Consumers in the First World today have a lot of choices. Mustard is one example. In a single store visit, I may be faced by yellow, spicy brown, honey, dijon, whole grain, hot, beer, stone-ground, creole, Chinese, English, German, horseradish, sriracha, and balsamic mustards, each in different size or type of package, some organic. Mustard is only one item on my shopping list.

I don’t shop at the Simpsons’ Monstromart, “where shopping is a baffling ordeal.” But I have become a satisficer, someone who makes a sufficiently satisfying choice when an optimal solution is impossible. I am actually pretty good at satisficing, because I quickly get bored and frustrated by extended choosing.  Worst Stay-Home Night Ever: spending 30 minutes looking at trailers on XOD with no decision. That’s when I take a book and go to bed.

If I do get caught up in evaluating excessive choices, I feel confused and disgruntled thereafter. Having more choices often leads people to either avoid choosing entirely or to later regret the choice. Did I really get the best one? I bet another one was better. 

A cornucopia of information can confuse and distract us, too, and just as excessive consumer goods have not made us more satisfied, excessive information has not made us smarter. That is to say, contrary to predictions, the Internet has not made us smarter. Every fact, factoid, and opinion possible can be found there, all piled together like an interior shot from Hoarding: Buried Alive. Deliberately-producing ignorance is not only an art form but also a field of academic study, agnotology.

The poster child for agnotologists predates the Internet. In response to conclusive studies linking smoking and cancer in 1952, Big Tobacco hatched a plan of obfuscation, falsely promising real research into the cancer link, actually funding research into other diseases (such as Mad Cow disease) to capture medical headlines, questioning conclusions, casting doubt on scientific methodology, and ultimately disparaging the issue as Old News. Decades of avoidable fatalities resulted.

Unfortunately, satisficing doesn’t work for facts, which need to be real, not just sufficient, and are often uncomfortable rather than satisfactory. When I have to choose among a long list of 401k options, I hire a professional. Similarly, I’m getting my facts from trusted journalistic sources, those with a proven track record.

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Material in this blog credited to:

Financial Times Magazine, The Problem with Facts, by Tim Hartford, March 8, 2017.

The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz.