Misinterpreting a TED Talk – How to make choosing easier = How to increase sales = How to destroy earth faster
Posted by Dan | Filed under earth, water, air, weather, food, animals, plants, Immaterial Things, Material Things, Natural, products, services, maintenance, Unnatural, what is important
Recently i have come across this TED Talk – Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier. While the informations presented are no doubt valuable and can be put to use in a good manner this TED Talk is also misleading people to think that choosing the easy way is better for them. Overall this TED Talk is indeed enlightening … but not for me. It’s so for the retailer that tomorrow will reduce my options to increase his sales.
As we have learned from a previous TED Talk ( Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains ) our brain is wired to choose the easy path and of course will choose to choose less information over more. In a product world, less products on offer mean less companies manufacturing those products and means bigger monopolies and we all know where monopoly leads. If we are talking about food products, less products on offer means a decrease in diversity and an increase in monocultures. This in turn amplifies the extinction of species ( not restricted to plants as plants are only at the beginning of the food chain ), decreases the quality of land, increases the use of pesticides and many other bad effects. A very enlightening TED Talk – Cary Fowler: One seed at a time, protecting the future of food is proposing the opposite when it comes to food and gives us one last chance when it comes to our survival.
Earth can’t simply provide everybody with cars, with the same types of foods, etc. We need to embrace diversity not stifle it.
What i propose ? If you are in front of 200 types of olive oil and you don’t know what type to choose, pick one that you have heard of it, pick your favorite again or just randomize. And believe me … some of the best choices i’ve made were random !
Tags: choice, farming, misleading, monocultures, monopoly, random, retailers, TED Talk
