When production was expensive you got one attempt, and craft meant making that attempt count. When production is free you get a hundred, and craft moves to the choosing.
The comparative method is the discipline of that choosing: generate widely, compare deliberately, and be able to say what separates the one you kept from the ninety-nine you did not. The last part is what makes it a method rather than a preference — an articulated reason feeds the next generation, an inarticulate one does not.
Practised badly
Most people generate a handful of options, feel vaguely dissatisfied, and start over. That is not comparison, it is repetition. Comparison requires enough candidates that real differences appear, and enough attention that the differences register as reasons.