Technology

It’s started to feel to me over the past few months that one of the most insidious things about daily life is the way the average person is pushed away from making informed choices, and is instead driven towards choosing the default options which are by-and-large worse for themselves and the people around them. If the “default settings” of our lives were more often a net-positive for ourselves then this wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but currently we sit in a place where “going with the flow” will inevitably leave us worse off.

Each decision we make, especially complicated ones that require a level of additional research or insight, incur a mental tax. No one can be perfectly informed enough and have the level of mental presence to fight their way through all of them. Even if you’re aware of these decisions and have a desire to choose better alternatives, it simply isn’t possible for you to keep up with them all. Eventually you will choose a default choice because it’s easy, because it’s being sold to you, because you weren’t aware that an alternative was available to you. This will make your life worse because the default options are worse.

They're right of course, but I will hold against that that you can also get used to your own default settings, they become second nature. Which then sometimes feels weird when e.g. I see other people browsing the net without an adblocker (masochists). Or when I realise that other - most - people do not look at the smaller price per kg label when shopping or don't read the ingredients - it just feels off. Because my own default settings are different.