Scott Adams's Blog, page 287

How to Know Your Dating Site is a Fraud

When the Ashley-Madison hack revealed that the vast majority of female profiles on the “dating” site were fake, three groups of people already knew that. A long time ago.

One of those groups includes all of the people on Earth that have more than five minutes of experience in the business world. If you are building a business that only has value if populated by lots of users on day one, you can’t get there from here. At least not legally, or ethically.

And if you do, there is some special case going on.

There are many dating websites. Can there be that many special cases? They all seemed to be populated with hot people on day one. (Otherwise they would not be in business today.) Did any of them get there organically, or even honestly? Again, anyone with five minutes of business experience already knows the answer, statistically speaking. 

The second group of people that knew the dirty truth long ago are the people who have spent more than sixty second on any of the big dating sites and also have an IQ over 80. I have sampled most of the famous-name dating sites (Why would I try just one?) and the fake profiles could not be more obvious. They are no better disguised than a mall Santa. Single people laugh about it. But I doubt most of them know the percentage of fakes. It varies by site. I have seen a few dating sites this year with 95% fakes (quite obviously), so wait for more on this story.

The third group of people who knew all along about the fake profiles includes anyone who was a founder or early employee at any of the dating sites. My guess is that many of them thought they would cheat the membership numbers in the beginning to get traction, then go legit over time. Then they got greedy. And obviously they knew what the competing sites were doing. It probably seemed normal.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go back to reading the news that men look for sex when they are not getting enough. I am still in shock to learn of this. 

Scott

Why Do They Hate Science So Much?

I love science more than you do. I would have sex with science if it let me. Sometimes I worship science. It has earned my trust, unlike whatever absurdities other people believe in. I am a man of reason.

Sure, science has a few warts. Don’t we all? And remember, science is more of a journey toward truth than a destination. We expect corrections along the way. Those corrections are an essential part of the scientific journey to truth. 

We know the scientific method is the best method because it was invented by Sir Isaac Newton, the same man who invented calculus, when he wasn’t conjuring gold using alchemy. But he also got several things right, including inventing gravity. Imagine no gravity, right?

I love science because it makes me smarter reading about all the results and stuff. And by that I am not talking about definitely smarter. One has no way of knowing for sure when science is done unfolding its mysteries. So until the train reaches its destination of truth – and no one really knows for sure when, or if, that will happen – we have to accept some doubt along the way. That is how rational people think. Not morons. Morons are dumb.

And so it pisses me off when people start saying that the knowledge I have been receiving at the altar of science since I was a wee boy, especially in the field of psychological research, is mostly brainwashing and bullshit, only slightly more credible than a horoscope. Why do the morons hate science? Is it a moron thing?

For context, I am guessing that dumb ol’ horoscopes, being general in nature, are accurate only about 25% of the time, by luck. Science obviously beats that. By a mile. Duh.

To back up my point, check out this article showing charts and graphs. I believe statistics and whatnot are involved. And variables. I don’t have time to get into the weeds of it. The point is that I have a preconceived notion, and I pointed you to a link, so I think we are done here. 

Scott

Buy my book because I love science. More than you do.

Trump and Godwin’s Law

The media is having a hard time wounding Trump. The attacks keep bouncing off. Looks like they stepped up their game today.

Here’s the SHOCKING story of how Trump once owned, or still owns, a book of Hitler’s speeches. It was a gift from a friend. Trump admits it and names the friend. The friend confirms he gave it to Trump.

I’m sure the friend meant well. Trump is a master persuader, and obviously Hitler was too. I’m thinking of picking up a copy for the same reason that I assume the friend thought Trump would be interested. Trump says he did not read it. I’ll bet that is true, but only because his skills are already at that level. There wouldn’t be much for Trump to learn. And it seems kind of a downer.

To put things in context, a book of speeches from Kennedy, Reagan, or Dr. King would have been good gifts as well. And for the same reason. But less of a downer. So what we have here is a case of a very shitty gift-buyer.

The media, or some of it, is looking for a Trump kill shot. When Hitler’s name enters the mix, you know all the other ammo is already gone.

Look for LOTS more Hitler comparisons. Until it all seems silly.

I think you have seen a bunch in my comment section already.

And the press continues its slide to irrelevance.

Scott

Nate Silver Gives Trump 2% Chance of Getting Nominated

On August 6th, Nate Silver predicted in his highly-respected FiveThiryEight blog that Donald Trump had only a 2% chance of getting the Republican nomination. Silver’s prediction is based on historical patterns, solid data, and sound reasoning. He’s great at what he does. Maybe the best.

A week later, on August 13th, I wrote my post about Trump’s “clown genius” and predicted – based on his tool set – that Trump would win the Republican nomination and the general election as well. 

On August 24th, based on Trump’s continued use of masterful persuasion techniques, I doubled-down and modified my prediction to say he would win the general election by a large margin. I believe I am alone in that prediction, at least among the talking-head/pundit/writer set. I realize that a healthy chunk of voters think he can go all the way. But the smart professionals almost universally expect him to flame out.

If I had to put a number on my prediction, I would say a 98% chance of Trump winning the whole thing. That is the direct opposite of Silver’s prediction. 

Nate Silver is far smarter than I am on this sort of topic. He’s considered the gold standard for predicting stuff that people don’t think is predictable. If you had to choose sides on the Trump predictions, the smart money is on Silver.

That said, Silver’s predictions are necessarily based on past patterns. My predictions are based on my unique view into Trump’s toolbox of persuasion. I believe those tools are invisible to almost everyone but trained hypnotists and people that study the science of persuasion.

What I see from my perspective as a trained hypnotist is that Trump brought a flame thrower to a stick fight.

Since the beginning of time, every winner of every stick fight was a guy with a stick. So you’d expect that trend to continue. Until someone shows up to the fight with a flame thrower.

I’m betting on the guy with the flame thrower. Silver is betting Trump will set himself on fire with that flame thrower, or some candidate with a stick will get lucky before now and election day. That’s what always happened before.

But I say this isn’t Trump’s first fight using a flame thrower. I wouldn’t count on him forgetting where the trigger is.

Today’s post is intended to document my prediction. I do this because I know most of you are not yet convinced of the power of persuasion. You know persuasion is a real thing, but you have never seen a Master Wizard practice in public, in real time, without trying to cover his tracks. That’s new. Even Steve Jobs did most of his work behind closed doors.

This might be a game-changer not just for politics but for humanity’s sense of identity. When you see humans get reprogrammed in real time, it is hard to maintain a belief in free will.

I don’t hang out with other trained hypnotists. But I’ll bet not many of them believe in free will. We see stuff you have never seen. And would not believe. 

If Trump wins, the professional watchers of politics will explain to you why voters selected him. Some writers will say voters chose Trump for his brutal honesty, his immigration stand, his business talent, an anger with the status quo, or because the competition was weak.

Those reasons will be “real” in the sense that the voters expressing them in polls are not lying. But no one will spend much time trying to figure out why people have those feelings.

Hint: Not free will.

Scott

In other news, for several years I have been tracking a Master Wizard that I believe lives in Southern California. It seems he has trained a small army of attractive women in his method. The women create a specialized style of porn video clips that literally hypnotize the viewer to magnify the orgasm experience beyond anything you probably imagine is possible. Hypnosis has a super-strong impact on about 20% of people. And a lesser-but-strong impact on most of the rest.

Once a customer is hooked, the girls use powerful (and real) hypnosis tools to connect the viewer’s enjoyable experience (a super-orgasm, or several) to the viewer’s act of giving them money, either directly or by buying more clips. Eventually the regular viewers are reprogrammed to get their sexual thrill by the act of donating money to the girls in the videos. There are lots of variations tied to each type of sexual kink, but that’s the general idea. 

My best guess is that 10% of the traffic that flows through their business model literally cannot leave until they have no money left. The Master Wizard is that good. The women are well-coached in his methods. 

The fascinating thing is that the videos fully-disclose what they are doing, in clear language that is often repeated. The women explain the hypnosis methods they are using much the way I have been dissecting Trump’s technique. Nothing is hidden, at least with this one set of practitioners.

That makes customers feel safe that the hypnosis is just for fun and not actually rewiring them. But it doesn’t work that way. Explaining the technique as you do it actually deepens the effect. Hypnotists learn to do that.

The Master Hypnotist behind all of this found a great loophole in the law. If humans understood how effective these videos are, they would be illegal in the same way gambling is illegal in most places. And the Master Wizard hides in plain site because the Internet is so littered with fake porn hypnosis (women waving watches and saying YOU ARE SLEEPY) that no one expects a real one to sneak into the mix. And this Master Wizard is a polymath of some sort. He also knows how to do high quality video production, data analytics, and A-B testing.

When you combine hypnosis, sex, and A-B testing on a large population, the results are unimaginably powerful. The customers in this situation are getting an insanely good product. The only issue is the price.

If a court ever tries to make this business illegal, the star witness will be the Master Wizard himself.

No jury will ever convict him.

Now THAT’S a business model.

—

Why is everyone so surprised that my book on systems versus goals is better than they expected? The two newest reviews are typical.

The Iranian Nuke Deal You Don’t Understand

So, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a nuke deal that looks to many observers as if we might be terrible negotiators. But we have no way of knowing what the secret side agreements are. And one assumes there are a few.

Have you noticed that the Israeli lobbying efforts on this topic seem uncharacteristically toothless? The media is acting surprised. You rarely see such a strong lobbying group coming up short. Kind of a mystery.

On a totally unrelated topic, the Saudis (our buddies in the Middle East) finally found the terrorist who bombed a US base in Saudi Arabia two decades ago. That was an Iranian-backed plot, the news reports.

That terrorist hid well for twenty years. Iran probably knew where he was. They backed him, so they probably had some sources back to him.

And now he has been caught. By the Saudis. Interesting timing.

My guess is that Iran is a full military ally of the United States now (give or take some backstabbing both sides expect). But no one can say out loud that we’re working together. That wouldn’t help anyone. 

My reasoning for not objecting to the Iran nuke deal is that I don’t know what the deal is. Neither do you. The good stuff is the secret stuff. (I hope.)

Scott

Trump Persuasion Alert: The Bush-Slayer Comment

This article explains how Trump has decided to call Jeb Bush a “low energy” candidate.

That’s a linguistic kill shot. If you live to be a hundred, you will never see a better linguistic move.

No candidate can recover from the low-energy label. Trump ended Bush with two words. Now, even if Trump stumbles, Bush won’t be the one that surges to the front. From now on, Bush’s campaign hat is an anvil.

You might think I am exaggerating. Politicians label opponents all the time. Usually the labels have to do with policies, personality, intelligence, or experience. And usually those labels are glancing blows, at best.

But no candidate ever launched a “low-energy” criticism before. That’s a kill shot. You don’t wash that off. It is a variant of the High Ground Maneuver because Trump is saying that even if Bush and Trump had the same policies, the choice is still clear. You want the guy who isn’t going to be napping for four years.

And remember your visuals. Jeb looks like a low-energy guy. Take away Trump’s “low energy” label and Bush might seem like a calm, cool, rational executive – exactly what this country needs in these crazy times.

Until your opponent tattoos “low-energy” on your forehead. That doesn’t wash off. Done. Next.

You don’t see linguistic kill shots that often. This one was engineered. Do you want to hear another example of a linguistic kill shot that you probably never noticed in the past?

When Clinton/Gore were running for reelection against Dole/Kemp, the big topic was Kemp’s “supply-side economics” idea that you could cut taxes and goose the economy enough to make up the difference in tax collections. Clinton and Gore were helpless against supply-side economics because it sounded to voters like free money. Who doesn’t want to cut their taxes and make more money too?

How do you defend against the promise of more money for nothing? Clinton and Gore had no way to counter it. You couldn’t argue it on economic grounds because the voters were not sophisticated enough to follow along. Nor would voters be swayed by experts. And supply-side economics was the big topic of the election. 

So Gore used a linguistic kill shot. If you remember your campaign history, he started labeling Kemp’s supply-side economics as a “risky plan” for an economy that was doing reasonably okay. The media sprayed the word “risky” all over the headlines after the first time Gore used it in a debate. Clinton started using it too, since the word was getting traction.

Older voters with one eye on retirement, or already retired, have no appetite for risk. And they know that any big, new economic plan comes with risk. You cannot argue risk. Risk was the Higher Ground. It was the kill shot.

Supply-side economics largely died that election cycle, give or take some later death spasms. Thanks to one word. And the word was engineered for that purpose.

Do you get a sense for how powerful this stuff is? A word or two changes history.

If you are following along with my Trump analyses, you know I try to make predictions so you can check my work. It is easy to overlay an interpretation on the past (as I just did). Predicting the future is harder, and thus a better way for you to check my interpretation of events against prediction.

My new prediction is that when Trump gets serious about eviscerating Hillary Clinton he will engineer a similar High Ground label that has little to do with her policies. It might even be open to interpretation so all of her haters see what they want to see. 

Watch me engineer a linguistic kill shot for Trump to use against Hillary Clinton.

Trump: “America needs credibility”

See what I did there?

Credibility is the high ground. It ignores policy differences. Core republicans will obviously agree that Clinton is a “liar” in their words. So the message works for them. That part is easy.

The hard part, and the reason these words have to be engineered, is that you need to appeal to both sides with the same words. And “credibility” does that. Even supporters of Clinton – people who love everything she says and does – have to agree that her credibility has eroded because of all the email scandal noise.

And what about Trump? Is he credible by contrast?

Look for all the stories already printed about Trump being a handshake agreement guy. If you work in the business world, that is the highest standard of credibility.

Let me put it this way. Ignore your thoughts about Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s policies and personalities for a minute. If you had to make a verbal agreement with both of them, which one do you think has the higher odds of doing as promised?

Trump already said he hates the Iran nuke deal but will enforce it because he honors deals. The man is bulletproof on that dimension, so he will take the argument to the dimension where he wins every time.

The word “credibility” resonates with every adult. And it hasn’t been overused in the context of politics so it carries no unintended baggage. We all want credibility, period. The word is clean and powerful.

Don’t worry about Trump using the word credibility to win. I ruined that option by using it in this blog and creating a paper trail to a cartoonist. Trump will need another approach.

Now you know how to engineer a linguistic kill shot. 

1. Find a word that is “clean” from historical political baggage (examples: risky, low-energy, credibility).

2. Choose a word that moves people to High Ground concepts where you are relatively strong and your opponent has a weakness, ignoring the smaller issues that are the topics of all disagreements.

Examples:

Low ground: Cut taxes                 —>  High ground: Risky

Low ground: Immigration policy   —>  High ground: Low-energy guy

Low Ground: Clinton’s policies     —> High Ground: credibility 

In my corporate days I used the High Ground maneuver to “win” any meeting I needed to win. Unlike most methods of persuasion that have more of a statistical power, perhaps influencing 20% of a crowd, the High Ground maneuver works instantly, every time, and on every person. (In my personal experience.)

As soon as I recognized that tool in Trump’s toolbox, I predicted he would win it all. He was going into a stick fight with a bazooka. Most of you only saw sticks. Trained persuaders saw the bazooka. 

I remind you that he literally wrote the book on negotiating.

My best guess for why the High Ground maneuver works so well is that you are taking a person from the weeds of your disagreement to a place where they need to define who they are as a person. Our egos won’t let us define ourselves as small thinkers in front of a big thinker, so we try to keep up, running to the High Ground of our demise as quickly as we can.

Scott

Bonus thought: If you view the world in terms of goals, Trump has failed twice to be president. You expect him to fail a third time because that is the pattern he created. But viewed from a systems filter, Trump got the most practice running for president of anyone in the conversation.

Name one situation where practice doesn’t matter. Stop being surprised that the guy who practiced the most is performing the best. That is how systems thinkers play the long game. They fail toward a place of BETTER odds, not worse.

You can see more about systems being better than goals in my book on success.

In Top Tech Blog, if you surf, you want a motorized surfboard that doesn’t need waves. And yet another handheld health “scanning” device is here. This trend of miniaturized personal health scanners is huge. You will want this one.

Trump Persuasion Alert: Bible Dodge

If you have been following my analysis of Trump’s persuasive brilliance you will see another example on display in

 

Scott

The Third Way on Immigration (Sort of a Trump Post)

Readers have objected to my prediction that Trump will win the nomination and then the general election because…

1. Trump needs about 40% of the Latino vote to win.

2. Only 13% of Latino voters support Trump, largely because of his immigration plan.

No politician can close that gap. Therefore, say the people that have been spectacularly wrong about all-things-Trump, he must be playing some sort of power game with no real intention of winning the whole thing.

Maybe. 

I can see both the math and the reasoning behind that point of view. I’ll bet it would be hard to persuade you that Trump can close that kind of gap in such a short time.

Game on. 

What follows is a blatant, manipulative play on your emotions that is engineered to make you believe Trump can beat the odds on Latino voters. It looks impossible to you now. You might update your opinion if you read to the end.

Please stop reading now if you don’t want to be part of the experiment. I’m not joking when I say I’m about to rewire your brain. It might feel a bit freaky, but I think it is worth it for you to get a visceral understanding of the power of persuasion.

— persuasion starts here —

Before I talk about Trump’s persuasion strategy for closing the Latino voter gap, I should reveal my bias on the topic so you can factor that in.

And I like to preface this sort of topic by saying you should not get any important opinions from cartoonists. This blog is for entertainment only.

The immigration issue has calcified into two camps, as far as I can tell. Trump’s plan forms one extreme, and includes building a wall, ending automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil, and rounding up 11 million illegal aliens and deporting them. 

The opposing camp believes it would be impractical, uneconomical, and inhumane to do any part of Trump’s plan. I assume many of Trump’s critics favor some sort of path to citizenship for illegal aliens.

I can see both sides. And I think both sides are missing the point by a mile.

In my view, this is one of those times when we get to pick who we are as a country. You don’t get many of these moments in a lifetime. I would hate to waste it.

Most of you heard the recent story about the Americans who helped disarm a gunman on a train in France. The young men heard trouble and they ran toward it. The story touched people in this country because it is a reminder of who we are.

I don’t think anyone in America can argue with the criticism that we can be assholes. Hey, no one is perfect. But when the shit goes down, you probably want some Americans nearby. We accept your criticisms, my international readers, but we still have your back. That’s how we roll.

I know each of you Americans reading this have your own notions about the identity of the United States, and that is my point today. The immigration issue gives us a chance to either confirm who we are or modify it. It matters that we get it right.

My view of the 11 million illegal immigrants is that anyone who wants to be on my team badly enough to commit a crime is my kind of American. My impression is that they bring up the average. I understand why some of my fellow citizens don’t want to compete with them for jobs. And good luck competing with the second generation that have their parents’ immigrant DNA and an American education. I want those kids working for my start-up. 

I hear everything folks are saying about the importance of the rule of law, about fairness, economics, and crime. Countries need secure borders or they fail to remain countries. Those are important considerations. But do we want to define yourself by those worries?

We can. But it is entirely optional. 

I prefer an America that knows when to use a hammer and when to use a hug. With immigration, I understand the hammer. But I prefer the hug. Not because it is right, in some intellectual sense, and not because it is economical, but because it is who I want to be.

And about that birthright law – the one that says a baby that draws its first breath in this country is an American forever? In the history of all laws made anywhere, in any age, that one is by far the coolest. It gives the country a magical vibe that feels part of our nature. I don’t want to lose that. 

You can look at the immigration issue through a filter of money, law, safety, or compassion. But none of those speak comprehensively to who you want to be. You are far more than those things.

And this brings me to Donald Trump, alleged racist son-of-bitch and hater of all law-breaking, brown babies. How the hell does that guy convince millions of Latinos to vote for him?

No politician could do that.

But Trump is not a politician. He is a business person and one of the top wizards of persuasion on the planet. And he has one enormous advantage that I have never seen for any candidate: He can change his mind and show his work.

As I said in a prior post, Trump is dropping a negotiation anchor with his super-aggressive plan that includes a wall, a change to the constitution for birth rights, and deportation of millions. He has no intention of doing all of that. He is simply creating some false choices to trade away later. But not until he has the Republican nomination in the bag. So be patient.

If Trump follows form, what he really wants is a “Trump Wall” that is so “fabulous” that it becomes its own money-making tourist attraction and carries his name forever. I doubt he cares about deporting anyone or tweaking the constitution. Those are the items he plans to trade to get Trump Wall.

I expect that Trump will eventually ask the Latino community to come up with its own plan for dealing with the 11 million illegals. And that plan might include having legal citizens “sponsor” an illegal alien including absorbing some of the risk. For example, as a sponsor I might have to buy a performance bond to protect against the risk that the illegal I am sponsoring causes any damage to the country. That’s just one idea. The main point is that Trump could put the Latino community on the spot to come up with their own plan.

Then Trump supports the new plan for sponsoring illegals, showing he is a man of reason, but keeps his Trump Wall plan and tells you it will turn a profit.

Another way he can game the system is by turning out massive numbers of young, white voters who normally would not vote. A President Trump would provide more hours of free entertainment than Netflix and Snapchat combined. And I do believe it will have a big impact on voter turnout.

Update: And look for Trump to pick a second-generation Latino as his running mate. Did you see that coming?

No one can know what the future holds. But I’ll bet a Trump presidency looks a lot more feasible than it did when you started reading this.

—

And that’s what persuasion looks like. If you have read my prior posts on persuasion and Trump, you can start to see the method in what I wrote. For new readers, check the comments  and I expect you will see my persuasion method dissected for fun. 

My disclaimer for new readers is that I am not endorsing Trump as president because I have no idea how that would work out. I am only interested in his genius of persuasion.

Scott

If you enjoyed reading this post you will probably enjoy my book about systems versus goals.

In Top Tech Blog, check out a Microsoft claim that it can take 3D photos with your regular phone. Are you believing that?

Trump Makes Univision do the Perp Walk

Could I love the man more? No. I could not.

I don’t know how Trump will perform as president, but he sure entertains.

If you are following my blog series on Donald Trump’s persuasive genius, you have to see this master stroke from today.

The set-up is a press conference in which a reporter for Univision asks Trump a potentially damaging question about his immigration plan. Here’s what you have to know to understand the scene:

1. Univision cancelled Trump’s Miss America Pageant over his comments about illegal immigrants. Univision and Trump are enemies.

2. The reporter is famous in Mexico and perhaps among Spanish-speakers but would be somewhat unknown to most American viewers.

3. The reporter is on record for being deeply critical of Trump.

4. Trump had not called on the reporter, and that starts the video off.

Given what I have taught you in past posts, view the video and separate out the impact of the visuals versus the “story” the media is putting on it. And remember that the visuals are about a 10-to-1 impact compared to text. Trump plays the visuals. Always. That’s part of his wizardry.

It seems the press will be reporting the “story” as Trump being inappropriate at a press conference in some generic ways that will not register as particularly important to anyone.

Now consider the visuals. Trump remained calm, put the reporter in his place, and eventually nodded to security to lead the protesting reporter out while cameras followed the entire episode.

Trump, that magnificent bastard, made his enemy do the perp walk on International TV while appearing 100% in charge of the situation.

Yeah. You can’t beat that. No accidents are happening here.

And do you know what his core supporters saw? They saw Trump deport that Mexican reporter right out of the room, metaphorically. Those other candidates are talking about immigration but Trump has already started. Remember we are not talking about anyone’s rational thinking. These sorts of images sneak through your rational defenses.

And Trump sent a message to the rest of the press, which helps to keep them nervous during future interviews. That’s how a world-class negotiator does it. He makes the other person less confident. Throws them off their game. And apparently he decided some collateral damage in the press would delight the viewers. I know I appreciated it.

And on some level every person watching that episode was happy they did not have to endure another round of gotcha outragism as one “news” outlet after another rushes to take Trump’s words out of context. Trump’s show was far more entertaining.

And he did all of that spontaneously. (As far as you know.)

Does the boring candidate EVER win?

I remind you I am not endorsing Trump. Most of the candidates seem qualified to me. I am only a fan of Trump’s persuasion methods.

Scott

If you like my Trump posts you would almost certainly like my book on systems versus goals. Trump is a systems guy. He isn’t that rich by accident.

Digital Distraction Syndrome

When I was a kid I couldn’t concentrate on homework while music was playing. The music was a distraction.

Today I often need to put on headphones and play loud music in order to concentrate on work.

What changed? Was it me?

Here’s another data point, still in anecdotal territory, obviously. My stepson fought like a wounded badger for the right to play music while doing homework. He insisted it helped him concentrate, as it does for me as an adult. But his mom and I argued that music was a distraction to learning.

We might have been wrong.

My hypothesis, subject to your sage review, is that the baseline stimulation of normal life has become a higher distraction than loud music blaring in both ears. Music once created a distraction in a quiet world. Now music creates a bit of a buffer from the baseline circus of your normal existence. And in this context I do not mean the noise of the outside world so much as the mental distraction of simply knowing you might have a message if only you looked. Stuff like that.

Music is somewhat predictable, especially for familiar songs, and it soon blends into the background of your mind, creating (in my experience) a sort of force field that keeps away the outside world. It is a defense against the distractions the world has inserted in your mind.

It goes without saying that our digital devices are both awesome in function and distracting in nature. No one wants to return to pre-digital days. But we do need to be conscious of the entire impact of our new tech, not just the shiny bits.

At the risk of being an alarmist, I’m going to go on record as saying Digital Distraction Syndrome (my name for it) is among the biggest health threats in the industrial world. The distractions of the digital age increase our stress, and stress makes us sick and crazy.

90% of the adults I know are on drugs because of what they think is the normal stress of life. Here I am counting the doctor-prescribed meds, the binge-drinking on weekends, the medical marijuana, porn, tobacco, wine before dinner, or even the exercise addiction that gooses the body to release feel-good chemistry. 

How’d we get here?

Our largest and most important tech companies are literally in the business of distracting you with their advertisements and their apps. They design their products to maximize distraction, not efficiency, because your distraction is their profit. Distractions make you less effective, which makes you more stressed, which kicks the hell out of your general health. Then you die.

In other words, our most important technology companies are killing you. 

For money. 

Like the tobacco companies. 

Is that comparison too extreme? According to the CDC, smoking will cause one person out of 13 in my country to die prematurely. Stress will probably get one-third of us, but we will label those deaths with whatever symptoms the doctor saw last, such as cardiovascular disease.

Our digital distractions are not the sole cause of our stress. But my best guess is that it accounts for about half of it in this day and age.

The tech companies’ defense (one assumes) is that no one is forcing you to do anything, and the risks and benefits are fully disclosed. That’s the tobacco defense as well. If you want to smoke, that is up to you and your free will. Likewise, no one needs all of these digital distractions to survive. You can go without your smartphone if you want. Obviously you would be living like a savage who can’t figure out how to get a ride home or pay for food, but you could do it. With your free will and stuff.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and the other tech giants are huge assets to humankind. (Okay, not the last three.) I admire most of them on many levels. I love their products most of the time. I can’t imagine living without them.

And that’s the point. They own me. Choice is an illusion unless I want to go full-caveman.

If we could reboot civilization from the beginning and engineer a perfect economy, I doubt we would agree to give away our brain cycles to every company that asks. Here’s how that meeting would go:

Primitive Guy 1: “Let’s build a vibrant economy that depends on distracting people from the things they want to do every minute of every day.”

Primitive Guy 2: “Excuse me while I push this spear through your stupid head.”

That plan would have never gotten off the ground. A civilization can only get to the point we are at right now by evolving over time. A few ads on roadside billboards probably reduced the boredom of driving. No one got hurt.

Today the tech companies blast your neurons with so many stimulants – all of them science-tested for maximum impact – that all of us are operating on sensory overload and inching toward insanity.

My best guess on the eventual death toll from Digital Distraction Syndrome is in the low tens-of-millions. For comparison, the second World War only killed 60 million. I think we’ll pass that mark with ease.

Am I wrong?

Scott

—

In Top Tech Blog, brainiacs are turning sunlight and water into fuel. What??? And how about buying a personal indoor farm run by robots? That’s an option now.

—

The seventh book reviewer in this list is a tough grader. He’s talking about this book.