… Facebook is empirically good enough or else we would use something else.
This reasoning is not sound.
… people keep making the choice to use Facebook when there are hundreds of other tools available.
No, they don’t.
The second of the two quotes above is wrong in at least two ways—a specific one and a general one. The general one first:
Whatever may be claimed by adherents of certain strains of philosophy, there is a profound difference between commission and omission. Specifically, there is a great difference between these two situations:
You are presented with a choice: A or B? You must select one.
You will be given A. If you wish, you may request B instead.
Suppose we look at a population of people who have encountered this situation, and observe that most of them have A. Would it be reasonable for us to say, “These people have made the choice to have A”? No. Absolutely not.
And, separately and additionally, there is a great difference between these two situations:
You have A. You are presented with an explicit choice: keep A, or get B instead? (There is no default action; or, perhaps, if you make no selection, A is taken from you and you are left with nothing.)
You have A. If you take no action, you will continue to have A. At any time of your choosing, you may elect to switch to B.
Once again, suppose we look at a population of people who have A. We know that, at a time of their choosing, any of them could switch to B. Would it be reasonable for us to say, “These people have made the choice to have A”? Once again: no, absolutely not.
Note that neither of these distinctions is identical with the familiarity effect[1], nor do either of them have anything to do with external (as distinct from cognitive a.k.a. “internal”) costs of switching! Both of those are separate points.
So that is the general reason why saying “people keep making the choice to use Facebook” is dangerously misleading: it ignores how human cognition works—the reality of how people think, choose, and act.
I will describe the specific reason in a sibling comment…
[1] Consider a scenario where you always use some particular brand of toothpaste. Every time you run out, you go to the store, select a brand of toothpaste from the many brands the store carries, and purchase it. There is no default action (you can’t just tell the clerk “give me toothpaste”, you have to personally make the choice and personally take the item, etc.), and you are required to actively choose—if you take no action, you will have no toothpaste. Thus neither of the two considerations described by the distinctions I list apply. Nevertheless, we often buy the same brand of toothpaste, over and over. This is the familiarity effect. Once again, this is entirely different from the “cognitive costs of choice” effects which I describe above.
Once again, suppose we look at a population of people who have A. We know that, at a time of their choosing, any of them could switch to B. Would it be reasonable for us to say, “These people have made the choice to have A”? Once again: no, absolutely not.
By why is A in this case “use Facebook”? No one is making anyone use Facebook, people choose to use it, so it’s not really a default except that in some particular framing you may think of it as a default, which may be how some people think of the choice but is not how I think the choice would look to someone who was not already a committed Facebook user (the outside view is different from the inside view, and I’m taking the outside view). I feel like your entire argument is hinged on a hidden assumption about a framing that places Facebook as a default choice. That’s fine as far as it goes but I also feel it fails to address the point I’m making by picking a different frame of reference, namely one that is aiming to be more outside.
Also, as a meta note I’m establishing a new Said-specific policy for myself of only responding once to Said threads for the foreseeable future: I dislike the confrontational tone (that I perceive that) you take so I’ll only respond at most once to you in a thread to avoid getting into a back and forth I dislike. Anyone who notices me doing otherwise please feel free to remind me I said this.
By why is A in this case “use Facebook”? No one is making anyone use Facebook, people choose to use it,
Because the question is “why are people continuing to use Facebook”, not “why did they start using Facebook”. It doesn’t matter why they started. They did; this is now a brute fact. But why do they continue? And so “use Facebook” is of course the default choice, the non-action.
it’s not really a default except that in some particular framing you may think of it as a default
No, it’s a default in the obvious and straightforward way of “a person who is already using Facebook, by default, continues to use Facebook”. Switching takes effort (cognitive effort, time, etc.). Heck, it takes even knowing that you can switch, not to mention knowing what to switch to, and how. Continuing to use Facebook takes no effort and no thought.
I feel like your entire argument is hinged on a hidden assumption about a framing that places Facebook as a default choice.
It’s not hidden at all, it’s not an “assumption”, and it’s not a “framing”; it’s just how things are.
That’s fine as far as it goes but I also feel it fails to address the point I’m making by picking a different frame of reference, namely one that is aiming to be more outside.
No amount of framing changes the facts of this matter.
This reasoning is not sound.
No, they don’t.
The second of the two quotes above is wrong in at least two ways—a specific one and a general one. The general one first:
Whatever may be claimed by adherents of certain strains of philosophy, there is a profound difference between commission and omission. Specifically, there is a great difference between these two situations:
You are presented with a choice: A or B? You must select one.
You will be given A. If you wish, you may request B instead.
Suppose we look at a population of people who have encountered this situation, and observe that most of them have A. Would it be reasonable for us to say, “These people have made the choice to have A”? No. Absolutely not.
And, separately and additionally, there is a great difference between these two situations:
You have A. You are presented with an explicit choice: keep A, or get B instead? (There is no default action; or, perhaps, if you make no selection, A is taken from you and you are left with nothing.)
You have A. If you take no action, you will continue to have A. At any time of your choosing, you may elect to switch to B.
Once again, suppose we look at a population of people who have A. We know that, at a time of their choosing, any of them could switch to B. Would it be reasonable for us to say, “These people have made the choice to have A”? Once again: no, absolutely not.
Note that neither of these distinctions is identical with the familiarity effect[1], nor do either of them have anything to do with external (as distinct from cognitive a.k.a. “internal”) costs of switching! Both of those are separate points.
So that is the general reason why saying “people keep making the choice to use Facebook” is dangerously misleading: it ignores how human cognition works—the reality of how people think, choose, and act.
I will describe the specific reason in a sibling comment…
[1] Consider a scenario where you always use some particular brand of toothpaste. Every time you run out, you go to the store, select a brand of toothpaste from the many brands the store carries, and purchase it. There is no default action (you can’t just tell the clerk “give me toothpaste”, you have to personally make the choice and personally take the item, etc.), and you are required to actively choose—if you take no action, you will have no toothpaste. Thus neither of the two considerations described by the distinctions I list apply. Nevertheless, we often buy the same brand of toothpaste, over and over. This is the familiarity effect. Once again, this is entirely different from the “cognitive costs of choice” effects which I describe above.
By why is A in this case “use Facebook”? No one is making anyone use Facebook, people choose to use it, so it’s not really a default except that in some particular framing you may think of it as a default, which may be how some people think of the choice but is not how I think the choice would look to someone who was not already a committed Facebook user (the outside view is different from the inside view, and I’m taking the outside view). I feel like your entire argument is hinged on a hidden assumption about a framing that places Facebook as a default choice. That’s fine as far as it goes but I also feel it fails to address the point I’m making by picking a different frame of reference, namely one that is aiming to be more outside.
Also, as a meta note I’m establishing a new Said-specific policy for myself of only responding once to Said threads for the foreseeable future: I dislike the confrontational tone (that I perceive that) you take so I’ll only respond at most once to you in a thread to avoid getting into a back and forth I dislike. Anyone who notices me doing otherwise please feel free to remind me I said this.
Because the question is “why are people continuing to use Facebook”, not “why did they start using Facebook”. It doesn’t matter why they started. They did; this is now a brute fact. But why do they continue? And so “use Facebook” is of course the default choice, the non-action.
No, it’s a default in the obvious and straightforward way of “a person who is already using Facebook, by default, continues to use Facebook”. Switching takes effort (cognitive effort, time, etc.). Heck, it takes even knowing that you can switch, not to mention knowing what to switch to, and how. Continuing to use Facebook takes no effort and no thought.
It’s not hidden at all, it’s not an “assumption”, and it’s not a “framing”; it’s just how things are.
No amount of framing changes the facts of this matter.