08-10-2020, 08:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-10-2020, 08:42 PM by Slothman07.)
Some of you may be surprised to learn that in addition to being an unstoppable force on the football field and the Golden Gate Intramural Orchestra's premier basoonist, I played shortstop on the Lady-Gates Softball Team. You may be even more surprised to learn that my fondest memories are neither of balls nor gloves, nor are they of pop flies or two-for-one chili dogs from Scuzzy Dave's Gourmet Vespa which was always parked in the handicap spot. It wasn't even the time I stole the suit for Goldie Prawn, our mascot, and did a keg stand in the bed of a pickup while driving over the Golden Gate Bridge holding on with nothing but my pincers.
The year: 1997.
The place: the women's locker room at Golden Gate University.
The me: Dorothy Zbornak.
The elephant in the room: Buridan's Ass.
As my fellow Lady-Gates and I wearily changed from our civilian clothes to our uniforms and vice versa, we often engaged in discourse, usually philosophical in nature, and my favorite instance of this was the Paradox of Buridan's Ass. I'll see if I can explain it to you half as well as Trish Hunderbocker, the all-American hindcatcher from Solvang, CA, explained it to me:
"There was this French dude in the olden days named Buridan, and he had an ass (that's what they called donkeys back then), and let me tell you: this dude's ass was HUNGRY. Luckily, it was very close to not one but two piles of tasty ass hay. You would expect a logical, rational ass to have gotten along just fine at this point, but there's a problem. The ass was exactly in the middle of the two piles of tasty ass hay. Precisely equidistant. And because neither pile was closer, he could not logically choose one over the other, and that ass died. And Buridan probably got in trouble for over complicating the feeding process and killing his ass."
My mind was blown. Still is honestly. Because that airhead Trish didn't know this but a very similar situation to this paradox of free will exists in digital electronics as metastability, which is essentially when something that should be either on or off can't decide which it wants to be.
Anyway, free will makes no sense, but neither does anything else. Who wants cheesecake?
The year: 1997.
The place: the women's locker room at Golden Gate University.
The me: Dorothy Zbornak.
The elephant in the room: Buridan's Ass.
As my fellow Lady-Gates and I wearily changed from our civilian clothes to our uniforms and vice versa, we often engaged in discourse, usually philosophical in nature, and my favorite instance of this was the Paradox of Buridan's Ass. I'll see if I can explain it to you half as well as Trish Hunderbocker, the all-American hindcatcher from Solvang, CA, explained it to me:
"There was this French dude in the olden days named Buridan, and he had an ass (that's what they called donkeys back then), and let me tell you: this dude's ass was HUNGRY. Luckily, it was very close to not one but two piles of tasty ass hay. You would expect a logical, rational ass to have gotten along just fine at this point, but there's a problem. The ass was exactly in the middle of the two piles of tasty ass hay. Precisely equidistant. And because neither pile was closer, he could not logically choose one over the other, and that ass died. And Buridan probably got in trouble for over complicating the feeding process and killing his ass."
My mind was blown. Still is honestly. Because that airhead Trish didn't know this but a very similar situation to this paradox of free will exists in digital electronics as metastability, which is essentially when something that should be either on or off can't decide which it wants to be.
Anyway, free will makes no sense, but neither does anything else. Who wants cheesecake?