It's Great Having So Many Choices (?)

Competition and consumer choice are always best! We would all be watching our Curtis Mathes TVs and listening to transistor radios otherwise.

I've harped on my kids, now in their 20's, to get yourselves to places where you always have choices in life. You may chose wisely or you may chose poorly, but having choices is better than being boxed into have no choice but to go in a direction of negativity.

Maybe a simple Pugh matrix is all he needs to use as a start.

That's all I have from a philosophical viewpoint.

The point I was trying to make was to show the relationship between choices and stress.  Obviously, I'm not subscribing to the Animal Farm "Slavery is Freedom" model, but there is a principle in there.  That's why you see these prison movies where the guy is let out after 20 years (it's always a guy) and he can't survive because of all the choices, so he commits another crime to go back or kills himself.  I don't know if it's true because I don't know anyone who was in prison, although I certainly know some people who belong there. 

The problem is not too many choices but too many overlapping choices or meaningless choices that just muddy up the water. This has come with the complexity of our technology which we have surrounded ourselves with IMO. The more complex the system the more opportunity for breakdown. The more opportunity for breakdown the more likely it will happen. And when it does breakdown, it usually takes longer to fix because of the complexity.

this morning, my wife could not start her car. Dead battery. Why no warning? Because these complexity of the cars allows the bad battery to continue without any warning. Prior to the electronic ignition and computers, it was easy to tell when a battery was in need of changing because it would turn the starter much slower. So you could drive to the store or mechanic shop to get it fixed. Fortunately this took place at home instead of out on the road. But still, I must either remove the battery myself or hope my 50 amp  charger can charge it. This is just an example of the problems cause by complexity. Look at the supply chain for another. And there are plenty more. . Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler.

IE, back in the mid 1900's when TV was coming of age, we had antenna which brought in the signal. If you lived in the city you may have gotten 5-6 channels which included ABC, NBC. CBS NPR and an independent. But living on MD's lower  eastern shore we got 3. Then cable came and we got 13. Then we got 35. Now we have 200+ channels. They often overlap in the shows they have just maybe a different episode. So now if you had XYZ show

I've experienced this dilemma a number of times in regard to audio equipment. Latest was being indecisive about which boutique 300B tubes to purchase for 300B amps. I researched and read every review from all over the interweb, easy to find both positive and negative experiences with every single 300B out there. My problem was the negative comments held greater salience than positive. This inability to choose lasted nearly a year before finally throwing  dart at dart board and coming up with Psvane Acme. It could just as well been any of the other 300B's available, I still can't come up with any concrete reason why the Psvane won over others. The shame of this all is I lived with inferior 300B sound quality for nearly a year.

We live in the age of data, the problem is information has become cheap. Prior to interwebs we had relatively little information, what little we could gather was far more valuable. This relatively high regard for the information we gathered made it easier to make choices, we were far more trusting in sources. And the likelihood of having access to only positive or negative information was far greater than today.

Today, because information so readily available, we often get conflicting narratives. So, it comes down to who do we trust with so much information at our finger tips. Today, we not only have to make choices of what products, services to purchase, but also which information to trust, whose information do we trust? Decisions, decisions, decisions!

I'm not sure humans built for this much information, lots of cognitive dissonance today. And if it isn't cognitive dissonance, we build walls around the information and/or deliverer of information we decide to believe, we don't like to feel cognitive dissonance. I've long observed humans prefer blacks and whites to greys, this is world they can make sense of.

Seems funny to me that with so much information available we have far more chance of discovering truths about all sorts of things than we ever did prior. The problem with searching for truth is that we're likely to have come to wrongheaded beliefs and conclusions that are threatened by alternate explanations, facts.

Man, I just know I held to many truths years ago, not so much today. This is conundrum of the more you know the less you know.

@SNS - you make some good points.  And as far as truth goes, nobody wants to hear the truth.  Whenever somebody starts a sentence with "To tell you the truth...", good news is NEVER coming.  Nobody says" To tell you the truth, you just won the lottery".  An overstatement, of course, but extreme examples sometimes illustrate the point more vividly. 

The illusion of freedom is mesmerizing.  All those choices that can be researched, sampled, rejected and categorized.  And then you can make a decision.  You can purchase the best toothpaste for you.

57 channels and nothings on

My last speakers were sold off Craig's List locally. Because I knew any normal person comes and hears them, they are gonna sound so much better than anything they ever heard before, they are gonna snap em up. Whereas any audiophile is gonna hem and haw and critically second-guess himself to inaction. 

I don't know how you read these forums over any length of time and not get the message there is a definite culture of, not quite neurosis but worry, tinged with elitism. The worry part is buyers remorse, which stems mostly from the elitism part, the fear of the audiophile elite not cheering your choice. 

This is everywhere by the way, not just here. Why do you think everyone buys a Rolex when clearly Grand Seiko are a cut above and cost less to boot? Because they know everyone but everyone will admire their Rolex, while statistically nobody even knows the words Grand Seiko. In audio however there is no one standout brand to gain universal approval. Thus the stress.

Truly, man is the only animal on earth that can be given everything they want and still not be happy. 

So true. I forget the exact quote and the philosopher who said it but basically if we lived in a utopia with wine and women our every whim provided, fairies pouring pabulum down our throats 24/7 someone would have to smash it to smithereens just to have something interesting to do for a change.

The only ex-cons I know are all well adjusted.

Less is more.  I don’t like too many choices.  My simple brain kind of gets stuck.

Having said this, I do have way too many of certain things in my life, which does cause me some stress.

Truly, man is the only animal on earth that can be given everything they want and still not be happy.

wife give captain 4 pair Nobsound woman sneaker(3 spring per sneaker) for boat. Last week I come to boat at 10:30 to find fist mate loose eye because one of spring break from under girl feet snap and hit mate in eye. So I in hospital with kid in quepos because captain got what he dream about. Lucky I meet good energy nurse there.

Choices rule.  Try yoga and meditation for stress mgmt. 

It depends on your personality. I love large amorphous unstructured problems. So, high end audio has always appealed to me… and career wise I was a CIO… so I would come into a global company with their information systems in disarray and I would figure out what their key business processes were and lead teams to choose and implements software suites to run their business. 
 

So, to me it is a challenge… sorting through the marketing hype and real performance, compatibility, what I want and making it happen. Many choices only makes success sweeter.