NationStates Jolt Archive

Inspired by the other coin toss thread, yes. Life is largely random. People die randomly everyday(every one of us could die this second), economies boom and bust, etc. So with some much outside of the control of most people, does it make sense to decide tough decisions on a coin toss? You never know for sure what will happen anyway.

You never know for sure what will happen anyway.

While uncertainty is omnipresent, it is not absolute.

I do not know for sure that this post will appear on this thread when I click "Submit Reply", but I know it's much more likely it will than if I do not.

Inspired by the other coin toss thread, yes. Life is largely random. People die randomly everyday(every one of us could die this second), economies boom and bust, etc. So with some much outside of the control of most people, does it make sense to decide tough decisions on a coin toss? You never know for sure what will happen anyway.

... but it will make some things... well... interesting...

"General Cornwallis of the British, this is General Washington of the Continental Army."
"General Washington of the Continental Army, this is General Cornwallis of the British."
"If you'd shake hands, gentlemen."
"O.K., British call the toss."
"British called heads, it is tails."
"General Washington, what are you gonna do?"
"General Washington says his troops will dress however they wish, in any color, in buckskins and coonskin caps, and hide behind the rocks and trees and shoot out at random."
"British, you will all wear bright red, all shoot at the same time, and march forward in a straight line."

Coin tosses always have better alternatives. Even for the coin toss at the beginning of a football team, imagine if instead a scantily-clad cheerleader from each team came out and the two started mud wrestling... :p

umm .no ..

coz lets say that the decision to be made is to kill everyone on earth then kill your own self ...and lets say that the coin toss is in favor of that ..?/ what would you do ?? kill everyone anyway ??

I use coin tosses for a lot of my decisions, but that's only if I'm caught between two paths of action, both of which appear about equally good from my present perspective. For example, tonight I decided to stay in and get a full, sober night's sleep for the first time in 2 weeks based on a coin toss.
Of course, I need to do stuff like this because otherwise I may well have spent the whole night deciding what to do tonight, and that would be silly.

Absolutely not.



You should use polyhedral dice.

http://www.greathallgames.com/aacc/adice/dccBone.jpg

Absolutely not.



You should use polyhedral dice.

http://www.greathallgames.com/aacc/adice/dccBone.jpg

Now that's thinking outside the box.

Absolutely not. Where's the control in that?

I'm way too much of a control freak to let a little piece of metal decide my life. No thanks.

Only if youre two-face.

(in litteral response to the topic question)
in the abscence of sufficient pertinent verifyable evidence, what else would you suggest?

(where it IS available, obviosly it should be weighed responsibly)
(also i ment that, not taking "coin" litteraly, but more generically to mean any randomization device. there is nothing inheirent to natural reality requiring "coins" in a literal sense, to exist at all)

I find it's good way of deciding what you really want.. If you toss it and are dissappointed by the outcome then you should choose the other option..

Only if the coin takes the legal responsibility for the decision.

I haven't ever made a decisions on this basis. I just don't give a toss.

*tosses coin*

Yes.