What Does Geography Have to Do with Decision-Making?

A few weeks ago, I was studying geography when the instructor said: "Geography, in its purest form, is 'why.'"

Geography explains why.

The more you understand that simple but profound word—why—the more clarity you will gain in decision-making and understanding the world itself.

Here are a few points that showcase geography's brilliant effect on decision-making. This is a basic overview—it will take an entire video to truly explore its significance:

1. Business & Economics: Companies analyze geography to determine optimal locations, considering customer distribution, transportation, and competition. Smart businesses position themselves strategically to maximize profitability.

2. Urban Planning & Environmental Management: Governments and city planners rely on geographic analysis to develop infrastructure, allocate resources, and balance development with sustainability.

3. National Security & Defense: Geography shapes military strategy—understanding terrain, borders, and spatial relationships is critical for national defense and intelligence.

4. Education & Awareness: Geography enhances geo-literacy, helping individuals comprehend spatial relationships and global interdependencies. Without it, people make poor, narrow-minded decisions.

5. Disaster Response & Public Health: Geographic analysis helps governments respond to natural disasters and track disease outbreaks. Without it, decisions are slow, ineffective, and deadly.

At its core, geography provides the spatial framework for every major decision. The greatest minds leverage geography to understand reality accurately.

Judgment is Everything

Sharpening your judgment will make you a better decision-maker.

Your inability to understand judgment makes you a terrible decision-maker.

Whatever the reason is—

• Maybe you have a negative perception of judgment.

• Maybe you don't understand it.

But disregarding judgment makes your judgment terrible. Which, in turn, makes you a terrible decision-maker.

Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest men in the world because of his judgment.

If Warren Buffett were to lose all his money today, companies would still pay him billions of dollars—because of his proven track record of great judgment.

Everything you do right now builds your ability to judge:

• Your experiences

• Your thinking

• Your consumption

• Your learning

• Your work

It all builds up to how you judge.

We all judge—but not everyone is aware of it. And unconscious judgment is weak judgment.

The Corruption of Social Decision-Making

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

Friedrich Nietzsche

“They call me a psychologist; this is not true,” Dostoevsky wrote. “I am merely a realist in the higher sense.”

Making something social destroys the truth of it.

Why? Because social groups need consensus to survive.

And consensus is about compromise, not truth-seeking.

This is why I hate sociology.

Natural science once allowed independent thinkers to seek truth. Individuals could verify reality through inventions and empirical proof.

But social sciences infected academia like a disease.

• Social sciences, like macroeconomics, are completely corrupted.

• Social sciences need funding—which means they are politically motivated.

• They themselves influence society and policy—making them even more corrupted.

Even natural sciences are under attack by the social sciences.

The truth of science is becoming socialized.

The more people involved in the process, the further from the truth the results become.

Science Itself Is Overrated

This dehumanization isn't just an academic problem—it’s a historical one. As Dostoevsky wrote, “All my life I have been offended by the laws of nature,” The rejection of human individuality in favor of rigid, systemic thinking has led to some of history’s greatest intellectual failures.

Look through history.

Who truly created groundbreaking innovations?

Not scientists.

It was the natural philosophers.

These were radical independent thinkers—persecuted for challenging society.

Think about what a Ph.D. actually means.

A Ph.D. means you are a philosopher in that field. You have the knowledge, skills, and intellect to extend the discipline you mastered.

It’s the same in martial arts.

I remember my master once told me:

"When you become a black belt, you won’t just memorize moves. You will understand the moves so deeply that you can apply them instinctively in a real fight."

It’s the same with decision-making.

You are not just learning facts. You are training your instincts.

The Separation of Economics from Social Science

I would allow macroeconomics to remain categorized as a social science. However, microeconomics is not a social science at all.

Microeconomics is what it is: Economics—the study of scarcity and how individuals make decisions within the burden of scarcity.

Sciences—especially social sciences—cannot interfere with economics at its core. Microeconomics is based on individual choices, incentives, and trade-offs—not political influence or social narratives. Any attempt to socialize microeconomics corrupts its foundation.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, has become a playground for ideological manipulation. It seeks to justify policies, regulate behavior, and distort economic reality.

This distinction is critical. Microeconomics reveals truth. Macroeconomics disguises it.

Free to choose Free to be wrong the burden of consequences

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

This was one of Dostoevsky's most profound insights.

Dostoevsky understood the agony of decision-making. His work is filled with characters who battle with freedom, morality, and consequences.

Why? Because most people don’t make decisions—they inherit them. Society, culture, family, media—all force decisions upon you before you ever think for yourself.

Your life is already thought out and planned for you. You are just a actor playing the script.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, known for exploring the complexities of human nature, often emphasized the importance of individual decision-making and self-will, even when it deviates from societal norms or reason.

**A quick back story of Dostoevsky - which is much needed **

He was in prison and was sentenced to death. Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death in 1849 for allegedly participating in the Petrashevsky Circle, a radical intellectual group suspected of subversive activities and criticism of the Tsarist government, although the sentence was ultimately commuted.

In other words these group of people will gather up and discuss radical ideas, including those critical of the Tsarist regime and the Orthodox Church.

However, at the last minute, the Tsar commuted the sentence to a term of hard labor in Siberia, followed by military service.

One man’s hair turned white from terror. Another lost his mind entirely. But the third—Dostoevsky—channeled his suffering into some of the most profound works of literature ever written.

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Demons

The Idiot

Just to name a few

But his best works are probably; "The Brothers Karamazov" is widely considered his masterpiece, followed by "Crime and Punishment" and "Notes from Underground".

To go deeper into his works and life and to further validate my point on decision making and the ridiculousness of totalitarian and socialized decision-making for the individual -

The mock-execution and the years in the Siberian prison—was thinly fictionalized in his novel Notes from the House of the Dead in (1860)— this experience changed Dostoevsky forever. His naive, hopeful romanticism disappeared. His religious faith deepened. The sadism of both prisoners and guards taught him that the sunny view of human nature presumed by utilitarianism, liberalism, and socialism is preposterous. Real human beings differed fundamentally from what these philosophies presumed.

man shall not live by bread alone - Jesus

Matthew 4:4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3

Jesus emphasized that true life comes from God's word and guidance, not just material needs.

Today, the phrase is often used to mean that people need more than just material possessions or basic needs to live a meaningful life.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," the Grand Inquisitor uses Jesus's statement "Man shall not live by bread alone" to argue that humanity needs more than just material needs met; they require spiritual freedom and meaning, which the Church, in its pursuit of order, has allegedly failed.

The whole point of prison, as Dostoevsky experienced it, is to restrict people’s ability to make their own choices. But choice is what makes us human.

Those prisoners lash out because of their ineradicable craving to have a will of their own, and that craving is ultimately more important than their own well-being and, indeed, than life itself.

The true test of decision-making is this: Are you making choices based on your own experience, logic, and truth, or are you just following social expectations?

This ties into Naval’s concept of decision autonomy—if you let the crowd think for you, your decisions will be distorted, weak, and built on artificial constraints.

Dostoevsky also warns against the burden of freedom:

“Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”

Freedom sounds great until you realize it means you alone are responsible for your life. This is why so many people give up their autonomy in exchange for comfort. They trade decision-making for the illusion of safety. The greatest decision-makers do the opposite: they embrace the burden of choice.

In Knowledge and Decisions, Thomas Sowell discusses how the dissemination of knowledge influences decision-making. He argues that decentralized decision-making, where individuals make choices based on personal knowledge and circumstances, often leads to better outcomes than centralized decisions by distant authorities. This validates Dostoevsky's insight: “To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”

The Truth About Decision-Making: You Will Always Face Costs

Here’s the part people refuse to accept: There will always be costs. There will always be problems.

Every decision has a price. You are always trading one thing for another.

Not every decision has a benefit. But every decision has a consequence.

You can’t escape problems. You can only decide which problems are worth having.

When you make a decision, ask:

What am I sacrificing? Every yes is a no to something else.

What constraints exist? You are not making choices in a vacuum.

Am I thinking for myself, or am I outsourcing my decisions?

The best decision-makers don’t just accept reality—they build better alternatives within it.

The Most Formidable Ability in the World

Your ability to see reality clearly makes you formidable.

Thomas Sowell once said:

"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."

A person who sees reality clearly is a threat to all falsehoods.

Governments, institutions, and socially accepted narratives depend on deception. The moment you start seeing things as they are, you become a disruptor.

And that is why decision-making is the most valuable skill in the world.

If you cannot judge reality properly, then every decision you make is flawed. Every failure you experience is self-inflicted.

The greatest tragedy of the modern world?

Most people are completely blind to reality.

But you don’t have to be.

A Challenge to You

The next time you make a decision, ask yourself:

• What constraints am I ignoring?

• Am I making this decision based on reality—or social influence?

Because your ability to judge reality correctly will determine your entire future.

And those who fail at judgment?

Fail at life.

A life without clear judgment is a life dictated by others. If you refuse to sharpen your judgment, you are not making decisions—you are merely following orders.

Dante