Don’t be a Donkey

Once upon a time a hungry donkey entered a barn. As he pushed the doors open, he saw two bales of hay at the other end of the barn, one in the left corner, and one to the right.

The donkey was weakened by his hunger and did not want to take an unnecessary step. “Which stack of hay should I go to?” he tried to decide.

“Is one of them closer?” went through his head as he gazed from left to right. But they seemed to be just as far away.

“Maybe one is fresher?” but both had the delicious smell of freshly dried hay.

“Which one is bigger?” was a difficult question to answer as both reached all the way to the roof.

“How can I decide?” pondered the donkey. He stood there for a long time, weighing the distance, the freshness, the size and many other things, but he could not find a difference.

The next morning when the farmer entered the barn, he found the donkey starved to death at the entrance of the barn. Both bales of hay were untouched.

Background: This story is frequently called Buridan’s Ass Paradox, but actually goes back to Aristotle, who told the story about a man who could not decide between water and food and died.

Learning Objective: Highlight the importance of making a decision. In most real life situations, decisions have to be made with insufficient information. The art is to stop the information gathering process when all key data that would overwhelmingly dictate a course of action is collected, or it turns out to be noncollectable. If a rational decision cannot be made based on the data, any other decision mode is acceptable, including chance (the donkey would have been better off flipping a coin). However, a decision has to be made.