December 29, 2024. The Beauty of Choices.

It's midnight, and I'm sitting in my makeshift home office, surrounded by whiteboards covered in system architecture diagrams. I've been trying to design a decision tree for a new feature in Abdi & Brothers Company's platform. But every time I try to map out the user journey, I keep running into the same question: How many choices is too many? This might seem like a simple UX design question, but after my last post about who gets to decide what's right, it's opened up a deeper rabbit hole. We often talk about choice as if it's inherently good—more choices equal more freedom, right? But as an engineering student who's spent countless hours studying complex systems, I'm starting to see choice differently.

Let me take you back to a moment in a lab that changed how I think about choice. We were studying wave-particle duality—how light can behave as both a wave and a particle depending on how we observe it. What fascinated me wasn't just the phenomenon itself but the fact that the observer's choice of measurement determines which reality manifests. The choice of how to observe literally shapes what becomes real. This connects to something I've been grappling with while building our platform. Every interface we design, every feature we implement, is like setting up a measurement apparatus. We're not just providing choices—we're shaping the reality our users will experience.

I remember my first encounter with quantum mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. The idea that every quantum choice splits reality into multiple branches was mind-bending. But what really got me thinking was a thought on my head saying: "If every possible choice creates its own reality, does that make choice more meaningful, or less?" Last week, I was debugging our authentication system, when something clicked. In quantum computing, we work with qubits that exist in superposition—they're essentially all possible states at once until we measure them. What if human choice works similarly? What if each choice isn't just a selection between existing options but a creative act that collapses potential into reality?

This might sound abstract, but it has practical implications for what we're building. Traditional platforms try to predict what users want and narrow their choices accordingly. It's efficient, sure, but what if it's fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of choice? Let me share something personal. Growing up, I was that kid who would take apart electronics just to see how they worked. My parents thought I was destroying perfectly good devices, but I was actually learning something crucial about choice. Every time I opened up a device, I discovered there were multiple ways it could have been built. The final product wasn't the only possible solution—it was just one collapsed possibility out of many.

This memory has been guiding how I approach system design at Abdi & Brothers Company. Instead of trying to predict and narrow choices, what if we focused on preserving possibilities? What if we treated each user interaction not as a selection from predetermined options but as a creative act that brings new possibilities into being? Think about how most recommendation systems work. They analyze your past choices to predict your future ones, effectively narrowing your possibility space. It's like quantum mechanics in reverse—instead of maintaining superposition, they're forcing collapse before measurement even occurs.

But there's something beautiful about uncollapsed possibilities. In quantum mechanics, a particle in superposition holds more information than one in a definite state. What if the same is true for human choice? What if the value isn't just in the choices we make but in the possibilities we keep open?. Then I remembered something about degrees of freedom in mechanical systems. The more degrees of freedom a system has, the more complex it is to control, but also the more capable it becomes. What if we applied this principle to choice architecture? Instead of optimizing for control, what if we optimized for degrees of freedom?

This brings me back to that decision tree I've been struggling with. The conventional wisdom says to limit choices to prevent decision fatigue. But what if decision fatigue isn't about having too many choices but about having too few meaningful ones? What if it's about the quality of choice rather than the quantity? I think about the pioneers who've inspired me—Tesla's choice to pursue alternating current when direct current was the accepted standard, Habibie's choice to learn and develop aerospace technology in a developing country (and somehow fail—knowing the possibility to succeed is small). These weren't choices between existing options; they were choices that expanded the possibility space itself.

This is what we're trying to build at Abdi & Brothers Company—not just another platform that efficiently guides users through predetermined paths but a space where choices can expand possibilities rather than collapse them. The engineering challenge is immense. How do you build systems that preserve possibility while remaining usable? How do you create interfaces that empower without overwhelming? How do you maintain quantum-like superposition in a classical user interface?

I'm finding answers in unexpected places. Complex adaptive systems in nature maintain stability not by limiting choices but by creating rich networks of feedback loops. Maybe that's the key—instead of trying to control choice, we should focus on creating healthy feedback ecosystems that help choices evolve and mature. This morning, I rewrote that authentication system again. Instead of just offering binary choices (secure vs. accessible), it now operates more like a quantum system, maintaining multiple security states simultaneously and adapting based on context and user behavior. It's more complex to implement, harder to test, and probably won't win any awards for conventional engineering. But it preserves something precious: the richness of genuine choice.

Because here's what I'm learning: The beauty of choice isn't in the selecting. It's in the expanding of what's possible. Every genuine choice we make doesn't just pick between existing options—it creates new ones. Like a quantum measurement that affects the system it measures, every choice we make reshapes the landscape of what's possible. So maybe the question isn't "How many choices is too many?" Maybe it's "How do we create choices that create more choices?" How do we build systems that don't just allow selection but enable creation?

I'm realizing something: Maybe the most beautiful choice is the one that keeps other choices possible. The one that doesn't collapse potential into a single reality but expands reality to encompass more potential. What do you think? When was the last time you made a choice that created new possibilities instead of just selecting between existing ones? When was the last time your choice expanded the world instead of narrowing it?

Because in the end, maybe that's what genuine choice is all about—not the selecting, but the expanding. Not the collapsing of possibility, but the creation of it. And maybe that's the most beautiful thing we can build—systems that don't just allow choice but nurture the kind of choices that create more choices. What possibilities will you choose to create today?