Esther's invited up her three afternoon guests - author Barry Schwartz; Philip Rosedale, founder & CEO of Linden Lab (which manages the "Second Life" online community); and Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman & CEO of India transaction portal Rediff.com. The discussion started off with a little bit of a rambling feel to it, and the audience is somewhat slow to ask questions. But as questioners have stepped up, Schwartz has offered a number of excellent insights that have helped to direct it.
Schwartz, responding to some of Balakrishnan's talk about the differences in the cultural decision-making climate in India versus the U.S.: "At this point it's life-enhancing to have this kind of choice available. We take it for granted...that the self is defined inside-out... That is the American way. I think in many traditional societies, it's exactly the reverse....the self is defined by social roles, and the individuation is defined by the network of connections to various institutions..." Schwartz isn't sure it's clear whether or not it's valuable to export such an individual- and consumer-focused environment to other cultures.
Schwartz also made an interesting point on the finality of decisions. He asks his students: Would you rather buy at a) a store that has a liberal return policy, or b) one that doesn't? Though 100% of his students choose a), he said that's often the wrong answer, if you want to be satisfied. When you make a decision that you can't reverse, you do all sorts of things to convince yourself that you made the right choice.
Rosedale talked about some of the "natural constraints" that users often impose on themselves, despite the fairly open-ended tools that let people do many things they can't do in the real world. He also mentioned an example of one 2nd Life user who was able to lose weight because he modified his online presence, or avatar, incrementally over time, empowering him to make the same changes in his real self.
Schwartz responded by talking about cognitive behavior therapy, one of the most popular psychological approaches in use today. "People have an habitual way of looking at the world," he said. The only way to undo a habit is to practice, defeating the actions that hold us back. That may have a lot of connection to some of the kinds of learnings we can get in the online world, where in "places" like 2nd Life, we can practice new behaviors - slimming down, meeting others - that not only happens in a low-risk environment, it gives us the opportunity to repeat behaviors until they might become ingrained in the real world.
Why are we relying more on "agents' to make decisions for us, such as insurance brokers and clothes buyers? Schwartz says it's actually because of the proliferation of choice. In many cases, we'd rather give a proxy the power to sort through our options - and even pay them for taking on the hassle.
Balakrishnan asked an excellent question: Who should be deciding what too much choice is? The way that questions are framed can easily manipulate an outcome. The moment you delegate it outside the marketplace, you create problems by how you decide what should be offered.
Rosedale said that infinite choice is inevitable in the future. How are we going to adapt to that? "I think delegation is inefficient. They could make the wrong choice." Instead, he thinks people should have "adaptive policies" where they can pre-define preferences, constraining their own options so they're not overwhelmed.
In response to one questioner asking why American's don't exercise certain choices like their emerging-world counterparts, such as voting, Schwartz cited a study showing that freedom doesn't mean "electing the government" in the U.S. "This is the one area in life where we have too little choice," he added.
gB
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