FCN’s Wager

The following post was inspired by Ellen, an FCN reader with a penitent heart who sent us the following email:

I need to confess that I have been a unfaithful reader. When I was young [I] read FCN every day, now *sigh* I don't even glance. My mid-year resolution it to read FCN every day. -In unbearable pain

FCN either has new content or it doesn’t. In the morning when you check Funny Class Notes (indeed, whether you check or not), we have either posted something new or we haven’t; there is no third option.

Based on the testimony if this site and the regular post habits of its contributors, it is safe to assume that there will be new content on FCN, but that assumption cannot be guaranteed. Illness, a poor internet connection, an idea deficit or girl problems may have robbed us of creativity and left the site more barren than an Old Maid. Despite these barriers to new content, it is abundantly fair to conceive that there is at least a 50% chance that FCN does have new content.

If FCN does have new content, and the reader believes in that reality enough to actually load the page, he or she will be rewarded with infinite humor. There is no limit to how funny a blog post can be and the only way to enjoy that comedy is by loading FCN and checking.

If you don’t load the page you deprive yourself of these potentially infinite benefits.

By the same token, there is a certain amount of embarrassment that accompanies an unproductive page load. Maybe you have to leave a comfortable social situation to sit at your terminal; perhaps your friends will criticize you if you load an old page. Whatever the hazzards, they are finite. They are pre-defined and limited. Your friends can only criticize so much. There is a limit to how much you can suffer while surfing the internet.

The reader has four basic options:

• You live as though FCN has been updated
• If FCN has been updated, you get to laugh: your gain is infinite.
• If FCN has not been updated, your loss is nothing.
• You do not live as though FCN has been updated.
• If FCN has been updated, you lose the chance to laugh: your loss is infinite.
• If has not been updated, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Or, for the more visual reader, here is the wager broken down in a diagram:

Therefore, since the reader stands to gain infinite humor, and thus longevity, laugh lines and all the other fun things that come from poorly conceived farce, the wise and safe choice is to live as though FCN has been updated and load the page.

If you are right, you gain everything, and lose nothing. If you are wrong, you lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose not to load FCN. That is FCN’s wager.

I expect all of you to come back tomorrow. Including you, Ellen.