The Paradox of Choice: On FOMO, Decision-Making, and the Good Life

“Look at this gateway! It hath two faces. Two roads come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of. This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long lane forward — that is another eternity. They are antithetical to each other, these roads; they directly abut on one another: and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘This Moment.’”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Staring at the blank page, I want to hook you in with the most compelling English sentence I can think of, and in the execution of this aim, I face many choices.

I was thinking of starting with “Free Beer!”, which is the most compelling English sentence I can think of…

But according to MathIsFun.com’s “Combinations and Permutations Calculator”, if there are 171,476 English words in current usage, neologisms notwithstanding, and the average sentence is 15 words long, then this is the number of possible opening sentences I could have created in order to capture your attention and make you want to read on:

3,258,743,390,496,303,169,343,465,180,799,457,101,382,075,604,741,914,423,812,922,301,499,366,887,653,376