I use a similar
method to
amelinda's quite often, but it's a bit more
amusing. I usually use it to decide such
patently irrelevant matters as which glass of
orange juice should go to my
girlfriend and which should
glass should go to me. The (quite simple)
system goes as follows:
- Alice and Bob have a decision to make, between a virtually limitless number of options. We'll say they have three: they're deciding whether to go to the park, the river, or the mall.
- Alice assigns three unrelated words to each of the different options. The park becomes "sneeze", the river becomes "freckle", and the mall becomes "tiger". Alice does not inform Bob of these assignments.
- Alice then asks, "Tiger, freckle, or sneeze?"
- Bob picks whichever one happens to strike his fancy, Alice informs him of the corresponding option, and a decision is made.
While this method is arguably not completely
random, as Alice could have a
subconscious wish to go to the mall, and, knowing that Bob likes
cats, she would therefore
subconsciously assign the value "tiger" to the "mall" option. However, the system works beautifully and amusingly when the
decision has no significant import.