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Theoretical scneario, not the best and has loopholes, but bear with me, and pretend it's valid.
So you are walking along a path, trying to find the route that leads to a meetup place with other friends, 3 miles further down the road. You come to a clearing with 3 paths. Any one of the paths could be the path you need to take, there are no signs and you have no idea, not even a hint which one you should take. You do not have a cell phone, and your car is 2 miles behind you. What process would you go through to make a decision? How much would you second guess yourself?
Me personally, I would take the third one on the right. It's always been my fallback answer to multiple choice questions (behold the mighty power of randomly choosing C). As far as second guessing myself, I would no doubt get 10 minutes into it, stop, curse, rethink the situation, and continue going, stopping every 10 minutes to curse again.
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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How often the road less travelled by has more wildlife poo in the middle of it. No thanks, I'll take the one where someone else stepped in it first. Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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It also tends to have spiderwebs slung across it if you're the first one there in the morning.
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I just let my subconscious mind decide. Oftentimes it has information that my conscious mind doesn't have.
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I would go to the one most to my left. As an avid video gamer, I always go left first in new areas, and I see no reason why life should be any different.
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What Tatiana said. (Annie, out of curiousity, what did you just read that she reinforced?)
Oh, and I hate those spider webs! I do this zombie walk in the morning, waving my arms in front of me.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: I just let my subconscious mind decide. Oftentimes it has information that my conscious mind doesn't have.
Seconded. Make a decision and stick with it. Overthinking will most likely cause you to guess wrong in the end.
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First I would carefully sight along each path to see which one tends to go closest to a cardinal direction.
Next, I would see which way the shadows were pointing, and carefully determine the ratio between length of shadow and an object hanging plumb. This would allow me to calculate the angle of the sun to the ground.
Next, using the date and time, I would calculate my longitude.
Finally, I would take a careful survey of the surrounding fauna and flora, pay special attention to signs of mycotic decay.
By the time I'd done all that, I figure my friends would be bored waiting for me and would come find me.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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If it's truly random, then of course it could be any of the three. So you can pick one by an arbitrary standard (always go right), or flip a 3-sided coin. The arbitrary standard has the advantage that it'll be easier to remember what you chose.
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Not having any additional information and not being willing to take the time to acquire more information, I would take the path in the center after leaving a sign indicating my choice at the fork (so that my friends, if they visited that point, would be able to find me).
My reasoning would be thus: if I'm going another three miles, and all directions on each path are equally likely, the odds are best that the center path will either have my friends on it or will be within shouting distance of my friends.
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If you were here in the desert, you could just stand on a rock and look. You should be able to see for 30 or 40 miles and tell where the paths go.
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Tom, that sounds about like my reasoning for taking the center path. The other two could easily go straight out to the sides, and if I was heading straight in that direction to begin with, there's no reason why I should turn aside.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: First I would carefully sight along each path to see which one tends to go closest to a cardinal direction.
Next, I would see which way the shadows were pointing, and carefully determine the ratio between length of shadow and an object hanging plumb. This would allow me to calculate the angle of the sun to the ground.
Next, using the date and time, I would calculate my longitude.
Finally, I would take a careful survey of the surrounding fauna and flora, pay special attention to signs of mycotic decay.
By the time I'd done all that, I figure my friends would be bored waiting for me and would come find me.
quote:Originally posted by DevilDreamt: I would go to the one most to my left. As an avid video gamer, I always go left first in new areas, and I see no reason why life should be any different.
I do this too when I play video games (or explore new malls)!
-o-
@ Dag
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I couldn't help but notice that this is three friends, three paths, three miles, and that I am two miles from the car. So what I have here is 333 x 2, which, of course, is 666, the number of the beast. So I would get the heck out of there.
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Not to mention I usually lose said paths unless they are paved, upon which I do not like them anyways.
It has worked on many a hike, as well as making them more interesting. Who knew that you could climb up a waterfall. Or that there was a waterfall there!
quote: Originally Posted By Icarus: I couldn't help but notice that this is three friends, three paths, three miles, and that I am two miles from the car. So what I have here is 333 x 2, which, of course, is 666, the number of the beast. So I would get the heck out of there.
You are right! It is the prophesied Nature Trail To Hell!!!
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I always ask myself, "if this were, Logan's Run, and I were Michael York, which path would I take?" Then after pondering this, I realize that if this were Logan's Run, I'd have Jenny Agutter with me and consequently wouldn't care about my friends, at least for a few hours.
Take it how you will, I've stumbled through many a Political Theory test with this exact method.
Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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It says you're sensible and you don't play along with thought experiments.
Your method means you'll walk five miles more. The other options mean potential walks of three, nine, and fifteen miles.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I would walk back to the car if that was viable. If it really wasn't, I'd get down on my knees and pray for direction in choosing a course of action (which might be to take a road or might be to seek shelter in sight of the spot I was at and stay put-- what I was taught always to do if I got lost, from the time I was in preschool.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I think that really is my way of randomly choosing an option (as per the thought experiment), though - find out more information and choose based on that. Call the friends, call their mothers, call someone who's been there before, if all else fails call it a day and go out for coffee. I mean, if they wanted to meet me, they should have given better directions.
Oh, and if I did choose a path to continue on, I would second-guess myself every step of the way and probably end up going back after a 1/4 mile and taking another route.
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