Me and Buridan's Ass
A classic problem given to first-year philosophy students is Buridan's Ass. For those of you who don't know it (or knew it and forgot), here it is:
A hungry ass stands between two piles of hay, both equally large and equally fresh. Because it has no rational reason to choose one over the other, it chooses neither, and as a result starves to death.
Although I consider myself a decisive person, I've thought about this problem a lot over the years and quite often find myself in similar situations. This morning, at the grocery store checkout, both registers were available, and both of the cashiers are equally pleasant, competent people, so I was frozen between the two for a few seconds. At the diner, I've been faced with this problem when both of my preferred seats on either side of the diner were open, and the two waitresses were equally attractive. What usually happens is that I catch myself in an endless loop, like the old BASIC routine of
10 PRINT "I can't decide!"20 GOTO 10
I mention this because lately I've been stuck on what I should be writing about. I have several equally interesting projects to choose from, all at the same point in their development, and for this reason I find myself, like the stupid ass, unable to choose any of them.
The cubbies where my piles of hay are stored.
Yet I won't be stuck like this forever. Ultimately I'll sense myself leaning towards one project more than another, and the farther I lean, the closer I'll be to that project and the more sense it will make to go with that one instead of the other.
While many philosophers have critiqued the problem of Buridan's Ass better than I ever could, the issue I've always had with it is that it fails to take into account the concept of entropy. Just about any system, if left alone for a while, will tend toward disorder, and the more disorderly a system becomes, the greater likelihood there is for imbalances—one option becoming more appealing than another.
In the meantime, I'll let myself be stuck, just like that ass.