A Better Way To Deal With Our Current Age Of Infinite Choices
Why the Greco-Roman idea of perfection and a multi-armed slot machine is the solution
I’ve run into a unique problem as I’ve aged. Namely, it’s getting damn difficult for me to sit down and watch a movie or television show. While I am busier, the main problem is the overwhelming choices.
My limited screen time gets invested watching countless trailers, and before I realize it, thirty minutes is gone. The experience got me thinking: this isn’t a bug of our age, it’s the main feature.
Technology has blessed us with the ability to seek endless ideas, products, entertainment, and people with the swipe of a finger, on a device which never leaves our side. But it’s hard to narrow “unlimited” down to a single perfect selection, due to a fear of a wrong choice.
Dr. Liesel Sharabi, the Director of the Relationships & Technology Lab at Arizona State University says this is part of the choice overload effect. In her article at Psychology Today, she notes a famous study where a tasting booth of jams was set up. The more on display, the less likely the shopper would make a purchase.
Dr. Sharabi says this also bleeds into online dating. She explains the more choices you have, the less happy you’ll be with your selection, and it can make possible partners seem “disposable.”
Fortunately, there’s a better way to deal with our age of infinite choices. It starts with our skewed version of perfection. While our idea of “perfect” involves making the ideal choice and avoiding mistakes, the Greco-Roman world saw it much differently.
Teleios And Perficio: Fulfilling Your Purpose
Author, podcaster, and Doctor of Greek literature Spencer Klavan says over years of use and translation, words can drift from the original meaning. He finds an example of this in the Bible on an episode of his podcast.
The Gospel of Matthew famously, or infamously, records Jesus telling his followers to “be perfect” as their Father is in heaven. Obviously, this sounds like an impossible request. But Klavan says the original text was written in Greek, and our use of the word “perfect” isn’t the same.
He says the word in the text was “teleios,” which doesn’t mean to be flawless and never make a mistake. It’s more about completing, than avoiding. In its base sense, teleios means to be complete or fulfill a goal, which is much different than our idea of perfect.
Klavan says this also carried to the Roman world. The Latin “perficio” is another version of the original Greek term, which morphed into the word we’re familiar with today. But the Latin term means to accomplish something or complete it thoroughly.
According to Klavan, you can still see this idea in certain sports in our modern interpretation of the Olympics. For instance, some gymnastics events have a list of requirements the athlete must perform, and their score is reflected on their ability to follow through or complete their goal.
So, our idea of perfect has drifted from the original interpretation. Since we understand this concept, it gives us a compass to navigate our unlimited selection of choices. But we need one more tool to use it properly.
Managing The Slot Machine Of Overwhelming Choice
“This is something I now notice whenever I read biographies of people who have done exceptional work: they lived narrow lives. They allowed themselves to care about less than others do.”
— Henrik Karlsson, Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on
Blogger Henrik Karlsson in his article above compares our world of unlimited choice to a “multi-armed bandit problem.” Where a standard slot machine has one arm, with one set of probabilities, our lives have endless arms, which can provide infinite probabilities.
This leaves us with two options: either explore new possibilities or exploit the lever whose variable is known.
But you can’t do both simultaneously. In other words, you need to “find the right balance,” by either exploiting a known arm of the machine or exploring others to see what their payoff is.
It’s wonderful to invest time into exploration, but at a point it pays to concentrate on exploiting the arms which are desirable. Karlsson says this is a formula repeated by many notable figures in their biographies — they focus their “achievement budget” on a narrow group of priorities.
The blogger quotes both Steve Jobs and the German filmmaker Werner Herzog explaining how they sacrificed other possibilities for their prime interest(s). Moreover, Karlsson says he gave up many hobbies to focus on his family and writing.
Personally, writing has taken a few arms away from my slot machine too. But this multi-armed bandit analogy of living “narrow lives” also fits nicely with the Greco-Roman version of perfect.
Solving The Choice Overload Effect / Choosing A Show To Stream
I started this article with a vision of a confused Socrates unable to choose a cereal from endless brands. There’s also a mention of my choice dilemma for a movie. It puts a comical vision to this problem.
However, trying to narrow that unlimited selection down to the “perfect” choice can result in extreme frustration and unhappiness rather than humor.
As Dr. Sharabi mentions, it can cause us to see people as “disposable.”
The quantity of choices can paralyze us and make us procrastinate.
Fear of a choice which isn’t perfect can haunt us with regret and a continuous wonder of what could have been.
But our answer lies within the problem of unlimited choice itself. Namely, we must have a metric to narrow it. It’s wonderful to explore the countless arms of the slot machine, but eventually there comes a time to exploit the known meaningful levers.
This leads us to the Greco-Roman version of perfection. Once you find those primary levers which are important to you, it’s time to follow through completely and fulfill your goal.
Strangely, by taking away the unlimited set of choices and cutting it down in the beginning, you’re enabling more freedom. So, a “narrow life” sets the condition for teleios and perficio.
It even works with my movie dilemma.
Now I keep a list of shows I’m interested in, and they get precedence instead of randomly hunting through countless trailers. Since writing is personally important to me, I also give extra preference to things I’d be interested in writing about. This narrows my choices early.
But it can also help us pick more compatible partners, choose more fulfilling careers, and even select more enjoyable hobbies.
There’s a better way to deal with our current age of infinite choices. It involves adopting a Greco-Roman idea of perfection, and narrowing our lives so we can remove arms from the slot machine of choice.
-Originally posted on Medium 1/13/24