More options has led to fewer choices.

In the history of mankind, we never had this many options to choose from as we do today.

What to eat, where to go, what to do, what to watch and what not. The options are stacking up infinitely. However, instead of liberating us through choice, we have been bounded by the shackles of indecision. How many times has it happened to you, that you open netflix or youtube or any other streaming platform and gets overwhelmed with just the options available for you to watch?

Barry Schwartz calls this Paradox of Choice - every choice carries the wight of every other choice you didn't make.

Here is what i think is happening, when I opened youtube and saw that there are two options, a new minecraft video by parrot and a new podcast by the why files. Instead of looking at the entertainment value that i will get from watching any of the video, I start looking into the value that I would loose if I don't optimize for the best value. But when I look at it closely, it wasn't about the value at all, it was about indecision. If for some reason one of the videos would have gone away on its own, I would have been fine. Not because the video is gone, but a decision was made for me but not by me.

In life, sometimes we are not afraid of making choices, but we are afraid of making wrong choices and spend endless time in optimizing for the best result on account of being thorough.

Due to this very specific reason, in Uphill a feature was added called Dice of Fate - two options, one choice and no re-rolls. You type your options, you roll and you accept the result. That's the whole thing.

It sounds trivial. But if anyone hesitates before hitting roll - that pause is very telling.

Because the dice doesn't make the decision hard. You already did that. The dice just makes you stop pretending you haven't already decided.