Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “man is condemned to freedom.”
His point was that since no higher power limits our choices, it is all up to us. Our freedom is infinite in every moment. The next second, you’re going for a run around the block, looking up NBA highlights, joining a political party, throwing your phone in the air, punching the person sitting next to you, and more. The possibilities are endless.
According to Sartre, this astonishing infinity is the inevitable source of humanity anxiety. What do you do when you can do anything? And while we can choose anything, we are fully responsible for our decisions. As our freedom increases, so does our anxiety and the weight of our choices.
When we narrow down Sartre’s worldview, he was fiercely anti-capitalist, anti-money, and felt that human nature was inherently miserable. But you don’t have to accept Sartre philosophy fully to appreciate this fundamental tension: We desperately seek freedom of choice, but if and when we get it, it becomes a source of deep anxiety.
We can see this tension in several areas, from consumer freedom to counterfactual thinking to technology innovation. I would argue that we will soon see it, in its full expression, in production artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT.
Psychology of choice in the modern world
The lie of freedom is a perennial feature consumer world. Consumers say they want a wider range of products to choose from – but when brands offer this, it makes the choice overwhelming. The more options consumers have, the less likely they are to buy and the less likely they are to enjoy the experience.
In response, the likes of Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb have gone to great lengths to address these possibilities. Consumers want freedom, but when they get it, it’s too much. This classic phenomenon in consumer psychology, the paradox of choice, directly reflects Sartre’s view of human freedom.
Return policies show a similar psychological pattern: Consumers want a flexible return policy — but as with most product options, that freedom can lead to dissatisfaction. When you can always take something back, you enjoy it less.
In an experiment conducted by Dan Gilbert at Harvard University, participants were presented with a series of photos and asked to choose the two photos they liked best. Then, of these last two, they were forced to keep one house and leave the other.
One group of participants was given a flexible return policy; They could go back and change the picture whenever they liked. But in the other group, the decision was final.
After a few weeks, they monitored how satisfied both groups of participants were with the picture they had chosen. Most people who had no choice but to live with their decisions were very happy with their choices.
Effects are not limited to photos or art. Psychologists used an experimental apparatus with different types of goods, from chocolate to cars. The results all point to one conclusion: The more free you are to make a decision, the happier you’ll be with it.
Personal freedom and technological innovation
To paraphrase Sartre, we are not only “condemned to be free”, but also condemned to demand freedom. Technological innovations reflect our ambivalence toward freedom.
We create platforms that give us incredible opportunities. YouTube contains over 800 million videos, with 3.5 million new videos uploaded every day. You can spend a lifetime watching and never scratch the surface. And that’s just YouTube; every time the internet is updated, it brings possible experiences.
However, the freedoms we create can completely overwhelm us. Many of us feel helpless against these technologies. We develop practices, routines, and entire areas to challenge our own innovations, from digital detoxes to “dopamine“fasting.
The biggest example of this tension: digital opportunities haunt us even when we are not online. Studies show that the presence of a phone can lower our mood. Imagine sitting next to a friend at dinner. If their phone is on the table, even face down, it represents the endless possibilities of the digital world. What other, even better, experiences could you have? This kind of thinking, counterfactual thinking, compares our current experience with an imagined better experience and makes the present worse by comparison. Even the possibility of freedom can cause anxiety.
Personal freedom in the generation of AI
As technology advances, the same intensity remains with increasing intensity. The most direct way to deal with it is to look at the manual of the AI generating platform. Whether it’s text on ChatGPT or images on Midjourney, you’re only limited by you. imagination.
If you’re a Monet fan, you can see what Monet’s painting of an apocalyptic Manhattan skyline would look like. Happy birthday to Jay-Z rap. These technologies are in their infancy, very much in the “cool, look at this” stage. But this is just the beginning. Text-to-video technology already allows you to create very realistic videos with just a few simple instructions. It may not be long until we are making full-length films that would otherwise take years.
People are already complaining about browsing Netflix’s catalog. Now imagine browsing not only all available movies, but all potential movies. The future of technological innovation is always mysterious, but one thing is clear: it brings a greater abundance of possible experiences, and with it, a greater anxiety of freedom.
Connecting personal freedom and human nature
Freedom is one of its great paradoxes human nature: we ask for it, but if and when we get it, it bothers us. Our technological innovations reflect our great desire for choice and possibility, and at the same time, our deep ambivalence. The generated AI just filled this out. If we take these innovations to their full potential, we will create a system, like Alan Watts, where every possible experience is at our fingertips. It may not be the perfect utopia we imagine, but instead, it’s equal parts pleasure and anxiety.
Sartre noted in the 60s that “everything is determined except how to live.” How true has it become?
This article originally appeared on the site human connection blog, NeuroScience From
