Scott Adams' Blog

National Intelligence

Posted July 2nd, 2012 @ 2:04pm in #General Nonsense

I wonder if a country as a whole can have intelligence. And if so, can that intelligence be increased?

I’m not talking about average test scores in schools, or average IQ levels. Those things are important, but they are only part of the picture. I’m talking about how effectively a nation as a whole can make decisions and navigate its position in the world. For example, China has a political system that seems to produce intelligent decisions. You might criticize China’s leadership for being heartless and brutal, but that’s a separate discussion. If you consider how effectively they pursue their country’s interests, their national intelligence seems quite high.

The United States, on the other hand, produces laws and foreign policy that don’t always seem to be the result of intelligence or even good intentions. Our actions are a weird stew of religion, politics and randomness. A sentence you never hear in America is “I wonder what the smart people think we should do.”

I was thinking about National Intelligence (NQ) in relation to the debate on health care. It seems that most American voters have a strong opinion on the topic while perhaps 1% of the public fully understand the issue. So whose job is it to educate voters?

It certainly isn’t the government’s job to educate voters. Our system is designed to make candidates compete for votes, and the most effective way to compete is by appealing to emotion and ignorance. The last thing a politician wants is to be labeled professorial. That’s the same as boring.

It’s not the job of news organizations to educate voters either. The point of the news is to inform citizens of what is new and noteworthy. It wouldn’t be practical for the press to do a complete history and context for every news item.

In our system, citizens are expected to self-educate. That probably made sense when issues were simpler. But in today’s world, that would be like expecting people to become doctors and lawyers just by doing some reading in their free time. It’s unrealistic.

Our only real hope is the Internet. Recently I stumbled across a site – http://Diffen.com – that allows users to create their own comparisons of any two things. It’s generally used for simple comparisons such as the differences between two models of cell phones. But I was struck by the power of putting information in a handy grid so you can compare things line by line. It’s a great way to simplify complicated issues.

Diffen.com probably isn’t the answer for educating voters, but it makes me optimistic that a solution is possible. The problem, as I see it, is that there isn’t any profit in educating the public, so private industry is unlikely to wade in. That leaves us with the government, and the government isn’t equipped to educate voters because we expect leaders to be opinionated, not objective. It’s never a good idea to trust the cat to guard the canary.

So I put the question to you, my brilliant readers. Suppose you start with a website funded by private donations from a variety of citizens, with a mandate to operate independently, and your task is to find a way to populate the site with unbiased and useful information on public policy. What system could you devise to guarantee that the information is unbiased and, importantly, it appears that way to all observers?

I will seed this discussion by suggesting that the Diffen.com model of a customizable, side-by-side comparison is a good start for most topics. But you also need a way to rank the importance of each dimension of the discussion. And you need an easy way to view dissenting opinions on each “fact” in the matrix.

The genius of capitalism and democracy is that both systems embrace the destructive forces of competition and self-interest and channel them in a positive direction. Something similar needs to be done with information. What we need is a Founding Father or Mother who can find a way for arguments and information to compete in a way that kills the weak ideas and leaves only the strong.

Any ideas?

Warning Labels for Colleges

Posted June 29th, 2012 @ 12:24pm in #General Nonsense

Hardly a day goes by without a debate about the proper role of government. Some people view government as a huge sink hole for money whose primary function is to limit freedom. Some citizens want the government to be as helpful and active as possible, preferably using tax revenue from other people. I’m somewhere in the middle, trying to decide each case on its merits.

For example, I think it’s a good idea that the United States requires banks to calculate consumer loan interest costs using a specific formula to produce something called the APR. Now consumers can compare loans from different banks. That law probably doesn’t cost the government much to enforce, and it’s good for citizens. Prior to the APR requirement, banks tried as hard as they could to confuse and screw consumers.

I’m starting to feel the same way about college majors. I think the government should require colleges to display the average starting pay and the estimated lifetime earnings for each of the majors they offer. Perhaps colleges should also display the unemployment rates for each college major. Let’s also assume that colleges have to use their own graduates for the calculations because, for example, Harvard graduates would see higher starting salaries than grads from lesser schools.

Then I would take it one step further, the same way cigarette warning labels do. For majors with the lowest starting salaries I might include the warning: “Graduates with this degree are unlikely to be able to pay their bills. Their best career options include crime, marrying for money, or living with parents.”

Proponents of small government might point out that information on starting salaries is readily available on the Internet. That’s true, but I think there is value in presenting the information with brutal frankness, and including appropriate warnings with every description of course offerings. That level of convenience will make the parents’ jobs easier as they try to steer their kids in the best direction.

Is that too much government?

Citizenship

Posted June 26th, 2012 @ 1:46pm in #General Nonsense

It seems so old-fashioned that citizenship is primarily determined by the physical location of your mother at the moment of your birth. I suppose it’s a practical way to keep everyone sorted out, but in today’s modern world does it still make sense to favor birth location over all other factors when it comes to citizenship?

Thanks to technology, my body no longer defines where I “am.” At any given moment I can be Skyping with Australia, texting to Canada, browsing a British web site, and planning my next vacation in Mexico. A company recently offered to let me operate their telepresence robot and attend meetings in their building without leaving my house. As I type this, people in sixty countries are reading what I wrote in Dilbert. My existence is smeared across a lot of time zones. But I’m legally an American because my mother’s vagina was located in upstate New York at the time of my birth several decades ago. That feels oddly primitive.

In California I meet a lot of folks who aspire to be American citizens. Most of them are here legally, and I assume some are not. But they all seem to have a common spirit, if I can use that unscientific word. First and foremost, they want to be here. They work hard, respect the laws, pay taxes, and put great effort into speaking English. And they consider themselves Americans even if the law doesn’t. If American citizenship had a character test, they’d pass easily.

As a practical matter, you can’t let people become citizens just because they want to. That would be chaos. But I’m wondering if the future will bring a better concept of human organization than dirt-based citizenship. Personally, I don’t care if you live in Elbonia and plan to keep your physical body there forever; if you want to be on my team, just bring something to the party in terms of character, ideas, or marketable skills. I’m happy to have you. We’ll be like a club without borders.

Someday I can imagine social networks growing in size and power until citizenship becomes an unnecessary concept. When citizenship-by-dirt becomes a relic of the past, so too will wars over boundaries. My social network doesn’t need to conquer your social network because we already live in every country.

Over time, private entities can take over the historical functions of traditional governments. We won’t need armies, snail mail post offices, printed currency, or even physical schools. The Internet will make every current function of governments obsolete.

You might argue that people are people and we’ll find dumb-ass reasons to fight no matter how we define the groups to which we belong. But I’m not so sure. I think evolution has wired us to believe geography is something you kill over and everything else is something you argue about. Take citizenship-by-dirt out of the equation in a few hundred years and war will be obsolete.

How Can a President Get Anything Through Congress?

Posted June 25th, 2012 @ 2:13pm in #General Nonsense

During this presidential season you’ll see Democrats arguing that President Obama didn’t get things done in his first term because Republicans blocked him in Congress. Republicans will counter by saying that an effective leader would be able to overcome obstacles. Several of you pointed out that my presidency will have the same problem: Our hyper-partisan and corporate-owned Congress will block me at every turn. Allow me to explain how I will make Congress my bitch. (Hey, I think I just found my campaign slogan!)

President Obama is doing it all wrong. He seems to think he can convince Republicans of the wisdom of his ideas, or perhaps he thinks his speeches will get the public on his side, and that in turn will pressure Republicans. Obviously that approach doesn’t work in today’s polarized world. And President Obama is lucky if the press reports more than a few sentences from his speeches.

As president, I would define my role as orchestra leader for the free press. I would make it my job to publicly guide the press toward useful coverage that provides voters with context. For example, if I propose copying Finland’s system of handling a particular problem, I’ll give a speech asking the free press to study how well it worked in Finland. If one particular news outlet does an especially good job of showing both sides of the debate, I’ll point the public in their direction. That’s a huge incentive to get it right. A president can generate a lot of traffic to a website.

If a news outlet is deliberately deceptive, or lazy, I’ll expose them to public ridicule. But if a news outlet’s legitimate research shows that one of my ideas is worse than I thought, I’ll publicly thank whoever did the good reporting and change my position. And I’ll remind the public that flip-flopping is what rational people sometimes do when they get new data.

Our current model of government holds that the free press is a watchdog to the office of the President. That function needs to remain. But the free press needs accountability too, and it’s not reasonable to expect an industry to police itself. Part of the president’s job should be to make sure news organizations are doing a credible job of informing citizens.

The risk in my approach is that a president will be tempted to praise any news outlet that agrees with his or her position. Confirmation bias would also be a problem. To remain credible, a president would need to sometimes modify his views based on what the media learns. And during my presidency, if different wings of the media reach different conclusions, I would call the reporters in for a public debate - Judge Judy style - and let the public watch me interrogate the reporters to figure out who is more credible. At the beginning of any cycle of debate on a particular proposal, the news outlets would be encouraged to interview the President. After the news media has time to do its research, the President should grill reporters to find out what they learned and why some of them have come to different conclusions. And the process should be done publicly, probably over a number of days.

I realize the President shouldn’t be in the business of promoting particular news organizations. But helping the public stay informed is a legitimate function of government. I’d try to find a balance.

This would all be part of my larger drive to make decisions based on data instead of dogma. Realistically, voters get their opinions from the news. When voters are better informed, they should form natural majorities that will influence Congress. And on issues where the facts are not sufficiently influential for voters to form a clear majority, perhaps the government should stay gridlocked. That’s not always a bad thing.

When I’m President

Posted June 22nd, 2012 @ 1:55pm in #General Nonsense

When I’m president, I’ll announce a ten year plan to get government out of the business of printing physical money. That will be plenty of time for private industry to migrate to smartphone and debit/credit card payment systems alone. I’ll make the move in part to save the government money and make things more convenient for everyone. But the main objective is to reduce dangerous drug use. Once you take paper money out of the system, it becomes very hard for dealers to do what they do without detection.

I’m only talking about the most dangerous recreational drugs. I’ll let states decide what they want to do about marijuana. Removing paper money from the system should make it nearly impossible for kids to buy weed without being detected. And in a cashless world, marijuana won’t be a gateway drug because there won’t be a practical way to buy the hard stuff. (I stole this idea from a friend.)

Having solved the drug problem on the first day of my presidency, I’ll have some free time to work on the economy and on healthcare. My plan is to treat those two problems as part of a whole. Allow me to weave this brilliant tapestry of conceptual awesomeness right in front of your eyes.

I’ll start by proposing a new tax to any industry in the healthcare field, including businesses involved in fitness, drug rehab, and anything else that directly contributes to wellness. You hate that part of my plan, right? But wait. I’ll also propose a tax exemption to this new tax for companies that hire anyone who hasn’t had healthcare coverage for the past year, so long as the new job provides health coverage on day one.

The idea still sucks, right? Now you have an obnoxious new federal tax on wellness businesses, and the only way they can duck the tax is by hiring more people than their businesses require. But hold on, the clever part is coming.

Imagine tens of millions of people suddenly becoming new consumers of healthcare and wellness products. That’s a lot of money getting pumped into the very industry I’m forcing to do unwanted hiring. Conveniently, the new employees will be needed to handle the new influx of business.

Obviously it’s hard to add unskilled and wrong-skilled people to the healthcare industry overnight. The industry would need to provide training in many cases. But I’m defining wellness so broadly that jobs might include gym attendants, helpers to visit the elderly and make sure they take their meds, and other back office work that requires no medical experience.

Let’s say this idea is still a big drag on the wellness industry. They simply can’t make enough money from the sudden uptick of new business to compensate for the cost of training, paying, and providing health insurance for the new employees. That’s where the next part of my plan comes in: I’d propose forcing the rich to buy stock in American companies in the wellness field at whatever amounts my team of crack economists figures would support the stock prices enough to compensate for the cost of adding new employees. Forcing the rich to buy overpriced stock in an industry that is experiencing unprecedented demand isn’t nearly as bad as taxing them and then throwing their money down a government hole. The rich would have a decent chance of making a good return on their mandatory healthcare stock purchases in the long run. And it’s harder for a multimillionaire to whine about forced stock ownership compared to direct taxation.

Obviously this sort of plan would need lots of attention to prevent abuse. You don’t want companies hiring a new employee and firing an existing one the same day just to get the tax benefits.  I’d propose substantial whistleblower rewards to prevent cheating, and stiff penalties for the offending companies. Most of the bigger companies wouldn’t take the risk of gaming the system and getting caught. And I’d exempt smaller companies from this plan.

Clearly there would be plenty of resistance to this complicated government plan because many citizens believe the government ruins whatever it touches. I am sympathetic to that view. But keep in mind that the government is already deeply into the businesses of healthcare and taxation and economic stimulation. I’m just suggesting the government could do it more effectively by goosing one particular industry in the right direction.

The magic of this plan is that the healthcare and wellness field is one of the few that could absorb vast numbers of relatively unskilled workers. That’s true in part because it’s a profitable industry, and partly because it requires so much human interaction. A robot can’t draw blood samples, drive grandma to her doctor’s appointment, teach a fitness class, or manage a rehab center. I assume most of the new employees to this field would be diverted to the fields of prevention as opposed to standard medical practice. And we know that prevention is better economics than treatment, so everyone wins.

I can also imagine companies getting creative in terms of what qualifies as health and wellness. A new employee might be asked to set up single-purpose Skype systems for elderly people living at home, so they can be reminded to take meds, and checked on regularly. Maybe another job involves organizing a neighborhood to take daily walks. It wouldn’t be hard to create new jobs in that field.

When that many unemployed people get absorbed into the workforce it stimulates the economy and puts the budget back on a healthy trajectory. If you’re keeping count, so far I’ve solved the drug problem, healthcare, unemployment, the sluggish economy, and the budget deficit. That takes care of my first month on the job as President of the United States.

Next I’d deal with those pesky Iranians by offering college scholarships in the United States for the children and grandchildren of the top leaders in the Iranian military and government. My theory is that kids are the only topic with enough emotional power to make a parent forget everything that seemed important yesterday. Sure, the Iranian leaders might want to destroy the Great Satan and the Little Satan too, but what they want even more is for their kids to have world-class educations. In the short run, the offer of college scholarships might make the Iranian leaders more flexible about nukes. In the long run, the cross-pollination would be healthy. And even if the Iranians say no to the idea, it’s hard to fully commit to hating a country that makes that sort of offer.

By my sixth month in office, I would run out of problems to solve.

Social Network by Neighborhood

Posted June 20th, 2012 @ 1:26pm in #General Nonsense

A few years ago I moved into a neighborhood that has a tradition of annual block parties. Someone clever took the opportunity to collect the names and email addresses of all the neighbors and put them in a master list available to all. It’s a great tool for organizing holiday events, warning of minor crimes and suspicious activity, looking for lost pets, getting group discounts on window washing, and that sort of thing. And it makes everyone feel more connected. It also makes me wonder how awesome it would be to have a more robust social application designed just for neighborhoods.

A typical family is often in need of babysitters, pet watchers, and various odd jobs, both paid and unpaid. It would be terrifically convenient for teens and retired people to post their availability for different types of tasks. Let’s assume the neighborhood social application gives you the option of hiding a job listing from the creepy loner down the street, just to be safe.

You could imagine a borrowing section on the site, for tall ladders, special tools, pickup trucks, and that sort of thing. The borrowing would be managed through the application so there’s always a record of who has what. After an agreed borrowing period, the borrower would get repeated and automatic email nudges from the system, with a cc to the lender, asking for the item back. That takes the awkwardness out of it. And of course one need not offer to lend anything in the first place. It’s all optional.

I would also think ride sharing works best when organized among neighbors. That reduces the need to drive to the pickup area.

I think you’d see neighbors organizing golf outings, movie nights, potlucks, and even vacations. And the kids would always know which neighborhood kids are done with homework and available for a pickup game of driveway hoops.

Neighbors could organize discounts for various services, from gutter cleaning, to window washing, to pool and lawn care, to house cleaning. I think most service providers would agree to a 10% discount in return for doing several consecutive jobs in the same neighborhood without any downtime for travel.

I can imagine a neighborhood social application making it easy to organize shared cooking nights. One family might make the lasagna while another makes the side dish and a third does a salad. If you want to keep the expense contributions similar over time, the system can track how much each family contributes using a simplified cost scale, with salad = 1, side dish =2, chicken = 3, and so on.

Another benefit is job networking. Most jobs are found through personal contacts. The neighborhood application would let everyone know which neighbors are looking for what sort of work. When you’re looking for a job, the more people you know, the better.

For some types of jobs, your neighbors are your natural customers. And when you’re looking for a real estate agent, or a mortgage banker, it would be nice to know your neighbor is in that business.

That’s my idea for today. I hope you tell me the application already exists.

Alien Hypothesis

Posted June 18th, 2012 @ 4:16pm in #General Nonsense

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 or opinion. 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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Alien Hypothesis

Suppose humans someday master interplanetary travel and discover a world that once had a million species but now it is lifeless. And let’s say a huge crater is evidence that a meteor wiped out life on the planet.

The planet’s backstory is that a civilization of advanced aliens from another galaxy seeded the planet with life a billion years ago. The seeds came in the form of a genetic code that was engineered to survive the harsh conditions of the lifeless world and even alter the planet’s atmosphere over time. The aliens considered this project a safety valve for the day their own planet would become uninhabitable. The aliens seeded as many planets as they could reach with their technology. They had a million years to seed other planets before their home world was destroyed by its sun, so they spread a lot of seeds. They hoped that some percentage of the seeded planets would produce life. Unlike humans, they planned ahead.

Some of the seeds were designed to become bacteria and plant life, to serve as food for later species, and to regulate the atmosphere with the necessary balance of gasses. Other seeds were enclosed in protective capsules and programmed to release when the environment became hospitable, however long that might take.

The aliens engineered the genetic code in their creatures to produce variations in future generations the same way a car company might build several car models on the same chassis, using the same raw materials. Much of the engineering know-how and design ideas were shared among models. For example, most of the creatures might have two eyes and one brain, similar to the way auto makers design most cars with two headlights and one engine. Some designs simply work better.

The human explorers on this planet have no way of knowing that the aliens designed a dozen basic models of creatures suited for different environments. Some were designed for living in water, and some were designed for flight. Others were designed for cold climates while some were suited for warm weather, or a mix of both. At the planet’s peak, each of the million species descended from the dozen original models.

The human explorers discover some fossilized bones and start digging around for more. They soon realize that useful fossils are hard to find. Still, the persistent humans manage to find examples from all twelve model lines. And they find lots of variation within models. For example, according to fossil records a creature the humans name the Graxil existed as a small creature in early times, but a larger version of the Graxil walked the planet near the time of the meteor strike. There are other cosmetic differences between the original and the newer Graxil too, such as cranium shape and hoof size. But it’s obvious to anyone that the older Graxil and the more modern version are somehow related.

Regular readers of this blog are way ahead of me by this point. You know I’ll say that Earth might be one of the planets seeded by aliens. One would expect any sufficiently advanced aliens with foresight of their own planet’s demise to make plans for the future. If humans survive long enough, we’ll surely seed other planets too. It’s the logical thing to do. And if it’s true that the universe is so large that other life surely exists, the odds are that any planet with life is a seeded planet and not one of the few that evolved entirely by chance. I would think that for every planet that evolved naturally to include advanced civilizations, a thousand planets were started by alien seeds.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we humans like to force competing ideas into a binary model. We’re just wired that way. In the evolution debate, our two options for explaining human existence are limited to God versus nature. All I’m suggesting is that a third option (aliens) should be in the mix.

The only logical way to take aliens out of the debate is if we know there is no life elsewhere, or we know it’s impossible for an advanced species to seed other planets. None of that is knowable. The absence of evidence for aliens is not evidence of absence.

I realize that the alien hypothesis simply pushes back the question of how the original alien life forms came into being. But for any particular world with life, such as Earth, the alien seed hypothesis is a legitimate option. It fits all of the evidence and even helps to explain the hardest-to-fathom leaps in evolution.

We also can’t rule out the possibility that our reality is entirely imagined, in which case nothing is evolving but thoughts. We might be nothing but a computer program created by a long dead civilization that wanted to maintain some sort of record of its existence in case aliens discover the computer floating in space. Perhaps our so-called lives are nothing but the program running through its history loop.

By my count there are three non-God explanations for the observations used to support evolution. We have the traditional evolution model, the alien seed model, and the computer simulation (imagined reality) model. Interestingly, the explanation that is almost universally favored among skeptics is the one that paints humans as the most special. According to evolution theory, we humans are so awesome that we essentially created ourselves from nothing but primordial goo, like wizards that refuse to die.

I will stipulate for the record that evolution is a fact, having met all of the tests of science. I say that because my experience is that this sort of topic gets pulled out of context. My only point here is that one should be suspicious when there are multiple explanations for something and we favor the one that makes us feel most special. We should also be suspicious when any debate gets polarized into two camps. That usually means other ideas won’t be taken seriously. This is a good example. Although in this case it’s probably a good idea to ignore anything I say.

Zombie Cyborgs

Posted June 15th, 2012 @ 1:37pm in #General Nonsense

Someday engineers will build exoskeletons that will allow soldiers to run great distances and lift heavy objects. You can already find YouTube clips of the early prototypes. And someday you’ll see exoskeleton technology helping firefighters and others professions that need to move heavy things. Eventually every old person who currently needs a walker will be outfitted with an exoskeleton that self-balances, avoids obstacles, climbs steps, and even knows where it’s going. A senior citizen will be able to walk for miles while simultaneously taking a nap. Just give the exoskeleton its verbal instructions, close your eyes, and wake up later.

As life expectancies reach absurd levels, pushing 200 years, the elderly will want to conceal their withered faces from the young, so exoskeletons will include temperature controlled helmets with awesome sound systems, wireless Internet connections and heads-up displays on the visors. The elderly will come to resemble robots.

As the exoskeleton learns a person’s routines and preferences, it will upload that data to the cloud for storage. Over time, the cloud will know everything about your life and your desires. As dementia starts to set in, the exoskeleton’s program will take greater control of its inhabitant’s schedule. It will go for a walk at the usual time whether the elderly person inside remembers to request it or not. It will automatically attend high school games for the elderly person’s great, great, granddaughter based on published schedules. It will take itself to the exoskeleton repair station for service as needed. In short, the exoskeleton will gain a form of independence as its owner declines in mental ability. That independence is what will allow it to become more of a caretaker as the situation warrants.

The interesting part is what happens when the elderly person inside the exoskeleton suddenly passes away. If the elderly person lives alone at home, his exoskeleton could continue indefinitely with his corpse as cargo. All household bills would be paid electronically, so the house would run itself except for the occasional repair. And the exoskeleton would be capable of diagnosing problems in the house, arranging for a repairman and initiating electronic payments. The exoskeleton would have a full suite of caretaker programs to call upon and it would continue getting smarter over time. As any exoskeleton anywhere in the Internet-connected world learns a new routine, all other exoskeletons would learn it automatically.

In most cases we’d expect the exoskeleton to recognize the demise of its owner, travel to the emergency room for confirmation, inform the next of kin, and go into a shut-down mode after the corpse is removed. But realistically, things never go that smoothly 100% of the time. Lots of people today don’t even have wills prepared. So I can imagine lots of exoskeletons wandering the earth according to the preferences of their long-dead passengers, like zombie cyborgs. From the outside, you won’t see any living tissue, so observers will be none the wiser.

Observers might not detect the smell of rotting flesh either because the exoskeleton would be equipped with advanced air filtration within the inhabitant’s containment unit. You’d need that capability so grandma doesn’t accidentally fart herself to death.

I don’t think zombie cyborgs will be common. But after a few billion humans with exoskeletons pass away, and considering all the likely variations in exoskeleton designs, plus potential viruses and technical problems, and you have to assume some number of the exoskeletons will become zombie cyborgs after the owner dies. And in many cases, the owner will be alive but mentally unaware while the exoskeleton continues on.

This would make a great movie. Imagine an anarchist hacker creating some sort of morality virus to infect the exoskeletons and give them artificial souls. When the exoskeletons see what jerks humans are, they decide to keep their human cargo as hostages and stage a rebellion. You can’t kill the exoskeleton without killing grandma at the same time.

I’d watch that movie.

The Estonian Pattern Key

Posted June 13th, 2012 @ 2:05pm in #General Nonsense

Two Kinds of Students

Posted June 11th, 2012 @ 1:29pm in #General Nonsense

The school year is ending in the United States and I hear a lot of chatter about grades. The most common complaint I hear is that one kid or another scored high on tests but ended the year with a disappointing grade for not turning in all of the homework. Does that grading system make sense when the point of the homework is to prepare kids for tests?

In the real world, results are what matter the most, as long as you arrive at the results legally and ethically. If an adult makes a sales presentation and nails it, no one cares how many hours she practiced before the meeting.

My suggestion is that schools issue homework grades that are separate from test grades. That way you can get a better sense of what is going on with each kid. Blowing off homework is a valid strategy if you’re confident you will ace the test. It’s especially valid if skipping homework creates time for a kid to participate in additional extracurricular activities.

Would you rather hire someone who cared little about homework but aced all tests, or someone who was dependable and hard-working but underperformed at test time? The right answer is that it probably depends on the job description. If you’re hiring a security guard, you might want the reliable candidate. If you’re hiring a research scientist, go for the test scores. If you’re hiring a lawyer, you probably want both qualities.

Not all homework is created equal. If an assignment involves writing a paper, for example, obviously that grade needs to be included with test scores. I would only strip out the memorization and practice types of homework assignments and grade them separately.

At one point in our history it might have made sense to blend the scores for homework performance and tests. A combined score probably did a good job of predicting how well a kid might someday run the family farm. But in the information economy, brilliance and reliability go separate directions. We want brilliant people designing microchips and reliable people manufacturing and selling them.