nullprogram.com/blog/2021/04/14/
“Call it,” Kelsey said, tossing a quarter. Her command was ritual,
meaningless, though not only because I always chose heads, but because it
was a false choice. My decision wouldn’t affect the odds. She established
this ceremony years ago when our work lunches became routine. Winner pays
for lunch. We were software engineers at Fastr, a tech startup involved in
the burgeoning domain of high-frequency trading, so her idea of a simple,
stateless solution to splitting the bill naturally appealed to us both. We
didn’t have to remember who paid last, and the law of large numbers meant
it would only become more fair the more we had lunch together.
Kelsey frowned at the quarter, “Tails. I think that’s the third in a row.
This must be one of your coins.” It was well known that before Fastr I was
employed by the United States Mint. This wasn’t the first time I was
blamed for bad luck on a coin toss. “Just how did you end up at the Mint
anyway?”
“It was a decision I made as a kid, shortly after I saw It’s a Wonderful
Life,” I said dismissively through a mouthful of cold fries.
“I don’t see the connection.”
“You remember my personal philosophy, don’t you? About how I want to
affect the whole world. In the film, George Bailey visits a parallel
universe where he was never born, to observe the effects he had on his own
world. I’ll never get that particular opportunity, but I’m still motivated
to maximize my effects. That’s what attracted me to Fastr. Most people
don’t understand that we don’t actually do high-frequency trading. Our
business is analysis.”
Kelsey nodded. “Right. Every microsecond of latency costs high-frequency
traders millions, and our data and analysis shaves off those microseconds.
We tell the actual high-frequency traders where to build their towers or
lay their fiber optic cables.”
I traced my finger across the table as if it were a map, “One of our
reports was behind the fiber optic cable tunneled through the Appalachian
Mountains last year. Did you know they blew up an entire mountain to lay
that cable? They literally changed the landscape. I’ve told you about my
contribution to that report.”
“I recall you were involved in the Monte Carlo Method analysis. There were
many ways to lay that line, too many to evaluate exhaustively, so instead
your team evaluated a random sample according to my team’s model.”
“Yup. Though some routes were essentially equivalent as far as your models
could tell. Different seeds gave slightly different results because they
happened to tip the balance another direction. Just before we finalized
the report, I chose a different seed such that the recommended route would
pass through a mountain. As a result of my activities one evening, some
mountain in Western Pennsylvania is now gone. My effect will remain for
eons.” I attempted the most Machiavellian grin I could manage.
Kelsey was unimpressed, “But what does this have to do with the Mint?”
“My seed-meddling changed the outcome of essentially only one coin flip,
even if the effect was dramatic. At the mint I had a broader goal. It’s
not a secret since anyone can look it up, but during my final months I was
Director of the Mint… up until they fired me.”
“You were fired from the Mint?!”
“Well, I was strongly encouraged to resign, but the result is the same. Do
you remember the coin shortage? That was largely my fault. Coins come out
of the die heads-up, or at least they used to, then they maintain
consistent orientation throughout the whole process, all the way through
annealing. My first and only action as Director was to stop and retool the
production lines one at a time, replacing the die with a flipped die.
After a few months and significant expense, all coins were coming out of
the mint flipped.”
Kelsey examined the quarter that had decided our lunch. “So by changing
the initial orientation of all coins, you’ve inverted nearly every coin
toss. According to the date on this coin, that includes our lunch.” She
paused thoughtfully. “To counter, from now on I’m deliberately putting my
coins in a canonical orientation before a toss.”
“Sure, some coins will have my flip oriented out of them, but most won’t.
Consider all the decisions I’ve reversed, particularly on the margin. Our
world is composed of chaotic systems, so even the little stuff can count.
How many close sports matches have had their results changed by the
opening coin toss? How many careers decided? How many couples have or
haven’t had children as the result of an inverted coin toss? Entire future
generations will be a different group of people. Not better or worse, just
different.”
Kelsey signed the check, then with the pen to her cheek, “Did you know
that Fastr nearly failed to receive funding in its final venture round? It
reportedly came down to a coin toss. I wonder if that was one of your
coins.”