Scott Adams' Blog

Interview with Jezebel.com Writer Irin Carmon

Posted June 21st, 2011 @ 7:15pm in #General Nonsense

Update: Newest material is at the end. Updated 6/22/11

My recent blog post titled Pegs and Holes caused quite a stir on the Internet. One of my harshest critics, feminist website Jezebel.com, accepted my offer to be interviewed about whatever it is that they find so objectionable about me. Jezebel’s Editor-in-Chief, Jessica Coen, asked writer Irin Carmon to represent the common viewpoint at Jezebel.

Let’s start with some background on the participants to give you some perspective on the bias that each brings to the table. I’ve been a long-time financial supporter of women’s causes, particularly in the abuse realm. I have a long history of promoting and mentoring women in my own businesses.  And I’m pro-choice.

My mother was a strong woman who raised three kids, worked most of her life, taught me to play baseball, and was the first member of the family to get a motorcycle license. She kept a loaded rifle in the kitchen and often used it to gun down rabbits and other assailants to her vegetable garden.  And she didn’t take shit from anyone.

My first career, in banking, came to an end when my boss told me there was no potential for a white male to get a promotion until the company did a lot of catching up in the diversity department. My second career, at the phone company, ended the same way, although I stayed around while I worked on my cartooning career on the side.

Irin Carmon has been a staff writer for Jezebel for about two years, during which time she has been covering politics, reproductive rights and health, sexual assault, workplace discrimination, and more. Irin is a 28-year old woman who reminds me that she does not deign to speak for all women.

We begin…

Scott:  Irin, your editor volunteered you to discuss your objections to my recent blog post titled Pegs and Holes. What in particular did you find objectionable?

Irin: Even seen as hyperbole or intentionally incendiary rhetoric, the piece does a disservice to men above all, and to women too. You start out by referring to men in the public eye who are “tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world,” and suggest that this happened because “society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable.” Leaving aside for a minute the implied equivalence of that laundry list (breaking your marriage vows versus raping someone), this is a bleak perversion of biological determinism. By that reading, the presumed majority of men who don’t rape (or cheat, or tweet) are simply better at managing their innate desires to violate someone else, which I’d wager isn’t true to the lived experience of most non-raping men. What you deem the “natural instincts of women” isn’t defined, but I’m going to assume you mean stereotypes about nurturing and nesting. In fact, history, recent and otherwise, is full of examples of women who were treated as “shameful and criminal” for following their own natural instincts for how to live their lives, whether it was whom to sleep with and when and how often, what jobs women “should” do, how many children to have and when, etc. etc. Until very recently, those strictures were on the books and enforced by men, full stop. Men and women are both better off that all that’s no longer official, at least in this country. 

You write, “Society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness.” In fact, what’s evolved is that women are now politically and, to a greater extent, socially recognized as full human beings. In contexts where women were seen as men’s property, rape, or any non-sanctioned sex was (or is) punished as such, and often the women were punished too. We now have a legal and social model that formally recognizes women as people. That changed because some men and women didn’t see the world as, in your words, “a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa,” and who saw the harm and dehumanization implicit in that model. Incidentally, though women were historically told they are too volatile or emotional to run the world’s affairs, you suggest it’s men who are unable to cope. 

You cite Hugh Hefner as an example of a man who has “lost,” or implicitly, been societally shamed. (“Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg.”) But by every possible measure, Hefner’s no victim. He is a very rich man. He has a robust sex life with women who look like the ideal upon which he made his fortune. He’s an icon. I’d say society has offered him quite the round hole. It’s hard to think of a woman who has experienced anything comparable, but then, I don’t agree this is a zero sum game. 

My question to you: What do you get out of posting these incendiary commentaries on gender? And why accuse others of misrepresentation when they’ve mostly stuck to directly quoting you?

Scott: Phew! Wordy.

As for your question, I write what I think will be interesting and thought-provoking. I stake out positions that I haven’t seen - whether I believe everything I write or not - because unique viewpoints interest me most. My blog is about inviting readers to wrestle with unique points of view strictly for fun. My regular readers understand that. When my writing is taken out of context, the way Jezebel and others did, it sometimes looks like a crazy rant and it pisses people off. That’s more of a bonus than a main goal.

I don’t understand most of what you wrote in response to my question. Can you try it again without the history lessons? I agree that women had it worse in the past. My offending blog post was about today and the future.

I think we can skip the question of whether I offended men, since that is not what is bothering Jezebel or Salon, just to name two. And most men correctly interpreted the post as saying that male sexual urges manifest differently in different men. The men who complained imagined I was saying all men are repressed rapists. That’s a simple case of bad reading comprehension, or maybe it is because the post was carved up by bottom-feeding websites until the meaning was distorted to fit an agenda. At Huffington Post, where the average reading comprehension is high, you can see that most commenters can’t understand how anyone would be offended by the post.

You say that the natural instincts of women can lead them to shameful and criminal behavior. I have a higher opinion of women than you do, in the sense that I think men are genetically more prone to bad behavior. If your point is that women suck just as much as men, I’ll take your word for it. But you’ll need to explain why our jails have so many more men than women.

I’m still confused why my blog is more offensive than what you just wrote. Can you try again, in simpler terms, and without the history lesson, to explain your objection to my post?

Irin: Not sure what’s left to say if all you can say about my good-faith critique of your piece boils down to TL;DR. (Sorry, “Phew, wordy.”) Surely a “certified genius” such as yourself knows how to read English when strung together in three paragraphs.

But I’ll boil it down anyway. Feminism is not about women being better than men. It’s about creating a world where gender and sexuality don’t stand in the way of each of us pursuing our individual rights, including to autonomy over our own bodies, whether that means who we have sex with, how many children we have, if at all, or what jobs we have. This might be a “history lesson,” but for thousands of years, that hasn’t been the case. Men ran things for most of that time, and by and large they still do; feminists and allies happen to believe that full participation will be better for everyone. Unfortunately, the transition is still incomplete, including on your blog, but we’ll keep at it nonetheless.  

Scott: If that’s your point, we’re in full agreement. I’ll leave it to my readers to decide if the bottom line is you’re unwilling or unable to defend what another writer on Jezebel has written on this topic. You simply explained some history and made some generic points about equality.

My readers should know that I requested this interview with Lane Moore, the Jezebel.com writer who characterized my opinion, with manufactured quotes, as “All men are rapists.” That is the ridiculous view I was expecting your employer to defend. I assume that in preparation for this interview you reread my blog and realized there is no defense for Jezebel’s position, and so you smartly retreated into history lessons and generic statements about the goodness of equality.

To be fair, you were assigned this interview by your boss. It’s clear to me that you’re too smart, and probably too ethical, to defend Jezebel.com’s grotesque interpretation of my writing.

So we’ll end here, and I’ll take this up with Salon’s writer, MaryElizabeth Williams, assuming her offer still stands. Stay tuned.

[Update: Jezebel.com is linking to this post. That’s why the voting changed direction so abruptly.]

Open Letter to the LRC Community

Posted June 21st, 2011 @ 8:44am in #General Nonsense

A Stupidity Tax

Posted June 20th, 2011 @ 7:13am in #General Nonsense

Tax policy has two purposes. One goal is to collect money to operate the government. The other goal is to promote public policy. For example, mortgage deductions are meant to encourage home ownership. Tax incentives are a proven way to change behavior. This makes me wonder if we could have a tax on stupidity and thereby reduce its prevalence over time. Seriously. The nation has a great interest in reducing stupidity.

Arguably, we already tax stupidity. When the government subsidizes student loans and helps fund colleges - that’s a transfer of wealth from non-students to students.  Okay, it’s not exactly a tax on stupidity, but it’s certainly a proof of concept.

One big obstacle to taxing stupidity is identifying it. We generally believe that anyone who has an opposing opinion is stupid. So we’d have to ignore politics and religion when designing our test for stupidity. That still leaves plenty of practical knowledge that can be tested for.

Suppose we developed a general knowledge test that had clear and indisputable answers. The questions could range from parenting skills, to healthy living, to how to apply for a job, to basic science, and perhaps some other school skills. The test could run thousands of questions long. And it would be entirely optional. If you choose to not take the test, you can simply pay a stupidity tax instead. If you take the test, and score 100%, you pay no stupidity taxes at all. And if you take the test and miss a few questions, you pay a stupidity tax that is prorated by your test score. You can take the test as many times as you like to improve your score.

I know that you libertarians object to government activism. I get that. I’m just curious as to whether tax policy could make a huge difference in the effectiveness of society by directly taxing stupidity. Suppose science is applied to the task of identifying the most important knowledge that an adult should possess.  Could you find a few thousand bits of knowledge that successful people generally understand and unsuccessful people do not? If so, that could be the basis of the stupidity test. You might also want to include any information about science or economics that an involved citizen needs to make informed voting decisions. That might help the government become more effective over time.

As with most of my ideas, this one is thoroughly impractical. No elected official could support a tax on stupidity. And you’d create a cumbersome bureaucracy if you tried to implement such a thing. I’m just thinking ahead to the day I create my own principality, perhaps on some island, and design the tax system from scratch. I’d have to give some serious thought to a tax on stupidity. I think it might help to keep the nation out of a death spiral.

Fake Vacation

Posted June 18th, 2011 @ 12:11pm in #General Nonsense

For the Wall Street Journal I expanded on my post about simulated vacations.

Technology Caves

Posted June 17th, 2011 @ 10:06am in #General Nonsense

I think the future is technology caves. You can get the advantages of a large home in a small space if you make clever use of technology and you design the space to fit the way modern families live.

For privacy in a small home, you’d want to soundproof the bedrooms and bathrooms. Much of the benefit of a big house is being out of hearing range of other people. Soundproofing probably adds 30% to the cost of the room, but it saves money if it allows you to make the home half as big and just as livable.

You’d want to locate these technology caves in towers or wherever you can find dramatic views. You won’t feel claustrophobic if you have wall-sized views of the great outdoors. Add a large flat screen TVs to a bedroom wall, doubling as a computer monitor, and you’ll have a technology cave that no kid will want to leave. With the right equipment, you’ll be able to stream movies, play video games, Skype, text, and access the Internet, all with one big screen and a wireless keyboard. Put surround sound speakers in the walls, and a microphone in the keyboard, and you have it all. I’d also design the sound system to automatically mute (as a preference option) whenever the door is opened, so the sound doesn’t blast into the other spaces.

The technology cave would have an oversized kitchen at its core, with a center island that seats six or more. There was a time when you needed a formal dining room for entertaining. But that level of formality is heading toward extinction. So delete the dining room and make the kitchen oversized. Everyone loves being in the kitchen with the action and the food.

Just off the kitchen, and open to it, would be what I’ll call a general utility room. It’s a combination of a home theater, a living room, and a family room. Normally you wouldn’t see a high end home theater system in a small home, but for $25K or so, wrapped into the mortgage, you could double the enjoyment your family gets from the common space.

Every home in the future should have some sort of office workstation setup, perhaps with two computer workstations. You could design the office to double as a guest room and a second gathering space. I can imagine the desk area being located on a raised floor a few feet above the rest of the room so you can store a bed beneath it. When guests come, just wheel it out. Office hours are generally different from sleeping hours, so one space could handle most needs.

Garages might be unnecessary in the future, except for storage. If you design a city from scratch, public transportation will get the job done.

In the past, the square footage of a home was probably the single biggest factor in determining its level of comfort and livability. Today, technology and a growing trend toward informality make the size of the home less important. You can get to the same level of livability at lower cost by putting your money into room design, sound proofing, and technology. My best guess is that a technology cave could achieve the same level of livability as a McMansion, at a quarter of the price.

I predict that someday you’ll see a technology company such as Apple or Google get into the residential technology cave business. The traditional residential construction industry will never embrace smaller homes with better technology. The change will have to come from another industry.

 

Pegs and Holes

Posted June 15th, 2011 @ 10:33am in #General Nonsense

If you have a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole, do you blame the peg or the hole? You probably blame neither. We don’t assign blame to inanimate objects. But you might have some questions about the person who provided you with these mismatched items and set you up to fail.

If a lion and a zebra show up at the same watering hole, and the lion kills the zebra, whose fault is that? Maybe you say the lion is at fault for doing the killing. Maybe you say the zebra should have chosen a safer watering hole. But in the end, you probably conclude that both animals acted according to their natures, so no one is to blame. However, if this is your local zoo, you might have some questions about who put the lions with the zebras in the same habitat.

Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way. Things just drifted in that direction.

Consider Hugh Hefner. He had every benefit of being a single man, and yet he decided he needed to try marriage. Marriage didn’t work out, so he tried the single life again. That didn’t work out, so he planned to get married again, although reportedly the wedding just got called off. For Hef, being single didn’t work, and getting married didn’t work, at least not in the long run. Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg. All it offered were unlimited square holes.

To be fair, if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers. Everyone is different.  But in general, society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires. I don’t have a solution in mind. It’s a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa. And there’s no real middle ground because that would look like tweeting a picture of your junk with your underpants still on. Some things just don’t have a compromise solution.

Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond.  Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.

That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations.

Vacation Science

Posted June 13th, 2011 @ 8:58am in #General Nonsense

Humans love to go on vacations. But no one enjoys the high cost, the hassles of planes, trains, and automobiles, arranging for pet care, and so on. I wonder if scientists could find a way to replicate the good elements of a vacation without the bad parts. In other words, if you applied some serious science to the topic of vacations, could you create a synthetic experience that would be almost as good as the real thing but without the cost and hassle?

By now you are digging into your treasure trove of science fiction references and thinking about hallucinatory drugs and holodecks and that sort of thing. But I’m talking about using current technology and resources to cobble together a low-cost vacation-like experience without the problems of a real vacation. Is it something we could do today?

A scientist might begin by studying people’s chemical compositions before, during, and after vacations. Obviously a day at the beach creates a different set of chemical responses than kayaking. You could probably catalog the various types of vacations and how they change people.  That would give you some sort of baseline to measure whether your artificial experiences are generating the same chemical results as the real thing. I assume scientists would be looking for changes in serotonin, oxytocin and other chemicals associated with relaxation and pleasure.

If you break down a vacation, it usually has some subset of the following elements:

1.       Novelty - experiencing something different

2.       Forgetting the stress of home and work

3.       Relaxation

4.       Learning about another culture

5.       Challenge (e.g. hiking, climbing, etc.)

6.       Physical beauty

7.       Everyone is nice to you.

8.       Shared adventure and memories with family and/or lovers

9.       Sun

10.   Exercise

11.   Water

That’s not a complete list. But accept for now that a vacation can be broken down into its component parts, and that people will have different preferences for which elements they like best.

Now let’s assume we try to build a synthetic vacation experience within one hour’s drive from a major metropolitan area. Proximity eliminates most of the cost of transportation and simplifies the planning. Hotel rooms can be relatively inexpensive because they won’t be on a beach or other prime real estate.

We don’t want you driving home at night, even though you could, because that would get you back into your everyday head. So let’s say our fake resort has luxurious pet care facilities so you can take Rover with you in the car and see him as often as you like during the day while he plays with the other dogs in a nice grassy area.

Obviously we could design our fake vacation facility to include physical beauty, challenging activities, water, sun, and most of the other elements of a real vacation. And while nothing feels the same as being on the beach, perhaps some combination of massages, extraordinary food, and naps in a hammock will create a similarly pleasing chemical reaction. Remember, we’re not trying to imitate the specifics of real vacations as much as the chemical reactions they create.

The tricky part, I’m guessing, is reproducing novelty. While some people enjoy going to the same familiar vacation spots every year, many people need something new each time. They need mental stimulation. I was thinking about this after seeing Woody Allen’s new movie, Midnight in Paris. The videography of the Paris streets was so well done that it started to evoke the feeling of actually being there. I would estimate that seeing Paris on film was 10% as cool as being there in person, at least visually. I’ll bet you could get that percentage up to 75% if science were applied and the video and viewing rooms were created with that intent. Add 3D, headphones, maybe a wind machine and some smells, and you have an experience. You’d also want the user to control where he explores, and how quickly he moves, street by street. And perhaps you could add some video presence devices to a few foreign locations so users could literally speak with the locals, or simply sit in a British Pub, virtually, and people-watch. A novelty seeker could visit and interact with a dozen places per day, albeit at a lower sensory level. And all of this would be done using current technology. If you want a shared adventure, perhaps each virtual travel room could be family-sized.

I could also imagine having one of these synthetic vacation facilities outside every metropolitan area, each one staffed with a group of people from a particular culture. One facility might be staffed entirely by Mongols, another by Belgians, and so on. Every six months, the entire staff switches locations and brings their special flavor of service to a new location.

Let’s all agree that a virtual vacation will never replace the real thing. But we don’t always have the time, money, patience, and health for real vacations. I think the market for virtual vacations exists. If we could design the virtual vacation to be about 75% as good as the real thing, for 30% of the cost, we’d have an interesting business model.

Fixing the Economy

Posted June 8th, 2011 @ 9:06am in #General Nonsense

Weiner Context

Posted June 7th, 2011 @ 11:24am in #General Nonsense

You’re all following the story of Anthony Weiner and his escapades. The common view is that he had extraordinarily bad judgment and low self-control. That makes sense if you believe humans have something called free will. But let’s hold the free will argument for later and look at the question of his self-control.

To begin, let’s agree that as a general rule, the more you do something, the better you get. Practice makes perfect.  People who do lots of public speaking become smoother and more confident. People who live near train tracks probably sleep better in noisy environments. People who live at high altitudes can exercise longer in that environment than people who don’t. Likewise, if self-control exists, it is probably the sort of skill you can improve with practice.

On the other hand, research has shown that self-control is diminished in all areas if you try to resist a temptation in any particular area. For example, if you successfully resist eating chocolate, you might have trouble resisting a glass of wine. But that sort of temptation has more to do with the moment. By analogy, a weight lifter gets stronger in the long run through repetition, but immediately after a strenuous workout he can lift less than before he started. So timing is important with any skill.

If we assume that self-control is something you can strengthen over time, but might be diminished in any specific hour if it gets overtaxed, that’s the model we should use to examine Weiner’s self-control.

We know a few things about Weiner - too much, actually. Apparently he is like catnip for women. He’s powerful. He’s smart. He’s tall. He’s famous. He’s ambitious. He has a way with words. He has all of his hair. He’s built like Wolverine. He also lives in the DC area, which has (correct me if I’m wrong) the highest concentration of young, single women of anywhere in the country. That’s a random factoid I remember from somewhere.

In this environment, Weiner probably had to exercise his self-control more than anyone you have ever met. Before marriage, we can assume he gave in to temptation often. But I’ll bet he had to practice his self-control a lot, just so he’d have time to exercise and do his job. In other words, he has far more practice at self-control than 99% of the public. If you look at his physique - and we all have - it’s also obvious that he has a tremendous amount of self-control in terms of fitness and diet. There’s also no evidence that he smokes, does drugs, or drinks too much. He probably studied hard in school too, or he wouldn’t have the job he has. In other words, this man is probably a world-class self-controller.

But self-control is only part of the equation. The human body has a way of making you so horny that you’re literally stupid. This phenomenon is unevenly distributed across the general population. Horniness in males is most closely linked to testosterone. And Weiner was a testosterone machine. Here’s an abbreviated list of activities that boost testosterone in men:

1.       Eating right

2.       Exercise - especially weight-lifting

3.       Avoiding cigarettes, drugs, alcohol

4.       Being around attractive women

5.       Power, winning, attention

6.       Sleep (Weiner has no kids and sets his own schedule)

Weiner also has the classic sharp facial features associated with high testosterone. He probably started in the upper range naturally and sent his levels into the stratosphere through his healthy lifestyle. And it is worth mentioning that his lifestyle is exactly what any doctor would recommend.

Now we get into the gray area of free will and self-control. The mechanistic description of a “mistake” in this context is when the urge (testosterone in this case) is higher than the counter-urge (fear of consequences). In theory, some amount of urge will trump any amount of fear, including the fear of death itself. This equation would be true for any healthy male, from priests (obviously) to presidents (more obviously). And Weiner probably had testosterone shooting out of his ear holes.

Against this urge was his self-control, which I have argued is probably in the top 1% if you had some way to compare him to the general public. The problem is that his urges were also probably in the top 1%. One particular urge (horniness) lops about 50% off of a man’s IQ. You can blame evolution for that. I assume evolution favored men who took stupid risks to get sex because those are the genes that were most often passed down. As a result, modern men are wired so that a boost in horniness shuts off half of the brain.

For the benefit of society, we have a responsibility to condemn Weiner’s inappropriate behavior. Doing so will increase the fear level for other married people and make it harder for chemistry-driven urges to win in the future. And so I join you in condemning Weiner for his actions. Shame is useful. But it is also objectively true - or at least highly likely - that Weiner has more self-control than 99% of the people who condemn him. And it is also objectively true that the “devil” that raised his level of temptation to the danger zone was a combination of healthy living and public service. That’s not an excuse. It’s just context.

Psychics

Posted June 6th, 2011 @ 10:22am in #General Nonsense

What would you call a man who started with nothing, worked hard all of his life, amassed a fortune, created thousands of jobs, was kind and faithful to his family, and privately gave away 90% of his wealth in a variety of ways that directly helped the poor? Answer: Douchebag.

You don’t get rich without screwing a lot of people along the way, right? That’s common knowledge. That rich douchebag is probably paying a lower tax rate than his caddy. And the bastard could have created more jobs had he not chosen to maximize his corporate profits. Successful guys are arrogant, we assume; that’s just part of the package. Rich guys also think they are above the law because they hire expensive lawyers when people accuse them of crimes. And let’s not respect any guy who makes a billion dollars and only keeps $100 million for himself. We want our heroes to suffer way more than that.

The cover of TIME on May 30^th featured a picture of a pig and the title “Sex. Lies. Arrogance. What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs.” Interestingly, I heard no protests about TIME’s characterization of powerful men (and by extension, men in general) as pigs. Apparently that worldview is universally accepted.

You all know the old joke: Why does a dog lick his own balls? Answer: Because he can. When you compare a man to a dog, both men and women think that observation sounds about right. Personally, I don’t mind being compared to a dog, because in our society, dogs are more respected than men. The comparison feels like an upgrade. (TIME’s comparison of men to pigs seemed like more of a lateral move, respect-wise, so no offense taken.)

Here’s a quick quiz: What is the common word for “hatred of women”? Most of you got the right answer in less than a second:  misogyny.

Question two, what is the common name for “hatred of men”?

Um…

The answer is misandry. But I would have also accepted “normal,” at least in America. Hatred of men for their supposed faults is pretty much business as usual in this country - so much so that we rarely label it. And if a man is powerful, that’s two strikes against him.

But this isn’t a post about men versus women, or the raging class war. It’s about psychics. Watch me suddenly turn this oil tanker on a dime, also known as bad writing.

Let’s stipulate for the sake of this discussion that lots of people think misogyny is a problem, and some people think misandry is a problem. Let’s throw racism into this discussion too. And don’t forget hatred of the rich. What do all of these forms of hate have in common?

Psychics!

A psychic is a person who can read minds. For example, a psychic can look deep into the private thoughts of a Tea Party member and know that the real reason he opposes the President’s fiscal policy is racism. A psychic can look at men - millions of them at once - and know that deep down, in their private thoughts, they hate women. Psychics can also know the thoughts and intentions of the rich, using as clues the inaccurate reports of the media, and the out-of-context yammering of pundits who have financial incentives to distort.

My own view is that some small part of the general population, perhaps 5%, is comprised of people who are either sociopaths, or simply batshit crazy. Some of those people are literally racists, gender supremacists, and robber barons. The rest of us live in fear that one of the psychics will accuse us of siding with the sociopaths and the batshit crazy folks in our private thoughts.

Watch the news this week and see how many stories involve psychics (pundits) claiming they have the power to read the minds of others and find evil of various sorts. Then watch the media manipulate society into punishing the accused thought-criminals because doing so is good for the news business. It’s the modern equivalent of witch hunts. In old Salem, you could identify a witch by a combination of coincidence and the ability to float. Today you can identify a racist and a misogynist and an immoral rich person using quotes taken out of context, guilt by association, and the accusations of psychics. We haven’t come far.