Scott Adams's Blog, page 305
December 9, 2014
Diet Science in 2014
I can accurately predict whether you will meet your weight loss goals by the way you talk about it.
I mean that literally. I think I could devise a controlled experiment in which I pick weight-loss winners and losers in advance based on nothing but a transcript of folks talking about their fitness goals.
I'll give you some examples. What follows is a list of things you will hear from people that have no legitimate chance of losing weight and keeping it off. Yes, your thing is probably on this list and it pisses you off to see it. But stay with me and I'll change your life by the end of this post.
Here's what people say when they are preparing to fail at a weight-loss strategy.
"I need to exercise more."
"I'm counting calories."
"I have a cheat day coming."
"I'm watching my portions."
"I'm doing a cleanse."
"I'm trying the (whatever) diet plan."
Ten years ago I would have said everything on the list is a common-sense way to lose weight. But science has since shown otherwise. I'll go through them one at a time.
"I need to exercise more."
You probably DO need to exercise more, for lots of health-related reasons, but exercise is a terrible way to lose weight. Science tells us that exercise is maybe 20% of the solution and diet is 80%, roughly speaking. So when I hear someone talking about trying to lose sixty pounds by joining a gym, I know that person isn't up-to-date on the science and doesn't have a plan that can work. The only way to lose tons of weight through exercise alone is by pushing yourself to the pain point, and science tells us that in that case your subconscious mind will find a way to be "too busy" to keep exercising.
During the first week of January my gym fills with overweight people who think they can exercise their way to slimness. After a month they will see no improvement and quit. The gym probably makes its entire profit from the folks that mistakenly believe exercise is a great diet plan.
"I'm counting calories."
If you are counting calories you probably don't know about the recent science on hunger control. One of the best ways to decrease hunger naturally is by eating calorie-laden fatty stuff such as peanuts. Science says that peanut-eaters lose weight even though they eat fatty peanuts because it suppresses their appetite. Meanwhile, calorie-counters might eat carbs with low calories without knowing they are stimulating appetite by their food choices.
"I have a cheat day coming."
Science tells us that unpredictable rewards create addiction. If you find yourself talking about your upcoming cheat day a week in advance, and craving it, you probably just set yourself up to become addicted to that cheat day - and therefore bad food in general - by your diet plan. If you reward yourself for "cheating" your diet, what do you think happens to your brain wiring? Yup, you crave the bad food that is the reward. Worst...diet...strategy...ever.
"I'm watching my portions."
Portion control has the same problem as calorie-counting. If you eat the right food, portion control takes care of itself. When was the last time you ate too much broccoli? If portion control even enters your mind, it means you don't understand the science about food cravings and the science about the glycemic index. Successful dieters manage their food choices and eat as much of anything as they want. The secret is in changing the "wanting" part, not the portion size. Eating a smaller portion of cake is rewarding the part of your brain that wants cake.
"I'm doing a cleanse."
I timed myself and it took exactly five seconds to find a Mayo Clinic link that says science does not support cleanses. If your diet plan can be debunked in five seconds, you probably aren't a seeker of knowledge. So even if a cleanse turns out to be accidentally a good idea, a knowledge-free long-term diet strategy has a low chance of success.
"I'm trying the (whatever) diet plan."
When I took my dog to puppy training class the instructor told us the importance of training the dog in different locations. If you only train your dog to sit when he is in your kitchen, he only learns to do the trick in that one room. You walk into the living room and the dog doesn't understand why you are doing the "sitting in the kitchen" trick in the wrong place. It will just stare at you.
My point is that if you learn to lose weight on a diet plan . . . all you learned is how to lose weight on a diet plan. After you lose your ten pounds you stop the plan and return to your normal diet. You don't know how to lose weight on your normal diet. Now you're the dog in the living room looking puzzled when someone says, "sit."
Okay, so those are all the things that don't work. So what does work?
Beats me. I'm not a doctor. But I can tell you my story to compare to other folks' accounts and maybe you can see a pattern. What I noticed in myself is that until I reached a critical base of knowledge about diet science I couldn't lose weight no matter how much so-called willpower I brought to it. As a reference point, I have a lot of this thing called willpower. Generally speaking, I simply have to want something badly enough and I'll chew through a concrete wall to get it. But willpower didn't help me lose weight, and it took me decades to learn why. In my defense, science was confused about diet choices until recently too, so the knowledge I needed didn't exist. Now it does.
I've lost 26 pounds from my high adult weight, gradually, over years. None of the improvement is from any sort of "diet." I simple acquired knowledge about nutrition and food science, a bit at a time, year-by-year, until some sort of critical mass was hit. Now I literally eat as much as I want, whenever I want, of whatever I want, and I have the body of a 19-year old swimmer who was tragically born with an old guy's head.
The secret to eating whatever I want is that I systematically reduced my cravings for the wrong food. Now I only want things that happen to be great for my body. And I also experimented for years to find ways to prepare healthy food that doesn't taste like your grandpa's socks. I'm already looking forward to my protein smoothie that is full of berries, almond butter, yogurt, protein powder, chia seeds, almond milk and ice. I get the same pleasure from the smoothie that I once got from ice cream. Sacrifice? Zero. Portion control? Zero. I often have two smoothies in a row just for the pleasure.
As an aside, my efforts in learning to control my food cravings are part of a larger decade-long personal experiment in which I am seeing how much I can reprogram my basic human preferences using science and my knowledge of hypnosis. Preview: So far, almost all of my most basic preferences in life seem reprogrammable. That will be another blog post someday.
If you want links to any of the science I mentioned, I have most of that in my latest book.
You shouldn't listen to cartoonists when it comes to health decisions. All I'm trying to add to the discussion is the idea that knowledge of food science can replace your need for willpower, and that wasn't possible until recently because the knowledge didn't exist. So consider a diet that involves consuming knowledge first. You'll know you have enough knowledge the first time you consciously eliminate a food craving you've had all your life.*
Good luck!
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
*That's a hypnosis trick I just did for you. It's a trigger for the future.
I mean that literally. I think I could devise a controlled experiment in which I pick weight-loss winners and losers in advance based on nothing but a transcript of folks talking about their fitness goals.
I'll give you some examples. What follows is a list of things you will hear from people that have no legitimate chance of losing weight and keeping it off. Yes, your thing is probably on this list and it pisses you off to see it. But stay with me and I'll change your life by the end of this post.
Here's what people say when they are preparing to fail at a weight-loss strategy.
"I need to exercise more."
"I'm counting calories."
"I have a cheat day coming."
"I'm watching my portions."
"I'm doing a cleanse."
"I'm trying the (whatever) diet plan."
Ten years ago I would have said everything on the list is a common-sense way to lose weight. But science has since shown otherwise. I'll go through them one at a time.
"I need to exercise more."
You probably DO need to exercise more, for lots of health-related reasons, but exercise is a terrible way to lose weight. Science tells us that exercise is maybe 20% of the solution and diet is 80%, roughly speaking. So when I hear someone talking about trying to lose sixty pounds by joining a gym, I know that person isn't up-to-date on the science and doesn't have a plan that can work. The only way to lose tons of weight through exercise alone is by pushing yourself to the pain point, and science tells us that in that case your subconscious mind will find a way to be "too busy" to keep exercising.
During the first week of January my gym fills with overweight people who think they can exercise their way to slimness. After a month they will see no improvement and quit. The gym probably makes its entire profit from the folks that mistakenly believe exercise is a great diet plan.
"I'm counting calories."
If you are counting calories you probably don't know about the recent science on hunger control. One of the best ways to decrease hunger naturally is by eating calorie-laden fatty stuff such as peanuts. Science says that peanut-eaters lose weight even though they eat fatty peanuts because it suppresses their appetite. Meanwhile, calorie-counters might eat carbs with low calories without knowing they are stimulating appetite by their food choices.
"I have a cheat day coming."
Science tells us that unpredictable rewards create addiction. If you find yourself talking about your upcoming cheat day a week in advance, and craving it, you probably just set yourself up to become addicted to that cheat day - and therefore bad food in general - by your diet plan. If you reward yourself for "cheating" your diet, what do you think happens to your brain wiring? Yup, you crave the bad food that is the reward. Worst...diet...strategy...ever.
"I'm watching my portions."
Portion control has the same problem as calorie-counting. If you eat the right food, portion control takes care of itself. When was the last time you ate too much broccoli? If portion control even enters your mind, it means you don't understand the science about food cravings and the science about the glycemic index. Successful dieters manage their food choices and eat as much of anything as they want. The secret is in changing the "wanting" part, not the portion size. Eating a smaller portion of cake is rewarding the part of your brain that wants cake.
"I'm doing a cleanse."
I timed myself and it took exactly five seconds to find a Mayo Clinic link that says science does not support cleanses. If your diet plan can be debunked in five seconds, you probably aren't a seeker of knowledge. So even if a cleanse turns out to be accidentally a good idea, a knowledge-free long-term diet strategy has a low chance of success.
"I'm trying the (whatever) diet plan."
When I took my dog to puppy training class the instructor told us the importance of training the dog in different locations. If you only train your dog to sit when he is in your kitchen, he only learns to do the trick in that one room. You walk into the living room and the dog doesn't understand why you are doing the "sitting in the kitchen" trick in the wrong place. It will just stare at you.
My point is that if you learn to lose weight on a diet plan . . . all you learned is how to lose weight on a diet plan. After you lose your ten pounds you stop the plan and return to your normal diet. You don't know how to lose weight on your normal diet. Now you're the dog in the living room looking puzzled when someone says, "sit."
Okay, so those are all the things that don't work. So what does work?
Beats me. I'm not a doctor. But I can tell you my story to compare to other folks' accounts and maybe you can see a pattern. What I noticed in myself is that until I reached a critical base of knowledge about diet science I couldn't lose weight no matter how much so-called willpower I brought to it. As a reference point, I have a lot of this thing called willpower. Generally speaking, I simply have to want something badly enough and I'll chew through a concrete wall to get it. But willpower didn't help me lose weight, and it took me decades to learn why. In my defense, science was confused about diet choices until recently too, so the knowledge I needed didn't exist. Now it does.
I've lost 26 pounds from my high adult weight, gradually, over years. None of the improvement is from any sort of "diet." I simple acquired knowledge about nutrition and food science, a bit at a time, year-by-year, until some sort of critical mass was hit. Now I literally eat as much as I want, whenever I want, of whatever I want, and I have the body of a 19-year old swimmer who was tragically born with an old guy's head.
The secret to eating whatever I want is that I systematically reduced my cravings for the wrong food. Now I only want things that happen to be great for my body. And I also experimented for years to find ways to prepare healthy food that doesn't taste like your grandpa's socks. I'm already looking forward to my protein smoothie that is full of berries, almond butter, yogurt, protein powder, chia seeds, almond milk and ice. I get the same pleasure from the smoothie that I once got from ice cream. Sacrifice? Zero. Portion control? Zero. I often have two smoothies in a row just for the pleasure.
As an aside, my efforts in learning to control my food cravings are part of a larger decade-long personal experiment in which I am seeing how much I can reprogram my basic human preferences using science and my knowledge of hypnosis. Preview: So far, almost all of my most basic preferences in life seem reprogrammable. That will be another blog post someday.
If you want links to any of the science I mentioned, I have most of that in my latest book.
You shouldn't listen to cartoonists when it comes to health decisions. All I'm trying to add to the discussion is the idea that knowledge of food science can replace your need for willpower, and that wasn't possible until recently because the knowledge didn't exist. So consider a diet that involves consuming knowledge first. You'll know you have enough knowledge the first time you consciously eliminate a food craving you've had all your life.*
Good luck!
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
*That's a hypnosis trick I just did for you. It's a trigger for the future.
December 7, 2014
The Human Mind
If you needed to describe the human mind to aliens from another planet, what would be the simplest way to do it? Assume the aliens speak English.
I would tell the aliens that humans form strong bonds with sports teams and enthusiastically cheer for victory. Then I would walk away, done. The aliens, having learned all there is to know about humans, get back in their spacecraft and continue their search for intelligent life.
In my youth, I rooted for my local sports teams. As I matured, I learned that life is just particles bumping into each other according to the rules of physics. What we observe with our five senses is nothing more than the result of all that particle activity. Once that understanding sunk in, I could no longer feel any emotion about the fate of one team versus another. In the universe, shit happens, and sometimes humans are wearing matching uniforms when it does. Why would that excite me?
I think the answer lies in the illusion of free will.
If you believe humans have free will then it makes sense to see a sporting event as a battle of wills. And maybe, just maybe, your mental concentration and inspirational rooting from home is helping things along. If you believe in free will it is not a stretch to believe that your free will flies from your head into the cloud and interacts with the "will to win" of your favorite team and somehow strengthens it. Thus, you, the fan, are important to the winning process. I can see how that would be exciting.
But if you are scientific-minded, and see no evidence of this thing called free will, you probably see sports as the sum of particles bumping around. It's hard to root for that.
I'm also puzzled by the concept of loving a specific team. A professional sports team is a legal entity with assets that change every year. If the assets change (mostly the players) but you still love your team the same, you're actually rooting for an artificial corporate entity formed for tax and legal purposes. Try explaining that to your aliens.
Perhaps you love your local teams because they are local, so you have something in common and they are representing for you. But realistically, your team is comprised of a bunch of freakish multimillionaires that came from other places. And the minute their contracts expire they are probably gone.
I love playing sports because it jacks up my body chemistry, gives me a cardio workout, has social benefits, and more. But watching other people play sports doesn't entertain me. The exception is major tennis matches, but I watch those more to observe techniques I can borrow.
This all leads me to wonder if there is a strong correlation between religious belief and rooting for a sports team. Both actions require a special kind of belief in free will, and not all of us have that.
So I put the question to you, my blog readers. On a scale from 1 to 10, where do you rank in terms of religious belief and enjoyment of watching sports?
Here's me:
Religious belief: 0
Enjoy watching sports: 2
How about you?
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of the best book in the history of humanity
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
I would tell the aliens that humans form strong bonds with sports teams and enthusiastically cheer for victory. Then I would walk away, done. The aliens, having learned all there is to know about humans, get back in their spacecraft and continue their search for intelligent life.
In my youth, I rooted for my local sports teams. As I matured, I learned that life is just particles bumping into each other according to the rules of physics. What we observe with our five senses is nothing more than the result of all that particle activity. Once that understanding sunk in, I could no longer feel any emotion about the fate of one team versus another. In the universe, shit happens, and sometimes humans are wearing matching uniforms when it does. Why would that excite me?
I think the answer lies in the illusion of free will.
If you believe humans have free will then it makes sense to see a sporting event as a battle of wills. And maybe, just maybe, your mental concentration and inspirational rooting from home is helping things along. If you believe in free will it is not a stretch to believe that your free will flies from your head into the cloud and interacts with the "will to win" of your favorite team and somehow strengthens it. Thus, you, the fan, are important to the winning process. I can see how that would be exciting.
But if you are scientific-minded, and see no evidence of this thing called free will, you probably see sports as the sum of particles bumping around. It's hard to root for that.
I'm also puzzled by the concept of loving a specific team. A professional sports team is a legal entity with assets that change every year. If the assets change (mostly the players) but you still love your team the same, you're actually rooting for an artificial corporate entity formed for tax and legal purposes. Try explaining that to your aliens.
Perhaps you love your local teams because they are local, so you have something in common and they are representing for you. But realistically, your team is comprised of a bunch of freakish multimillionaires that came from other places. And the minute their contracts expire they are probably gone.
I love playing sports because it jacks up my body chemistry, gives me a cardio workout, has social benefits, and more. But watching other people play sports doesn't entertain me. The exception is major tennis matches, but I watch those more to observe techniques I can borrow.
This all leads me to wonder if there is a strong correlation between religious belief and rooting for a sports team. Both actions require a special kind of belief in free will, and not all of us have that.
So I put the question to you, my blog readers. On a scale from 1 to 10, where do you rank in terms of religious belief and enjoyment of watching sports?
Here's me:
Religious belief: 0
Enjoy watching sports: 2
How about you?
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of the best book in the history of humanity
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
December 3, 2014
Can Your Phone Make You Fat?
There has been a lot of research on willpower in recent years. The gist of it is that willpower is a limited resource during any given day, so if you use your willpower resisting one temptation you might not have enough to resist the next.
I don't know about you, but my biggest drain on willpower during any given day is my iPhone 6. It calls to me continuously during the day. Often I need to be focusing on something more important, or it would be socially impolite to check my text messages, or I am driving and it would be dangerous. These situations come up all day long. It's mentally exhausting. The conversation in my head goes like this: "Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE! Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE!" And so on to infinity. The research on habit formation suggests that anyone with a smartphone is having the same experience because the "rewards" of checking your phone are unpredictable, and unpredictable rewards create addiction circuitry in your brain.
Life had enough temptations before smartphones were invented. Personally, my daily willpower drain feels as if it is 100% higher than it was pre-smartphone.
If my hypothesis is correct, smartphone users should have higher obesity rates, drug dependence, spouse abuse, and infidelity rates than non-smartphone users all other things being equal.
I have no data to support my hypothesis, but it is built on fairly solid assumptions:
Willpower is a finite resource.The reward from checking your phone is unpredictable and creates addiction/habit circuitry in your brain.Resisting your smartphone addiction all day requires willpower.You need willpower to resist unhealthy choices.I'm pro-technology and I don't suggest we return to an agrarian civilization. But am I wrong that smartphones are killing us?
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
I don't know about you, but my biggest drain on willpower during any given day is my iPhone 6. It calls to me continuously during the day. Often I need to be focusing on something more important, or it would be socially impolite to check my text messages, or I am driving and it would be dangerous. These situations come up all day long. It's mentally exhausting. The conversation in my head goes like this: "Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE! Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE!" And so on to infinity. The research on habit formation suggests that anyone with a smartphone is having the same experience because the "rewards" of checking your phone are unpredictable, and unpredictable rewards create addiction circuitry in your brain.
Life had enough temptations before smartphones were invented. Personally, my daily willpower drain feels as if it is 100% higher than it was pre-smartphone.
If my hypothesis is correct, smartphone users should have higher obesity rates, drug dependence, spouse abuse, and infidelity rates than non-smartphone users all other things being equal.
I have no data to support my hypothesis, but it is built on fairly solid assumptions:
Willpower is a finite resource.The reward from checking your phone is unpredictable and creates addiction/habit circuitry in your brain.Resisting your smartphone addiction all day requires willpower.You need willpower to resist unhealthy choices.I'm pro-technology and I don't suggest we return to an agrarian civilization. But am I wrong that smartphones are killing us?
--------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
December 1, 2014
Texting and Driving - update
Here's a short video of Katie Curic interviewing an entrepreneur with a device like the one I described a few posts ago to prevent teens from driving and texting.
The difference, I think, is that in my concept I required one driver to register as the designated driver in order for the car to start.
I can't tell if there is an easy way for teens to defeat the product in the video. But if the teen only has one car, and the device is in it, I can see it working well so long as it also notifies a parent whenever the device is removed from the port.
The difference, I think, is that in my concept I required one driver to register as the designated driver in order for the car to start.
I can't tell if there is an easy way for teens to defeat the product in the video. But if the teen only has one car, and the device is in it, I can see it working well so long as it also notifies a parent whenever the device is removed from the port.
November 30, 2014
The Temporary Dictator System
I propose a constitutional amendment to allow Bill Gates to become dictator of the United States for one year. The only exception to his power would be control of the military. The civilian president along with Congress would still control military actions and policies. That should prevent any temporary dictators from consolidating power and becoming permanent.
During Bill Gates' one year run as dictator he could create any laws he wished, change national priorities any way he liked, and generally fix things without a lot of political friction. He could even tweak the Constitution while he's in power.
At the end of Gates' one-year reign, the returning civilian government could - if they want - reverse any of his laws, but doing so would be politically perilous because Bill is likely to have good reasons for what he did. We can depend on political timidity and inertia to keep most of our dictator's laws on the books after he leaves.
I picked Bill Gates for this example because I'm not entirely sure he has a political leaning. He's probably a robot from the future. And at this point I think he has removed all doubt about whether his motives are pure. These days he obviously isn't in it for the money. And we would expect him to bring a high degree of rational thought to any decision. What more do we want?
I deal with lots of odd legal contracts in my career, ranging from licensing to publishing to public appearances and more. The default solution to almost every contract issue is to make the term short. The shorter the term, the less likely something will go wrong that can't be fixed. I'm using the same idea for the dictator concept. A permanent dictator would be the worst system in the world because power eventually corrupts even the nicest human. But a one-year term for our dictator removes most of the potential problems. As long as the dictator doesn't control the police, military, or intelligence services, he or she can't cause too much trouble in a year.
Overall, I like our "sticky" political system with its perpetual gridlock because that means only the most important issues become laws. But every ten years or so, we probably need a temporary dictator to clean out our political closets and get some useful things done.
If you look at the United States as a system, or a big machine, it is lumbering along with nothing but basic maintenance. We have a political system that was designed during the age of horse-drawn carriages and it no longer fits the times. (Or at least it ignores the opportunities of the Internet age.) We need a system that occasionally rebuilds the entire engine of democracy as opposed to keeping the old system dusted and oiled for eternity.
I think the temporary dictator system could be a huge economic advantage over our international rivals. Their systems would either be Putin-like dictatorships that self-destruct in the dictator's lifetime or bloated democracy-inspired systems that are gridlocked beyond usefulness. Our hybrid system with its temporary dictatorship every ten years could be the best system of all.
What do you think?
--------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
During Bill Gates' one year run as dictator he could create any laws he wished, change national priorities any way he liked, and generally fix things without a lot of political friction. He could even tweak the Constitution while he's in power.
At the end of Gates' one-year reign, the returning civilian government could - if they want - reverse any of his laws, but doing so would be politically perilous because Bill is likely to have good reasons for what he did. We can depend on political timidity and inertia to keep most of our dictator's laws on the books after he leaves.
I picked Bill Gates for this example because I'm not entirely sure he has a political leaning. He's probably a robot from the future. And at this point I think he has removed all doubt about whether his motives are pure. These days he obviously isn't in it for the money. And we would expect him to bring a high degree of rational thought to any decision. What more do we want?
I deal with lots of odd legal contracts in my career, ranging from licensing to publishing to public appearances and more. The default solution to almost every contract issue is to make the term short. The shorter the term, the less likely something will go wrong that can't be fixed. I'm using the same idea for the dictator concept. A permanent dictator would be the worst system in the world because power eventually corrupts even the nicest human. But a one-year term for our dictator removes most of the potential problems. As long as the dictator doesn't control the police, military, or intelligence services, he or she can't cause too much trouble in a year.
Overall, I like our "sticky" political system with its perpetual gridlock because that means only the most important issues become laws. But every ten years or so, we probably need a temporary dictator to clean out our political closets and get some useful things done.
If you look at the United States as a system, or a big machine, it is lumbering along with nothing but basic maintenance. We have a political system that was designed during the age of horse-drawn carriages and it no longer fits the times. (Or at least it ignores the opportunities of the Internet age.) We need a system that occasionally rebuilds the entire engine of democracy as opposed to keeping the old system dusted and oiled for eternity.
I think the temporary dictator system could be a huge economic advantage over our international rivals. Their systems would either be Putin-like dictatorships that self-destruct in the dictator's lifetime or bloated democracy-inspired systems that are gridlocked beyond usefulness. Our hybrid system with its temporary dictatorship every ten years could be the best system of all.
What do you think?
--------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
November 23, 2014
The Tyranny of Expectations
Last year I rejoined the ranks of the spouse-free. Things sure changed since the last time I was single.
For starters, it is not necessary for men to ask women for revealing selfies. Those photos just start showing up on your phone after you exchange numbers. A revealing selfie in 2014 is essentially just a digital business card for your dating life.
I have also discovered that the most-used characters on my phone keyboard are emoticons. When single people text each other, every sentence has to end with an exclamation mark or a smiley emoticon or else it looks like you lost interest since the last time you texted thirty seconds ago.
For the most part, texting is just a means of feeling connected at a distance. The content isn't terribly important. But the pauses between text messages mean A LOT. Single people monitor the pauses between text replies to decipher real meaning in the content. For example, if I text "I really enjoyed our time together," the real message is contained in the timing of the message not the content. If the text is sent while one person is still driving home from a date, that means you feel a strong connection. But if I text something nice and have to wait seven hours for a reply, the seven-hour wait is the message, not the content of the reply.
Single people in 2014 frequently break up with each other by text, but the words are only the punctuation at the end of the break up. The actual break-up happens with what is called "the taper." The taper is when you are texting someone at a predictable rate, such as several times per day, and you gradually reduce your texting to one message every third day. That's the taper, and it tells the other person your interest has tapered too.
But here's my biggest insight about the single world: Expectations.
I have observed two approaches to dating. One approach involves creating a checklist of expectations that you have for your next romantic partner. You might want a minimum height, a good job, geographic proximity, the same travel preferences, and on and on and on.
Then you find out that no one on the planet fits your criteria. So you have to make hard decisions about which items on the checklist you want to give up on. And if you do give up on those items, you probably resent your partner forever or try to change him/her to conform to the checklist. And that is doomed to fail.
The long checklist is a modern dating problem. Two-hundred years ago, if you and your romantic partner both liked square dancing, you had everything in common. The checklist looked like this:
Are you alive?Do you like square dancing? Today the checklist for a romantic partner is 25-items long. Literally no one meets the requirements of anyone else's checklist. So setting expectations before searching for a romantic match is doomed to fail. And the checklist approach is the primary method that most people are using. It is no wonder that 70% of marriages are unhappy
Let's call the 25-item checklist a "goals" approach to dating.
The other approach to life is the "no expectations" method I am trying to cultivate. This is more of a system than a goal. The idea is that you arrange your life so you meet lots of people and you put no expectations on any of them. If I meet someone with a 4.5 tennis level and lots of free time, perhaps I have a new tennis partner. If we click on some other level, that's great too. No expectations.
It is too early to say if my systems approach is successful. But the first year or so have been wonderful. I'm never stressed or disappointed. Everything pleasant that happens to me feels like a gift.
Stress is essentially the gap between what you optimistically expect to happen and what actually does. That means you can eliminate stress either by changing your expectations or by changing what actually happens. Most people are trapped in a doomed loop of wishful thinking that our romantic partners will change their basic nature and start conforming to our unrealistic expectations if only we complain long enough. For comparison, here's how my model of no-expectations works:
Other Person: Do you want a hug?
Me: Yes
That's the beginning and end of my expectations. Or at least I want it to be. It isn't easy to release expectations, but I hold it as an ideal.
To be fair, if kids are part of the equation you probably do need a checklist before getting involved. So the no-expectations system isn't for every situation. I'll let you know how it works for me.
--------------------------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book (about systems versus goals)
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
For starters, it is not necessary for men to ask women for revealing selfies. Those photos just start showing up on your phone after you exchange numbers. A revealing selfie in 2014 is essentially just a digital business card for your dating life.
I have also discovered that the most-used characters on my phone keyboard are emoticons. When single people text each other, every sentence has to end with an exclamation mark or a smiley emoticon or else it looks like you lost interest since the last time you texted thirty seconds ago.
For the most part, texting is just a means of feeling connected at a distance. The content isn't terribly important. But the pauses between text messages mean A LOT. Single people monitor the pauses between text replies to decipher real meaning in the content. For example, if I text "I really enjoyed our time together," the real message is contained in the timing of the message not the content. If the text is sent while one person is still driving home from a date, that means you feel a strong connection. But if I text something nice and have to wait seven hours for a reply, the seven-hour wait is the message, not the content of the reply.
Single people in 2014 frequently break up with each other by text, but the words are only the punctuation at the end of the break up. The actual break-up happens with what is called "the taper." The taper is when you are texting someone at a predictable rate, such as several times per day, and you gradually reduce your texting to one message every third day. That's the taper, and it tells the other person your interest has tapered too.
But here's my biggest insight about the single world: Expectations.
I have observed two approaches to dating. One approach involves creating a checklist of expectations that you have for your next romantic partner. You might want a minimum height, a good job, geographic proximity, the same travel preferences, and on and on and on.
Then you find out that no one on the planet fits your criteria. So you have to make hard decisions about which items on the checklist you want to give up on. And if you do give up on those items, you probably resent your partner forever or try to change him/her to conform to the checklist. And that is doomed to fail.
The long checklist is a modern dating problem. Two-hundred years ago, if you and your romantic partner both liked square dancing, you had everything in common. The checklist looked like this:
Are you alive?Do you like square dancing? Today the checklist for a romantic partner is 25-items long. Literally no one meets the requirements of anyone else's checklist. So setting expectations before searching for a romantic match is doomed to fail. And the checklist approach is the primary method that most people are using. It is no wonder that 70% of marriages are unhappy
Let's call the 25-item checklist a "goals" approach to dating.
The other approach to life is the "no expectations" method I am trying to cultivate. This is more of a system than a goal. The idea is that you arrange your life so you meet lots of people and you put no expectations on any of them. If I meet someone with a 4.5 tennis level and lots of free time, perhaps I have a new tennis partner. If we click on some other level, that's great too. No expectations.
It is too early to say if my systems approach is successful. But the first year or so have been wonderful. I'm never stressed or disappointed. Everything pleasant that happens to me feels like a gift.
Stress is essentially the gap between what you optimistically expect to happen and what actually does. That means you can eliminate stress either by changing your expectations or by changing what actually happens. Most people are trapped in a doomed loop of wishful thinking that our romantic partners will change their basic nature and start conforming to our unrealistic expectations if only we complain long enough. For comparison, here's how my model of no-expectations works:
Other Person: Do you want a hug?
Me: Yes
That's the beginning and end of my expectations. Or at least I want it to be. It isn't easy to release expectations, but I hold it as an ideal.
To be fair, if kids are part of the equation you probably do need a checklist before getting involved. So the no-expectations system isn't for every situation. I'll let you know how it works for me.
--------------------------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book (about systems versus goals)
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
November 19, 2014
Uber Gets the Buzzfeed Treatment
Recently a dipshit editor named Ben Smith over at Buzzfeed ambushed Uber executive Emil Michael by taking out of context something Michael said at a private dinner and publishing it under a misleading headline.
It was such a clever ambush that Emil Michael couldn't hope to explain himself without inflaming things further. So he wisely issued a half-assed non-apology-sort-of-apology to make it all go away.
But he's stained. That stuff lives forever on the Internet. It was a total hit job and Buzzfeed pulled it off. As Buzzfeed's own article explains, they have a grudge with Uber over some privacy issues. I assume this was either payback or a . . . coincidence?
If only there was some independent observer of this outrage who once cared what the public thought of him but no longer does. Perhaps that person could say some of the things that I imagine Emil Michael wants to say but can't. And what if that independent observer woke up in a bad mood? How fun might that be?
Well, it's your lucky day.
Let's start with Buzzfeed's totally manipulative and misleading headline:
Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists Holy shit! Uber must be evil! They are trying to suppress freedom of the media!
Except. . . that isn't what happened, according to Buzzfeed's own reporting in the article with the misleading headline.
Michael didn't "suggest" doing anything. Nor did he - then or now - even want to dig up dirt on journalists. Assuming Buzzfeed's reporting of the details is accurate, all he did was make a dinner party intellectual comparison between the evil of the media that was unfairly attacking them (which I assume is true) and their own civilized response to the attacks.
Michael's point, as Buzzfeed reports it, was that horrible people in the media mislead readers and there is nothing a victim can do about it within the realm of reasonable business practices. The Buzzfeed business model is totally legal. But, as Michael explained, probably over a cocktail, the only legal solution to this problem would be to use freedom of the press to push back on the bad actors by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
But it was just private cocktail talk. It wasn't a plan. It definitely wasn't a "suggestion." It was just an interesting way to make a point. The point, as I understand it from Buzzfeed's own reporting, is that Uber DOES play fair in a fight in which the opponents (bad actors in the press) do not. I find that interesting. It is also literally the opposite of what the headline of the story "suggests" happened.
And Michael made his point in a room full of writers/media people. Obviously it wasn't a plan.
It's not as if Michael was talking about manipulating the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Those publications might get some facts wrong now and then, but they don't have a business model that involves intentionally taking things out of context to manufacture news. No one suggested trying to strong-arm the legitimate media. Michael was talking about the bottom-feeder types that literally manufacture news, hurt innocent people, damage the reputation of companies, and hide behind the Constitution and freedom of speech. You can't compare the bad actors in the press with the legitimate press. And in my opinion it makes interesting dinner conversation to speculate how one can stop the bad actors without breaking any laws.
And then Buzzfeed proved Michael's point by taking his words out of context and showing that Michael could do nothing about it but apologize for . . . Buzzfeed's misleading description of what he said.
That's called "news."
[Update: A commenter points out that this ugly situation is even uglier than I thought. An executive at Buzzfeed is in investor in Uber's competition. See this take on it.]
Disclaimer and biases: I don't own any Uber stock. I had lunch with the founder once.
------------------------------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
It was such a clever ambush that Emil Michael couldn't hope to explain himself without inflaming things further. So he wisely issued a half-assed non-apology-sort-of-apology to make it all go away.
But he's stained. That stuff lives forever on the Internet. It was a total hit job and Buzzfeed pulled it off. As Buzzfeed's own article explains, they have a grudge with Uber over some privacy issues. I assume this was either payback or a . . . coincidence?
If only there was some independent observer of this outrage who once cared what the public thought of him but no longer does. Perhaps that person could say some of the things that I imagine Emil Michael wants to say but can't. And what if that independent observer woke up in a bad mood? How fun might that be?
Well, it's your lucky day.
Let's start with Buzzfeed's totally manipulative and misleading headline:
Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists Holy shit! Uber must be evil! They are trying to suppress freedom of the media!
Except. . . that isn't what happened, according to Buzzfeed's own reporting in the article with the misleading headline.
Michael didn't "suggest" doing anything. Nor did he - then or now - even want to dig up dirt on journalists. Assuming Buzzfeed's reporting of the details is accurate, all he did was make a dinner party intellectual comparison between the evil of the media that was unfairly attacking them (which I assume is true) and their own civilized response to the attacks.
Michael's point, as Buzzfeed reports it, was that horrible people in the media mislead readers and there is nothing a victim can do about it within the realm of reasonable business practices. The Buzzfeed business model is totally legal. But, as Michael explained, probably over a cocktail, the only legal solution to this problem would be to use freedom of the press to push back on the bad actors by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
But it was just private cocktail talk. It wasn't a plan. It definitely wasn't a "suggestion." It was just an interesting way to make a point. The point, as I understand it from Buzzfeed's own reporting, is that Uber DOES play fair in a fight in which the opponents (bad actors in the press) do not. I find that interesting. It is also literally the opposite of what the headline of the story "suggests" happened.
And Michael made his point in a room full of writers/media people. Obviously it wasn't a plan.
It's not as if Michael was talking about manipulating the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Those publications might get some facts wrong now and then, but they don't have a business model that involves intentionally taking things out of context to manufacture news. No one suggested trying to strong-arm the legitimate media. Michael was talking about the bottom-feeder types that literally manufacture news, hurt innocent people, damage the reputation of companies, and hide behind the Constitution and freedom of speech. You can't compare the bad actors in the press with the legitimate press. And in my opinion it makes interesting dinner conversation to speculate how one can stop the bad actors without breaking any laws.
And then Buzzfeed proved Michael's point by taking his words out of context and showing that Michael could do nothing about it but apologize for . . . Buzzfeed's misleading description of what he said.
That's called "news."
[Update: A commenter points out that this ugly situation is even uglier than I thought. An executive at Buzzfeed is in investor in Uber's competition. See this take on it.]
Disclaimer and biases: I don't own any Uber stock. I had lunch with the founder once.
------------------------------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
November 17, 2014
A Life Well-lived
How do you know if you're living your life right? Is there a standard for that sort of thing?
I came up with a little graph of what I think a well-lived life looks like. The idea here is that we are born 100% selfish, as babies. But if we manage our lives well, our selfishness declines continuously until death. Death is the ultimate lack of selfishness.
I came to this idea by observing the natural evolution in my own selfishness over the years. In my twenties I would have chewed through a hundred not-yet-dead bodies to get to the top of the pile. In my fifties, I make most of my decisions based on how I can be useful to others.
I'm not awesome; I'm just rich and healthy. I have everything I need, and that doesn't seem likely to change soon, so my natural human inclination is to look around and see how I can be useful.
My entire philosophy is two words: Be useful
When you are young, the most useful thing you can do is focus on your own health, happiness, and education. The world wants you to be selfish until you don't need to be that way. That's what keeps the system going. But if you maintain a high level of selfishness all of your life, your friends and family might only be pretending to like you.
My proposition is that you can only experience meaning in life when your selfishness trend is downward, or you are doing something (such as learning new skills) to make that happen. Life is complicated and messy, and that makes it hard to keep score. But if your selfishness levels have plateaued, you might want to consider a new plan.
------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
I came up with a little graph of what I think a well-lived life looks like. The idea here is that we are born 100% selfish, as babies. But if we manage our lives well, our selfishness declines continuously until death. Death is the ultimate lack of selfishness.
I came to this idea by observing the natural evolution in my own selfishness over the years. In my twenties I would have chewed through a hundred not-yet-dead bodies to get to the top of the pile. In my fifties, I make most of my decisions based on how I can be useful to others.
I'm not awesome; I'm just rich and healthy. I have everything I need, and that doesn't seem likely to change soon, so my natural human inclination is to look around and see how I can be useful.
My entire philosophy is two words: Be useful
When you are young, the most useful thing you can do is focus on your own health, happiness, and education. The world wants you to be selfish until you don't need to be that way. That's what keeps the system going. But if you maintain a high level of selfishness all of your life, your friends and family might only be pretending to like you.
My proposition is that you can only experience meaning in life when your selfishness trend is downward, or you are doing something (such as learning new skills) to make that happen. Life is complicated and messy, and that makes it hard to keep score. But if your selfishness levels have plateaued, you might want to consider a new plan.
------------------------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
November 16, 2014
How to Stop Teens from Texting while Driving
You would become a billionaire if you built a device to stop teens from texting and driving. The insurance companies would love it.
I think I figured out an elegant way to stop teens from texting. Yes, I could form a company to produce the product myself. But building a company takes time, and luck, and patent applications, and lots more. I would be dicking around trying to form a company while thousands of people die in the meantime.
So I'm going to release this idea for anyone who wants to take a run at it. I think insurance companies would be first in line. And I think they can act faster than I can.
Before you understand my solution, let me give you some context.
All newer cars have a standard jack that lets consumers add third-party devices that interact with the car's electronics. The jack is usually under the dashboard and most people have never seen it. Devices already exist that plug into that jack and record data about the car's operation.
The brute force method of preventing texting while driving involves, for example, having an app on your teen's phone that interacts with the plug-in device and shuts off texting functions while the car detects movement. That device already exists. I think AT&T offers one.
The problem with that approach is that whenever the teen is moving as a passenger in a car, or on a bus, texting is disabled. All the app knows is that the teen is in motion.
The problem no one has yet cracked is how to identify the driver of the car and disable that one phone's texting capability while allowing texting for passengers and public transit users.
That's the problem I solved.
My insight is that the problem lies with psychology, not technology. Here's my solution.
Like AT&T's solution, a device is jacked into the car's port below the dashboard. (You literally just plug it in.) The device works with an app that your teen has on his phone. That technology is all standard stuff.
All I am changing is the psychology, and to do that we require some tweaks in the software.
My solution requires one person to register as the non-texting driver for the specific vehicle or else a text alert will go to parents saying the car has no designated driver and is in motion.
That's it. That's the psychological fix. Think this through with me...
For starters, the passengers are all free to text, even if they have the app on their phones, because they have not registered as the driver of the moment. The speed of the vehicle is irrelevant to them.
If your teen is driving alone, he can still text and drive. The technology does not prevent it. But what does happen is that an immediate text is sent to a parent alerting of the behavior. And I can imagine also sending that data directly to the car insurance company as a way of knowing if the non-texting discount can apply.
I think it is important to allow texting and driving because sometimes the driver might hand his phone to a buddy and say, "Text my dad that we're heading to Bob's house." Or maybe the teen is stuck in stop-and-go traffic and just needs to tell his Mom, "home in 10." That's reasonably safe, but the parent will get an alert text anyway, including the highway speed at the moment of the text. If the car is at rest, the parent doesn't care. If the text says, "Eric says to tell you we are heading to Bob's house," it is obviously from a friend in the car, and again the parent isn't concerned.
My idea assumes that teens are selfish. (Fair enough?) Imagine a car full of teens, each with a phone, each texting continuously during the ride as passengers. Would any of those teens volunteer to be the designated driver - just to fool the app - so the real driver can text and drive? I don't think so, at least not often. Teens have lost the ability to be car passengers without texting. It isn't even a thing anymore. They need texting like they need air.
A teen is dumb enough to ride in a car with a driver that is texting, but that teen is too selfish to give up his own right to text. A system that relies on honesty, good judgment, or dependability will always fail with teens. But a system that depends on teens being selfish has a good shot at working.
Best of all, this system gives the teen passengers an easy way to protest if the driver somehow tries to beat the system and text anyway. Teens aren't good at saying, "Drive safely and don't text." But teens are great at saying, "Dude, I'm not going to be your designated non-texting bitch."
Your brain is now busy thinking of ways your teen can thwart my clever system, and those ways surely exist. No system is hole-free. But I think this system takes a huge bite out of the problem.
This is a big deal. If you can't think of a serious flaw in the system I described, we just fixed a big problem. And if there is a flaw I don't see, perhaps this discussion will spark a better idea in one of you.
Let's see if we can do something good today.
----------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
I think I figured out an elegant way to stop teens from texting. Yes, I could form a company to produce the product myself. But building a company takes time, and luck, and patent applications, and lots more. I would be dicking around trying to form a company while thousands of people die in the meantime.
So I'm going to release this idea for anyone who wants to take a run at it. I think insurance companies would be first in line. And I think they can act faster than I can.
Before you understand my solution, let me give you some context.
All newer cars have a standard jack that lets consumers add third-party devices that interact with the car's electronics. The jack is usually under the dashboard and most people have never seen it. Devices already exist that plug into that jack and record data about the car's operation.
The brute force method of preventing texting while driving involves, for example, having an app on your teen's phone that interacts with the plug-in device and shuts off texting functions while the car detects movement. That device already exists. I think AT&T offers one.
The problem with that approach is that whenever the teen is moving as a passenger in a car, or on a bus, texting is disabled. All the app knows is that the teen is in motion.
The problem no one has yet cracked is how to identify the driver of the car and disable that one phone's texting capability while allowing texting for passengers and public transit users.
That's the problem I solved.
My insight is that the problem lies with psychology, not technology. Here's my solution.
Like AT&T's solution, a device is jacked into the car's port below the dashboard. (You literally just plug it in.) The device works with an app that your teen has on his phone. That technology is all standard stuff.
All I am changing is the psychology, and to do that we require some tweaks in the software.
My solution requires one person to register as the non-texting driver for the specific vehicle or else a text alert will go to parents saying the car has no designated driver and is in motion.
That's it. That's the psychological fix. Think this through with me...
For starters, the passengers are all free to text, even if they have the app on their phones, because they have not registered as the driver of the moment. The speed of the vehicle is irrelevant to them.
If your teen is driving alone, he can still text and drive. The technology does not prevent it. But what does happen is that an immediate text is sent to a parent alerting of the behavior. And I can imagine also sending that data directly to the car insurance company as a way of knowing if the non-texting discount can apply.
I think it is important to allow texting and driving because sometimes the driver might hand his phone to a buddy and say, "Text my dad that we're heading to Bob's house." Or maybe the teen is stuck in stop-and-go traffic and just needs to tell his Mom, "home in 10." That's reasonably safe, but the parent will get an alert text anyway, including the highway speed at the moment of the text. If the car is at rest, the parent doesn't care. If the text says, "Eric says to tell you we are heading to Bob's house," it is obviously from a friend in the car, and again the parent isn't concerned.
My idea assumes that teens are selfish. (Fair enough?) Imagine a car full of teens, each with a phone, each texting continuously during the ride as passengers. Would any of those teens volunteer to be the designated driver - just to fool the app - so the real driver can text and drive? I don't think so, at least not often. Teens have lost the ability to be car passengers without texting. It isn't even a thing anymore. They need texting like they need air.
A teen is dumb enough to ride in a car with a driver that is texting, but that teen is too selfish to give up his own right to text. A system that relies on honesty, good judgment, or dependability will always fail with teens. But a system that depends on teens being selfish has a good shot at working.
Best of all, this system gives the teen passengers an easy way to protest if the driver somehow tries to beat the system and text anyway. Teens aren't good at saying, "Drive safely and don't text." But teens are great at saying, "Dude, I'm not going to be your designated non-texting bitch."
Your brain is now busy thinking of ways your teen can thwart my clever system, and those ways surely exist. No system is hole-free. But I think this system takes a huge bite out of the problem.
This is a big deal. If you can't think of a serious flaw in the system I described, we just fixed a big problem. And if there is a flaw I don't see, perhaps this discussion will spark a better idea in one of you.
Let's see if we can do something good today.
----------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
November 13, 2014
The Transparency Party
The other day a friend mentioned that he would vote for the first presidential candidate that agrees to wear a GoPro camera on her head and live-stream every working minute of the presidency.
My first reaction to the idea was that it was funny but impractical.
But . . . the idea was coming from one of the smartest people I know. So I listened as he unfolded his thoughts. There's a lot of cleverness baked into this simple idea, and it is more doable than you first think.
Imagine a charismatic, science-loving candidate, under 40, running a presidential campaign while wearing a GoPro on her head and live-streaming every bit of it to the Internet. The media LOVES that candidate because she is interesting news, assuming she is a serious candidate in every other way. How do you ignore her?
The biggest hurdle for a third-party candidate is getting attention. The GoPro camera on the head solves that problem in a big way. And it would force both the incumbent and the established challenger to defend keeping secrets from the public at the same time they strip away privacy from citizens.
Sure, politicians say they have good reasons for taking your privacy, but the public doesn't appreciate complex arguments. The public responds to imaginary notions of "fairness," and to most people it just sounds fair that the government should be more transparent than the citizens it governs.
The GoPro candidate could have an intellectually compelling reason for government transparency too, which I will explain in a moment. But the public needs to quickly understand their candidates with stereotypical labels.
Hilary Clinton: Liberal
Jeb Bush: Conservative
GoPro Candidate: Transparent
The GoPro candidate would have what I call the winning comparison . Half of the country is biased against anything labelled liberal and the other half dislikes anything labelled conservative, but no one is opposed to knowing whether their government is worth the money they pay for it.
Imagine a fit, qualified, 35-year old female presidential candidate with a GoPro on her head, debating Hilary Clinton on stage. The GoPro candidate would make Hilary look like that pile of rags in the garage that you intend to throw away but never do.
And the visual impact of the GoPro on the head would turn the national conversation to government transparency. How would competing old-school candidates sell the idea that the public is better off remaining ignorant while trusting the government?
The GoPro candidate could dominate the news cycle simply by being visually interesting every time. If a news editor has to choose between a cool video clip from the GoPro live feed versus a discussion of a candidate's tax policies that will never be implemented, which one is the top story?
And privacy is always a hot story. The GoPro candidate would put a face on one of the biggest topics of the times.
So the GoPro candidate could easily suck all of the attention out of a presidential campaign. But obviously there has to be some substance or it will play out like Donald Trump on the campaign trail - more of a joke than a real thing.
For the sake of seriousness, let's say the GoPro gimmick is for the campaign trail and not the Oval Office. Once in office, the candidate will have professional crews filming her instead of wearing the camera on her head. This would all be clearly stated during the campaign.
As a helpful citizen, I put together a platform that might make sense for the science-loving Transparency Party candidate. You have seen some of these ideas before.
Transparency Party Platform
Government should be transparent so the citizens can see what they are paying for. This is the only way to keep the influence of lobbyists at bay in a society that values free speech.
National security conversations would be tape-delayed. An independent, bi-partisan group would be formed to decide when to release tape-delayed stuff. The politicians would still feel the heat of public scrutiny because the public will someday see what happened behind closed doors.
The President should be less of a "leader" and more of a communicator-in-chief. During filmed business meetings the GoPro president would sometimes speak directly to the viewers at home to explain the context of the meeting. Then the President would challenge the opinions in the room and demand data, all on camera.
The government would fund private competition to build a website that would allow the best arguments on any issue to bubble to the top, for both pro and con. As communicator-in-chief, the president would refer to the two "best" arguments whenever explaining policy to the public.
A president's opinion should change when the data changes. Don't expect consistency.
States should be test beds for social and economic experiments. When something works at the state level the President would act as communicator-in-chief to persuade other states to adopting methods that are proven to work.
For social issues, the GoPro candidate agrees to side with the majority opinion for lawmaking purposes while reserving the right to try and sway the majority with new data or better arguments. That takes social issues off the President's desk and puts them in the public's hands where they belong. If a new social policy succeeds at a state level, the President would encourage others to look at it.
-------
You might say there are obvious problems with government transparency because sometimes politicians really do need to make deals behind closed doors to get things done, or to save face for some partner country, or to "manage" the voters that are frankly not smart enough to understand the big issues. That was the old thinking, and it probably made sense in the past. But in today's world, government transparency might be the smarter approach.
The powerful idea here is that government secrecy is always a red flag that the government is doing something wrong. Remove the secrecy and the only remaining options are ideas that require effective selling to the public. And the best seller in the world would be the communicator-in-chief. The President would show his thinking process, show his data sources, show the counter-arguments, compare options, and present a reasoned opinion on every issue.
Sometimes the media, pundits, and other experts will make a strong counter-argument to the President's position. In those situations the Transparency president is free to change her opinions. In fact, doing so would bolster her credibility, so long as the reasoning is clearly explained to the public.
In the comments I expect to see lots of examples of things that would not work in a fully-transparent government. But watch how each of the reasons is debunked by your fellow commenters. It takes some effort to think through the reasoning of how transparency is a cure-all for government inefficiency, but I think you will be surprised how robust the idea is.
----------------
Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Twitter for Scott: @ScottAdamsSays
My first reaction to the idea was that it was funny but impractical.
But . . . the idea was coming from one of the smartest people I know. So I listened as he unfolded his thoughts. There's a lot of cleverness baked into this simple idea, and it is more doable than you first think.
Imagine a charismatic, science-loving candidate, under 40, running a presidential campaign while wearing a GoPro on her head and live-streaming every bit of it to the Internet. The media LOVES that candidate because she is interesting news, assuming she is a serious candidate in every other way. How do you ignore her?
The biggest hurdle for a third-party candidate is getting attention. The GoPro camera on the head solves that problem in a big way. And it would force both the incumbent and the established challenger to defend keeping secrets from the public at the same time they strip away privacy from citizens.
Sure, politicians say they have good reasons for taking your privacy, but the public doesn't appreciate complex arguments. The public responds to imaginary notions of "fairness," and to most people it just sounds fair that the government should be more transparent than the citizens it governs.
The GoPro candidate could have an intellectually compelling reason for government transparency too, which I will explain in a moment. But the public needs to quickly understand their candidates with stereotypical labels.
Hilary Clinton: Liberal
Jeb Bush: Conservative
GoPro Candidate: Transparent
The GoPro candidate would have what I call the winning comparison . Half of the country is biased against anything labelled liberal and the other half dislikes anything labelled conservative, but no one is opposed to knowing whether their government is worth the money they pay for it.
Imagine a fit, qualified, 35-year old female presidential candidate with a GoPro on her head, debating Hilary Clinton on stage. The GoPro candidate would make Hilary look like that pile of rags in the garage that you intend to throw away but never do.
And the visual impact of the GoPro on the head would turn the national conversation to government transparency. How would competing old-school candidates sell the idea that the public is better off remaining ignorant while trusting the government?
The GoPro candidate could dominate the news cycle simply by being visually interesting every time. If a news editor has to choose between a cool video clip from the GoPro live feed versus a discussion of a candidate's tax policies that will never be implemented, which one is the top story?
And privacy is always a hot story. The GoPro candidate would put a face on one of the biggest topics of the times.
So the GoPro candidate could easily suck all of the attention out of a presidential campaign. But obviously there has to be some substance or it will play out like Donald Trump on the campaign trail - more of a joke than a real thing.
For the sake of seriousness, let's say the GoPro gimmick is for the campaign trail and not the Oval Office. Once in office, the candidate will have professional crews filming her instead of wearing the camera on her head. This would all be clearly stated during the campaign.
As a helpful citizen, I put together a platform that might make sense for the science-loving Transparency Party candidate. You have seen some of these ideas before.
Transparency Party Platform
Government should be transparent so the citizens can see what they are paying for. This is the only way to keep the influence of lobbyists at bay in a society that values free speech.
National security conversations would be tape-delayed. An independent, bi-partisan group would be formed to decide when to release tape-delayed stuff. The politicians would still feel the heat of public scrutiny because the public will someday see what happened behind closed doors.
The President should be less of a "leader" and more of a communicator-in-chief. During filmed business meetings the GoPro president would sometimes speak directly to the viewers at home to explain the context of the meeting. Then the President would challenge the opinions in the room and demand data, all on camera.
The government would fund private competition to build a website that would allow the best arguments on any issue to bubble to the top, for both pro and con. As communicator-in-chief, the president would refer to the two "best" arguments whenever explaining policy to the public.
A president's opinion should change when the data changes. Don't expect consistency.
States should be test beds for social and economic experiments. When something works at the state level the President would act as communicator-in-chief to persuade other states to adopting methods that are proven to work.
For social issues, the GoPro candidate agrees to side with the majority opinion for lawmaking purposes while reserving the right to try and sway the majority with new data or better arguments. That takes social issues off the President's desk and puts them in the public's hands where they belong. If a new social policy succeeds at a state level, the President would encourage others to look at it.
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You might say there are obvious problems with government transparency because sometimes politicians really do need to make deals behind closed doors to get things done, or to save face for some partner country, or to "manage" the voters that are frankly not smart enough to understand the big issues. That was the old thinking, and it probably made sense in the past. But in today's world, government transparency might be the smarter approach.
The powerful idea here is that government secrecy is always a red flag that the government is doing something wrong. Remove the secrecy and the only remaining options are ideas that require effective selling to the public. And the best seller in the world would be the communicator-in-chief. The President would show his thinking process, show his data sources, show the counter-arguments, compare options, and present a reasoned opinion on every issue.
Sometimes the media, pundits, and other experts will make a strong counter-argument to the President's position. In those situations the Transparency president is free to change her opinions. In fact, doing so would bolster her credibility, so long as the reasoning is clearly explained to the public.
In the comments I expect to see lots of examples of things that would not work in a fully-transparent government. But watch how each of the reasons is debunked by your fellow commenters. It takes some effort to think through the reasoning of how transparency is a cure-all for government inefficiency, but I think you will be surprised how robust the idea is.
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Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
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