There are so many assumptions and logical problems in this article's reasoning... it's distressing to read.
First we assume that choosing to purchase jam is empirically better than choosing not to purchase jam. And we ignore the question of how the jam selection is made, when the supermarket chooses for you: what is driving the supermarket's selection of which single brand to offer? Is it price to quality ratio? Price? Partner deals on other brands? When I start a new jam company, do I aim to make a happy consumer, or a happy grocery store manager? This doesn't seem optimal for the consumer at all.
The argument is later 'bolstered' with the example of jeans; we're told that they SHOULD be "the ill-fitting sort", that “The secret to happiness is low expectations.” If you expect shitty jam, the supermarket can remove choice to satisfy your expectation. For that matter, so can the market of jam providers.
At last we get the example of pensions, where we can at least agree on the basic point that not choosing is definitely worse than choosing poorly. We're advised that employers should choose for the employees to prevent this outcome. Again we leave aside the question of how the employer selects a 'one-size-fits-all' pension plan. Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest plan up front? And how does that change the behavior of pension plan companies?
Generally, choice in the market is an important driver of improving real and perceived value for consumers. Perhaps there are alternative solutions to 'choice paralysis' that don't involve sacrificing quality. Off the top of my head, expert advisors are a better solution than what the article offers. There are hundreds of wines at my local store, but I have no trouble making a choice with the guidance of the sommelier. There are thousands of health insurance options where I live (in Germany), but I'm confident that I make the right choice for my family with the guidance of my Versicherungsberater (insurance advisor). Interestingly this is a field that is difficult to automate, not least because humans trust human recommendations more than machine ones. I can imagine this author would praise the coming "advisor economy" as the solution to fears of machine-learning-driven unemployment.
In short: everyone accepts the premise that "choice paralysis" is real, and that it causes people to make sub-optimal choices. It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer."
Pensions are a particularly good example because they're impossible to quality control. You could theoretically do batch QC and assign taste experts to the jam to nominate a "best" jam. But the value of a pension is impossible to know, because it relies on the outcome of the pension firm's investment. And as the adverts are keen to disclaim, past performance is not a guide to future performance.
I have generally found that a random user on Hacker News is much less likely to be a troll than, say, Reddit. In light of that consideration, I'm left with a belief that the most likely cause of comments like these is simple misunderstanding of rhetorical technique in writing. This is not a character flaw - it could be a touch of autism, or simply that the context switch from the very literal and meticulous mode of interpretation required when looking at code all day was not fully context-switched out when reading journalistic prose. In any case, and for what it's worth, here are a few of what I found to be sensible interpretations of the points that caused distress for the above commenter:
Jam. I didn't read it as saying that the existence of jam positively and empirically correlates to a better shopping experience - the jam was used merely as an example - sample data, if you will - for demonstrating the central point that a proliferation of choice counter-intuitively causes less actual purchasing to be done than does an offering of fewer jams.
Jeans. The commenter quite correctly perceives that this is related to the jam. But the choice of product is, again, used to demonstrate that a rise in options has a point of diminishing returns beyond which customer participation decreases. I didn't interpret the article to hold the position that this was better, in any absolute sense, but that the negative experiences the writer describes were his attempt to make sense of, again, the phenomenon where too many choices makes people buy less.
This may be a phenomenon that, while it exists, not everyone experiences - that does not mean that the article is an attack on those people. And I think even people who enjoy as much choice as possible can still find the effect this article describes to be interesting, if only for how it seems inconsistent with what a purely theoretical approach would lead one to expect.
I didn't perceive that the author ever put forth the notion that less choice was better - if that assertion exists, it arises from one possible interpretation of the effect he describes.
These are my readings of the original article, and I share them with you as a perhaps useful guide for escaping the feeling the above comment seems to have, that there is inevitably a single and rather unpleasant attitude the author of the article could have had when creating this piece.
Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest plan up front?
Or the one who's friendly sales guy took the HR people out to a nice steak dinner.
(Actually kind of how it happens now with 401ks. One big benefit of shifting jobs regularly is that you can rollover your 401k - chosen via the steak dinner method - into an IRA and just buy ETFs.)
>It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer."
Only the article never says that. Low expectations here is not a stand-in for "shitty", it's "don't overthink and overanalyze your jam purchase to get some near absolute best etc".
First we assume that choosing to purchase jam is empirically better than choosing not to purchase jam. And we ignore the question of how the jam selection is made, when the supermarket chooses for you: what is driving the supermarket's selection of which single brand to offer? Is it price to quality ratio? Price? Partner deals on other brands? When I start a new jam company, do I aim to make a happy consumer, or a happy grocery store manager? This doesn't seem optimal for the consumer at all.
The argument is later 'bolstered' with the example of jeans; we're told that they SHOULD be "the ill-fitting sort", that “The secret to happiness is low expectations.” If you expect shitty jam, the supermarket can remove choice to satisfy your expectation. For that matter, so can the market of jam providers.
At last we get the example of pensions, where we can at least agree on the basic point that not choosing is definitely worse than choosing poorly. We're advised that employers should choose for the employees to prevent this outcome. Again we leave aside the question of how the employer selects a 'one-size-fits-all' pension plan. Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest plan up front? And how does that change the behavior of pension plan companies?
Generally, choice in the market is an important driver of improving real and perceived value for consumers. Perhaps there are alternative solutions to 'choice paralysis' that don't involve sacrificing quality. Off the top of my head, expert advisors are a better solution than what the article offers. There are hundreds of wines at my local store, but I have no trouble making a choice with the guidance of the sommelier. There are thousands of health insurance options where I live (in Germany), but I'm confident that I make the right choice for my family with the guidance of my Versicherungsberater (insurance advisor). Interestingly this is a field that is difficult to automate, not least because humans trust human recommendations more than machine ones. I can imagine this author would praise the coming "advisor economy" as the solution to fears of machine-learning-driven unemployment.
In short: everyone accepts the premise that "choice paralysis" is real, and that it causes people to make sub-optimal choices. It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer."