Monday, December 27, 2010

The Morgenbesser Principle

Never Done: Understood (what I am calling) the Morgenbesser Principle
Also: Saw Arrested Development

Here's a true story. A Columbia University philosophy professor named Sidney Morgenbesser went into the corner coffee shop for his morning coffee and bagel. When he asked what kind of bagels they had that morning, the guy told him they had sesame and poppy. Sidney thought about it a while and then said, "I'll take a sesame." The guy went in the back to get his bagel, and came back with the news that they also had plain. "In that case," said Sidney, after a thoughtful pause, "I'll take the poppy."

I always thought this story was about Jewish neurosis, until Josh and I were eating bagels with my family, and he told that story, and before I knew it, we were talking about electoral politics. You see, I have always assumed (erroneously) that you can choose among many things (movies you want to see, photos of yourself, shirts you might want to wear) by comparing two, choosing the one you like better, setting aside the one you like less, and then comparing the one you like better to another one -- and so on and so on until you are left with one thing that you presumably like best. Not only have I assumed this, but I've practiced it, and it's brought me great comfort -- choice without anxiety. Until now. It turns out that Morgenbesser was sincerely choosing among the three bagel types. Had he been presented with poppy and plain at the beginning, he may well have chosen poppy. And Leigh pointed out that someone might like Democrat A over Republican B, but if Democrat C over Democrat A. I actually found it quite confusing, until I was on the airplane to Portland, with three DVDs from Netflix: The Maltese Falcon, Alien, and Inglorious Basterds.

I decided to choose which one to watch my old way first -- by randomly comparing two to see which one I prefer, taking the loser out of competition, and then comparing the remaining two. I chose Maltese Falcon and Alien -- and between the two, I wanted to watch Alien. Then I compared Alien and Inglorious Basterds, and between the two I still wanted to see Alien.

Then I tried it another way -- which was to compare Maltese Falcon and Inglorious Basterds -- and from that match-up I wanted to see Maltese Falcon, which had been the first movie eliminated the way I first did it. Just like Sidney and the poppy bagel! Now imagine I would choose among a dozen candidates, and I would throw out the first one based on this illogic. It would be much harder for me to see my way back to that candidate than it would be to see my way back to one of three. It turns out that there is no algorithm to help entire districts determine who is the most wanted candidate -- that's why some nations have systems of representative democracy -- like England's parliamentary system. I should be upfront here that I am not very fluent in civics -- and am mostly repeating what I Leigh, who is, said -- but I do finally understand that the way I have been making decisions for years is flawed. I don't so much worry that I've chosen the wrong headshot or appetizer, but more that in the future I'll agonize more over decisions. The mide (middah) Decisiveness: When you have made a decision, act without hesitation -- doesn't give much help with actually making the decision -- just putting it into action. I guess I'll have to develop new comparing and contrasting techniques. Meanwhile, I put on the Maltese Falcon, and got excited about seeing it, as the introduction scrolled by, and then ... the sound didn't work. So I put on Inglorious Basterds. Sometimes help comes in strange places. (Then I put in Inglorious, and watched until chapter three, when the Nazi is drinking milk in the French dairy farmer's house before the battery on the computer ran out. Not sure what that means, but maybe it's something about not having too much anxiety about the choices we make, because life can come along and intervene anyhow.

So I watched Arrested Development for the first time and felt so caught up with the early 2000s.

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