Imagine it’s almost nine in the morning; peak hour, and you are rushing to office. You are almost at one of the city’s busiest roads, a bottleneck if that is the term I’m looking for. As is the always the case, you have a detour. There is a narrow Side Route you can take. A longer path, yes, but it has the potential to take you to your destination in time given the present traffic conditions. It is also presumable that there are a few people on the same Road as you who are not even aware of this alternate route. The question is: which one shall end up as the road not taken?

A normal person would take the side road Thinking not many would attempt this route, and hence he can reach faster. A smarter person would postulate, “I bet everyone’s thinking of taking the side route, so there’ll be less traffic on the main” – counter-logic or reverse psychology as you may have it. Then there will always be the guy whose thought pattern will be along the lines of, “What if everybody takes the main road thinking that the others take the side route.”. And the guy who says, “It is plausible that people take the side route thinking that others will take the main road in the false assumption the the rest will use the side route”. True, but there will always be the guy who goes one more level deep. It’s strange how the simplest of choices in life infinitely recurse on to themselves. It’s stranger as to how everything has an application in everything else.

Chris Nolan, are you reading this?

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