Take A Third Option / Real Life

• After the German coalition's victory in the Franco-Prussian War, Otto von Bismarck moved to form Imperial Germany under Prussian hegemony and install his sovereign, Prussian king Wilhelm I, as the head of this new state. However at the proclamation of the first Emperor of a united Germany in Versailles in 1871, the Prussian leadership was split as to how to proclaim Wilhelm. Bismarck and the King's other advisors wanted to subtly declare him the "Deutscher Kaiser" ("German Emperor")— a phrasing which would downplay his actual power in the Reich and make it easier for the other member states to accept his title. Wilhelm himself, however, stubbornly wanted the proclamation to style him pompously as "Kaiser von Deutschland" ("Emperor of Germany"), which would imply that he would have exactly those kinds of powers, and thereby piss off the Southern German States (Bavaria in particular) into possibly not joining the new Reich out of protest. Bismarck, in typical style, eventually chose to go the middle route and proclaimed Wilhelm I as the "Kaiser Wilhelm"— no more, no less. This established Wilhelm I and his successors 'merely' as the primus inter pares ("first among equals") amongst the various German monarchs. Thus, no side was pissed off too much, and the finer details were left to be thoroughly discussed at a later point. (They eventually persuaded Wilhelm to go with Deutscher Kaiser for exactly the reasons explained.)^note They were also all interested in avoiding one specific title, Kaiser der Deutschen—"Emperor of the Germans"—as being too liberal and associated with the failed Revolutions of 1848.
• During the trial of Joan of Arc, she was asked point-blank "Do you know whether or not you are in God's grace?" Answering "Yes" would confirm a charge of heresy, as she would be tacitly claiming to know the mind of God, while saying "No" would allow the prosecutor to proclaim that she must know that she is sinful. Her reply was later used in her canonization as a saint, and one of the notaries present, Boisguillaume, remarked that her answer left the court "stupefied".
  Joan: If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest creature in the world if I knew I were not in His grace.
• In 1990, Belgium passed a law allowing abortion. For the bill to become law, the king of Belgium had to sign it; however, while he could technically refuse to promulgate the law, it was a firmly established convention by this point that the monarch would never withhold assent from a bill that had duly passed Parliament. The staunchly Catholic King Baudouin was faced with a difficult choice: by signing the bill he would put his name on something he was morally opposed to (and possibly risk excommunication), while not signing it would most likely create a constitutional crisis and bring down the monarchy. The solution was for the cabinet to declare him 'unfit to govern' for 24 hours, during which time they promulgated the law and after which Baudouin resumed his ceremonial role. This bit of loophole-jumping became such a notorious chapter in European politics that when the just-as-staunchly-Catholic King Juan Carlos I of Spain was asked fifteen years later about his attitude to promulgating a then-pending bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Spain, he answered "Soy el Rey de España y no el de Bélgica" ("I am the King of Spain, not the King of Belgium"), and everyone understood that he meant he would sign anything presented to him without hesitation, and sure enough, he promulgated the law once it passed.
• In the 1920s, an English submarine captain in China once faced the Morton's Fork of either allowing a hijacked river steamer to escape, or allowing the pirates to kill their hostages. He took the third option of sinking the ship. He fired a shot into the waterline, causing the ship to settle slowly, so that the passengers and crew could easily abandon ship, and in the confusion most of the pirates were killed. Since they had blended with the passengers, it was uncertain how many pirates had escaped and how many innocents had died, but the overall solution worked, and the captain was exonerated.
• In 1936, just months into his reign as King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of the Dominions of the British Empire, Edward VIII proposed to American Wallis Simpson. The British Parliament and the governments of most of the colonies greatly opposed the marriage due to Simpson being twice-divorced^note The British Sovereign is also the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time considered marriage to such a person invalid, and gave Edward an ultimatum: either he cancelled the wedding, or they would resign en masse, prompting a constitutional crisis. Edward duly took the third option of abdicating the throne, eliminating the political issues that the marriage would have caused, and then marrying Simpson. While Edward had been gaining a reputation for his disregard of protocol, Parliament had never even considered that he might abdicate.
• In the US, once a bill is passed by the state legislature, the state governor has the option of either signing the bill and having it become law, or vetoing the bill. A third option exists in most states: Simply do neither, in which case the bill becomes law by default after a set number of days. This may effectively be the same as signing the bill but is sometimes done when the Governor is in an awkward position, such as opposing the bill but knowing it has much popular support and could harm them politically if it was vetoed, that the veto is guaranteed to be overturned, or if they don't necessarily oppose the bill but consider it unnecessary or a waste of time. It can also happen if parts of the bill are quite necessary and a veto could have negative effects (for example a budget and funding allotment bill) but the Governor still opposes some portions of it.
  • This also exists on the federal level, but with a twist. If a bill is passed by Congress and the President neither signs nor vetoes it within ten days (not counting Sundays), it becomes law automatically... but only if Congress is still in session. If Congress has adjourned during those ten days, the bill is vetoed (a so-called "pocket veto"), and Congress must pass the same bill (or a new one) during their next session. Congress figured a way around this by designating a "messenger" or "secretary" to receive veto messages while Congress is adjourned.
  • Another political third option is the line-item veto, which allows the nullification of certain sections of a bill without approving or rejecting the whole thing. Brazil, Panama, and Uruguay allow their presidents to do this. In the United States, 43 states and the District of Columbia give their governor (or mayor, in DC's case) line-item veto power. Congress briefly gave the president line-item veto power over the federal budget during the Clinton administration, but the law was overturned by the Supreme Court two years later.
  • In state legislatures and the US Congress, members can vote either Aye (Yes) or Nay (No) on bills. A third option also exists, voting "Present". This has the effect of abstaining but it does make clear the member was present for the vote (hence the name) and was not simply absent, thus allowing the abstention to be public record.
    • The United Kingdom Parliament has an interesting variation: the yes and no votes are tallied at different times. A member of Parliament wishing to abstain has the option of simply not voting either time, but this will not record the abstention and will not appear any different than if they were absent. However, nothing prevents them from voting twice and effectively cancelling their vote out, thus abstaining in the public record.
    • In the state of Minnesota, constitutional amendments passed by the legislature must be approved by the voters. This is the law in most states,^note One exception is Delaware, where the legislature may make some amendments on procedural matters without the public having a vote. but in Minnesota (and Illinois) there is a twist: they must be approved by the majority of voters voting in that election, and not simply voting on that ballot item. This means that abstaining and not voting on that part has the same effect as voting "No". In 2012 a few people advised doing this on the state's vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages in Minnesota, as a protest against the legitimacy of the amendment and means of not even dignifying it with a vote. (The amendment was flat-out defeated with a majority actually voting "No".)
• Something similar happened in the English debates leading up to the Canadian parliamentary election in 2006. While future Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tore then-PM Paul Martin's corrupt Liberal government to shreds, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Jack Layton, took most of his time to remind Canadians that they "always have a third option," and to vote NDP. It backfired spectacularly, making Layton look like a kid in the back of a classroom, jumping up and down and yelling "pick me!" The media backlash was so large, and the third-option catchphrase repeated so often to tarnish Layton's reputation, that it's the closest thing to Memetic Mutation in the political journalism field.
  • Jack Layton tried it again in the 2011 election and... became leader of the Official Opposition, moving the NDP from third- to second-largest party in Parliament (they and the Conservatives mostly gained at the Liberals' expense). And then he died.
    • His successor as leader, Tom Mulcair, tried something similar in the 2015 election, portraying his party (which had the second most seats and were riding high in the polls) as the alternative to an endless cycle of Conservative and Liberal governments. It failed miserably, as the party lost more than half its seats (including many veteran MPs), putting them back in third place.
    • The third option in the 2015 election ended up being the Liberals, due to them being the third party and the perceived inexperience of their leader, Justin Trudeau (son of Pierre, one of the most iconic political figures in Canada to this day). They started out low but went up to first place by the end (mostly by out-flanking the normally socialist NDP on the left), and finished with a majority government.
  • In the run-up to the 2010 UK general election, Nick Clegg repeatedly stressing his own existence went down very well, creating a positive Memetic Mutation called 'Cleggmania'. Despite leading in the polls at one point and gaining votes, the Liberal Democrats actually lost a net five seats in the election, but they did manage to enter a coalition government, which was more likely to be what they were hoping for at the start. Their popularity later declined because many of their supporters felt betrayed by their decision to join a Conservative-led government, especially after breaking a promise not to raise tuition fees on universities. Then the Conservatives got a (very small) outright majority at the 2015 election, enabling them to implement everything the Liberal Democrats had been able to shoot down in committee and things went From Bad to Worse,^note At least from the perspective of the 63% of voters who voted for any non-Conservative, first-past-the-post being what it is. leaving the Liberal Democrats somewhat Vindicated by History. Or, alternatively, vilified for enabling the Conservatives in the first place; at the next election they went from forty seats to eight and have still not fully recovered.
  • Irish commentators have usually labelled the Irish Political System as a two-and-a-half-party system. The Labour Party is the 'half' party; much like the Liberal Democrats in Britain, they are much bigger than smaller parties in the Dáil (Irish Parliament) but smaller than the other two dominant parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil). Historically, when Fianna Fáil lost elections, Labour would form a coalition with Fine Gael (and once in the early 90's they were in coalition with FF). This seemed to have changed in 2011 where Labour gained more seats than Fianna Fáil to become the second largest party, but then their perceived collusion with FG and betrayal of their base led to their being almost completely wiped out in 2016. Fianna Fáil are now supporting Fine Gael (who are in coalition with a few independents) via a "Confidence and Supply" agreement, after neither party won a convincing majority.
  • Costa Rica's two-party system was broken when the PLN (centre-left) and PUSC (centre-right) faced the new and popular PAC (center). PAC won the presidential election in 2014.
• In the 1912 United States presidential election, the Republican nominee was incumbent William Howard Taft and the Democratic nominee was Woodrow Wilson. But Taft had a falling out with his mentor and predecessor as president, Theodore Roosevelt, leading TR to give voters a third option: himself. He created his own Progressive Party, soon to be better known as the Bull Moose Party. Taft became the only incumbent president and the only Republican Party presidential nominee ever to finish in third place, carrying just two states and winning eight electoral votes (Utah and Vermont, with four each). However, TR's six states and 88 electoral votes still left him in a distant second to Wilson.
• Post-1912, third parties in the United States have never really had very much success in federal elections, compared to other western countries. There have, however, been a few notable exceptions. Here are some of those from presidential elections:
  • Senator Robert M. La Follette of the Progressive Party (not the same as Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party) won his home state of Wisconsin in 1924. He was an economic progressive as opposed to Republican President Calvin Coolidge and Democratic challenger John W. Davis.
  • Governor and future Senator Strom Thurmond carried four Deep South states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, and got a faithless elector's vote in Tennessee) for the States' Rights Democratic "Dixiecrat" Party^note The South was the Democratic Party's greatest stronghold in the US for decades. The Dixiecrats were the hardcore Southern racists who walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention after President Harry Truman and Northern liberals proposed putting a then-historic civil rights plank in the party's platform. In the states Thurmond won, he was in fact the official Democratic candidate. in 1948.
  • A faithless elector from Alabama, W.F. Turner, cast his vote for obscure Alabama judge Walter Burgwyn Jones for president and better-known Georgia senator Herman Talmadge for vice president in 1956, despite the fact that neither man was running. In explaining himself, Turner felt that Democratic nominees Adlai Stevenson II and Estes Kefauver (who won Alabama) were far too lenient on civil rights issues: "I have fulfilled my obligations to the people of Alabama. I'm talking about the white people." (Jones was definitely a white supremacist, while Talmadge would go on to join a boycott of the 1964 Democratic Convention due to President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act that same year.)
  • In a case like the above, while Senator Harry F. Byrd didn't run for president in 1960, he took the electoral votes of Mississippi and half of Alabama (those electors being nominal Democrats who would not promise to vote for John F. Kennedy) and an electoral vote in Oklahoma from Republican elector Henry D. Irwin, who broke his pledge to Richard Nixon.
  • Governor and famous segregationist George Wallace ran as the American Independent Party's candidate (not referring to true political independence, but rather a far-right third party that focused in Wallace's case on upholding racial segregation) in 1968 and carried five Deep South states (Alabama,^note Like Strom Thurmond two decades earlier, Wallace was the official Democratic candidate due to the state party being dominated by Wallace loyalists, thus forcing Vice President Hubert Humphrey to run under the short-lived National Democratic Party offshoot affiliated with the official national party. Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, plus faithless elector Lloyd Bailey's vote in North Carolina). He is notable for being the last third-party candidate to carry any state.
  • Libertarian Party candidate John Hospers won a single electoral vote from Roger MacBride of Virginia, who broke his pledge to President Nixon, in 1972. This is impressive since Hospers was on the ballot in only two states (Colorado and Washington) and got the fewest votes of any party-backed candidate during that election (to put it in perspective, beyond the two major parties, a far-right conspiracy theorist, the Communist Party candidate, a pediatrician, three different socialist candidates, and even the Prohibition Party candidate got more votes than he did).
  • Ronald Reagan won one electoral vote from Washington state elector Mike Padden in 1976. Although he had lost the Republican nomination that year, his rivalry in the primaries with President and nominee Gerald Ford kickstarted his rise in popularity, allowing him to win the nomination (and ultimately the presidency) in 1980.
  • Congressman John B. Anderson ran as an independent in 1980 after losing the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan. Although he didn't carry any states, he won a surprising 6.6% of the popular vote (ironically, he likely won over more Democrats, many of whom were disappointed with Jimmy Carter, than he did Republicans).
  • Although the 1988 presidential election was a pretty solid victory for Republican George H. W. Bush with no real surprises, West Virginia Democratic elector Margarette Leach reversed the offices to which she named her party's nominees: Lloyd Bentsen for President and Michael Dukakis for Vice President. It is said she did so as a protest vote against the Electoral College. Many Democrats at the time, though, felt that Bentsen was a stronger candidate than Dukakis and perhaps deserved some sort of recognition (like the above-mentioned vote for Reagan in the 1976 election). Or maybe she was just that impressed with his "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" line in the VP debate with Dan Quayle.
  • Billionaire Ross Perot ran two very famous (and ultimately ill-fated) presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996. Like Anderson he didn't carry any states, but he did win a whopping 19% of the popular vote in 1992 (by far the highest percentage of any third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt's 27% eighty years earlier), as well as an impressive-but-less-whopping 8.8% in 1996, though this was largely due to his dropping out of the race, then re-entering, then dropping out before finally re-entering completely.
  • A fairly controversial presidential candidacy was the 2000 run of political activist Ralph Nader as the Green Party candidate. Although he got less than 3% of the vote, he was perceived as "taking away" votes from the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, splitting the ticket in key states and allowing Republican nominee George W. Bush to be elected. Such a claim would be laughable in any other year, but the 2000 election was so close that some analysts back then actually took it seriously as a deciding factor (well, as one of the many and often strange factors, anyway).
    • Gore won the popular vote but lost the 2000 election anyway — the first time such had happened since Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland in 1888 — after the Electoral College went to George W. Bush. Gore contested the results in Florida, and specifically in counties in Florida where he thought it likely more votes for him could be found. Election officials in those counties began recounting ballots, including ballots rejected for having "hanging chads" where the voter had not pushed their stencil all the way through the ballot. A controversial Supreme Court verdict decided that the recounts could not continue under those circumstances and effectively gave the election to Bush.^note Later recounts determined that even by the standards most favorable to Gore he still would have lost Florida, so the Supreme Court decision did not actually change the outcome of the election. Some studies suggested that a statewide recount might have resulted in a Gore victory, but the Gore campaign had only requested recounts in a few counties, so that scenario would have gone untested even if the Court had ruled in favor of Gore. Gore later joked about it at the 2004 Democratic Convention, ruing how the election itself had not been as binary as it should have:
      Al Gore: You know the old saying: you win some, you lose some. And then there's that little-known third category...
    • Gore-pledged Washington, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons, meanwhile, didn't vote for anybody for president, the first abstaining elector since 1864. She was protesting D.C. not having a voting representative in Congress.
  • In 2004, Minnesota voted for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, but a faithless elector voted for his running mate, John Edwards, for both president (as "John Ewards") and vice president.
  • Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski capitalized on this idea in 2010. After a narrow loss in her primary race, Murkowski, who was popular in her home state, launched a campaign urging voters to write her in rather than voting for either of the two candidates officially printed on the ballot. Murkowski defeated Joe Miller, the official Republican candidate and runner-up, by just over four percentage points, becoming only the second person in history to win a Senate race on a write-in campaign.
    • In general, this is the idea of the write-in vote; if a voter doesn't want to vote for the candidates officially printed on the ballot, he or she can select the write-in option and write down the name of a candidate they'd prefer. In many cases, it's done with the knowledge that the vote will have no meaningful impact (as a form of protest voting or even just plain joking), and in most cases, even if there's an organized campaign, a write-in candidate will struggle to get a substantial percentage of the vote, especially if there are already two or more substantial candidates (chances of success are slightly higher if the situation involves a single candidate running otherwise unopposed). However, there are a handful of cases, like Murkowski's, where a write-in candidate has been able to become a legitimate third contender in a contested election.
  • The 2016 election saw the most third-party votes since 1996, with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and independent candidate Evan McMullin gaining at least 5% of the vote in at least two states each, but as notable were the number of faithless electors, the first election with more than one since 1808. Two Texas Republican electors voted for someone other than Republican nominee Donald Trump, who carried the state (Christopher Suprun voted for 2016 GOP presidential hopeful John Kasich, while Bill Greene voted for Republican-turned-Libertarian perennial candidate Ron Paul). Four Washington state Democratic electors voted for someone other than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (Peter Chiafalo, Levi Guerra, and Esther John voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who had endorsed every Democratic presidential nominee since 2008, and Robert Satiacum, Jr. voted for Sioux Nation tribe member Faith Spotted Eagle, who at the time was involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests). Hawaii Democratic elector David Mulinix voted for 2016 Democratic primary runner-up Bernie Sanders over Clinton. Democratic electors in Colorado (Michael Baca), Maine (David Bright), and Minnesota (Muhammad Abdurrahman) tried to vote for Kasich and Sanders, but due to those states' laws against faithless electors Bright was made to vote for Clinton and the other two were replaced with people who did. Clinton, for her part, like Gore sixteen years earlier, won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College.
• In the days right before the Roman Civil War, Pompey and the Senate attempted to foist two lose-lose options onto Julius Caesar: return to Rome without his veteran legions in Gaul and be crucified in court, or refuse to return, which would lead to him being declared an enemy of the state. With Caesar's legions spread across Gaul and the war season rapidly drawing to a close, by the time he could gather all his forces he would have found an overwhelming army prepared against him. Caesar, proving once again that he deserved his reputation for military genius, decided to Take a Third Option. He realized that the one legion he had on hand was more than the zero legions his enemies had mustered so far, and marched one legion into Italy proper. They conquered Rome without a fight and Caesar held the initiative for a good part of the war after that.
• In general, politicians in a two-party system find success in appealing to the moderates as having found a "Third Way." Bill Clinton was known for such positions. Clinton's political team referred to the strategy as "triangulation" — using both conservatives in Congress and his own party's left wing as foils for his own policies. This led to him being branded him as a "waffler" early in his term by opponents, and as a "sell-out" after he left office by liberals. Among many on the left, "triangulation" came to be a term of derision, with the suggestion that rather than using the left and right as "foils" it actually reflected a lack of conviction and a mere pandering to whatever polled well at the moment. However, it also earned him widespread public popularity then and now.
  • This inspired the concept of "Compassionate Conservatism" used by his successor, George W. Bush. It has been argued that both politicos were echoing the first President Bush, who attempted to distance himself from his wildly popular predecessor by calling for a "kinder, gentler nation" than that of Ronald Reagan.
  • In his book What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Thomas Frank argued (incorrectly) that this triangulation strategy would doom the Democratic party, since it would render the Democrats indistinguishable from the Republicans except on sociocultural issues, guaranteeing that they would lose the white working-class vote and be even more vulnerable to accusations of being anti-American and/or anti-Christian than they were before.
  • The political opponents of Tony Blair, one of the politicians most famous and successful for relying on such rhetoric, remarked at the time that he was not the first politician to claim he had found a Third Way between free markets and state control ... the first national leader to use the slogan "Third Way" was Benito Mussolini.
  • A variation on this tactic is to create a combination of a False Dichotomy and Morton's Fork between two straw positions, using the Golden Mean Fallacy to illustrate that your own politics are both more moderate and better policies.
• The Berlin Airlift. After the Soviets blockaded the western-controlled West Berlin, an enclave in East Germany, the only apparent options for supplying the city were to try and force their way past the Soviet blockade, thus giving the USSR grounds to retaliate and potentially start World War III, or to let the city be starved into submission. Instead the Western Allies choose to fly in the supplies required by the city's two-million-plus population. The largest airlift in history followed and it placed the shoe completely on the other foot; the airlift could only be stopped if the Soviets started downing planes.
• Fort Sumter. The Union could either send a ship to resupply it, and give the Confederacy an excuse saying they were being attacked to start a war while blaming the Union, or let them all starve. The Union instead choose to warn everyone faaaar in advance that a ship would be sent without weapons solely to resupply the fort, giving the 'blame' for starting the war to the South.
• In the early days of the Space Race, the scientists involved were divided into two camps as to how to get to the Moon: the first, NASA's "Direct Ascent" concept, would build an unbelievably huge rocket capable of launching from the ground, flying to the Moon, landing, lifting off from the Moon, and returning to Earth. Dr. von Braun proposed an alternative Earth Orbit Rendezvous, wherein multiple launches would construct and fuel a vehicle with a similar flight profile in Earth orbit. In 1961, a working group was assembled to hash out which option NASA would commit to. Instead, the conference resulted in a third option: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. By using a small vehicle to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface and back, they avoided the massive cost of landing and lifting the fuel and equipment for the homeward journey.
  • This option was not initially considered because no spacecraft rendezvous had ever been accomplished before; it was considered risky even in Earth orbit, where astronauts could de-orbit in an emergency. The risk of the lander docking with the command module after the surface mission was considered great, but the engineering challenges in building the LOR launch vehicle were relatively minor in comparison. Practicing orbital rendezvous was the whole point of the Gemini program.
• This is how the Japanese shogunate dealt with the case of The 47 Ronin: letting them all go would've been bad for optics, as they had violated a direct order from the shogunate through their assassination plot. Executing them all as criminals would've also been bad either, as they were regarded as having acted according to bushido by avenging their master. The solution was for the youngest to be pardoned, and the remaining 46 allowed to honorably kill themselves via seppuku.
• The Non-Aligned Movement. Countries like India, Malaysia, Egypt, Tito's Yugoslavia, Indonesia and others chose to join neither the USSR nor USA in the Cold War, making their own alliance instead. This is what "Third World countries" originally meant, though in practice many countries allied with one or the other.
• Some gamers complain about draconian DRM, since they can only either buy the game, which they would have to deal with said DRM (some of which has been construed as malicious), or not buy the game which may lead to their non-support for the DRM being misinterpreted as non-support for the game. Instead they Take a Third Option of buying the game and then getting a crack or some other method of playing the game without the DRM (see Spore).
  • Some claim that this "proves" to the publisher that people will buy the game with DRM, and that they "need" stronger DRM to hold off piracy; some claim that it proves to the publisher that people won't stand for crap DRM.
  • There's also a fourth option of just pirating outright, but again that runs the risk of "proving" either that the game needs stronger DRM to prevent that option or that the game is a failure for lack of sales, killing the series, which isn't exactly what fans want. Plus it's against the law in most places to take and play the game without paying for it.
    • Running a pirated version also runs the risk of having another form of potentially nastier unwanted software on the computer: malware. Those pirates aren't internet crusaders on your side against the evils of DRM. They're just that, pirates. However, the malware is usually not the game itself, but the "keygen" or crack program.
    • It is worth noting that the behavior of some DRM is almost identical to the behavior of malware (e.g. StarForce) and could be used by a less than honest employee of whatever company produced the DRM to serve up worse forms of malware. Some DRM platforms are just outright security hazards, like earlier versions of Ubisoft's UPlay.
  • Or take a fifth option and stick to playing open-source games (see also below), though that's no good if you want to play the big commercial titles.
  • The unfortunate thing is that lack of sales, due to disinterest or piracy, is a Morton's Fork for gamers and fans of the product. Some companies will interpret weak sales as people just pirating the game, either killing the series or justifying the "need" for draconian DRM. It doesn't help that it's solely up to the publisher what "lack of sales" means.
  • Incidentally, the industry has taken a third option as well; the rise of Steam as a distribution platform (and many more that followed the model), coupled with its annual massive sales, has actually managed to stifle much of the piracy; why run the risk of putting malware on your computer and jump through loops to crack a game when you can just buy it on sale for five dollars or less?
    • GOG.com presents an alternative to Steam by allowing gamers to buy games legally but without DRM.
• The False Dichotomy fallacy is all about this— a problem is presented as having two solutions, when there might be more. The Golden Mean Fallacy is the inverse... wherein the "third option" is not always the best option and can actually be the worst.
• Weekday Vegetarianism. From the talk: "I realised that what I was being pitched was a binary solution [...] so I wondered... might there be a third solution?"
• When Anthrocon was debating whether or not a move from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh would affect whether or not people would attend, the majority of those polled took a third option: they didn't care which city it was in because they lived so far away that the move wouldn't really affect travel.^note For those who care, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are at opposite ends of Pennsylvania, approximately 300 miles apart, a five-and-a-half-hour trip by car.
• Psychologist Paul Watzlawick gives us a nice example with the Austrian Franzl Wokurka. He did this the first time when he saw a flowerbed with a sign forbidding ripping out flowers; conflicted between obeying a law (he didn't like) and crossing it (which might have led to consequences), he suddenly had an epiphany, thinking "those flowers are pretty nice" and deciding he would leave them alone because he wanted to. From then on, he lived his life following this philosophy; thus, he became neither a theist nor an atheist, but an agnostic. Later, Those Wacky Nazis flooded Austria with posters stating "National Socialism or Bolshevist Chaos?"; he commented "Erdäpfel oder Kartoffeln?" (spuds or potatoes?).
• A man tells a TV reporter a story about his grandfather and how he refused to be mistreated despite being black (or, in the day's parlance, a Negro) in the U.S. Deep South back in the 1950s. His grandfather wanted to build a house and purchased the lumber. The (white) owner of the lumberyard later informed him that he wasn't going to give him the lumber, so the customer wanted his money back. The lumberyard owner pointed out (correctly) that he could get away with not paying him, because even if he sued him, no jury (which would be all-white, in the southern U.S.) would find for a Negro. So, he'd keep the money and the lumber. The man then got angry about it and said that he's taking a third option: either the lumberyard owner refunds him his money, gives him the lumber he paid for, or he'd kill him. The lumberyard owner then decided that it would be a good idea not to cheat the man and gave him the lumber he paid for.
• Robert Bloch said that, on graduating from high school, he was faced with a choice between working and starving to death. He decided to become a writer, and do both.
• During the late 1980s and 90s, computer users were stuck with the choice of the Mac (easy to use, but more expensive with proprietary ports and an unusual software architecture) or IBM-PC (less proprietary, more manufacturers, annoyingly primitive hardware until the introduction of the PCI bus). Some denied the battle and just bought an Amiga (the first multimedia system; way ahead of its time, but owned by a company with poor management). UNIX workstations offered scientists, engineers, and computer animators a similar combination of graphics and power.
  • In the late 2000s (decade), a similar event happened following the release of Windows Vista. Widely abhorred, many chose to either stick with Windows XP or switch over to Macs. Some didn't like either and went with Linux OSs (particularly Ubuntu).
    • In the early 2010s, the situation was echoed with the release of Windows 8 and its radical (and unpopular) change in user interface. Worse for Microsoft, there were plenty of third options available, including standing pat with Windows XP or 7 (as many people's PC computing power needs had plateaued), switching to Linux distributions that were becoming better at handling diverse workloads and handling Windows applications, switching to a Mac, or abandoning the PC for portable devices (phone or tablet) which had grown greatly in computing power.
    • And so it continues in the late 2010s/early 2020s. Windows 10 updates have often caused problems for a significant minority of users (thanks to changes in how updates are developed and tested), and lower-cost versions of Windows don't make it easy to avoid updates. Meanwhile, portable devices, Chromebooks, and Linux distros continue to improve. And the Mac now has another Third Option as new models switch from Intel to ARM-based CPUs, making them more like Apple's portable devices (and opening the possibility of easier software ports between iOS and MacOS).
  • In the UK and a few other countries, the Acorn Archimedes was another potential option that was ahead of its time. The ARM CPU architecture now found in the vast majority of mobile consumer devices, as well as modern Macs, was first developed for the Archimedes.
• A man is in the hospital, due to not feeling well, with his girlfriend. His girlfriend gets a phone call. It's the man's wife, who managed to find his girlfriend's number. The girlfriend asks why the woman on her phone is claiming to be the man's wife. The man responds by losing all color, and collapsing due to cardiac arrest.
• In 2011, two Libyan pilots were given the choice between bombing civilian protesters or facing execution if they refused. Instead, they flew to Malta and applied for asylum.
• One of the ideas from Aristotle's philosophy is that every virtue can be represented as the sensible option when presented with two extremes. For example, 'Wittyness' is presented as the virtue of saying just the right amount in a conversation, between the extremes of saying too little and coming across as shy, or saying too much and being thought of as a bore.
• Immanuel Kant, the last Enlightenment philosopher, advocated the "categorical imperative" which, boiled down, meant that an act could be considered "moral" only if it would be reasonable for everyone to act the same way. French philosopher Benjamin Constant pointed out that under this system telling the truth was an imperative (since a society of habitual liars could not function), and a moral person would be forced to tell an inquiring murderer the location of his target. Kant responded in his next essay, pointing out that although it's still wrong to lie to the murderer, that doesn't mean you have to give him the information he wants, either. The system still has critics, but Kant definitely advocated the Third Option to seemingly unwinnable situations.
• More moderate/liberal Christian organizations and some churches often market themselves as such, as a third option for those who are not atheist or non-religious but also aren't very conservative or fundamentalist. Emergent churches often do this too as a third option for those unhappy and bored with traditional worship styles between that and not attending. Sometimes it's as simple as performing a Hand Wave: almost all Christian churches oppose abortion, but they will try to woo pro-choice advocates by acting as if anti-abortionism isn't as important to them as other causes that pro-choice people would find more palatable (the Catholic Church having used this strategy semi-successfully).
• The celebrated US Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison. Short version: the Supreme Court was asked to order the Jefferson administration to deliver a letter naming William Marbury as a Justice of the Peace, a letter that had been signed under the previous Adams administration with the intention of causing trouble for Jefferson's incoming government. If the Court refused to back Marbury, it'd seem like it was caving in to political pressure; if they did order delivery of the letter and the Jefferson adminstration responded 'make me', it'd expose the fact that the Court had no ability to compel enforcement of its decisions. Instead, the Chief Justice took a third option, stating that Marbury had a right to his commission but that the Court couldn't constitutionally order the administration around in this way:^note Specifically: The previous Congress had passed a statute allowing someone to file certain kinds of lawsuits directly in the Supreme Court, and that is what Marbury did. The Supreme Court decided that Congress did not have the power to give the Supreme Court the power to hear that kind of suit directly; if Marbury wanted his commission, he would have to sue in a lower court, and then if he lost there, then he could appeal to the Supreme Court. placating both sides, and not incidentally establishing the principle that the Court gets to decide what's constitutional and what's not. Only later in life would Jefferson, who opposed the idea that the Court should have exclusive say on this matter, realize how badly he'd been hornswoggled.
• The "Two-State Solution" to the Arab–Israeli Conflict is intended to be this, with both Israel and the Palestinians having their own independent states.
  • One key problem with the two-state solution, and a key reason that it hasn't progressed in real life, is the continuing debate on the status of Jerusalem (containing some of the holiest sites in Judaism and Islam, stacked on top of each other). Simply put, both sides want control of it and neither side wants the other to control it.
    • Another key problem is that a not insignificant segment of the Israeli right believes in the concept of greater Israel, in which the West Bank settlements would be merged into Israel proper without having to give up any current Israeli land (in Israel proper) as compensation to the Palestinians, or believes in expelling all or at least most of the Palestinians from all of the West Bank and making the West Bank officially a part of Israel. There are also the very divisive issues of Palestinian refugees' “right of return” and whether they would have full rights to their own air space and water, or be forced to allow Israel to provide air protection and water (under the justification that Israel’s security needs justify it).
  • An actual, but lesser known, third option is the "three-state solution", giving Jordan control of the West Bank^note which would be interesting, given that Jordan renounced its claim to sovereignty over that area in 1988. and Egypt control of Gaza.
  • Another third option is the "one-state solution" which involves rolling present-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza into one nation. Like the two- and three-state solutions, few people are holding their breath.
  • Similarly, some have started referring to that area as neither Israel or Palestine, but simply "Gaza", to avoid starting an argument with either side.
• The English constitutional set-up of 1689 was this. England (which had been plagued by political instability) had the problem of trying to balance monarchism (which they believed could lead to tyranny) with Parliamentary rule (a form of republicanism which they had tried and believed lead to instability). The solution was a "third way": retaining the monarchy but curtailing the king's powers whilst ensuring that, legally, all power was still derived from the crown even though it was largely (and later entirely) executed by Parliament. Not only did this system work but they believed they had found the perfect system of government. When the American colonies decided to try the republican option again, many English observers believed it was doomed to failure, as it would "only work with small city states".
• Regarding union issues (especially those in California relating to the entertainment industry), the general rule of thumb is that union members are strictly limited to union work and vice versa for non-union members. Then there is something called the "financial core" option (or "fi-core" for short). It lets the said workers work in both union and non-union environments. Regarding working in a union shop and obtaining the benefits of working in the union, the financial core worker must pay a small union fee. They cannot represent or participate in union activities; but at the same time, the financial core member is not restricted by the union bylaws (particularly SAG's "Global Rule Number One", which was carried over when SAG and AFTRA merged), can work in non-union environments, and can continue working if the unions go on a strike. Oh yeah, and mentioning this to SAG-AFTRA is a very bad idea.
• Light bulbs: Do you install compact fluorescent bulbs^note more expensive and contain toxins, but longer-lasting and more efficient. or regular incandescent?^note cheap, but short-lived and inefficient. Third option: Light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs.^note They last over 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs and use one-tenth the power. They do cost more up front, but it more than evens out over time.
• The origin of Eduard "Mr. Trololo" Khil's famous Trololo song. The song he "sings" was actually a famous Russian folk song named “I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home”, which had been banned in the USSR due to its lyrics... so when faced with the choice of dropping it from his performances or not, Eduard Khil still sang it, but changed the lyrics to unreadable gibberish. And he got away with it.
• The 2012 US Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (aka "the Obamacare case") was decided this way, as the court's four liberal judges voted to uphold the law while three conservative judges and one moderate judge voted to strike it down, leaving conservative Chief Justice John Roberts as the tiebreaker. Roberts could either strike down all of the Obamacare law (thus ending health care coverage for millions of people with pre-existing conditions) or violate his conservative philosophy and uphold the law by ruling that the mandate in it is constitutional under the Commerce Clause, setting (from a conservative standpoint) a very unwanted precedent.^note One of the biggest dividing issues in judicial philosophy in the United States is how far reaching the Commerce Clause gives the federal government power to regulate commerce and the states, with people on "the right" supporting less power given and those on "the left" supporting more. Had the Court ruled outright that the Commerce Clause justifies the mandate, this would set a legal precedent that could have implications in future cases going far beyond Obamacare. Roberts ended up ruling that the mandate was not justifiable under the Commerce Clause, but the penalties for violating it could be considered constitutional as a tax, thus upholding the law without setting a far-reaching precedent.
  • There is yet another option: It is standard practice for a bill to be edited after the two houses of Congress pass it— usually, these edits are not controversial, and do not change the meaning of either version. The purpose is just to ensure that there is only one version presented for passage. Some opponents claim that the edits to the ADA go beyond this practice and actually change the meaning of one or both of the two versions passed by the two houses. If the law's opponents had felt that this claim was compelling enough and adopted it as one of their arguments for striking down the law, the Court could have sent it back to Congress for re-passage.
  • In fact, in Alma Motor Co. v. Timken-Detroit Axle the Supreme Court basically codified this trope, adopting as a rule, not just for itself but for all the U.S. federal courts, that if a case presents both a constitutional and a non-constitutional question, and the court can decide the case purely on the latter grounds, it must do so. For instance, when the respondents in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores argued that closely held corporations (i.e. one where five or fewer shareholders control the majority of the stock, a common ownership structure in family-owned businesses like Hobby Lobby) have freedom of religion rights under the First Amendment and thus cannot be forced to pay for employee health plans that cover prescription contraception, the Court decided the case purely by reading two different federal statutes^note Although at the price of really forcing its reading of them, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent. to permit a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby without considering the First Amendment issue.^note Some readers have wondered if the single terse sentence saying this near the end of the majority opinion — "Our decision on that statutory question makes it unnecessary to reach the First Amendment claim raised by Conestoga and the Hahns." — is a hint that the Court really doesn't want to have to hear another case where it can't avoid that question, because it might have to rule the other way.
  • In other cases the Court has been spared having to actually decide an issue when one of the five justices has a different reason to vote in one party's favor. For instance, in In re Will v. Calvert Fire Insurance Co., a rather obscure 1978 case involving a procedural issue, the federal abstention doctrine,^note This allows federal courts, which are normally supposed to take any case where they can arguably have jurisdiction, to let state courts hear the case(s) instead, given certain conditions or reasons. the Court divided evenly on the key question, but Justice Harry Blackmun used a different reason to decide the case on purely procedural grounds.
    
    A few years later, it happened again in Island Trees School District v. Pico, which presented the First Amendment question of whether the school board has the ultimate authority to decide which books are on the school library shelves. Again, the justices divided equally on the constitutional question, but the students who'd brought the suit won because Justice Byron White felt the case hadn't been fully litigated in the lower courts, so the Court couldn't properly hear it yet.^note The question remains undecided.
  • Clay v. United States, the case about Muhammad Ali's refusal to submit to the draft, is another example; the case was only heard by eight Supreme Court Justices due to Thurgood Marshall recusing himself, as he was employed at the Department of Justice when the case prosecuting Ali began. At first the decision was 5-3 against Ali, but Justice John Harlan, after being assigned to write the decision, read up some more on the Nation of Islam and Ali's beliefs brought to him by one of his clerks, and changed his view, deciding that Ali was a legitimate conscientious objector. This created a difficult situation, since a 4-4 decision would've still upheld Ali's conviction as the lower court's ruling against him would stand, but the Court wouldn't be able to write its own decision, meaning Ali would be sent to jail without being told why, and even the Justices ruling against him were somewhat sympathetic to Ali and believed that he at least deserved an explanation. On the other hand, not changing his decision would result in a case with binding precedent for the future in contradiction to what Harlan actually believed. Justice Potter Stewart came up with the "third option": he noted that the original draft board did not cite a valid reason to Ali why his conscientious objector application was denied and it was impossible to determine from which of the three possible reasons why, and therefore the entire charge could be nullified on these grounds. The Court ended up ruling unanimously in favor of this.
  • Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow brought forth a very controversial and divisive issue before the Court: whether the "under God" part in the Pledge of Allegiance rendered it unconstitutional to be recited in public schools. It had been a very hard fought cultural battle on both sides before it made it to the Court for the several years since the original decision by a court that the Pledge recitation was in fact unconstitutional, and the Court had the opportunity to issue a polarizing decision either way on it. The Court avoided this altogether and simply ruled that as, Michael Newdow (who originally brought the suit before the school district) did not have custody of his daughter, he did not have standing to sue. The case was thus dismissed and the underlying constitutional issue remains unresolved.
• Molly Ivins, writing in spring 1993, about articles focusing on the first 100 days of Bill Clinton's first presidential term:
  "The hundred-day thumbsuckers, as think pieces are known in our trade, fall roughly into four categories. 1) Clinton's full of energy and ideas and, despite some setbacks, has had a lot of success. 2) Clinton is a disaster. 3) In the long view of history, taking all this from the judicious, balanced point of view for which I the writer am so noted, Clinton's glass is half-empty. And 4) One hundred days is a ridiculous standard on which to judge any president. I especially like number four. When in doubt, wee-wee on the premise. That's my motto too."
• Biographies of Saint Alphonsus Maria of Liguori mention him taking one of these. As a former artist who later took the path of priesthood, Alphonsus was a big fan of musical performances, but in the times he lived in, these were often accompanied by acting, which wasn't seen as very "proper" back then. So Alphonsus quietly sat back in a dark corner of the theater... and then took off his glasses. Since he was Blind Without Them, Alphonsus could listen perfectly to the music without catching sight of anything "improper" happening on stage.
• St. Thomas Aquinas is known for bringing, broadly speaking, Aristotelianism and Christian theology together, an enterprise which was extremely controversial at the time. Aristotle was previously known for his logical works, but by the dawn of the 12th century, his other works, like the Physics, Metaphysics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics came into the West, mostly from the translations of the Islamic commentators like Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina). The Church learned of Aristotelianism through these commentators, whose interpretations made Aristotelianism seem incompatible with the Christian faith, and became understandably wary. For example, the dispute flared around questions of the immortality of the soul, the creation of the world, and the nature of the mind. According to Averroes, Aristotle denied personal immortality and taught that the world was eternal and that there is a universal mind in which individuals participate. These respectively contradicted the Christian teaching on the afterlife, God's creation of the world, and the soul having its own faculties of mind and will, and two camps formed as a result. On one side were the Latin Averroists, led by Siger of Brabant, who enthusiastically accepted Aristotelianism, especially as expounded by Averroes. On the other side were the more cautious theologians who thought Aristotelianism was fundamentally incompatible with the Christian faith. This group favored the Augustinian tradition, which drew from the Platonists; St. Bonaventure, a friend and intellectual rival of St. Thomas, was of this group, though he knew Aristotelian terminology. St. Thomas, completely aware of the controversy, drew from Aristotle but was careful enough to amend the parts where he thought Aristotle was mistaken, even writing a few works critiquing the Averroists. Needless to say, he drew criticism from both sides, and 219 Aristotelian propositions, five of which were St. Thomas's, were condemned in 1277 (though it was partially amended to make an exception for St. Thomas).
• St. Josaphat Kuntsevych was a Lithuanian Basilian monk and archeparch of the Ruthenian Uniate Church (now called the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) who ministered in Lithuania as it was divided by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. He sought to bring the Churches together, but the Eastern Christians feared that unity with Rome meant supplanting their Byzantine traditions with Latin rite practices, and not helping matters is the Polish clergy who demanded exactly just that. St. Josaphat swore allegiance to Rome but maintained the Byzantine traditions of his Church, which predictably angered both sides. On 12 November, he confronted a violently angry Orthodox mob, who then killed him, dragged his mangled body around, and threw it into the river.
• Various political theories, such as social democracy and the Third Way, are attempts to combine socialism with capitalism. Most world economies are in fact "mixed economies," combining elements of both the free market and central planning. In the case of social democracy, the ideology of fusing capitalism and socialism came after World War II.^note After the Cold War, social democratic parties have favored neoliberal, pro-deregulation economic policies, attracting the ire of more radical socialists. The original intention was to transition in an orderly way from capitalism to a socialist economy, in contrast to the communists who wanted a violent revolution. On the other hand, proponents of fascism also saw their ideology as a fusion of socialism and capitalism, or as a third way between corrupt, broken capitalism and violent, chaotic Communism.
  • National Bolshevism. A fusion of Communism and Fascism.
  • Many far-right and neo-Nazi groups and parties call themselves "Third Position", although some camps like the Strasserists (Nazis who held actual leftist economic views until their purging) and National Bolsheviks will claim to be the true Third Position since they combine far-right social views with far-left economic ones.
• In research people actively search for this to avert it before a study, because the discovery of a third variable screws up the whole study (it's great science, but not when you have a deadline you have to meet). It's called the confounding variable. For an exaggerated example: the number of drownings correlates with ice cream sales every single year. The higher ice cream sales are, the more people who suffer drowning deaths. You could argue until you are blue in the face about which causes which, but the confounding variable is the simple fact that both rise during summer.
  • This post which has became a famous meme in the thedailywtf.com community. True, False, or FileNotFound.
• In 1978, George A. Romero was preparing to release Dawn of the Dead and had it submitted to the MPAA for rating. He was told that the violence of the film merited an "X" rating. The problem was that by that time, the untrademarked "X" rating had been co-opted by the porn industry (the original intent was for a self-applicable rating for films that were of adult content, such as Midnight Cowboy, but not porn), making an "X"-rated film a financial disaster as most (legitimate) theaters had stopped allowing "X"-rated movies. He did not want to cut his movie down to an "R" rating, and so took a third option of placing the following disclaimer on all posters and ads:
  "There is no explicit sex in this picture. However there are scenes of violence which may be considered shocking. No one under 17 will be admitted."
• The London Underground buildings of the English architect Charles Holden. Neither classicist nor modernist, they have an elegant sensitivity to them, and yet they fit into neither camp. He himself said of his architecture that he was "not enough of a traditionalist to please the traditionalists and not enough of a modernist to please the modernists".
• This seems to be Nintendo's modus operandi:
  • At its time, the Wii was Nintendo's third option. Following the relative failure of the Nintendo GameCube,^note the GameCube was profitable, but far, far below expectations Nintendo was faced with either continuing the graphics arms race with Sony and Microsoft, or reorganizing as a third-party developer, and in both cases, continuing to struggle against its "kiddy" image in a time where developers who wanted to be taken seriously had to look and appear mature. Nintendo decided to ignore all that, embrace its family friendly nature, and try to redefine a video game market that had been "stable" for decades. And it worked because it became the definitive party game: when Sony and Microsoft started concentrating on online play in earnest, the Wii focused instead on excellent in-person multiplayer gaming, and won over parents, kids, the elderly... target groups that Sony and Microsoft did not consider.
    • Considering the respective sales figures, the Wii essentially was the first option for its console generation. Add in PC game sales, and the Xbox and PlayStation were both the 3rd options.
  • The Nintendo DS was a portable Wii in this regard, as its complete and intuitive control scheme was appreciated by "hardcore" gamers while the touchscreen was appealing to "casual" players.
  • Another case for Nintendo was when they were developing the Nintendo Switch. People in Japan prefer to play their games on handheld consoles due to a lack of space in their homes, whereas westerners prefer to play their games on home consoles or PC, and developers for both sides of the Pacific often found it to be a pain porting their games to either platform. Nintendo would give the Switch the ability to be played in different modes such as console, handheld, tablet, etc. to try and appease both markets. Needless to say, it worked phenomenally well for them.
  • There's been cases that didn't work out so well, like the Virtual Boy. They had two choices: either pump more money into the project and release something that would have been too overpriced for the market, or cancel it. They chose option C: release it as is knowing full well it would bomb so they could at least make some money from it. It's Nintendo's worst-selling console, was treated like an Un-person by Nintendo for years and is still a major Old Shame for them, and its failure forced Game Boy and Metroid creator Gunpei Yokoi to resign in disgrace. He would go on to design the WonderSwan before being tragically killed in a car accident.
• When the crew of TACA Flight 110 were approaching New Orleans, they lost both engines over the Louisiana swamps. They were faced with either ditching onto a canal or land somewhere on the muddy banks, hoping the 737 would withstand the impact and sudden stop in the soft ground. They chose to instead land on top of a levee, half the width of a standard runway and way shorter, but at least even. To add to all of this, the captain had only one eye, which leads people whose knowledge has not progressed beyond what they were told at school to erroneously assume that he couldn't properly estimate the distance in the pouring rain; in fact binocular vision, as well as being only one of many mechanisms for extracting depth information from the visual field, is only effective at short range (a few metres) and is entirely irrelevant in terms of the distances involved in landing a plane.
• A king learns that his son has committed some misdeed. In his anger, he proclaims that a big stone shall be thrown on his son — he's talking about a stone big enough to kill. When he regains his calm, he notes the dilemma: If he cancels the punishment, he broke his word — but if he pulls it through, his son may die or be crippled at least. One (truly) wise man shows him the third option: Break up the big stone into fine gravel before throwing it.
• This is one part of the appeal behind free/open-source software and its equivalents in other media: faced with the option of buying and using expensive, restrictive proprietary product and breaking the law by piracy or illegally decompiling and hacking the code, the third option being to write software that's specifically designed to be distributed and hacked at will. Of course the idea has its roots well before proprietary, closed-source software, but the principle remains.
• There are plenty of third options to run Linux while still keeping Windows around. The classic method is dual booting, installing Windows and Linux and separate hard drive partitions. Another way is running a distro live off of a CD or USB key. Yet another way is running it in a virtual machine. If you just want the command line tools to run inside of Windows, you can just install something like Cygwin or WSL. One of the reasons Linux vaulted ahead of other free Unix implementations has been attributed to the ease with which users could use their existing software while trying out Linux.
• It has been suggested that the Khazar Kingdom chose to adopt the Jewish religion as a third option between the Christian faith of Russia and the Islamic faith of the Turks.
• Put up with the high prices, generally poor customer service, and limited DVRs of cable, or the high prices, slower Internet speeds, and weather-related clarity issues or outages of satellite? More and more people are choosing to do away with either and instead watch TV through online services like Hulu Plus or Netflix, or simply stick to over-the-air broadcast networks like ABC that an antenna can pick up. Or a combination of both over-the-air and streaming TV. Or additionally subscribing to a streaming service that provides one with cable/satellite channels, like Sling TV or FuboTV, on top of regular streaming services.
• At the end of World War II, after the Japanese surrender was signed but before it was formally broadcast, there was an attempted coup by the War Ministry staff and part of the Imperial Guard in order to prevent the surrender. The plotters had been counting on the then-War Minister, General Shizuichi Tanaka, to support them. But Tanaka —faced with the options of either joining in a coup against the Emperor or being party to a dishonorable surrender —chose instead to convince them to stop said coup... and commit suicide a few days later.
• On Wikipedia, nearly anything can be nominated for deletion: articles, user pages, images, policy/guideline pages and anything else in the "Wikipedia" namespace (their equivalent of Administrivia), etc. These discussions ideally go one of two ways: "keep" or "delete". However, there can also be other outcomes: "Withdrawn" (the nominator changes their mind and no one else in the discussion objects^note Another participant in the Xf D can, however, open another one after this happens if they believe there were still solid arguments for deletion.), "Merge" (the content is combined with another related article), "No consensus" (the discussion has been open for a while without a clear consensus forming), "Speedy keep" (the nomination is obvious trolling, or otherwise does not present a valid argument for deletion), or "Speedy delete" (the content being nominated meets one or more criteria that allow it to be deleted instantly without any need for discussion; most commonly used for obvious vandalism or copyright violations).
• A third gender option is gaining worldwide traction. Those who don't feel particularly male OR female (regardless of whether or not they were born with ambiguous genitalia) are using other words to describe themselves. "Non-Binary" is the umbrella term used for all these identities—or at least it is in the USA. Some other countries already have legitimized Third Options:
  • Nepal put a third gender option on their census in 2011.
  • For a long time, India has used the term "hijra" to describe those who identify as neither male nor female. Now, Pakistan recognizes them, too.
  • Germany was the first European country to do it, specifically to stop intersex children into the binary at birth.
  • New Zealand has a third option for passports now.
  • In Australia, the issue went all the way to the Australian High Court, and they ruled in favor of the third-option-takers. Gender is now much more of a legal non-issue (although not a COMPLETE non-issue quite yet).
  • The US government was petitioned via We The People to legally recognize nonbinary genders in the US. It got over 100,000 signatures, but there has been no response to it yet.
  • There is, of course, the old joke that there are in fact FOUR genders: "Male," "Female," "Don't know," and "Don't care."
  • Biology: Hermaphroditism or Intersex.
• When some atheists are confronted with the Lewis's trilemma or "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" dilemma that is supposed to prove Jesus Christ is divine, they respond with something like "You're forgetting one more option, 'Legend.'" They argue that Jesus' followers exaggerated his powers after his death, eventually going on to outright claim he was the Son of God.
• When Gene Hackman was cast as Lex Luthor for Superman: The Movie, he didn't want to fully shave himself bald. (He was already unhappy after Richard Donner tricked him into shaving his moustache.) Instead, he came up with the Running Gag of Luthor wearing a different wig in every scene... and wearing a bald wig when he's arrested.
• During the 1960 US presidential election, both Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were jokingly asked whether California (Nixon's home state) or Massachusetts (Kennedy's home state) made the better women. Kennedy's reply was, "Well, since my wife is from New York, I would say that in fact New York makes the better women."
• This has been a major reason why the Consistent life ethic has gained some popularity in the United States. To wit, the consistent life ethic serves as an alternative to both the Republicans (who are generally anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia but also in favor of capital punishment and some military action) and the Democrats (who are generally pro-choice and pro-euthanasia but also anti-war and anti-death penalty). This philosophy was pioneered by Catholic cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, in order to reconcile these two political ideologies, arguing that Catholics had a moral obligation to protect all life.
• This is the major point (and appeal) of non-chain restaurants and stores, as they are not connected to major chains. Why go to Walmart or Target when you can go to the local retail store?
• An incident that once occurred on an American message board: A man known to be a member of his state's legislature was a regular poster. He was very respected on the board for his insight on both politics and his work as a professor at a state university. A bill came before the legislature that would legalize gay marriage in the state. It was overwhelmingly supported by the board's posters who encouraged him to vote for it and by most of his academic colleagues. Voting against it would've driven a rift between him and people he was close to. However, the man was a Republican who represented a very conservative district, and voting for it could've ruined his political career. It just so happens that he ended up being absent from the legislature the day that bill was voted on.
• The trope backfired on Canada's Social Credit Party. They had offered their support when Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark was elected with a minority government in spring 1979—but because most of their members, especially inside Parliament by this point, were pro-secession Francophone Quebecers, the PCs declined their support and made up the difference to form a government by other means, including persuading SoCred MP Richard Janelle to switch parties. When Clark faced a confidence vote (on his government's budget) in early 1980, the SoCreds had the choice of voting no, which would touch off another federal election which would likely bring Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau, whom they couldn't stand, back into power,^note It did just that, making Trudeau the most recent person to win four mandates as prime minister of Canada. or backing the government which had spurned them, showing that they had no problem being treated as doormats and that their support came without a price.
  
  So what did they do? They decided, as a party, to abstain ... yes, you read that right, they abstained from the most important vote that can be taken in a parliamentary system. The Neutrality Backlash that ensued put them in an even worse position, accelerating a decline that was already underway, and within a few years they had lost all their seats in the House of Commons; by the end of the 1980s they were delisted because they couldn't even get enough candidates to run for seats.
• The United Kingdom lacks the same strong free speech protections The United States has in its First Amendment, meaning it's very easy for courts to place a gag order on unproven allegations considered libel,^note The UK's law on libel very starkly contrasts with the law in the US, where for something to be considered libelous the person claiming libel must prove the allegation is false, and the person making it made it knowing it was false. In the UK the burden of proof is shifted: the person making the allegation must prove that it is true. and allows people with lots of money or power and access to high-powered attorneys the ability to silence criticism or unflattering allegations, thus giving those wishing to make such claims the option of either potentially facing lawsuits and prolonged legal battles, or having to bury any allegations against a person with power. There is however a loophole: Parliament can never be censored. If a Member of Parliament is sympathetic, they can make the statement on the parliamentary floor, which allows it to become public record and lets the media cover it free of censorship (as the story is now "MP so and so has claimed that..." instead of "anonymous sources claim that..."), with the maximum punishment that can be inflicted on the MP being no more than a five-day suspension and corresponding loss of salary.
  • Speaking of the UK, in the 1990 Conservative Party leadership election, the first round was between Margaret Thatcher (who was popular with much of the party but was down in the polls and had made several missteps) and Michael Heseltine (who had his own base of support but was ideologically crosswise with Thatcher on several points). Voting for Thatcher would obviously have one interpretation whereas any vote against her (either for Heseltine or by abstaining or spoiling one's ballot) would have the opposite. Either would potentially alienate about half of of the party. So ... John Major 'had a toothache' the day of the vote. Then, when the first round was inconclusive, the party also took a third option, and he was promptly nominated and elected Prime Minister.
• Israel is one of the few countries in the world to lack civil marriages; the state only recognizes religious marriages^note This is primarily because Israel's staunchly Orthodox Jewish parties often hold disproportional influence over such matters due to Israel's purely proportional voting system and the way Parliament is organized. which can create a very sticky situation for Jews wishing to marry non-Jews, because Israel's religious authorities do not hold marriages between Jews and non-Jews as valid, and the Christian and Muslim leaders will not always recognize a mixed marriage either depending on the circumstances or sect. This leaves the option of either having a marriage not recognized by the state, or having the Jew convert to another religion for the purpose of marriage, which they may not wish to do and may be seen as a betrayal to their community. The third option: Hold the wedding outside of Israel proper (the nearby island of Cyprus is a common destination), because Israel does recognize all marriages performed in other countries.
• In 1976, after the NBA/ABA merger was completed, the ABA teams left out — the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis — were offered $3 million buyouts by the NBA. Kentucky accepted. St. Louis owners Dan and Ozzie Silna, rather than accept or sue for a better deal, negotiated what was thought of as fool's gold: They would accept a deal that would annually pay them one-seventh of the television revenue earned by the four ABA teams that joined the NBA.^note The Denver Rockets (now the Nuggets), New Jersey Americans (now the Brooklyn Nets), Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio Spurs. At the time, the NBA was a second-tier sports league that didn't even have the NHL's regional drawing power. The Silnas bet on the NBA exploding in the coming years, especially with the then-nascent cable market developing. The deal ultimately ended up netting them over $300 million over the life of the deal. It would have brought them even more, adjusting for online and international revenue, had the NBA not negotiated a $500 million buyout in 2013. The Silnas ended up earning far more profit than they ever would have, had they managed to keep their team alive.
• Gisella Perl was a Jewish gynecologist, forced to work as a doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp during the holocaust. She was ordered to report every pregnant woman to the physician Dr. Josef Mengele, who would then use the women for cruel experiments (e.g. vivisections) before killing them. Refusing to do this would have gotten her killed and replaced with someone who would (and her refusal/avoidance would have become clear once the women's pregnancies became evident). So, she took the third option and performed abortions on the women, so that Mengele and the other Nazis would never know they had been pregnant.
• A psychological experiment involved a boy trapped in a hallway with only two exits — one at either end. The first exit was guarded by a vicious, snarling dog; the second exit, by a mean-looking man wielding a baseball bat. The boy waffles back and forth for a while: when he cautiously approaches one exit, the guard there looks scarier and the opposite danger seems not as bad, driving him back to the center. In several instances, the boy eventually breaks through the walls or does something else to avert a beating or a mauling.
• As explained in this article, during the 1965 Southern 500 NASCAR race, the Ford cars had a problem in their new radiators used for the race, in which they had a problem with track debris getting stuck in them, causing them to overheat. Thus, the Ford drivers was given the option to race normally but risk the car blowing up (and maybe get set ablaze), or deliberately slow down and not race with full capability in an attempt to cool down the engine enough so they can finish. Ned Jarrett did a third option: Shut down the engine on the turns and restart it in the straights. It worked. It worked so well, Jarrett ended up winning by a gap of fourteen laps.
• The cat people and dog people dichotomy is really more about personality type than what pets people keep, but those aren't the only pets out there. So, when you ask someone which one they are, they might answer, "I'm a bird person", "I'm a fish person", "I'm a rabbit person", or whatever. And, of course, you can be a mix of cat and dog person, or not a pet person at all.
• For people who are opposed to factory farming but don't completely object to animal products outright, one option is only eating meat that was humanely killed or opting for free-range/cage-free eggs, as well as various forms of semivegetarianism, including "weekday vegetarianism" mentioned above. Some vegans still object to all of these on the grounds that they believe any use of animals by humans is immoral, but others support these methods because they might encourage people to eventually go fully vegan.
• Capital cities are often chosen as a result of this
  • Early in Australia's life as a nation, there was much debate over whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the capital city. The solution? The city of Canberra, between Melbourne and Sydney, specifically made to be the nation's capital.
  • Washington DC was this in two ways. To avoid any state claiming the capital, a special District was created. Similarly, rather than being in the North or Deep South, it was built in the geographic center of the original 13 colonies.
• The ultimate third option. The results when a real coin is tossed: Head, tail, edge of coin.
• Some countries are proposing to ban gasoline and diesel cars around 2025-2040. However, some members of the public see a third option - alternative fuels such as CNG, ethanol and LPG, so they can still have big V8 engines, only more economical and eco-friendly.
• The famous crash of US Airways Flight 1549, also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson", was a case of this. After losing his engines, pilots Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles had to choose whether to head for La Guardia airport or Teterboro, as they were in opposite directions, and they were low enough that getting it wrong could be catastrophic. After a moment's thought, Sullenberger determined that both options were too risky, and decided to do something else entirely — he radioed "We're gonna be in the Hudson" to ATC and they proceeded to perform a water landing in the river.
• In 1573, the artist Paolo Veronese drew a painting of The Last Supper for a basilica in Venice. However, due to a lot of space remaining on the canvas, he decided to fill it with a massive amount of people, up to and including jesters. The Inquisition took notice, brought him in for questioning (the protocol survives), and finally stated he must either fix the painting in three months at his own expense, or face the consequences. Paolo then remembered that according to the Gospels, Jesus participated in a feast explicitly specified to have numerous outsiders, including sinners. Once he renamed the painting to The Feast in the House of Levi, the Inquisition had no more objections.
• Vocational training for skilled trades (such as plumbing, haircutting, and carpentry) is often seen as this for the people who don't want to go to college and/or can't afford it, but at the same time want to be able to get a job in something that doesn't involve fast food or retail. You still have to pay for your education, but it costs much less than getting a four-year degree, it often doesn't take as long as getting a bachelor's degree or higher, and the trade career fields pay surprisingly well due to high demand, unionization, and lack of qualified workers. Also, no matter how well or poorly the economy is doing, there's always going to be a need for mechanics, hairdressers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, construction workers, sanitation workers, etc., making trade jobs more-or-less recession-proof.
• There's a story online about a bed-and-breakfast owner who was approached by a social media influencer hoping to get a free room in exchange for "exposure". The owner was taken aback by their sense of entitlement, but rather than turning them away, he offered to make a deal: he would charge full price for the stay, but he would also provide a discount code that the influencer could share. If at least five people use the code, the owner would give the influencer a full refund. They did not take him up on the offer.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar was once asked which of her movies she wouldn't let her children watch - I Know What You Did Last Summer or Cruel Intentions. She picked Scooby-Doo.
• In this Ted Talk, an AI was given the task of getting from point A to point B with the intention that it would produce some kind of walking machine. Instead, it simply turned itself into a tower and fell towards point B.
• The history of mathematics is full of examples of some people accepting a certain axiom (a starting point taken as true) and other people attempting to prove it true based on other axioms, before a mathematician takes the third option of What if I consider that axiom false? and invents a whole new branch of mathematics. Non-Euclidean geometry is one example.
• The answer "Mu", in the context of a "Yes-or-No question" means "The question itself is invalid." For example, the Morton's Fork question "Does your mom know you watch hentai?" It's not a fair question, because either way, you've confessed to watching hentai ("yes, mom knows" vs "no, mom doesn't know"). The answer "Mu" means that you reject the question outright.
• The Christians who are Anabaptist (among them the Amish) are often lumped together with Protestants, but they say they are a "third way".
• The global standard time zone, the one you'll want to use if you're trying to coordinate with people across the world, and the one which all other time zones are officially defined as an offset from, was set by cooperating teams of scientists speaking English and French. Naturally, everyone wanted it to have the same abbreviation in all languages — the problem is that differing rules of adjective placement mean it's called "Coordinated Universal Time" in English, and "Temps Universel Coordonné" in French. The compromise was to abbreviate it UTC, which doesn't match the full phrase in either language.
• The Pretentious Latin Motto of the CIA's Special Activity Center is Tertia Optio, Third Option. This refers to cases where diplomacy and military action are not feasible.
• Malcolm Hulke explained how he introduced the Silurians into Doctor Who - science fiction stories tended to be either humans visiting aliens or aliens visiting Earth. So he thought, "What if they were here before us and laid claim to the planet?"
• During development of the first Kingdom Hearts, Disney wanted Donald Duck to be the protagonist, while Squaresoft wanted Mickey Mouse. Tetsuya Nomura went with an original character: Sora, whose outfit is modeled after Mickey and has Donald as a partner.
• During the Opening Ceremony of every Olympic Games, the Parade of Nations follows a format: Greece (hosts of the first modern games) goes first, host nation goes last and in between the rest enter the stadium in alphabetical order, according to the official language of the host. This put Greece in an awkward position during the 2004 Athens games. They'd either have to give up the traditional first slot or the last. Their solution: Both, sort of. Greece sent their flag bearer (weightlifter Pyrros Dimas) out first so the flag could take its traditional first place among the parade. Dimas then led the Greek team out (with a second Greek flag) in the traditional final slot.
• When FIFA had to choose a host for the 2030 centenary edition of the FIFA World Cup, they had two options: Spain/Portugal/Morocco, or Argentina/Chile/Paraguay/Uruguay. FIFA preferred the former bid, but were relucant to turn down the latter bid outright — Uruguay had hosted the inaugural World Cup in 1930 to celebrate their own centenary, and the idea of a return on the World Cup's centenary was too good to pass up. The result was a compromise: Spain, Portugal, and Morocco would be the official hosts, but the opening ceremony and the first match would be held in Uruguay, and Paraguay and Argentina would get to match one match each as well (with Chile missing out). This also conveniently left the way clear for Saudi Arabia to bid for the 2034 World Cup unopposed^note FIFA rules stipulate that once a confederation hosts a World Cup, they can't host either of the next two. With Canada, the US, and Mexico (all CONCACAF nations) hosting in 2026, and Spain, Portugal (UEFA), Morocco (CAF), Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina (CONMEBOL) hosting in 2030, the only confederations eligible to host in 2034 were Oceania - which doesn't have any countries capable of hosting - and Asia.
• When the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened and the major Hollywood film studios decided to boycott the Russian market in an attempt to economically throttle it, they were met with a huge Morton's Fork when it came to ethnic Russian communities in surrounding countries and the Russian diaspora — either continue making Russian dubs in Russia but only for release outside Russia, or not make Russian dubs for new films at all. Instead, the studios made the decision to move production of Russian dubs to other countries, primarily Kazakhstan, Georgia and Israel, all three of which have plenty of Russian-speaking talent.

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