You lost me at "decisional optimizer." 
Satisfisers try to do what's "good enough". For example: Extract brewing produces excellent beer. Additional work is not required.
Optimizers spend more time making (and more often regret) their decisions, attempting to produce the best result. For example: all-grain brewing with a mash tun (not a modified cooler) allows for the greatest level of control and the best beer; the investment is about 2-2.5 the initial cost compared to extract brewing, and the cost of materials (grain) is lower going out.
Of course, full decisional optimization requires a lot of additional consideration. The above assumes that cost between extract and all-grain is important--additional equipment, additional work, and so on. If the cost is extremely high for all-grain, an optimizer may avoid that route because spending more on your brew kit than you do on your car is non-optimal; whereas if the initial cost is twice as high, the effort is roughly the same, and the results are similar, a satisfiser may skip the extra work and stick with extract brewing, while an optimizer puts in the larger initial investment to achieve ultimately better results.
And complete decision making involves using a lot of the nervous system--firstly a full rationalization of the facts, exploration of fixed beliefs in the basal ganglia and how they affect your ability to use your prefrontal cortex to reason, and so on; then an accounting of internal emotional and biological factors, including hormones and stress signals from the 100,000 nerve endings in your heart (it does a lot in response to emotional factors) and from the completely independent neurological system in your digestive tract (the esophagus and intestine contain a fully autonomous neural network which responds to systemic issues).
Needless to say, decisions are hard to make. You have to determine if you're rational, if you're rationalizing, if you're having an emotional or subconscious-systemic response ("gut feeling"), and if any of these additional factors are valid.
At this point I've muted some rationalization and pushed aside some emotional impulses to simply acquire new things to learn about--that's valid, and accounted for, but that impulse
screams for more attention than it deserves--but also have taken account of the rationalization that the serger seems to reduce work (I don't have to cut with shears in a separate step) and (possibly) produces better results (overlock), along with a gut feeling that I think is accounting for the low tolerance for time-consuming excess processes (i.e. I might just sideline all of this because it takes too much time, so maybe I shouldn't buy moderately expensive equipment).
From my experience, sergers are complicated to use and overkill for a person who is just sewing for their own needs. If you were running a garment shop, I'd encourage you to buy a serger. Most hobbyists struggle to even get them threaded correctly.
Reasonable mental and physical effort are not major concerns for me.
There are four needles and four thread spools, with convoluted thread paths. You do seem like a detail-oriented person though, so maybe you should go for it and buy the serger. My main point was that a sewing machine is much more versatile. A serger has pretty much one use.
Everyone has eight thousand uses for a serger posted, but they're all for making frilly garbage and half of them are just decorative stitching.
I've found ones that you can use for garment repair--$450 five-spool with chain stitch, they'll do a straight chain stitch or go as far as a 3-thread overlock and then double-chain-stitch it so you don't need to go back and add one or two chain stitches with a basic sewing machine. So cut/sew can become overlock/reenforce (two machines), or you buy a better machine and just run a 5 thread safety stitch in one step.
The basic sewing machine still handles basic repair better, since I can sew buttons and button holes. You would not believe how often clips break and I need to remove them and install a button hole and button where none existed before. Plus I can rig a twin needle on my 4411--there's no instructions other than "use the additional spool holder" (included with the machine)--although I imagine I could magic up (undocumented) settings on a 14T968DC to produce a double-chain stitch.
Of course, you could always take a trip to a sewing machine sales rep and have a look for yourself. A good salesperson should even sit you down and take you through a free tutorial on using each kind of machine. Heck, bring one of your shirts with you and use that for a sewing test. See what you think!
It's a dying art here; the dedicated fabric shops have a billion crafts sections for glue and wax and coloring books and kitsch toys and pens and paint and wooden hobby crafts, with a tiny little section for sewing. Last time I went to Joann Fabric, I asked some random old woman how to match thread to my pants for repairs... that was enlightening. Staff sure doesn't know, they just eye up the spool to see if it's close.
Even in high school, they showed us a sewing machine and had us sew a pillow mostly because they couldn't talk about sex for 9 months straight. Home Economics was a filler. They even explained to us what a laundry machine was, but we never used one--there were three in the classroom.
At this point I'm even more confused.
Topic: Tailoring... serger or sewing machine? (Read 6591 times)
