Pfired! 
Daniel Soar
When in doubt, toss a coin. If you really can’t decide which alternative is preferable, if everything seems equal and you don’t care a damn, it can’t matter what you settle on. Or so you would think. But to flip a coin – literally or figuratively – and abide by the result whatever the consequences would be an inhuman act. If you’ve ever tried coin-flipping you’ll know that there’s a good chance you won’t accept the outcome: ‘Heads? But I can’t!’ Having been confronted with an imminent imagined possibility that you can’t countenance, you will have discovered what it is you wanted to do – or at least will have learned that what you do matters very much indeed.
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From the LRB letters page: [ 9 February 2006 ] Randy Cohen.
Other articles by this contributor:
At Tate Modern · Jeff Wall
The Art-House Crowd · Svetislav Basara’s fictions
Bile, Blood, Bilge, Mulch · What’s got into Martin Amis?