The 14th century philosopher, Jean Buridan, is famous for popularizing the paradox known as Buridan’s ass, in which a donkey (the ass) is equally hungry and thirsty yet equidistant from a stack of hay and a pail of water. The ass, being perfectly rational, cannot budge an inch without changing its preferences and thus dies of both hunger and thirst.
Fortunately most of us are not like the ass. We are rarely equally hungry and thirsty, and even when we are, such a state cannot last very long without one desire winning out.
But getting out of the paradox is sometimes just as bad as staying in it.
Imagine you’ve had a delicious hot pot dinner with friends. Falling asleep on the couch, the spicy chilies marinate in your stomach overnight, loosening the gut bacteria from their starchy slumber. Upon waking up, you have the brilliant idea to skip breakfast in place of a cup of strong black coffee from Starbucks. While cycling home, you continue to take sips from the coffee, but after a few minutes you begin to notice something strange. A burning sensation rumbles within you unlike anything you have ever felt before. It is almost as if there is a flame burning below your stomach, and with each sip of coffee, the butane dial is turned up a notch. The chilies want out. And the only way out is through.
You want it to stop. But you also want more coffee. But you also want the hot pot to stay inside before you get home. But you also think it would be terrible to waste a perfectly good cup of coffee. So you take another sip and thus the rumbling deep inside intensifies, which, no doubt, you want to stop, but you equally want another sip. What to do with your hot pot ass?
You know that you must try something that perhaps nobody has tried before: you must try to wrest yourself free from the paradox. Against all odds, you keep sipping, keep cycling, rumbling. You know that the ass’s rationality was its demise, and so the only way out is to act irrationally, to keep moving, to keep doing something, anything. If the ass died from indecision, you must act.
Yet this is all easier said than done. How is one supposed to act in the face of competing desires? It’s not like they will just go away through a sheer act of willpower. One must reason one’s way out of the paradox. And so you decide to set the bike aside by the side of the road, find a comfy spot on the grass, and start thinking. But it’s no use. “The paradox has been with us since the 14th century,” you say to yourself. “How am I supposed to find a solution to it under all this pressure?”
Feeling dismayed, you pull out a sheet of paper and scrawl on it “HOT POT ASS” and when passers-by ask, with a look of disgust on their face, “now what could that possibly mean?” you respond by telling them that it’s an allusion to the paradox, popularized by the 14th century philosopher, John Buridan, known as Buridan’s ass, in which a donkey (the ass) is equally hungry and thirsty yet equidistant from a stack of hay and a pail of water; and that the ass, being perfectly rational, cannot budge an inch without changing its preferences and thus dies of both hunger and thirst; and that you, in this present moment, are finding yourself in a similar sort of situation, and are thus in need of their assistance in helping you reason your way out of the paradox.
Unfortunately, most passers-by simply respond by saying, “Oh, that’s easy. You’ve just got to figure out what you want more: coffee or hot pot ass?” demonstrating that they have not understood the true meaning of the paradox. “Idiots. All idiots!” you mutter to yourself as they walk away.