"The Paradox of Choice" has a couple good insights, especially for entrepreneurs selling, but I think it misses one very important thing.<p>Yes, the unknowledgeable shopper will feel overwhelmed if you ask them what spice you want to buy out of 40 different spices, but the world would be much worse if there was a mandate that you could only buy pepper and garlic.<p>It would be easier for the unskilled cook, but serious chefs would have their ability severely curtailed.<p>Likewise, I think a lot of the "paradox of choice" applications evolve into tyranny - force simpliciy, because hey, that's great for people! All these choices confuse people! It's true, yes, that 80% to 90% of people don't want more choice and the choice is a hardship for them. But removing choice from that last 10 to 20% that are educated on the tradeoffs is really, really, really bad.<p>There's a fundamental flaw with the whole premise of paradox of choice - it ignores that there are people for whom a wide variety of choices is <i>incredibly</i> valuable and important. Encouraging restricting choices (especially by force! yuck!) makes things easier for most people, but destroys a lot of potential for amazing creations as well.