David Epstein
speaker
469 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 29 Jun
David Epstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, uh, advocated something that he called satisficing, which was basically having good enough rules for decisions instead of the, the opposite, which is called maximizing, which is trying to get the best of everything.
And it turns out that psychological research shows that it's almost always bad to be a maximizer.
Maximizers are, uh,
less happy with their decisions.
They're less happy with their lives.
They're more prone to regret.
They're more likely to make decisions just in the interest of optionality.
So to prefer reversible decisions, even though it prevents them from committing one way or another.
Whereas satisficers will say, here's what I'm looking for.
Here's the thing that I want this tool that I'm getting on Amazon to do.
And once that is met, they make the decision and then move on.
And I think that's almost a critical approach to life in a time when we have more options than we can even reasonably consider.
Okay, so maximizers will, in fact, some of the surveys that help determine if people are maximizers will ask things like, you know, if you found some good program that you're watching already, do you stop and watch it or will you keep searching to make sure that you're seeing the best thing?
When you're shopping for gifts for friends, do you have a lot of trouble because you really need to find that perfect thing?
Are they prone to regret?
Are they ruminating over a lot of decisions that have already been made?
Things like that.
Whereas satisficers will be much more likely, first of all, to not necessarily take reversible decisions.
So there are some studies that offer people reversible decisions, and the maximizers will always take a reversible decision even though it makes them less happy.
Exactly, yeah, and get something else.
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