The illusion of decision-making
You are your history, you can't change your current decisions, but you can change your future decisions.
Iacta alea est
(the die is cast)
Julius Caesar, upon crossing the Rubicon (49BC)
My hypothesis is that there is a large discrepancy between how we think we make decisions and what actually happens. Even afterwards, we likely reconstruct decisions differently than what likely happened. I use the word likely, because there is still much we don’t know about how our brains arrive at ‘decisions’ or how decisions are being made within groups socially. Nonetheless, both intuition and experience make me doubt whether our decisions are always that rational, clear-cut or decisive for that matter. Decision-making or ‘giving orders’ is important in the armed forces, perhaps more so then anywhere else. Why? Because of the gravity of some of these decisions, which can be about the lives (or deaths) of many.
So, if decision-making is that important for armies, then we probably make them very thoroughly, rational and above all, consciously, right? Well, I have my doubts. Not because we don’t care, but because we overestimate our abilities to make decisions, thoroughly, rational and consciously. There is much research on this topic, yet not always in relation to military decision-making. This specific post will briefly look into the biological and sociological dimensions of decision-making on the individual level. Buckle up for some science first..
Individual decision-making: you or your history?
Free will is a myth, if we are to believe the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. Besides the point, albeit a very important one but also a box of Pandora that I do not dare open here, Sapolsky argues that our decisions are being shaped by our histories. In an elegant manner he described what happened one second before your decision, to hours or days, up until centuries or millennia.
Seconds..
For example, there is still much debate about whether you consciously choose to push a button (in an experiment), or whether your brain already decided this before you became aware of the ‘choice’ to push this button.[1] Libet, and subsequent more recent researchers, claim that our brains already choose milliseconds before we become aware of our what we have chosen. Sapolsky: “Three different techniques, monitoring the activity of hundreds of millions of neurons down to single neurons, all show that at the moment when we believe that we are consciously and freely choosing to do something, the neurobiological die has already been cast.”[2][3] This is what happens milliseconds before you ‘decide’.
Minutes..
When talking about minutes to days before making decisions, our overall physiological state becomes important. Hormones like oxytocin can work as a katalysator and increase how much we like (or hate) something.[4] The neuroscientist Barrett speaks of body budgets, our energy levels sort of speak, that determine how we perceive the world and make decisions.[5] There is this well known example of an experiment where judges needed to review the parole of prisoners. The conclusion: depending on whether the judges just had a break, or were in need of one and very hungry, decided for a large part whether parole would be granted or not.[6] When you have been in military training, you likely know that deprivation of sleep and food will influence your abilities. But even more mild deprivations can have great consequences. Tensions within a team, fear from a superior, lack of good food with enough vitamins, or just skipping a meal, can already influence your decisions. Don’t underestimate your body budget and how it influences your cognitive abilities, even when you are a staff officer somewhere far from the front.
Years to centuries..
When we look at what happens years before making a certain decision, your childhood, education, training and even culture will influence on how and what decisions you make. This even goes back as far as when you are still an embryo in the womb. External influences like your mother smoking during pregnancy can have a lasting effect on your brain structure, and thus on how you develop during childhood and how you make choices.[7] And of course, when looking back centuries or millennia, evolution and culture influence our behaviour. One cool example is this experiment in Chinese ‘starbucks’ restaurants, where they discovered that people from regions that predominantly cultivate rice behave differently to changed circumstances than people that predominantly cultivate wheat. When the experimenters blocked the path with a chair, those that cultivated rice tended to avoid the chairs, whereas those that cultivated wheat moved the chairs aside. Apparently, there is a correlation between what your local culture has been primarily cultivating or eating and how you react to obstacles in your path.[8] Of course, this is just one experiment and they show a correlation, not a consequences, but Sapolsky’s 500-page book is full of these kinds of examples that definitely make you wonder how much influence you actually have.
Sapolsky’s main argument is that our history, whether it is just one second or centuries ago, influences how we behave and what decisions we make. Our histories matter. We should therefore select our future leaders carefully, since they already carry with them tons of experiences that will indirectly influence their decision-making abilities. These might not be the experiences you see on a resume, but the small things that influenced their brains during childhood and thus eventually their characters in adult live.
Livewired with boundaries
Fortunately we can also shape our future and thus our history, we call this learning. This is why training and an attitude of continuous learning is important, no matter how old you are, for it will influence how we make decisions in the future. David Eagleman recently wrote a brilliant book called Livewired: the inside story of the ever-changing brain, which is about the adaptability of our brains. The main point of the book is that your neural networks are not hardwired, but livewired, meaning you can reconfigure your circuitry every moment of your life.[9] To some degree at least, because both Eagleman and Sapolsky are right. Your genes for example are mostly hardwired, and even your brain will become less flexible when aging, which explains why it is so much easier to learn when your young. The explanation for this is that when aging, your brain has already figured out how the world works and start ‘locking in’ efficient neural pathways. Moreover, the neural territory (brain regions) that have claimed specific task in your brain is dependent on activity.[10] Even though you might be proficient in a foreign language, when you don’t use it anymore, the brain will repurpose that area for other tasks. However, relearning that specific language will be much easier than without prior training or knowledge. We can thus change our brains to some degree during our lives, but there are boundaries to how much change is possible.
Snap judgements
We concluded that our decisions are shaped by our histories, part of which can be actively changed at a neurological level. But this would imply that our decisions are less susceptible to objective information and analysis as we would like to. How can we think without thinking and still come up with good decisions? Malcolm Gladwell wrote an excellent book on this topic, called Blink. In this book he explains how we are able to make snap judgements without rational thought, and why this often leads to a better assessment than rational and often time consuming deliberations. Of course there are also examples of when these snap judgements lead us astray. This is what Kahneman and Tversky refer to as system 1, and which in their opinion is inferior because it is more liable to biases.[11] Read my take on their work (Thinking Fast and Slow) in this earlier post. Gladwell also acknowledges the existence of these biases but exemplifies how well the outcomes of these snap judgements can actually be, despite possible biases. The dichotomy of either, fast and lesser judgements, versus slow and better judgements is a false one.
Gladwell begins his book by explaining this false dichotomy with an example about a statue that didn’t look right. The sculpture was what they call a kouros (6th century BC) and after months of research and tests, it was determined that it was an original yet undiscovered specimen. However, some experts felt that something was off. They could not immediately point out what it was, but the statue didn’t look right. Further assessments eventually concluded that it was indeed a forgery.[12] This is but one example, but this book is full of similar experiences.
Most interestingly, Gladwell discusses the role of retired Marine Corps General Paul van Riper in a simulation war game called the Millennium Challenge (’02) in which he played the opposing forces. The blue forces (JFCOM) used a decision-making model called Operational Net Assessment, which consists of elaborate and rational analysis. Paul van Riper on the other hand relied on this intuitions, or what snap judgements are about. One could argue the simulation displayed the science versus the art of war. The result: Paul van Riper obliterated the blue forces, despite all their analysis and fancy tools. Only after changing the rules of the game, thereby tying down the red forces, did the blue forces succeed. Of course, there will be different accounts of this experiment, but Gladwell uses it as an example of why intuition matters in war, even at a strategic level.[13]
Brains still matter
In the midst of increasing sales-pitches of AI systems that will revolutionize our decision-making, it is important to reflect that there is still so much misunderstanding on how we humans make decisions, and more importantly, what works best. We haven’t yet really started optimizing our greatest tool in war, our brains. Instead, we are tempted to give it an even less important role by outsourcing tasks to machines. Don’t get me wrong, we need to use AI on the battlefield. Yet, we foremost need to further understand how we humans make decisions and how we can get better at it.
To conlcude: you are your history, you can't change your current decisions, but you can change your future decisions.
Thank you for reading! There are only free-subscriptions to Beyond the Art of War. If you do want to make a contribution, you’re welcome to buy me a coffee!
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Armed Forces.
[1] Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A science of life without free will, P19-44
[2] Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A science of life without free will, P24
[3] For more, see the (Benjamin) Libet research.
[4] Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A science of life without free will, P55
[5] Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, P121
[6] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges
[7] Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
[8] Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A science of life without free will, P76
[9] Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking
[10] https://www.sloww.co/livewired-david-eagleman/
[11] Daniel Kahneman, Ons feilbare denken: Thinking Fast and Slow
[12] Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking P1-17
[13] You can find the full report here: https://wargaming.hoover.org/view/ark:/54723/h3n58cv0t/millenium-challenge-2002-final-report-2002?offset=206&limit=25&sort=title.keyword
Bibliography:
David Eagleman, Livewired: the inside story of the ever-changing brain, (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2020)
Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2005)
Daniel Kahneman, Ons feilbare denken: Thinking Fast and Slow (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Business Contact, 2011)
Lisa Feldman Barret. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (London: Pan Books, 2018)
Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A science of life without free will (New York: Penguin Press, 2023)
Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (London: Penguin Random House UK, 2018)
Image: https://stockcake.com/i/military-operations-center_333428_750745
Much of the book "Blink" is based on Gary Klein's work who is perhaps the world expert on expertise. John Schmitt (CEO of ShadowBox and author of MCDP Warfighting) recently wrote a short memoir of his experience discovering the RPD model which you may find interesting:
https://www.shadowboxtraining.com/news/2025/08/19/rpd-a-memoir/
There is lot of literature trying to sell the story that people are easily influenced by things out of our control. Richard Thaler calls them SIFs, Supposedly Irrelevant Factors. But a large portion of these studies were done with undergrads in domains where they have no experience. Other studies fail to replicate (e.g., the infamous judge study - turns out the judges took harder cases before lunch which is a massive confound).
What we find in our work is that experts are much better at realizing what is relevant and irrelevant. Basically, as people gain more experience they are able to make increasingly more refined and useful distinctions by focusing in on what is relevant. In her work on emotion, Lisa Feldman Barrett calls this Emotional Granularity. But in our domain we just call it expertise.
I cannot speak to free will (though I have my doubts of the Libet study!). But I do think it is possible to train yourself to act on relevant factors and ignore the irrelevant. Indeed, that is our entire purpose as a Substack and as a company.
“We should therefore select our future leaders carefully, since they already carry with them tons of experiences that will indirectly influence their decision-making abilities.”
What would a screening regime based on this insight look like in practice? It’s one thing to say that our personal histories, the circumstances of our birth, and our genealogies all (to a degree) weigh on our decisions but it’s another thing to say that X factor led to Y decision. The latter doesn’t seem to be possible.