http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher...h/improbable/story/0,,1858809,00.html

From The Page:
“Dijksterhuis asked his test subjects to choose between four hypothetical cars on the basis of a set of specifications (whether the car had a sunroof, low mileage, etc) that could be either simple (only four specifications) or complex (12 specifications). One group was given four minutes to consider the problem; the other group was shown the specification and then immediately distracted by another task. Surprisingly, the subjects with plenty of time to think fared better when faced with a simple decision (four specifications) but worse when the problem was more complex (12 specifications).”

Choices become dangerous and criminal when you discard the emotional human needs in interest of the ego’s growth –the ego is nothing more than the empire naked.

JK is right: I don’t think it’s the quantity of choices that matters, but rather the quality. Of course we’ll be paralyzed if all of our choices are uniformly shit, just packaged differently.

I have come to believe that the only way out of this hell is the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknown”. Who knows if it will happen in our lifetimes?

For many, restriction in freedom might lead to greater satisfaction, but there might be important subgroups of people for which the opposite is true. For example, when my partner was confronting treatment options for oral cancer, many of his doctors counseled him to have his jaw removed. That was the wrong thing to do for his needs, and he unilaterally decided against it. As it turns out, with just chemo and very directed radiation, he has had several additional years of high quality-of-life, being able to move about socially with no obvious external physical evidence of his condition, and currently no signs of advancement of the cancer. Obviously, this is just an anecdote, not a systematic study, but it illustrates the point.

There is a way out. In fact you’ve hit the nail on the head, Tim, when you fleetingly ask whether Schwartz disproves his own point by you getting the book.

Tonight as you know, I inherited a grip of old newspapers (unfortunately not going back as far as I was hoping — but going far back enough). Let me tell you this: The naivete factor was and is rife in the trash strata of what we term our “past” or “history”. I’m thinking that the only way for social control to continue as it has, whilst maintaining the appearance of “consumer choice” is to have some authority behind the “data clouds” which follow us and our disembodied numbers around. This authority has chosen to instead of leaving well enough alone, to amphetaminatically amp up the amount of unknown, untested technologies to do what it must until the glorious DAY ahead dawns.

It’s all in the statistics my dear Watson. Actually, more to the point, it’s all in the ill understood data clouds my even more dear, dear Job.

Looking at these old newspapers proves to me this: it is clear there has always been unhindered uber octane bullshit ever since well, bullshit came into existence. But the one thing there never was, was the bandwidth to carry such things to such extremes as there is now. In other words, you can see not only in the newspapers of old, but the wired cyber-democracy of today, that there is one function and one function alone of information — and that is to obliterate finally the human soul. Because there is no need for this information other than the upkeep of appearances for the empire, one wonders how much longer this needlessness, this trembling need for the Empire to be noticed as the only game in town must go on. Stick a finger out into the contemporary air and discern for yourself which way the wind is blowing.

My thought is this concerning “choice” or too many of them: We’ve been utterly undermined and destroyed already. Not by choice. But by our moth to a flame propensity to gather round choices already self-contained within their projected outcomes — preordained outcomes at least going back thirty, fifty years and easily more. The sky’s the limit if you can make people believe they are free when in their hearts they “know” they are not. Free to worship, free to travel (Ha!) and free to excercise what power they have over the “almighty dollar”. Ah freedom. Reminds me of South Park. Or as I call it “Soul-Sap Park”. Free to be irreverant. Can’t forget that.

Choices become dangerous and criminal when you discard the emotional human needs in interest of the ego’s growth –the ego is nothing more than the empire naked. Therefore, because nobody as of now can see past this because it is all so new and will continue to be ever more new for generations to come, our choices are corralled into ever advancing technological improvements . “Choice” is nothing more than illusion. As our biological bodies become more matched with what our disembodied data says via more exacting algorithms and a little fear based hatred thrown in we’ll be making all kinds of choices in no time. None of them will we want, but a plethora will we be presented with.

I personally want pepperoni on my tombstone.

Shoppers who confront a display of 30 jams or varieties of gourmet chocolate are less likely to purchase any than when they encounter a display of six.

This man needs to go chocolate shopping with me. When given over 30 choices, such as in a Godiva shop, I always buy more than if I was given fewer choices.

I want to see the research on this sweeping generalization. Especially since gourmet chocolate shops are always packed with people buying, not just browsing.

Allow me to quote Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy, when he introduces the “Four Ultimate Concerns” being Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaninglessness. Here he speaks of Freedom:

Another ultimate concern, a far less accessible one, is freedom. Ordinarily we think of freedom as an unequivocally positive concept. Throughout recorded history has not the human being yearned and striven for freedom? Yet freedom viewed from the perspective of ultimate ground is riveted to dread. In its existential sense “freedom” refers to the absence of external structure. Contrary to everyday experience, the human being does not enter (and leave) a well-structured universe that has an inherent design. Rather, the individual is entirely responsible for - that is, is the author of - his or her own world, life design, choices, and actions. “Freedom,” in this sense, has terrifying implication: it means that beneath us there is no ground - nothing, a void, an abyss. A key existential dynamic, then, is the clash between our confrontation with groundlessness and our wish for ground and structure.

The first half of Frankl’s Meaning describes his observations while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. The second half is an analysis of those observations, with the aim of understanding how humans derive meaning despite living in the most harrowing and dejected of conditions.

But, since Freedom, and its attendant anxiety, are fundamental existential issues, I believe that a concentration camp makes a poor laboratory for studying the human response to the existential predicament - simply because a concentration camp restricts freedom and choice, thereby dampening the effect of these factors.

Having just posted on my own blog a memoir up to age 10, I was struck by childhood’s lack of choice. Parents call the shots till the adolescent breaks free. Whether the greater freedom to choose brings later happiness seems to depend on the degree of self-love and hence confidence that the child’s upbringing has brought about so far.