As a society we claim to love freedom and having more choice is seen as a good thing. But the reality is that since the 50s we've been given more choices and we've only become more unhappy.

Modern life has too many choices for the average brain to handle. Too many bad choices lead to bad outcomes which lowers our quality of life. Examples:

1950s: Only a few options at the grocery store. Most food is homemade. 2020: we have thousands of types of junk food to choose causing people to get fat.

1950s: For entertainment, you can read, watch a movie/TV or socialize with your family. 2020: thousands of video games, "freemium" mobile games, garbage on Netflix, 800 channels on TV.

1950: Your choice of spouse is limited to the few hundred people your age in your town. 2020: Start swiping, there's infinite people to choose from.

1950: You place 15% of your salary in your pension fund and in 30 years you will receive a pension for life no work required. 2020: You choose how much to save, how it's invested, how you pay taxes on it. Of course most people save nothing or play the market leading to suboptimal outcomes.

There’s nothing wrong with video games. It’s another form of digital entertainment just like television, movie theaters, music, etc.

There is almost certainly a lot of truth to this. The issue is most people are ignorant and have no self control, but for those of us that do all of the extra choices are amazing.

True, everything got more complicated. Women having X standards. Need to make X to make it. Need to have X to buy this. Need to have X to drive here. Need to have X to play this type of video games. Need to be this X to ride this rollercoster.

So damn depressing. Now I see why half the population is on some kind of anti-depressant.

So why not just simplify your life then?

the world is
a mess

Our brains have not developed for what we are doing now.

I agree. The sad thing is this leads to people looking for someone to tell them what to do, ie big government

the paradox of choice

legit ngl

Is this a real picture or was it organized?

Not possible.

For example, I am required by my job to have a smartphone with Slack and several other "productivity" apps on it.

Many good jobs require a college degree which is a whole new level of complexity.

Online dating is pretty much the only way to find a spouse these days.

Good pensions are pretty much nonexistent unless you're in the military.

OP is a shill for someone pushing big gov't.

Videogames, movies, an porn rot your mind turn u soycuck

WTF? Man.... this is not it, not it at all. Online dating is the WORST idea for trying to find anything not casual.

Online dating is the number 1 way people meet their spouse in 2020 and it is still growing rapidly.

I don't think the problems you are describing are best ascribed to complexity. Smart phone addiction is more a problem of distraction. Smart phones don't make your life more complex, they ruin your ability to concentrate deeply and live in reality.

There are also lots of ways that life has gotten simpler. The internet makes it a lot easier to look up basic information. Back in the day you would have to use a map if you were traveling somewhere new. Now your phone will tell you what to do.

Agree but the 90s must have been better than the 50s, we were in a balanced stage between natural life and technology, we had more cool stuff without the overcomplexity. It only got worse post 2012.

Maybe so, but think about what TYPE of people are doing this. Materialistic, shallow, lazy, social media addicted, deadbeats. It's like the old saying, just because everyone else is jumping off of the cliff, doesn't mean that you should.

https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better


Marketers assume that the more choices they offer, the more likely customers will be able to find just the right thing. They assume, for instance, that offering 50 styles of jeans instead of two increases the chances that shoppers will find a pair they really like. Nevertheless,research now shows that there can be too much choice; when there is, consumers are less likely to buy anything at all, and if they do buy, they are less satisfied with their selection.

It all began with jam. In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper published a remarkable study. On one day, shoppers at an upscale food market saw a display table with 24 varieties of gourmet jam. Those who sampled the spreads received a coupon for $1 off any jam. On another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display.The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.

You should check out what Ted Kazinsky wrote about the modern world.

[QUOTE=DandyDink post_id=1633759203][URL=https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better]https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better[/URL]


Marketers assume that the more choices they offer, the more likely customers will be able to find just the right thing. They assume, for instance, that offering 50 styles of jeans instead of two increases the chances that shoppers will find a pair they really like. Nevertheless,[b]research now shows that there can be too much choice; when there is, consumers are less likely to buy anything at all, and if they do buy, they are less satisfied with their selection.[/b]

It all began with jam. In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper published a remarkable study. On one day, shoppers at an upscale food market saw a display table with 24 varieties of gourmet jam. Those who sampled the spreads received a coupon for $1 off any jam. On another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display.[b]The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.[/b]


[img]https://images.theconversation.com/files/295551/original/file-20191004-52810-zkvhes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1[/img]























[img]https://thumbs.gfycat.com/TanAridJenny-max-1mb.gif[g][/QUOTE][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/3PgbNQU3cYo[/youtube]

Read this book OP:
Escape from Freedom by Eric Fromm.

Basically what op is saying but didnt is:

- lack of whole foods in diet because modern life is too time consuming w/o women home to cook so we eat processed garbage and feel like chit

- too many ways to mindlessly indulge and consoom inside, especially activities that arent necessarily social in the way our brain truly craves

- money is tight for majority of people so they either blow it or invest it poorly because they dont have insider knowledge

Nah, it's really just that economic life was so much better for a wagie in the '50s than any kind of fukking paradox of choice.

Imagine that you dropped out of high school in the 1950s. You could catch on with FoMoCo as a janitor and make $2700/yr (equal to $30,000 today. An average house back then was $7500 (no chit! equal to $80K today), which is affordable at less than 3x your income. Congradulations, you're now a home owner on a single high school dropout's salary. You find some 50s sloot who will marry you just for your job/house, splooge all in her, make some Boomers, and keep her home taking care of your kids. They could even have a TV to watch. It'd sting at $200 (about a month of your income), but it's not out of reach.

Now imagine that you drop out of high school in 2021. You will have a hard time catching on as a janitor because of illegals. If you can, you make $12/hr ($24k/yr, 20% less than what your grandpa got paid for the same work). I'll be generous and say that a house is $250K where you live, which at 10x your income will never be possible to own. Rent at ~$1000/mo, food and internet will pretty much eliminate your take-home and you'll be living a hand to mouth existence. A wife is out of the question with your level of financial insecurity, so now you just smash trashy randoms whenever you can. A home is out of the question, so you just rent bedrooms for life. Kids are out of the question unless govt assistance is involved. But miscers will tell you how lucky you are to be able to afford a better TV now than '50s brah had.

To get the same quality of life in 2021 as a high school dropout in the 1950s used to have - suburban house, SAHM, kids and car - you would probably need to be a doctor earning $150K after student loans. And we wonder why life seemed better back then lmao. It wasn't cause they had less fukking brands of cereal.

Remember the 90's when everything was calm and nobody had smart devices or social media and you could just enjoy every little second of your life without a care in the world?

Yeah, i call it "The Netflix effect" (copyrighted term by Ken-O).

The more options you have, the less likely you are to choose correctly or to be satisfied by your choice. Back in the day you would surf the cable channels and just pick a movie and finish it, even if maybe you had already watched it 10 times before.

Nowadays you waste half n hour choosing a movie on netflix or a tv show, and if the first 5 minutes dont completely interest you, you say fuk it and change to a different movie/show.

If one day you dont know what to watch, and suddenly netflix only gives you 10 options instead of 10,000, then you will pick something very fast and you will for sure finish it. No "hmm maybe i can find something better if i search enough" thought on the back of your mind.


Same happens with pretty much everything, including relationships.

Just to play devils advocate:

1) nobody is forcing you to work at your job. You could into the wild it tomorrow if you wanted to.

2) college degrees have been watered down and smart managers base a lot of their decision on experience either with side projects or other work.

3) online dating is not the only way to find a spouse and even if it is the most common way it might not be the best way.

4) you can learn the basics of investing quickly using free online resources and develop your own retirement plan. Plenty of access to online financial advisors, forums, etc.

There is rarely real barriers to simplifying your life; it’s just that the pain to change and worry over what people might think is usually enough to keep us doing what we know.

There’s 7.7 billion people on the planet with majority of people having access to high speed internet on their phones.

1950 was half that population. Yes the quality of life is getting worse from a mental standpoint

Very interesting thread. Agree.

Also to the misc ballers, well done. Both mirin and jelly.