Buridan's Dog

 

Last night, my wife came home from the new Star Wars movie with a half bag of popcorn.  (I haven't seen the movie, so don't spoil it for me.)  I took a piece and lazily tossed it to the dog, who caught it in mid-flight and silently swore that I was now his favorite.  So I tossed him another.  And another.  And then I accidentally tossed two at a time.  The dog froze- his mouth wide open and poised to leap- as two puffs of popcorn softly floated by either side of his mouth.  He missed not just one piece of popcorn, but two!  

This captured my attention, so I tried a simple experiment.  I tossed a single piece, and he grabbed it from the air and swallowed it before he landed, as he had so many times before.  Then I tossed two pieces again, and he sat nervously as they sailed past his reach.

I called my son over and shared the tale of Buridan's Ass.  Jean Buridan, a French philosopher, told the story of a donkey who was placed between two similar bales of hay.  The ass couldn't decide which bale was bigger or closer, and so it sat indecisively between the two bales and eventually died of hunger.

In the centuries since Buridan gave this illustration, we've reinvented the general idea with more modern descriptions.  In my career, I often reference Cyril Northcote Parkinson's familiar Law of Triviality, in which organizations spend disproportionate time and resources to the least important issues.  Or I might describe Edward Fredkin's paradox, in which two alternatives become more difficult to choose between as they become more equal.  My own description states that the most difficult decisions are those in which there are no wrong answers.  (This is why I always carry a large coin.)

But neither Parkinson nor Fredkin were in my kitchen.  There was only my dog, starving to death because he couldn't choose between two equally attractive pieces of popcorn.  I couldn't help but wonder if Jean Buridan's story was more than a fictional illustration.  My son couldn't help but wonder if we had enough popcorn to torment the dog all night.

This story isn't merely about four-legged animals, though.  Individual persons have difficulty making simple decisions, and it becomes increasingly difficult when a decision involves a group.  But indecisiveness is detriment to people, organizations, and projects.  It causes delays, wastes resources that are better spent on other things, and makes us miss opportunities that our competitors will catch.  

A good decision now is better than a perfect decision later, or something like that... both Roosevelt and Patton said it better.  If I may paraphrase Boyd's Law, the timeliess of decisions can be more important than the quality of decisions.  This is because you won't often know if you made the right decision until you act on it and observe the results.  But small, incremental decisions can be corrected.  The longer you delay a decision, the larger and more consequential it will become.  

Coincidentally, it's almost 2020.  May your new year be full of good decisions, starting with that resolution to eat right and exercise that you'll make again.  Don't let the decision-makers on your projects escape their responsibility by asking for additional, meaningless data or by scheduling a series of follow-up meetings to revisit the issue.  These delays starve your projects to death, and they make an ass of us.

And don't forget to feed your dog.