Or are they basically the same? Thank you for any help.
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Hobson’s Choice is canonically “Take it or leave it.”
A Catch 22 is no choice at all, there is nothing on offer, only the appearance of an offer.
The eponymous Catch 22 is that a flight surgeon must be asked to take someone off the line, on the grounds that they’re crazy. If however someone does this, it proves that they aren’t crazy, since they want to avoid combat.
Hobson’s choice was that he had a stable of many horses, giving the illusion of variety, but in fact you took the horse nearest the door or you took nothing.
tl;dr Hobson’s choice is singular, Catch 22 is naught.
**Hobson’s Choice**
Hobson’s Choice refers to offering people a choice with only one practical option. It’s an illusion of choice.
For example the phrase: “Take it or leave it”
This logic is named after an infamous stable owner named Hobson that would give you the choice of the Horse closest to the door or none at all. In other words if you want a horse, you’ll take the one I’m giving you or none at all.
A more contemporary example is Henry Ford’s famous saying:
“You can have it in any color you want, so long as its black”
Henry Ford famously painted all Model T’s black because it was the cheapest and most practical color to paint them.
**Catch 22**
A Catch 22 is a situation were the only solution is denied by a circumstance caused by the very same situation.
For example:
“You can’t get a job without experience, but you can only get experience from a job.”
Another one is the Lottery paradox
“You can’t win if you don’t play, but if you play you can’t win”
The phrase was coined in a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller of the same name. During which he describes the paradox of a Flight Surgeon taking a pilot off the line due to insanity because they are fearing for their life. The problem is if a pilot wants to be taken off the line because they fear for their life it proves they aren’t crazy.
In a Hobson’s choice, you don’t actually have a choice at all. At best, there’s a “right” choice and a “wrong” choice. Like, if I offer you $1000, or I punch you in the face, that’s not *really* a choice at all, because nobody wants to get punched in the face. The Wikipedia article describes the “choice” that women faced about getting married. If they *didn’t* get married, then they had zero job opportunities, zero chance of higher education, and zero chance of being able to support themselves and remain independent. So, although they could, theoretically, choose not to get married, it was such an awful option that it wasn’t *really* an option at all.
In a Catch-22, you do have a choice, and both options are more or less equal…they just both lead to the same outcome. The actual “Catch-22” from the novel is that pilots could be taken off active duty if they were deemed “unfit” by way of insanity. However, if you expressed any desire to be taken off active duty, it meant that you feared for your life, which showed that you were not insane. So the choice is: be sane, and therefore be fit for active duty and be sent out (and possibly die); or, be insane and have no fear of death, and therefore you would not ask to be taken off of active duty, so you would be sent out (and possibly die). The choice is still there – sanity or insanity – but the outcome is the same.
They are similar enough, though, that the difference is mostly pedantry. They’re *basically* the same thing.
Hobson’s choice is a false choice, the illusion of choice. The outcome is always the same, regardless of what you pick. Like, if I give you a box (that contains $100, but you don’t know), and ask you to pick either the box or $100… that’s a hobson’s choice. You’ll get $100, doesn’t matter what you pick. Or the classic Ford example – you can get the model-T in any color, so long as it’s black.
A catch-22 has nothing to do with choice at all. A catch 22 is when you have two linked things, where one presupposes the other, and vice versa.
For example:
1- to get rich, you have to have good connections.
2- to get good connections, you have to be rich.
As you see, this has nothing to do with choice – you are either already rich, and therefore have good connections, or you aren’t, and therefore can’t become rich, since to do it you would need the connections first, and you can’t get those unless you’re already rich. Choice doesn’t play any part in it, you don’t get to “choose” anything.
Catch 22 is a loop. “In order to ABC, you must XYZ, but before you can XYZ, you must ABC first. But in order to ABC you must XYZ…”
Hobson’s Choice is when there *isn’t* a choice, even when it’s presented like there would be. “You can pick anywhere you want for dinner, as long as you pick Bob’s Diner.”
Hobson is the illusion of choice where there is none.
Catch 22 is a self-referential issue where you always get nothing. So the problem is you lost your watch, so you go find your watch, no problem. But what if instead you lost your glasses, and you need your glasses to find your glasses? You’re in a Catch 22, the fact that you have no solution to the problem is in the problem itself.
Catch 22, two options can not in fact exist together. One will cancel out the other.
Hobson’s choice, only one “option” makes any sense or woulld ever be chosen by anyone. So it’s a fake choice, you just have to do the one viable thing.
Catch 22 was (paraphrasing) “The only way to get out of going on a bomber mission is to be crazy. You have to be crazy to want to go on a bombing mission.” If you say you don’t want to go on a mission, well, that’s just sanity talking. You gotta go. The crazy ones never try to get out of it. (Of course, this was an absurdly limited interpretation of “crazy”.)
Hobson’s choice is your money or your life. The only catch to this example being the people that think they can fight the mugger and avoid both.
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