Scott Adams's Blog, page 289

Success is a Relative Thing

There is no such thing as absolute success. Success only has meaning in relation to other things. For example, my book, God’s Debris, is ranked #8 on a recent Amazon.com best seller list in the Religious Studies - Psychology category. That doesn’t seem like much of a success until you notice who placed 9th. It’s all relative.

Suck it, number nine! 

(And by that I mean not literally a “sucking” force but more of an illusion caused by your dead lips bending space-time.)

I’m a terrible winner.

[If your firewall blocks the image, you can peep it on @ScottAdamsSays on Twitter.]

How Trump Becomes President

I’m watching the Donald Trump campaign for president with the same amount of amusement as everyone else. The only difference is that I think he has a legitimate shot at becoming president. You’ll choke when I tell you why, because you’ll agree.

Realistically, the mood of the country is that it is time for a woman to be president. If you have watched any broadcast TV lately you know that commercials have swung from the traditional anti-woman sexist stuff of the past to become flagrantly anti-male. (Mostly. Still some exception.) That’s the national mood. Clinton is in the right place at the right time. The era of women has arrived. Nothing but a health problem or a new scandal could stop the inevitability train. 

But if Hillary does not coast into the White House as I expect (and this is a prediction, not a preference) you will see a Donald Trump presidency.

Here’s why. I’ll start with some obvious stuff and then get to my surprise reason that Trump could become president. I’ll bet you don’t see it coming. 

For starters, the visceral reaction that makes so many people dislike Trump has a lot to do with his New York style. I grew up in upstate New York and his style registers with me in a completely different way than it does with my California friends who can’t stand him. What I see is bluntness, honesty, some risk-taking, and a competitive nature. I don’t hate any of that. In fact, I kind of like it. 

I have blogged about making the transition from my New York personality to my California personality. New Yorkers tend to say whatever they think is true to whoever is standing nearby. Not much filter. Californians say what they think will make you feel good. The California way would feel like lying if it were not so well-meaning. 

I certainly understand that Trump comes off as arrogant, obnoxious, and lots of other bad stuff. But over time, and compared to the liars on stage with him, you might get hooked on hearing his honest opinions. That’s how the New York style works. At first you hate it because it seems so harsh. In time you start to appreciate the honesty. And when you realize the harshness is not a signal of real evil – just a style – you tend to get over it. He won’t win over all of his haters, but I predict that his New York style will grow on people more than you would expect. You could say his style is his biggest problem, but it might be self-solving with time and exposure. He is getting both.

When I speak of honesty in this context, I’m not talking about Trump inflating his business success record. Keep in mind that Trump is literally in the business of exaggerating the value of his brand, so if you see him doing exactly that – and breaking no laws in the process – you might come to understand it as nothing but a business approach that is apparently working.

Trump is a business-Republican as opposed to a social conservative. He is the first candidate in memory that could legitimately offer this proposition:

1. Social freedom (that liberals like)

2. Stronger economy without raising taxes (that Republicans like)

I’m not saying he can deliver on any promises. I’m only saying he is likely to have the sort of platform that looks appealing to independents.

Now let’s say Trump gets strategic because he sees that his stroll across the presidential landscape is being taken seriously. He never really had to get serious before. But I’ll bet he could turn it on like a switch if he thought it would get him elected. I would expect him to dial back his crazy-sounding stuff as his poll numbers grow.

But that’s not what gets him elected. If he wants the independents and some Democrats to vote his way, he needs something bigger. He needs a trump card. 

And he has it.

His hair.

I believe Donald Trump could become President of the United States if he promised to shave his head upon winning. Or perhaps he could do it a month before election to suck all the media attention from his competitor.

Right. Think about it. Voters are emotional creatures and they would love such an act of humility coming from such an egotistical jerk. People love to see other people change. That is the formula for successful movies: The protagonist changes when the audience thinks such change is not possible. We LOVE that.

Hillary Clinton has a 95% chance of being our next president unless we get some surprises. But the other 5% is all Trump. So if Clinton stumbles, Trump is running the country. Assuming he shaves his head.

Scott

In Top Tech Blog, read about 3D printers for printing pharmaceutical drugs. This is part of why I predict healthcare costs will drop 90% in your lifetime. But what happens when anyone can print drugs at home? Might be a downside!

—

People like my book.

Robots Read News - about the murdered Hitchbot

If your firewall blocks the image, try seeing it on Twitter.

If you are not from around here, you probably don’t know that Google’s self-driving cars are a daily sighting in Mountainview California.

In Top Tech Blog: 

- Super capacitors are coming and that’s a big deal.

- A head-cooling helmet that gets us one step closer to realizing the human body is always the weak link and we should just evolve to software now.

Best. Complaint. Ever.

I got this complaint in my email today. This gentleman says my calendars used to be funny but they no longer are. Read top to bottom to see my response.

—- incoming email —-

Hi There.

I want to share my thoughts on the current [Dilbert] calendar block I am working through this year.

I have had these for two or three years but have been completely disappointed with the content in this years’ effort. Gone are the clever jokes and observations and instead we seem to have an almost formula approach which to me frequently misses the mark. I check the daily cartoons on the Dilbert website and these are still as sharp and funny as they have always been.

To me it is as if someone else is creating the calendar and not really achieving the required result. I for one won’t buy it next year as it just isn’t funny.

Regards
[name removed]

Tasmania, Australia

—- my response —

Hi [name removed],

The comics on the website are current and the calendars are curated collections of comics that have already been on the website. 

Which means you are writing to complain that my comic is improving. And I thank you for that :-)

Scott

What is Better Than a Republic?

Most of you would agree that our democratic system (a republic) is flawed in many ways, and yet it is still better than all the known alternatives.

So I thought I would come up with a better alternative.

Keep in mind that the Constitution of the United States was written before the Internet. I doubt the founders would have created the system we have today if they had better tools. So I will try to extend their thinking to modern times, when the Internet provides us with more options.

I think you would agree that the best political system would involve a talented and enlightened dictator that had the best interests of the people at heart. Unfortunately, that sort of dictator is rare, and succession planning is problematic. So the dictator plan has too many risks.

I have suggested in the past that a good system would involve a dictator wearing a bomb vest that could be detonated at any time by a majority vote of the public. That would keep the dictator working on behalf of the majority, but you can see lots of problems with that system as well. Hackers would blow up the president in about ten minutes. I wouldn’t let that politician kiss my baby.

Our current system – a republic – is obviously broken because the majority is not getting its way for issues that are good for all. For example, a strong majority of voters in California wants to legalize doctor-assisted dying, but the state politicians have tabled it. As a result of our republic not serving the best interests of the people, old folks are suffering by the thousands, maybe millions.

And weed is still a federal crime here. The majority of citizens would legalize weed, and that would be disproportionately good for minority groups that tend to be over-jailed for marijuana possession. That’s an example of the majority protecting a minority, even if it is only out of self-interest. (That’s how it generally works. Educated people understand that oppressing minorities is a bad strategy for everyone in the long run.)

Gay marriage would have happened sooner with a pure democracy. And here again the prime beneficiaries of a pure democracy would be a minority group. That is the opposite of what you expect with “mob rule.” And we can see that when the majority votes in its own enlightened best interests, it usually bodes well for the non-majority as well. I think you would have to go back in history to pre-Internet days to find an example of the majority abusing the minority. You see that behavior most where the Internet coverage is the least.

My hypothesis is that a pure democracy coupled with the Internet would create an almost “super morality” situation in which we would find our best selves. In other words, I believe a real democracy, supported by modern communication tools, would drive the risk of “mob rule” to zero. 

Let me give you some bad analogies to make my point.

Consider firing squads used for executions. By tradition, one of the guns is loaded with blanks, so shooters can never know who did the killing. When your actions are DIRECTLY linked to an outcome, as opposed to being diluted by probability, you feel and perhaps act differently. Likewise, if I vote for a politician, and the politician does something bad, I don’t take it as a personal failing. I think the politician failed in that situation, not me. 

But if I get to vote on every issue, I feel a personal responsibility to the people affected. There is a big difference between watching your elected representatives abuse a minority group and doing it yourself. I can tolerate other people being evil – because I can’t fix the entire world – but I’m not okay with being evil myself. 

The big problem with a pure democracy is that voters are – and here I must generalize – under-informed idiots. So one would expect their decisions about complex foreign affairs, or the economy, to be sub-optimal. Our current system tries to fix that problem by making our politicians the experts on behalf of the public. There are two problems with that:

1. Politicians don’t understand the issues either.

2. Special interests can influence politicians.

So here is how I would build a system to solve every problem I have mentioned.

Imagine a system that involves direct citizen voting on every issue. But in addition to voting yes or no on a ballot question you can also assign your vote FOR A PARTICULAR TOPIC to any other voter who is open to that assignment.

For example, I might cast my own direct vote on simple topics, such as gay marriage, weed, and doctor-assisted dying. I feel I know enough about those issues to be useful.

But if the proposed law is about economic policy, I might want to delegate my vote to Paul Krugman, or whoever I thought had the best thinking on that topic.

You could also delegate your vote to your better-informed spouse, a friend, or anyone you would trust making decisions for you. But I would make it illegal to delegate a vote to anyone representing an organization. And I would make it illegal to delegate more than one voter topic to another person. That keeps individuals from becoming too powerful outside their field of expertise.

The beauty of my system is that you never have to wait for elections to improve things. The minute that you hear an expert saying something brilliant on a particular topic, you call up your voting app and assign rights to that expert for all of your votes in the category. If you hear a smarter expert tomorrow, you reassign your vote to that person.

I see no practical way to evolve from our current system to what might be called an Assigned Voter system. So it would have to be tested on a new country. Perhaps it will first be tried on a city built on an ocean platform. 

Do you think it would be an improvement over the current system? I am having a hard time finding a flaw in this idea. I know you will do better.

Scott

In Top Tech Blog:

I predict that healthcare costs will drop by 90% over the next 20 years. I think IBM’s Watson will take a big bite out of it. So will the flood of inexpensive medical testing devices coming this way. So will nano-robots in your blood. So will our better understanding of diet. And when you can 3D-print your own meds and medical devices, things get interesting. And obviously doctor-assisted dying laws would make a difference because the last year of life is the expensive one.

If you don’t need a doctor or a nurse to do a diagnosis, and you can print your own medicines and medical equipment at home, healthcare costs will plummet. In my own experience, when my healthcare provider, Kaiser, started allowing patients to email their doctors directly, my number of doctor visits for the small stuff dropped by 75%.

When I had my exotic voice problems that rendered me speechless for over three years, I ran up a lot of expenses going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was going on. I believe Watson (and big data in general) could take a voice recording of someone with spasmodic dysphonia (my problem) and identify the condition in less than a second. At nearly zero cost.

One would still need to pay for surgery in that case, but Watson could have saved me years of pain.

If you think healthcare costs will slowly rise forever, you are probably 100% wrong. And I also think the norm for the future is to only have healthcare plans for the big issues such as surgery and emergency room visits.

New Olympic Event

I have often said that training your kid for the Olympics is a form of child abuse because it is such a waste of time and talent. Especially if you don’t win. Training for the Olympics is a good example of not following the odds.

But apparently things CAN get worse, at least for the athletes that will be swimming in the rivers in Rio that are equal parts poop and water.

If your firewall is blocking the image, see it on Twitter here.

I have this image of the TV network that covers the Olympics going to commercial break, everyone in Rio uses the bathroom, and the simultaneous flushing causes a river wave that sweeps the competitors out to the ocean.

I have said enough.

Scott

Meanwhile, on Top Tech Blog …

Okay, here’s what I want to see.

I want this camera mounted on the bottom of a drone. And I want to watch the video it produces in a round room that is surrounded by those new curved TVs, as if I am sitting in a cockpit of a moving aircraft. That way I can take a tour all around Paris, for example, steering as I please.

That’s how I want to travel.

In the long run, that’s also how I want to learn. I want to be immersed in a topic via CGI and video. I want to be on the battlefield with Napolean. I want to watch evolution in fast-forward as if viewed from a time machine. I want to learn math by being inside it. In other words, I want an immersive learning room along with lots of content.

I figure that will come just before the holodeck.

Living by the Odds

I like to live my life by the odds. 

For example, I don’t often ride a bicycle because the risk of injury is high while the enjoyment can be matched by safer activities. For most of my sporting life I played tennis because it offers a good exercise-to-injury ratio. Even distance running is less safe.

As a result of my safety bias, and luck too, I have never had a sporting injury of any major consequence. Today, I really, really want to own a motorcycle. But I don’t like the odds. So I don’t.

When I was young, my mother brainwashed me on the importance of education for escaping my low-income life. I was taught that paying attention in class and doing all of my homework would be enough to make my life better, and I’m sure it did. Authority figures told me what I needed to do to improve my odds, and in nearly every case I did exactly that.

I also follow the odds with diet and fitness. That was problematic in my youth because a lot of what I learned about diet and exercise as a kid was completely wrong. I followed all the good advice of the time and found it challenging to keep weight off. Today I follow the scientific guidelines for diet and exercise – which are probably a lot better than in the past – and my results are shocking. I’m in the best shape of my life, by far, as I cruise into my senior citizen years, and I use nothing like “willpower” to get it done. I did not see that coming.

Career-wise, I also pursued the odds as I saw them. But here things get complicated with my “white male privilege” which clearly helped as well. So I won’t compare my situation to anyone else’s except to say that whatever your starting point is, playing the odds probably helps.

For my career, I consciously played the odds in the following simple ways:

1. Upon graduating college I moved from Windham NY, population 2,000, to San Francisco to improve my career odds. An ex-girlfriend lived in San Francisco but I had no other ties there.

2. I took an entry-level job (teller) at Crocker Bank because at the time they were the technology leader in banking and a big deal in California. I went where the energy and money was. I figured I could work my way up from the bottom and learn along the way.

3. I was agnostic about what types of jobs I did so long as they taught me something that improved my odds for something better, no matter what that better thing was. I saw my corporate days as a practical education for whatever I would later do on my own.

4. I took advantage of every free educational offering from my company. When my employer offered to pay for any kind of useful class, I signed up. The bank even paid for most of my MBA classes at Berkeley while I went to school at night. And they paid for me to take the Dale Carnegie course to become an accomplished speaker. The learning opportunities were incredible.

I was not only becoming smarter and more capable in a general way, but many of the skill combinations made me unique in a financially valuable way. For example, I worked in the bank during the dawn of the personal computing era, and I was among the first to learn how to use an IBM PC (on my own time). As quaint as this sounds in retrospect, few bankers were technologically savvy, and since I was, I stood out. It helped on a few promotions for sure.

5. I stayed single and child-free, intentionally, to keep my mobility high during my important early career days. Staying out of jail helped too.

6. I took LOTS of risks with side projects that I hoped would grow into something good. But in each case the risk was one of embarrassment, lost sleep, and wasted time. If one thing did not work out, I would simply move to the next. Dilbert was my first side project that worked.

Most of you would see the success of Dilbert as good luck. And it was. But financially it was probably bad luck because I was a young, ambitious, white, highly-educated man with an entrepreneurial personality living on the edge of Silicon Valley. My best guess is that if cartooning had not worked out, I would have cashed out of a few start-ups by now and would be far richer.

There is little about my story that could be directly applied to a young person today. For example, I doubt you could become a bank teller today and afford to rent a windowless bedroom in San Francisco, as I did. My story is about following the odds, not creating a template that anyone else can follow.

My question to you today is simple. Do you know anyone who played the odds the way I did (with their own variations, in their own time) and found that life did not work out well?

Obviously people have health issues and tragedies that are beyond their control. But I can’t think of anyone in my experience who followed the odds and got a bad result unless they got hit by a car or some other random tragedy visited.

Is there anyone reading this blog who was as dedicated to following the odds as I was and yet things did not work out for you? 

Scott

—

Bonus Thought: My sister told me a story the other day. She graduated high school as Valedictorian and planned to become a scientist until an authority figure in her life informed her that “science isn’t a job.” So she got a major in art and became a teacher. Because science isn’t a fucking job? (The authority figure did not say “for a woman” but I think it was implied.)

This brings us to the question of why more girls do not pursue science and technology jobs. The solution probably involves a thousand small steps, but one of those steps might include the games kids play. See Tamra Teig’s sportlight on a start-up called Build and Imagine and how they plan to make better games for girls. I don’t know if this will make a difference, but it can’t hurt.

Note: I am not an investor in the start-up mentioned but I like to put a spotlight on Berkeley-related start-ups that are doing something good.

Thinking Strategically

Are you a strategic thinker or a victim?

You’re probably one or the other.

The other day a smart, attractive, 27-year old, white woman told me it was hard to get a job in California because she is a woman.

That’s a victim.

A few months ago I had a minor leg injury that looked like it would keep me from doing cardio for a few weeks. My first thought was that it was an opportunity to do more weight training on my upper body, which I wanted to do anyway.

That’s strategic thinking. 

Every problem creates an opportunity.

In the early days of Dilbert it looked as if the strip would fail. It was published in fewer than a hundred newspapers worldwide and sales had slowed to a trickle. In the comics business that almost always means a comic will disappear in a few years. 

I saw the situation as nothing to lose. It was freedom. I could take risks that successful cartoonists could not, and so I did. Dilbert was the first syndicated comic on the Internet even thought the thinking of the day was that giving away your content for free was business suicide. But, as history showed, the Internet was essential to Dilbert’s Success.

Generally speaking, I have the following automatic responses to bad situations.

Chaos: There must be an opportunity in here someplace, as the saying goes.

Discrimination: Discrimination generally brings with it some reverse-discrimination (perpetrated by the minority plus the guilty-feeling majority) that you can use in your favor if you find it.

Broke: Nothing to lose. Take some risks.

Not in a Relationship: Great time to learn a new skill. Easy to relocate for work. Far easier to exercise and eat right. (I got an MBA at night during one relationship-free period.)

Angry mood: Good day to fire people who deserve it and yell at the people that need it. I do all that unpleasant stuff on my bad days because I know those days won’t get much worse. No point in ruining a perfectly good day when you can batch up all your bad stuff for a day that is already bad on its own. Never waste an angry mood.

A few years ago I was sharing some frustrations about my scheduling challenges with a friend. We were both juggling schedules for work, family, and especially kid activities. We were buried in the complexity of figuring out where we needed to be and when. So we formed a start-up (CalendarTree.com) to solve the problem, which it does for thousands of happy users. We will soon announce a new set of functions and a name change. (I predict that 80% of you will use at least one of the new features we are launching soon. I already use it every day.)

In my freshman year of college, I came down with mono, the so-called kissing disease. Doctors advised me to avoid physical contact with women for months. By coincidence, another student visiting the college infirmary for mono was one of the most attractive women I had seen on campus. She was way out of my league. But as I explained to her, the only person on campus she could kiss without fear was me. She became my girlfriend.

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. There were only about forty kids in my graduating class. As you can imagine, the town did not have much economic opportunity. You might say it was bad luck to be born there, at least from an economic sense. But I saw it as an advantage because I had no special ties to my home town, and my parents were happy for me to follow my ambition. Because of that freedom, I could choose to live anyplace on earth that I could afford. So I sold my car for a one-way ticket to California, where the weather was nice and economy was humming. It was the best decision of my life.

I don’t believe pessimists can or should become optimists. But I think you can train yourself to think strategically. 

Scott

—

In Top Tech Blog:

- A flying car with a whole-car parachute option, just in case. That is what I want. That is coming.

- In our ongoing effort to fool ourselves into thinking human drivers are necessary for operating cars, Ford has some cool headlights.

- And how about a folding bridge you can take with you?

—

If you only have time to read one self-help book in your entire life, wouldn’t you choose the best one?

Robots Read News about Dumb Trump

If you can’t see the image because of your company’s firewall, see it on Twitter here.

In Top Tech Blog:

Here comes a little company that is about to change the world with a small device that scans your food and tells you what is in it.

You might be saying this is no big deal. It is just another way for diet Nazis to obsess over something new.

But imagine being able to scan your food and have the device tell you it is unhealthy (in essence). How many parents would keep serving unhealthy food to their kids if they have an option? I think a food scanner changes the world (if it works.)

How?

Well, for starters, Warren Buffett’s investments in crap-foods will start to suffer. So your notions about skill versus luck in the stock market will dissolve at the same rate as the sales of Kraft and Coke.

But more importantly, this is one more step toward society’s “discovery” that what you eat has an impact on your happiness. When you don’t know you’re eating crap for lunch, you might think you’re tired that afternoon for no particular reason. But when you start to see the clear connection between bad diet and how you feel in a few hours, you’ll probably stop injuring yourself with food.

Good information about your body’s fuel source changes healthcare, life expectancy, happiness, productivity. Well, everything.

And I think a handheld food scanner does all that. (If it works.)

The question for today is this: Would you improve your diet if you had better information? (I predict most of you will say no because you mistakenly believe you already know what are putting in your body.)

Scott

Hey, Mark Twain just gave me a great book review on Amazon. I guess the rumors of his death were exaggerated.

Why You Are Insane

This morning I needed to respond to an email request for action. It was a simple task.

But the email says I did not respond to a recent voice mail. I search my phone and learn I have had no voice mail messages for days. Now I have a mystery to solve. Does my voice mail work?

The email that asked me to do the task answered one question I had about the task from prior conversations but not another. So I can only do a half-reply with the information I have. Now my history of email messages with this business contact splits into two, as the topic has bifurcated. Twice the complication, thanks to the design limitations of email communications.

I notice the message also asks me to check a calendar date. That means picking up my phone…and noticing I have a text message alert. Do I look? Must be important at this time of day. I resist, but my mind is now spread over the incoming text message curiosity, my missing voice mail mystery, and the task at hand that has now turned one email chain into two or three.

I search my sent emails to remind myself what I asked for, and what I have. I need a file that I can’t find in any direct way, but I figure out a clever way to find a copy.

Wait, wasn’t I checking my calendar? It takes about ten clicks on my phone to close an app, hunt for my calendar app, open it, and navigate to the date in question. By then I have had seven new thoughts and literally do not remember why I opened the calendar in the first place. Ten clicks to do one task is far too many.

At some point in that process it occurred to me that I should document my internal thoughts to show how complicated the world has become. So I am doing that now. And I literally do not recall why I opened my calendar in the first place. That was 25 thoughts ago.

This is why we are all crazy. There is no such thing as a simple task. Every little thing becomes a mental marathon of app-switching, searching for old emails, troubleshooting technology problems, and juggling five questions spread over seven emails.

I blame our many legacy systems for this situation. The idea of an “application” makes no sense in 2015. I should be able to start my task directly and let my software figure out which app to use and how. That part should not be my job. 

For example, if want to check my calendar, I should be able to start typing a date in some blank page on my device and have the operating system know I must want to see my calendar, so it pops up. We need to get rid of the step where you have to choose a device and an app before you can do any simple task. The task has to come first, with the choice of app at the end, or automatic. That’s how you will keep your mind straight in complex situations.

And why do messages come to me via text, WhatsApp, Facebook, IMs, and my several email accounts? I don’t want to first pick an app before sending a message. I want to start typing or talking my message and select the app when I am done, or not at all if the software guesses right.

And everything I do on my phone or computer should be grouped by project, not by application. That way the distractions you encounter will all be in the same context at least. That probably helps.

I realize I say things that sound like exaggerations to you. And this is a blog, so you expect that sort of thing. But without exaggeration, I believe our app-first technologies, and the unnecessary complications of daily life, are literally driving normal folks insane. And in this context I mean an adult will seek mind-altering prescription meds just to keep the gun out of his mouth.

Marriage and family life has the same legacy problem. I’ll get to that in another post.

One of the great strengths of America, being a youngish country, is that we sometimes don’t mind tossing tradition out the window in the name of efficiency. I think we need to get a lot more aggressive about that now for mental health reasons.

I would start by designing from scratch the following legacy systems:

1. Marriage and child-rearing (Doesn’t work in the smartphone era)

2. Education (We teach the wrong topics in the wrong way.)

3. App-centric operating systems (Drives us crazy, literally)

4. Government (Poorly designed for 2015)

5. Taxes. (Should be automatic.)

Are there any other legacy systems you would overhaul? 

Scott

If you want to make an author smile, try leaving this sort of book review on Amazon. 

This review was for God’s Debris, written in 2001. The book is experiencing a sales resurgence for some reason. It might be because the sequel, The Religion War, predicts the rise of ISIS (Caliphate) and predicts that terrorists will start using hobby-sized drones for attacks in other countries.

Or maybe it was this video of a teen who put a gun on a drone and fired it at targets in the woods. That should be the last time a president appears outdoors in public.