This highly depends. There is a lot of people who made bad choices off of the info they have at the time. If this is the case, then that has to deal with luck.
But, lets say you want to try drugs and everyone around you tells you not. You find info saying what happens. And so on, but you still take drugs. This is walking into a situation with your eye's open, and this was your choice.
A less extreme example, is lets say you want to go home from some store. You know of a shortcut or a different way of getting home, but it takes you through a bad part of town. You know your chances of getting robbed or hurt is much higher taking this other way, but you take it anyways. Again, you walk into a situation with your eyes open and it's purely on your head.
Or we can take one of my things. I'm autistic and wanted to go into the military when I got out of HS. Between the time between HS and when I got my BS make backup plan was to join the air force and become a pilot. When time came and I couldn't find any jobs. I went to enact my back up plan. It turns out that not only I can't be a pilot because of stupid things like I get hay fiver. But my autism disqualifies me from the military altogether. Like I have to have a ton of wavers, and each time I get a CO I have to get another waver. That or be kicked out. And then to top it, the chance of getting a waver is virtually 0%. This was on my head because I could've done research into this as soon as I gotten documented with autism.
Like it was to the point that a month or so my dad kept pushing me to join the military or do some reserve. And after I told him what I found and asked him to look into this since he has major connections into the military. He told me about a number of case studies and he confirm there is no way for me to get in. After which, he 100% stopped the military talk.
But like I said, I could've done the research far far far sooner. Yes I was unlucky because I'm autistic and there was nothing I could've done about that, and there is no known cure. But at the same time if I did my research sooner instead of assuming. I could've made a different back up plan. But even still, I don't think I would've found a solution and ended in the same spot no matter what.
It's not so much a question of what knowledge one has at the time they make a decision. It comes down to defining what a decision really is. I would define it vague terms, as a neurological event in the brain. If we accept this, then we have to then ask; are we in control of that event?
In the drugs example, yes, indeed it was my choice (my brain's judgement) to take the drugs. But
why did I choose to take the drugs, against the advice of my peers?
Why would some people heed the advice of their friends, and others not? There has to be a
physical basis responsible for that difference somewhere, otherwise we would be identical and all make the same good decisions. Similarly, in the walking home scenario, why would some people take the normal route, and others take the more dangerous route, assuming all had the same information? We know that, in real life, people would diverge, some would take the normal route, while others wouldn't. The brain computes some kind of result to arrive at a decision, but are we truly responsible for what decision it arrives at? It is
our brain and therefore
our decision, but that doesn't mean we (conscious awareness) were in charge of the result it arrived at.
Regarding your life situation
, why did you not do the research sooner? Yes, it was
you who failed to do the research, but are you responsible for that failure? Okay, maybe you were just too lazy to do the research. Is that laziness your fault? Did you (your aware self)
create that laziness? That we make different decisions,
must eventually come down to differences in brain structure.
