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"The Paradox of Choice" has a couple good insights, especially for entrepreneurs selling, but I think it misses one very important thing. Yes, the unknowledgea

"The Paradox of Choice" has a couple good insights, especially for entrepreneurs selling, but I think it misses one very important thing. Yes, the unknowledgeable shopper will feel overwhelmed if you ask them what spice you want to buy out of 40 different spices, but the world would be much worse if there was a mandate that you could only buy pepper and garlic. It would be easier for the unskilled cook, but serious chefs would have their ability severely curtailed. Likewise, I think a lot of the "paradox of choice" applications evolve into tyranny - force simpliciy, because hey, that's great for people! All these choices confuse people! It's true, yes, that 80% to 90% of people don't want more choice and the choice is a hardship for them. But removing choice from that last 10 to 20% that are educated on the tradeoffs is really, really, really bad. There's a fundamental flaw with the whole premise of paradox of choice - it ignores that there are people for whom a wide variety of choices is incredibly valuable and important. Encouraging restricting choices (especially by force! yuck!) makes things easier for most people, but destroys a lot of potential for amazing creations as well.

gmac 16y ago
Spices are a hopeless example of the paradox of choice, since they're all genuinely different things. The kinds of choices I hate are the ones that have been deliberately and often artificially cooked up between things that are in essence the same -- or that I'd benefit from really being the same. Two examples: (1) Washing powder. My local supermarket has a whole aisle filled with essentially identical products in different packaging (many from the same manufacturer/conglomerate). Ironically, this proliferation of meaningless branding seems to push out genuine choice: despite the acres of shelf space devoted to washing powders, I can't buy an ecologically sound washing powder here. (2) Travel insurance. The choices faced for insurance (and other financial products) are genuinely overwhelming: to sensibly choose between the hundreds of available policies I'd need to read and compare the T&Cs for each one. I'd enormously prefer there to be some central body mandating a minimum standard for travel insurance (or maybe 2 or 3 levels of minimum standards) and then just pick the cheapest policy adhering to my standard of choice. In the absence of this, companies often appear to go out of their way to make it difficult to compare their products with others' -- mobile/cell-phone plans are a case in point here. In short, the 'paradox of choice' should really be 'the paradox of pointless artificial choices'... but then it becomes more obvious that it's only a paradox if you were previously a sucker for economic theory at its purest and most crazy.
- TillE 16y ago
  The problem is arguably not too many choices, but too many indistinct choices. This is something I've been banging on about from a game design perspective - having a dizzying array of skills or research options can be exciting, or it can be overwhelming and boring, depending on how each option is characterized and distinguished from the rest. Less is only better insofar as it widens the "difference gap" between each option.
  - robertk 16y ago
    Are you a game designer? And do you have a mathematical background? I liked the way you phrased this.
- mhb 16y ago
  Why anyone would buy travel insurance is a mystery to me, but maybe you'd like http://www.insuremytrip.com/ http://www.insuremytrip.com/ which has a pretty nice comparison feature.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Cameras are generally one of the main reasons.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    Why anyone would buy travel insurance is a mystery to me Medical expenses, repatriation, accommodation in case of particular delays, emergency cash in case of theft.. I can't see why you wouldn't have it for any trip overseas given how unpredictable medical costs can be (unless you have a great existing policy that would cover all of these).
  - DrStalker 16y ago
    If I'm hit by a car in Australia I'm pretty well covered. If I'm hit by a car in the US I could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees if I don't have travel insurance.

gmac 16y ago

Spices are a hopeless example of the paradox of choice, since they're all genuinely different things. The kinds of choices I hate are the ones that have been deliberately and often artificially cooked up between things that are in essence the same -- or that I'd benefit from really being the same. Two examples: (1) Washing powder. My local supermarket has a whole aisle filled with essentially identical products in different packaging (many from the same manufacturer/conglomerate). Ironically, this proliferation of meaningless branding seems to push out genuine choice: despite the acres of shelf space devoted to washing powders, I can't buy an ecologically sound washing powder here. (2) Travel insurance. The choices faced for insurance (and other financial products) are genuinely overwhelming: to sensibly choose between the hundreds of available policies I'd need to read and compare the T&Cs for each one. I'd enormously prefer there to be some central body mandating a minimum standard for travel insurance (or maybe 2 or 3 levels of minimum standards) and then just pick the cheapest policy adhering to my standard of choice. In the absence of this, companies often appear to go out of their way to make it difficult to compare their products with others' -- mobile/cell-phone plans are a case in point here. In short, the 'paradox of choice' should really be 'the paradox of pointless artificial choices'... but then it becomes more obvious that it's only a paradox if you were previously a sucker for economic theory at its purest and most crazy.

TillE 16y ago
The problem is arguably not too many choices, but too many indistinct choices. This is something I've been banging on about from a game design perspective - having a dizzying array of skills or research options can be exciting, or it can be overwhelming and boring, depending on how each option is characterized and distinguished from the rest. Less is only better insofar as it widens the "difference gap" between each option.
- robertk 16y ago
  Are you a game designer? And do you have a mathematical background? I liked the way you phrased this.
mhb 16y ago
Why anyone would buy travel insurance is a mystery to me, but maybe you'd like http://www.insuremytrip.com/ http://www.insuremytrip.com/ which has a pretty nice comparison feature.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Cameras are generally one of the main reasons.
- petercooper 16y ago
  Why anyone would buy travel insurance is a mystery to me Medical expenses, repatriation, accommodation in case of particular delays, emergency cash in case of theft.. I can't see why you wouldn't have it for any trip overseas given how unpredictable medical costs can be (unless you have a great existing policy that would cover all of these).
- DrStalker 16y ago
  If I'm hit by a car in Australia I'm pretty well covered. If I'm hit by a car in the US I could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees if I don't have travel insurance.