Correction: The Paradox of "Consumer" Choice

Really interesting short about Ryan Larkin, talented Canadian Animator. The CGI by Chris Landreth is very sophisticated.

Link -> Ryan

Animation by Chris Landreth (very heavy cat....)
, based on "Disregard this play", Link -> Bingo

Lovely metaphor for how something can be incomprehensible in one view and simple in another. Link -> Moebius

Here is one of those Google Techtalk videos, where they bring in special speakers to keep the Google stuff up to date. This talk, by Professor Barry Schwarz is called "The Paradox of Choice" . It deals with "overchoice", analysis paralysis, and so on from a sociological standpoint. One of the lemmas is, "Everything suffers from comparison."

There are a number of excellent quantitative studies showing paradoxical effects when the number of choices increases.

The habitus is that consumer choices determine happiness. Of course, the consumer prefix is left off. The other bit of habitus is that this "bad comparison algorithm" is treated as inevitable. when in most cases it can be easily relaxed with 19th century mathematics. Futhermore, there is no analysis from either an operations research or information theoretic basis. What optimizations are avaialable, e.g. is there in an optimal strategy nevertheless? How many choices are pseudo-choices, what is the sensitivity of satisfaction to the overall expectation? Could this be a sign that we expect too much from THINGS?????????????????

On another plane, this sociology speaks of inevitabilities based on highly specialized sampling. This is no more inevitable than students not knowing how to do calculus until it is taught to them.

The real problem, of course, is that if business defines everything, including happiness, consumer choice is all that matters, because, like all Darwinian creatures, you are a consumer.

On the other hand, art doesn't suffer from comparison, nor anything sublime. WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON"T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE...

"If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities."

Maybe it's time to take the reactor off line........

.....

.....

............................Nope -

Watch the video - if it applies to you - look at the domain. It only applies to things that require selection. What if you don't take the gambit - opt to like Picasso and Raphael incomparably.

Link -> Paradox of (Naive) Choice

-----------------------------

Watch out for that one, she

has a calf, they'll go after her

for sure. We must have calves

we protect the young

That one is ill, it won't live,

let it die for us now instead of tomorrow

That one is old, they will take it last, it is dead

already.

Move away from the ones that will go first

except the calves

Move away from her

her son has problems

she'll draw the sharks

she needs help

move away

He has a drug problem

she has a hormone problem

he's on prozac

she's on anti-depressants

he's a narc, she's bi-polar, no I meant BPD, he's one of them,

she's not like us, they smell different, he hates women,

she has Baron Von Munchausen by proxy

(but he actually is Baron Von Munchausen!?!)

It's in their nature -

they scream, but it don't mean nuthin'

it's what they do.

if I give an inch they'll take a mile

I ain't budgin' - not an inch - cuz they'll take a mile

they won't budge an inch, not even 1/8 of an inch, crazy....

he has baggage, she has sensitivity issues, they're not right for each other

she's too smart, he's arrogant, they have no talent, that's incurable

With the proper combination of drugs and therapy, this is correctable

Fill the meaningless void with cosmetics - drive the wedge in deeper for them

here's the a-priori -

Pain means anger.

Misunderstanding brings pain, brings anger.

Anger brings pain.

Perfect.

<<>> - "I" am going to change my chemistry - I'm going to SCARE MYSELF! >>

The recollection of the tides of fortune in Uncle Vanya

that is not poetic drama

that is depression

Myshkin, Buddha, Roquetin, Bartleby; the lot of you,

chemistry

Tchaikovski - chemical

Scri - chemical - abin

Don't even bother with Dali and Van Gogh -

Picasso, different, he met the president didn't he?