6

Choices

(excerpts)

Making a decision from among a DISCREET set of choices is a very complex process.

I read somewhere once that all of Einstein's suits were the same color so that he wouldn't waste psychic energy on choosing in the morning. If one thinks about how a discrete choice is usually made: An internal dialogue goes on between logical reason and intuition or feelings. Usually logic more in the beginning of the process and intuition more towards the end. How often does one say when they sit down at a restaurant to themself "what do I feel like"? (an internal dialogue??)

If I say to someone how are you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10 how often do they say 0 or 11 or 2.5 ? They don't like the process of abstracting their feelings to a discreet set of possibilities. This is why icons are not about and cannot be about intuitive communication...

The point is that making a discrete decision is such a complex and often logical process that it removes the viewer from the aesthetic process of viewing or interacting with a work of art.

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If one were reading an interactive book that had 5 choices at the end of every page then clearly the reader wouldn't get anywhere.

Discrete decisions are dealt with by the logical part of the mind and continuous decisions are dealt with by feelings or the intuitive part of the mind.

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