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Thread: Rabbit holes

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    So, you go to the meat market to pick up something for dinner/supper and they only now stock chicken thighs or pork ribs. Wouldn't most meat eaters prefer more choices?

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Okay, let's use your example.

    Suppose you decided today that you wanted a steak supper.

    Cool, that's one decision made. Easy peasy.

    Now, what kind of steak are you going to get? Ribeye, sirloin, porterhouse etc. Quite a few options.

    Let's assume that you have a specific preference for a ribeye steak.

    Phew! No problem, easy peasy again.

    Now, you may want to consider if the steak is ethically sourced.

    You may also want to consider the price that realistically you would like to pay.

    Do those last two options align? Perhaps the cheapest option is the least ethical. A possible dilemma. Or perhaps the supermarket that sells your preferred option is further away and involves additional travel cost (gas + time). Another small dilemma.

    Then, suppose your wife wants something that only supermarket A sells and your steak is in supermarket B. Will you compromise to avoid making two visits, or absorb the additional time to make sure everyone gets what they want - an example of a choice made by someone else impacting on your choice.

    This is a simplified decision making line, but it is easy to see that it could apply to pretty much every choice we make in life.

    Now consider this. When you go to the supermarket how often do you see people strolling casually up and down the aisles pulling items off shelves without considering the other options in each case? How often do you see someone standing before a shelf laden with options - breakfast cereals are a good example - unable to make an instant choice. How often do you see that person with children who now has to factor in their (often) vague choices too?


    The point is that there are many factors associated with making a decision that involve some element of stress. Simple maths, increase the number of options and you multiply the potential stress factors.


    Here's another example (if you've survived this far!)

    Ford said you can have any colour you want as long as it is black. Great! One less decision to make, and black's not so bad. Ford's competitors started offering cars in a couple of other colours. Now customers have the choice not only between two makes but between colour ways. Of course, the make you want may not come in the colour you desire, and that causes stress. Back to Mr Ford. Now he sees part of his sales going to the other guy. What to do about it? Obviously people seem to want a choice of colours, which causes him to make the choice to produce cars in something other than black. This choice gives him stress because it is more expensive to do this. Now his competitors are introducing a choice of trim, or tyres, or a myriad of other options. And what of the customer who is now assailed with a seemingly endless set of choices before them? How can they weigh all this? It's tricky and stressful.

    Show me a man who would walk into a car salesroom and say "I want to buy a car. Doesn't matter what it looks like, what is economy is like, what model it is, what the seats are made of... etc. As long as it gets me from A to B I'll take it.". Bit unikely.
    Last edited by Empty_of_Clouds; July 23rd, 2020 at 02:12 PM.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Okay, let's use your example.

    Suppose you decided today that you wanted a steak supper.

    Cool, that's one decision made. Easy peasy.

    Now, what kind of steak are you going to get? Ribeye, sirloin, porterhouse etc. Quite a few options.

    Let's assume that you have a specific preference for a ribeye steak.

    Phew! No problem, easy peasy again.

    Now, you may want to consider if the steak is ethically sourced.

    You may also want to consider the price that realistically you would like to pay.

    Do those last two options align? Perhaps the cheapest option is the least ethical. A possible dilemma. Or perhaps the supermarket that sells your preferred option is further away and involves additional travel cost (gas + time). Another small dilemma.

    Then, suppose your wife wants something that only supermarket A sells and your steak is in supermarket B. Will you compromise to avoid making two visits, or absorb the additional time to make sure everyone gets what they want - an example of a choice made by someone else impacting on your choice.

    This is a simplified decision making line, but it is easy to see that it could apply to pretty much every choice we make in life.

    Now consider this. When you go to the supermarket how often do you see people strolling casually up and down the aisles pulling items off shelves without considering the other options in each case? How often do you see someone standing before a shelf laden with options - breakfast cereals are a good example - unable to make an instant choice. How often do you see that person with children who now has to factor in their (often) vague choices too?


    The point is that there are many factors associated with making a decision that involve some element of stress. Simple maths, increase the number of options and you multiply the potential stress factors.


    Here's another example (if you've survived this far!)

    Ford said you can have any colour you want as long as it is black. Great! One less decision to make, and black's not so bad. Ford's competitors started offering cars in a couple of other colours. Now customers have the choice not only between two makes but between colour ways. Of course, the make you want may not come in the colour you desire, and that causes stress. Back to Mr Ford. Now he sees part of his sales going to the other guy. What to do about it? Obviously people seem to want a choice of colours, which causes him to make the choice to produce cars in something other than black. This choice gives him stress because it is more expensive to do this. Now his competitors are introducing a choice of trim, or tyres, or a myriad of other options. And what of the customer who is now assailed with a seemingly endless set of choices before them? How can they weigh all this? It's tricky and stressful.

    Show me a man who would walk into a car salesroom and say "I want to buy a car. Doesn't matter what it looks like, what is economy is like, what model it is, what the seats are made of... etc. As long as it gets me from A to B I'll take it.". Bit unikely.
    I see something that you may not have intended to project. I don't see any of those choices as a dilemma. I don't see considering other's preferences a chore, and especially the littles one's cereal choices. Cereal is cheap. I can get both or three...LOL!!

    The real choices for me are those that are going to have lasting effects, things that are life and death, not what cut of meat or whether it was ethically sourced. I mean, if you're hungery, whether the steer was given antibotics is the last consideration.

    What if I said I had a Parker 51 I was going to give you. I could offer you a cedar blue or dove, or I could just offer the dove. Does having to decide which cause you stress? Now lets say you want to ask some questions to determine which you want. Does the inquiry cause you stress, or do you enjoy making an informed decision?

    I think if we make decisions fun, those that are not life and death, we can reduce whatever stress may or may not exist.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Well, I am going to stop here. There are two things that are pretty clear, one, that the literature supports the OP question, and two, that we are now talking past each other.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    The idea of stress may not be clearly understood by some. It looks like if it's low it's ignored. Doing ANYTHING is stress. How much is another thing.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Well, I am going to stop here. There are two things that are pretty clear, one, that the literature supports the OP question, and two, that we are now talking past each other.
    Perhaps and its up to you to decide how to live and think.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post



    How many angels can dance on the nib of a pen?
    All there are!
    My other pen is a Montblanc.

    And my other blog is a tumblr!


    And my latest ebook, for spooky wintery reading:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CM2NGSSD

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    We live in an age where there are a multitude of fountain pens available, with more and more new models produced each year, to say nothing of the smorgasbord of (mostly working) older pens, some dating from the fin de siècle, that are also there for the sampling. On top of this, look at inks. From a time when there were few colours - mainly black or brown - through the cautious introduction of blue, red and green, to the current firework display of endless variation.

    In other words, there is a lot of choice. A real lot.


    The other day I caught a recording of George Carlin, and in it he said "Too many choices America, it's not healthy". He was talking about something else, but it struck a chord.

    Well, leaving out the "America" part I wondered if there was any kind of debate on this, and it turns out that there has been tons. Far too much to mention here. A short internet search led me to a book by psychologist Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice, Why more is less. This in turn led to another website all about voluntary simplicity, and from there a winding path through history to the likes of Diogenes and so on. Hence the rabbit hole in the title.

    It would seem, from a cursory reading, that having too many choices reduces our happiness in significant ways. And yet, here we are in a culture of rampant consumerism.

    So, I am a bit baffled. Is our assessment such that the supposed happiness assigned to acquisition outweighs the apparently well-known happiness that accrues with living more simply?



    Note, for the most part I would exclude collection that is done with the spirit of preservation of historical (past and present) artifacts from this question.
    This is a very odd thread. Apparently, in 8 pages it has not occurred to anyone that life offers us a zillion choices every instant of our lives -- what to do, what to say, what to think, what to buy, what to embrace, what to destroy, etc. etc., ad nauseam. Desire, perceived necessity, perceived obstacles, and the like may limit, or appear to (or perhaps in actual fact really does) limit the immensity of choices, but the fact remains that all of us are constantly faced with a staggeringly huge number of choices to make every waking moment. And yet, some of us are happy and some of us less so. I contend it is not the number of choices that determine happiness, but rather how we handle them.
    Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. — Horace
    (What are you laughing at? Just change the name and the joke’s on you.)

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    That's an interesting point, but for the most part a lot of those decisions are made almost automatically. Where stress comes into it is when, for whatever reason, we bring out mental focus to bear on the decision making. That's when we start to look for restrictions, justifications, validation and so on. This then is the point of the thread and the rationale for bringing it up here. When choosing a pen there are a lot of choices. Not just between makes but also between models, colour schemes, trim levels, nib materials, barrel materials, nib grinds, filling systems, locality of retailer, price, ethics, and so on. As this is not an 'everyday decision', mundane to the degree that little if any focus is required, we have to consciously pick our way through these options.

    To add to the complexity, if you find you have accidentally stumbled into a hobbyist forum you will now be assailed by recommendations based on other people's preferences as well as finding yourself arbitrarily placed on the legendary pen acquisition ladder according to what you say you currently own. All of this has the potential to generate internal conflict and lead to stress, but primarily it is because our focus on the pen options is likely a lot sharper than the attention we may give to breakfast cereals. Though no doubt there are some who agonise over that decision too.


    Edit: and yes the zillions of choices we face every day had already been noted earlier in the thread.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Why would you feel "assailed by recommendations", or consider "validation" of importance? I mean, if I felt that recommendations were something I had to consider or that my acquisitions were a way to validate myself, I then come to understand having so many choices would lead to stress.

    For some strange reason all this reminds me of a story of a young woman cutting off the hock before cooking the ham. She did so because her mother did. When questioned about the practice she consulted her mother who said that her mother, the young woman's grandmother, had always cut off the hock. So the granddaughter called her grandmother to find out why she always cut off the hock. The grandmother said it was because her pot was too short. All this to say that it is easy to do something because we think we are supposed to without every questioning why. I do think that if we saw many options as a vast array of opportunities and the decison making process as an opportunity to think, we might enjoy more about living.

    I do agree with the other member who said it is how we handle choices that makes the difference in how happy we become.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Am I correct in saying that that this thread is based on the idea that happiness, whatever that is, is the product of a possession?

    Is no one on here an ex-hippy?

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    I think it's about that some feel too many choices leads to stress and not being happy.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Sounds like another First World Problem.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by RobJohnson View Post
    Sounds like another First World Problem.
    I don't disagree. However, there are important, life and death decisons that every human faces like should they undergo chemotherapy, or schooling needs when both parent must work, or what personal sacrifices must a teenager make when both parents have contracted COVID-19.

    One person feels overwhelmed and another empowered.

    Much has been stated regarding the evils of marketing as if marketing science was in place to make people buy something they really don't want which was true 90 years ago when a factory made something detached from the preferences of the consumer and attemtped to create need and want.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    EOC, you are much more patient than I. I commend you.


    Everyone is talking past you at this point.

    To these other posters of late who feel that you are somehow qualifying or suggesting a contrary to what EOC has been suggesting: you are not.

    The point of the thread, from the start (there has been no shifting or lack of clarity about this), has been to ask for a discussion on the idea (confirmed in some research published in a book which EOC named in the first post) that there may be a point where the amount of choice for the average consumer (in other words, not *ALL* consumers, but enough of them to be statistically significant) becomes burdened and less likely to make a purchase. One study by another woman (also cited above) also suggested that a statistically significant portion of consumers may even become more often disenchanted with their purchase (unhappy with it) if they made that purchase under the stress of many options. This has been clear from the start of this thread.

    Despite all the verbiage, the objections to these ideas have boiled down only to the following, each of which is off-topic and irrelevant:

    (1) "Your point isn't clear, and you change it."

    (2) "This is not true for me, thus it is an invalid idea."

    (3) "Human behaviors can't be reliably studied and reported."

    (4) "People should just learn to be less stressed about choice."

    I'll put this bluntly: these objections are all irrelevant to the actual research which is about how a statistically significant group of persons is behaving. #3 is somewhat relevant, but it is too dismissive because purchasing behaviors can be very reliably measured (whether a purchase was made or not is obvious) although motivations are more complicated, yes. That is why these studies reveal correlations and suggestions. #4 is a platitude, and may be true, but it's not relevant to EOC's question about the apparent patterns of how some consumers make purchases when given too much choice for them. It's not that choice is always bad, or even that some choice is always bad; it is that for an interesting and significant number of people, there appears to be a point at which choice turns from being a benefit to being a burden that impedes some purchase-making and even some enjoyment of the product after the purchase is made.

    What is so complicated or outrageous or objectionable about that as an idea? It seems perfectly logical and possible to me, even if it does not reflect MY purchasing habits at all.
    Last edited by TSherbs; July 25th, 2020 at 10:00 AM.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    I think EoC’s point is potentially disturbing because it undermines one of the primary legitimations of the capitalist economy: Jes look at all this STUFF! Ain’t it great?!

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post
    EOC, you are much more patient than I. I commend you.


    Everyone is talking past you at this point.

    To these other posters of late who feel that you are somehow qualifying or suggesting a contrary to what EOC has been suggesting: you are not.

    The point of the thread, from the start (there has been no shifting or lack of clarity about this), has been to ask for a discussion on the idea (confirmed in some research published in a book which EOC named in the first post) that there may bea point where the amount of choice for the average consumer (in other words, not *ALL* consumers, but enough of them to be statistically significant) becomes burdened and less likely to make a purchase. One study by another woman (also cited above) also suggested that a statistically significant portion of consumers may even become more often disenchanted with their purchase (unhappy with it) if they made that purchase under the stress of many options. This has been clear from the start of this thread.

    Despite all the verbiage, the objections to these ideas have boiled down only to the following, each of which is off-topic and irrelevant:

    (1) "Your point isn't clear, and you change it."

    (2) "This is not true for me, thus it is an invalid idea."

    (3) Human behaviors can't be reliably studied and reported.

    (4) People should just learn to be less stressed about choice.

    ...
    Objection 2 reminded me of this.
    @ 15:54 'Don't make the mistake of thinking because it's not true for you it is not true for the majority of the world.'





    Gilbert's entertaining TED talk on happiness has some relevance, particularly regarding rationalization (synthetic happiness) in the absence of choice or the ability to change.

    The surprising science of happiness

    @14:35 'The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck, when we are trapped. This is the difference between dating and marriage. You go out on a date with a guy, and he picks his nose; you don't go out on another date. You're married to a guy and he picks his nose? He has a heart of gold. Don't touch the fruitcake! You find a way to be happy with what's happened.'

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    So, I listened to the video, which may be applicable to some, but certainly not all. Sure, some females may not enjoy being with their children and may get as much out of it as scrubbing the toliet, but that's not everyone. It is some at best.

    The problem here is the OP decided to start a thread with his or her biases and decided to participate in some confirmation bias evidence, which is all well and good until the suggest it applies to everyone one or even most.

    I think the First World introduction was appropriate because for some of us we could care f-ing less what the members of this forum thinks I should have or worse, that I get validated by accepting with others want.

    Fact is, I don't stress out over decisions because I enjoy the research and satisfying what I want or don't want. Like I said, if it was whether to have radiation therapy or just live with it emerged, there might be some stress.

    So, if I take notice of when the berries get rip and realize the bears like berries and might show up, it is not less science.
    Last edited by Chuck Naill; July 26th, 2020 at 01:16 PM.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    So, I listened to the video, which may be applicable to some, but certainly not all. Sure, some females may not enjoy being with their children and may get as much out of it as scrubbing the toliet, but that's not everyone. It is some at best.
    You'd have to read the study itself to know how many people gave which kind of response, etc. But of course only "some" (and not "all"). No one has claimed "all" except you as a strawman to argue against.

    The problem here is the OP decided to start a thread with his or her biases and decided to participate in some confirmation bias evidence, which is all well and good until the suggest it applies to everyone one or even most.
    He never claimed this. NEVER. This is a misperception on your part (see "strawman" above).

    I think the First World introduction was appropriate because for some of us we could care f-ing less what the members of this forum thinks I should have or worse, that I get validated by accepting with others want.
    Um, what is this? You really don't understand the meaning of a research study, do you? And if you don't "care," why are you here?

    Fact is, I don't stress out over decisions because I enjoy the research and satisfying what I want or don't want.
    Excellent. No one has ever suggested otherwise for you.

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    Default Re: Rabbit holes

    Here is the Wikipedia page for Research, what it is and how it is approached.

    It is disappointing to note that the phrase "I did my research" is bandied around on the internet by those who clearly do not understand the process or intent of academic research. It is taken by many to simply mean "I read some stuff", without any thought to systematically assessing the sources and applying an appropriate yardstick - for example, Downs & Black.


    This lack of understanding makes having this kind of discussion thread much more difficult.

    And to note, there is nothing judgemental in what I have written here. Understanding one's gaps in knowledge is the first step in learning. There is no stigma attached to not knowing something (at least not in my culture, I am aware that it is in some others).
    Last edited by Empty_of_Clouds; July 27th, 2020 at 01:22 PM.

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