Reducing complexity is a real cultural concern in recent years. Its often cast as a positive goal: increasing simplicity- but I think that a diminutive can’t be increased. Complexity is our true target.
Similarly, that diminutive, “focus”, has become the goal achieved through “more simplicity”. From my decision analytic perspective, the problem is one of complexity leading to more difficult decisions. Why is complexity harder? Because complexity increases uncertainty. If there are two alternatives, the decision space is smaller than when there are one hundred. We use metaphor and models to reduce complexity and make decisions easier. This is the paradox of choice. More alternatives make decisions harder not easier.
In a shorter span of time I probably made four times many photographs, most of which will prove redundant, and editing down that set is going to take uninspiring hours of peering and comparing.
Is the answer really to reduce our decision space in reality? Is it really better to have fewer clothes or fewer browser bookmarks? Or to return home after an afternoon of image capture and realize that the potentially great image is marred by being just slightly out of focus? Wouldn’t have been better to just grab the same image 3 times, knowing that they might be identical, but that it also could be that one and one only really was successful?
I challenge the advocates of “less is more” to convince me that they doing any more than reducing the number of alternatives they have available and thus simply artificially making decisions easier.
I believe it is possible to do better by living in a rich, complex, uncertain environment full of way too many choices and lear to decide better. A world filled with only chocolate and vanilla? Ugh. Give me chocolate raspberry. Gelato, sorbet or artisan ice cream. My choice.
The problem is not that the decision space is too large. The problem that there are unrelated problems that *appear* to be caused by a large decision space.
Suppose I have some machine at home, and it’s broken because a bolt came loose and fell out. (this is real, just happened to me.) I need a new bolt and nut. I can go to the small decision space store. There, the choice among bolts and nuts is small, but they *won’t have what I need*. Or I can go to the large decision space store, where I will have trouble navigating the space, but they will have the bolt and nut I need.
So that’s one set of problems conflated with ‘decision space too large’.
Another confusion is that people confuse ‘preference’ with ‘choice’. I go to a restaurant that serves good food, but serves only one item. I have made my choice when I chose the restaurant. I could go to a restaurant with an extensive menu, and everything is good. Now I have many more choices, but I need to pick what I prefer tonite. It’s a preference because the outcomes all have the same function. What people don’t seem to realize is that if you are having a hard time choosing between the Chicken Kiev and the roast pork, you’ll likely be equally happy with either. Flip a coin!
This is different from going to the store to buy, say, a DVD player. There are many choices, but not all are compatible with what I already own. So the decision making is very hard, the criteria might be hidden, and information is hard to gather. That appears to be a problem caused by the decision space size, but it’s actually a problem of critical information being hidden and hard to find.