In part 1 of my discussion of Choose Wisely, I detailed a typical decision—what to do on a beautiful Saturday—to illustrate the sorts of decisions we face in everyday life. My aim was to show that even a simple decision such as this one comprises a complexity that we often fail to appreciate. Far from a straightforward, algorithmic process of weighing pros and cons and specifying their probabilities, deciding what to do on a Saturday is inextricably wrapped up in our values and goals, our mood and situation, our sense of morality and the expectations of our community. In part one, I also sketched briefly what my collaborator, Richard Schuldenfrei, and I called “intelligent reflection” as a model of how such a decision might be made. As I explained: “Intelligent reflection allows you to see multiple aspects of a decision. It allows you to compare options that seem to have little or nothing in common. It allows you to consider how a simple decision of how to spend a Saturday says something about who you are and what you value. It allows you to ponder what kind of shadow your decision about today may cast on your future. Intelligent reflection speaks not only to what you decide, but also to how you decide.” There is no “science” of intelligent reflection, nor are there rules that enable us to distinguish clearly instances of intelligent reflection from instances of unintelligent reflection … of which there are many in most of our…
