The signal that is easy to see

A family in Riyadh is choosing a driving instructor for their daughter, and two men come to meet them.

The first arrives in a spotless new car, firm handshake, plenty of stories about his years on the road. The second is quieter, his car is older, and he spends most of the visit asking her what scares her about driving.

Almost everyone picks the first one.

We have to use clues. Nobody can test-drive every instructor, read every book before buying it or try every dentist before trusting one. So we look for something visible that might stand in for the thing we cannot see yet. That is not a flaw. It is how choosing works.

The problem is that the easiest clues are often the emptiest. Height, polish, a confident voice, a famous school on a certificate, a person who reminds us of ourselves. None of these tell us whether someone can do the job. They tell us whether they are comfortable being looked at.

And the cost of a wrong clue is rarely obvious. The family will never learn how their daughter would have done with the quieter man. They will only notice, months later, that she still freezes at roundabouts.

Better clues exist, and they are usually a little harder to collect. How many of his students passed first time? How did the nervous ones feel by the third lesson? Does he notice what frightens her, or only what impresses her parents?

The same goes for anyone we hire, any seller we buy from, any partner we trust with something that matters. The question is not whether we use shortcuts. We always will.

The question is whether the shortcut points to the work, or only to the person standing in front of it.