Seeking good web sites for Debian tools

[David N. Welton]

Ian Zimmerman <itz@buug.org> writes:

> Les> "...providing too many options— particularly when the
> Les> differences between them are small — can make people feel
> Les> overwhelmed and overloaded,..."
> 
> But psychology aside, this is illogical: the fewer the choices, the
> smaller the differences.  Even if the major candidates start very
> different from each other, the pressure of competing for the same
> market will drive them closer and closer.  This is the politics
> analogy I had in mind which apparently nobody parsed.

They didn't say that "the best number of choices is 0, 1 or 2", just
that too many is bad.  Presumably there is an optimal number for each
situation where people feel that they can get exactly what they want,
but without being overwhelmed.  It's probably a factor of many things,
including whether the person in question, as the article says, is one
who says "ok, well, as long as it's good enough for me", or instead "I
want the best!".

Politics and election systems are interesting too, but I think there
you have to concentrate first on an election system (like Australia's
IRV, or Debian's Condorcet) if you want to change things, rather than
considering "choice fatigue", which most likely won't play a factor
any time soon.  The centralized system we have is due to the rules of
the game.  If I may editorialize a bit, sometimes it's not bad to be
pushed to the center - consider Europe in the 1930's.

Ciao,
-- 
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Apache, Linux, Tcl Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/