The best choice among those considered may not be the best choice available.
Most decisions are framed as comparisons between alternatives. We examine their advantages, disadvantages, risks, and supporting evidence before selecting the most promising option.
But this process rests on an assumption we rarely question: that the alternatives worth considering have already been identified.
What if the best alternative has not even occurred to us?
Philosopher P. Kyle Stanford explored this problem in Exceeding Our Grasp (2006). His research into the history of science revealed how scientists repeatedly accepted the best explanations available to them, only for subsequent generations to discover fundamentally different explanations that accounted for the same evidence.
The problem was not necessarily poor reasoning or inadequate evidence. It was the failure to conceive of better alternatives.
Why This Matters
The same limitation affects decisions in business, investing, strategy, public policy, and everyday life.
A decision can be carefully researched, logically reasoned, and supported by extensive evidence, yet still produce a poor outcome because the available alternatives were inadequate.
Good reasoning applied to a poor set of alternatives does not necessarily produce a good decision.
The alternatives we consider are shaped by our experience, knowledge, assumptions, incentives, and how we define the problem.
When we accept a choice between A and B, we implicitly accept the assumptions that produced those alternatives.
Sometimes the most important contribution is not demonstrating that A is better than B, but discovering C—or reconsidering why the choice exists at all.
The Practical Principle
Before comparing alternatives, examine the alternatives themselves.
- Question the choice set. Why are these the options being considered? What might be missing?
- Reconsider the problem. Are we addressing the underlying objective, or merely choosing between predefined solutions?
- Challenge the constraints. Which limitations are unavoidable, and which result from assumptions we have not examined?
- Generate fundamentally different alternatives. Look beyond minor variations of existing proposals.
- Match exploration to consequences. The greater the stakes and irreversibility of a decision, the more valuable it may be to search for alternatives before committing.
This does not mean postponing decisions indefinitely. Searching has costs, and no set of alternatives can ever be guaranteed complete.
It means recognizing that generating possibilities and evaluating possibilities are two different intellectual tasks. Both deserve serious attention.
The quality of a decision depends not only on how well we choose between alternatives, but also on how well we conceive of the alternatives worth choosing between.
Before asking which option is best, we should first ask whether we are considering the right options.
References
- Stanford, P. K. (2006). Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives. Oxford University Press.
- Stanford, P. K. (2006). Darwin’s Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57(1), 121–144.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Underdetermination of Scientific Theory, Section 3.3.