augury

The Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman presents a rather interesting expository piece, with a segue about an African tribe that submits its most perplexing and unprecedented problems to an oracle—a sort of poor Schrödinger’s Cat of a decision-maker in a chicken fed poison and whether the animal survives or expires is the sought after solution. This method seems to work perfectly well for the chieftain. In parallel, neuroscientists have discovered that when faced with a similar predicament, a new environment where rodent-logic or bias may actually prove detrimental, laboratory rats can switch their brains into a random-mode. I wonder if our brains aren’t similarly wired. Burkeman finds the profundity in these little philosophic barbs and has a whole series of articles in this vein.