J-Soft Blog

Monday, January 20, 2003

I was approaching the doors, about to exit the building. There were several sets of doors, each with a left door, and a right door. I would soon have to decide on a door through which to leave the building. This was not a decision I would give conscious resources to make, it was more of a background process. One of the many such necessary, yet unimportant decisions that passes through the brain's queue each day. On this occasion, I took notice of this particular background process, and watched as it occurred. One of the doors had just recently been passed through by someone entering the building, and so, was at the moment partially open. The rest of the doors that were close enough to consider going through were all closed. All the doors but that one, were all identical, and in the same state; closed. A choice of one of those would be entirely random. Of course, I could simply have chosen the most direct route and gone through the door directly in front of me. However, the altered state of the partially opened door just to my left had a certain gravity. Perhaps this bias, for the partially open door, had practicality. It would certainly take less effort to open an already open door. That is a justification for choosing the open door, and a proof of sloth, for the extra effort to open a door, as opposed to a half open door is minimal. Quite simply, the uniqueness of the open door set it apart from the rest. It made the choice trivial, precluding the need to randomly select one of several identical doors. Had that door to my left been closed, like all the rest, the choice would have gone to the door directly in front of me, its position in front of me being its distinguishing feature. However, the openness of the door to my left was a much greater distinguishing feature than the "directly in front of me"ness of the door directly in front of me, so I altered my path and exited through the partially opened door to my left.
posted by Jesse at 11:35 AM #