Slashdot Mirror
The Paradox of Choice
sproketboy writes "Psychology professor Barry Schwartz has written a book which is a must read by those wanting to get Linux on the Desktop.
Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all?
Here's a video interview with Dr. Schwartz,
a review of the book from the New Yorker and
more info from PBS." Of course, the choice issue applies to far more than desktop computers, but is still instructive in that area. Thanks to Stefan Hudson for a SciAm story that has more information.
is what you got...
Freedom From Choice
Is what you want.
(Are we not men?)
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
This would have been an informed post, but there was a link to a video of the guy discussing the paradox of choice, a link to the article about the book, and a link to an interview with the guy in the video who wrote the book that the article was about... ...so I couldn't decide.
Looks like link this was going to be included in the article, but something got messed up. Sciam digital subscription required for the full article, unfortunately...
Scientific American: The Tyranny of Choice [ PSYCHOLOGY ]
Logic suggests that having options allows people
to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery
You can have a simple desktop that Joe Sixpack can play with, and at the same time set up a dialogue that allows the tweaker in some of us to have free reign over what each little widget and bit of desktop does.
I just don't get why it has to be such an "either or" choice here...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Tons of choices can be annoying - going to a restaurant and being forced to select from a huge list of foods can be overwhelming. Usually, all I end up doing is finding one thing I like and then ordering that all the time, without checking out other stuff. It's too much of a hassle to try out every choice that exists in the world.
Then again, if we didn't have as many choices, I might not be able to find one thing I like in the first place, and thus probably wouldn't go back to eat there - I'll choose to go somewhere else.
But if that choice was taken away, I'd have to eat something I didn't particularly like, which never killed anyone.
Morale of the story? Having too many choices is the real reason I'm a picky eater.
Apple used to have a massive product line with dizzying list of model numbers. Not only did it confuse customers but it also brought down quality and delayed shipping of many of the models. Now you can just buy a notebook (iBook and PowerBook) and a desktop (eMac, iMac & PowerMac) from Apple. Sure you can supe up the basic model they sell but you are still buying a standardized item.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It's not about the number of choices. It's about the quality of them. Even the poorest schmuck has plenty of choices. It's just that they all suck.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The observations are a direct consequence of a well known usability heuristic called Hick's Law. Hick's Law states (roughly) that the time an individual requires to make a decision increases with the number of alternatives available.
But the thing is that with Linux, you can always back out to Windows, which in this day and age, is just a fine choice. So if I'm gonna install Linux, then be presented with 13 web browsers, 3 desktops, and 5 office suites, I'm much more likely to throw up my hands and say "fuck it" and re-install windows, then to try to deciper everything in Linux. Each distro should just pick out the best, and leave it at that. Not only do I not need a dozen web browsers, I don't *want* a dozen web browsers. This makes total sense.
I run a retail store. I have a large number of products that cover one particular need. Without help, customers just get overwhelmed and leave. We have to ask them what they need, and help them make a decision. Same thing with Linux, except that there's no help. You install a distro, get 1000's of programs, 95% which are useless to the user, and they get overwhelmed and bail.
Unless some expertise is offered (ie: each distro picks ONE office suite, ONE browser, ONE desktop, etc.), it's just too much to deal with, and completely unnecessary.
The Paradox of Choice
From the title, I thought this was going to be a deep mathematical or philosophical piece that I would have to give a lot of thought to.
I do agree with concept that we have too much choice in our society, or rather, we are deep in information overload. Too much choice is not a problem if you can quickly whittle down what you want and what you don't want. The problem is when the choices become confusing and ambiguous - and I think that has happened for the average individual. For instance, go into an applience store and say you want a tv, then hold on to your butts, because you're going to be there for a while. Then pretend you didn't know what all the fancy jargon stuff means (like the average consumer). If that wasn't bad enough, I think marketers actually inflate the problem on purpose, making it seem that there is more choice than there actually is - since that boosts the chances that a consumer will buy your product.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
And what, Macs are like getting laid? What does that make Microsoft?
GPL Deconstructed
Choice is a fine thing for now. Most of the world is still being introduced to desktop computing. It is not yet time to select the best technologies for any given application because we don't understand the application well enough yet.
Even something as "basic" as word processing has changed radically in the last 10 years as a wider variety of people have gained access to computers. The "outliers" in the sample set have, in some cases, become the majority of users.
Open source OSes are especially subject to this. Our systems are designed by those who have a combination of real-world-need and ability to implement. As time goes on that will be a broader and broader segment, and others will be brought in to implement for those who have the need, but not the ability (certainly already happened in some areas).
Give computing 20 or so more years to find its feet and it will be time to make hard decisions, but for now I think choice is a good thing.
Now, moving on to the officeplace (which is where most people think of desktop computing in terms of adoption strategies), I think it's key that OS vendors such as Red Hat, Mandrakesoft, SuSE/Novell and others produce a desktop with clear defaults and clear ways for admins to limit choices. This is important for large scale systems admin where you are maintaining 2,000 systems on people's desks. You need some uniformity in order to scale that support reasonably. This does NOT meant that choice should not be available, but that it should be available to the admins who install the systems and the system should behave well once those choices are made.
I think Red Hat and Mandrake do a decent job here. I'm not as familliar with SuSE, so I can't say. But, that is clearly one of the jobs of a vendor: to establish best practices and ease compatibility.
Q: Choice is bad? A: Yes Q: Can anyone understand the issues? A: Think of how many letters there are in one word. Now multiply that by how many words are in a page, and then the book. Then by how many books there are. That's so much information! You shouldn't even try. Q: I like choice A: No you don't. You'd be happier if you didn't have them. Q: No, really, I like choice A: Well, here's some proof for you. People with cancer like having doctors treat them instead of creating their own chemo routines. Do you think you're better than people with cancer or something! THE END
Everything will be taken away from you.
There's only a lot of choice in areas where there is still a lot of experimentation into the possible solutions. In areas where a suitable and economic solution has been found, choice is really rather limited.
It's a standard aspect of evolution: early forms show extraordinary variation and complexity; as time goes on the simplest and most economical solutions get standardized and the bizarre varieties get killed off.
The same happens in technology, which is why we converge on mature standards such as TCP/IP and (dare I say it) Linux.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I agree. And even if each distribution picks, say, 1 standard software package to put in an "average Joe" version, you still have to pick a distribution, which isn't exactly the most straightforward choice when there really isn't any means of comparison (everything's so customizable that it really doesn't matter a whole lot, but it looks like it does).
The reason the average person doesn't switch to Linux is a lot like the reason the average person doesn't build their own computer; not because it's hard, but because it gives you too many choices (hard drive, motherboard, processor, case, etc.), and most people would rather just pick up a box that they can plug in and use.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
No, no... Macs get you laid. With Microsoft, you're simply fucked.
While that's a related problem, I don't think its the root cause. The fact is the choices aren't being made easy.
First of all, your choice involves a significant investment of time. Changing your mind is a lot of work. With your programming language, your job, things like this, you are limited by the learning curve. Many PC games are suffering from this badly (although its not as bad as during the Sim era of the 90s when obtuse displays and complex missions and controls were the norm).
Combine this with the fact that your choices aren't very well explained - when I click around in many apps or application managers, I don't know whats what, what's better, what's worse. I don't know what music to download, what channels to watch. If there's a significant time investment in the wrong answer, I might just choose the safest bet. If the cost of a proper search for the rigth answer exceeds the benefits of finding the superiour solution, then I might just choose to do what everyone else does.
This is why we are stuck in a monoculture - society has made it very hard to even find the offstream material, and those in the offstream have not made it easy to know which of their offerings are meritorious for whom. I'm not pointing the finger - noone can blame independants for being disorganised - if they were organised, they wouldn't be the independants. But you see the problem. I don't like pop music, but finding good music is so much work. Solution? I'm finding every single old Depeche Mode and Collective Soul album I missed back in their heydays. When I run out of old music I like, I'll just stop listening. I've alraedy resorted to that for a while.
I ushered a wedding this weekend. People could sit wherever they wanted. So i started by offering people to sit anywhere, but they just looked like a deer in the headlights. Finally I just started telling them to "follow me" and to "sit there." They were much happier.
Most people are not dumb, they just don't want to be bothered. I happen to be one of them.
Those who do wan't to be bothered will speak up anyway.
It's just like when I'm trying to find some good porn, I've overwhelmed!
So many fetishes, so little kleenex.
Josh
It's a common mistake to confuse choices with decisions. Decisions are what confuse and annoy people, not choices.
Some simple illustrations of this. Choice: "these are the desktop themes you can play with". Decision: "please choose a desktop theme to continue installation.
Choice: "tired of your wife? Here are ten more girls to choose from." Decision: "you gonna marry me or what?!"
Choice: "choose from fifty different fabric colors for your car interior". Decision: "what color interior do you want your next subway car to have?"
Basically a good designer maximises choice but minimizes the decisions needed to get started.
I believe the article has made the error of confusing the two.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
When you go to the grocery, do you ask for 'meat', or do you specify species and cut?
What the hell is this "meat"? Just give me a store full of gray boxes labelled "Food", damnit!
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
" Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all?"
Um, Microsoft being right or wrong doesn't really factor in here. It's the lack of effective competition that's creating a lack of choice. Apple OS has more or less limited themselves to their own platform, which is generally more expenisive than the average computer user is willing to pay, while Linux is still too obscure for the average user to screw around with. It's not that Windows is a spectacular product that by nature crushes all competition in it's path, it's the fact that what competition exists has been limiting itself in one form or another, giving MS free reign on the PC. As such, most products now cater to it, which makes it more popular.
Too much competition doesn't even begin to enter into the PC OS market, because there never has been that amount of competition. MS won by default, which has nothing to do with them being right or wrong.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Thousands of programs? 95% of which are useless?
13 web browsers? 3 desktops? What Linux Distribution are you using?
Come on man, have you tried some modern distros oriented towards the new user? (I.e. Mandrake 9.2/10, SuSE)? They give you a default desktop. In mandrake's case, that is KDE. They give you one browser (Konqueror). One email client (kmail). The alternative apps are buried in menus, but those apps are NOT immediately viewable to the user.
Most modern distros do a very good job of eliminating excessive choice for the new user. Mandrake is the easiest, and you should be using it if you are a linux newb.
Every fork, every distro is one more nail in Linux's chances on the desktop. Linux is divinding and conquering itself. Pick a distro. Name it the One True Linux. Promote the hell out of it. Then you'll see results.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I take it you've never eaten at the HP cafe?
Lunch, the HP Way
by Stephen Harrison and Noel Magee
This is the story of a different kind. No melting CPU's, no screaming disc drives, just the kind of psychological torture that scars a man for life.
I had a 9:00 meeting with my sales rep. I needed to buy an entire new series 70, the works. He said it'd take about an hour. Three hours later, we'd barely got the datacomm hardware down on paper, so he invited me downstairs for lunch.
This was my first experience in an HP cafeteria. Above the service counter was a menu which began...
MMU's (Main Menu Units)
0001A Burger. Includes sesame-seed bun.
Must order comdiments 00110A separately
001 Deletes seeds.
002 Expands burger to two patties.
00020A Double cheeseburger, preconfigured. Includes cheese,
bun and condiments.
001 Add-on bacon.
002 Delete second patty.
003 Replaces second patty with extra cheese.
00021A Burger Upgrade to Double Cheeseburger
001 From Single Burger.
002 From Double Burger.
003 Return credit for bun.
00220A Burger Bundle. Includes 00010A, 00210A and 00310A
001 Substitute root beer 00311A for cola 00310A.
My eyes glazed over. I asked for a burger and a root beer. The waitress looked at me like I was an alien.
"How would you like to order that, sir?"
"Quickly, if possible. Can't I just order a sandwich and a drink?"
"No sir. All our service is menu driven. Now what would you like?"
I scanned the menu. "How big is the 00010 burger?"
"The patty is rated at eight bites."
"Well, how about the rest of it?"
"I dont have the specs on that, sir, but I think it's a bit more."
"Eight bites is too small. Give me the Double Burger Upgrade."
My sales rep interrupted. "No, you want the Single Burger option 002 'expands burger to two patties'. The double burger upgrade would give you two burgers.
"But you could get return credit on the extra bun," the waitress chimed in, trying to be helpful, "although it isn't documented."
I looked around to see if anybody was staring at me. There was a couple in line behind us. I recognized one of them, a guy who merely mowed me down in the parking lot with his cherry-red '62 Vette. He was talking to some woman who was waving her arms around and looking very excited.
"What if... we marketed the bacon cheeseburger with the vegetable option and without the burger and cheese? It'd be a BLT!"
The woman charged off in the direction of the telephone, running steeplechases over tables and chairs. My waitress tried to get my attention again. "Have you decided, sir?"
"Yeah, give me the double burger- excuse me, I mean the 00020A with the option 001. I want everything on it." She put me down for the Condiment Expansion Kit, which included mayonnaise, mustard and pickles with a option to substitute relish.
"Ketchup." I hated to ask. "I want ketchup on that, too."
"That's not a condiment, sir, it's a Tomato Product." My sales rep butted in again. "That's not a supported configuration."
"What now?" I kept my voice steady.
"Too juicy. The bun can't handle it."
"Look. Forget the ketchup, just put some lettuce and tomatoes on it."
The waitress backed away from the counter. "I'm sorry, sir, but that's not supported either, the bun can take it but the burger won't fit in the box. The sales rep defended himself. "Just not at first release." "It is being beta-tested, sir."
I checked the overhead screen. Fries, number 000210A, option 110. French followed by option 120, English. "What the hell are English Fries?" I turned to the sales rep. "Chips they call them. We sell a lot of them."
I gave up. "OK, OK just give me a plain vanilla Burger Bundle." The confused the waitress profoundly. "Sir, Vanilla as an option is configured
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I have no sympathy for people who have so many good choices that they have trouble choosing just one. None.
Wow. You're so heroic.
Your problem is that you think NORMAL people--i.e., people who don't visit Slashdot 10+ times a day and download the latest point release of something called "GNOME"--have the time, energy, and patience to learn which of their 8 text editors is the best. To them, the whole idea is ridiculous, and they'll ask you, "why don't they just make one good one?"
Are you going to whine at them how you have no sympathy for people who blah blah blah something about poor people in India blah blah blah, or are you just going to nod and agree like any sane person would?
The day anti-social, non-approachable nerds like you (this is not a troll but an accurate description of the mindset) stop controlling the direction of the Linux desktop community is the day it finally starts gaining real momentum outside of its current niche position.
This is a well-known phenomenon in people management. If you're trying to persuade someone to make a choice and give them 50 options they are most likely to not choose any of them (or in this case, stick with Windows). When you have so many options they get worried and confused - did I pick the right one? What if I had picked XYZ? What makes option XYZ better than option ABC?
.. N, etc..
Now, I'm not suggesting that choice is bad - but if you want someone to decide you must initially present them with a small number of options - A or B - not A or B or C or D or
Thanks,
--
Matt
The summary (as I read it)? People like choice when it's related to what they want to do. If they're making a greeting card, they want to choose what font it uses and what overused clip-art to use. They don't want to choose its orientation as it comes out of the printer, or whether it's saved in MS Word or PDF or RTF or HTML or BMP.
So when I install a linux distribution, and I want to compose a word processing document? I don't care all that much whether I'm using KOffice or StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or AbiWord or whatever, because the point is not what program I'm using. The point is to write a document, and I shouldn't have to make a needless choice just to get to that point.
That's why modularity (versus "yes" or "no" to compiling it in) in the linux kernel is such a good idea, for example. It allows me to say, "make this choice for me if I need it, and don't hassle me about it."
Actually, when you go to the dealership, they DO make decisions for you. Like you said, there are thousands of cars, and about 500 variations of any given model - more on the expensive cars with lots of options.
You don't go in there knowing what all these options are. Most of them are shit you've never heard of. What the hell is Quadromechinational Steering and why the hell does it cost $5000? They tell you that stuff, and they help you make a decision on wether you want it, or want to take the normal power steering everybody else has.
They don't make the choice for you, and the above post doesn't suggest that. But you aren't just shown a list of the fifteen engines, four steering assemblies, seven or more fucking DOOR HINGES that any given car can have installed at the factory while the salesman sits there with a blank stare waiting for you to pick which ones you want.
Most of it you just get and don't worry about.
I don't care what kind of flanges are on my trunk door, just so it opens and closes, I'm happy. But I could picked from two different flanges on that hood. I don't even know what a flange is or does, let alone how one or the other is better, but they both cost the same thing, so I don't care.
After wrecking the car I've been talking about, I also learned that the 1997 Chevy Lumnia could have had one of four different engines, each of which has two different head assemblies. I don't know what all that shit is, and I don't want to pick one or the other.
I want that white car over there. You put the shit in it that makes it drive, I don't want to worry about flanges and fittings and what kind of clips hold the radiator hose in place. Fine, ok, I have seven different fan belt choices - I DON'T CARE, just make it DRIVE.
See? That's how people are with their computers. The coice is there, but they don't know what all this shit is. Yes, they use it, but they don't know one from the next, and that's why the vast majority of people still use Windows. You get the stuff, it's there, you don't have to think about it.
You'd like to think that equations are harder to understand than complex human systems but then again you only believe what you want as it flatters you to think so.
Mozart and Picasso and Alexander the Great probably wouldn't be able to write a Perl script or analyze a chemical reaction if they were alive today. But I think few people would call any of them unintelligent.
As for wealth vs. intelligence, here's a book for you: "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." A bit repetitive, but it talks at length about how someone can be very smart in some ways but not when it comes to money.
Being able to figure out the decay rate of a new radioactive isotope doesn't make you good at figuring out which underpriced region is going to have the next big real estate boom. But both of those things require smarts.
That said, at least one study (admittedly, performed by someone whose views on the subject are controversial) shows a pretty good correlation between high IQ and financial success. That tracks pretty well with my experience in life: most of the rich people I know are pretty sharp. All of the self-made rich people I know are pretty sharp. If you can provide a pointer to any research showing a reverse correlation, I'd be fascinated to see it.
Less choice, less questions, less confusion. So far I have had no complaints. Obviously, as he gets comfortable he will want more choices later. At the beginning, I think the overwhelming amount of choice is what turns new users away from Linux.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I do agree with concept that we have too much choice in our society, or rather, we are deep in information overload. Too much choice is not a problem if you can quickly whittle down what you want and what you don't want. The problem is when the choices become confusing and ambiguous - and I think that has happened for the average individual.
Very good points. I see the issue in terms of 4 factors:
Rising Cost of Decision Making: Excessive options and excessive information on each option drive up the cost of choice. The cost of decision making can easily exceed the marginal benefit of making the decison.
Psychological Risk of Decision Making: Some people are more comfortable without choice because it absolves them of responsibility. If you have only one choice, you get to bitch about it. If you have multiple choices and you chose incorrectly, you have only yourself to blame.
Cost of Competition: We seem to live in a competative, judgemental socitey in which people are judged by the choices they make. This increases the importance of every minor decision. Faced with a number of reasonably good options, people often spend too much time deciding. They feel compelled to do this because of the perceived social penalty of making the wrong choice. Nobody wants to pick the second-best option even if it is nearly as good as the #1 option.
Scale of Society: The bigger problem is the increasing scale of society. Many might think that have umpteen types of mustard, text editors, or cars is too much. But there is no unanimous agreement on which alternatives to remove.
This problem will only get worse. I would wager that in most industries, the number of economically viable choices scales with the log of the market-accessible population. With global trade and rising standards of living, we will only see more choices.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Consider: how many manufacturers and models of cars do we have? Consumer electronics? Colours and styles of paint?
How many models of cars that do things differently from every other model of car? If I buy a Ford, I don't need to take training because my last car was a Pontiac. Everything works the same. Sure, the placement of the A/C or cruise controls are a little different, but the steering wheel isn't square and in the trunk. The basics of "a car" does not change: it has four wheels, (in the States) a steering wheel on the left front side, two-three pedals, etc. Hell, even the order of the gears on an automatic are the same (P R N D 1 2 3).
Contrast that with Linux distros where some applications are present, and some are not. Some applications are placed here, and some are placed there. Some use this window manager, some use this one. Some keybindings are like this, some are like that. Some will work with hardware better than others. Some have this, some have that. Hell, I've tried 2-3 distros in the last few months, and only one that I remember contained a GUI util to change the screen resolution (an important util for noobs as most distros set your damn resolution to the absolute highest it will go, regardless of how you want it or not!)
I can climb into any car, start it up and drive it. Change your Linux distro, or just upgrade in some cases, and you spend hours just trying to figure out where everything is. THIS is why Windows is winning the desktop day in and day out. It has nothing to do with monopolies or political bullying. It never ceases to amaze me that the Linux community will stomp and scream like small children about anything that violates an open standard in any way, shape, or form, but outright REFUSES to create a single, standard, default desktop that is consistent across all distros. There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from changing it later, but start with SOMETHING.
Give 'em four tires and a steering wheel, if they want a Cartman antenna topper or a Jason Mewes window sticker, they can add it themselves. And, I know, there's gonna be tons of flames on this post..."Don't tell me what I can and can't run on my desktop!" "Who gives you the right to decide what's included in my distro?" For those contemplating such flames...get a clue. No one is suggesting locking anyone into a "one size fits all soylent world", idiot. They're suggesting giving a consistent base to build on.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com