Scott Adams's Blog, page 296

The Sameness Illusion

Today I read an opinion that I didn’t understand, criticizing the media for not understanding a study. So I read that study. I didn’t understand it. And I still have an opinion. Because this is the Internet, damn it.

The topic of the study is whether or not the amount of time a mother spends with a kid matters to the outcome. Seems important to know, right?

Maybe not.

It might be better NOT knowing the truth in this case. Because the truth is about an average. And no individual is average.

If you tell mothers that the average mom does X to get a good result, peer pressure causes all moms to do X, or to feel guilty for not. Even if it kills the kid. Music lessons are a valuable learning experience for some kids and torture for others.

What are the odds that one flavor of parenting will be the right fit for every culture, every kid, every parent, and every situation? I’m going to say zero. 

Let’s try this experiment: If your kids are well-behaved and mine are not, let’s switch kids for a month and see what happens. Will your awesome parenting fix them? Good luck with that, sucker!

The sameness illusion is what makes most management fads start out smart and morph into pure ridiculousness. The thing that worked for Apple is not necessarily going to work for… well, anyone else. 

Career advice has the same limitation. I could tell you every trick I used to become a famous cartoonist but it would not help you become one. You and I are different people in different times and different circumstances. Your strategy needs to be crafted for your situation.

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Cyborg rats with brain implants are here! But let’s not make cyborg rats that are too smart, okay? That has trouble written all over it.

And how about the self-driving car that went across the country 99% unaided? Maybe it’s just me, but I have lots of questions about the 1%.

And finally someone is making a running boot that does some of the running for you. But only 7% of it. I can’t wait for them to get the other 93% done so I can do some serious sleep walking.

Scott

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@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)
@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)
My book on success: “I feel the best I have ever felt after reading a book.” -  Puget Sound Paralegal  (Amazon 5-star review Feb 20, 2015)

Rationality Engine for Assisted Dying - Prep Phase

This post is strictly to prep for an upcoming “verdict” from me on the topic of assisted dying, using the Rationality Engine I have been testing in this blog. 

The Rationality Engine attempts to turn the uninformed and irrational opinions of the public into a coherent verdict via a system that has the following features:

Rationality Engine

1. Public debate, with comments that can be up-voted, and no end to the debate. It is a living document.

2. Curator who explains his/her biases.

3. A format that includes simple claims, usually in one sentence, followed by the curator’s verdict and reasoning. Relevant links will be cited so the reader can check the reasoning for the verdict.

4. The curator updates the living debate as new and useful links, arguments, and insights occur on all sides.

5. The curator can not be a member of an organized political group because it would taint credibility. Ideally, the curator’s livelihood should benefit more from being unbiased than from holding a particular view. 

6. Phase one is a call for links and arguments that the curator can sort and summarize to get the conversation started.

The Rationality Engine has been tested successfully on two topics in this blog. The first topic was the gender pay gap, in which all sides viewed the resulting verdicts as balanced. (Based on comments.) To my knowledge, this has never before been accomplished.

The second test was on the question of whether Democrats or Republicans are more “anti-science.” The question is silly and subjective, but the Rationality Engine worked again to show beyond any doubt that ignorance of science is not limited to one of the parties. Nor is it obvious which party is “worse.”

The question of assisted dying will be the third test of the Rationality Engine. In phase one I will seed the topic with the opinions of one well-informed and well-placed opponent of assisted dying in California. I will provide the other side of the issue because it is fairly simple in this case. Your comments will further shape the final verdict that comes later.

At this point you should be thinking I am not unbiased. And you already know what my verdict will be. But you would have said that for the first two debates tested with the Rationality Engine and you would have been wrong. The Rationality Engine is designed to squeeze out the curator’s bias in the glare of public scrutiny. This will be a good test of whether that is possible.

So let’s agree that in this case the curator (me) is super-biased. If the Rationality Engine still works, we learned something useful. If my super-bias ruins the debate, we learned something else. So let’s learn something.

Background: California is considering legislation similar to Oregon’s assisted dying law. I asked for a volunteer to “debate” (but really just explain) opposition to the law because I have never met anyone who opposed it. Organizations such as the AMA, the Catholic Church, and disabled rights groups oppose assisted dying. But organizations have motives slightly different from individuals. For example, an individual would be happy for an organization to disappear when its mission is accomplished. But organizations tend to develop a life of their own as soon as money starts changing hands. So an organization can never win and can never admit losing because both situations mean an end to the organization and the paychecks of people who support it. For an organization, the fight is more important than the outcome. Individuals prefer a good outcome over a perpetual fight.

Jimmy Akin, a prominent and outspoken Catholic, (see his website) volunteered for this discussion and I accepted. 

To be clear, this does not test my “unicorn” hypothesis that there is no such thing as a normal, ordinary citizen of California who opposes the proposed law once it has been explained. Jimmy is professionally aligned with the Catholic church, so the Rationality Engine will have all sorts of bias as input (his and mine). But the Rationality Engine should still work if you readers keep us both in line.

I will start with a list of questions for Jimmy. Please add to the list if you see something missing. With Jimmy’s answers in hand, which will take some back-and-forth by email, I will put the debate into claim-verdict form for your review.

Here are the questions I propose for Jimmy so far.

Questions for Jimmy Akin

1. What standard would you use to deny me the right to a painless death at the time of my choosing?

[Note: From prior email exchanges I know that Jimmy’s answer is “the common good.”]

2. Explain what you mean by the “common good” in the case of assisted dying. And can you give an example from real life (as opposed to a thought experiment) where you see the common good standard applied to the satisfaction of society’s majority?

3. Explain how the common good is achieved by making my grandmother suffer, against her will, for an extra month before death. How did that make things better for others?

4. Oregon already has an assisted dying law. What problems have you seen with Oregon’s experience? 

[Note: I assume a California law would be essentially similar to Oregon, maybe with some upgrades.]

5. Do you think the folks in Oregon would agree with you that their law allowing assisted dying has not worked for their common good? If not, what can you point to as an example of why they don’t understand their situation?

6. Do you believe psychological anguish is “pain” in the context of end-of-life decisions about reducing pain? For example, if you are trapped in a broken body that will never improve, slowly going mad, strapped to a hospital bed, with no end in sight, do you consider this pain?

7. There is legitimate concern that some elderly and disabled folks will be pushed into making an assisted death decision by caretakers seeking their own convenience, or an inheritance. Given that concern, if the law said you could include in your Health Directive an absolute ban on assisted dying options, would that reduce your concerns?

For example, I would gladly accept the risk of my family encouraging me to die early because once my family wants me dead it is time to go anyway. You, on the other hand, could put in your Health Directive that no assisted dying option can be contemplated should you become mentally feeble. You would have nearly zero risk of an unwanted assisted death at that point.

[Note: My assumption is that even if the new law in California is silent about your Health Directive, the current law would let you ban assisted dying in that document.]

8. Do you believe physical pain can be nearly eliminated by drugs at the end of life, and that doing so is already the common practice? 

[Note: I will be providing my numerous first-hand observations that while it seems like such a thing is easily possible, it is almost never done unless you want the patient in a coma. In the real world, pain management at the end of life is a myth.]

9. In the United States alone, and in your lifetime, how many people do you think will be in terrible pain and wishing they had an assisted dying option? 

[Note: My estimate is 100 million people over my remaining lifetime.]

10. In the United States alone, and in your lifetime, how many people do you think would choose an assisted death only to learn their disease has a cure just around the corner? 

[Note: My estimate is 100 people.]

11. In the United States alone, and in your lifetime, how many disabled people do you think would be successfully persuaded to end their lives early for the sake of someone else’s convenience should assisted dying be the law everywhere? 

[Note: My estimate is nearly zero. Too many eyes watching. I would be interested in Oregon’s experience, if known.]

Personally, I prefer living in a world where the AMA, The Catholic Church, and disabled rights groups fight for the value of life. That creates a powerful counter-force against slipping toward a culture that is casual about life and death matters. That said, would you be comfortable with the law allowing assisted dying as an option while the major opposition groups hold to their legitimate concerns about the process? 

And let’s say the groups I mentioned encourage people to opt out of the assisted dying option in their Health Directives. One could further imagine the law in California requiring Health Directive instructions to include opposition opinions from the mentioned groups.

Would that scenario meet the common good standard, given that everyone gets heard, everyone gets the option they want, and the value of human life is always put center stage in the process?

Some have argued the slippery slope case. If you share that view, can you give examples in which the slippery slope actually happened for the worse? [Note: I will be arguing that the slippery slope argument is not credible in any debate.]

Okay, smart readers. Time for you to suggest questions to include. And if anyone feels inclined to collect a list of links (pro and con), that would be great for seeding the discussion.

Scott

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In other news, tiny bio-sensors smaller than your blood cells might be coming to a body near you. Cheap weather stations can be printed with 3D printers. And bring on the electric spaceship.

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Scott

Dilbert on Facebook
@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)
@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)
My book on success: “I feel the best I have ever felt after reading a book.” -  Puget Sound Paralegal  (Amazon 5-star review Feb 20, 2015)

End War Forever with a Chip

War seems like a permanent part of the human condition. It has been with us forever and there is no obvious end in sight. So I think you would agree that if we had a reasonable plan to end war in 200 years, for example, that would be an amazing accomplishment for humanity.

So this is a 200-year plan for ending war. Hold your objections until you see all the parts. Then feel free to fix it or fail it in the comments. How close can we get to ending war? You never know…

Let’s say the most powerful governments in the world coordinate in an effort to prevent smaller countries from starting wars that drag them in. That goal should be compatible with the interests of all the big powers. 

The big powers already have zero interest in fighting each other directly, and that doesn’t seem likely to change. The nuclear deterrent is living up to its name. And small countries don’t attack powerful countries. So if we can stop small countries from fighting each other, we have a good chance of ending war forever.

Now let’s say the big powers agree to force the weapons-makers of the world to include a hard-to-duplicate chip in all high-end weapons from now on. The chip would make weapons programmable to work only in certain geographies. And let’s say the weapons need to be reauthorized every month. That means plugging it into whatever source sends it new instructions.

Now imagine that the United Nations has the ability, after some sort of vote among nations, to deactivate all big weapons in a given location. And imagine that it is a hundred years from now, when the good weapons are REALLY, REALLY, GOOD WEAPONS. The U.N. Peacekeepers would have the good weapons of the future, with special codes to work in any location. The locals would be back to handguns and rifles. The mismatch would be so great that the peace-keeping force could, one imagines, sustain zero casualties even among hostile forces. Remember, this is a hundred years from now. It might not be a big deal to stop a bullet in flight, or to send in hordes of disposable robots, or to put an entire town to sleep with gas. All we know for sure is that the mismatch will be like an elephant to an ant because of the technical marvels of the next century that will be available to only one side. 

Between now and then, countries can still cause plenty of trouble using existing weapons plus whatever trickles out of the defense industry pipeline until the chips become available. But that old weaponry will only last five minutes against an opponent using weapons the world is likely to have invented by then. And the old stuff will fall into rust and disrepair in the long-long run. Time is on our side with this plan.

Let’s say small arms and hunting rifles remain chip-free because those are about individual freedom and protection more than war preparedness. Or not. I’m just saying the issue of individual gun ownership can be stripped out of the discussion of war if you choose to do it. So relax if you love your guns because under my plan you can still shoot your neighbor if he has it coming.

Big countries still have incentives to attack smaller ones. Russia and Ukraine are an example. So we might expect more of that in the next fifty years as big countries consolidate territory ahead of the time their weapons will no longer work for offensive war. Here I am assuming a vote of the security council could shut off weapons from the big powers too. 

By now you have realized there are many ways my optimistic view of the future could go awry, including:

Big countries rarely agree on anything.
Big countries can make their own secret weapons with no chipsAny chip can be counterfeited.
Hackers could take over all weapons
Small countries would produce their own weapons
What about Israel, North Korea, and Iran? Special cases?
Weapons makers control the governments
Too easy for one tyrant to control all weapons somehow
The UN has lots of issues, so it is dangerous to give it power
The big countries like fighting proxy wars to gain advantages.

I trust you can come up with many more reasons why this approach would not work. But keep in mind that we have a hundred years to tweak the details of the plan, put safeguards in place, test it, get public buy-in, redesign the United Nations, and anything else we need. 

Technology is better since the last time civilization considered a plan for ending all wars, assuming you consider the United Nations such an attempt. Maybe we should revisit the options. The alternative to the future I described is probably poison-gas drones flying across borders for all sorts of bad reasons. Wouldn’t it be nice if the bad players couldn’t use GPS navigation outside their own borders?

[Acknowledgement: I stole the weapon-with-a-chip concept from Naval Ravikant. I added the dumb parts about ending war forever.]

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In other news, a technology for making your headlights shine where you are looking makes it even harder for guys to drive while their wives are in the passenger seat. “Honey, why are our headlights following that woman in the crosswalk?”

And would you let a robot operate on you? I would if my surgery was scheduled for a Monday. Humans and orange cats are not at their best on Mondays.

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Scott

Dilbert on Facebook
@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)
@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)
My book on success: “I feel the best I have ever felt after reading a book.” -  Puget Sound Paralegal  (Amazon 5-star review Feb 20, 2015)

Robots Read News 27 - Donald Trump’s new project.

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

Humor Dimensions: clever, mean, recognizable

Predicted sharing: High

This one has no naughty elements to prevent sharing. The political point is generic and will not cause divisions. Themes about people being dumb perform the best coming from me. Golf is another popular reason for sharing.

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In other news, have you heard of Graphene? It might change your world. Look at all it can do.

And how well do computers recognize items in photographs? Not great yet, but that is changing quickly. 

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Scott

Dilbert on Facebook

@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)

@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)

My book on success: “I’m only about halfway through but can definitely highly recommend it to anyone, young and old. It’s a quick read…but who would have guessed that I’d be highlighting so much that I want to go back to?!“ - Sarah  (Amazon 5-star review March 14, 2015)

California Debate on Assisted Dying - Search for a Unicorn

California’s politicians are considering legislation on assisted dying. I plan to get involved in the debate but I have one problem: I can’t find anyone who is against it.

Can you help me find a human with an opposing opinion? If such a human exists, he or she must be as rare as a unicorn because I can’t find that person.

My understanding is that at least two organizations oppose the legislation. The AMA is opposed to doctors being in the business of assisting death. I certainly understand that from the organization’s perspective. But organizations are not people.

Likewise, the Catholic Church opposes assisted dying on religious grounds. I get that too. A church needs to be consistent. But a church is not an individual.

I am looking for any California citizen who believes the government should be allowed to prevent his or her own loved ones from dying in comfort instead of suffering in agony for months. Is anyone on that side? Anyone?

My understanding is that the vote in California might be close. Half of our elected representatives might be under the mistaken impression that voters are in favor of the government making their loved ones suffer in agony for months for no reason. The reality (which I am testing here) is that there is no real opposition from citizens. The opposition comes from organizations with a self-preservation motive. And organizations are not people. They do not suffer with people. They do not have loved ones. They do not pay property taxes in California.

The last time I asked this question I discovered exactly two people in the entire United States who were opposed to assisted dying. They were married to each other and both earned a living (in part) by writing articles about this sort of thing. 

Over the course of my entire life, I have never met anyone who wanted the government to make personal decisions about their level of pain. It is a myth that such people exist. And yet the laws of the land seem to imagine these unicorns are the majority of voters.

My ideal debate partner on this topic would be a Catholic Bishop living in California. But any California-based representative of the church would be good too. My offer is to debate this topic with a worthy spokesperson from the other side, in any forum. I would be happy to include an opposing argument in this blog as well.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think the so-called “debate” on assisted dying is a complete fraud. Individuals all seem to be on the same side (in favor) and organizations such as the AMA and the Catholic Church are the only opposition. And organizations are not people. They get to speak on topics, but they do not get to vote.

Does anyone have a connection to a Catholic Bishop willing to take the side of putting the government in charge of managing my personal level of pain before I die? I would like to meet such a person for a public debate.

Update 8:00 AM PST

Okay, I feel I need to clarify my point. My hypothesis is that the existence of a debate over assisted dying is a mass illusion. And I mean that in a literal sense, not in the sense of winning an argument by clever wording. I am saying that in a literal sense, this is a mass illusion.

Do you realize how outrageous that claim is?

And yet how easy to disprove. All we need is one person to come forward and say some version of “I prefer that the government decides how much pain I suffer at the end of my death, not me.”

Here is my hypothesis for the cause of the mass illusion. I think that when the question of assisted death is posed in language that is unclear, reasonable people say they oppose it. It makes total sense to oppose an unclear proposition about life and death coming from your government. So what you really have is a normal risk-avoidance response from normal people.

But only when the question is unclear, or the details surrounding it are unknown.

What happens when you ask the question about assisted death clearly? It turns out that everyone is on the same page. So let me state the question clearly here:

Do you want the government to decide how much pain you or your loved ones should suffer before dying? (The alternative is that you, your doctor, and your loved ones would make the decisions without the government.)

There you have the question written clearly. Does anyone oppose it?

I realize that reasonable people can oppose laws based on the details. But in this case we have the example of states already doing similar things with no big problems and some surprising benefits. It turns out that a lot of people go through the process to get the end-of-life pills and don’t use them. Apparently it feels good to have the option in case things get worse.

So the question of whether a practical law can be fashioned has been answered by example. And there is literally no one in favor of the government deciding how much they should suffer.

The so-called debate about assisted dying is LITERALLY a mass illusion.

Prove me wrong by finding an informed person who disagrees.

Update 3/31/15

I have one volunteer (over on Twitter) to take the side that assisted dying should not be legal in California. If you see a better candidate, please upvote here so I don’t miss the comment.

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In other news, how about a robot that swims ashore from a military ship to look around. Already here. Soon I expect robots and humans fighting side-by-side, with the robots having some autonomy even during a firefight.

And if FaceBook succeeds with its drones that provide Internet access to remote places, soon an African tribesman will be able to check his Instagram account. So, that’s like progress or something.

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Dilbert on Facebook

@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)

@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)

My book on success: “I’m only about halfway through but can definitely highly recommend it to anyone, young and old. It’s a quick read…but who would have guessed that I’d be highlighting so much that I want to go back to?!“ - Sarah  (Amazon 5-star review March 14, 2015)

Robots Read News of the Kraft/Heinz Merger

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

Humor Dimensions: Recognition, mean, clever, bizarre

Brevity: Good (could lose the word “have” in first panel)

Inappropriateness: High (bathroom humor)

Predicted Twitter Response: Expect lots of retweets despite bathroom humor because the message about nutrition is important to folks and the naughtiness is softened by the silliness of it.

[Update: Typo in last frame corrected]

Scott

@ScottAdamsSays

The Era of Humans - Ending Soon

I believe the Era of Humans will end in my organic lifetime. I expect to see the first humans transfer their minds into non-organic vessels (meaning software, maybe robot bodies) within twenty years. In fifty years, no human will want to suffer through an organic lifestyle. It just won’t make sense.

If you dismissed my opening paragraph as ridiculous, you are probably not up-to-date on technology. This is real, and probably inevitable, with normal advances in technology. You can debate timing, but the folks with the most knowledge of this field see it coming. 

Creating AI from scratch might never happen if it involves some sort of impossible-to-know insight about human minds. A reasonable person can predict that true AI will never be fully realized. But copying an existing brain and moving it to software is within the glide path of current technology. That will not require any giant conceptual leaps of imagination or invention. We will get to that point through normal incremental improvements in technology. Some say the scanner technology is already here.

But today I am going to ignore the technology questions and talk about the psychology of it. That part fascinates me. Would a human be willing to abandon his or her organic body to live forever as software?

I say yes. And the surprise is that it will be an easy choice because of another trend: Our illusion of free will shrinks as our scientific knowledge increases. Once we lose the illusion of free will, our organic bodies will seem like nothing but a source of discomfort. 

When I say our illusion of free will is going to vanish in time, that is simply an extension of what has been happening for decades. The illusion of free will is probably half of what it was even a hundred years ago. Here is the conceptual graph.

Our belief in free will decreases every time science makes a new discovery about “why” we do what we do. When scientists chase down the source of why humans do what we do, no “free will” is ever discovered in the mechanism. What started as a trickle of evidence against the existence of free will is about to become a fire hose. Here are the historical events that have decreased our illusions of free will so far:

Discovery that decision-making is located in the brain. 

Discovery of DNA.

Understanding the role of environment and DNA (especially twin studies)

Psychology studies show human “intelligence” is largely an illusion. We are influenced by all sort of things without our knowledge.

Marketing proves you can “cause” actions in others.

Discovery that alcoholism has a genetic component, so not entirely a “choice.”

Discovery that sexual orientation has a genetic component, so not a “choice.”

A-B testing on the Internet shows you can control people remotely by small manipulations of their environment. Their behaviors change without employing anything like “free will.”

Health monitoring bracelets prove that humans are willing to take orders from well-meaning technology. When your bracelet says you should be more active, you do it. But you think you are just using your will power to follow wise advice.

That last point is the most important. And I will put it in the form of a question:

If you always knew the wise thing to do, would you ever choose the unwise path?

Here I allow that sometimes you might choose the unwise path just to test whether or not you could do it, or maybe out of some other sort of curiosity. But in those cases you have payoffs for your choices as well. The point is that folks always choose the path with the greatest imagined payoff.

To the observer, it seems you are making choices based on free will. But internally you are simply weighing alternatives as best you can and trying to optimize your future. If your brain is functioning properly you will never choose a bad decision over a good one, at least in terms of how you score the options in your mind.

Adding to our illusion of free will is the fact that everyone assigns different values to the various elements of life, and those values can change within a given day. The observer sees randomness and unpredictability. It looks like free will is happening. But internally all you are doing is weighing alternatives and picking the “good” one based on how you assign value to stuff. And how you assign value is hard-coded in your brain, at least for any given moment in time. 

Now fast-forward just a few years. Your health-monitor bracelet and your smartphone know a lot about you, including your current mental state, your level of hunger, sugar levels, stress, and every preference you have expressed online for years. Big Data knows you and it knows all the humans that are similar to you. And that means, inevitably, technology will continue giving you well-meaning advice and you will take it. Every time. Unless you are just screwing around to see if you can ignore good advice. But that won’t become a habit.

In the early days of health monitors (today) you might ignore your bracelet’s “advice” about increasing your step count for the day. But imagine just a few years from now when you discover that every piece of advice from your technology is paying off wonderfully. Would you ignore it and make your own bad choices?

All technology needs is a good track record of “leadership” and your organic body will follow it like a slave. If the technology discovers that my best wake-up time is 5 AM, I will set my alarm for that time. If the technology tells me it KNOWS I will like a new movie, and it has been right on the last ten predictions, I will buy a movie ticket. And the technology might even pick a date on my calendar and invite some friends who will love the same movie.

I could ignore any advice coming from my technology, but why would I? My human-made plans work out great about 75% of the time. But a computer-made plan that knows all of my preferences, and everyone else’s too, could make decisions that pay off for me more like 90% of the time.

As the trend toward machine-made decisions accelerates, your sensation of free will is going to erode to zero. You will have no sense of making decisions in your life. All you will be doing is agreeing with the excellent decisions made by machines. A baby born today will probably never drive a car or make navigation decisions because cars will handle that on their own. We will come to trust the machines more than we trust our friends or our own bad judgement.

When the illusion of free will is gone you will have nothing to lose by moving your mind to software. If you take free will out of the equation the only difference between an organic life and a software life is the level of pain. All other things being equal, why would you choose pain over pleasure?

My prediction is that humans will happily move their minds to software after the illusion of free will is entirely gone. And that day is coming quickly.

Would you make the leap to software if you knew it would mean an eternal life of “feeling” terrific?

Scott

Speaking of free will, see this technology that tells police where the crimes are likely to happen before they happen. Does a criminal have free will if we know where he is going to commit a crime before he does? (I realize we are only talking about statistics here, but a real human has to act in order for the statistics to be valid.)

One wildcard in my prediction is that research on extending organic life is coming along nicely. See this.

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Dilbert on Facebook

@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)

@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)

My book on success: “I’m only about halfway through but can definitely highly recommend it to anyone, young and old. It’s a quick read…but who would have guessed that I’d be highlighting so much that I want to go back to?!“ - Sarah  (Amazon 5-star review March 14, 2015)

Morning Routine of a Writer

Business Insider asked me to describe my morning routine. You might be interested in how rigidly I control my body and my environment to invite creativity in.

Scott

Humor Writing Tutorial

How hard is it to write three sentences for my experimental web comic Robots Read News? 

Probably harder than it looks.

I think of the writing process as having about eighteen layers. And one of those layers has six dimensions. If you get any of it wrong, your writing lays on the side of the road like a squirrel that had a bad day last week.

How much technique is involved in writing versus, say, instinct? Natural talent? If I know my readers, you will be interested in the answers to those questions because you might pick up some useful tips. So here is a quick tutorial on humor writing.

Humor Diversification Rule

One of the many blind spots we have as humans is the notion that people are similar in their senses of humor. Sure, some folks are more uptight than others, but we think humor is somewhat universal.

It is not even close.

My best guess is that a third of the public doesn’t possess an appreciation for humor of any type. I would go so far as to say they probably have to fake it when other people are watching. I mean that in a literal sense.

Another subset of people are only amused when something socially awkward happens to someone else in real life. For that group, professional comedians are just noise, but a restaurant server dropping a tray is hilarious.

For some people, humor only happens when there is a violation of societal standards. For this crowd, anything that would make a priest uncomfortable is comedy gold no matter how poorly executed.

For some folks, humor lies only in cleverness. This group likes puns and jokes with out-of-box solutions to problems. And they like some complexity and timing in their humor. 

And nearly everyone enjoys humor about subjects and people that are close to them. Nothing interests you more than yourself. And when you see a version of yourself or someone you know played out in comedy it triggers a laugh reflex. This is the only form of humor that everyone enjoys. Even the folks with no humor gene whatsoever find pleasure in being the topic of a good joke. But since we all have different experiences, it is hard to find a topic that works for everyone.

So what do you do when there are so many types of people and your humor can’t please them all?

You do what any economist would do. You add quantity and variety, also known as diversifying. Instead of telling one joke, tell twenty. Make some of them clever, some naughty, and so on. If you spray enough types of humor into the universe, everyone has  a chance to find one they can enjoy.

But is being funny 20% of the time good enough?

Yup. Because…

The Humor False-Memory Rule

My experience as a professional humorist is that if you are funny one time out of five, people will remember you as being funny all the time. So make sure you produce enough volume, and enough different types of humor, so diversification works for you. (Unless you are intentionally targeting a narrow audience.)

Some years ago I developed a formula for humor. I call it the Six Dimensions of Humor. My observation was that you have to use at least two of the six dimensions to be recognized as humor. You can use more than two dimensions for even better results, but two is the minimum. And it does not matter which dimensions you combine. I have written extensively on this topic, so today I will just list the six dimensions and tell you that you need two of them.

Six Dimensions of Humor

Naughty
Clever
Cute
Bizarre
Mean
Recognizable

Humor is only one layer that a writer must consider. To produce good writing you need to simultaneously balance about… oh, eighteen layers of technique at the same time. Luckily, most of this happens as an automatic process.

Writing LayersLogicTiming
Messenger matches message
Usefulness
Reading level
Conversational style 
Flow
Humor
Branding (of the author)
Intelligence (write slightly smarter than the reader)
Interest
Relevance
Tense (past, current, future)Whose point of view?Editing (grammar, spelling, vocabulary)
Emotion
Hypnosis layer (this is just me)musicality

Most of the layers are self-explanatory. The most interesting layer is what I call the musicality layer. Do your words form a beat? Are they smooth and silky? Does the musicality of the sentence match the tone of the piece? How would the sentence sound if read aloud?

Compare these sentences for musicality:

A big kid kicked a milk can. (Yuck. I sprained my brain reading it.)

Now read one line from a Keisha song: Are you dancing on the dance floor or drinking by the bar? (Perfect rhythm.)

Consider one of my popular tweets this week: “Repurpose the shattered pieces of your past. That stuff is useful.” I used a beat in the first sentence and none in the second, for the musicality.

How to Layer

You probably can’t hold eighteen layers of technique in your mind while forming coherent sentences. Writers can’t do that either. That’s why I write a few layers at a time, then add other layers in subsequent passes.

A lot of the work of writing involves picking a topic that will interest your audience. If humor is the goal, 90% of the job involves picking a topic that lends itself to laughs. If the topic makes you smile before you write the joke, that’s a winner. And if a topic is interesting before you add your twist, that is a winner too. Compounding the problem is that all writers are looking for the same gems, so you often end up in picked-over territory. Don’t stay there unless you came with something special.

I start my writing by laying out the logic of what I want to say, often in bullet points or short paragraphs that I can arrange on the page to discover the best order of presentation. If humor is part of the plan, I make sure the logic supports that future humor layer, like scaffolding.

A lot of the writing process is automatic once you have practiced enough. For example, I am typing this sentence without thinking of my hands. I just look at the screen and the words appear. Nor do I think much about vocabulary or grammar. That stuff is mostly automatic now, and I will fix any typos and sloppy wording in subsequent passes. The number one rule of writing is write something.

The last three writing layers (emotion, hypnosis, musicality) are where most of the magic in writing happens. Amateur writers are not aware that those levels even exist. Most folks stop writing as soon as they make their point. For professional writers, that is when the real writing starts. 

I included hypnosis on my list of writing layers because I have a background in the practice. Most writers would not have a layer by that name. A close substitute is a basic understanding of the psychology of persuasion. 

A quick way to understand the power of the hypnosis layer is to consider how words carry their own emotional weight independent of the sentence. For example, the word “gun” puts your mind in an emotional state that “pillow” does not. The hypnotist puts greater weight on the emotional content of individual words than a normal writer might. As a reader, you will never be aware of this layer; all you will know is that you are having a positive reaction while you read.

That was your mini writing lesson for today. Please let me know if this topic interests you.

Update Notes:

Imagine how hard it is for a book editor to evaluate my first drafts. At that point in the process I have not fully layered on the humor, hypnosis, musicality, timing, or emotion. Editing a first draft means divorcing yourself from the question of how good it is. Normal humans can’t do that. The best editors can smell good writing before they see it.

Scott

Do you think local law enforcement can monitor all of your smartphone communications in real time? They can if they have this device. Scary.

And now Ford has technology for reading speed limit signs and adjusting your speed automatically. Other companies have auto-driving technology that keeps you between the lines on a road and away from the back bumper of the car ahead. Human driving skills are becoming less necessary by the minute.

And if you dislike touching germ-covered objects, relief might be coming with this technology.

Dilbert on Facebook

@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)

@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)

My book on success: “I’m only about halfway through but can definitely highly recommend it to anyone, young and old. It’s a quick read…but who would have guessed that I’d be highlighting so much that I want to go back to?!“ - Sarah  (Amazon 5-star review March 14, 2015)

Robots Read News of Utah Firing Squads

Today I bring you a Robots Read News episode engineered to get a healthy number of “favorites” on Twitter but relatively few retweets. The hypothesis is that people enjoy dark humor but they are cautious about associating with it, and wisely so.

If your corporate firewall is blocking this, see it on Twitter at this link.