Insights on choice from Dostoevsky: “…man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one positively ought (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy— is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. (Ed: humans are often strongly pro-choice, regardless of how deadly the consequences to themselves and the most vulnerable)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes from the Underground (Kindle Locations 416-422). Kindle Edition. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/600