Choice Words

by Ken Bresler

The Vocabula Review, November 2004

1.

The phrase “Hobson’s choice” was named after Thomas Hobson, a stable-keeper whose “rule was that each customer must take the horse nearest the door or no horse at all.” The result? “You get no choice at all,” wrote Theodore Bernstein in The Careful Writer.

Hobson, who lived in Cambridge, England, in the sixteenth century, was not being inconsiderate to customers, but instead, considerate to his horses. Reportedly, he wanted to keep his most popular horses from overworking.

“Hobson’s choice” is frequently misused to mean a difficult choice; it actually means no choice.

Hobson’s Choice in Everyday Life

Many schools, families, and other places where children learn have an expression and a policy: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” When lollipops are handed out, children are not supposed to complain about the flavor they receive. When animal crackers are handed out, a child gets the horse he is handed, not the rhinoceros he wanted.

Families, schools, and places that practice “You get what you get and you don’t get upset” are dispensing Hobson’s choices under a different name.

A simple gumball machine that dispenses different colored gumballs is dispensing Hobson’s choice: you get the gumball closest to the chute. A mechanical nonelectronic machine selects the gumball, demonstrating that a Hobson’s choice is neither difficult nor much of a choice.

You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Chances

The expression “You pays your money and you takes your chances” is used in different contexts and therefore has different meanings. In some contexts, “You pays your money” means a Hobson’s choice. For example, my congregation buys etrogs (the plural is actually “etrogim”), citrons used to observe the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, for members who order one. Each etrog comes in a box. Members of the congregation are not supposed to open the boxes and look for the most appealing etrog because the rule is, “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” So members reach for and take the closest etrog box. They get their Hobson’s choice of etrogim.

The Lady or the Tiger

In Frank Stockton’s story, “The Lady or the Tiger,” a young courtier and a princess became lovers. The princess’s father, a semi-barbaric king, had a system of supposed justice. People accused of crimes were led into an arena, and given the choice of opening one of two doors. Behind one door was a hungry tiger; behind the other was a fair lady. If the accused opened the door leading to the tiger, it meant that he was guilty, and he was immediately torn to pieces for his crime. If the accused opened the door leading to the lady, he was innocent, rewarded, and married to the lady then and there.

For his so-called trial, the princess’s lover was led to the arena filled with people and given the choice of two doors. The princess sat in the stands. Some people who are not completely familiar with this story mistakenly think that the lady behind the door is the princess. But it’s more complicated than that.

The lady behind one door was “one of the fairest and loveliest … damsels of the court.” The princess, who had inherited some of her father’s barbarism, was jealous of the damsel. The princess’s soul burned “at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him [her lover], but who should have him?”

Before the trial, the princess had used bribes and browbeating to learn the locations of the lady and the tiger. The youth on trial looks to the princess, who makes a quick signal to him to choose the door on the right. The lover had to decide whether the princess is trying to save him from death — or send him to his death so that he will not marry a beautiful lady whom the princess is jealous of.

As soon as the princess pointed to the door on the right, her former lover’s mind probably raced: “What does the princess’s face look like? Does she look anxious or possessive? If she looks anxious, is she anxious about my impending death or my impending marriage? Is she anxious that she might be punished for signaling to me? Has she ever said something such as, ‘If I can’t have you, then no one can’?”

The phrase “The Lady and the Tiger” is often used to mean a choice that leads to one of two alternatives, one good and the other bad. It’s accurate but misses the complexity of the choice. To me, “The Lady and the Tiger” means a situation when one must scrutinize an advisor’s advice and motives before making a choice.

Dilemma

A dilemma is a choice between two undesirable outcomes, the lesser of two evils. An example of a dilemma would be a condemned man’s choice to be executed by hanging or by firing squad. Another dilemma would be if the princess’s lover in “The Lady and the Tiger” were given the choice of being torn apart by a tiger or torn apart by a lion.

“Dilemma” is often misused. A dilemma is not the same as a difficult decision. If a difficult decision has two outcomes, one desirable and one undesirable (I’ll give an example soon), it is not a dilemma. If a difficult decision has two desirable outcomes (such as the choice between two good job possibilities with different sets of advantages), it is not a dilemma either. And if a difficult decision has more than two outcomes, it is not a dilemma.

One way to remember all this is the expression “on the horns of a dilemma.” An animal’s horns generally come in pairs, and most horns are sharp and dangerous. It’s not as if an animal has one sharp and dangerous horn, such as a rhinoceros horn, and one skin-covered cuddly-looking horn, such as a giraffe horn. If you’re on the horns of a dilemma, you have the choice between two dangers.

Another but less effective way to remember to use “dilemma” properly is to focus on the prefix. The prefix di means “two,” as in “dialogue,” “diode,” and “dioxide.” A difficult decision with three undesirable outcomes is not a dilemma; it is a trilemma. According to my Internet search, the lemmas (premises) stop after “quadrilemma” and “quintilemma.”

Now back to the lady and the tiger. It’s a difficult decision, but is it a dilemma? Before answering, we must first ask, “Who’s deciding? From whose perspective?” We think of the choice between the lady and the tiger as belonging to the youth. But what about the princess? She had to decide too; she had to decide how she wanted to lose her lover, through his death or through his marriage. For her, this choice between two undesirable outcomes is a dilemma.

Now for the youth. Is it a dilemma for him? The youth never said that he would rather die than be with the princess. Stockton and his readers, including me, assume that the youth preferred to live and to marry the beautiful lady. He is faced with the desirable (or at least acceptable) outcome of surviving and marrying a beautiful damsel other than the princess, and an undesirable outcome, terrible death.

I said before that I’d give an example of a difficult decision with two outcomes, one desirable and one undesirable, and this is it. This is not a dilemma from the youth’s perspective.

Prisoners’ Dilemma

The mathematician Albert Tucker devised the Prisoners’ Dilemma, whose variations and applications now number in the hundreds, and possibly more. In the original, two burglars are arrested near the scene of a burglary. The police separate them, and ask each of them to confess and to implicate the other. If both suspects stay silent, they will serve one year in prison, not for burglary, but for carrying a concealed weapon. If both suspects confess and implicate each other, both will serve ten years in prison.

But if one prisoner confesses and implicates the other, and the other prisoner does not confess, the confessing prisoner goes free and the nonconfessing prisoner goes to prison for twenty years.

The prisoners’ so-called dilemma is not a dilemma.

Each prisoner does have two choices, to confess or to stay silent. But the prisoners are not choosing outcomes. The outcomes depend on the combination of choices by both prisoners. In other words, the prisoners are choosing whether to confess or to stay silent, not how many years they will serve in prison. And though each prisoner does have two choices, to confess or to stay silent, he faces four outcomes: twenty years in prison, ten years in prison, one year in prison, or no prison at all.

Thus, the prisoners’ so-called dilemma is not a dilemma for three reasons:

1. The choices are not directly related to outcomes.
2. A dilemma consists of two outcomes, and the prisoners’ dilemma has four possible outcomes for each arrestee. It has a total of four combined outcomes for both arrestees: both serve one year; both serve ten years; the first serves twenty years and the second goes free; and the first goes free and the second serves twenty years.
3. All outcomes are not equally undesirable. Twenty years in prison is undesirable; serving no prison term is desirable.

If the prisoners’ dilemma is not a dilemma, what is it? A predicament or quandary.

(By the way, the so-called prisoners in a prisoners’ dilemma are probably not prisoners. The word prisoner usually means someone who has been sentenced to prison. These so-called prisoners have not been convicted, let alone sentenced. They are arrestees, detainees, suspects, or even, to use a less common word, jailees.)

Word Lover’s Quandaries

The word lover faces two quandaries in this context: whether to fight the misuse of words, and if so, how to know when it is too late to fight.

If you challenge the misuse of a word, you risk being pedantic and quixotic. You could be a scold for a losing cause. On the other hand, if you acquiesce to the misuse of a word, English might become poorer. A word or phrase with a specific meaning (such as “Hobson’s choice”) becomes a synonym with another word or phrase (such as “difficult choice”). The language loses specificity and gains redundancy.

Why is this a word lover’s quandary and not a dilemma? Because a third possible outcome exists. If you acquiesce to the misuse of a word, or don’t consider it a misuse, English might continue to be dynamic and become, not poorer, but richer.

However, if you do decide to fight the misuse of a word or phrase, the other word lovers’ quandary kicks in: how do you know when it’s too late to fight? The phrase “prisoners’ dilemma” began in the 1950s. It seems to me, and I’m judging by instinct, that “prisoners’ dilemma” is too entrenched to ever become “prisoners’ predicament” (or “detainees’ predicament”). Just let this misuse go.

It also seems to me that it is not too late to fight these abuses:

“Dilemma” to mean “quandary,” “predicament,” or “difficult decision.”
“Hobson’s choice” to mean “difficult decision.”
“Hobson’s choice” to mean a choice between “the lesser of two evils.” (The choice between the lesser of two evils is a dilemma.)

Let’s say we fight these abuses (this article is part of the fight) and lose. Then what? We take the English that we get and we don’t get upset.

2.

Now for more fanciful phrases about choice, some of which I coined for this article.

Henry Ford’s Choice

Henry Ford supposedly said that customers could buy a Model T Ford in any color they wanted, as long as they wanted black.

Henry Ford may not have said it, and if he did, it was not always true. Not all Model Ts were black. For the first model year, 1909, no Model T was black; the car was available in gray, green, and red. For the model years 1910 through 1913, Model Ts came in the additional colors of blue and black. After that, Model Ts were available only in black — but other colors were again offered for the last two model years in 1926 and 1927.

(This information is from the website of a company in Ontario that restores Model T cars, The Frontenac Motor Co. The Ford Motor Co. doesn’t seem to have information about the color of Model Ts anymore; it referred me to the Detroit Public Library.)

Nonetheless, the truth about black Model Ts and what Henry Ford may have said does not diminish the potential value of the phrase “Henry Ford’s choice.” Assume it was true that buyers of Model Ts could buy any color they wanted, as long as it was black. Isn’t a Hobson’s choice the same as a Henry Ford’s choice? In Hobson’s choice, you get the next horse in line; in Henry Ford’s choice, you get, in effect, the next car off the assembly line. In both cases, you get no real choice.

You get no real choice, but the “choices” are not the same. The reason is that horses are not standardized while Model Ts were supposed to be. Standardization and efficiency were probably why all Model Ts manufactured during a twelve-year period were black.

Another way to realize that a Hobson’s choice differs from a Henry Ford’s choice is to imagine a gumball machine with eight different colors of gumballs. You want a blue gumball, but when you put your money in and turn the handle, you get a yellow one. The yellow was the next gumball out; you got your Hobson’s choice of gumballs.

Now imagine a gumball machine containing only one color of gumball. You can get any color of gumball you want as long as it’s the color in the machine. That’s your Henry Ford’s choice. With both Hobson and Ford, you get no choice, but in different ways.

Angolan Waiter’s Choice

In Angola, or at least in the capital, the contamination of tap water with microbes means that many or most restaurant-goers (even residents) do not eat raw vegetables or drink anything with ice in it. The vegetables may have been washed in tap water, and the ice may have been made from tap water.

When I traveled to Angola in 2003 and ate in restaurants, some of my colleagues and I explicitly ordered food without raw vegetables and drinks without ice. We did so though a Portuguese-speaking colleague who translated our instructions to Portuguese-speaking wait staff. So, mistranslation was not an issue. Most of the time, the wait staff graciously served food with raw vegetables and drinks with ice.

Thus, no specific request about raw vegetables and a specific request for no raw vegetables usually meant the same thing. A request for ice and a request for no ice usually meant the same thing.

An Angolan waiter’s choice differs from a Henry Ford’s choice. For example, you may have wanted a red Model T in 1919, but no factory would produce one that year. It was not feasible to buy a red 1919 Model T. However, in the kitchen of an Angolan restaurant, it is feasible to prepare a meal without raw vegetables and to prepare drinks without ice. In actuality, it won’t happen.

Catch-22

In his novel Catch-22, Joseph Heller identified seven scenarios as Catch-22s. The best known is about World War II airmen who were assigned to fly bombing missions, which were generally dangerous. Sane airmen had to fly bombing missions. Insane airmen could not fly bombing missions. Anyone who didn’t want to fly a bombing mission was sane, and was required to do so. Anyone who wanted to fly bombing missions was insane and couldn’t do so. To be excused from missions, an insane airman had to ask. But an airman who wanted to fly missions wouldn’t ask to be excused from flying. The result? Every airman flew bombing missions.

The term “Catch-22” has come to mean a bizarre situation, a no-win situation, or a paradox. But the term is also about choice. The best-known Catch-22 resembles an Angolan waiter’s choice.

The Angolan waiter’s choice is binary: ice/no ice. So is the airmen’s Catch-22: fly/no fly. The result is the same: ice and fly.

You’re not necessarily deprived of choice. If you want ice and raw vegetables, you get them. If you’re insane and want to fly missions, you get them. You get ice, raw vegetables, and bombing missions without asking.

Banja Luka Restroom Choice

While enjoying a meal in an Angolan restaurant, my colleague Christian Åhlund told our small group about a restaurant in Bosnia on the road between Sarajevo and Banja Luka. (“Banja” is pronounced “bon-ya,” just as the “j” in “Sarajevo” is pronounced as a “y”.) Inside the restaurant were two doors: one marked to indicate a men’s restroom, and one marked to indicate a women’s restroom. Both doors led to the same unisex restroom that accommodates more than one person.

Thus, another way to get no choice is the Banja Luka restroom choice. But this is a particularly unsatisfactory way to get no choice.

A single-occupancy unisex restroom, such as on a passenger airplane, is acceptable to most people. The single occupancy provides privacy and security. But in Banja Luka, a multi-person unisex restroom would make many women nervous about their safety and many men self-conscious.

In a Hobson’s choice, Henry Ford’s choice, and airmen’s Catch-22, you are not necessarily deprived of your choice. But a Banja Luka restroom choice deprives many people of their choice, namely, a choice between an all-women’s restroom and an all-men’s one.

In his poem “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Unless, of course, all roads lead to Rome.