Choice

If I was to talk about Radio Lab, most of you would say, "What?" Which is a shame, because Radio Lab, at least on my podcast list, is one of the smartest programs on any media as well as the most creative. And I say that as a die hard This American Life listener. My inner Ira Glass is right now trying to subtly remind me that its not a competition, but we all know better.

A few weeks back, hosts Robert Krulwich & Jad Abumrad, put forth a great program on Choice, which was late in some respects because the election was 12 days before it aired. The choice of the year, guys!

I can hear Krulwich now - "But Id, why did we need to say a thing about the election?" Well, Robert, bear with me . . all shall become apparent.

Jonah Lehrer helps us understand why by introducing us to George Miller's classic paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two", which explains the ability of the average human to hold about seven pieces of discreet information in working memory at any given time.

Classic is almost an understatement - we all interact everyday, some of us every hour, with the most famous application of the paper: the telephone call routing system. Miller found that the average normal human can handle or juggle about 7 pieces of discrete data at once in foreground memory, plus or minus 2 in variance. Its because of Miller that my phone number is (515)557-1785 (it's really not) - we not only give our number in in local terms as 7 digits, and then also in two or three chunks. You can also see derivation on Miller's work in the Web address system - this chunking also applies to single words or other simple datums.

Robert X. Cringely, a technology journalist, wrote about Miller's work in Accidental Empires, postulating that the people whom could hold more data in RAM (so to speak), more than 7-9 numbers, were likely to be gifted individuals.

It is the 0.15 percent . . we're interested in - the 3 out of 2,000 people who can remember more than nine numbers. There are approximately 375,000 such people living in the United States, and most of them would make terrific computer programmers, if only if we could find them.

It's more than about computer programming, of course, because being able to hold transitory information in short-term memory at the very least could be a great asset at parties, much less in board rooms or even the White House.

So if seven, with a little fudging, is the magic number, what happens when we give someone more than 7 pieces of data and expect them to make a serious decision?

How many times have we stood in a shopping aisle and muttered that our brain hurt?

In my case, I've stewed for weeks on certain decisions or purchases, wanting to assess all the variables and correctly identify all the needs or wants I want to fulfill. This plotting and planning sometimes takes on a senseless life of it own as my brain chases its tail around and around. Some of that is information overload.

A very devious guy, Baba Shiv, at Stanford put together a little experiment based off of those numbers. He showed that if you give someone a data set like a phone number with the implied intention for said person to reguritate it a little later, and then interrupting that person, you can bend their judgment away from good to worse choices.

How often have we stood in a voting booth and muttered about down-ballot candidate races?

Now remove that decision-making process one step further. How does someone, whom isn't a politics and news junkie like the fair readers of this blog, whom doesn't commit talking points and positions to long-term memory, and whom doesn't watch the election cycle for months on end, come to a decision? Whom on average, has only five to nine slots available to stick the datum of the moment.

Yeah. Scares me too.

The marketers, advertisers and their close relatives in political communications know this very well. In certain respects, they want to overwhelm the low-information voter and bend the decision-making process with less-than-noble talking points and appeals. In the age of 24/7 news and the Information SuperFirehose, it's then pathetically easy to blow away a person's judgment.

That flood of information can lead to avoidance and anxiety, and even to people refusing to make any choice whatsoever - and not ultimately voting.

Coincidentally, the next program to come off my randomized playlist was TAL's Ground Game episode. In Act One, it featured the Democrats for McCain stumping door-to-door in Scranton, PA. Listening to it, and the Radio Lab just previously, made you really think about how we form choices - and rationalize the ones that we feel so strongly about that we sacrifice our time and money for.

That's the story you didn't go for, Robert.