The Paradox of Choice - What We Can Do (Entry IV)

In my previous blogs, I discussed decision making and its unforeseen repercussions, oftentimes in the form of suffering. Since each choice a person makes could be loaded with regret and pain, it’s important to know how to take the necessary steps to mitigate, or even eliminate, sources of distress. As such, Schwartz provides several new ways of thinking.

Schwartz’s first piece of advice is to choose when to choose, which can significantly help save time. For example, a shopper can make the rule that she will visit no more than two stores when shopping for a pair of shoes (Schwartz 233). While she may have saved a small amount of money if she were to visit one more store, she would feel less emotionally drained when she encounters a limited number of choices. The reason is because she restricted her options and accepted whatever choice she made at the end of the search. Once the chooser makes habitual limitations, the perceived results, or subjective results, naturally become more satisfying.

Another important piece of advice Schwartz gives is for decision makers to think about the opportunity costs of opportunity costs. As mentioned in my previous blog, opportunity costs can detract from the perceived attractiveness of any decision. Thus, it’s important to limit the evaluation of the countless potential alternatives. By setting our own standards for what is “good enough,” there is no need to seek out so many more comparisons and add underserved stress to our lives.

Without a doubt, these methods of alleviating the emotional burdens on decision makers require practice and habitual adjustments. For anyone interested, Barry Schwartz also provides several sets of strategies and routines to help anyone follow his advice in The Paradox of Choice.

The Paradox of Choice - Why We Suffer (Entry III)

In the argument for a free market, choices are reasoned to bring autonomy and freedom, which in turn lead to more satisfaction and happiness. With this chain of reasoning, we can safely assume that the growth of material affluence and expansion of choices in recent years has brought a dramatic increase in subjective wellbeing. Psychologist Martin Seligman’s work suggests that the more choices, and thus control, people have, the less helpless and depressed they would be. As such, depression should be, as Schwartz put it, “going the way of polio.”

Herein lies the paradox. Just a few examples of how suffering and depression have increased since 1960: the divorce rate has doubled; the teen suicide rate has tripled; and the recorded violent crime rate has quadrupled. This decline in satisfaction mainly arises from the fact that each new option or selection is psychologically (consciously or not) added to a “list” of possible trade-offs, which carries heavy emotional consequences.

Using the language of an economist, opportunity cost, in simple terms, is the value of the next best alternative. For example, if taking a date to dinner at a quiet restaurant is the best choice for a Saturday night activity, the next best activity is going with her to a dance club, and the third best is going to a friend’s party, the opportunity cost is the amount paid for the dinner and the passed up opportunity, going to the dance club. However, this widely accepted way of evaluating decisions is not consistent psychologically. Even though there could be a single second-best overall activity, each may have a most desired feature that beats the others. For example, going to the dance club may be most exciting, but the party at the friend’s house may be the cheapest. Consequently, going to the dinner would result in less excitement and more money spent. Therefore, each alternative that is considered may introduce more lost opportunities and potential benefits.

While choices may provide variety, the subjective utility of the chosen activity could greatly diminish as a result. Thus, the continual increase in choices on the free market could in fact mean less and less enjoyment and more and more suffering.

The Paradox of Choice - How We Choose (Entry II)

As mentioned previously, consumers today are provided with more and more varieties of goods and services. As a result, making a satisfying decision can be tricky and time consuming, to say the least. With advertisements everywhere, consumers are oftentimes exposed to misleading statistics that could persuade them to make poor choices.

Barry Schwartz mentions a major factor that can dissuade decision makers from making a satisfying choice—the availability heuristic. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky reported this discovery and stated that people have a tendency to give undue weight to some types of information. The availability heuristic says that people logically assume that the more available something is to their memory, the more frequently we have encountered it in the past. However, this is only partly true because salience, or a memory’s vividness, also matters greatly (Schwartz 58).

Schwartz gives the following example: a consumer is seeking to purchase a safe and reliable car. He dutifully checks Consumer Reports, a trustworthy source, and discovers that Volvos are ranked highest for safety and reliability. Later, however, a friend gives an emotional, vivid account of how the Volvo she bought six months ago gave her nothing but trouble. Since most people give undue but substantial weight to these types of salient, anecdotal “evidence,” the positive ranking from the Consumer Reports may be cancelled out. Thus, that consumer may be dissuaded from purchasing a Volvo.

Going back to the Nisbett article on holistic versus analytic perception, I have realized that Westerners could be dramatically different decision makers than Asians. Since Westerners generally tend to focus on a salient aspect, independent of its context, they may be more liable to give more undue weight to vivid, personal accounts. On the other hand, because Asians tend to have a more holistic perception, they may weigh such salient accounts much less in their decision making. By relying more on facts and less on arbitrary, individual cases, decision makers would be more likely to gain greater utility from their choices.

"The Paradox of Choice" - Our Choices (Entry I)

Barry Schwartz in his Ted Talks presentation highlighted the “official dogma of all Western industrial societies,” which is to maximize the welfare of citizens by maximizing individual freedom. Accordingly, he stated that the widely embraced way “to maximize freedom is to maximize choice—the more choices people have, the more freedom they have; [and] the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have.” Having first listened to him in ToK class a couple months ago, I have increasingly begun to realize the vast number of choices and decisions we face in our everyday lives.

Schwartz pointed out in the Paradox of Choice that a short walk down his supermarket’s snack section would yield 85 varieties of crackers and 285 varieties of cookies, excluding 20 different types of Goldfish. However, for the average middle-class consumer who seeks to economically maximize the utility of his decision, locating the "perfect" package of cookies could a time-consuming task. Further, the emotional residue of the next best alternative would linger in the consumer’s mind, especially if the type of cookie he purchased was only mediocre. Even if the cookie was entirely satisfactory, he may wonder how the other 284 varieties may have tasted, which would diminish the utility of any cookie consumption.

On an even more practical note, let’s analyze the summer ToK book selection process. Looking over the language of the assignment, there were, “in no particular order,” 16 suggested books. However, “by no means [were students] restricted to this list” as they were “merely suggestions.” As a result, we were also open to choose from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of books that would qualify as acceptable ToK readings. From a glance at the assignment, most students would probably think it would be effortless to come up with an acceptable book. Considering this logically, however, so many readily available choices would hamper our efforts. When we went to the Amazon page to copy the link of our book selection, the website provided us the “Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed” section. As motivated students, we would feel obliged, or at least tempted, to compare other possible selections and ensure that we have the "perfect" book to analyze. As a result, Amazon could constantly generate an endless number of book options for us to view.

Certainly, choices are not consequence free. While a handful of choices may enhance our satisfaction, too many choices would detract from the effectiveness of our decision. This predicament along with the difficulties of choosing will be discussed in my next entry.

Who are you?

Based on the first theory in the “personal identity” chapter, the physical continuity theory, I am the same person as I was since birth if my body existed continuously from then until now. With this, however, our intangible assets and memories are overlooked. Clearly, there must be more to me than just my physical attributes. According to the same-soul theory of identity, what makes me me is my soul. For me, this theory appeals more. The example of the car parts being replaced, the car being taken apart completely, and the car being put together reminds me of my own body and identity. As my physically grow, my body changes like the car with parts being replaced. On a smaller scale, my baby tooth were replaced by adult teeth and, on a larger scale, my skeletal structure changed drastically with age and continues to do so. This convinces me that the personal identity theory is fallible. Eventually, our physical appearance would be almost unrecognizable. Thus, looking at the physiological continuity theory, which states that what makes me me are my psychological characteristics, I believe that my mind primarily defines me as a person.

Recalling back to middle school, I blindly supported the Democratic Party, mainly the Democratic Presidential Candidates (Clinton at the time). I really did not know why, but it may have been the perception that Chinese people always go blue. Really, the root of my initial political belief is unknown. I discarded that it was my family’s political beliefs since my younger sister who is 10 years old really likes President Bush because he is the President. Since the first day hearing her say this, I have fervently told her to root for Democrat. Hopefully, I will present her a case with reasoning. Nonetheless, my reasons for my personal political belief when I was younger have changed.

Today, however, I support most Democrats with reason and a clear perception. I try to gain all the information available and truly understand platforms and issues before making a political decision. I put aside fundamental biases as best as I can and reject unsupported slanders to arrive to a final conclusion. This conclusion tends to be in favor of Democrats, thus forming my political belief today. In relation to most issues, I cannot see myself calling myself something other than a Democrat. Perhaps, a few years from now, I may register a Republican (forbid that day). Or, maybe I will be a lifelong Democrat.

Finally, I just want to quickly note and inject another confusing point that political parties change. A few years from now, the Republican Party may become more liberal and shift in their platforms (like in the 1960’s). Should Giuliani by nominated to run for President, we may see the identity of the Republican Party change. Along with that, we may shift parties. Intrinsically, would we a change in our own identity, given that our beliefs do not change but party association does?

Blog Assignment #4 - Edge Question

Bruce Sterling: http://edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#sterling
Leonard Susskind: http://edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#susskind

Bruce Sterling’s five-word response to the 2005 question was, “we’re in for climatic mayhem.” Without too much guessing, Mr. Sterling, author of Globalhead, is referring to the adverse effects of global warming and potentially disastrous climate changes in the future. He states that his prediction is part of his intuition, which is probably based on his factual reasoning. Perhaps, his statement conceals a deep sense of sarcasm, insinuating how those ignorant (which includes President Bush) of global warming constantly deny that the current climate change is a benign natural cycle. The undeniable “truth” Mr. Sterling is referring to is that anthropogenic warming and raising temperature levels are clearly evident and will lead to mayhem and destruction in the future, again contrary to the belief of “nonbelievers.” Although climate change requires immense volumes of data collection over long periods of time recently, scientists, some who have been pressured by the Bush Administration to downplay their findings, revealed that global climate change have been induced by humans and pose a danger to the world’s welfare. Mr. Sterling’s claim is most probably correct and maybe we are in for a ride.

Another intensely interesting response is a dialogue about probability theory created by Leonard Susskind, which is extremely logical and reason-based. In this dialogue, a “slow student” questions his professor about the facts in his own coil flip experiment. At several instances, he reaches the conclusion that the number of heads and number of tails will adhere to the calculated margin of error, especially if given a “large” number of enough flips. To his confusion and dismay, Dr. Susskind responses with only “probablies.” Having taken a college course on decision theory, I find that this conversation is quite fascinating. According to the law of large numbers, the percentage difference between heads and tails will become smaller and smaller as the number of flips increase. Eventually, given enough flips the percentage difference between heads and tails become absolutely tiny. However, there is still that margin of error, which the professor stated, and, of course, there is also no certain guarantee that the percentage of heads and tails will be about 50-50. Yet, based on probability theory and statistical mechanics, the percentage of heads and tails should be near equal as the professor stated. When the professor says that he would be “surprised” if it were not the case, I interpret it as the professor would be expecting that the law of large numbers is intact. In the end of the dialogue, Dr. Susskind writes, “If I were to flip a coin a million times I'd be damn sure I wasn't going to get all heads…I'd be so sure that I'd bet my life or my soul…I'm absolutely certain the laws of large numbers—probability theory—will work and protect me. All of science is based on it.” Without a doubt I agree that the chances of flipping a coin a million over one trial is near impossible (and with good reason), as getting all heads when the coin is flipped one million times is 1 to 2 raised to the millionth power. Maybe after the 2^1,000,000 trial, which means you would have to flip the coin 1,000,000 X 2^1,000,000 times, you may have succeed in obtaining all heads just once—not good odds to bet on…

My Unproven Truth: We have preconceptions of everyone we as soon as that person—a stranger—enter into our perception, and thus we subconsciously make judgments before we even make verbal communication with other people. Furthermore, I believe that we associate that stranger based on the past appearances of acquaintances who radiate a similar appearance and style. Physically, we create ingrained biased perceptions and immediately form emotions about that stranger, who we never have interacted before, as a result. The constant frequency of perception that instantaneously triggers our emotions layers into the fat of prejudice. Most times, it is difficult to push against and change our emotion on what we reason as our "core" beliefs, which drives that formation of the first impression. Yet, although difficult, our prejudices can be conquered through cultural interaction and willed acceptance (in other words, compelled, whether by thyself or by others). Through further reasoning, delving deep into the mind, willingly shaping the subconscious, and gaining more life experiences, we hold the power to alter our emotional responses when we see people and have the ability to genuinely adapt a new, positive attitude and language during these situations.

TedTalks - Barry Schwartz

This guy is my decision making hero: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=b_schwartz.

Steven Levitt makes the analogy of gangs to economics: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=s_levitt. Great parallels...