Judgment

There is no substitute for judgment. No algorithm can make all our choices for us, whether those choices are consumer choices, like which phone to buy or where to go on our next vacation, or whether they are public choices, such as how to vote in the next election. Quizzes and ranked lists and expert reviews are only a click away for practically every choice we might make, and yet our judgment remains the most valuable resource we have for making any choice.

The good news here is that our judgment can be improved. People who have good judgment haven’t always. Rather, they’ve learned from experience, taken reputable advice, and interrogated their choices for self-delusion. They have strengthened their judgment, and so can we.

This is the value of participating in communities that make decisions together, the collective exercise of judgment. On too large a scale this just feels like politics with one clear winner and several clear losers. There’s collective judgment in that, but it feels abstract, and we can too easily distance ourselves from outcomes we didn’t vote for. But at a smaller scale–say, a congregational scale–we are required to throw in with people whose judgment is different than ours and to mine their judgment for wisdom, even if we disagree with it.

Communities of judgment focus on details. The most important judgments we make are not about big ideas and seismic events, turning points and moments of crisis. The judgments that have the greatest impact are the day-to-day decisions we make about the people and the places we care about.