4 ms·

With the paradox of choice, this many products often make us less satisfied and more unhappy. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice

With the paradox of choice, this many products often make us less satisfied and more unhappy. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

wallacoloo 10y ago
I have major objections to this talk. The speaker claims that choice itself is the issue. I disagree - choice is not the issue. The issue is an inability to make decisions when presented with hundreds of possibilities & to not be upset over poor outcomes that our choices create, and our ability to make these choices is a recent phenomenon that has finally caused this issue to surface. Consider his point on salad dressing (paraphrased): > If you buy one of the 100 available salad dressings & you don't like it, > it's easy to imagine what things would have been like if you had chosen a > better one & suddenly you're disappointed. Well sure, I'll be disappointed. But then I'll just try a different one next time and repeat until I find some dressings that I do like, and now I'm happy. If there wasn't choice here, I would be perpetually unsatisfied. Regarding paralysis when confronted with too many choices, I think this is just a temporary artifact as we're making the transition to having more options. The first few times I went shopping for shoes at a shoe store, I tried on tens of pairs and debated the pros and cons of various shoes for over an hour under the assumption that of all the shoes in the store, only one would be the best one for me. Now I know that this isn't the case. There are several shoes that I'll be completely satisfied with, and now there are enough of them that the store has specific sections where probably a good 20% of them will meet all the requirements I have. So I find the first one that meets all my goals, and then I buy it. The process takes < 10 minutes. This is actually less time than it previously would have taken, as the candidate shoes would previously have been spread over different sections and not one of them would match all my requirements, leading me to have to make a conscious decision on what to sacrifice. And now that my decision carries more weight, I would spend more time deliberating and hence the trip to the shoe store would take longer & I'd be disappointed at the time I lost. No, the author cherry-picks his points & confuses his own limitations as being indicative of a problem with the existence of choice rather than a personal limitation because - guess what? - he doesn't want to blame himself for his own lack of satisfaction.
- grillvogel 10y ago
  "the author is just cherry picking but my cherry picked anecdotal story related to me proves he's wrong" ok
  - wallacoloo 10y ago
    I intended for my shoe story to be a rebuttal against the speaker's pants story, as the scenarios are essentially identical if you substitute "shoes" for "pants". Perhaps the argument would have been more valid had I skipped that and just directly addressed the long-term results of his pants encounter instead.

wallacoloo 10y ago

I have major objections to this talk. The speaker claims that choice itself is the issue. I disagree - choice is not the issue. The issue is an inability to make decisions when presented with hundreds of possibilities & to not be upset over poor outcomes that our choices create, and our ability to make these choices is a recent phenomenon that has finally caused this issue to surface. Consider his point on salad dressing (paraphrased): > If you buy one of the 100 available salad dressings & you don't like it, > it's easy to imagine what things would have been like if you had chosen a > better one & suddenly you're disappointed. Well sure, I'll be disappointed. But then I'll just try a different one next time and repeat until I find some dressings that I do like, and now I'm happy. If there wasn't choice here, I would be perpetually unsatisfied. Regarding paralysis when confronted with too many choices, I think this is just a temporary artifact as we're making the transition to having more options. The first few times I went shopping for shoes at a shoe store, I tried on tens of pairs and debated the pros and cons of various shoes for over an hour under the assumption that of all the shoes in the store, only one would be the best one for me. Now I know that this isn't the case. There are several shoes that I'll be completely satisfied with, and now there are enough of them that the store has specific sections where probably a good 20% of them will meet all the requirements I have. So I find the first one that meets all my goals, and then I buy it. The process takes < 10 minutes. This is actually less time than it previously would have taken, as the candidate shoes would previously have been spread over different sections and not one of them would match all my requirements, leading me to have to make a conscious decision on what to sacrifice. And now that my decision carries more weight, I would spend more time deliberating and hence the trip to the shoe store would take longer & I'd be disappointed at the time I lost. No, the author cherry-picks his points & confuses his own limitations as being indicative of a problem with the existence of choice rather than a personal limitation because - guess what? - he doesn't want to blame himself for his own lack of satisfaction.

grillvogel 10y ago
"the author is just cherry picking but my cherry picked anecdotal story related to me proves he's wrong" ok
- wallacoloo 10y ago
  I intended for my shoe story to be a rebuttal against the speaker's pants story, as the scenarios are essentially identical if you substitute "shoes" for "pants". Perhaps the argument would have been more valid had I skipped that and just directly addressed the long-term results of his pants encounter instead.