How Many Options Should We Consider?

In his ill-fated attempt to get climbers to the top of Mt. Everest in 1996, mountain climbing guide Rob Hall believed that his expedition plan would get the climbers in his charge onto and down from the summit. He believed his hard rule that the team would turn around at 2 p.m. if they were not yet on top of the mountain would protect the climbers from disaster. He believed that allowing his climbers to express any dissenting views while the expedition made the final push would hurt their chances of success.?

Nearly all the climbers on the summit push that day, including Hall and his team, kept climbing and arrived at the top after two o’clock. As a result, many climbers found themselves descending in darkness, well past midnight, as a ferocious blizzard enveloped the mountain. Five people died in this highly publicized disaster and many others barely escaped with their lives.

What might have led renowned guide Hall astray, beyond the judgment-skewing effects of high stress, and oxygen and sleep deprivation?

While Hall's climbing and leading experience are evidence that he should have known about the dangers of scaling Mt. Everest, clearly his planning did not account for the bad luck of leading less experienced climbing clients in a surprise storm of epic proportions.

But Hall’s errors go beyond not planning for bad luck.

Evidence suggests he saw the climb as a "now or never" opportunity for his charges. However, other climbers including filmmaker David Breashears and his team who were on the mountain at the same time, got to the top and down in following days. There were other opportunities to make the summit push. Hall’s "all or nothing" thinking suggests that he was trapped by the false dilemma fallacy, which is when the choice is presented as being between two options, when in fact one or more additional options exist.?

A reasoner who unfairly presents too few choices and then implies that a choice must be made among this short menu of choices is using the false dilemma fallacy, as does the person who accepts this faulty reasoning.

Leaders, whether intentionally or not, can deceive others by establishing false constructs. Leaders who mislead narrow the options to exclude valid choices. They create a false dilemma by unfairly presenting too few choices and implying that a choice must be made among this short menu.

Leaders don’t always see that they are misleading by presenting too few options. Sometimes the situation is presented as an “either-or” analysis because the reasoner is pursuing traditional logic, which we are conditioned to do. That’s the exclusive alternatives trap. Yet many situations, as the deadly climb illustrates, should lead us to juggle more than two alternatives.

No doubt, evaluating multiple options and dealing with dissent can impede progress. But Hall's party encountered the worst of outcomes because options were not recognized and the judgments of others went unheard. Hall's insistence that his decisions were not to be questioned on the ascent meant he heard no dissent - even when his guides and climbers had doubts and questions about the decision to continue climbing.

This lack of feedback, in essence, freed Hall to continue the climb after his deadline. It perversely amplified the false consensus effect, which is seeing more consensus for our beliefs than is actually the case, leading us to not consider judgments different from ours.?