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When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

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31–40 of 89 posts

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#31
post #7

Sounds familiar. I wish the article had some sort of suggestion or hint as to what to do when you're really prone to anxiety. I have several very good options in my life right now and have made a tenative decision on what to do, but I'm finding I'm crippled by anxiety over my decision.

paulsutter gave a good answer to this elsewhere in the comments. But I would add this: All other things being equal (or roughly equal), pick one at random. Sure, there's opportunity cost, but there are also costs way beyond the time you take fretting over a decision. You said it yourself: You're "crippled" by anxiety. How is that better than making a random decision? Or just going with your gut?

I think it's naive to assume that simply making a random decision would remove or reduce anxiety. Anxiety doesn't only come from the fear of regretting your decisions; it also comes from the fear of receiving a negative outcome, even if that outcome was "chosen" by a coin flip or a third party. Hence people are anxious to receive news after a job interview, or a call about a loved one's medical condition, despite both having nothing to do with their own decisions.

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#32
> Lipowski thought of Buridan’s ass: an apocryphal donkey that finds itself standing between two equally appealing stacks of hay.

> ...

> While Lipowski’s work received some immediate wide attention, it soon fell into relative obscurity.

> ...

> Schwartz would then popularize and rename as the paradox of choice

No wonder. It's so much easier to be told that you are experiencing a paradox than to be told that you are behaving like an ass. Buridan’s or not.

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#33
This article focuses on the choice you have as a consumer. Which brand, which flavor, which stack of hay?

But I observe a similar crippling effect when working on software. Every step along the way of producing a software product involves making an incredible amount of choices. Choices like, 'what platform?', 'what programming language?', 'which algorithm?', etc. I believe that the the freedom we have as a software engineers forces us to make more choices than in any other engineering discipline.

There is a certain anxiety involved in make such engineering choices. Will this choice work out in the end, or am I going to waste a lot of time implementing and later reversing this for the other option?

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#34
> The choices between those objects that they valued most highly were both the most positive and the most anxiety-filled. The more choices they had—the study was repeated with up to six items per choice—the more anxious they felt.

This sounds like nothing more than loss aversion. Until you make the choice you have opportunity to acquire some valuable things. When you make the choice you've lost all the things you didn't choose.

This leads to easy ways of alleviating anxiety. You just need to mentally devalue all the things you are supposed to choose from and when you make the choice, immediately devalue things you haven't chosen even more (getting hyped over the thing you just chose won't help because anxiety comes not for the lack of appreciation of what you gained but for too much appreciation for the things you've lost opportunity to obtain).

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people were satisfied with horses and 480p, we'd be just as happy with those as we are with cars and 1080p. In fact, these decades and centuries of technological advancement hasn't, empirically, resulted in any enhancement in happiness anyway, because we're trapped on the hedonic treadmill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

Yes, but we wouldn't have cars or 1080p in the first place. Why would you develop 1080p technology if you were perfectly happy with 480p? Who would support your research and business by purchasing a 1080p tv, if they were already satisfied? I never said any of this technology enhances our level of happiness. I just said as a species, being constantly unhappy could be one of our greatest strengths. Otherwise, we might…

I think you should read philwelch's post again. You seem to see development as an intrisic good thing, whereas philwelch does not (or at least questions it).

There is a world of difference between freezing in a cave and developing 1080p/2160p/4320p.

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#36
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is to stop caring and satisfice. Optimizers are never happy.

I've seen the "satisfice rather than optimize" meme a lot recently. I think it's a pretty weak argument. The problem is that there is still a potentially massive amount of calculations and predictions (about costs, opportunity costs, trends, etc.) required to choose a reasonable acceptability threshold. If you take more time to gather this relevant information you can probably choose a better acceptability threshold.…

It's not one argument. In its simplest form, take the digital camera megapixel race. Who in their right mind does anything useful with 20 megapixels, where most are buried in the noise levels for all common applications? Does that really need to be "optimized" further, even if it means quality and storage both suffers? A lot of real problems worked on in the industry could be described like that.

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#37
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we wouldn't have cars or 1080p in the first place. Why would you develop 1080p technology if you were perfectly happy with 480p? Who would support your research and business by purchasing a 1080p tv, if they were already satisfied? I never said any of this technology enhances our level of happiness. I just said as a species, being constantly unhappy could be one of our greatest strengths. Otherwise, we might…

I think you should read philwelch's post again. You seem to see development as an intrisic good thing, whereas philwelch does not (or at least questions it). There is a world of difference between freezing in a cave and developing 1080p/2160p/4320p.

I think people living in the modern world, with all of our technology are no more happy than a caveman sitting by a fire with his family.

However, to survive as a species in the long term, we need to leave this planet. To do that, we need a number of advancements in technology.

So, if we can agree the survival of the species is in our benefit, then we can agree development is considered a good thing, even if it doesn't equate to an increase in happiness for the individual.

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#38
In Poland there is very famous children's rhymed short story about a donkey regarding this paradox of choice, so polish children are very early confronted with this paradox and warned about possible consequences (donkey dies of hunger in the end). Rhymed form makes it stick so good that we even have a saying for describing person experiencing paradox of choice that is literally the first line of this story.

Story: http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Chciwo%C5%9B%C4%87_os%C5%82a

Saying: http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/osio%C5%82kowi_w_%C5%BC%C5%82o...

Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

#40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should read philwelch's post again. You seem to see development as an intrisic good thing, whereas philwelch does not (or at least questions it). There is a world of difference between freezing in a cave and developing 1080p/2160p/4320p.

I think people living in the modern world, with all of our technology are no more happy than a caveman sitting by a fire with his family. However, to survive as a species in the long term, we need to leave this planet. To do that, we need a number of advancements in technology. So, if we can agree the survival of the species is in our benefit, then we can agree development is considered a good thing, even if it doesn…

Except for medical technology : without it, the cave-man would have far fewer years of expected life-span to enjoy sitting by the fire with his family. And many of those years would be filled with ill-health, etc.
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