Scott Adams's Blog, page 294

Robots Read News - New Miracle Drug

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

Humor Dimensions: recognition, cleverness, bizarre, cruel

Predicted sharing: Medium-high because the “people are dumb” idea always travels. No disqualifying concepts and safe for work.

On Top Tech Blog:

Here come 3D holograms that float in the air without special glasses. I plan to leave a hologram behind when I die, like Obi Wan Kenobi, just to freak people out. Or perhaps I will port my personality to software and have the computer generate my 3D hologram when needed. Good luck getting rid of me!!! BUWHAHAHAHA!

How about a smart bullet that changes direction in flight to chase a target? Can I shoot down my neighbor’s drone with that bullet? And more importantly, will my hologram ever be able to shoot that gun?

And how about bionic eyes for blind folks? Here they come.

Scott

@scottadamssays 

@Daily_Dilbert

Things That Cannot Be Communicated

As a writer, I keep bumping into topics that cannot be communicated for a variety of reasons. I thought I would list them so you see how many there are. That’s the surprising part.

 Feel free to skim it to get to the content after.

Secrets: Someone asked you not to talk. Or you know it would not be appreciated.

Embarrassment: The topic is personally embarrassing or would embarrass someone else of importance.

Brand problem: If you have a personal or corporate brand to protect, you stay away from controversial topics.

Company secret: You have agreed to not discuss the topic with outsiders.

Tribal identity: You disagree with your “tribe” but you don’t want to be a traitor to your people. In this context, the tribe might be your gender, age, ethnicity, or lifestyle group.

Illegal 1: You did something illegal and don’t want anyone to know.

Illegal 2: You did NOT do something illegal, but displaying too much interest or knowledge in an illegal topic would make it seems as if you did. For example, you don’t want to show too much knowledge of cocaine at the PTA meeting.

Awful Topic 1: Some topics are so awful no one will listen to them.

Awful Topic 2: Some experiences are so awful you cannot form the words to describe them. Your brain shuts off.

Incredible claims with no evidence: If aliens really do abduct you, don’t expect to be believed.

Liar telling the truth: Once you are a known liar, no one believes anything you say.

Opponent who is right: When opponents say something true and right, we don’t hear them. We twist the message in our minds until it is something we can disagree with. 

Self-Interest: If someone has a strong self-interest that opposes our own interests (such as a salesperson) we should not believe everything they say.

Complicated: Some things are just too complicated to explain. 

Emotional topic: Some topics are so emotionally charged that no one can hear what the other side is saying.

Inflammatory speech: Some topics are so inflammatory that just mentioning them could spark a riot.

Inmate claiming innocence: No one believes a convicted criminal claiming innocence.

Wrong messenger: In the unlikely event that I made a breakthrough in molecular biology in my garage, no one would listen to a cartoonist on a topic such as that.

Braggart stories: If a braggart says he gave Steve Jobs the idea for the iPhone, you don’t believe it, even if it happens to be true.

Hurtful: Some truths would cause pain without a compensating benefit.

Whistleblower: If you fear retaliation, you stay quiet.

Confidence: If you are not confident with your knowledge, or just in general, you might keep quiet.

Strategic: You might see great value in revealing a truth at a future date, so revealing it today is out of the question.

Kids are involved: Adults keep lots of “adult” topics from kids, for good reasons. Kids keep things from adults too, but not always for good reasons.

Reminder problem: You do not want to talk about your love of barbecuing while in the hospital burn unit.

Misinterpretation Risk: If your topic lends itself to misinterpretation by professional outragists, the wise communicator stays away.

Poor communicator: If you can’t communicate a thought (and many people cannot) it remains locked in your mind.

Listener is a drama-maker: Sometimes you don’t communicate what you know simply because the listener is too hard to deal with.

Can of Worms: Some topics are innocent on their own but they open up a line of questioning that you don’t want to invite.

Messenger is not confident about information: You think you saw your friend’s boyfriend cheating, but you can’t be 100% sure, so you keep it to yourself.

Avoiding Helpfulness: You might not tell your boss or spouse something important if you fear they might try to “help” you and make things worse.

Boring: Some information is too boring to for anyone’s attention span to handle.

Information has competitive value: You don’t want your competitors to know what you are up to.

The Optimist/Pessimist Problem: Optimists will tend to avoid saying pessimistic things and vice-versa. 

You are right but you don’t know why: Sometimes you know you are right (call it intuition or pattern recognition) but you don’t know why you are right, so you can’t sell your point of view.

The truth would seem too braggy: Modesty or professional branding might prevent you from tooting your own horn.

But here’s the interesting part: These limitations rarely apply when I’m the only listener. People size me up in about a minute and realize I have a personality similar to a therapist.

I’m non-judgmental.
I am impossible to shock. I am usually interested.I am a good listener.I can understand complicated things (usually).I have an impulse to be helpful.
I can keep a secret.
I enjoy hearing opposing views.

And so I wonder how different my view of reality is compared to the judgy person who is walled-off from the inner thoughts of others. When you wear your judgment on your face, do people tell you what they are really thinking?

You could argue that ignorance is what makes people judgmental. But I think being judgmental goes a long way to keeping you ignorant.

Scott

@scottadamssays

—- In Top Tech Blog —

A company invented a glove that can “feel” virtual images, such as in a video game. How long before that technology is mated to a [NSFW] mechanized Fleshlight? I say we have one year until gamers give up on direct human interaction and just start rewarding each other remotely after a good game.

And now your smartphone really is an exobrain, at least for folks with Alzheimers. An app can keep you “reminded” of important things in your life. The probable direction of this technology is turning your grandfather with Alzheimers into a cyborg with a brain that is part human and part smartphone. If you think about it, a human with almost no memory, but a functioning personality, could someday navigate the world with the phone as his memory. You might not recognize your own kid, but the phone will.

And how about a helicopter that can catch an expended rocket that is falling to Earth? I give it two years before it becomes the opening sequence of a Bond film.

—- Interesting Start-up —-

Berkeley has the second-biggest start-up environment in the world, after Stanford. I’m an alum of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley (MBA program). You will see some of the interesting start-ups spotlighted when I think they are worth the attention. As in…

A start-up called Honeit created a platform so employers can see candidates interviewed on video by third-parties, with tags that let you quickly find the parts you care about. I can see how it would be a great time-saver for recruiters. But I always wonder how a start-up like this can get critical mass when the service has little value until lots of folks are using it. That’s partly why we highlight this sort of company. If the product has value, just shining some light on it might make the difference. 

(I have interests in the Berkeley start-up world but not this particular company.)

———

This would be the most important book in the world, if the world did not have other books.

New Sport - Castleball

Sports are poorly engineered. Actually, most sports are not engineered at all. Things just evolved over time. That’s why our major sports are unnecessarily dangerous, expensive, and boring – at least by the standards of modern times.

Sports are still fine for watching. Actually, the spectating has never been better. But watching is not playing. It is the playing that is broken.

So I invented a new sport to solve the major problems common to most of the popular sports in America. I will be running tests on it in my backyard this summer to figure out the final rule set. I call it Castleball. 

And it is a combination of the best parts of soccer, dodgeball and the video game Angry Birds.

All you need is three (or more) micro-sized soccer balls, some red safety cones, and nearly any type of playing field. Teams can be any size, and you can mix lots of skill levels on the field and still have fun.

The objective of Castleball is to kick the balls (no hands) and knock down the “castle” of the opposing team while they try to do the same. The castles are actually structures you build using little red warning cones. See photo. The castles can be any size, from smallish to gigantic, depending on the event and number of players.

If no cones are available, any durable items that won’t break on impact will work.

[If your firewall blocks this image, it is just a backyard with three micro-soccer balls and two castles made of safety cones.]

Note: Artificial grass. 

You play until all cones of one castle are knocked down. Then you go again. You can agree on a winning score if you like, or just keep playing. Continuous substitutions, no stopping. And the size of the teams can change as you play. If you get too many players, add more balls and make the castles larger.

Hand-balls are not a game-stopping penalty unless you use your hands to gain advantage, such as blocking a shot or stopping a ball so you can kick it.

A variation of the game would have the kids trying to knock down castles that adults and older kids try to defend. Another variation is that the cones you knock down from the enemy castle can be added to your own castle. That makes the better team’s castle a bigger target as the game progresses, evening out things a bit.

In Castleball the spectators are part of the play. Spectators and bench players can touch an approaching game ball (but only one touch per time) to redirect it back into play if it would otherwise roll out of the play area. Likewise, they can use their hands to catch or redirect a ball back into the field. And they can do so for the advantage of the team they support. They just have to stay at the boundaries and be immediate about returning the ball to play. And they are not allowed to shoot at the castles. I call this group of boundary players the Tomato Guard because in my backyard I need spectators to keep errant balls from destroying the tomato plants on the sideline. Lots of ad-hoc fields will have some sort of boundary problem such as a busy street or a swimming pool.

Our current major sports have serious problems in the year 2015, at least for adults who want to play. Consider these examples.

Football: Dangerous and expensive. Requires special equipment. Not everyone can play. Not the best option for coed play.

Soccer: Dangerous and too hard for most adults to play.  Usually the adults are just spectators while the kids enjoy themselves. And soccer has too many rules, such as off-sides, that stop play.

Volleyball: Need a special court with a special net. It is nearly impossible to get a good pickup game of volleyball because a few bad players ruin the experience. Too many delays and complicated rules about positions and scoring.

Baseball: Need a big field, lots of players, and special equipment. And it is still boring for most people as well as surprisingly dangerous for non-athletes. (Even softball generates lots of injuries.)

Running: Not very social. Surprisingly dangerous. (Distance runners have lots of injuries.) Kids and adults usually do not run together because of different abilities.

LaCrosse: Need special equipment. Dangerous. And not something the whole family plays.

Tennis: It used to be fun until the rackets and strings improved to the point where the game is now mostly waiting for someone to pick up a ball that was either a blistering winner or a big miss. And you need special courts and equipment. It is also expensive. 

I could go on, but you see the point. Sports were not engineered to make sense in modern times.

With castleball, the three-ball environment should lead to fewer injuries because it makes the game more about quick reactions and being alert than about two athletes going full force for a single, heavier ball. Shin pads should be enough to keep most players of castleball safe.

That’s the basic idea. Sound fun or not?

Top Tech Blog:

Soon your technology will be able to identify you from any body part, not just your fingerprints. I wonder if someday my bike will be impossible to steal unless the thief has my exact ass.

Someone finally figured out a good use for all the old smartphones with cameras. You can build your own monitoring system.

And if you believe it this time, another big breakthrough in 3D camera technology. 

———–

In other news, Amazon reviewer Laurie Clarkson reminds us that graduation season is upon us and there is no more perfect gift for a grad than my book about creating systems for success. You are so wise, Laurie Clarkson!

———–

Scott

@Dilbert_Daily

@scottadamssays

Libertarian Dilemna

Would a Libertarian favor laws designed to reduce the number of new tax laws?

Guest blogger Diana Wales explores some options for the small-government crowd.

There Ought to be a Law – Part Deux-Over

By Diana Wales

My last blog attempt (here) was an unmitigated, epic failure. I tried to keep it humorous and succinct, which did not work for the topic. I was ready to take the hostile comments as a hint to give up blogging. But as Scott’s book points out, failure should be viewed as a stepping stone to success, so I’m giving it another go.

One thing I was particularly disappointed in for the last blog was the lack of constructive suggestions for improving our laws. Scott has a community of highly-intelligent followers with some great ideas, and I’m hoping this topic will bring out the best in you.

Other than flat-out banning taxes or suggesting the well-discussed topic of a flat tax, what new laws would you like to see regarding taxation? Here are a few of mine:

It should be illegal to promote a tax as “temporary,” because they almost never are. Once politicians get their hands on a revenue stream, taking it away is about as difficult as removing the Mississippi from the landscape. Toll roads are a classic example. The tolls start out as a way to pay for the road, and twenty years later when the bond is paid off, not only is the road not converted to a freeway, but the toll is several times what it was when first approved. Calling a tax temporary is a deceptive way to sell it to tax payers and should be banned.

It should be illegal to claim a proposition won’t raise taxes unless it actually does not cost anything. I have seen propositions that earmark a specific amount of dollars, often tens-of-millions or more, for something specific such as school infrastructure improvements. The project is pitched as if it would not raise taxes because the money would be taken out of the overall school allotment in the current general budget. But that means that the rest of the school budget has to be frozen in order to avoid raising the total. What are the odds of that happening? Furthermore, it assumes that the economy remains stable enough to bring in the same amount of total tax dollars. If the economy slumps, as it did a few years ago, suddenly there are fewer people working and paying taxes, so tax rates are raised to ensure that fixed-dollar amount is covered. If something costs $20 million, that should be clearly stated up-front in the proposition.

Lastly, if the government wants to fund a large purchase, like a new fighter jet, the funding approval should be based on the bid pricing multiplied by a historic cost-overrun percentage. For example, if the last five fighter jet contracts ran over by an average of 30%, then funding would have to be approved at 130% of the bid amount. If you’re going to ask for millions, or even billions, of taxpayer dollars, don’t come back a couple years later and ask for more because you “accidentally” underestimated the cost.

So what laws would you like to see to put more accountability into our system of taxes?

— end —

Top Tech Blog :

How about an eye exam service that works through your smartphone? And how long before a parent can use something like that feature to identify drug use in their teens? Just hold up the phone to the teen’s eyes and I’ll bet it could identify both molly and weed use. Maybe other stuff as well. There’s your new app idea. 

And Google has a technology for painting a wall with a material that can become a display screen. That’s a game-changer if it works. The future I imagine is that your “smart glasses” allow you to see one image on the wall while my glasses filter out your image and provide only mine. (Because of interleaving or something.) Your smart glasses would be a filter that works in all environments. Not much tech in your glasses because most of the tech is in the walls, the cloud, and the Internet of Things. That reduces the social problem of looking someone in the eye while they look at a video inside their glasses instead of you.

And scientists figured out how to make hydrogen fuel from dead plants. That’s great because California will be nothing but dead plants by the end of this summer. To the rest of the world we Californians look like bad water-planners, but our strategy all along has been to create free energy for our SUVs so we can drive to Oregon to brush our teeth.

—–

True fact: If you say “book” as often as I do, you sound like a chicken. Book-book-book!

Scott

@ScottAdamsSays

Robots Read News - Self-Driving Cars Unionize

Humor Dimensions: Recognition (headlines about self-driving cars), clever (humans are meat cargo to unionizing cars, and they only dump every 100th passenger), cruel (third panel), and bizarre (cars unionize, robots talk).

Predicted Sharing: Low, because self-driving cars are not yet important in people’s lives. This comic is testing a more robot-centric reporting approach because readers have consistently requested that. I predict more “favoriting” than sharing.

Robots Read News - Bonus Update

An organized band of Moisties in the car industry created a driving system that takes perfectly good data and feeds it through a pile of loud meat for no compelling reason. And yet, somehow, the meat usually reaches its destination with only a slight increase in rotting. The credit goes to the amazing machines that surround the slow-rotting meat with equal parts air conditioning and indifference.

Meanwhile, on Top Tech Blog :

Robots can now read human emotions. Or as I like to say, the user interface for robots to program humans has taken another leap forward.

Spouse-free people already know how to write full sentences in text messages using nothing but emoji characters. Personally, I can describe a thousand sexual acts using nothing but icons for water, boots, and sometimes monkeys. But someone took it to the next level. 

——-

I worry for anyone who does not understand the difference between systems and goals in 2015. If only you could read about it in some sort of awesome book that is certain to win a Pulitzer Prize. Sadly, that book does not exist. But while you wait for it, you might want to read my book. 95% of readers agree it does not suck. 

Scott

Brainwashing

Suppose you could push a button and brainwash another person into changing his thinking to match your preferences. Would it be ethical to push that button? 

You probably had a bad reaction to the thought of brainwashing another human. It seems counter to every notion of freedom we have. And you certainly would not want anyone to brainwash you. 

But if you remove the word “brainwash” and replace it with “education” or “advertising” or “leadership” you have a perfectly acceptable situation. And in each case someone is trying to change your thinking to manipulate your actions. So why is brainwashing so bad and yet advertising, education, and leadership are considered good?

My hypothesis is that when you hear the word brainwashing, you assume it is something that might work every time.

On the other hand, we know from experience that advertising, education, and leadership do not work every time. Most people who read ads do not buy the product. Kids come out of school with wildly different opinions and knowledge, and leaders are lucky if they can persuade even half of their citizens to move in the same direction.

My hypothesis is that we are biased against brainwashing because we imagine it works, and we imagine it would work on us. But we know from our own experience with school, advertising, and leadership, that we are sometimes influenced as intended and sometimes not. So in the latter cases it feels as if we have free will. But what is actually happening is that when we can predict the outcome of the influence, we don’t like it. When we can not predict the influence, we imagine we have free will.

Or to put it more succinctly, if marketing worked every time, it would be illegal. 

But here is the interesting part: Eventually marketing WILL work every time. As we learn more about how the brain works, and do more A-B testing, and more clinical studies, and more brain scans, the potential for full “brainwashing” is clearly upon us.

Apple is the current leader in brainwashing. When Apple comes out with a new product, such as their new watch, I don’t feel as if I have a choice about buying it. They are making me do it. I will rationalize it by saying it is for market research, or something. But as a trained hypnotist, I recognize that I do not have a choice in the matter as long as I still have money. Apple did that to me. I have no rational need for their watch, and yet I will definitely buy one.

(Disclosure: I own some Apple stock.)

What Apple does with design is similar to what the food industry does by manipulating the levels of sugar, fat, and salt in your packaged foods. Food scientists know that if you get those three ingredients in the right balance, the brain goes into addiction mode. Apple has employed enough scientists to know when their designs will trigger an addiction response (or some equivalent). 

So why is Apple’s brainwashing of citizens legal? 

It is legal because their brainwashing does not work every time. 

But someday it will.

Someday a store will scan your brain in real time as you enter, learn all of your preferences from the cloud, learn your brain architecture from the cloud, learn your social situation from social media, monitor your pupil size and your breathing, and rapidly A-B test the environment by changing digital ads in the store on the fly until you literally cannot resist making a purchase. In other words, the store will someday be able to reprogram your brain in real time, without your knowledge or approval. They do it already, but not as well as it will someday be done. Today a store can influence you by, oh, say, 5% at any given moment. In the near future that will be 90% or higher. (Source: My colon)

Humans have been quite clever in learning how to program computers. But wait until computers start programming humans. They will be a lot better at it than we are.

Scott

@ScottAdamsSays

———— Over at Top Tech Blog ——————

If my post did not creep you out enough, how about this technology that could someday allow a robot to control a human’s body, making the human walk anywhere against its will. The words “meat puppet” comes to mind.

Star Trek technology keeps getting closer. Someday your smartphone will be a tricorder capable of identifying the chemical composition of stuff from a distance.

And if your drone is not tilt-rotor, you are no better than the other drones in the neighborhood. Time for an upgrade.

——————————

Oh, and yadda, yadda, yadda, please read my book as soon as you are done with that other book you are reading.

Robots Read News - About California’s Drought

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

Humor Dimensions Used: (4) Recognition (current news), cleverness (oddity of water being expensive and oil being cheap, solution of moving robots to California), cruel (robots stealing a state from idiot humans), bizarre (talking robot, surfing robot)

Predicted Sharing: Medium. Formulation is solid but California’s drought is somewhat local news.

———– Meanwhile, over on Top Tech Blog —————–

Here comes the fingernail mouse pointer. This is the technology, along with the Internet of Things, that will usher in what I call the Era of Magic. That’s when you just wave your hand at stuff and it does what you want, like magic.

If 3D printing keeps entering the mainstream, as in this Disney example, soon you will be able to print your own Dilbert character chess set. Alice is the queen, obviously. Asok is a pawn. Dogbert a knight. Dilbert a rook. Wally a bishop. Pointy-haired-boss is king?

And I get excited every time someone invents a new way to make electricity out of sunlight. I don’t know what you accomplished this year, but I know I didn’t invent any new energy sources.

————

Blah, blah, please read my book.

Success Without Testosterone

Confession: I am a serial interrupter.

If I don’t like what you are saying, I might start start talking over you while hoping my rudeness makes you stop. If I am in a hurry, and you are taking too long to form a thought, I will cut you off just to get on with my life. If you are saying something vague to a third-party, I might cut you off to add my clarification. And if you are saying something illogical, off topic, or in any way unpleasant, I might start talking over you just because I prefer the sound of my own voice.

If you call me on my cell phone, I might let it roll over to voice mail because cell phone delays don’t let me interrupt as much as I’d like. No way I am going to listen to complete sentences just because I have a phone in my hand. I will look for your text later. (True story. I avoid the phone largely because it has no interrupt feature.)

Now add my rude interruptions to my firm belief that whatever I say is more useful than whatever other people are saying and you can see why people might not want to attend a meeting with me. I’m that guy.

But here is the interesting part: I am not always that guy. A lot has to do with my testosterone levels at the moment. If I’m jacked up on testosterone, don’t expect me to even hear what other people say. It is all about me at that moment. But if my testosterone is low, feel free to kick me. I will just run away and feel bad. 

Can a man actually tell when his testosterone is high? I think so, but perhaps one of you can add some clarity in the comments.

About a decade ago I went to my doctor to ask about testosterone supplements. I was over forty and I was showing all the signs of decreased testosterone. I no longer had the vigor, the confidence, or the muscle-building capabilities of youth and I wanted it back. My doctor talked me out of getting testosterone supplements because my condition was not unhealthy and the shots could have some nasty side-effects.

So instead I embarked on a more natural path to regain my testosterone levels, or at least keep them as high as my age allows. I fixed my diet and my exercise systems and dropped more than twenty pounds over a decade, slowly, and without any real effort. As I accumulated knowledge about fitness and diet, I no longer needed much willpower. I just made smarter choices.

As my fitness continued to improve, I could feel my sense of well-being, confidence, and personal power increasing to levels I had not seen since my youth. Eventually I started adding muscle like a twenty-something. (I don’t take any illegal meds or sports supplements beyond protein powder for my shakes.)

The end result is that at age 58 (almost) I have the body of a young man with raging testosterone. And as science would predict, my life has evolved to match that testosterone level. I take on more projects than I should because my ambition is sky-high and my confidence is at a peak. And when I fail, as I often do, I shrug it off and skip-off to my next challenge. Testosterone is an awesome drug.

[Here I invite you to doubt whether a man can “feel” his testosterone levels. My experience is that my testosterone levels are as obvious to me during the day as my hunger or my tiredness. Is it imagined?]

At this point in my story you might be wondering why I would intentionally jack up my testosterone levels when I know it makes me even more of an aggressive, egotistical monster than normal. The answer is that I do it strategically. All indications from studies are that over-confidence is correlated with success. So my target range for my body’s chemical composition is whatever creates that feeling of overconfidence. Most of you have never experienced the feeling of overconfidence. I have to tell you it feels great. But it only takes one day of bad lifestyle choices to pound down your testosterone levels and turn you into the mouse in the room. 

Back to my main point: In my testosterone-soaked condition, I will interrupt you before you even open your mouth. And I will not feel bad about it. So my question is this: How do women succeed in a business setting surrounded by testosterone-beasts who are interrupters?

In the interest of full-disclosure, I did not believe the “men interrupt women in meetings” claim until recently. I had never noticed the phenomenon, but the science suggests I would be blind to it even if I were the perpetrator. (And I am.) Recently I have had several conversations with executive-level women on this topic and I let them finish enough of their sentences to convince me that this is real. And I think it is a bigger deal than men realize. As I say, we are usually blind to it even while doing it.

Personally, I interrupt anyone who lets me. I have never been aware of interrupting women more often than men. But my hypothesis is that I interrupt people based on my perceived risk. And I would see my risk of interrupting someone with high testosterone, such as a puffed-up male CEO, as high. I would see my risk of interrupting a female CEO as low. None of this is based on reason. It is based on instinct, bias, evolution, and whatnot.

And this ties into another interesting concept I heard the other day from a highly-successful businesswoman: The importance of physical size. The notion here is that evolution makes us fear large people even when we are in a safe environment such as a business context. And men are usually larger. It is easy to imagine (without the benefit of data) that interrupters go easier on large people just because they are intimidating. 

The social rules of business evolved around male patterns and preferences. In the short run, we are stuck with that.  If you put a smallish creature with low testosterone in a room with a huge creature with high testosterone, you don’t have a setting that is likely to produce the best ideas. You have a situation in which only one opinion is likely to be heard. That can’t be a good thing.

This is a thorny problem because men are not likely to lower their testosterone, women are unlikely to take testosterone supplements for obvious reasons, and men are generally physically larger than women. It seems impossible to fix the interrupting problem, right?

Maybe not.

An article in TIME has some suggestions for both men and women on how to handle the women-get-interrupted-more issue. I was surprised to see how practical those ideas are. And I started using the trick of cutting off a man when he cuts off a woman, and directing the conversation back. That one plays to my strength because I get to cut people off.

Questions to ponder:

1. Can a man feel his testosterone level?

2. Have you noticed smaller people getting interrupted more?

3. Do you think testosterone levels influence interruptions?

Scott

Twitter: @scottadamssays

————— In Top Tech Blog ————–

I do some angel investing, so I see technology that is coming online about two years before the rest of you. The biggest trend I see is miniaturization of medical diagnostic equipment. We are approaching a day when healthcare costs will reverse and begin a permanent decline. (That is my prediction.) See some of the amazing stuff coming. I would call this the most important trend in the world that is not robotics.

—————————————————————-

Scott Adams’ book on success: “Scott Adams shared some surprisingly practical advice in a very entertaining way.” - Oliver Johnston, 5-Star Amazon review 4/8/15

There Ought to be a Law

By Diana Wales - Special Guest Blogger

There Ought to be a Law

I’m a law and order kind of gal, and I often imagine new ways to catch or punish criminals. For example, when some punk spray-paints his initials or gang symbol all over someone else’s property, I think every item of clothing he owns should be stenciled with something not of his choosing - like Hello Kitty or Tinkerbell – which he’d be required to wear during any probationary period. Besides bringing home the point of how annoying it is to have your stuff defaced by someone else, he’d be laughed out of any gang, which is a bonus.

That’s a low-tech, easy fix. But we live in an age where more high-tech options are available to law enforcement. I had a stalker who worked at my company. He was put on a psychiatric disability leave, but immediately after his return he threatened to “kick in my f*ing teeth,” so apparently the meds didn’t work quite as planned. He was dismissed, but I was still afraid to walk through the parking lot afterward.

 I want to see anyone under a restraining order required to wear a special tracking anklet linked to an app that their victim can load on a phone. If the two devices are within a minimum distance, the anklet alarms, the phone alarms, and the police are alerted. This technology already exists, we just need the laws to catch up. Frankly, I’d also like the anklet to taser the bastard if he comes too close, but that could pose a public safety issue if he happens to be driving. 

A more sophisticated tool I’d like developed is a lie detector that is at least 99.99% accurate. Considering recent advances in brain mapping, this should be possible, and I think the government should fund it. Assuming anyone innocent of a crime will volunteer for the test, it would greatly reduce investigative costs and wrongful convictions. Plus it could come in darned handy during terrorist interrogations, elections, and dating.

On the rehabilitation front, we should be studying hormone balancing for criminals.  For example, studies indicate that oxytocin can enhance empathy. Let’s try giving parolees with low levels of oxytocin some implants with a time-released supplement to see if it reduces recidivism, or if just makes them feel really, really bad about their next drive-by shooting.

That’s just a small sample of the ideas that run through my head every time I watch a Dateline episode. How would you improve our system of justice?

(Note: I’ve used the pronoun “he” in a couple examples, but the concepts apply equally to female scumbags.)

————– On Top Tech Blog —————–

Thanks to non-Newtonian Shear Thickening Fluid, super-villains will soon be able to build bullet-proof suits. I hope the villains are still vulnerable to spider webs shot from wrists.

A new technology might turn every window into an energy source. I believe it was invented by ants who were looking for revenge. If the view looking out the window seems larger than usual, don’t stand there when the sun is out.

And how about a tiny camera powered by daylight? Sounds perfect for drones. 

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Scott Adams’ book on success: “Scott Adams shared some surprisingly practical advice in a very entertaining way.” - Oliver Johnston, 5-Star Amazon review 4/8/15

Huge Gender Bias Found in Hiring - New Study

CNN reports on a new study showing there is a HUGE gender bias in hiring decisions in the United States and it has been this way in some fields since the eighties. You already knew there was gender bias in hiring (duh) but you probably did not know how bad it was. Check this out: The gender preference in hiring decisions was 2-to-1 in some areas for candidates with equal qualifications. 

That is an embarrassing number for a country that prides itself on equal opportunity. A 2-to-1 advantage is not even within driving distance of equal rights.

By the way, this study matches my personal observations over a lifetime. I have been in countless meetings in which a strong gender preference in hiring was discussed behind closed doors. Now I feel terrible about all those conversations. I am officially part of the problem because I did nothing to stop it.

I’m not sure if I mentioned that the study shows the gender advantage in hiring favors women by 2-to-1. That matches my experience in business. I have been in lots of closed-door meeting with other men discussing a preference for hiring women. I have never heard a man express a preference for hiring another man. Nor have I heard it in a private conversation. It makes me wonder how common my situation is.

Here’s the study.

Two questions for you:

1. Have you ever been in a business meeting in which you or co-workers discussed a preference for hiring women?

2. Have you ever been in a business meeting in which you or your coworkers discussed a preference for hiring a man?

Scott

@ScottAdamsSays

——- Over on the Top Tech Blog —————-

Drones that hunt other drones in the sky and identify the human operator based on radio signals. I need that drone-hunter for defending my home from drones! Every celebrity should have one. How the hell does Madonna keep the camera drones from hovering outside her bedroom window?

And now there are drones that do the hard part of lining up your perfect photograph for you while you concentrate on taking the picture.

Also coming soon, artificial limbs that can feel what they touch. How long before people voluntarily give up their weak human limbs for powerful robot arms that feel the same? We are in The Age of Cyborgs. The human reign is pretty much over.