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Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

I have realized some time ago that when some decision is difficult to make, it is likely that both outcomes are equally good (or bad), or at least, equally indeterminable. If one of them was much better, then the decision would be obvious!

So indeed, if you can't decide, spin a penny. You save time and the outcome will be similar.

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In similar situations, I’ve often discovered that I’m hoping the penny will fall one particular way. When that happens, I don’t look at the actual answer and go with the one my subconscious apparently wanted.

The advice my mum gave me was similar: If you don't know which way to choose, flip a coin, and see how you feel about the outcome. That will tell you what you really wanted to choose.

This was my parent's trick for getting me to make choices as an indecisive little kid. They didn't just assign the options and flip a coin, they had me do it without saying what I had picked. It worked far better for getting outcomes I was happy with, and it works remarkably well even for adults.

Even fancy things like Oblique Strategies and Tarot often seem to provide the same value; they spit out some directed randomness that gets us from thinking about the problem to expecting outcomes.

That is also the poem in the conclusion of the article:

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,

and you’re hampered by not having any,

the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,

is simply by spinning a penny.

No—not so that chance shall decide the affair while you’re passively standing there moping;

but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

That could be a psychological trick that uses buyer's remorse to push you to choose whichever the coin did not choose. And also what you "feel you want" is not the same was what you will be happy having chosen. (Forecasted utility vs experienced utility vs remembered utility is a researcher program in behavioral economics).

I do seem to recall a research paper that showed that the coin trick worked well, in an experimental setting with people deciding whether to get married or break up!

A variant on that which I will use when no coin is handy is to assign odd and even to whatever options and then look at the time. If you haven't looked at the time recently, the final digit is random to you.

Better, take both if possible.

Or try to redefine the problem so you can widen your perspective and come up with other possible solutions.

cf. Never Split the Difference

Thanks for reminding me to check out the Kindle sample I downloaded in 2017.

This is called Fredkin's Paradox[0] for those who are curious.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredkin%27s_paradox

When I hit a similar situation. I'd share it with someone else to verify that both outcomes are equally indeterminable. If that is the case, I often go with my gut feeling.

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