If blogging’s light this weekend, it will largely be because I’m trying to choose between a few job offers (and proto-offers). If blogging is heavy, it will be because I’m looking for things to do other than actually make a choice. For better or worse I can’t keep putting off a decision forever. By next weekend, or at the very latest a day or two later, I need to decide something. Having choices is much much better than the alternative, so I’m not complaining, but I do wish I was more decisive sometimes.

The problem is basically Arrow’s Theorem. I’ve got lots of desiderata for an ideal job. Lots of money (with really no satiation point here), nice weather, proximity to home, low workload, friendly colleagues, stimulating work environment, smart students, low cost of living, fun city to be in, and so on. Sad to say, not even I can find a job satisfying all those desiderata.

(If we moved the cream of most of the top 20 departments to a fancy university in Melbourne with a long and highly successful placement record and offered me a job there with leave every year or two and an apartment with bay views, I think I’d take that job. For some reason that department never seems to advertise.)

So I look at how each of the options ranks on each of these criteria, look over the listings, try and aggregate them, and remember that Arrow’s Theorem is, er, true. At this stage I start applying heuristics and see how many intransitive preferences I can end up with. Well, that’s not the intent as such, but it is always how it seems to end out, so maybe there is a revealed preference for intransitivity. (Is it irrational to desire to have intransitive preferences? I guess it is by some standards.)

I suspect this will come down to something about as rational as a magic 8-ball. Well, maybe not. In practice I normally end up doing like Dylan in 115th Dream.

I decided to flip a coin
Like either heads or tails
Would let me know if I should go
Back to ship or back to jail
So I hocked my sailor suit
And I got a coin to flip
It came up tails
It rhymed with sails
So I made it back to the ship