It’s always strange to hear a term you thought you “owned” in a complete different context. Case in point: as a board gamer, I have been using the phrase “analysis paralysis” for years, completely unaware that the term was affiliated (and perhaps originated) with A.A.
Most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for addictive-type thinking is: Analysis-Paralysis … That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good … In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself.
The problem of analysis-paralysis crops up so often in board game discussion that it is usually just abbreviated as “AP”. And we tend to use the term in two distinct ways: in reference to people, and in reference to design.
A person who is, in our lingo, “AP-prone” is someone who freezes up on their turn as they mentally traverse the entire decision tree, terrified of making a less than optimal move. Imagine a chess-playing computer, that calculates every possible move and its outcome before taking its turn; now imagine some guy who’s already had two beers and half a bag of Cheetos trying to do the same thing, looming over the table with furrowed brow, stuck in a endless loop because, by the time he considers the last of all possible choices, he has already forgotten the first, and must therefore start again. And meanwhile the fun whooshes out of the room like atmosphere through an open airlock.
A game that is “AP-prone”, on the other hand, is a design that encourages exactly this kind of minimaxing behavior.68 Whereas many players have learned to turn a deaf ear to AP’s siren song, certain games can ossify even the most casual of gamers.
AP is such a problem in modern board games, that designers are taught ways to prevent it. The quickest method is to throw a sand timer into the game and declare that each player only has x seconds to complete their turn. Another is to introduce an element to chance into the game, thus making it difficult or impossible to successfully predict future events. A third is to reduce the number of options available to a player at any given time.
In other words, the solution to analysis-paralysis–at least in terms of board game design–is to reduce freedom: reduce the amount of time, or the amount of information, or the amount of choices. Constraint facilitates action.69
Even if you don’t play board games, you are surely familiar with the phenomenon. Your 8th Grade English teacher says you can write an essay on anything, and your mind’s a blank; she instead says you have to write it on leaf cutters ants, and at least you know which Wikipedia page to plagiarize. Or consider Twitter: I would argue that the 140 character “limit” (no longer a technical necessity, by the way) is precisely what makes the service so popular.
Although the term “analysis-paralysis” only crops up on Infinite Jest a few times, in many ways it seems to be the crux of the novel, the delicate balance between freedom and constraint, action and thought, territory and map. Indeed, the recent passages about Randy Lenz and Bruce Green practically depict the two men as incarnations of the extremes: Lenz with his gerbil-in-a-wheel logorrhea, Green clocking in at “about one fully developed thought every sixty seconds, and then just one at a time, a thought, each materializing already fully developed and sitting there and then melting back away like a languid liquid-crystal display.”
It’s a theme present in all major storylines: Schtitt imposing his Draconian training regiment on the unruly student, honing them into world class tennis players; A.A. teaching “Substance-addicted people” how to stop overthinking and instead “fake it until you make it”; and Marathe lecturing Steeply about the perils of too much choice.
The rich father who can afford the cost of candy as well as food for his children: but if he cries out “Freedom!” and allows his child to choose only what is sweet, eating only candy, not pea soup and bread and eggs, so his child becomes weak and sick: is the rich man who cries “Freedom!” the good father?
One has to wonder if Wallace wasn’t so keyed into the chaos v. order equipoise because of his own relationship with editors, the tempering force to his own voluminous output, the catalyst between madness and genius.
Comments
19 responses to “The Peril of A.P.”
One of my favorite posts so far. What a great distillation of an idea so much at the heart of this novel. I might have to start using this to sum up when people ask me “wow, that’s a big book; so what’s it about?”
Yep. Me too. Thanks for the window into how Game folks know this and see this…great post.
Re “fake it until you make it” — I’ve also seen this idea stated as “creed follows deed,” specifically in a Jewish-oriented parenting book called “The Blessing of the Skinned Knee.” The author recommends teaching your kids to do the right thing even before they understand why they’re doing it — by the time it’s “muscle memory,” they’ll presumably have an understanding. More here: http://verbatim.blogs.com/verbatim/2007/08/book-group.html
Tangentially, adding an element of chance to a board-game seems like it would make AP that much worse — then you have someone trying to figure out every possible course of action, weighted for different probabilities…
Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice” which I highly recommend, looks @ AP in the context of consumers, as well as modern day life in general. Consider career: someone growing up today has SO many choices w/r/t college major, profession, living arrangements, etc. that it is often nearly impossible to pull the trigger, so to speak. I think many here would find the book thought-provoking, or google Schwartz’s TED talk lecture for a condensed version of the premise/concept.
DFW is exactly on point with the topics discussed in Barry Schwartz’s TED talk. It’s amazing that DFW knew this concept intuitively (less freedom=less paralysis) while it has taken 12 years after the publication of IJ that modern science has caught up. When it came to happiness, DFW knew what he was talking about.
Well, to be totally fair, wouldn’t the whole anxiety of choice thing start with Freud, and before that, Kierkegaard?
For whatever it’s worth, “analysis paralysis” gets thrown around in software engineering circles as well. Same basic idea: spending too long analyzing requirements and whatnot and not enough time designing and implementing solutions. (The history of software development is chock-full of truly epic examples of analysis paralysis, projects that spent many years and many millions of dollars assembling massive tomes full of charts and documentation but never actually built a single usable thing.)
is the rich man who cries “Freedom!” the good father?
… and is Avril– aka Moms– who offers freedom the good mother?
I loved this post. Thanks Matthew!
Really interesting post. You’ve illuminated a new facet on this gem of a novel.
As a mom of a board gaming family and an elementary school teacher for 27 years, I have to say you are spot on!
This also reminds me of a piece of research done years ago (as memory serves) about children playing on a playground bordered by city streets with occasional traffic. The kids all tended to play near the center of the playground until a fence was erected around the perimeter, at which time the kids began to “feel free” to spread out, utilizing the entire playground area. Another example of limits/boundaries = “freedom”/ enjoyment?
So great post! Can’t wait to share it with my brother who made my whole family “Settlers” geeks!
I never responded to this at the time, but this was one of the most helpful things on the board for me. So – thanks!
On “less freedom=less paralysis” in a literary context, read up on the OuLiPo. (Wikipedia is serviceable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo)
Very key. It also seems pretty clear that DFW was ‘aware of’ John Barth’s “The End of the Road” that other seminal work which explores the near-catatonic pyschological paralysis of its protagonist, Jacob Horner, a character whom Jonathan Lethem recognizes(in influencing a novel of his own) as “being characterized by a certain slipperiness: he refuses to cohere, to take one or another rather than both ends of a given argument, to be consistently seducer or seduced, rival or friend, confident or pathetic.”
In a world of seemingly infinite choice Horner likewise cannot ‘choose’ a thing. He will be both everything and nothing as long as all the choices exist.
This is kind of scaring the sh*t out of me…this thread.
Julia:
Why? Because of the time we waste in our heads?
I’m guilty of same.
I thought I’d mention a giving-more-freedom situation that seems to have freed up, in this case seventh and eighth grade students, though it isn’t freedom from AP exactly, it’s freedom from professed boredom and lack of motivation. A movement is on in some schools to get kids to read by removing the books of the typical middle school canon and allowing them the freedom to read books of their own choosing with the result that students are reading more, according to some teachers who’ve tried this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?em
I should say that in my case, if it’s between having the freedom to read the books I want versus the constraint in college that is supposed to “facilitate action,” I read more books when I can read what I want.