Anybody who has ever taken a challenging new year resolution will likely be aware of the psychological ploys employed by the mental weakness that we’re resolved to overcome. One of the most cunning schemes among these is to use our own sense of good against ourselves – by pitting the best against the better. Let’s take the example of a chronic alcoholic who wants to quit drinking and resolves to do so. Wanting to win over this despicable habit is what we earlier referred to as his sense of good – which has to be strong if he is even to undertake such a resolution. The very first trick that his habit will typically play is to give him a few easy victories, encouraging him to lower his guard. At the next opportune moment, such as at a party hosted by a friend, the habit is likely to strike undercover, so that he will consider having a drink – “not because of his addiction, but because he doesn’t want his friend to feel bad”. If he falls for this trick and even tastes a bit of alcohol, that is when the powerful stratagem which is the subject of this discussion will be employed by his habit to exploit his momentary daze to completely knock him over.

This comes as a feeling, that having already broken his resolution, he has nothing more to lose by drinking even more. If successful, this ploy is enough to make him consider the war as lost, based on the result of a single insignificant battle. The best outcome, would undoubtedly have been for him to hold his ground against temptation and stick on to his resolution. But given that this is no longer possible, the better of the available options is for him to reaffirm his resolution and not cede any more territory than has already been lost. This better option, however looks like a bad move when pitted against the best outcome that has already ceased to be an option. It is by thus appealing to his sense of good, that the habit gets him to discard the better option without realizing that he is defaulting onto the worst path open to him. It is to alert us to this psychological trap that some wise man have given us the saying, “Do not make the best an enemy of the better“.

There are many other flavours in which this trap manifests itself. When we find that others are littering the street, we convince ourselves that no good can come of only us taking care to not add to the mess. While the best scenario is where everybody does their part in keeping the street clean, the options that we are dealing with are just whether we add to the mess or not. By comparing this with the impossible best option, we make a weak excuse to lower our standards. To defend against this tendency characterized by arguments such as “Why should we change this article when hundreds of other articles have the same problem?”, Wikipedia has a policy which says “Don’t make perfect the enemy of better“, and points out that it is impossible to fix every instance of a given problem before fixing any instance of it!

A variation of this thought process is known as Nirvana Fallacy, a term coined by economist Harold Demsetz who noted: “The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing ‘imperfect’ institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach” . An example of this fallacy is when people oppose implementation of a prohibition on sale of narcotic drugs by arguing that those addicted would still somehow procure it through illegal means. An imagined solution in which consumption of narcotics can be completely stopped is being used to fight the implementation of a practical measure that can bring about a reduction in the use of such drugs.The common thread in all these examples is that there are times when our desire for perfection can stand in the way achieving a realistic improvement. At such times, it will be good to remember that in most cases, the path to the best is through the better. After all, in the middle of night it would be unwise to refuse to be illumined by the Moon by citing that it cannot match the Sun in brightness!