The Art Of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday of our Lives, What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them

Max Born once made a famous remark: “I think chance is a more fundamental conception than causality”. Taking that cue along after reading this book, I think “choice is a more fundamental concept than constraint!” If you are expecting specific research insights from the author’s work, perhaps this is not the book. Most of the experiments (like Jam tasting etc.) are familiar ones. But the stories are well articulated. Her prologue about her own immigrant life with poor eye sight bordering blindness turns out to be a serious start. Her last chapter is about her marriage wherein her experience with a famous astrologer is indeed engaging. Overall, this book defies any attempt to summarize it. Still, let me persist and come up with a few points. “We all have a buffet mentality” she firmly declares and so argues that choices are critical. (By the way, Mr. Buffet always goes for A la carte when it comes to picking stocks. J) In her view, there is an optimal level in terms of the number of choices beyond which any additional choices available is nearly of no consequence and in fact add to our woes. Decision making then, becomes more complicated than it needs to be. She quotes Mathematician Henri Poincaré: “Invention consists in avoiding the construction of useless combinations and in constructing useful combinations. To invent is to discern, to choose”. She does propose a nice corollary based on that: “To choose is to invent”. Trouble with such a simple dictum is that it takes a Poincaré, arguably one of the best mathematicians of the century, to reject useless combinations. Nice try anyway... More in the blog page....

Good view on the subject art of choosing. Consumables for 3-5hours read. All the main fact of this book has been stated in the 1st chapter itself. After it get repeatative.

Sher