Limited availability makes things seem more valuable or urgent.
More quotesChoice has acquired a saintly reputation. Nobody asks whether the chooser wants the bloody job. A company declines to decide how often an app should interrupt, presents twelve toggles, and calls the resulting admin “control”. The product team enjoys freedom from blame. The customer gets a small unpaid position in configuration.
The absurdity becomes clearer when the choices are reversible. Pick a sensible notification rhythm. Let the unusual person alter it. Instead, every newcomer is invited to develop a personal philosophy of banners, badges, sounds, summaries and lock-screen previews before doing the thing they opened the app to do. This is sold as respect. It feels remarkably like tidying somebody else’s cutlery drawer.
Whitehead’s point bites because thought has a cost. Civilisation advances by making settled actions ordinary, then spending attention on the unsettled ones. A lift does not request a preferred acceleration profile. A kettle does not offer six boiling philosophies. Their makers have made decisions and accepted responsibility for them.
The saintly language conceals a transfer of labour. Each edge case becomes a permanent control because nobody wants to own a default. Ten thousand people meet the extra decision so one complaint can be avoided. The support log later classifies the resulting mistakes as user preference.