English Training 01 — The paradox of choice — Barry Schwartz

This is my first Ted presentation review to train my written English. I’ve been taking class with my teacher Jeremy and we will use this platform to put up some texts about videos, podcasts, articles, movies, etc. We have these rules: just check words in the dictionary, watch videos without captions, write an opinion about it and don’t check Google Translator. Let’s learn and practice!

Wow… It’s so difficult to understand this guy! He speaks fast for me and I did my best to put his ideas on this page.

So, I heard about Barry Schwartz and his book in my MBA course in 2018. He wrote a book called “The Paradox of Choice”. I haven’t read it yet, but I have the book on my Kindle.

In the apresentation, in 2005, Schwartz talked about his book. He started talking about the “Official Dogma” and the wish to maximaze individual freedom. To him, the way to achieve this is to maximize choice. More freedom, more choice. He gave two examples:

1. The first one is about having a lot of options (millions) to buy some vegetables in the supermarket or to buy eletronics in a department store. There are a lot of options or brands to choose from.
2. The second one is about the doctor talking about your problem and giving you two options. He doesn’t make a decision about the treatment, just talks about options A and B and the consequences and you, the patient, must choose.

The whole presentation, he spoke about making choices. We have to make decisions again and again and again. Every time, we go to a soccer game to see our kid playing soccer and our smartphone receives a notification, we must choose what we will do: watch the game or look at the smartphone.

The paradox, according to Schwartz, is the consequence of having so many choices to make. He listed three effects (he gave details about each one, but I had a lot of difficulty to understand and I didn’t put them here):

1. People have difficulty to choose at all
2. You will feel disappointed because you could have chosen better
3. Higher expectations

He concluded by talking about the “Official Dogma” being false and about the consequences, dissatisfaction, responsibility and about not having excuses for failure. Schwartz finished with a metaphor about a fishbowl. But, again, I didn’t understand.

English Difficulty Level: High

Conclusion: So difficult! I understood the main idea (maybe because I knew his book), and some parts of his examples, but I had a lot of difficulty understanding his conclusion.