Buridan's ass

Jean Buridan considered a starving ass placed between two haystacks that are equidistant from it. According to Buridan, unable to choose between them the ass would starve to death. Quite early on in my experiments with Lego robots I had something rather similar to the Lego Scout Bug with two feelers in front. If the left feeler was triggered the robot was to turn toward the right. If the right feeler was triggered the robot was to turn toward the left. In operation I once had the robot hit a wall exactly head on, trigger both feelers at once, and sit permanently frozen in place. Needless to say, more sophisticated programming doesn't suffer from this problem.