Wrestling the gorilla

Paradox of Choice

Common belief: more choice is better. If you have many choices the chance of one of the choices being the most appropriate for you is higher. If you make the right choice, the result will be aligned with your intentions.

This is a fallacy. When you have more choice, a few things affect your ability to make the best decision. First, your time to make a selection is divided amongst your choices. Second, you can compare the choices but your decision is often based on the differences of the choices rather than the overall alignment of the single choice to your needs. Mainly, making a selection of multiple choices creates stress.

Sometimes the best thing is to eliminate choice.

Chance

Chance is not the absence of causality but rather the achievement of one end while seeking another. (Taken from Aristotle)

[excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard]
(Rosencrantz has been flipping a coin and it has come up heads every time.)
Rosencrantz: Eighty-nine.
Guildenstern: It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. (He muses.) List of possible explanations. One: I’m willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I’m the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. (He spins a coin at Rosencrantz)
Rosencrantz: Heads.
Guildenstern: Two: time has stopped dead, and a single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times… (He flips a coin, looks at it, tosses it to Rosencrantz) On the whole, doubtful. Three: divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot’s wife. Four: a spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually (he spins one) is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise that each individual time it does. (It does. He tosses it to Rosencrantz)
Rosencrantz: I’ve never known anything like it!
Guildenstern: And syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two: he has never known anything to write home about. Three, it’s nothing to write home about…