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Old 05-03-2003, 01:17 PM   #29
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
Maybe things get so complicated so quickly that it really challenges the limits of the brain, because there are so many different variables.

When we first went looking for a house to buy, I quickly got overwhelmed and confused. I went about it the wrong way, mentally. I would try to work out the worth of various things, trying to turn it into a big equation. "It has a crack in this wall that we have to fix, that's worth about $3000... we'll need three major appliances... the commute is 10 minutes shorter but it has no view..." I thought if I could create that equation, I could simplify the house process somehow.

Tried to keep all the things in mind that affected the choice, tried to figure a value of them. But I only wound up dizzy. We looked at 19 different places and pretty soon I couldn't remember all the factors I was trying to keep in my head.

The better way would have been to rate a few factors from 1 to 10 -- real-world factors like cost, condition, location, etc. and then go intuitive: do I want to live here? What would it probably be like, every day? Could I live like that?
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