The very human problem of regret minimization
Will Tau be able to help us solve the problem of how to minimize regret? Regret minimization is one of the main problems decision makers have, at the core of ethics (ethical dilemmas) and shopping.
The problem of how to minimize regret over a lifetime turns out to be an extremely difficult problem. The other problem(s) people have is choice anxiety and choice fatigue. We have so many different options to analyze, the world is becoming increasingly complex, the consequences for error increasingly severe, that choice anxiety and options fatigue are also a problem.
The problems of choice anxiety and options fatigue arise from the fact that attention is scarce. There are plenty of problems so a person has to typically prioritize the problems they will attempt to solve. To solve a problem often requires deep analysis of information and analysis is taxing on the human psyche as well. Analysis paralysis is basically the state of a human brain where the human is functionally paralyzed, unable to make a decision, due to concern that their decision will be less than perfect or not correct enough.
To minimize regret a person would have to avoid making decisions which they could later regret. Bounded rationality would mean that a human brain is limited in analyzing decisions to begin with to even know which decisions will lead to regret even if the human had all the information necessary (and often the human doesn't have access to the necessary information). Some people due to analysis paralysis fail to make a decision at all, putting it off, over and over again, or just take forever and a day to make a decision. In the end, the bottleneck seems to be the human brain and the ability of the human brain to analyze information, adopt rational decision making as a strategy, consistently follow it, and keep emotions in check.
How can this be resolved? The only solution I have found is not to rely on the human brain. This requires accepting that the human brain is the bottle neck to quality decision making, including morality/ethics, and only by augmenting with machines can this bottleneck be transcended. So the approach to minimizing regret while minimizing option fatigue, analysis paralysis, etc, is to use machines (intelligent machines) to assist humans in making decisions by automating certain processes, such as the data analysis, and also keeping things rational.