What if there’s an optimized limitation for freedom?
We may more or less heard about the concept — more is less. That is, when people encounter enormous choices, or the amount exceeds one can stand while making a reasonable decision, people would then choose from whatever nearest, cheapest or any random factor one could come out with to make the decision. So, the first concept I am trying to say is — people’s energy/attention are limited, therefore, excessive choices does not benefit us as much as we thought. In fact, The amount of efforts we put in making decisions may, in the contrary, cost us more.
Psychologists indicates that, in most cases, people tend to overestimate the domination power base on personality than on environments. (i.e. environments dominate our behaviors more than our own personalities do) Legally, we were considered by our society that we will be matured enough to handle everything once we pass the legal age. In my opinion, that’s not necessarily true. Life is the accumulation of every tiny decisions, yet even a trivial decision matters. We all know how to live a brilliant, healthy life — we read and listen about it everyday repeatedly, yet most of the time we don’t act like we are going to be different. Because in the face of technology/ advertising media storms, we are still kids.
My conclusion here is that freedom has a diminishing marginal utility(it’s an economics usage — all else equal as consumption increases the marginal utility derived from each additional unit declines.) In the Sapiens Trilogy written by Yuval Noah Harari, there’s an important suggestion Harari has to offer for us to facing upcoming great AI era — we must take over the domination of our own mind/behavior(by genuinely and deeply understands our own mind ASAP before machine or data does)
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker, 2014) ISBN 978–006–231–609–7
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), ISBN 978–1910701881
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)