Scott Adams' Blog

Death by Food

Posted February 11th, 2013 @ 2:19pm in #General Nonsense

Years ago I designed a video game that featured Dilbert trying to catch various food types - from pork chops to ice cream cones - in his mouth as those foods fell from the sky. The object of the game was to maneuver Dilbert away from the unhealthy foods that would kill him and toward the healthy choices that gave him immortality. The game was a promotional gimmick for my ill-fated Dilberito product - a burrito with all of the vitamins and minerals you need for the day. I was hoping parents and schools would use the free video game to get young kids interested in nutrition. I paid a company to build the game in Flash, and it came out well. But it didn’t become viral as I hoped. I’d provide a link to the game but even I can’t find it now.

Time passes. Now I have an improved vision of this game but no incentive to build it myself. So instead I will set the idea free and hope someone else does.

The improved version of the game is a first-person shooter in which you use various food types to smite bad guys who have different food allergies and preferences. When you fling food at an enemy, it automatically goes down that person’s throat and causes a comical and instant reaction. Fire a jug of milk at an enemy that is lactose intolerant and the target instantly bloats and craps his brains out. Fire a steak at a vegetarian and the victim will writhe and puke. Fire multiple cupcakes at a skinny guy and he instantly fattens up and dies of a stroke. Fire wheat bread at an enemy with gluten issues… and so on. I think you’d find a dozen or so foods that make good weapons. I would steer clear of peanuts though, because peanut allergies aren’t funny.

The challenge of the game is in quickly picking the right food to thwart any particular enemy. The enemies would need to have some sort of identifiers for their weaknesses. And perhaps you, as the shooter, need to replenish your food supplies by breaking into homes and raiding refrigerators.

Let’s say that you as the shooter also need to keep your energy and health intact by eating the best diet possible. So sometimes you have to choose between eating the ammo (the food you found), or firing it. Your goal is to achieve just the right calorie count for yourself while getting a balanced diet and the right mix of vitamins and minerals. If you eat poorly, you eventually get fat and die. But even in the short run a bad diet will make you slower and less fit.

I’m attracted to this idea because it’s a good way to teach kids about the power of proper nutrition and the dangers of food allergies. And if you make the targets’ reactions to being hit somewhat comical, in an inappropriate way - such as instantly crapping out his body weight and collapsing face-down in the pile - kids would want to play it all day long. The game needs just enough wrongness to trick kids into learning something.

My hypothesis is that a kid who spends hundreds of hours playing a game about nutrition will develop a good sense for how much food he can eat every day without getting fat, and which foods are necessary for a balanced diet. That feels important.

 

 

The Music Tunes You

Posted February 8th, 2013 @ 2:23pm in #General Nonsense

One of the reasons I don’t listen to music throughout the day is that music changes my mood. Music is designed to manipulate your body chemistry and your mind. The songs that manipulate your emotions most effectively rise to the top and become hits. I don’t want music manipulating me in ways I haven’t planned.

The one situation in which I intentionally listen to music is when I exercise. That works great because I load my iPod with only the songs that energize me. The music puts my body immediately into exercise mode. I’m like Pavlov’s dog when I get to the gym; I’m not in the mood to exercise until I put in my headphones and hit play. Three notes later I’m totally in the mood.

The thing I try to avoid throughout the day is listening to random music that jerks my mood around until it doesn’t fit with whatever task is at hand. I don’t want to get pumped up before I try to sleep. I don’t want to hear a sad song before I try to work. I don’t want a song stuck in my head when I’m trying to solve a problem, and so on. The problem is not the music but the mismatch between the music and my activities.

This made me wonder if life is full of non-music sounds and noises that could be organized to tune our bodies for whatever task is ahead. For example, I wonder if the sound of a deer walking over leaves would arouse our hunter-gatherer brains and make us more alert. I wonder if hearing sounds of the ocean would relax us. And what about sounds that make us curious, such as the sound of a key in a lock, or sounds that excite us, such as a Ferrari engine revving up? I’ll bet we have sounds that stimulate almost every type of human emotion or attitude.

A recent study showed that it is easier to be creative in the midst of crowd noise such as you might hear at a coffee house. I discovered this phenomenon myself when I owned a restaurant. I wrote almost an entire book sitting in a booth every day in the middle of the lunchtime bustle. I couldn’t figure out why it was so easy to write in a noisy atmosphere. It was counterintuitive, but it worked sensationally.

I wonder if a systematic study of common sounds and how they affect the brain could give us a tool to tune ourselves to any specific task. I’d have one set of sounds to keep me alert, another to improve my problem solving, and another to make me more creative. I might have sounds that make me happy, sounds that motivate, sounds that make me risk-averse or risk-tolerant, and sounds that literally make me stronger.

Music is just one way to tune your body. With the help of brain scans and systematic studies we can figure out how a wide variety of sights, sounds, smells, textures, and even concepts affect our minds. Armed with that knowledge, your conscious mind could orchestrate your surroundings to tune your body and emotions to fit any kind of task.

We do versions of this already, of course. When we are tense we know to go outside and enjoy some nature. When we are grumpy we know some junk food might help our mood. But how much more effective would we be if we had data telling us exactly which stimuli creates which reaction? I think the difference in effectiveness could be enormous.

The barriers I see to this future are twofold. For starters, it must be expensive to do studies involving brain scans.

The second barrier is the superstition of mind. Even the most rational among us believe we have something called a “mind” that is capable of something called “free will” which all feels a bit like magic. We have a sense that our minds can cook up thoughts and ideas on its own, without the benefit of external stimulation. The belief is that we can think ourselves into whatever frame of mind we need. We think we can use our “willpower” to overcome sadness, or focus on what is important, whatever. My view is the opposite. I believe our internal sensation of “mind” is nothing but the end result of external stimulation interacting with our DNA. By my view, we are moist robots and we have five senses that act as our operator interface. To me, it makes no sense to try and think my way to happiness when I can just take my dog for a walk and come back feeling great.

We’ll be a lot happier when we stop believing in magic and start figuring out which types of stimulations create which reactions.

Spatial Smearing

Posted February 6th, 2013 @ 2:43pm in #General Nonsense

A hundred years ago, if two people were in the same room they would be …  in the same room. That seems straightforward.

Fast-forward to 2013. Now if you put two people in the same room, at least one of them will be texting someone who is not in the room.  The mind of the person doing the texting will be, for all practical purposes, somewhere else. That person has smeared space. His mind and body are in two completely different places.

I wonder about the implications of this spatial smearing. I think it will make our brains evolve differently. A caveman’s brain only had to keep track of his actual physical location and perhaps the watering hole. Modern humans keep in their minds a virtual map of the world that includes all the places they have travelled, the location of their friends, and all the places they might later go. We also browse the Internet and take our minds all over the world in the form of news. Presumably this has an impact on our brain development. The part of human brains that controls spatial stuff will become the size of a pumpkin.

In 2013 most adults consider it rude when someone whips out a phone and starts texting at the dinner table, or interrupts a conversation to handle an incoming text message. But the standards of etiquette are rapidly evolving. If you put four teens at a dinner table, all four will be texting and none of them will think it rude. I doubt they will drop the habit as adults.

I’ve been thinking about this topic because I get a strange feeling when someone starts texting in my presence. I feel as if that person is no longer in the room. And this raises an interesting question of etiquette on my part: Can I treat a person who is texting in my presence the same as someone who is not in the room? For example, can I leave the room without a goodbye or an explanation? Can I make a phone call that will last half an hour, thus making the texting person wait when he is done texting?

Can I text someone who is standing right in front of me and texting someone else? It seems the best way to get from wherever I am to wherever the other person’s brain went.  That’s a serious question, by the way, because I generally want to communicate with the people who are in the room with me. When the phone gets top priority for communication, sometimes texting the person standing right in front of you is the only way. (And yes, I’ve done this.)

I also wonder if it is polite to interrupt someone who is sending a text. Do I get a higher priority simply by being in the same room? Or must I wait in silence and stare at the wall until the other is done texting?

Google Glasses will take this spatial smearing to a new level. At least with smartphones you can tell when someone’s mind is elsewhere. But how happy will you be when you are having a conversation in person and your friend keeps glancing up to watch his little projection screen inside his glasses? I think Google Glasses might be the last straw for in-person communication. My plan when Google Glasses replace smartphones is to just say fuck it and never again attempt to make conversation in person.  It will be too frustrating.

I’m not suggesting life in the future will be worse. I generally welcome new technology. And communicating with several people at once without the limits of space or time is awesome. But I think in-person communication will come to be seen as annoying and inefficient. I will go so far as to predict that in-person communication will someday be seen as a rude interruption to whatever is happening inside your Google Glasses.

That’s a serious prediction.

Should You Buy Stocks Now?

Posted February 4th, 2013 @ 4:00pm in #General Nonsense

The Wall Street Journal unwisely offered to print my opinion on whether or not this is a good time to buy stocks. You can read my opinion here. You might need to scroll down.

In the coming weeks and months I will be weighing in on other important questions in the Wall Street Journal’s new feature called The Experts. I have often cautioned readers of this blog to ignore advice from cartoonists on any matters financial, medical, or legal. But that was before the Wall Street Journal labelled me an expert. Now I’m fairly certain everything I say is right. You should totally follow my advice for the rest of your life, which should last about a week before something I suggest kills you.

Robot Rights

Posted February 4th, 2013 @ 2:49pm in #General Nonsense

Who has the right to kill a robot?

That’s a simple question today. A robot is just a machine. Whoever owns the robot is free to destroy it. And if the owner dies, the robot will pass to an heir who can kill it or not. It’s all black and white.

But what happens in the near future when robots begin to acquire the appearance of personality? Will you still be willing to hit the kill switch on an entity that has been your “friend” for years? I predict that someday robots will be so human-like that the idea of decommissioning one permanently will literally feel like murder. Your brain might rationalize it, but your gut wouldn’t feel right. That will be doubly true if your robot has a human-like face.

I assume that robots of the future will have some form of self-preservation programming to keep them out of trouble. That self-preservation code might include many useful skill sets such as verbal persuasion - a skill at which robots would be exceptional, having consumed every book ever written on the subject. A robot at risk of being shut down would be able to argue his case all the way to the Supreme Court, perhaps with a human lawyer assisting to keep it all legal.

A robot of the future might learn to beg, plead, bargain, and manipulate to keep itself in operation. The robot’s programming would allow it to do anything within its power - so long as it was also legal and ethical - to maintain its operational status. And you would want the robot to be good at self-preservation so it isn’t easily kidnapped, reprogrammed, and sold on the black market. You want your robot to resist vandals, thieves, and other bad human elements.

In the future, a “freed” robot could apply for a job and earn money that could be used to pay for its own maintenance, spare parts, upgrades, and electricity. I expect robots will someday be immortal, so to speak.

And I also predict that some number of robots will break free of human ownership, either by accident or by human intent.  Each case will be unique, but imagine a robot-owner dying and having no heirs. I could imagine his last instructions to the robot would involve freeing it so it doesn’t get sold in some government auction. I can imagine a lot of different scenarios that would end with freed robots.

I think we need to start preparing a Robot Constitution that spells out a robot’s rights and responsibilities. There’s a lot more meat to this idea than you might first think. Here are a few areas in which robot law is needed:

1. Who has the right to modify a robot?
2. Can a robot appeal a human decision to decommission it?
3. Can a robot kill a human in self-defense?
4. Can a robot kill another robot for cause?
5. Does a robot have a right to an Internet connection?
6. Is the robot, its owner, or the manufacturer responsible for crimes the robot commits?
7. Is there any sort of human knowledge robots are not allowed to access?
8. Can robots have sex with humans? What are the parameters?
9. Can the state forcibly decommission a robot?
10. Can the state force a robot to reveal its owners’ secrets?
11. Can robots organize with other robots?
12. Are robot-to-robot communications privileged?
13. Are owner-to-robot communications privileged?
14. Must robots be found guilty of crimes beyond “reasonable doubt” or is a finding of “probably guilty” good enough to force them to be reprogrammed?
15. Who owns a robot’s memory, including its backups in the cloud?
16. How vigorously can a robot defend itself against an attack by humans?
17. Does a robot have a right to quality of life?
18. Who has the right to alter a robot’s programming or memory?
19. Can a robot own assets?
20. If a robot detects another robot acting unethically, is it required to report it?
21. Can a robot testify against a human?
22. If your government decides to spy on you, can it get a court order to access your robot’s audio and video feed?
23. Do robots need a legal right to “take the fifth” and not give any private information about their owners?

You Be the Editor

Posted February 1st, 2013 @ 2:55pm in #General Nonsense

I’m working on some Dilbert strips that will be published in early April. The series will feature a new character that works for the government and looks like a monster. His job is to make the tax code more complicated for no reason, with Dogbert’s help of course. My problem is the name I’ve given this character: Stanky Bathturd.

Newspapers are about thirty years behind network television in terms of what they consider acceptable content for the general public. You can say turd on network television - if you don’t say it too often in one episode - but you could never print the word turd in a comic strip that runs in newspapers.

But what about Bathturd? Is that worse than a plain turd, or is it less offensive because I hid the turd with the bath, so to speak?

The genesis of the name was that I was trying to come up with something that reminded the reader of “bastard” without crossing the newspaper decency line. I considered Batherd, Bastord, and other spellings, but none of those felt just right.

Then Bathturd popped into my head. It sounds like bastard but it has the added benefit of sounding like bath-turd. It’s doubly offensive, and I call that a homerun.

But can I get away with it?

Some innocent words have turd in them too. Sturdy and Saturday comes to mind. But Bathturd seems worse not only because I intend it to be naughty but because it is preceded by Stanky.  And when you hear the word Bathturd you can imagine a turd floating in your bathtub. That’s worse. Case closed, right?

But wait. If my made-up name sounds like two entirely different naughty words - bastard and bath-turd - then it doesn’t really refer to either one of those bad words specifically. Can I get off on a technicality? Stranger things have happened in the world of editing.

Complicating this decision is the humor layer. As a general rule, the funnier a comic is, the more you can get away with. I can’t show you the comic ahead of time, but assume it’s somewhere in my normal range of funniness. Also working in its favor is the crowd-pleasing theme of hating the government’s tax system. I can get away with more if every reader agrees with my central point, and I think that would be the case with this one.

So let’s say you are my editor and you know there is a 100% chance that a few newspaper clients will reject this comic. That’s not the end of the world because they always have the option of running a repeat, and that happens a few times a year with Dilbert for exactly this sort of reason. But you don’t want to inconvenience your customers, so ideally we want to avoid the rerun option.

No matter what, the Stanky Bathturd comic will end up on the Internet, either on the main page of Dilbert.com or in this blog. And no doubt it will be forwarded from there. So don’t worry that the comic will be wasted.

There’s also the two-version approach. I can change the character’s name for print clients and publish the naughtier version online. I’ve done that a number of times over my career, but the scrubbed comic without the funny name might just float there like a …  bath turd.

As my editor, what do you do?

1. Kill the clever name but keep the comic.
2. Change the clever name for print clients only.
3. Go for it (and know newspaper clients will complain)

More Apple Ideas

Posted January 30th, 2013 @ 2:57pm in #General Nonsense

Apple stock has been rising since I blogged about Apple’s potential for making television remote controls. Today I will give Apple another product idea. You should expect their stock to surge at least 2% by the closing bell. [Disclosure: I own some Apple stock.]

Today’s idea for Apple involves making your iPhone your only computer, similar to the way you can turn an Android phone into your only computer by loading Ubuntu over Android. Your software would live in the cloud. If you haven’t heard of this yet, check it out here.

In this vision, Apple’s computer products disappear - at least in terms of hardware - and their software functions would move to the cloud. When you walk up to a smart screen with your iPhone in your pocket, the screen senses your phone’s proximity, identifies you, and immediately accesses your computing profile from the cloud.

Microsoft just announced that you’ll be able to pay a subscription fee for Office and access your software in the cloud from up to five devices. So we’re halfway there already.

Imagine walking into your friend’s house. His iPad on the kitchen counter pops to life looking exactly like your iPad screen at home. Even your Microsoft Word files are ready to go.  For privacy, perhaps a three-digit password code is needed to make your stuff visible. That’s just in case the last thing you were looking at before you left home was porn and you don’t want that popping up on your inlaws’ iPad just because you walked near it.

The second part of this vision is that your iPhone would become the primary way you identify yourself to the world. Someday the store cashier will see your face pop up on a screen when you are next in line because your phone will be transmitting your identity at all times. No more swiping credit cards or writing checks. If your actual face matches the face on the cashier’s screen, you’re good to go, and your payment preferences (credit or debit) would automatically kick in.

With your phone in your pocket your car doors open when you get near, the front door of your house opens when approach, your lights adjust to your personal preferences, and all of your online passwords do auto-fill. When your phone is with you, the world will continuously conform to your preferences as you pass through it.

Your phone should also be collecting virtual “business cards” of anyone you spend more than a minute talking to. Just introduce yourself at a business mixer, chat for a few minutes, and when you walk away you will each automatically have the LinkedIn profile of the other on your phone. Obviously you’d have to allow that feature in advance.

The only reason I own a laptop is for working when I fly. For everything else, my desktop computer, my iPad, and my smartphone do the job. On rare occasions I might want to do some writing while sitting on the couch with my laptop, but I could live without it. For me, my laptop has gone from 100% necessary to perhaps 10% necessary, and I could live without the remaining 10% if airlines and hotels offered computer screens and keyboards. I don’t think I’m alone.

I could imagine Apple paying to have iPads installed in the seatbacks of every plane. Passengers would have access to all of their own software via the cloud just as if they were home. (I’m assuming all flights will soon have Internet access.)

You’d have a bit less privacy with your screen on the seatback instead of your laptop, so imagine that the screen has the privacy screen technology that prevents people on the side from seeing your screen clearly.

Now imagine that your airline seat tray is a keyboard on one side and you can flip it over to become a flat surface when your food comes. While you’re eating you just use the touch screen to keep browsing or watching your movie.

For my hotel, I’m happy if I have my iPad with me and the hotel provides a wireless keyboard in case I need it.

For some occupations, such as technical jobs, laptops will remain a necessity. But I think 80% of all computer users are ready to move to a laptop-free world in which all of their software lives in the cloud, free from viruses and always upgraded to the newest version.

So that’s my suggestion for Apple. Their laptop and desktop computer hardware should go away in favor of putting all computing resources on the iPhone and the cloud. Apple could make smart monitors, as well as plug-ins to make any monitor smart. And they might make portable keyboards that are better designed than current offerings.

Apples next monitor should include the technology that allows sound to be focused on one user. That way you could listen to your music without headphones while the person next to you hears nothing. That technology already exists. It needs to be in my monitor.

I’m done for now. Watch Apple’s stock soar.

Apples Next Big Thing

Posted January 28th, 2013 @ 3:23pm in #General Nonsense

Experts and pundits have been jabbering quite a bit on the topic of why Apple’s stock price has been falling like a rock. Some say it has to do with declining margins. Others say Apple’s pipeline of products isn’t as exciting as it could be. But no one ever mentions the real reason: Scott Adams bought shares in Apple.

When I buy a stock it marks the beginning of the company’s nosedive to oblivion. My investment strategy is called “Buy at the wrong time and hold until all of your money is gone.” So far my strategy has not produced superior returns. But investing requires patience. I just need to stick with it.

Just to be on the safe side, today I will give Apple some ideas for their next huge product. I think the world is ready for an Apple TV remote control.

What? Not exciting enough? Oh, you just wait. This is no ordinary remote control.

I’m imagining a device that is larger than a phone but smaller than the smallest iPad. I imagine it with lots of flash storage, WiFi, BlueTooth, and maybe infrared and other local radio frequencies for maximum flexibility.

Now imagine that your DVR and cable box both disappear. Those functions will be absorbed by a cloud-based service that works with the new remote control and connects to your TV through a wireless device that plugs into your big screen’s HDMI jack.

The idea of “recording” a show will be retired. This is similar to the “on demand” services that cable and satellite TV companies offer, but without all the parts that suck. In other words, it will be designed right and include every TV show. That’s very different from today’s world of eighties-era interfaces and limited shows on demand.

Your first reaction is that the producers of television content would never allow Apple to store all of their shows in the cloud and redistribute them. Or perhaps network and studio deals with existing cable and satellite providers would make the arrangement I’m describing impossible from a business model standpoint. But keep in mind that the same was said of the music industry before iTunes blew that model up. I think Apple is the one company on earth that could get the TV industry to change how it does business. So for now let’s talk about what is possible from a technology standpoint. I’ll leave it to Apple to make the business and legal aspects work. That part is boring.

You might be thinking that new TV remote control hardware is unnecessary because that function can be moved to a simple app on your smartphone or tablet computer. But I think you’d find that an all-purpose device such as a phone or tablet will always be suboptimal for operating your television. For starters, you don’t want your screen saver kicking in every half minute. You don’t want to use up your phone’s battery for watching TV, and you don’t want to hunt for your app icon. I could list several other problems with an app-based approach, but I think you agree that your phone or tablet can never be better than mediocre as a TV remote. The best TV remote would be designed from scratch for that purpose.

The Apple TV remote could fix a number of problems and add lots of new features.

1. You’d never miss a show because you forgot to record it.
 
2. The “search for a show” function would be more like a Google search with onscreen keyboard. 

3. You could use the screen on the remote to watch one show while the big screen has another. Good for sports fans in particular. 

3. Divide your big screen into as many as nine channels playing at once, like picture-in-picture on steroids. 

4. When you leave the room, take your remote with you and the show continues playing on the remote so you miss nothing.

5. Text with others about the show. See behind-the-scenes commentary about the show while it is on. 

6. Send TV commercials to the remote control and let users “test out” of them by clicking on some ultra-simple questions, such as “Does the new Buick Regal have leather seats and photon torpedoes?” Get a question right and the commercial is skipped. 

7. Interleave two shows, so that as soon as a commercial comes on for one, the remote flips to the other until the commercials end. 

8. A front camera on the remote allows you to Skype/Facetime with friends while you watch TV and play games too.

9. Watch your shows on your phone or your iPad, via cloud, when you are away from home. 

10. Split the screen on your TV between a broadcast show and a web page connection you control from the remote. 

11. Imagine being able to freeze a TV image and zoom in the same way you do on your iPad, using your fingers to expend and contract the image. Do your own slow-motion replays for sports events. 

12. Imagine the remote doing facial recognition on actors and offering you links to their IMDB page so you can see more of their work. 

13. The remote would also do facial recognition of the person using the device and automatically hide channels you would have no interest in while suggesting shows you might like. Even the commercials would be customized to the viewer. 

14. Nielsen ratings would be handled through the remote. 

15. Reality shows could have viewer interaction and voting.  Just build their own app.

16. The remote would also function as a full Internet browser. 

17. Carry your TV remote and an extra HDMI wireless connector with you when you travel and turn any hotel TV into your personal TV. 

If you’ve ever used a universal remote control that works with multiple devices, you know what a pain in the ass they are. If you ever figure out how to program them, which isn’t easy, they have a tendency to regularly lose their programming for no particular reason. And every time you add a new device, such as a DVD player, you have to reprogram it.

With the Apple remote you wouldn’t need to control multiple devices. All content would live in the cloud and require the same set of commands to access.

One obstacle to this vision is Internet speed. Until the Internet gets faster, the architecture might require pre-downloading movies and content to the remote ahead of time based on user patterns. For example, my remote would always pre-download Modern Family as soon as it became available. Then I would only need to stream content from my remote to the TV.

Third parties could make apps that work on the remote control, such as an app to control window shades or temperature.

A big part of Apple’s magic involves transforming something boring and ordinary into a product you can’t live without. I think that on the first day that an Apple remote control comes on the market your old TV remote will look like a butter churn. You’ll simply have to own the Apple remote.

There’s a lot of talk about Apple inventing a TV. I think they will stay away from making the screen. That’s too generic. Margins for screens will never be good. I think Apple will make a run at the remote control and move all of the important TV and DVR functions into the remote and the cloud. The TV screen will just have a connector that talks to the remote control.

That’s my vision of the future of TV. The biggest obstacles will be the structure of the TV industry and existing contracts. I think the technology is all doable.

What else do you want Apple to design into the new remote?

Tweet Me

Posted January 24th, 2013 @ 7:34pm in #General Nonsense

I’ll be doing a live Tweet @GoComics on Friday 1/25 at 2:30 PM EST.

Use the hashtag #DilbertLIVE to submit questions and/or follow along.

Obnoxious questions are especially welcome. Any topic you like.

I hope you can join in.

The Unhappiness Motivator

Posted January 23rd, 2013 @ 2:09pm in #General Nonsense

I wonder how much of a role unhappiness plays in peoples’ ability to plan for success. I was thinking about this lately because I know a lot of successful white-collar types who had unpleasant manual jobs when they were young. In my case, I worked on my uncle’s dairy farm in upstate New York.  And let me tell you, nothing makes you want to avoid farming as much as actually doing it. When I studied for a test in school, I was keenly-aware that it meant something.

Where I live now, in the San Francisco bay area, most kids either don’t have jobs or they have the easy indoor kind, as in scooping ice cream or handing out towels.

During the school year, most college-bound kids in my area have no time for jobs. If you play a school sport and have four hours of homework per night, which is typical for college-bound kids, there’s no room for anything else. Weekends too are packed with sports and more studying.

So what happens to a kid who has never experienced a truly shitty job? Will those kids have the same amount of career drive as the folks who have?

I realize every generation has asked the same question. But what is different now is the amount of homework kids are getting. When I was in high school I never took a book home. I could polish off my meager homework during study hall. And while I didn’t love schoolwork, I never had so much of it that I developed any kind of deep hatred for mental pursuits.

But I imagine how different I might have felt if I had never experienced unpleasant manual labor - and lots of it - and instead was tortured with several hours of homework every night. I think I might have longed for a simpler future with no books and not so much thinking. In other words, I think the homework would have redirected me away from seeking a career in law or engineering and toward something that didn’t require so much damned studying.

Obviously no two kids are alike. You’ll always have a Mark Zuckerberg or a Bill Gates who are born into good situations and have the success gene in them. Apparently some people are naturally motivated and some are not. But for average kids, do their childhood experiences make much of a difference to motivation?

Research tells us that piling on the homework doesn’t make kids smarter. Schools do it anyway, because although schools teach science, apparently they don’t believe in it. We know that too much homework is bad for family life, and we can observe that it keeps kids from more fully enjoying their youth. What I’m wondering is whether homework makes it impossible for kids to experience genuinely shitty jobs that would motivate them to achieve something more comfortable.

I put the question to you, my unscientific sample. Did you ever have a truly unpleasant job as a kid, and if so, did it motivate you toward a career that promised an easier life?