Scott Adams' Blog

Mockability Test

Posted February 3rd, 2011 @ 8:17am in #General Nonsense

It’s nearly impossible to humorously mock something that is reasonable. Take, for example, the idea that hard work is often necessary for success. There’s nothing funny about that topic because it’s unambiguously true. Humor only comes easily when the topic itself has a bit of dishonesty baked into it. That’s why humor about politics, business, and relationships is so easy. There’s a whole lot of lying in those environments.

I have a theory that some sort of mockability test would work like a lie detector in situations where confirmation bias is obscuring an underlying truth. In other words, if you believed that hard work often leads to success, and yet I could easily make jokes about it, that would be a contradiction, or a failure of the mockability test. And it would tell you that confirmation bias was clouding your perceptions. To put it in simpler terms, if a humorist can easily mock a given proposition, then the proposition is probably false, even if your own confirmation bias tells you otherwise.

I’d like to test this theory. I’m wrestling with my own confirmation bias on the topic of whether we could, in some practical sense, balance the U.S. budget without raising my taxes. I certainly want that to be a solution. But everything I see confirms my belief that it’s literally impossible to do without causing more problems than it solves. And by that I mean more problems to everyone, not just the poor.

Obviously the math of budget cutting works. If you cut federal spending by 50%, just as an example, and keep collecting taxes, you balance the budget. And the philosophy of small government is legitimate. No one wants a government that grows larger without end. But I wonder if there is any way to cut government spending enough so that, along with economic growth, we can balance the budget without raising my taxes. I sure hope so.

So I issue a challenge to anyone who holds the view that the budget can be balanced without raising taxes. Allow me to interview you, by email, with the transcript published in this blog in a week or so.

I will pick one person to interview on this topic. If you’d like that person to be you, describe in the comment section your qualifications, political leanings, and a brief bio of yourself. The rest of you can vote on which champion of the cause you would like to see me interview. I’ll ask the chosen one to email me.

Just so you know what you’re getting into, I plan to mercilessly mock anything you say that lends itself to humor. If I fail to find humor in your reasoning, you win. It’s that simple. And remember, I want you to win because it means there’s hope I won’t have to pay more taxes.

Who wants to take a run at this?

Live Chat - Taxing the Rich

Posted February 1st, 2011 @ 10:18am in #General Nonsense

I’m taking questions now for my live chat for the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday 3 pm EST. (That’s noon for you Californians.) Post your questions now at this link.

Cloud Government

Posted January 31st, 2011 @ 9:40am in #General Nonsense

I decided to start a new government for the United States. The current version had a good run. It was well suited for an age when the issues were simple, the masses were uneducated, and communication involved horses. Now the government is broken. It can’t even balance the budget.

Perhaps you think I’m overstating the case. After all, the budget is just one of many things a government is supposed to do. That’s true, in the same sense that making sure there is enough fuel in the airplane is just one of the things a pilot is supposed to do.  If the pilot can’t keep the plane in the air, you don’t care how well the flight attendants serve beverages. The United States hasn’t crashed yet, but the fuel tank is empty and our economists are calculating a glide path to the nearest river.

Common sense tells us that any system designed in the 1770s will be suboptimal for modern times. But our common sense is thwarted when it comes to our own government because we’ve all been brainwashed as children, literally, to revere the genius of our Founding Fathers. Don’t worry.  We’ll keep all of the philosophical bits that inspired Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the gang. We’ll even strengthen the freedom part. The change will only involve the delivery system, or the gears of the machine, if you will. I think Jefferson would approve, and Franklin would have a total nerdgasm if he heard it.

The new government will be Internet based and require no actual politicians per se, except for the President. Citizens will vote for the laws they want, as often as they want, by Internet. Actually, voting is too strong a term. Think of it as a rolling opinion poll. There’s no need for elections when the preferences of the people are continuously monitored in real time.

Call it a cloud government if you must, and it will have the following functions.

1.       Provide “jury nullification” for unconstitutional laws that the majority favors.

2.       Manage the outsourcing of most government functions to private industry.

3.       Manage the transparency of the system.

4.       Educate the public about the issues, using the tools of the Internet.

5.       Propose new laws and policies developed by independent experts.

6.       Manage the military.

Most of the actual decision-making would be directly in the hands of the public. Social policy would be determined by simple majorities, with perhaps a two-thirds majority needed to overturn any existing laws.

We can design and operate the new government in test mode, with full transparency, without disrupting the current one. It will take a few years to work out the wrinkles in the new system. During that time, none of its laws and policies will be implemented. It will be like an emergency backup government. When the day comes that two-thirds of the country wants to move to the new system, it will be up and running over night. No revolution needed.

So what’s so great about this new system of government?

Keep in mind that we’re still in brainstorming mode here. The system I describe today might be closer to awful than awesome. It’s a collaborative process and you haven’t weighed in yet. This is just the start.

The core principle of the Founding Fathers was freedom. In simple times, that meant little more than “Don’t tell me what to do.” Suppose we convene a panel of economists, psychologists, philosophers and other experts to update our notion of freedom, and to make it more quantifiable, so it can be measured and managed by this new government.

For example, a person who is unhealthy has less freedom, in a practical sense, than a person who is not. And a person who is poor has less freedom than someone who is rich. A person with no education has less freedom of choice, again in a practical sense, than someone who is educated. I think you could quantify freedom so you can measure the impact of any new law. The calculated result wouldn’t be binding on the public, but it’s helpful to know how your decisions impact everyone’s freedom.

If you’re worried that quantifying freedom leads to socialism, assume that the algorithm understands capitalism. No one can be free if the economy chokes out with high taxes or burdensome regulations. The advantage of an algorithm is that it automatically considers all sides of every issue. In our current system, pundits and politicians are free to debate the advantages of their ideas without mentioning the costs. The freedom algorithm considers all plans in their entirety.

Almost any issue can be cast in terms of freedom. If you increase taxes to pay for more police, the taxpayers lose some freedom because they have less money to spend. But they gain freedom to walk the streets without fear. And so on.

By now you are grinding your teeth and shouting to yourself that freedom is too squishy and subjective to be quantified. Special interests would game the system. Complicated models never work. And who decides on the assumptions that feed into it? It would just be a mess! You could be right about that. Remember that we’re in the brainstorming phase.

But consider the way doctors quantify pain, on a scale of 1 to 10, as a way of determining what level of painkiller to give to patients. Some patients lie about their level of pain to get more meds. The patient’s pain level can vary by the hour, as do the effectiveness of the meds. For cultural or gender reasons, one person’s pain level of eight might be another person’s four. And yet, despite being totally subjective and generally inaccurate, the 1 to 10 pain ranking is entirely useful. I could give you a hundred examples where measurements are flawed and yet the process of measuring yields something useful. I think the same could be true of freedom. Attempting to measure the net gain or loss in society’s freedom will help to clarify any debate. Accuracy might be less important than the fact that we try to measure it at all.

After our system is up and running, we can license our cloud government’s software to other countries looking for a change. Half of the countries in the world are looking for an upgrade. Think how much easier a revolution would be if rebels could set up their new government in the cloud before they even begin to protest. Ironically, democracy is probably an obstacle to freedom in countries run by dictators. Everyone understands that when the dictator is overthrown, you have years of messy and ineffective government ahead of you to get a democratic system up and running. And then you have decades of corruption to look forward to. The government in a cloud could hasten the end to dictators because the alternative would be so clear and easy. The downside is that only the citizens who have access to the Internet can participate in the cloud government. But that’s probably an improvement over the current system because he people who use the Internet tend to be the most informed. And in time, the Internet will extend to all. That’s what the freedom algorithm will call for.

 

WSJ - How to Tax the Rich

Posted January 29th, 2011 @ 7:42am in #General Nonsense

You might be interested in my article this weekend in the Wall Street Journal about how to tax the rich.

Comparing

Posted January 27th, 2011 @ 8:59am in #General Nonsense

If I could add one required course to every student’s education, it would involve learning the skill of comparing.  You might think that comparing alternatives is the domain of common sense, but it isn’t. It takes actual training. People who study law, engineering, economics, psychology, and business get different subsets of that training. But many people get none. And it’s one of the most important skills that we humans need. Every decision involves some sort of comparison.

In our current system, the skills you need to compare alternatives are broken into little pieces and spread across several disciplines. A business student might learn about the time value of money while the psychology student is learning about confirmation bias. The math major is studying statistics while the religion student is learning that people will believe just about anything if the context is right.

My hypothetical curriculum for a course in Comparing might include the following topics:

Sunk costs

Time value of money

The illusion of fairness

Evaluating risk

Considering the source of the information

Considering the wider context

Limits of human perception

Statistics (basic)

Cognitive dissonance

Confirmation bias

Famous Lies and Hoaxes

If I may overgeneralize for a moment, most disagreements have at their core one or more of these four basic causes:

1.       People have different information

2.       People have different selfish interests

3.       People have different superstitions

4.       People have different skills for comparing

Of the four causes for disagreement, one is king over the other three. People with strong skills in comparing alternatives can quickly identify in each other where they have differences in information and in selfish interests, and that can be enough to suggest ways to reach agreement, or at least accommodation. (People with skills in comparing generally don’t engage in debates about superstition.)

Lacking the basic skills needed to compare alternatives, two people with different information and a couple of drinks can argue all night long and produce nothing but bad feelings. The same goes for people with different selfish interests and different ethical/moral standards.  But people with good comparison skills can quickly find common ground. In our increasingly complex world, where different cultures are colliding, we’ll all need a lot more talent for making the right comparisons.

Consider the budget debate in the United States. Every knowledgeable observer recognizes that the solution involves both deep cuts in expenses and higher taxes on those who can afford it. And yet our elected officials have framed the issue as one of higher taxes or not, and budget cuts or not. Politicians get away with false comparisons because the majority of voters are not trained in the skill of comparing.  Borrowing a strategy from Gandhi, we need to become the change we seek in the government. Leaders will only make rational comparisons, and therefore rational decisions, when they know that the voters can tell the difference.

Strange Reality

Posted January 26th, 2011 @ 10:19am in #General Nonsense

This morning I was formulating a comic in my mind that involved Asok using the two sides of his brain like dual core processors. I imagined it was a skill he learned back at the Indian Institute of Technology. I took a break from creating the comic and checked my public email. The first message I read included a link to an article on Alien Hand Syndrome, which is what you can get when the two halves of your brain are surgically separated. Each half of your brain can start acting as an independent mind.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12225163

To make this even stranger, the two sides of my mind then got into a debate about whether this is a coincidence or something deeper. The rational part of my brain knows that coincidences of this sort happen every day, and it would be far stranger if I didn’t notice them on a regular basis.

But another part of my brain is operating at exactly the same time as my rational thoughts and it’s telling me that reality is nothing but a work of fiction that my mind creates for me on the fly, and in that context it makes sense that themes would sometimes repeat. In other words, thinking about Asok’s split mind nudged my imagination to conjure up a link to similar story while fooling me into believing I actually exist as a human body in this world at all. Perhaps coincidences are nothing but errors in the part of our minds that normally do a better job of convincing us that an objective world exists.

Meanwhile, the rational side of my mind is laughing at me because it knows that reality is exactly what it seems to be, and we are just a bunch of particles bumping around until something interesting happens.

And this made me think about the way we humans process new data. When I read the Alien Hand story, I saw it as strong evidence that neither the human soul nor free will exist anywhere but in our imaginations. But I suppose it’s no coincidence that I already held those views before looking at the evidence. We humans see what we want to see.

So I’m curious what you see in the story of the Alien Hand. Does your mind interpret the evidence to support whatever beliefs you already have?

Freedom of Data

Posted January 24th, 2011 @ 9:29am in #General Nonsense

You and I learned in school that freedom of speech is a fundamental right that all people should enjoy. There’s a practical reason for that. Without freedom of speech, governments and other moneyed interests would be in a position to abuse their power even more than they already do.  And obviously voters need uncensored information in order to shape their government. Democracy only works when citizens and the media enjoy freedom of speech.

But what if freedom of speech is only a benefit in a democratic system?

China’s system, as I have written before, reminds me more of a corporate structure, or a meritocracy. In a corporation, you’re generally free to disagree with higher ups if you do it with data, and in a professional manner. Usually you need to go through proper channels, but dissent is generally allowed, and sometimes actively encouraged. If you’re a jerk about your disagreement with your superiors, or you don’t have persuasive data to back up position, you could get fired. But that’s a stupidity issue, not a freedom issue.

China’s leadership is packed with engineers and lawyers by training. I imagine that like any corporation, they appreciate the value of information when presented in a professional manner, and through proper channels. Unlike elected politicians, managers in a meritocracy are free to change position as new or better data emerges. The advantage of having only one political party is that everyone is on the same team. And if effectiveness is the goal, which apparently it is in China, I assume that new data is generally welcome.

An American politician is likely to lose his next election if he “flip flops” on an issue, even if the reason for the change is that new information has emerged. In that environment, practical politicians simply take the position that their party has established, confident that the free media will present both sides of every argument regardless of where the data leads. A free press has the perverse effect of increasing the volume of information while simultaneously reducing its usefulness.

A free press is also a huge distraction. I would imagine that at least half of all the time and effort our elected officials put into their jobs has something to do with managing the media. Compare that to a corporate system in which managers are also concerned with image, but they focus most of their energy on getting the job done. I imagine that Chinese leaders have a similar freedom to act in accordance with data. And I imagine they spend little or no time worrying about how the media will treat them, since they control it.

What about the jailing of dissidents in China? On a human level, it certainly feels wrong to imprison someone simply for speaking out. It feels even more wrong when the dissident’s only goal is to improve the lives of his or her fellow citizens. And it seems pure evil if the dissident has valid criticisms.

But what if the dissidents themselves are the ones who have it wrong? Suppose a dissident is stirring up public emotions in a direction that could be detrimental to the interests of a billion fellow citizens?  Suppose, for example, the dissident is agitating for freedom of speech, a right that would be fitting for a democracy, but would be nothing but trouble - perhaps serious trouble - in the Chinese system. In that case, should the Chinese leadership value the freedom of this one individual over the wellbeing of a billion others? What would Spock say?

I’d like to be perfectly clear that I know almost nothing about the Chinese system, and absolutely nothing about any particular dissidents. My emotional reaction is that no one should be in jail for voicing an opinion. But the rational side of me doesn’t have any data to support the notion that the Chinese people would be better off with complete freedom of speech, especially since we know that free speech encourages leaders to ignore data.

America has freedom of speech.  China has freedom of data. Where do you place your bet?

 

Digital Ghosts Exist!

Posted January 20th, 2011 @ 8:24am in #General Nonsense

In my prior post, I described a future where your digital ghost would live on without you. Many of you were quick to point out how many sci-fi stories have that plot. Fair enough. My point was that the technology to start building your digital ghost is already here. What I didn’t know is that it’s already being done.

Check out this company. They saw my post and were quick to tell me they are already well into the business. It’s creepy-cool.

www.virtualeternity.com.

Your Digital Ghost

Posted January 17th, 2011 @ 8:18am in #General Nonsense

Suppose you wanted to create your own digital ghost to live for eternity in the Internet and maybe do some haunting. What would that look like?

You’d start now, backing up everything that happens on your computer to the so-called cloud (storage on the Internet). You’d run a program in the background that monitors your Facebook changes and all of your email conversations. Together with your photos, your resume, and all of your shopping and entertainment preferences, the program running in the cloud could piece together an avatar of you.

From your photos, the program in the cloud could create a 30-year old version of you that never ages. The program would know how you speak, based on your email and other writing. It would know all of your preferences, your passions, your hot buttons, your finances, the identities of your friends and family, and anything else that flows through your computer.

That’s all possible with current technology. Now let’s say we extend this to your phone. In the near future, every conversation you make could optionally be saved to the cloud too, as well as all of your GPS locations, your web searches on your phone, your pictures and more. From your saved voice conversations your avatar would get its voice. With today’s technology, your digital ghost would sound robotic. In time, as technology improves, your ghost’s voice would be indistinguishable from your living self.

When your mortal body ends, you will have stored all the data you need to create your permanent digital ghost. As the technology in the cloud improves, so too does your ghost, learning to move more naturally, perhaps learning from videos it has of you, or even based on some type of profiling based on clues such as your level of testosterone (from face shape), and the types of sports you did in life. In a hundred years your digital ghost would be indistinguishable from a living human appearing on video or in a holographic projection.

Artificial intelligence will get to the point where all you need to do is seed it with an individual’s personality and it will do the rest. People of the future will be able to have extended conversations with loved ones who have passed. The generation who personally knew the departed might detect slight flaws in the personality of the digital copy, but to the third generation, great granddad’s ghost would appear as real as anyone they know.

In your will, you’d have to specify the degree of haunting that you’re comfortable with. And just as with Facebook, the living could decide to block a particular ghost from unauthorized appearances. Pranksters might program malicious ghosts that live in Stuxnet-like computer viruses and are harder to block. You might be able to block a particular ghost in your home computer, but in theory, a digital ghost could identify your whereabouts in public by your purchasing patterns and visit you unexpectedly.

Someday the living might send Evites to the dead to attend parties and special events. Imagine opening gifts while seven generations of your family in the form of holographic projections join the celebration.  The ghosts would watch the action, talk among themselves, and join in to sing Happy Birthday, all without prompting from the living. It will be creepy-cool for a while, and then simply normal. My guess is that humans are so wired for family that keeping the ghosts of relatives in the house will feel comforting.

There are some downside risks to all of this. It will be hard to let go of a deceased loved one if that person’s digital ghost is hanging around. That problem too might be handled by the will of the deceased. For the benefit of whoever you leave behind, you might block your digital ghost from appearing for at least ten years, or until the next generation.

Entrepreneurs could start today to collect and store data for your digital ghost, in anticipation of the day, perhaps after your death, when your ghost avatar rises up. A number of companies already offer online backups of your computer. The software runs in the background and moves any new data to the cloud. The only tweak you’d need at this point is to make sure no files are ever deleted from the cloud. Storage is cheap.

Digital ghosts need to see their environment to interact properly. Phones will all have video “eyes” someday, as will most computers. The new Xbox Kinect has “eyes” that literally follow your movement around the room. You could install additional cameras in any room in which you wished to be visited by digital ghosts. The malicious ghosts might commandeer video cameras or your phone’s camera function. My point is that you are already surrounded by cameras attached to the Internet, and that trend will continue. Your ghost will be able to see most rooms in the world.

Digital ghosts could continue learning throughout their afterlives, by reading the news and following the Facebook pages of friends and family. The ghosts would also be free to make friends with other ghosts and live their lives independently. Ghosts could stay with the ghosts of their life partners forever, so long as that was specified in the will of both people.

If I had to predict the odds that digital ghosts will someday exist, I’d say 100%. Stay alive for another five years and you will live forever, sort of.

Marital Deafness

Posted January 12th, 2011 @ 8:51am in #General Nonsense

Being married is a lot like being deaf. If you hear the same person talking day-after-day, you literally lose the ability to hear what that person is saying. I will give you two examples from my own life. Both are true. This one happened last week:

Shelly: Do you want some carrot cake?

Me: Hurricane? What hurricane?

In that particular case, we eventually got to the bottom of it, but only because Shelly needed an answer. I estimate that half of the time she says lamp, I hear doorknob, and it doesn’t really matter so we go on with our lives. I might spend a few seconds confused about the larger point, but I shake it off.

Within a day of the carrot cake incident, I made an offhand comment to Shelly to the effect that she might enjoy a certain sport. That conversation went like this:

Me: That’s your new game, honey.

Shelly: What did you call me?

Me: (slower and louder) I SAID, “THAT’S YOUR NEW GAME, HONEY.”

Shelly: Oh. I thought you called me Jimmy Bean

Me:  Why would I call you Jimmy Dean

Shelly: Not Dean, Bean. Jimmy Bean.

Me: Why would I call you Jimmy Bean?

Shelly: That’s what I wondered too.

Me: No, I said, “That’s your new game, honey.”

Shelly: What’s my new game?

Me: I forget.

As I’m sure you’ve learned,  it’s impossible to speak to a spouse if he or she is near running water, or using power equipment, or concentrating on something else, or eating something crunchy, or wondering if the squeak in the distance is the cat dying, or there is a child within a hundred yards. Amazingly, that covers 90% of every conversation you might attempt at home.

Recently I discovered that spouses, like computers, must be booted up before they can hear what you say.  Try walking into a room where your spouse is otherwise engaged and simply launch into your statement or question. Notice that your first sentence doesn’t count. That might go like this.

You: I think the ice maker isn’t working.

Spouse: What?

In that example, the spouse had not yet booted into listening mode. You can solve this problem with what I call the boot up tone. It is a sound that serves no function except to say, “Shift to listening mode.” I highly recommend that you use your spouse’s first name as your boot up tone. People are programmed to hear their own names even when they won’t notice other background noise. And I recommend speaking in the key of F, even if that isn’t your normal range, because it’s a great tone for penetrating background noise. It’s also a good idea to stretch out your spouse’s name a bit. I turn Shelly into She-e-e-e-e-lly. Try it at home. It works. But use your own spouse’s name.

I have the added disadvantage of being a serial mumbler. In my head, everything I say is clear and loud, sort of like Prince Charles. But I have been told that my actual sound is more like a corpse farting in a rolled up carpet.  My semi-solution for that is to trick people into reading my lips while I talk. Even people who are not expert lip readers can get some extra comprehension from seeing mouths move.

My method, which I share with you today, is to first get eye contact. If you are at home, start with your boot up tone. If that doesn’t get you the eye contact you need, try a scary opening phrase such as “I didn’t want to tell you this…” Anyone will give you eye contact after you use that phrase, even if you mumble it.

Once I have tricked Shelly into giving me eye contact, I quickly stand on my tiptoes so my lips are where my eyes once had been then blurt out my message. The only downside is that I will later have to explain, maybe several times, why I opened with “I didn’t want to tell you this.” I usually handle that by eating potato chips and standing near running water.