Re: Do we want more choice? (was Bookmark the end of file?)

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-04-13, at 09:17, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

>> "A general realization." "Nowadays." Ooooh. Can't argue with that.
>> 
>> Consideration of one particular choice has now been successfully
>> diverted toward vacuous generalizations about choice in general -  
>> platitudes of Polonius.  Too bad.
>
> I must say that I agree strongly with this point of view.
>
> More choice is *always* better. The hard part is presenting this
> choice to the user in a way it doesn't overwhelm her/him.

Hm.  Don't want to sound trollish, but as a mathematician I'm strongly
against using the general quantifier where it doesn't belong.  So, not
*always*, but often.  (A good source of counterexamples is ethics.
I wouldn't consider giving my child -- or myself, for that matter --
giving more choice wrt to e.g. drugs a good thing.)

> I have the strong suspicion that the "less choice is good" movement
> we are seeing stems from being too lazy (or at a loss) wrt thinking
> hard about how to guide the user through a rich set of choices. The
> latter would be, in my view, the right thing to do.

+1.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University