What actually happens while a tossed coin is still in the air

Almost all of us have at least once found ourselves in a situation where a decision has to be made, a choice between two options — and the options seem entirely equal. We weigh the pros and cons carefully, then ask our friends, then think it over for a long time, and realise we are simply unable to make that choice. Or, just as often, unwilling to take responsibility for it.

So we look for something to hand the choice over to — something that strikes us as genuinely impartial. Cast lots, fall back on one of the hundreds of old folk beliefs. But let us take the simplest thing of all: a coin. I suspect a fair number of us have used one to settle a yes or a no. Not for nothing, it seems, does a coin have exactly two sides. And it appears that once we have tossed it and got our answer, we simply take that answer as it comes.

Except that this seemingly simple ritual turns out to be not quite as simple as it looks.

Why we toss it again

Let us start with the fact that the coin's "answer" is not always one we are prepared to accept. Think back to what you did when the coin came down on the "wrong" side. If you had truly handed it the choice, you would have taken the result in silence — that is what casting lots is for, that is the deal you made with yourself. So why is it that every now and then your hand reaches out to toss it again, and then once more: best two out of three, three out of five, and so on.

And yet if one result pleases us and the other does not, it means that by the time the coin lands we already know which of the two is the "good" one. We know — and we give it no thought whatsoever. What we tell ourselves in that moment is not "I'm disappointed, so I must want the other answer", but "bad toss".

Where did it come from, then, this "good" answer, if a moment ago both options seemed equal?

The coin as a translator

It never went anywhere. It was inside us the whole time — it simply had no language. We had been talking to ourselves in the language of arguments: for, against, two columns, what our friends said, all the while afraid to admit that we would rather have one of the two. And that preference does not live within the bounds of the rational, which is why it never showed up in the columns.

And here the coin does the one thing worth tossing it for. It translates the question into another language. It does not ask which is the wiser course — it puts the question in the only form in which a preference is able to reveal itself: "What do we actually want?"

And now the interesting part — the moment at which it reveals itself.

Not when the coin has landed. By then it is too late: the instant there is a result, we have an excuse. There is something to blame — the coin fell badly, my hand slipped, let's toss again.

It all happens earlier, while the coin is still in the air. In that stretch there is no result yet, and nothing to pin your reaction on. Which is precisely why the wish shows itself undisguised: let it be this one.

So tossing the coin again is not a sign that we heard the answer. It is a sign that we did not.

The coin as a catalyst

It turns out the coin does not make the decision for us. It is not a generator of decisions, it is a catalyst.

The word is worth recalling in its original sense. A catalyst, in chemistry, is a substance that takes no part in the reaction and is not consumed by it. It brings nothing of its own and creates nothing. All it does is lower the barrier the reaction could not clear unaided. Everything that comes out at the end was already there in the starting materials — it was simply lying still.

With our decision it is exactly the same. It was already there — alongside all the weighed arguments, alongside the two columns that came out even, alongside the sleepless nights. All that was missing was the smallest of things: a nudge. A nudge to make the scales, until then held in their uneasy balance, tip at last to one side.

How to stretch that instant

But a catalyst has one peculiarity. Lowering the barrier does not do away with the time the reaction itself needs to run. Lighting something is not the same as letting it burn through.

And a coin gives us less than a second. Everything of value fits into that instant while it is in the air, and the instant is far too short for us to make anything out.

So what if we stretched it a little? What if the coin hung in the air not for a fraction of a second, but for several? Perhaps those extra moments would let us pay closer attention both to the ritual itself and to its "hints".

That, more or less, is what the app "Answer from the Universe" was made for. In essence it is the same coin — only staged as a dialogue with the Universe, in which the gap between the question asked and the answer received is pronounced and, within reason, unhurried. A gap which, as it turns out, is the most important part of making a decision.