[SmooL]

"-Normal distributions come from multifactorial situations, where many variables matter. -In a world governed by scarcity, our decisions and preferences tend to be multifactorial in nature. -In a world governed by abundance, on the other hand, our decisions are no longer multifactorial. They tend to be dominated by one factor above all others: either X matters to you, or it doesn’t."

I'm more curious as to _why_ our decisions become dominated by one factor as we approach abundance. It almost seems counter-intuitive: in a world of abundance, wouldn't there be more things we could afford to care about? In a world of scarcity, wouldn't your decision be based mostly by just "does it do what I want it to do"?

Maybe we're just lazy. Maybe it's the other way around: in a world of abundance, we can _afford_ to be _lazy_ and not care about nearly as much, and instead focus on singular values.

In either case, I'm not convinced that decision distribution is a function of scarcity/abundance, but rather some other factor, of which scarcity/abundance contributes to.

[blfr]

In a world of scarcity, wouldn't your decision be based mostly by just "does it do what I want it to do"?

Yes but also "can I afford it?", "is it available?", "will it be shipped on time and to my address", etc. When you reach real abundance and everything is at your fingertips, the only factor that matters is whether you want it.

[bluetomcat]

> I'm more curious as to _why_ our decisions become dominated by one factor as we approach abundance.

I would speculate that it comes down to the availability of too many different "classes" of products and services, which are often self-exclusive. There is only so much time in a day to consume a limited amount of these products and services. People's time and attention span is the limiting factor.

Let's say that you are in the market for entertaining yourself in some way. You can entertain yourself by riding on a rollercoaster, by watching movies, by driving a sportscar, by hiking, by doing photography. There is too much choice, and you eventually pick only one or two of these activities and they eventually become your "favourites". You become addicted, you prefer buying only high-end, specialised equipment, and you skew the market of that product accordingly.

[cfarm]

In a world of abundance where you can (by definition) do whatever you want, you will need to prioritize the things that you want to do vs not. There is simply not enough time to do everything so there is less "weighing" of decisions.