It is all rather automatic. But compare this to the choice some victims had to make between two of their children in the face of Nazi brutality. Now, this is a real choice. It involves conflicting emotions of equal strength. One must not confuse decisions, opportunities and choice.
Decisions are the mere selection of courses of action.
Opportunities are current states of the world, which allow for a decision to be made and to affect the future state of the world. Choices are our conscious experience of moral or other dilemmas. Christoff finds it strange that Truman having discovered the truth insists upon his right to make choices, i.e., upon his right to experience dilemmas. To the Director, dilemmas are painful, unnecessary, destructive, or at best disruptive. Truman is programmed not in the sense that his spontaneity is extinguished.