Reddit reviews The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Check out the book, "Paradox of Choice" http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005688
It looks like the cover art is the same as the picture in the article.

The premise of the book is that choice has diminishing returns and even a negative effect that can be quantified. Not only is the process of choosing stressful, but the feeling that you could have done better by picking some alternative reduces your long term happiness with your purchase.

Interesting side story about selection. When I was in SF, I stopped in a little store close to the convention center and in the cooler, I saw no less than 5 different flavors of Thunderbird (generally the cheapest alcoholic stuff) in unnaturally bright colors, probably to be visible to the non-sober target audience.

I was struck that choice was available to even this group and the thought of a drunk pan-handler contemplating the flavor of his fix ran through my mind. Somebody put effort into figuring out what flavors, colors & labeling would attract buyers and accomplished this, no doubt, by studying their target market carefully. I still not sure if this is a celebration or indictment of our consumer-based system.

Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005688

It talks about how we can become frozen by the amount of choices we have and how indecisive we are as a culture. Always afraid to make a decision because something better might be out there.

> The less-is-more world is here. Get used to it.

It's been with us since the start, manufacturers just lost sight of it for a while.

• A primer
  
• A book

I think the natural human instinct when granted more choices is to obsess more. There's a body of research out there that indicates more often than not, more choices leads to paralysis by analysis Book or TED talk. That's not an absolute obviously, but I think it is the case for many if ot most. Speaking from personal experience, the more options I have on the table, the less likely I am to seriously invest in any given one of them.

>As I had stated before, I wasn't familiar with your phone specifically and I didn't know that it had hardware buttons. Most Android devices have the touch buttons so thats where my assumption came from.

That's fine, but I did state the specific device I used for that exact reason, so that you didn't have to assume anything :)

>That's a fair point, and it seems that's just something crappy with your phone unfortunately =[

Indeed.

Another, admittedly minor, problem is HTC's decision to have the lock screen be unlocked by a vertical swipe, instead of horizontal. Where I never, ever, ever unlock my iPhone 4 by mistake, I find myself doing this quite frequently on the Legend. Picking it up from my pocket, it's hard not to touch the screen, and for some reason, even though we've established that the power button is the only button that can unlock it, it's apparently very, very easy to press, resulting in some minor, non-deliberate movement unlocking the screen and managing to press quite a lot of screen buttons before I get it up to my face. I can't say exactly where the problem is, but I can say that this issue is entirely non-existent on the iPhone.

The only lock screen replacements I've found either don't work at all, or look like utter crap :/

>Here though you seem to be pulling things from thin air. You mentioned how Android phones sacrificed visuals specifically, so I'm still curious what your point was there.

I'm hardly the only one to comment on the overall greater visual quality of iPhone apps compared to Android apps.

>Again, I've never seen the functionality of the Menu button matched at all in any iPhone app, nor the Back button in the same capacity.

I guess we'll have to take this down as a matter of preference, because I can't get over how inconsistent the Back button is on Android phones, and I've never had any iPhone app be harder to configure or access settings from than any Android app I've tried.

>I'll give you an example here: browsing. Unless mobile Safari has changed drastically, it can be a bit of a pain to get the address bar back without scrolling back up. On every Android browser, I just hit menu, and there it is.

True, but at least this is specifically designed behavior that is entirely consistent. Why would you need to access the address bar, or the search bar, unless you intended to leave the page? Also, there's no "bit of pain". The functionality is clear: tap the status bar at the top to bring up the address bar (with the added function of scrolling the page to the top). Input-wise, it's the exact same action, but in two different places. Neither is harder than the other to perform.

>It just isn't vastly superior to Android as it once was, and in general the Android platform as a whole isn't so restricting.

While I agree, I have to mention that psychologically, I think of the Android platform as more restrictive. See, Android promises me that it's open, and by doing that, I assume I get to do whatever I want with it. Naturally, then, any time I can't (requires root to change built-in apps, can't switch carrier if it's locked, can't use this, can't do that, etc...) it bothers me much more than if I knew from the start it came with restrictions. I know there aren't any porn apps in the App Store, so I don't even have to bother looking for them (I'll just get my porn from the internet, like everyone else, without any restrictions whatsoever). I know I can't change the theme on my phone, so I don't have to bother finding one I like. And so on. I fully realize why some people take offense to this, in principle, but I think that practically, it's actually a benefit. This is actually a very interesting book on the subject, if you're interested.

Personally, I end up using my iPhone almost all of the time for surfing, apps, music, etc... even though if I break it I have to pay for it, and I have to pay for data. I have every incentive to use my Android phone instead, but my iPhone is simply that much more convenient, easy, fast and, frankly, open. Every app I can think of wanting is already allowed and in the App Store. It syncs to my Mac at home in a way an HTC phone never would. Safari works so well, even though I admit the dynamic text resize on Android is really cool, that I never bother with my Legend, and my bookmarks are synced from my Mac. Mail works better (I actually think the Android Gmail client sucks, it renders html emails horribly), the screen is brighter and sharper, and the battery life is better.

I chose the HTC Legend specifically, because I wanted an Android phone to try out. Now I have, and I can't think of any reason it's supposedly better than iOS. I'm sure others can, if they have vastly different needs than I do, but that's where I get philosophical and question whether those needs are genuine, or only arise from the possibilities promised by Google.

I'm digging spotify's player lately, but I dislike how unwell my local files are integrated into my music. For instance, when I search for a song in the search tab, it only searches for spotify-hosted music. In order to get my local music, I have to go to the local music tab and then search there. This is frustrating as I have put a lot of time into my library before I was in Spotify and it is all lossless and I never get to use it.

Also, when it does display both my local copy of the file and the spotify version, it not only displays both (I shouldn't have to look at a duplicate) but I can't tell which one is which because there are no identifiers that I know of.

Something I like about Spotify is the way they integrate last.fm. All I have to do is check it in preferences and I don't have to have the last.fm application up in order to scrobble. This is how it should be.

A way to get all my album art and song information, even for my illegitimate copies of my music, would be wonderful. A while back I was looking for a program that did this, the only one I was able to find that worked (it barely does work) was FetchArt. At least on my 2010 MBPro with Snow Leopard, this program is a piece of crap that barely works, please integrate a better way into your player and I will be sold.

I really like spotify's one star system. See: The paradox of choice.

TL;DR: Spotify capabilities, seamless album art/metadata collection and spotify-like Last.fm capabilties.

>If our only option is to fight the system and bring in new options then it looks like it's working in many areas, and needs to be applied to others.

This only works when there is a clearer argument and hopefully a "this or that" dichotomy. Once you add more ideas than just a question of black or white, then the vast majority of people stop caring. If enough stop caring then the few enlightened folks aren't going to be able to fix the world.

If you want some reference for this just look at something related about global warming and a book about too many choices

The world is not getting better, it's getting more apathetic with people just doing whatever they feel they can do to fix problems with as little effort as possible. Hell, I can't even be bothered to sign a petition or donate money for various horrific things I've heard about or been witness to because there is just too many things happening for me to give up all my time no matter how important they are. Instead I've been doing less and less as I've been aware of more and more. The studies and books I've read about these issues and the little I understand about psychology supports this as a mass movement and not an anecdotal support of limited data.

I'd love to think the world is moving in a better direction, but it's stagnating or slipping into woeful agony as people take cell phone pictures to post of facebook telling others to fix it while we all stand idle. A world full of everyone living vicariously is what we are approaching...someday soon everyone will just watch syndicated news because there is no new news - nothing new is happening.