When’s the last time you had a day off, alone? Looked forward to that day off, planned how much fun you were going to have, and then, when it finally came… sat around and did absolutely nothing?
How about the last time you were in a candy store, and couldn’t pick a piece of candy?
Or on a dating site, with literally thousands of potential partners close to you, but ended up liking nobody?
The problem with being in a candy store, or on a dating site, or alone in your house with nothing but silence and freedom, is that you have too much choice. You can become, quite literally, paralyzed by choice.
Physical Limitations
I’ve heard some smart people talk about robots and AI. And one of the most interesting things I ever heard was about limitations on robots. Not legal or moral limitations, but physical ones. In order for us to design a robot that we can program adequately, we must give it a body that we actually understand.
You see the world with your body, in a sense. You look at objects not as objectively shaped and sized pieces of the physical world, but as things that could be interacted with in certain ways. When you look at a mug, you don’t see a cylindrical open-top baked chunk of ceramic. You see something that holds liquid; something that can be grabbed with your right hand and lifted to your lips. When we see objects in the world, we perceive them not through what they are, but through how we interact with them.
So if we intend to make robots that can do human things, we have to make them in the form of humans. A robot that is unconstrained by a body will have endless ways to perceive the world and the things in it. A robot unconstrained by utility and purpose will only be good for computation and mathematics — it won’t know how to do anything else. Only when we give that robot hands and legs and a body can it actually start making useful decisions and useful observations based on the utility of the world around it.
Emotional and Mental Limitations
There’s a TED Talk that I’ve always really liked (you can check it out here) called The Paradox of Choice, by psychologist Barry Schwartz. He talks about some of the absurdities surrounding the concept of “choice” in modern society.
Ever since I first saw that talk, years ago, I’ve been acutely aware of how awful my life becomes when I have too many options in front of me.
Having too many choices is not fun. It’s not good. Rather, it’s paralyzing. It’s debilitating. Human beings require restraint and limitations. It’s the only way we can actually commit to anything.
Imagine someone walks up to you and says “hey, do you want to play a game? It’s your turn.” You’ll stand there and do nothing, and then you’ll ask this person what it is you’re supposed to be doing. I mean… what’s the game? Are there pieces? Or a ball? Where are we playing? What’s the goal? Are we on the same team?
In order to play a game, there must be rules, roles, and objectives. There must be guidelines and guard rails.
Imagine that person tells you “okay, the game is anything you want. You get to do anything you want. You just have to win against me.” Well, maybe you can punch them in the stomach. Maybe you can make fun of them. Maybe you can recite poetry better, or sing better, or park your car in front of theirs and say “checkmate.” And of course this might be good for a few laughs, but it won’t be long until you’re bored. Because this game is pointless and fruitless. Without a defined way to see progress or fun, there is no progress or fun.
This is how people feel in most areas of life these days. It’s part of why so many people are mentally and emotionally unhealthy. It’s because we have so much choice, so much freedom, that we are continuously questioning ourselves and wasting our time. We are constantly wondering, “what if I had chosen the other thing?” We are constantly experiencing both a dissatisfaction with the options in front of us, and a dissatisfaction with the decisions we’ve already made. Along with copious optionality comes the perpetual fear of missing out on something better.
Do you ever wonder why our grandparents didn’t all need counseling and mental help, and yet we do? Well, put yourself in their shoes. People who lived a hundred years ago didn’t have access to the kind of freedom or information that we do. A farmer only had one option every day. Get up, take care of his crop, and keep his kids from doing anything stupid. That’s it. That was his whole life.
And he was probably happier than you, because he wasn’t constantly barraged in the face with options to do something else. Something different, something “that sounds better.” Families that lived a hundred years ago didn’t have access to the kind of social information that we do today. They weren’t constantly forced to compare themselves to others and wonder why they didn’t measure up. They just got a job they thought sounded decent, found a good partner, and made the most of it.
Now of course people in today’s Western world are lucky to have such freedom of choice. That goes without saying. We have access to an unbelievably robust job market, lots of social situations and groups, and lots of options for how to structure our lives. My point is, along with that blessing comes a curse. Because everything is a trade-off.
We go on dating apps and we shop for humans as if they are toys on shelves in a store. Commodities. Nothing more than options for us to judge the utility of. And the worst part is, we go in with a rubric against which to score all of these commoditized humans. Because, tragically, people think they actually know what they want. Which, most times, we don’t. Most good things in life comes as a surprise. In general, we have no idea what we want.
The point of dating, or trying new hobbies, or building new social structures, is to try. To throw away what we think we know about ourselves, throw away that silly rubric that we created, and just give it a shot. See what we have in common with that girl over there. Or that club, or that activity they’re all doing. It is silly and counterproductive to walk around looking for only A Plusses everywhere, and yet that’s what we do. We won’t even pull those toys down off the shelf to play with them because we’re so convinced that they’re not what we want. They’re not quite up to our standards. And our standards, of course, are completely arbitrary and ridiculous.
You know what would make dating apps better? Well, other than closing all our accounts and never, ever letting us access them again? Giving us a list of 8 people and saying “choose the 2 you think you might connect with most.” And opening up a space for us to have a conversation with them.
And you might say “well yea, but what if they’re not a 9 out of 10 or better?”
I’ve got news, pal. Neither are you.
The vast majority of people think of themselves as above average. You know what that means, right? It means that a statistically significant percentage of us are full of shit.
It means that we should give each other a break. And allow people and places and things to pleasantly surprise us.
Don’t become so bogged down in choice that you forget that life is for living, not planning. Life is not something you’re supposed to walk around all the time judging with a clipboard. It’s for experiencing now and taking notes later.
Without guard rails, limitations, and restrictions, we cannot even act in the world. We must have limits imposed on us in order to be able to narrow down our thinking enough to actually commit to something. And, unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of externally-imposed restrictions on human behavior in modern society — especially the more liberal and progressive we become. Which means that the modern man, perhaps more so than any other man in history, must master himself. He must have the discipline and foresight to impose restrictions upon himself. Or else he’ll end up swiping left on everything his whole life, and growing into an old man having never really experienced anything.
It might not be a good thing to tell your kids “you can be whatever you want.” If they’re like me, that probably paralyzed them. And made them feel even worse when they couldn’t even pick something. Maybe instead you should tell them “find a couple of things you think you’ll be really good at, and try them. Try them really hard. If you fail, it’s okay. Find a couple more.”
Drink water, but only right by the sink.
JDR
“Only madmen and fools are pleased with themselves; no wise man is good enough for his own satisfaction.” - Benjamin Whichcote