Scott Adams' BlogYoda the Dog
I washed my dog, Snickers, yesterday. Apparently that process turns a dog into a Jedi master.
“Still damp, I am.” 0 Comments
“Still damp, I am.” 0 Comments
Choose Your Immortality
I wrote this article for TIME this morning.
Dead Arm
Have you ever done this?
1. Sleep on your arm until it goes numb.
2. Wake up and realize you can’t feel your arm.
3. Try waking it up with the other arm.
I assume all of you have done those three things. It’s the next step I wonder about. Do you then panic because you think this time the dead arm might be permanent?
I do.
In those first seconds, I’m always thinking some version of this: “Oh, no!!! This time is different. Now my arm is dead and it’s never getting better. I’m a one-armed guy now. I’ll have to start drawing left-handed. I wonder if anyone will notice my dead arm. Should I keep it in a sling so people know it doesn’t work or should I ask my doctor to lop it off? If only I had rolled over even once during the night. But nooo, I have to sleep on my arm until it dies. That is so like me. What happens if I sleep on the other one tomorrow night? Can I learn to use a fork with my feet?”
Then at about the fifth second, some feeling returns to my arm and I experience hope. I also realize that if people could lose their arms after sleeping on them there wouldn’t be many people left on earth with two good arms. Apparently the rational part of my mind wakes up last.
As full feeling returns to my arm I experience an emotion similar to how I imagine people with incurable diseases feel when someone unexpectedly invents a cure. It makes me happy to be alive. I want to buy a motorcycle, kiss a baby, donate to charity, and travel the world. Life is wonderful, for about a minute.
Then I realize I’m just a dumbass who thinks his arm is ruined every time he sleeps on it.
Biometric Scanners
Apple’s new iPhone will have a fingerprint reader on the home button for security.Imagine if the government required fingerprint scanners on any new phone sold after a certain date. And then imagine the government requiring phone companies to phase out service to any cell phone that doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor.
Now imagine that your phone becomes your only wallet and only means of paying for stuff. That seems likely at some point. The government won’t print cash forever, and credit cards are redundant with your phone.
What would that world look like?
For starters, it would be the end of a lot of crime. The government would know who was doing what and where it was happening. There would be no such thing as committing a crime and going on the run unless you had friends buying you food and necessities with their own phones. And even then the government could detect who your friends and family are and look for spikes in their food-buying patterns.
As I’ve written before, the apps and services that would be possible in a world where people have no privacy would be incredible. Life is mostly about moving people and things from wherever they happen to be to where they could better be used. When all the people and products in the world have a location and a history that is known to all, life could become almost magical. Your hotel room would adjust its temperature to your preferences before you finished checking in at the lobby. Every car on the road would have multiple passengers, cutting traffic and commute times in half. And those cars will drive themselves. When you approach any computer screen, your phone will act as the brains and bring up your home screen.
So that part is all good.
The only downside is that the government in such a world would have complete control over the people.
That’s a large downside.
But by then the government might have the highest approval rating of all time simply because life is so pleasant and the economy would be turbo-charged by all the new possibilities that come out of knowing where everyone is and what they want.
I’m an optimist, so I wonder if there is any future technology that will help citizens control their governments and neutralize the risks that stem from a total loss of privacy.
I think there is.
For starters, the government could make it illegal to campaign in any fashion but on the Internet, which would be free to any legitimate candidate. The process would involve local candidates winning in their own towns, even if they are running for national office, before competing in, for example, a county-wide election and then statewide and finally national. By the time the election reaches the national level, the number of candidates would be down to a handful. And no campaign money would have tainted the process.
Then I’d want more transparency on the workings of government itself. So let’s say government officials are required by law to hold work-related meeting in rooms that are wired to record everything happening. Every meeting would be encrypted and stored on government servers. One would still need a court order and a good reason to view any recordings, but I have to think it would keep most politicians from doing anything too outrageous. Even their phone calls would be recorded.
People could still meet in person to collude and scheme. But in today’s world I think that would seem like too much trouble. Ninety percent of government corruption would disappear overnight if all government conversations were recorded.
If public oversight of the government stays as is, it would be risky for citizens to give up too much privacy in return for a better economy and richer life. But if technology allows citizens to better monitor their elected representatives, perhaps that restores the balance of power.
The question of the day is this: If the government said it would record all of its own conversations, would you be okay with a law requiring fingerprint scanners on all future phones and a phase-out of cash and physical credit cards over time? Let’s say it’s a ten year plan.
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My new Non-Dilbert book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big – Sort of the Story of My Life, available October 22nd, is ready for pre-order on Amazon now.
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Does This Look Right?
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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Research shows that men are more attracted to women who smile.
That’s no surprise to men. Ask any married man and he’ll tell you that the corny old saying “Happy wife, happy life” rings true. The happier a woman is, the more beautiful she appears to men. It makes sense that men would want to make the women in their life more beautiful, for entirely selfish reasons, and so you would expect men to go out of their way to induce happiness in their female mates. That’s a gross generalization, obviously, but it roughly matches my observations; most husbands seem to want their wives to be happy. The men might not be succeeding, for any variety of reasons, but they certainly want it.
The more interesting aspect of the same research is that women did NOT prefer men who smiled. In fact, younger women were more attracted to men who had a look of shame. The look that women liked the least in men was happiness.
Anyone see a problem with that?
If the science is right, we’d expect to see marriages in which men are trying to please their wives, thus making the wives more smiley and attractive, whereas women would be trying to squeeze the happiness out of the men in their lives and replace it with shame, thus making the men more attractive.
I won’t go so far as to say that matches my observation, but the science points in that direction. So I put the question to you. According to your lifetime of observations, and very generally speaking, do you see a pattern in which men want to please women but women want to keep men in a frame of mind that is closer to shame than happiness?
To put this in more concrete terms, do you see a pattern in which husbands try to please wives and wives respond to their attempts with criticism? That would look like this:
Man: “I repainted the living room while you were gone, just like you wanted.”
Woman: “Looks like the wrong color.”
I hope the science is wrong. I’d hate to live in that world.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
My new non-Dilbert book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Sort of the Story of My Life, is due out on October 22nd and I am happy to report that the reviewers are pleased with it. You’ll need to navigate to the 5th page on this Barron’s review to see one reviewer’s opinion.
Readers of this blog will not be surprised that the descriptions and reviews you see of this book won’t entirely capture its essence. That’s because I designed the book to work on three levels. The top level is a series of stories about some of my most embarrassing failures. You might enjoy reading about the face-plants I’ve taken along the road. You’ll also hear the strange story of how I lost my ability to speak for over three years to an allegedly incurable brain problem.
The next level describes the strategies I’ve used since college to capitalize on my failures, ramp up my personal energy, increase my market value, and create a situation in which luck could more easily find me. It’s not an advice book, but you might find it useful to learn about one person’s unusual strategy for success and how it all turned out. Generally speaking, before you try anything risky, it’s a good idea to ask others how they approached the same situation. I hope my experience is helpful in that sense.
The third level in this book is emotional. I designed the book to raise the energy level of the reader without the reader knowing that’s the plan. If I succeeded, which is an admittedly rare situation, readers will simply feel good while reading it. And that energy can be useful for whatever you hope to achieve in life.
I can’t predict how the market will receive this book, but I’m fairly sure it’s my best work, and that’s enough for me at this point in my life. I feel as if I didn’t have the skills until recently to write this tale the way it needed to be written. I’d like to thank each of you regular blog readers for helping me hone those skills. I test a lot of things out on you folks and your reactions are my classroom. I take a hybrid business/science approach to writing in which I test a hypothesis, observe reader reactions, and try to learn something. You’ll recognize some of my thought patterns in the book, but it’s 98% new material.
The How to Fail… book is the sum of what I’ve learned over a lifetime filtered the way you taught me to write. If you’re curious, you can preorder the book now, and it will make me happy if you do.
On Being Judgy
I’m not judgmental when it comes to other people’s lifestyle choices and I’ve always wondered if that is learned or natural behavior.
I saw a segment on 60 Minutes recently in which researchers purported to discover some sort of gene-based morality in babies, as well as a preference for people like themselves. That makes sense from a survival standpoint. I assume I have as much gene-based bias as any other human. But for some reason it doesn’t translate into being judgmental about people in my everyday life. I’m hoping this is an example of mind over genes, but I have no way of knowing for sure.
What I do know is that over the years I have developed a worldview that makes the idea of being judgmental feel nonsensical. Here are the pillars of my worldview, some of which you already know from earlier posts.
1. Willpower isn’t a real thing. Some people just have greater urges than others. If I resist a cookie and you don’t, it doesn’t say anything about your willpower, but it might say you are hungrier than I am, or you simply like cookies more than I do.
2. I don’t believe in a creator. I see humans as a collection of particles bumping into each other. Or maybe we’re a computer simulation created by some earlier civilization. In either case, no group of particles, or arrangement of ones and zeroes, is superior to another.
3. I have no individual skill that is not topped by at least one person in every demographic group. Every group has people who are smarter than me, stronger than me, kinder than me, more generous than me, more talented, and so on.
4. There is no logical way to rank talents or virtues. Is one person’s excellent musical skill somehow better than another’s good parenting skills? Is your kindness better than your friend’s work ethic? None of these things can be compared objectively.
5. Genes are often destiny. You were probably born with your personality and your preferences, in which case you are not to blame. Or you might have been the victim of some sort of nastiness in your past that changed you permanently, and that probably wasn’t your “fault” in any objective way either. Your particles bumped around until something bad happened, nothing more.
6. For purely practical reasons, the legal system assigns “fault” to some actions and excuses others. We don’t have a good alternative to that system. But since we are all a bunch of particles bumping around according to the laws of physics (or perhaps the laws of our programmers) there is no sense of “fault” that is natural to the universe.
I’m avoiding the term “free will” here because experience shows that using that term turns into a debate about the definition. I prefer to say we’re all just particles bumping around. Personally, I don’t see how any of those particles, no matter how they are arranged, can sometimes choose to ignore the laws of physics and go their own way.
I’m curious about the rest of you. Are you judgy? And if so, do you think it is learned or genetic?
The Cost of Privacy
Privacy is a good thing, right?
Almost everyone agrees with that statement.
Assuming the majority is correct - and privacy is a good thing - you probably have examples from your own law-abiding life in which losing your privacy created a lasting problem for you. Can you tell me a few stories like that?
Probably not.
Okay, now can you give me some examples in which sacrificing your privacy worked to your advantage? I’ll bet you can.
Maybe you shared your medical history with your doctor and that allowed him to treat you more effectively.
Maybe you put your personal information on an online dating service and it helped you find the love of your life.
Maybe you showed your past tax returns to your bank and it helped you secure a mortgage to your dream house.
Maybe you were secretly gay or lesbian and it was a huge relief when you came out.
Maybe you installed a device on your car that allows your insurance company to track your driving history in return for lower rates.
Maybe you enjoy sharing your life on Facebook.
Maybe Google tracked your search history and later served up an ad that was exactly what you were looking for.
Maybe your favorite airline gave you a free upgrade because they know you fly with them often.
Maybe you put your work history on LinkedIn and someone offered you a job.
We tend to fear losing our privacy until it’s gone. Then we wonder what all the fuss was about. It turns out that the bigger challenge than retaining privacy is getting anyone to care about you at all.
I know, I know: You want to lecture me about how an evil government can use your private information to hurt you. You might even toss in a Hitler reference or two because that helps any argument.
But I would counter that you’re describing a situation in which the government has privacy and you don’t. I’m not in favor of that situation either. If the government were to operate with complete transparency, not counting some national security secrets, law-abiding citizens would have nothing to fear. The government and the governed would keep each other under control. So don’t confuse a problem created by too much privacy (the government’s) with one caused by too little privacy.
Let’s game out another scenario in which citizens give up privacy and see if that seems better or worse. I’ll pick gun registration as my example because it’s a hot topic. Suppose that tomorrow you could go online and see which of your neighbors registered their legal guns. What would you do next?
Well, if you don’t already own a gun, you probably get one quickly because burglars can see the same information you see. You don’t want to be the one unarmed home on the block. And because you’re a good citizen, you get a gun safe, maybe trigger locks, and you train every member of the family in proper gun use. Now every home in your neighborhood has a small armory.
My best guess is that in that scenario the burglary rate in the neighborhood goes down. And instead of gun registration leading to government disarmament of the public as many fear, my best guess is that gun ownership would expand. And if the burglary rate goes down as a result, politicians would be happy to take credit.
The studies on gun ownership and crime rates are sketchy in my opinion, so no one can safely predict what might happen if every neighbor had a registered gun. Maybe that would lead to gun duels in the streets, suburban warlords, and sniper attacks on backyard barbecues. But historical patterns suggest it would be more good than bad. I say that because every case I can think of in which adult citizens intelligently gave up privacy in this country turned out well.
I can imagine insurance companies offering lower rates to customers who have passed gun safety programs and/or own gun safes. In the long run, you might have more gun ownership but a higher rate of gun safety. It’s hard to know where that nets out.
Here’s a story from my personal life in which giving up privacy helped tremendously. For most of my life I harbored an embarrassing secret that I am about to reveal to you: I can’t use restrooms if any other human is nearby. For decades I believed I had some sort of mental problem. I was ashamed of my condition and never spoke of it. I continuously made excuses for avoiding situations with inadequate bathroom privacy. The inconvenience of it all was debilitating. Leaving the house for more than an hour was a nightmare because I couldn’t be sure I would have access to a bathroom I could use.
Then several years ago, an unexpected thing happened. My older brother went public, website and all, with the same problem. We grew up together and somehow neither of us was aware of the other’s situation. I later learned that the condition has a genetic component. It goes by the medical name paruresis, or more commonly shy bladder, and perhaps 5% of the public have it.
My brother gave up his privacy because he thought it would help others. And it has. My own problem diminished by about 75% within a year of learning that other people suffered from the same condition. I started admitting my condition to my friends, only to learn that a surprising number have the same problem. And once I was open about it, I found I could say without embarrassment which bathroom situations work for me and which ones don’t. When I let go of my privacy on that topic, it improved my life considerably. With the exception of the Oakland A’s stadium restrooms, in which men stand shoulder to shoulder to pee in a trough, I can now use normal public restrooms without much trouble. And all of that happened because my brother gave up his privacy on the topic and I followed his lead.
About 5% of the people reading my story just took a deep breath and felt normal for the first time in their lives. You can thank my brother’s lack of privacy for that.
Syriausly?
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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Back in March I predicted a 20% correction in the stock market sometime in 2013. I based the prediction on my hypothesis that the financial markets are manipulated by a loose network of big players. I have no hard evidence for that hypothesis. All I know for sure are the following facts:
1. Markets act in a way that is consistent with manipulation.
2. The big players have the means and the motive to manipulate markets.
3. Collusion is nearly impossible to detect if done right.
4. Some of the most respected firms in the finance world have recently been caught doing unethical and illegal things.
That’s the backdrop.
This week, our so-called government announced it has secret evidence that a dictator in the Middle East used chemical weapons on his own citizens.
Pattern Recognition: ON
Here’s some more background to keep in mind: The President of the United States recently supported the closing of medical marijuana dispensaries in California and never offered a reason for his change of policy from hands-off to go-to-jail. The new policy wasn’t even popular with voters. An observer has to assume money was behind the flip-flop. Maybe it was the private jail industry that wants to keep weed illegal. Maybe it was the booze lobbyists. All we know for sure is that President Obama changed his views on the topic and didn’t offer a reason. So he has a credibility problem where money is involved.
Now we citizens of the United States are being told that we might need to lob some bombs at Syria because someone over there allegedly used chemical weapons. Everyone agrees that the limited military action being contemplated won’t fix anything. But it certainly will drive down the financial markets.
One entirely plausible explanation for the administration’s position on Syria is that it has information we citizens don’t have, and shouldn’t have, and the government is acting in our best interest. Or maybe they really want to send the world a message that chemical warfare is a red line that can’t be crossed. Maybe the whole thing is an excuse to poke Putin in the eye and make his people scurry for cover because we’re still tweaked about the Snowden thing.
Any of that is possible.
The problem with believing any of those scenarios is that an equally good explanation for what we observe is that the defense industry, the news industry, and the market manipulators are, once again, moving in lock-step to gin up a war, generate weapons sales, improve news industry profits, and create huge profits for market manipulators.
As a citizen, I am forced to form an opinion using nothing but the questionable “facts” emerging in the news, plus my own guesses and suspicions. How does one form an opinion in that environment?
In a situation with so much at stake and so little reliable information, I default to the following rule: If you don’t know which choice is right, pick the one that costs the least to implement. So I don’t support bombing Syria; it sounds expensive.
I want to be clear that I’m not recommending a course of action for the United States. I don’t have access to the information that the decision-makers have. All I’m saying is that the government has a credibility problem where money is involved, and lots of money is riding on the Syria decision. The whole thing smells like bullshit to me.
Aspirations and Genes
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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I wonder if anyone has done an experiment like the one I’m about to describe. Let me know if you have heard of it.
The experiment would involve one set of slightly underfed mice that are not tall enough when on their hind legs to reach some extra food on a ledge in the cage. They’d smell it and want it, but they couldn’t reach. The food would always be there, day after day, just out of reach.
You’d need a control group of mice who are similarly underfed but have no shelf of food that is frustratingly beyond their reach.
I’m curious if the mice that have the shelf of food just above their reach would produce taller offspring, on average, than the control group.
If so, I would call that Aspirational Evolution. My hypothesis is that creatures with brains have evolved in a way that allows one generation to influence the genes of the next based on what the parents imagine they need to better survive.
I do know that if one generation of humans lifts weights, for example, it doesn’t automatically make their kids have bigger muscles. But going to the gym has no immediate survival advantage in the way that extra food has to a hungry mouse. Exercise registers to us as more of a rational decision that might pay off over the years. Hunger is right now, and emotional.
When humans get stressed, their bodies automatically produce one set of chemicals, and if they fall in love they produce another. There’s a lot going on in our bodies, chemistry-wise. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that our minds - and specifically our aspirations - positively influence the design of the sperm and eggs that are formed by our bodily juices.
Has anyone done that experiment?
