Ten perspectives to match

Read the questions first. Select answers in the same-numbered cards after Texts A–E.

1. Which person found that someone’s admission of the limits of their knowledge made their guidance more credible?
2. Which person came to regard delaying indefinitely as a choice with consequences of its own?
3. Which person’s support for testing a new working process depended on retaining a route back to the previous system?
4. Which person resists treating a disappointing result by itself as evidence that the original decision was unreasonable?
5. Which person values some unpredictability as a source of interest, rather than merely tolerating it until it can be removed?
6. Which person no longer regards feeling at ease as a prerequisite for taking a first step?
7. Which person rejects the idea that effort already invested creates an obligation to continue the same work?
8. Which person regards revising a view in response to new information as compatible with being dependable?
9. Which person considers earlier results useful for forming expectations while rejecting them as guarantees of the next result?
10. Which person thinks those who will bear the consequences of a trial should help shape the decision about it?

Text A · Irene

Paragraph A1I keep records of what grows in my small garden, and I consult them before choosing next season's seeds. They tell me about earlier conditions and about what I did; they do not promise a repetition of the harvest. A neighbour thinks I should either trust those records completely or stop using them. That seems an unnecessary choice. Past results can inform my expectations without settling them. I would rather use imperfectly predictive information with its limits in view than pretend that its inability to guarantee a result makes it worthless.

Paragraph A2If the next harvest disappoints me, I shall want to understand what happened. I will not assume from disappointment alone that choosing those seeds was foolish. I could make a sensible choice with the available information and encounter a season unlike the ones in my notes. That does not put the decision beyond criticism: I may have overlooked something relevant. It means I would need to examine the original basis, rather than let the result do the whole job of judging it.

Text B · Joel

Paragraph B1Before joining a board-game group, I asked its coordinator whether I would fit in. She could describe the meetings, the usual numbers and how newcomers were introduced. She would not assure me that I would feel at home with everyone. Oddly, that admission increased my confidence in her account. She had attended the group for years, but knew which questions that experience could answer and which it could not. I found her more credible for drawing that line, not less useful because she declined to make the promise I wanted.

Paragraph B2I still felt nervous on the way to the first meeting. For a long time I had treated that feeling as a reason to put off trying unfamiliar groups. This time I did not make calmness a condition of going. I could attend once and decide afterwards whether to return. The possibility of feeling awkward was unwelcome, but it did not have to prevent a first step. I was allowing a feeling to accompany a choice, rather than requiring the choice to remove the feeling beforehand.

Text C · Nadia

Paragraph C1Our volunteer team was considering a shared booking page instead of its paper timetable. I was willing to try it, provided the old records remained available and we could return to the previous arrangement after the trial. No demonstration could establish exactly how the new process would work during our busiest week. Keeping a route back made a limited test acceptable to me. I was not opposing change; I was resisting a commitment whose consequences we could not yet assess and would then struggle to reverse.

Paragraph C2The team leader thought her own confidence ought to be enough for the rest of us. I respected her experience but disagreed. Some volunteers would enter bookings, others would deal with mistakes, and neither group should simply inherit the uncertainty created by her decision. People who would carry those consequences deserved a part in discussing the conditions of the test. I did not expect unanimous enthusiasm or a guarantee. I wanted participation in shaping a choice, rather than confidence from one person standing in for everyone else's judgement.

Text D · Paolo

Paragraph D1When I edit a documentary, I do not want to know every connection the material will reveal before I begin. An unanticipated link between two interviews can make the work more interesting than the film I imagined in advance. I still prepare questions and organise the recordings. Preparation gives me material to explore; it need not determine the final argument. The unresolved part is sometimes an attraction of the work, not merely a discomfort I reluctantly endure until I have removed it.

Paragraph D2That attraction does not mean I keep every project going indefinitely. Last year, a colleague urged me to continue a sequence chiefly because I had already spent ten days assembling it. I could not see why those days required another ten if the material no longer served the film. Changing direction felt disappointing, but keeping an unhelpful sequence would not recover the time. I prefer to decide what is worth doing next, rather than let effort already expended become an obligation to continue the same task.

Text E · Mei

Paragraph E1I hesitated over trying a shared workroom because I could not know whether the company would help my work or interrupt it. Staying in my room seemed like avoiding a decision. Eventually I noticed that postponing indefinitely would simply keep the existing arrangement in place, with its isolation as well as its convenience. Waiting had consequences too. I was choosing a continuation whenever I declined to consider the alternative, even if I did not call that a choice. That recognition made the uncertainty of trying less uniquely troubling.

Paragraph E2After a short trial, I changed the days on which I intended to use the workroom. A friend called this unreliable: I had sounded convinced about my earlier schedule. I thought it more dependable to explain what I had learned and revise my view than to protect the appearance of consistency. Reliability did not require me to keep an opinion after its basis had changed. It required taking the new information seriously and making the revised arrangement clear to the people who needed to know it.