On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Vince Teachout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's been the main hindrance I've found to my installing Linux as my
> main OS. Faced with too many flavors of jelly, I've been unable to
> choose one. (See cut & paste below)
So you choose to starve to death? Hmm. Is this a case of Darwinism in
action? <g>
Do you have that trouble at the grocery store, too? Can't buy a car
because you're afraid the Volt or the Tesla is going to be a
game-changer in a couple years? Holding out for the Prius plug-ins? Or
for gas to hit $2 a gallon? (good luck!)
When tea is on sale at the grocery, I can pick one one I know I like
and one I haven't tried before and I'm okay with that, even though
there are 60 to choose from. Sometimes I hem and haw a little. Would I
be happier with less choices? No.
I believe that the Paradox of Choice is a great sign of a healthy ecosystem.
We're shopping for a new stove, and we can buy a Kenmore or a GE or a
Westinghouse or a Haier and... they are all the same! Same burner
options, same color options, same features. There is no innovation,
and the only competition is on price. Quality stinks on everything
under $1K and the choices stink. We're going to take our time, do our
research, and buy exactly the right one we can live with for 15 years.
Is this "harder" than just choosing the first one we see. Sure. Are we
"unhappier" about having to work through the choices? Maybe, but a
little unhappy now is a whole lot better than 15 years of unhappy
later ("I told you we should have bought the gold one!")
> Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at
> Swarthmore College, points out that people really end up more unhappy
> with the decisions they make when those decisions are arrived at from a
> wider variety of choices, or they end up not making any choice at all.
The huge flaw in this assumption is that there is some Warranty of
Happiness. That MAX(Happiness) is the ultimate goal. Life is a series
of hard choices and compromises and tough decisions and then you die.
You want to be happy? Go belt back a couple on Friday night. You want
to have a solid, working, reliable computer system (or car, or stove
or partner)? That's hard. Takes work. Tough decisions. Suck it up and
deal with it.
> 30
> percent of those people exposed to the smaller selection of jams made a
> purchase whereas only three percent of those exposed to the full line of
> 24 made a purchase.
Do you know what they termed the 3 percent? Winners. The 97 percent?
Losers. You get to choose which category you are in.
And an unfair test. How many of the people tested were starving to
death? How many of them were told they would be killed if they didn't
pick one? See! The study was biased! <g>
The lesson of the experiment is that the testers didn't provide
sufficient motivation for the people to want to make a choice. Six are
easy to choose from; 30 is harder. Harder enough that a buck wasn't
worth it. What if they raised the stakes along with the choices? Five
bucks off a jar of jelly to choose from 30. How many people would
refuse free jelly?
So, you lack sufficient motivation to choose a Linux distro. Perhaps
we can make it easier for you: pick from any one of the top 6 at
distrowatch. There? Easier?
1 Ubuntu 2393<
2 openSUSE 1770>
3 Fedora 1401<
4 Mint 1367<
5 PCLinuxOS 1141<
6 Debian 969<
(Ha! Mandriva is 7th! Happier now?)
Looked at another way, would you like to be in a group or 30 percent
of your peers, or 3 percent?
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com
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