
Why too much choice is stressing us out - bootload
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/21/choice-stressing-us-out-dating-partners-monopolies
======
cstross
The foundation of Apple'a current success is based on this principle --
curation of a selection of best options from a wide possible range makes
buying decisions easier for customers than giving them the whole phase space.

Before Steve Jobs returned in the late 90s, Apple's Mac range was a hot mess.
Apple was trying to compete with the entire range of PC manufacturers, so in
addition to licensed third-party Mac clones, they were making multiple ranges
of desktop Mac with overlapping specs, on the principle that they could occupy
one shelf slot per machine in Fry's or Target with each model. So you had the
Centris, the Performa, and the Quadra ranges, with high, middle, and low end
machines in each range, educational and professional media authoring variants,
and the powerbook range ...

Jobs returned and priority #1 was to staunch the cash haemorrhage.
Rationalizing the product range and supply chain was a huge part of this. So
he drew a simple diagram. X-axis: consumer and professional. Y-axis: desktop
and portable. Four models would occupy the entire grid, with roughly three
specification levels in each (think Goldilocks and the Three Bears). This gave
us the iBook and iMac machines (consumer), and the Powerbook and Mac Pro
machines (professional), with differentiation based on CPU speed/memory/disk
capacity within each cell.

This made the choice of which machine to buy _vastly_ easier on the customer;
it was glaringly obvious which model you wanted, all you had to do was decide
how much speed/memory/disk capacity you needed, and that was it, rather than
trying to figure out what the difference was between a Centris 630 and a
Quadra 630AV (hint: RGB video out, 10MHz, and about $250) and so on ...

This turned the precipitous decline in Mac sales around. It took years to
build up to the current powerhouse, but it staunched the arterial bleeding --
and all by giving the customers _less_ choice, not more.

~~~
Pxtl
It drives me nuts that _none_ of their competitors learn this lesson.

So you want to buy an Asus wifi router?

[http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus/asus-
routers/pcmcat29320005...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus/asus-
routers/pcmcat293200050003.c?id=pcmcat293200050003)

Enjoy your paralysis.

~~~
xlm1717
It's only 24 options and you can filter by what you want to the left of the
product listings. Each filter cuts your number of choices by more than half.
Who gets paralyzed with this??

~~~
91bananas
Myself, CS degree and a fair amount of digital electronics knowledge.

~~~
eecks
me too, CS degree and now a software engineer.. choosing over 24 different
types of routers is just crazy.

------
yummyfajitas
The Guardian is reading far too much into Tesco's actions. Following the
Paradox of Choice, the effect was widely studied and found to not be
particularly robust. The classic jam study (cited by this article) failed to
replicate. There are various circumstances when having more choices
_increases_ sales as well (e.g., a higher priced option that no one takes can
cause more sales of the low priced choice). Even the author of "Paradox of
Choice" admits the science is far from settled.

I've been to Tesco. From a consumer's perspective, it's amazing - I really
wish I had a place like Tesco where I am. Most likely the reason Tesco is
reducing choices is because _stocking more SKUs is expensive_ , but at the end
of the day the customer buys the same quantity of cheese. Choice is fantastic
for the consumer, particularly the consumer with minority tastes. If you are
an Indian or Nigerian person living in the UK and you are hungry for some home
food, Tesco's got you covered.

I'm not even going to discuss the blatant cheerleading for state monopolies
and Corbyn.

[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-
parad...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-paradox-of-
choic/)

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-
is-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-
the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/)

~~~
bko
Choice is certainly under-rated and we take it for granted in the Western
world.

Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be celebrated.
Consumer choice may have even been a major driver in taking down centrally
planned economies.

Boris Yeltsin while visiting a supermarket in Houston:

> Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in
> amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if
> their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions
> of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”

About a year after the Russian leader left office, a Yeltsin biographer later
wrote that on the plane ride to Yeltsin’s next destination, Miami, he was
despondent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the plentiful food at the grocery
store and what his countrymen had to subsist on in Russia.

In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s,
which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later,
he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide
in Russia. You can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops.

“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons
and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick
with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially
super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is
terrible to think of it.” [0]

[0] [http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-
yeltsin-...](http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-
grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be
> celebrated.

Supermarket choice is often largely the illusion of choice -- the same product
(substantively, and often literally, made in the same facility to the same
specifications) in different packaging

~~~
amelius
Indeed. Try finding food containing little or no refined sugar in a regular
supermarket. Good luck :)

~~~
13thLetter
This doesn't make a lot of sense as a critique of choice. If you don't like
the options available in a regular supermarket, you can go up one level and
visit higher-end supermarkets, or even smaller specialty stores instead of
chains.

Now, it is true that it requires more effort to find the foods you're
interested in. That's because most people aren't interested in the same foods
you are. There's no way to "fix" this problem beyond heavy-handed government
intervention, and in a socialist society I can guarantee you that -- unless
the Supreme Leader is also keen on foods without refined sugar -- you're going
to find it even harder to locate anything which isn't preferred by the mass
market.

------
Angostura
I agree. The other day, I stood in the supermarket contemplating the 20
different types of Colgate toothpaste.

Did I want Whitening? No. Sensitive Teeth? No. Those were easy choices. What
about the Anti-Cavity version? Now that sounds good. But, but I also have some
gum disease, so perhaps Gum Care is the right choice? But what about the
formulation that promised Harder Teeth?

Perhaps I should just get Colgate Total. But does Total have as much anti-
cavity stuff as the Anti-Cavity variant? does it have as much as much gum care
stuff as the Gum Care variant? It costs the same as both, so maybe its kind of
a bit of everything and not as good as anything.

In the end I bought Aquafresh. In the old days I thought that Total was the
best I could get - now I'm not so sure.

~~~
yummyfajitas
My ex-girlfriend had the opposite problem. She stood in the market and
contemplated only a few choices in shampoo - basically regular and hair fall
rescue. She went with regular. Her hair got all messed up - apparently Indian
and African hair are actually very different and Africans actually need fancy
African shampoo.

At the end of the day she did have only one choice - cut her hair short and
spend 1000rs/month (plus about 6 hours) having a Nigerian woman give her an
(illegal) weave.

Choice sucks when you are part of the majority who's needs are catered to.

~~~
pjc50
_(illegal) weave_

Illegal hairstyles? There has to be a bizarre story behind this.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Occupational licensing and immigration restrictions mean black ladies need to
turn to the black market.

Even in the US this is an issue: [http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-
judge-rules-hair...](http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-
hair-braiding-laws-unconstitutional/)

------
degenerate
At least when it comes to food, a small selection feels curated, as if the
grocery owner is vetting this food for me and saying "These are the jams I
find worth your time". A supermarket with 8 brands and 38 total selections
didn't take the time to help me. I suppose it's like when non-techies walk
into Best Buy and there are 40 laptops to choose from, ranging from
Atoms/Celerons to various i7 types. We have all done it before on the phone:
"anything but the Celeron... yes it's cheaper... but it's slow, just don't get
those" \- basically we narrow down the selection significantly by saying "at
least 4GB ram, i3,i5,i7".

The analogy is not perfect because there's a big price difference in laptops.
But making the consumer feel "safer" with their choice by eliminating the
really _bad_ choices up front lets them shop worry-free. This small selection
thing can be bad too, though - I for one hate shopping at Walmart because I
_know_ without a doubt that whatever I am purchasing is the absolute lowest
common denominator in terms of quality. They might have 2 different types of
lawn chairs, and you better believe that both will fall apart just after the 1
year warranty is up. It all comes down to trust; if you trust the store in
their selection, you'll enjoy shopping there.

~~~
pimlottc
Indeed, this point came up in a conversation about Whole Foods. Sure, they are
often overpriced, and you can find many of the same brands and products in
other stores, but by shopping at Whole Foods, you can at least have confidence
that any random product on the shelf is at a reasonably high level of quality.

~~~
osi
That's exactly why my wife likes to shop there. (And Trader Joe's for similar
reasons)

------
lucozade
When one of my children was about 4 or 5 we visited friends in Abu Dhabi. We
went out for brunch in one of the 6* hotels there.

The pudding table was enormous with 3 chocolate fountains, piles of cakes, the
works.

My son went up to the table, stood there for about 3 minutes, then burst into
tears. Just the thought of deciding what he wasn't going to eat was too much
for him.

~~~
yandreiy88
maybe it was happy tears. :)

------
afsina
Article says:

"Not only is Tesco reducing its number of products, but the new leader of the
Labour party has just been elected on a political platform that, in part,
challenges the rhetoric of choice. Jeremy Corbyn proposes to renationalise not
just the rail network but public utilities (gas, electricity and water),
partly in the hope that the reduction of choice will provide a fairer, less
anxiety-inducing experience for their users."

Two things, First, is the author really that naive to think that the reason
Corbyn wants to renationalise energy distribution is to reduce the stress on
consumer from too many choices?

Second I am wondering how many people are anxious about the choice of their
rail or energy distribution company.

And after sprinkling the almost unrelated Thiel speech, this became an absurd
ending to an already shaky article.

~~~
arethuza
The idea of re-nationalising the rail network is actually quite popular:

[https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-
support-r...](https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-support-rail-
nationalisation/)

NB I just learned about this yesterday - and was quite surprised. In that
respect Corbyn might actually be tapping into a genuine change in public
opinion.

~~~
eertami
The only people who are _for_ privatisation of railways are those wealthy
enough that they don't need to use rail travel.

Privatising public infrastructure is absurd, especially when you exactly build
an adjacent railway line to compete.

~~~
afsina
Privatizing public infrastructure is not absurd. They just get the management
from government's hands with the promise that they can do it with more
efficiently. Even if it is far from perfect, they do a better job. Just
anecdotal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#Impact)

~~~
ctz
Did you read the link you posted? Because it covered the major mismanagement
which killed four people and directly resulted in renationalisation of UK rail
infrastructure.

It's also worth noting that, for the UK rail system, most passenger operators
are actually owned by public operators from other countries (like DB with
their Arriva brand, NS with Abellio, etc.).

~~~
afsina
Unfortunately accidents happen, there are much bigger accidents happened in
complete public rails. But if you check the measures , overall safety has been
increased a great deal, actually it is considered as the safest in Europe, And
for most accounts there are improvements (Customer satisfaction is up, Level
of traffic is up, Fare increases are lower than before, Average train age
unchanged, Punctuality unchanged, Safety is increased, Efficiency is up) ).

If it would be a real privatization, chances that it would be better.

------
vukmir
_The standard line is that choice is good for us, that it confers on us
freedom, personal responsibility, self-determination, autonomy and lots of
other things that don’t help when you’re standing before a towering aisle of
water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose._

That's just ridiculous!

According to the author, a towering aisle of water battles reduces you to the
Buridan's ass.[0] Yes, there are some hard choices that will force you to
think hard and put you through emotional hell. Yes, there are choices that
will make you stuck in analysis paralysis, but choosing which bottle of water
to buy isn't one.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass)

~~~
coldtea
> _Yes, there are choices that will make you stuck in analysis paralysis, but
> choosing which bottle of water to buy isn 't one._

He was going for rhetorical effect. I think they should teach these things in
reading/writing classes, so people don't take everything literally.

That said, choosing from "a towering aisle of water bottles" can still cost
you up to a minute or more on deciding, which, while not Buridan's ass, it's
still non-productive and worsens your shopping experience.

~~~
vukmir
>He was going for rhetorical effect.

I guess I'm having a bad day and the author's _malcolmgladwellization_ of the
paradox of choice was too much...

------
ohthehugemanate
There are so many assumptions and logical problems in this article's
reasoning... it's distressing to read.

First we assume that choosing to purchase jam is empirically better than
choosing not to purchase jam. And we ignore the question of how the jam
selection is made, when the supermarket chooses for you: what is driving the
supermarket's selection of which single brand to offer? Is it price to quality
ratio? Price? Partner deals on other brands? When I start a new jam company,
do I aim to make a happy consumer, or a happy grocery store manager? This
doesn't seem optimal for the consumer at all.

The argument is later 'bolstered' with the example of jeans; we're told that
they SHOULD be "the ill-fitting sort", that “The secret to happiness is low
expectations.” If you expect shitty jam, the supermarket can remove choice to
satisfy your expectation. For that matter, so can the market of jam providers.

At last we get the example of pensions, where we can at least agree on the
basic point that not choosing is definitely worse than choosing poorly. We're
advised that employers should choose for the employees to prevent this
outcome. Again we leave aside the question of how the employer selects a 'one-
size-fits-all' pension plan. Does she optimize for the best pension for
employees, or for the cheapest plan up front? And how does that change the
behavior of pension plan companies?

Generally, choice in the market is an important driver of improving real and
perceived value for consumers. Perhaps there are alternative solutions to
'choice paralysis' that don't involve sacrificing quality. Off the top of my
head, expert advisors are a better solution than what the article offers.
There are hundreds of wines at my local store, but I have no trouble making a
choice with the guidance of the sommelier. There are thousands of health
insurance options where I live (in Germany), but I'm confident that I make the
right choice for my family with the guidance of my Versicherungsberater
(insurance advisor). Interestingly this is a field that is difficult to
automate, not least because humans trust human recommendations more than
machine ones. I can imagine this author would praise the coming "advisor
economy" as the solution to fears of machine-learning-driven unemployment.

In short: everyone accepts the premise that "choice paralysis" is real, and
that it causes people to make sub-optimal choices. It's an enormous leap
however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes,
is the best answer."

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest
plan up front?_

Or the one who's friendly sales guy took the HR people out to a nice steak
dinner.

(Actually kind of how it happens now with 401ks. One big benefit of shifting
jobs regularly is that you can rollover your 401k - chosen via the steak
dinner method - into an IRA and just buy ETFs.)

~~~
arethuza
I've always suspected that employer pension schemes are purchased based on the
quality of the deal for the associated executive pension scheme.

------
Grue3
Why are the bigger stores so popular then? I actually like choosing the
product that I think has the best price/quality ratio. I compare prices per
unit of weight and everything. In the end I'm satisfied that I made a
seemingly rational choice. When there's only one choice I can't help but feel
it must be overpriced since there's nothing else to compare it to.

~~~
k__
Maybe people just think it's better to have more options?

Also, I once read, that more options aren't necessarily bad.

For example if you can buy a car as diesel or petrol and red or white, but the
color doesn't affect the fuel type, it's okay.

But if you could buy a car as diesel or petrol but only the petrol in red or
white and the diesel just in white (or a completely different color) this
leads to stress, because one decision lets you miss on the other options.

------
lloydde
The article reminds me of the superior grocery shopping experience at Trader
Joes where they only have one choice in each category. They complement this by
having more niche and seasonal items. The physical footprint is much smaller
and memorable. Importantly, these details contribute to them being able to
predict throughput and optimize the amount of cashiers.

~~~
fluxquanta
I find the pleasant experience of having a limited choice of quality products
at Trader Joe's to be counteracted by the frustration of the tiny, crowded
parking lots. Every one I've ever been to has been a mess to park at.

Also Trader Joe's is actually owned by Aldi, in case you didn't know.

~~~
lloydde
here in Alameda we benefit from a large shopping mall parking lot. The other
one I frequented for a time is in downtown SF.

I recently noticed that
[https://www.helloenvoy.com/](https://www.helloenvoy.com/) is doing TJ
delivery in my area.

~~~
fluxquanta
Ah. I'm basing my observation on the ones I've been to most frequently in
Syracuse and Albany, New York. Both of them seem to always involve a 20 minute
parking ordeal. Perhaps it's just me...

~~~
mikeyouse
Nope, one of the others in San Francisco (on Masonic St.) has the same
ridiculous parking ordeal -- At any normal time, the line out of the parking
lot blocks a turn lane + one of the traffic lanes onto Masonic Street.

~~~
duderific
Ah yes, I used to go to that one before I moved out of the city. I seem to
recall they had to have someone out in the parking lot directing traffic
because the backup was so severe.

------
VLM
Obviously there's an engineer mindset where pulling up a parametric search of
RF inductors at an electronic component supplier bringing up over 25K results
brings forth a smile and happiness not terror or paralysis. I was thrilled to
see over 25K results and with some more parametric searching I found one with
a self resonance above 4 GHz and over 100 mA limit and blah blah blah and the
GPS preamp ended up working perfectly in the end. It was so comforting seeing
25K results, knowing my project would almost certainly succeed. It certainly
extends out of the workplace and into individual life.

Choice paralysis might be a legacy declining way of looking at the world, like
nationalism or racism or imperialism are no longer acceptable in the current
year's Overton window. Its like people who insist they won't talk to machines
or won't use the internet to pay bills or won't learn how to read. Well, get
used to choice or become obsolete.

~~~
pjc50
Supermarkets don't have parametric search.

------
rspeer
I got a serious case of decision fatigue recently while trying to invest.

(As a note, this means that I am very much NOT soliciting financial advice
with this comment. If you want to tell me a different decision I could have
made, especially something I considered such as index funds, you are doing the
opposite of helping.)

As one of those things you're supposed to do when you realize you're an adult,
I decided to automatically invest a portion of my paycheck. There are of
course a lot of investment companies who would love to help with that, and
first I had to pick one. I picked Merrill Edge because it seemed the easiest
to set up the automatic deposit with.

At that point, the site told me: Welcome! You want to invest in a mutual fund,
right? Here are EIGHT THOUSAND of them you could choose from. Good news! You
can even filter them by 20 different criteria that you would know what they
mean if you worked in finance!

All the highest-rated funds of course have statistically indistinguishable
rates of return, so there is no real financial basis to make the decision
unless I think I'm clever enough to know who is a better fund manager than
who, which of course I'm not.

Oh, by the way, they've tried to address the problem. They have a set of
"Merrill Edge Select" funds. Of course you get to them in a different
interface, you have to choose which jargon-ful category of Select funds you
want, and once you do so you still get 20 options in 4 sub-categories.

So I could just make an arbitrary decision, and trust that these products are
indistinguishable, right? Not so fast. My first arbitrary choice led me to
nearly start an automatic investment in a fund that specifically makes
socially conservative, "Biblical" investments, and I found this out by
googling the name of the fund at the last minute. Egad.

I have been through a process that was much better than this. It wasn't on the
Web, it involved actually walking to an investment bank's storefront. Aside
from unavoidable questions about taxes, they asked me two things:

* What year do you plan to retire?

* How much risk can you tolerate?

And then they picked one fund. Take your 8000 choices and shove them, Merrill
Edge.

In case I need to say it again: no financial advice please.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
You really should invest in your own personal knowledge of the subject. Going
to an investment advisor is a recipe for getting gauged. And this is a really
big deal when setting up your plan for retirement. If you are losing small
percentage points due to a lazy advisor or the greedy "managed" plan that they
set you up with, the effects will be magnified enormously over decades of
compound interest. To the tunes of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Serious, everyone should make an effort to get even a basic financial
education. It is by far the best investment choice you could make. Relying on
"professionals" is unbelievably expensive come your retirement.

~~~
Apocryphon
That's the rub, isn't it. Financial literacy is as contentious a field as
nutrition is[1]. I recently got Tony Robbins' Money: Master the Game [2]. It
claims to use both common sense principles and tips from investment masters,
and ultimately settles upon pretty reasonable ideas (such as choosing index
funds and avoiding mutual funds). Sure, he might be a motivational speaker-
but he echoes advice from people in the know, right? Turns out some online
investment bloggers do recommend it [3], while others don't [4]. Still others
have created a three-hour podcast critiquing it [5].

At some point, one just gives up looking for the best class to take and
settles on whatever comes along. To his credit, Robbins did teach me that
investment advisors are not to be trusted to keep your best interests in mind-
what you should be looking for is a fiduciary.

[1] [http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/quest-improve-
americ...](http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/quest-improve-americas-
financial-literacy-failure-sham-72309)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-Game-Financial-
Freedom/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-Game-Financial-
Freedom/dp/1476757801)

[3] [https://investorjunkie.com/38192/money-master-game-
review/](https://investorjunkie.com/38192/money-master-game-review/)

[4] [http://www.basonasset.com/yes-i-actually-read-most-of-
tony-r...](http://www.basonasset.com/yes-i-actually-read-most-of-tony-robbins-
new-book/)

[5] [http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/a-comprehensive-review-
and...](http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/a-comprehensive-review-and-critique-
of-money-master-the-game-by-tony-robbins-rpf0109/)

------
baldfat
I love choice and this article seems to ring true for "most people."

Linux is my preferred OS and I hate Apple's structure. I am in the minority.

I also like programming languages were there are several different ways to do
things (Looking at R)

People don't like choice they like "Just Works." To me the is "Just Works"
means not that important to me or I don't want to know more than the minimum.

~~~
rndmind
I am with you. I hate apple's structure, I'm strictly a linux user. I disagree
with both sides of this article when I say that none of this matters, non-
choice exists, you can choose not to participate entirely.

------
webdigi
There is an awesome TED talk by Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en)

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies:
freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but
more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

~~~
colund
I was just going to post the Google Talk with the same guy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I).

Choice is good as long as people don't feel like they need to optimize, but
instead feel they can settle for good enough.

~~~
barney54
And here some of the other side--that the paradox of choice might be s myth:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-
is-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-
the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/)

------
cobweb
I remember hearing or reading an article that said that suggested that making
a choice/decision was tiring, and it pays to save your strength for important
choices. Rather than deliberate over which beverage you are going to drink in
the morning. Similarly if you have a standard place for your wallet, watch and
keys you can save brain time by not having to search for them.

~~~
duderific
This is the essence of why we develop habits - it saves our brain power for
when we need it during the work day.

It's strange but my wife seems to have an endless supply of this choice-making
brain power - she never tires of poring over options, whether it be deciding
what to eat or shopping online for shoes. I just want to be done with it as
quickly as possible; it's almost physically painful for me to go shopping and
be confronted by endless choices.

~~~
cobweb
Does she vocalise her deliberation? Or ask involve you in the opinion making?

I love to be made a drink. And love a surprise, partly because it saves me
having to make a decision.

------
bhauer
> _Perhaps, Corbyn’s political philosophy suggests, what we need is not more
> choice, but less; not more competition but more monopolies. But before you
> counter with something along the lines of “Why don’t you go and live in
> North Korea, pinko?” consider this: Paypal founder Peter Thiel argues that
> monopolies are good things and that competition, often, doesn’t help either
> businesses or customers. “In the real world outside economic theory, every
> business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others
> cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is
> the condition of every successful business.” Competition, in short, is for
> losers._

Corbyn is talking about state monopolies while Theil is talking about
"monopolies" in air-quotes such as Microsoft from the 1990s or, well, PayPal
from roughly the same era. The emergence of PayPal alternatives since the
1990s and the decline & later rejuvenation of Microsoft illustrate the
difference.

Yes, a successful business can appeal as a "monopoly," but in a free market,
it is rarely an actual monopoly. Apple and other small manufacturers provided
alternatives— _other choices_ —even at Microsoft's peak of desktop dominance.
I would argue that the highly-successful Apple that we have today was in large
part shaped and honed by a decade of fighting for scraps in a market that
Microsoft dominated. So if your opinion is that Microsoft was a monopoly in
the 1990s, then I think it is reasonable to agree with Theil that
monopolies—using that definition—are ultimately a good thing for consumers.

But we should not kid ourselves about matters that can end up being so
important to life and happiness: a state monopoly expressly disallows even the
smallest and (seemingly) inconsequential alternative choices. State monopolies
are definitively not the same thing as Microsoft and PayPal.

~~~
Apocryphon
Does a state monopoly necessitate abolishing private options? What about a
public default?

------
supersan
This is also one of the reasons why it's not a good idea to give 10 different
pricing options for your startup.

Too much choice and the user gets paralyzed and doesn't buy anything.

------
vinceguidry
I've walked out of restaurants before when there were too many things on the
menu. Ethnic restaurants can be forgiven, but an American restaurant that does
this gives the impression that they do none of the dishes well.

------
sugarraps
This is exactly why we end up angry when we try to select a movie to watch on
Netflix (and why we end up not watching any!). And also why companies like
MUBI are curating (offering) only 30 movies at any given day.

------
Animats
Tesco seems to have overdone it, which has to be running up their inventory
costs. That's just a Tesco thing; they're so big that they can't get out of
their own way. Safeway in the US may have three or four choices for something,
but not 20.

Decision paralysis is amusing in kids. I've seen little kids totally freeze up
when faced with all the topping options at the frozen yogurt store. It's kind
of cute, except that they're holding up the line.

------
ck2
google "decision fatigue"

[https://google.com/search?q=decision-
fatigue](https://google.com/search?q=decision-fatigue)

fascinating little thing I recently learned about

if you find yourself wearing the same clothes often, it's a sign

------
rcarrigan87
Buying decisions can have so many confounding variables (emotion, status,
cost, quality) this article draws some very loose conclusions on relatively
little data. Less choice can be an interesting A/B test for a business, but I
wouldn't be surprised if results feel more random than this article suggests.

------
lifeisstillgood
We can all reduce our choices upfront, but it seems rare that we let other
people explicitly curate our lives.

Would anyone here let me for example, set their weekly menu, choose their
lunchtime gym sessions, restrict their Netflix choices to my favourite films?

Would you basically let me curate your lifestyle? For a fee?

~~~
cantrevealname
Curators of weekly menu: Yelp if you're going out, New York Times "Recipes of
the Day" if you're staying home

Curator of gym sessions: private fitness trainer you hired

Curator of films: Netflix's own "suggestions for you" section, Rotten
Tomatoes, movie critics

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Still too much choice and still I have to decide am I going to choose the NYT,
the good housekeeping, the Jamie Oliver, the xyz diet.

Still too much choice - much easier to give up a huge chunk of it to someone
else - especially in days of online ordering where I just don't have to do
anything like go get the ingredients

I think the amalgamated curation and default ordering seems ... Interesting

------
smrq
Some boardgamers know this as "analysis paralysis", and for such individuals
it often points us towards games that have fewer, grander choices as opposed
to a thousand minor choices that add up to a grand choice.

~~~
losvedir
That sounds interesting! What are some examples of good games in each
category?

------
stegosaurus
I tend to agree in a wider sense (knowing that I could live basically anywhere
in the world, for example, makes life seem short and that's stressful).

But the supermarket example doesn't work for me at all.

Bottled water? Cheapest price tag, done. It's water. Most items can be reduced
to this (tinned beans, frozen vegetables, etc) because it's inconsequential to
me.

Big ticket items like a laptop or a car - sure, that's a decision I'll have to
live with for a long time, so it makes sense for me to think long and hard.

------
bsmith
This reminds me of one of Tim Ferriss' essays, The Choice-Minimal Lifestyle: 6
Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm:
[http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-
li...](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-
lifestyle-6-formulas-for-more-output-and-less-overwhelm/)

There are quite a few practical tips in there to help decrease the sense of
overwhelm from having too many choices.

------
joosters
I just read this article about the _lack_ of choice in cars:

[https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-
mobile-b03932ac971d](https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d)

Which effectively makes the same point: it's easier to sell something with
fewer choices.

------
cLeEOGPw
I could explain it as "More choices increases possibility space and in turn
increases effort required to make a decision. And incomplete consideration
leaves the feeling that you may have made not the most optimal decision, and
both cases increases stress."

------
deskamess
Canadian residents who have experienced amazon.ca vs amazon.com know this is
not true.

~~~
kruhft
Until you fill up your cart and go to checkout and see that none of the items
you want to buy will ship to Canada.

------
eecks
I am surprised Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been mentioned yet. He dresses in the
same style clothes every day. His reason? It's one less thing he has to decide
upon during his day.

~~~
nommm-nommm
President Obama has said the same.

[http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-
pe...](http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-
thing-every-day/849141/)

‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits’ [Obama] said.

‘I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what
I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He
mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades
one’s ability to make further decisions.

------
matt_morgan
Freedom of choice is what we got

Freedom from choice is what we want

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU)

------
dschiptsov
Because too much choice seems like an intuitive negative heuristic, because it
contradicts the fundamental Nature's way to avoid redundancy.

~~~
icebraining
Curiously, this was published just this month:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137974)

------
kingkawn
its not the choice its the way we make them.

------
chrisan
Does this apply to javascript frameworks?

------
klunger
"Who wouldn’t rather choose to lie in a bath of biscuits playing Minecraft?"

Indeed!

------
gopowerranger
I've been in the fast food business for 30 years (an investment). When I
bought someone else's failing location, one of the first things I noticed was
that his chip rack had 12 varieties to choose from. One of the first things I
did was reduce that choice to the five best selling items.

Sales of chips went up about 25% immediately.

~~~
arethuza
Out of interest, how did you choose 5? Did you experiment and measure or
observations of other stores?

~~~
borkabrak
"five best selling items"

I assume he meant the five that were the best-sellers at his own store.

