[From Dave Miller]
There’s a paradox called “Buridan’s Donkey,” named after the French philosopher Jean Buridan, although the paradox has been reformulated many times from Aristotle onward.
According to the story, a donkey finds itself between two piles of hay, identical in all ways and the same distance apart. Although the poor donkey is desperately hungry, it can’t decide which pile of hay to eat and, paralyzed by indecision, starves to death.
A corollary is that the more choices you have, the harder it is to choose. If there’s only a single loaf of bread on the store shelf, the choice is simple. But if you have to choose from two dozen kinds of breads, the choice isn’t as easy.
We fear making the wrong choice. But if the choices are equally desirable (or equally undesirable), and if you have obtained all the information you can about your options, then there is nothing else you can do but just make a choice.
Life is full of dilemmas and options. The way to move forward is this: When in doubt, do something.
There is a shortcut you can apply when you have to choose between a limited number of options. This is a perfectly good answer to many choices you have to make:
“I’ll take the one on the left.”
For more from Dave, see his technical blog.
Image: Ryan Hodnett, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons