4/13/2005

Do we have too many ideas to choose form?

In the world today are there to many different choices that we can choose from. That is what it is said to believe in the article called we have too many ideas to choose from. I personally think that is true. There are a lot of choices that have to be made that can become very confusing they can make us frustrated and even depressed. Some examples are listening to campaign ads, or news stories it is just way too overwhelming with all of the information given. What do you think is there to many ideas to choose from today.

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

Harry: you're an economist in the making. The top economics blog, Marginal Revolution, had a post about this not too long ago.

The profession is torn on this.

Traditionally, variety of choices is seen as a good thing - it helps people to buy the "most best" thing for their situation.

Of course, gathering information and analysing it to make decisions is hard, and that can be included in models as well.

Then there is the regret theory that comes to us from psychology - basically that regret about decisions we though were optimal but turn out not to be influence how we act.

Lastly, there is the observation that optimization in the face of changing information means we must update our decisions constantly. The fact that we don't means one of two things: 1) the costs of changes are so high that we stick with decisions that are no longer optimal (thus creating anxiety), or 2) we respond to information overload by following conventions that are OK, but rarely optimal (again leading to anxiety).