I Think You're Totally Wrong Read Online Free Page B

chance—take it.” What do you do? Okay, you have two objects: one is worth a dollar more than the other, and they are worth a dollar ten total. How much is each object worth?
    DAVID: Unless I’m missing something, isn’t one object a dollar and the other a dime?
    CALEB: That’s a difference of ninety. One’s worth a hundred and five. The other’s worth five.
    DAVID: True that.
    CALEB: You have doors A, B, and C. Behind two of the doors are goats and behind one is a car. You pick door A. The announcer goes to door B and opens it: it’s a goat. He asks you if you want to take door C or keep door A. Should you switch doors?
    DAVID: The guy could be lying, so what difference does it make?
    CALEB: Assume he’s not. Three doors: behind two are goats, and behind one’s a car. Whatever door you pick, you get what’s behind.
    DAVID: And you want a car?
    CALEB: No, you live in the Himalayas and want a goat. When you pick door A, he opens door B and there’s a goat, and he hasn’t opened door A or C yet, but he gives you the option of switching from A to C. Do you switch?
    DAVID: I gotcha.
    CALEB: Do you switch?
    DAVID: To door C? Umm, I would say no. I’d stay.
    CALEB: Wrong. If you switch, you’ll have a two-in-three chance of getting the car. If you stay, you have a one-in-three chance.
    DAVID: Isn’t there still, at this point, an equal one-in-two chance?
    CALEB: No. You switch and you always have a two-in-three chance of getting the car.
    DAVID: Is that really true?
    CALEB: By switching, you can expatiate your wrongness two out of three times.
    DAVID: I’m not sure “expatiate” is the right word.
    CALEB: You have to switch.
    DAVID: Are these math puzzles?
    CALEB: Math and logic.
    DAVID: Are you good at math?
    CALEB: I scored two hundred points higher in math than verbal on the SAT. I was an average English student.
    DAVID: I barely passed trigonometry. Hearing all these logic puzzles makes me think about something a student told me the other day about David Wagoner. Did you ever study poetry with him?
    CALEB: No.
    DAVID: Perfect example of misapplied logic.
    CALEB: Hold that thought. I’ve got to pee.

    DAVID: When Wagoner taught, he required his students to present their work by reading it aloud in class. That way he wouldn’t have to read their work on his own time.
    When Wagoner retired ten years ago or so, David Guterson got up and told a funny story about how whenever he tried to track down Wagoner for a response to his work, Wagoner would say, “Just keep writing.” Guterson pretended that Wagoner was actually providing deep Buddhisticwisdom, forcing the apprentice back onto his own resources. Wagoner stalked out of the ceremony, furious.
    The story this student told me was that Wagoner advised his grad students, “Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Don’t do drugs. Don’t have too many sexual partners. Be a cautious, risk-averse person because—look at me—I’m eighty-four, I still have this mane of silver hair, and I’m still cogent and writing poems and you, too, if you’re lucky, at eighty-four, can—”
    CALEB: I saw this blog once that posted a list of keys to being a writer and one was not drinking.
    DAVID: That’s such an inadequate response to existence, and Wagoner’s work suffers from exactly the same caution: every poem he writes is about how he took a walk in the woods and came across a snake or a dying ember, which turns out to be a symbol of something or other. I know I’m guilty at times of being overly careful about health and food, etc., but even I know the point of life can’t be to die at ninety-two safe and secure in your jammies.

    CALEB: This girl, a friend from Whidbey Island, Samantha, had a fling with Harv—his name is Harvey, but we call him Harv. It’s a good story and happened here in Sky when Harv was staying out here. And before I begin