counter-arguments exist. According to Edward Lauzinger, Buridan's ass fails to incorporate the latent biases that humans always bring with them when making decisions. Social Psychologist Kurt Lewin's Field Theory treated this paradox experimentally. He demonstrated that lab rats experience difficulty when choosing between two equally attractive (approach-approach) goals. The typical response to approach-approach decisions is initial ambivalence, though the decision becomes more decisive as the organism moves towards one choice and away from another. Buridan's principle The situation of Buridan's ass was given a mathematical basis in a 1984 paper by American computer scientist Leslie Lamport, in which Lamport presents an argument that, given certain assumptions about continuity in a simple mathematical model of the Buridan's ass problem, there is always some starting condition under which the ass starves to death, no matter what strategy it takes. He further illustrates the paradox with the example of a driver stopped at a railroad crossing trying to decide whether he has time to cross before a train arrives. He proves that regardless of how "safe" the policy the driver adopts, because indecision can cause an indefinite delay in action a small percentage of drivers will be hit by the train. Lamport calls this result "Buridan’s principle": A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time. He points out that just because we do not see asses or people starving to death through indecision, or other examples of Buridan's undecided states in real life, does not disprove the principle. The persistence of a Buridan's undecided state for a perceptible length of time may just be sufficiently improbable that it has not been observed. Application to digital logic: metastability A version of Buridan's principle occurs in electrical engineering. Specifically, the input to a digital logic gate must convert a continuous voltage value into either a 0 or a 1, which is typically sampled and then processed. If the input is changing and at an intermediate value when sampled, the input stage acts like a comparator. The voltage value can then be likened to the position of the ass, and the values 0 and 1 represent the bales of hay. As in the situation of the starving ass, there exists an input on which the converter cannot make a proper decision, and the output remains balanced in a metastable state between the