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Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how these tricks really do work, where you can skip the deliberation and go right to the decision you've already subconsciously made.

Another similar one is to flip a coin and see if you're disappointed in the outcome or not (or alternatively, think about which coin outcome you're hoping for before you look at the result).

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There's also another variant of coin-flipping: if you're agonizing over choice between option A and option B, it means that their costs and benefits roughly cancel out - so you're wasting time deliberating, and may as well toss a coin and be done with it.

Kind of like Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Many think it's about how he made a bold decision that "made all the difference," but it's really about how it didn't matter which road he took.

Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same

That's not what the poem is saying.

The poem is saying two things:

1. The line you quoted: Even though one of the paths looks special, in fact both are well-trodden paths. The walker is making a decision on imaginary evidence. The poem is mocking the poor decision-making process and retroactive rationalization.

2. (granted, not in the text, but in the context). The poem is about Frost's friend Thomas having trouble deciding deciding whether to volunteer to fight in WWI. Thomas died in the war.

"The road [supposedly] not taken" did make all the difference, but in a negative way. The walker should have used the rigorous method the article proposes.

http://www.historybyzim.com/2014/08/robert-frosts-the-road-n...

I never would have interpreted the poem that way...even given the supposed study we've given it back in the day...i should dig up some poetry and reread, you know, when i find the time.

Appreciate the correction. I dislike poetry that is not self-contained (and Frost in general), but I guess that would have been common knowledge at the time. I do like Thomas's 'Adlestrop.' It's unfortunate, and probably unsurprising, that Frost meant it in that way, because it cheapens it, but it is what it is.

>The walker should have used the rigorous method the article proposes.

Curious how you'd justify this statement with the text.

Yes the coin thing is really good. If you want to flip again, then you know what option you prefer.

I have written a bit about this matter, from the point of view of using I-Ching as your "decision support tool"... https://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html

Thanks. I find it funny that some people who consider themselves rational and open minded are very easily discarding methods like this as superstition without hearing out what you actually have to say. I believe Tarot cards are a somewhat similar way of gaining understanding of your own preferences.

In my opinion yes, any kind of oracle that gives you ambiguous answers is more or less equivalent: I Ching for me is convenient because it gives a relatively compact result (while doing tarot reading requires you to pore over a dozen or so cards and all their relationships, which to me risks to muddle things up).

>If you want to flip again, then you know what option you prefer.

Nope.

Of course if you see A coming originally and don't want to flip again, then we know that you're OK with A.

But if you do want to flip again, then you just know that you don't prefer A -- you can't deduce from that that you want B.

You can still:

(a) prefer B (b) dislike both

I see this judging Magic: the Gathering a lot. Players will sit there staring at their hand, mulling over various options, all of them bad. And they hesitate to make a play because once they make a play, bad stuff happens. They're constantly trying to convince themselves there's another "good" option if they just stare at their cards long enough.

Nope. All your choices are bad. Make a play.

I think this is a great point generally. People are frequently forced into making one of a number of bad choices. Human circumstance almost always gives us that problem. It is in those situations where “trying to be strategic” really holds us up. Sometimes, things suck in the short run and have no long term value either. I think acknowledging this is why some people can make snap judgements in that situation while others sit in denial.

I always give myself five minutes in which I can flip the coin as many times as I like, but at the end of that I have to go with the face that's showing. It's pretty interesting - I find myself hesitating when it's showing one face more and more. I'm sure part of it is just reinforcing an initial bias once I notice my own hesitation, but magnifying an existing bias is after all the point of the exercise.

I have occasionally imagined flipping a coin, on the ground that when the coin is in the air I will know how I'd wish it to fall.

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