What was morton fork

The film Mad Max has a similar situation where Max captures an enemy named Johnny the Boy and handcuffs his ankle to a wrecked, overturned vehicle with a ruptured petrol tank. Max lights a crude time-delay fuse and gives Johnny a hacksaw. He says "The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It'll take you ten minutes to hack through it with this.

Now if you're lucky, you can hack through your ankle in five minutes. Psychology Wiki Explore. Animal defensive behavior Kinesis Animal escape behavior Cooperative breeding Sexual cannibalism Cannibalism zoology Animal aggressive behavior. Recent Blogs Community portal forum. Many people find themselves struggling with Morton's Fork at some point in their lives. According to Morton's logic, wealthy subjects of the Crown obviously had money to be spared for taxes, and poor subjects were clearly sitting on savings, so they could also bear high taxes.

Rich and poor alike found themselves at the points of "Morton's Fork," paying high taxes. Like many logical dilemmas, Morton's Fork can have interesting implications. It sometimes comes up in game theory , with the game of bridge actually having a move called "Morton's Fork" after the dilemma which inspires it.

Mathematicians and people who study human behavior are often interested to see how people respond to such dilemmas, and how they rationalize their behavior if the outcome turns out as poorly as expected. When faced with two bad choices, the temptation may be to do nothing, but sometimes this is also a bad alternative. This is a lot easier today, what with electronic payment systems being common; obviously, it was much harder in Morton's day.

This is often confused with Hobson's choice. The customer's choice was "Take it the horse assigned or leave it don't get any horse. A Morton's Fork is a false choice because both options have the same or equally undesirable results. Compare Xanatos Gambit , where this is weaponized in a specific type of plan and often used by The Chessmaster.

See also Sadistic Choice , which similarly forces characters to choose between two untenable choices, except that each leads to a different undesirable outcome. Characters often attempt to Take a Third Option in response, with varying degrees of success. They may instead pick one to Get It Over With. If the fork is deliberately placed into a test, this is Unwinnable Training Simulation.

Can be the outcome of a Trial by Ordeal , especially those involving witchcraft, where some ordeals were made to be deadly for innocents, the survivors, being deemed culprits and ending burnt on the stake. Contrast Sweet and Sour Grapes , wherein a good outcome occurs regardless of the choice made.

But Thou Must! Remember, it's only a Morton's Fork if both choices lead to basically the same outcome. It isn't enough just to be given a choice between two bad options.

If you're offered a choice between a bad option and a worse one, that's probably The Easy Way or the Hard Way. Subtrope of Failure Is the Only Option. Compare Prisoner's Dilemma.

Community Showcase More. Follow TV Tropes. You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account. Or they could just turn around. If the Dead win, they march south and kill us all. If the Living win, and we've betrayed them, they march south and kill us all! A commercial for the Twix candy bar plays the trope for laughs; a young couple are at home and the girlfriend is trying on a dress.

She asks her boyfriend if the dress makes her look fat. The boyfriend knows he's been asked a loaded question, but rather than trying to answer, he stuffs his mouth with the Twix bar so that he can't answer properly.

Asian Animation. Happy Heroes : In the second episode, Big M. If they don't give him the Stones, he'll take over the planet. If they do give him the Stones, he'll use them to take over the planet. Miss Peach comments on how neither sounds good. Audio Play.

Big Finish Doctor Who : In The War Valeyard , the Valeyard is faced with a choice of either being trapped in a time loop where he believes he is the Doctor trying to save a doomed world or escaping the loop only to regress back to his true self.

As the Eighth Doctor prepares to depart the loop, the Valeyard chooses to stay so that he can at least believe he's the hero rather than leave the loop and become a villain again. In The Crimes of Thomas Brewster , the Doctor is kidnapped by a crime boss whose idiot henchman has mistaken him for a rival crime boss who happens to go by "the Doctor". Mick : Hur hur hur. Gallagher : Shut it! Doctor : But as I'm clearly the victim of a case of mistaken identity Gallagher : You give me something of a problem.

A problem with one very Doctor : A solution which involves Mick taking me outside Gallagher : Well done, you've read me mind. Comic Books. Age of Ultron : Ultron's drones maraud about yelling "surrender or perish! Asterix : When a Corsican asks you with a Death Glare and a folding knife in his hand whether you like his attractive sister, both "yes" and "no" are wrong answers.

If he says Spooky was better in bed, then that's obviously bad. If he says they're about the same, then that would suggest them to be interchangeable, which is even worse. As he discovers, if he says Emp is better, then that's implying he stayed with Emp primarily if not solely because she was better at sex, since it can't be because she's a really cool and powerful superhero since Spooky is stronger and more famous. No matter what, she's getting angry. At one point in Ex Machina , Mayor Hundred is on a talk-radio show and has been asked whether he, in the eventuality that Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial in the United States, would support or oppose his execution.

Answering yes goes against the mayor's own political statements as a firmly anti-death-penalty politician, but answering no makes him sound like he is sympathetic to bin Laden. The mayor instead calls the interviewer a "motherfucker" and walks out , pointing out to his staff that there is absolutely no correct answer to that question.

In Lucifer , the Japanese pantheon attempts this on Lucifer, since they want to kill him but honor forbids they do so without a technical cause.

The plan is to serve sacred meat to him at a banquet. If he eats the meat, this will be a deadly insult.