Assumption Idiocy, How Assumption Impacts Our Expectations and Decision-making

We all assume things, it is what we do. We assume a friend will like a gift we got them, we assume we will like a restaurant that was recommended to us in a book or by a friend, we assume a movie will be good based on a trailer we saw. However, do we ever stop to think where do these assumptions come from and what can happen if they turned out to be wrong?

The term “Assumption Idiocy” denotes that people nowadays take most of their decisions or build most of their expectations on assumptions that are not properly studied; this leads to the risk of making a bad assumption and causing problems in our lives and with the people around us. The idiocy comes from not taking enough time to study our assumptions and acting on something that hasn’t been thought through.

Assumptions have become part of our daily lives and the outcome of our assumptions is generally immediately linked to us and the people around us. An example of how assumptions are linked to things, for instance, is going to the movies. The first thing a person should do is either read the synopsis, find out who stars in it and/or watch the trailer. Based on those inputs, a person can assume weather a movie will be good or bad according to that person’s taste and past experience. “Assumption Idiocy” kicks in when someone reads the title of a movie and assumes it’s good. Full stop.

Now to give an example on how assumptions affect the people around us, for instance, you called a friend up and asked if they would like to have dinner in a week’s time. A week later, you haven’t heard anything from your friend so you assumed the dinner was canceled and never showed up at the restaurant whereas your friend did. These scenarios are countless.

The best way to make an assumption is to build it. Like when wanting to go out to dinner, you would first check the restaurant’s cuisine, look at its menu, read some reviews, perhaps ask a few friends if they recommend it and then go. Unless you have no assumptions nor expectations on how the food in a restaurant will be, you will have to build your assumption based on logic.

Having said that, there are many cases where even after building our assumptions correctly and logically they still fail us; and that is perfectly fine as assumptions are only our version of the result and not the actual result.

Assumptions are called assumptions because we only assume the result, however, the outcome isn’t guaranteed. The only time we get to know if our assumption is correct or not is after the action has been taken and things are in motion. In many cases, we only get an indication of the result when it is too late to change our minds about what we assumed would happen.

The best way to make an assumption is to build it by logic, reason, past experience and communication. The result is never guaranteed however, you will be able to justify your assumption when you are either wrong or right.

Dictionary:

• Assumption: guess, postulate, theory.
• Idiocy: utterly senseless or foolish behavior.