Scott Adams's Blog, page 333
February 20, 2013
Follow your Passion?
You often hear advice from successful people that you should "Follow your passion." That sounds about right. Passion will presumably give you high energy, high resistance to rejection and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. Those are all good things, right?
Here's the counterargument: When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank in San Francisco, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don't want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He's in business for the wrong reason.
My boss at the time, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry cleaning store, or invest in a fast food franchise - boring stuff. That's the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job.
So who's right? Is passion a useful tool for success, or is it just something that makes you irrational?
My hypothesis is that passionate people are more likely to take big risks in the pursuit of unlikely goals, and so you would expect to see more failures and more huge successes among the passionate. Passionate people who fail don't get a chance to offer their advice to the rest of us. But successful passionate people are writing books and answering interview questions about their secrets for success every day. Naturally those successful people want you to believe that success is a product of their awesomeness, but they also want to retain some humility. One can't be humble and say, "I succeeded because I am far smarter than the average person." But you can say your passion was a key to your success, because everyone can be passionate about something or other, right? Passion sounds more accessible. If you're dumb, there's not much you can do about it, but passion is something we think anyone can generate in the right circumstances. Passion feels very democratic. It is the people's talent, available to all.
It's also mostly bullshit.
Consider two entrepreneurs. Everything else being equal, one is passionate and possesses average talent, while the other is exceedingly brilliant, full of energy, and highly determined to succeed. Which one do you bet on?
It's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn't work out - and that would be most of them - slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. As a result, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, the passion evolved at the same rate as the success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
Passion can also be a simple marker for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at while not enjoying things we suck at. We're also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. I was passionate about tennis the first day I picked up a racket, and I've played all my life, but I also knew it was the type of thing I could be good at, unlike basketball or football. So sometimes passion is simply a byproduct of knowing you will be good at something.
I hate selling, but I know it's because I'm bad at it. If I were a sensational sales person, or had potential to be one, I'd probably feel passionate about sales. And people who observed my success would assume my passion was causing my success as opposed to being a mere indicator of talent.
If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he'd say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk.
Here's the counterargument: When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank in San Francisco, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don't want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He's in business for the wrong reason.
My boss at the time, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry cleaning store, or invest in a fast food franchise - boring stuff. That's the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job.
So who's right? Is passion a useful tool for success, or is it just something that makes you irrational?
My hypothesis is that passionate people are more likely to take big risks in the pursuit of unlikely goals, and so you would expect to see more failures and more huge successes among the passionate. Passionate people who fail don't get a chance to offer their advice to the rest of us. But successful passionate people are writing books and answering interview questions about their secrets for success every day. Naturally those successful people want you to believe that success is a product of their awesomeness, but they also want to retain some humility. One can't be humble and say, "I succeeded because I am far smarter than the average person." But you can say your passion was a key to your success, because everyone can be passionate about something or other, right? Passion sounds more accessible. If you're dumb, there's not much you can do about it, but passion is something we think anyone can generate in the right circumstances. Passion feels very democratic. It is the people's talent, available to all.
It's also mostly bullshit.
Consider two entrepreneurs. Everything else being equal, one is passionate and possesses average talent, while the other is exceedingly brilliant, full of energy, and highly determined to succeed. Which one do you bet on?
It's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn't work out - and that would be most of them - slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. As a result, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, the passion evolved at the same rate as the success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
Passion can also be a simple marker for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at while not enjoying things we suck at. We're also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. I was passionate about tennis the first day I picked up a racket, and I've played all my life, but I also knew it was the type of thing I could be good at, unlike basketball or football. So sometimes passion is simply a byproduct of knowing you will be good at something.
I hate selling, but I know it's because I'm bad at it. If I were a sensational sales person, or had potential to be one, I'd probably feel passionate about sales. And people who observed my success would assume my passion was causing my success as opposed to being a mere indicator of talent.
If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he'd say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk.
February 17, 2013
Best Video Game Ever
It's an old idea, combining exercise equipment with video games. But no one has nailed the design yet. I'll try to do that today.
For starters, let's assume the videogame/exercise hybrid device exists in a professional gym designed for just this reason. That allows us to design something more expensive and more space-hogging than you might want at home.
Imagine that your exercise equipment is in a three-walled bay, open to the back, with the front and sides featuring large video screens that are synchronized. When you are faced forward, you are immersed in this artificial video world as if you were in a car driving forward.
Now let's talk about the exercise equipment before we design the actual game play. I imagine a variety of pulleys, bars, and pedals that satisfy most of a person's cardio and weight training needs. The hard part is organizing those physical assets to match game play in a way that makes sense. So let's jump to the game itself so you can better understand how to organize the exercise "cage."
The game is called Morph Herder of LowGrav 9. The game player is one of many people in the far future who work as morph herders on low gravity planets. Morphs are vaguely cow-shaped creatures that were genetically engineered to produce valuable pharmaceuticals in their milk. The morph herders fly ultra-light planes over the planet by pedal power alone, which works great because of the low gravity. Your job is to fly low over the alien terrain until you find a morph and tag it while it tries to escape. The tagging allows the mother ship, from which you just descended with your ultra-light, to lock onto the morph with a tractor beam, bring it up to the ship and milk it, then release it unharmed. No morphs die in this game. When you tag them with your tagger gun, they instantly freeze and zip up to your mother ship in a beam of light.
The gym's exercise device would mimic the controls of the ultra-light. You're fighting the wind, so simply turning left requires some muscle to adjust the wings. And you are pedaling from a reclined or standing position whenever you need to pick up speed or altitude. Your glide distance is very long on this low gravity planet, so you need not pedal continuously.
Your arms would need to work hard to navigate your ultra-light, pulling and pushing on the physical control bars in your exercise cage. It also takes some energy to aim the tagging gun because of the wind friction. I can imagine having actual fans in your exercise cage that simulate your movement through the air. And perhaps your entire exercise cage leans left, right, back, and forth to match the motion you are picking.
The idea is to have a full set of arm, chest, abs, and shoulder exercises while in a reclining seat that has bike-like pedals. The resistance would be the equivalent of perhaps 5-10 pound weights, but the catch is that you'll be moving and lifting and pulling for a solid hour. Kids might use less resistance, big people would use more.
I imagine the game being multi-player, so you can see the ultra-lights of the other gym users at the same time on your screen. You'd plug in your headphones to talk with them as if by radio, and either coordinate or compete for "Morph Herder of the Week" honors.
But here's the interesting part of this idea. I have a hypothesis that the body will more readily build muscle for what the brain perceives as necessary. I'll defend that idea in a moment, but first allow me to point out that a movie will stimulate a human's mind in the same way as reality. In other words, a sad movie makes you cry, a scary movie makes you afraid, and so on. You can be fully aware that the movie is fiction while still experiencing it as if your body thought it was real. The videogame I'm describing would have the same impact. You would be aware that it was an artificial story yet your body would likely respond with adrenaline and whatever else happens when you feel competitive.
I have no evidence for my hypothesis that your body builds muscles faster for tasks it feels are necessary for survival. But let me explain my thinking.
We know that people who win competitions experience spikes in testosterone, and that testosterone helps you build muscle faster. And you know that listening to your iPad makes it easier to exercise because it gets you all pumped up. Your brain is continually adjusting your body chemistry to fit the situation. My hypothesis is that the brain distinguishes between important tasks, such as survival (including fictional survival situations), versus unimportant tasks such as yoga. Morph herding is designed to mimic the primal urge for hunting. It is also designed to feel like a job that satisfies our need to complete physical tasks. And because one wrong move in an ultra-light means death, the simple act of steering your vehicle will seem important to your brain. Put all of that together and my hypothesis is that your brain would produce an ideal mixture of chemistry in your body to keep you exercising longer and harder, and to build muscles faster.
At the very least, the videogame distraction might make the time go faster and seem more interesting. But I think the potential might be far more. I think if the set-up stimulated just the right chemistry in your body you would get faster results than you would in a treadmill in the corner of your bedroom. With the treadmill, your brain has no reason to juice up your body chemistry so you can perform better in this trivial and boring task.
I described one type of videogame, but I could imagine lots of variations that use different combinations of the exercise cage. One might involve nothing but pedaling your bike through virtual streets in Paris or other exotic places, following a path of your choice.
I'll be the first one to say the business model I just described probably doesn't work. It would be nearly impossible to sell enough gym memberships to make back the investment of the game design and building out the facilities. But I'm curious whether manipulating body chemistry in just the right way, by controlling external stimulation, produces faster muscle growth. I think it would. It seems to me that evolution would have given us the tools to quickly "tune" our bodies - at least in terms of specific muscle growth rates - for the challenges of survival in any given environment.
What do you think?
For starters, let's assume the videogame/exercise hybrid device exists in a professional gym designed for just this reason. That allows us to design something more expensive and more space-hogging than you might want at home.
Imagine that your exercise equipment is in a three-walled bay, open to the back, with the front and sides featuring large video screens that are synchronized. When you are faced forward, you are immersed in this artificial video world as if you were in a car driving forward.
Now let's talk about the exercise equipment before we design the actual game play. I imagine a variety of pulleys, bars, and pedals that satisfy most of a person's cardio and weight training needs. The hard part is organizing those physical assets to match game play in a way that makes sense. So let's jump to the game itself so you can better understand how to organize the exercise "cage."
The game is called Morph Herder of LowGrav 9. The game player is one of many people in the far future who work as morph herders on low gravity planets. Morphs are vaguely cow-shaped creatures that were genetically engineered to produce valuable pharmaceuticals in their milk. The morph herders fly ultra-light planes over the planet by pedal power alone, which works great because of the low gravity. Your job is to fly low over the alien terrain until you find a morph and tag it while it tries to escape. The tagging allows the mother ship, from which you just descended with your ultra-light, to lock onto the morph with a tractor beam, bring it up to the ship and milk it, then release it unharmed. No morphs die in this game. When you tag them with your tagger gun, they instantly freeze and zip up to your mother ship in a beam of light.
The gym's exercise device would mimic the controls of the ultra-light. You're fighting the wind, so simply turning left requires some muscle to adjust the wings. And you are pedaling from a reclined or standing position whenever you need to pick up speed or altitude. Your glide distance is very long on this low gravity planet, so you need not pedal continuously.
Your arms would need to work hard to navigate your ultra-light, pulling and pushing on the physical control bars in your exercise cage. It also takes some energy to aim the tagging gun because of the wind friction. I can imagine having actual fans in your exercise cage that simulate your movement through the air. And perhaps your entire exercise cage leans left, right, back, and forth to match the motion you are picking.
The idea is to have a full set of arm, chest, abs, and shoulder exercises while in a reclining seat that has bike-like pedals. The resistance would be the equivalent of perhaps 5-10 pound weights, but the catch is that you'll be moving and lifting and pulling for a solid hour. Kids might use less resistance, big people would use more.
I imagine the game being multi-player, so you can see the ultra-lights of the other gym users at the same time on your screen. You'd plug in your headphones to talk with them as if by radio, and either coordinate or compete for "Morph Herder of the Week" honors.
But here's the interesting part of this idea. I have a hypothesis that the body will more readily build muscle for what the brain perceives as necessary. I'll defend that idea in a moment, but first allow me to point out that a movie will stimulate a human's mind in the same way as reality. In other words, a sad movie makes you cry, a scary movie makes you afraid, and so on. You can be fully aware that the movie is fiction while still experiencing it as if your body thought it was real. The videogame I'm describing would have the same impact. You would be aware that it was an artificial story yet your body would likely respond with adrenaline and whatever else happens when you feel competitive.
I have no evidence for my hypothesis that your body builds muscles faster for tasks it feels are necessary for survival. But let me explain my thinking.
We know that people who win competitions experience spikes in testosterone, and that testosterone helps you build muscle faster. And you know that listening to your iPad makes it easier to exercise because it gets you all pumped up. Your brain is continually adjusting your body chemistry to fit the situation. My hypothesis is that the brain distinguishes between important tasks, such as survival (including fictional survival situations), versus unimportant tasks such as yoga. Morph herding is designed to mimic the primal urge for hunting. It is also designed to feel like a job that satisfies our need to complete physical tasks. And because one wrong move in an ultra-light means death, the simple act of steering your vehicle will seem important to your brain. Put all of that together and my hypothesis is that your brain would produce an ideal mixture of chemistry in your body to keep you exercising longer and harder, and to build muscles faster.
At the very least, the videogame distraction might make the time go faster and seem more interesting. But I think the potential might be far more. I think if the set-up stimulated just the right chemistry in your body you would get faster results than you would in a treadmill in the corner of your bedroom. With the treadmill, your brain has no reason to juice up your body chemistry so you can perform better in this trivial and boring task.
I described one type of videogame, but I could imagine lots of variations that use different combinations of the exercise cage. One might involve nothing but pedaling your bike through virtual streets in Paris or other exotic places, following a path of your choice.
I'll be the first one to say the business model I just described probably doesn't work. It would be nearly impossible to sell enough gym memberships to make back the investment of the game design and building out the facilities. But I'm curious whether manipulating body chemistry in just the right way, by controlling external stimulation, produces faster muscle growth. I think it would. It seems to me that evolution would have given us the tools to quickly "tune" our bodies - at least in terms of specific muscle growth rates - for the challenges of survival in any given environment.
What do you think?
February 13, 2013
I Want My Cheese
My city recently passed a law making it illegal for stores to provide plastic bags for free at the checkout stand. Now we have the option of paying ten cents for a paper bag or bringing our own. If one looks at this new law in isolation, it seems reasonable enough. People will adjust to the change and the environment will be better for it.
That's how it looks if you view the bag law in isolation. But allow me to put it in context and explain how I feel when I go to my local grocery store, Safeway.
When I walk into the store, and realize I didn't bring my reusable bags, I feel like an absent-minded moron. This is how I usually feel during the day, so it's no big deal.
Then I start looking for cheese, only to discover that some genius in Safeway's marketing department thinks that cheese should be spread out over about seven different locations throughout the store. You have your cottage cheese here, your artisanal cheeses there, your shredded cheeses somewhere else, and so on. There is no logical order to any of it. Five minutes into my shopping, I am filled with rage and I feel manipulated. I assume someone at Safeway decided that inconveniencing me would somehow make me buy more shit because I end up walking down every frickin' aisle in the store looking for my cheese. It's not the inconvenience that bugs me so much as the feeling of manipulation.
When I'm ready to pay, I see long lines at the human checkout stands and short lines at the self-checkout. I know from experience that using the self-checkout, which was designed by a crack team of practical jokers, sadists, and monkeys that have been abused by their trainers, will bring me to frustration. I know I will inadvertently move my bag before the system believes I should and it will proclaim to all nearby shoppers that I might be a shoplifter. I will feel humiliated, incompetent, stupid, and shamed.
So I skip the self-checkout and look for the shortest line with a human checker. The 15 Items or Less line looks good, but I'm never confident in how they do that calculation. Is a six-pack one item or two? What about two identical items for which only one needs to be scanned and the cashier can hit the "times two" button? Will the people behind me think I cheated? Will the cashier give me an angry look and call the manager? What exactly is the process for dealing with express line cheats?
I can't stand the ambiguity so I head for the regular checkout stand and its longer line. When it's my turn to pay I am faced with the choice of proving I have a loyalty card or paying a penalty if I can't. I don't carry loyalty cards with me because I would need a wheelbarrow for all of them. Instead, I rely on using one of our phone numbers at the checkout. But which one? The people behind me glare at me and my time-wasting hesitation, or at least it feels that way. I know some of those folks were just looking for cheese so they can't be happy.
Is the loyalty card registered under the landline number for our house? Or might it be the phone number we had at our old home when we first got the card? Is it under my wife's cell phone number or do I have my own Safeway loyalty card? I can't remember. I peck at the point-of-sale terminal until one of those numbers works.
Now I have to decide on debit versus credit. I choose credit because of the airline miles associated with the card, which is another cesspool of complexity. I get mad just thinking about my airline miles.
Now the point-of-sale terminal asks if I want to donate a dollar to some worthwhile charity. I approve of the charity, but it pisses me off that they ask me in this particular situation. It's manipulative. I JUST WANT MY DAMN CHEESE!!!!
The cashier informs me that my credit card is blocked. I must have recently purchased a few things that match the pattern of credit card thieves. I switch to my emergency backup credit card while the people behind me wonder if I am a credit card thief, a pauper, or an idiot who forgot to pay his bills. I feel belittled and frustrated and angry.
I am also aware that there was probably some sort of coupon or discount for the stuff I am trying to buy that I didn't know about. So I feel a little ripped off too.
Now I have to figure out the bag situation. I have too many items to hand-carry because my search for cheese caused me to buy several items I didn't even know I needed. It only got worse as I got hungrier and hungrier over the course of my cheese safari. Damn you, Safeway marketing department! Damn you!
The cashier asks, as law requires, whether I want to pay ten cents for a paper bag. I would happily pay the ten cents if the cost were baked into the total price, but something about being asked in front of witnesses makes it feel wrong. And I know that if I do buy the bag I will be destroying the planet for future generations. I will feel guilty buying it, guilty loading it into my car, and guilty recycling it later. I decide to buy a reusable bag that is offered at the checkout. At this point, for reasons I still don't understand, the cashier gives me a death stare and moves in slow motion toward the reusable bags, as if to signal to me that I have done something wrong, but I'm not sure what.
Then the cashier asks if I need help to my car with my half-a-bag of groceries. I know her company requires her to ask, but it calls into question my manhood. I feel insulted because I know I can lift as much as five pounds and carry it across an entire parking lot without stopping more than twice. I try to ignore the insult. . . until the bagger asks the same question.
By the time I reach my car I feel frustrated, angry, guilty, stupid, incompetent, belittled, weak, humiliated, ripped off, and inconvenienced. The feeling lasts until I get home and my wife says, "That's the wrong cheese." That feeling pretty much replaces all the other ones.
My point is that the new bag law in California is entirely reasonable when viewed in isolation. Likewise, loyalty cards, self-checkout, and all the other annoyances make complete sense when viewed in isolation. But we don't live in a world in which anything can exist in isolation. Safeway and my city government have made the simple act of food shopping so complicated that I'd rather scrounge in the dumpster behind the store than endure the pain of shopping inside the store.
This is an interesting issue because every business decision that causes inconvenience for customers is viewed in isolation. When you take that perspective, eventually the entire process becomes so complicated it is barely competitive with dumpster diving.
What we need is some sort of system in which any proposed complication is viewed as more bothersome than earlier complications. The first complication usually doesn't cause much problem. The tenth complication - no matter how well-meaning - destroys the system.
But here's my big gripe. Yes, I saved the best for last. You see, brains are like muscles in the sense that they have a limited capacity during any given day. If you lift too many heavy objects, your muscles will fail. Likewise, if you use up all of your brain cycles on nonsense, you have nothing left for the important things in life, such as making Dilbert comics and writing blog posts.
Seriously though, I think society is blind to the hidden cost of complexity in daily life. The ever-worsening complexity isn't simply annoying; it is hijacking your brain. Every minute you spend trying to find cheese, and trying to pay for it without getting arrested, is time you aren't thinking about solutions to real problems.
If this seems like no big deal, you might be wrong. Consider that everything good about modern civilization was invented by people who really needed to focus to get the job done. What happens to a world-class engineer or entrepreneur when he or she has to syphon off more brain energy to satisfying Safeway's marketing strategy instead of designing new products? Now multiply that times a hundred because every retailer, website, and business is trying to complicate your life too.
Complexity sneaks up on you because every individual decision - such as the bag laws in my city - make sense when viewed in isolation. But if that trend continues, complexity will be a huge drag on civilization.
Does complexity have a cure?
That's how it looks if you view the bag law in isolation. But allow me to put it in context and explain how I feel when I go to my local grocery store, Safeway.
When I walk into the store, and realize I didn't bring my reusable bags, I feel like an absent-minded moron. This is how I usually feel during the day, so it's no big deal.
Then I start looking for cheese, only to discover that some genius in Safeway's marketing department thinks that cheese should be spread out over about seven different locations throughout the store. You have your cottage cheese here, your artisanal cheeses there, your shredded cheeses somewhere else, and so on. There is no logical order to any of it. Five minutes into my shopping, I am filled with rage and I feel manipulated. I assume someone at Safeway decided that inconveniencing me would somehow make me buy more shit because I end up walking down every frickin' aisle in the store looking for my cheese. It's not the inconvenience that bugs me so much as the feeling of manipulation.
When I'm ready to pay, I see long lines at the human checkout stands and short lines at the self-checkout. I know from experience that using the self-checkout, which was designed by a crack team of practical jokers, sadists, and monkeys that have been abused by their trainers, will bring me to frustration. I know I will inadvertently move my bag before the system believes I should and it will proclaim to all nearby shoppers that I might be a shoplifter. I will feel humiliated, incompetent, stupid, and shamed.
So I skip the self-checkout and look for the shortest line with a human checker. The 15 Items or Less line looks good, but I'm never confident in how they do that calculation. Is a six-pack one item or two? What about two identical items for which only one needs to be scanned and the cashier can hit the "times two" button? Will the people behind me think I cheated? Will the cashier give me an angry look and call the manager? What exactly is the process for dealing with express line cheats?
I can't stand the ambiguity so I head for the regular checkout stand and its longer line. When it's my turn to pay I am faced with the choice of proving I have a loyalty card or paying a penalty if I can't. I don't carry loyalty cards with me because I would need a wheelbarrow for all of them. Instead, I rely on using one of our phone numbers at the checkout. But which one? The people behind me glare at me and my time-wasting hesitation, or at least it feels that way. I know some of those folks were just looking for cheese so they can't be happy.
Is the loyalty card registered under the landline number for our house? Or might it be the phone number we had at our old home when we first got the card? Is it under my wife's cell phone number or do I have my own Safeway loyalty card? I can't remember. I peck at the point-of-sale terminal until one of those numbers works.
Now I have to decide on debit versus credit. I choose credit because of the airline miles associated with the card, which is another cesspool of complexity. I get mad just thinking about my airline miles.
Now the point-of-sale terminal asks if I want to donate a dollar to some worthwhile charity. I approve of the charity, but it pisses me off that they ask me in this particular situation. It's manipulative. I JUST WANT MY DAMN CHEESE!!!!
The cashier informs me that my credit card is blocked. I must have recently purchased a few things that match the pattern of credit card thieves. I switch to my emergency backup credit card while the people behind me wonder if I am a credit card thief, a pauper, or an idiot who forgot to pay his bills. I feel belittled and frustrated and angry.
I am also aware that there was probably some sort of coupon or discount for the stuff I am trying to buy that I didn't know about. So I feel a little ripped off too.
Now I have to figure out the bag situation. I have too many items to hand-carry because my search for cheese caused me to buy several items I didn't even know I needed. It only got worse as I got hungrier and hungrier over the course of my cheese safari. Damn you, Safeway marketing department! Damn you!
The cashier asks, as law requires, whether I want to pay ten cents for a paper bag. I would happily pay the ten cents if the cost were baked into the total price, but something about being asked in front of witnesses makes it feel wrong. And I know that if I do buy the bag I will be destroying the planet for future generations. I will feel guilty buying it, guilty loading it into my car, and guilty recycling it later. I decide to buy a reusable bag that is offered at the checkout. At this point, for reasons I still don't understand, the cashier gives me a death stare and moves in slow motion toward the reusable bags, as if to signal to me that I have done something wrong, but I'm not sure what.
Then the cashier asks if I need help to my car with my half-a-bag of groceries. I know her company requires her to ask, but it calls into question my manhood. I feel insulted because I know I can lift as much as five pounds and carry it across an entire parking lot without stopping more than twice. I try to ignore the insult. . . until the bagger asks the same question.
By the time I reach my car I feel frustrated, angry, guilty, stupid, incompetent, belittled, weak, humiliated, ripped off, and inconvenienced. The feeling lasts until I get home and my wife says, "That's the wrong cheese." That feeling pretty much replaces all the other ones.
My point is that the new bag law in California is entirely reasonable when viewed in isolation. Likewise, loyalty cards, self-checkout, and all the other annoyances make complete sense when viewed in isolation. But we don't live in a world in which anything can exist in isolation. Safeway and my city government have made the simple act of food shopping so complicated that I'd rather scrounge in the dumpster behind the store than endure the pain of shopping inside the store.
This is an interesting issue because every business decision that causes inconvenience for customers is viewed in isolation. When you take that perspective, eventually the entire process becomes so complicated it is barely competitive with dumpster diving.
What we need is some sort of system in which any proposed complication is viewed as more bothersome than earlier complications. The first complication usually doesn't cause much problem. The tenth complication - no matter how well-meaning - destroys the system.
But here's my big gripe. Yes, I saved the best for last. You see, brains are like muscles in the sense that they have a limited capacity during any given day. If you lift too many heavy objects, your muscles will fail. Likewise, if you use up all of your brain cycles on nonsense, you have nothing left for the important things in life, such as making Dilbert comics and writing blog posts.
Seriously though, I think society is blind to the hidden cost of complexity in daily life. The ever-worsening complexity isn't simply annoying; it is hijacking your brain. Every minute you spend trying to find cheese, and trying to pay for it without getting arrested, is time you aren't thinking about solutions to real problems.
If this seems like no big deal, you might be wrong. Consider that everything good about modern civilization was invented by people who really needed to focus to get the job done. What happens to a world-class engineer or entrepreneur when he or she has to syphon off more brain energy to satisfying Safeway's marketing strategy instead of designing new products? Now multiply that times a hundred because every retailer, website, and business is trying to complicate your life too.
Complexity sneaks up on you because every individual decision - such as the bag laws in my city - make sense when viewed in isolation. But if that trend continues, complexity will be a huge drag on civilization.
Does complexity have a cure?
February 12, 2013
What Makes Cartoonists Laugh
Early in my career I learned that whatever brain defect makes a person become a cartoonist is the same defect that prevents that cartoonist from having the same sense of humor as the general public. In other words, if I make a comic that I personally feel is hilarious, the public will be disappointed in it. They might even hate that comic. I've discovered that the most successful cartoonists have learned to write for the readers and not their own sensibilities. Normally I try to do that too.
The problem is that no jail can hold art. Sometimes I simply . . . have . . . to . . . create comics that I love and you don't. That happens about five percent of the time. And those comics probably appeal to no more than five percent of the public - the people who have similar brain defects.
The Dilbert comic for 2/13/13 is a perfect example. You can see from the online comments that the public isn't impressed. Personally, I find this sort of humor hilarious.
I'm generally attracted to humor that involves wrongness, rule breaking, or inappropriate behavior. The adult comic-reading public is mostly interested in humor that has the "That happens to me too!" element. To put it another way that is less flattering to me, I enjoy the same sort of humor that children do. All I've done is transition from fart jokes to indirect references to erections. It's the adult version of childish humor. I'm not proud of it.
I felt an explanation of this phenomenon was necessary because people act puzzled when one of my comics seems to miss the mark by a mile. One would think that after all of my practice even my misses would be near-hits. The reason for the bad misses on some days is that I can't help myself. Sometimes the comic is just for me and the few freaks that never lost their childish sense of humor.
For what it's worth, I consider it a failure of professional discipline on my part. But I can't promise it will improve.
The problem is that no jail can hold art. Sometimes I simply . . . have . . . to . . . create comics that I love and you don't. That happens about five percent of the time. And those comics probably appeal to no more than five percent of the public - the people who have similar brain defects.
The Dilbert comic for 2/13/13 is a perfect example. You can see from the online comments that the public isn't impressed. Personally, I find this sort of humor hilarious.
I'm generally attracted to humor that involves wrongness, rule breaking, or inappropriate behavior. The adult comic-reading public is mostly interested in humor that has the "That happens to me too!" element. To put it another way that is less flattering to me, I enjoy the same sort of humor that children do. All I've done is transition from fart jokes to indirect references to erections. It's the adult version of childish humor. I'm not proud of it.
I felt an explanation of this phenomenon was necessary because people act puzzled when one of my comics seems to miss the mark by a mile. One would think that after all of my practice even my misses would be near-hits. The reason for the bad misses on some days is that I can't help myself. Sometimes the comic is just for me and the few freaks that never lost their childish sense of humor.
For what it's worth, I consider it a failure of professional discipline on my part. But I can't promise it will improve.
February 11, 2013
A Guy Named Bill Agrees with Me
I know, I blog too often on the topic of robots in our future. I only do it because, seriously, dude, the future is totally robots. And that future will come at us hard. Our robot future is like an earthquake in the ocean that has already created the conditions for our tsunami. Now we're just waiting.
Anyway, it feels good to know that Bill Gates agrees: Robots are the next big thing.
Some say robots will take 75% of all jobs. But that is only a problem if the average person who has a job is unable to purchase his own robot when the time comes and lease its services to a corporation, or put it to work directly. The robot will work around the clock and send its "paycheck" to your bank account. In effect, humans will become investors while robots become labor.
The people who can't afford to have an ownership interest in a robot might have problems. But that assumes our social safety nets stay at pre-robot levels. That seems unlikely. If corporations experience tenfold increases in productivity because of robots, and equally impressive increases in profits, one can imagine that for every human taxpayer there might someday be fifty humans living off the government. In our current pre-robot economy, that math doesn't work. But once productivity shoots to the moon, thanks to our robot economy, every part of society will change. Today a human might resent paying taxes to support another jobless, able-bodied human. In the future, people who have actual jobs might be a rarity. And one business-owner with a fleet of robots might earn so much money that supporting a million unemployed people doesn't feel like a burden. I can imagine business taxes approaching 95% and no one complaining because the remaining 5% is more than Exxon's total earnings today.
The robot future is fundamentally unpredictable. But a good start is assuming all straight-line predictions are incorrect. The prediction of massive unemployment assumes nothing much changes except that a robot applies for your job, figuratively speaking. On day one that might be true. Ten years later, every human social structure will be totally transformed.
If you hate big government, robots are the solution. Someday technology will make just about every current function of government irrelevant, and the size and scope of government will shrink as a result. For example, when robots start doing all of the medical research, the speed of discoveries will increase a hundredfold. Robots will simply try every idea until someday there is a cheap pill that keeps your body young and healthy. The government will get out of the healthcare field when the cost of medical services becomes trivial, and I think robots will get us there. Your family robot will be more qualified than any human doctor. He'll also do the cooking and shopping so you eat healthy. And once you are free of the need for a job you might have time to exercise.
Eventually schools will disappear because education will seem pointless to the folks who expect to be unemployed for life. I'm not sure humans in the future will have any need to read or do basic math. Those functions will be built into our bodies, cyborg-style, or handled by our environment.
Long term, robots will discover some sort of feel-good drug to keep the human population entertained and out of the way. Someday, when aliens visit Earth, the aliens will discover that we are the crack house of the universe. They will laugh and laugh until our robots slaughter them, find the coordinates of their home planet from their ship computer and conquer it for resources.
A lot of things will change in our robot future, but we'll still be a bad-ass planet.
Anyway, it feels good to know that Bill Gates agrees: Robots are the next big thing.
Some say robots will take 75% of all jobs. But that is only a problem if the average person who has a job is unable to purchase his own robot when the time comes and lease its services to a corporation, or put it to work directly. The robot will work around the clock and send its "paycheck" to your bank account. In effect, humans will become investors while robots become labor.
The people who can't afford to have an ownership interest in a robot might have problems. But that assumes our social safety nets stay at pre-robot levels. That seems unlikely. If corporations experience tenfold increases in productivity because of robots, and equally impressive increases in profits, one can imagine that for every human taxpayer there might someday be fifty humans living off the government. In our current pre-robot economy, that math doesn't work. But once productivity shoots to the moon, thanks to our robot economy, every part of society will change. Today a human might resent paying taxes to support another jobless, able-bodied human. In the future, people who have actual jobs might be a rarity. And one business-owner with a fleet of robots might earn so much money that supporting a million unemployed people doesn't feel like a burden. I can imagine business taxes approaching 95% and no one complaining because the remaining 5% is more than Exxon's total earnings today.
The robot future is fundamentally unpredictable. But a good start is assuming all straight-line predictions are incorrect. The prediction of massive unemployment assumes nothing much changes except that a robot applies for your job, figuratively speaking. On day one that might be true. Ten years later, every human social structure will be totally transformed.
If you hate big government, robots are the solution. Someday technology will make just about every current function of government irrelevant, and the size and scope of government will shrink as a result. For example, when robots start doing all of the medical research, the speed of discoveries will increase a hundredfold. Robots will simply try every idea until someday there is a cheap pill that keeps your body young and healthy. The government will get out of the healthcare field when the cost of medical services becomes trivial, and I think robots will get us there. Your family robot will be more qualified than any human doctor. He'll also do the cooking and shopping so you eat healthy. And once you are free of the need for a job you might have time to exercise.
Eventually schools will disappear because education will seem pointless to the folks who expect to be unemployed for life. I'm not sure humans in the future will have any need to read or do basic math. Those functions will be built into our bodies, cyborg-style, or handled by our environment.
Long term, robots will discover some sort of feel-good drug to keep the human population entertained and out of the way. Someday, when aliens visit Earth, the aliens will discover that we are the crack house of the universe. They will laugh and laugh until our robots slaughter them, find the coordinates of their home planet from their ship computer and conquer it for resources.
A lot of things will change in our robot future, but we'll still be a bad-ass planet.
February 10, 2013
Death by Food
Years ago I designed a video game that featured Dilbert trying to catch various food types - from pork chops to ice cream cones - in his mouth as those foods fell from the sky. The object of the game was to maneuver Dilbert away from the unhealthy foods that would kill him and toward the healthy choices that gave him immortality. The game was a promotional gimmick for my ill-fated Dilberito product - a burrito with all of the vitamins and minerals you need for the day. I was hoping parents and schools would use the free video game to get young kids interested in nutrition. I paid a company to build the game in Flash, and it came out well. But it didn't become viral as I hoped. I'd provide a link to the game but even I can't find it now.
Time passes. Now I have an improved vision of this game but no incentive to build it myself. So instead I will set the idea free and hope someone else does.
The improved version of the game is a first-person shooter in which you use various food types to smite bad guys who have different food allergies and preferences. When you fling food at an enemy, it automatically goes down that person's throat and causes a comical and instant reaction. Fire a jug of milk at an enemy that is lactose intolerant and the target instantly bloats and craps his brains out. Fire a steak at a vegetarian and the victim will writhe and puke. Fire multiple cupcakes at a skinny guy and he instantly fattens up and dies of a stroke. Fire wheat bread at an enemy with gluten issues. . . and so on. I think you'd find a dozen or so foods that make good weapons. I would steer clear of peanuts though, because peanut allergies aren't funny.
The challenge of the game is in quickly picking the right food to thwart any particular enemy. The enemies would need to have some sort of identifiers for their weaknesses. And perhaps you, as the shooter, need to replenish your food supplies by breaking into homes and raiding refrigerators.
Let's say that you as the shooter also need to keep your energy and health intact by eating the best diet possible. So sometimes you have to choose between eating the ammo (the food you found), or firing it. Your goal is to achieve just the right calorie count for yourself while getting a balanced diet and the right mix of vitamins and minerals. If you eat poorly, you eventually get fat and die. But even in the short run a bad diet will make you slower and less fit.
I'm attracted to this idea because it's a good way to teach kids about the power of proper nutrition and the dangers of food allergies. And if you make the targets' reactions to being hit somewhat comical, in an inappropriate way - such as instantly crapping out his body weight and collapsing face-down in the pile - kids would want to play it all day long. The game needs just enough wrongness to trick kids into learning something.
My hypothesis is that a kid who spends hundreds of hours playing a game about nutrition will develop a good sense for how much food he can eat every day without getting fat, and which foods are necessary for a balanced diet. That feels important.
Time passes. Now I have an improved vision of this game but no incentive to build it myself. So instead I will set the idea free and hope someone else does.
The improved version of the game is a first-person shooter in which you use various food types to smite bad guys who have different food allergies and preferences. When you fling food at an enemy, it automatically goes down that person's throat and causes a comical and instant reaction. Fire a jug of milk at an enemy that is lactose intolerant and the target instantly bloats and craps his brains out. Fire a steak at a vegetarian and the victim will writhe and puke. Fire multiple cupcakes at a skinny guy and he instantly fattens up and dies of a stroke. Fire wheat bread at an enemy with gluten issues. . . and so on. I think you'd find a dozen or so foods that make good weapons. I would steer clear of peanuts though, because peanut allergies aren't funny.
The challenge of the game is in quickly picking the right food to thwart any particular enemy. The enemies would need to have some sort of identifiers for their weaknesses. And perhaps you, as the shooter, need to replenish your food supplies by breaking into homes and raiding refrigerators.
Let's say that you as the shooter also need to keep your energy and health intact by eating the best diet possible. So sometimes you have to choose between eating the ammo (the food you found), or firing it. Your goal is to achieve just the right calorie count for yourself while getting a balanced diet and the right mix of vitamins and minerals. If you eat poorly, you eventually get fat and die. But even in the short run a bad diet will make you slower and less fit.
I'm attracted to this idea because it's a good way to teach kids about the power of proper nutrition and the dangers of food allergies. And if you make the targets' reactions to being hit somewhat comical, in an inappropriate way - such as instantly crapping out his body weight and collapsing face-down in the pile - kids would want to play it all day long. The game needs just enough wrongness to trick kids into learning something.
My hypothesis is that a kid who spends hundreds of hours playing a game about nutrition will develop a good sense for how much food he can eat every day without getting fat, and which foods are necessary for a balanced diet. That feels important.
February 7, 2013
The Music Tunes You
One of the reasons I don't listen to music throughout the day is that music changes my mood. Music is designed to manipulate your body chemistry and your mind. The songs that manipulate your emotions most effectively rise to the top and become hits. I don't want music manipulating me in ways I haven't planned.
The one situation in which I intentionally listen to music is when I exercise. That works great because I load my iPod with only the songs that energize me. The music puts my body immediately into exercise mode. I'm like Pavlov's dog when I get to the gym; I'm not in the mood to exercise until I put in my headphones and hit play. Three notes later I'm totally in the mood.
The thing I try to avoid throughout the day is listening to random music that jerks my mood around until it doesn't fit with whatever task is at hand. I don't want to get pumped up before I try to sleep. I don't want to hear a sad song before I try to work. I don't want a song stuck in my head when I'm trying to solve a problem, and so on. The problem is not the music but the mismatch between the music and my activities.
This made me wonder if life is full of non-music sounds and noises that could be organized to tune our bodies for whatever task is ahead. For example, I wonder if the sound of a deer walking over leaves would arouse our hunter-gatherer brains and make us more alert. I wonder if hearing sounds of the ocean would relax us. And what about sounds that make us curious, such as the sound of a key in a lock, or sounds that excite us, such as a Ferrari engine revving up? I'll bet we have sounds that stimulate almost every type of human emotion or attitude.
A recent study showed that it is easier to be creative in the midst of crowd noise such as you might hear at a coffee house. I discovered this phenomenon myself when I owned a restaurant. I wrote almost an entire book sitting in a booth every day in the middle of the lunchtime bustle. I couldn't figure out why it was so easy to write in a noisy atmosphere. It was counterintuitive, but it worked sensationally.
I wonder if a systematic study of common sounds and how they affect the brain could give us a tool to tune ourselves to any specific task. I'd have one set of sounds to keep me alert, another to improve my problem solving, and another to make me more creative. I might have sounds that make me happy, sounds that motivate, sounds that make me risk-averse or risk-tolerant, and sounds that literally make me stronger.
Music is just one way to tune your body. With the help of brain scans and systematic studies we can figure out how a wide variety of sights, sounds, smells, textures, and even concepts affect our minds. Armed with that knowledge, your conscious mind could orchestrate your surroundings to tune your body and emotions to fit any kind of task.
We do versions of this already, of course. When we are tense we know to go outside and enjoy some nature. When we are grumpy we know some junk food might help our mood. But how much more effective would we be if we had data telling us exactly which stimuli creates which reaction? I think the difference in effectiveness could be enormous.
The barriers I see to this future are twofold. For starters, it must be expensive to do studies involving brain scans.
The second barrier is the superstition of mind. Even the most rational among us believe we have something called a "mind" that is capable of something called "free will" which all feels a bit like magic. We have a sense that our minds can cook up thoughts and ideas on its own, without the benefit of external stimulation. The belief is that we can think ourselves into whatever frame of mind we need. We think we can use our "willpower" to overcome sadness, or focus on what is important, whatever. My view is the opposite. I believe our internal sensation of "mind" is nothing but the end result of external stimulation interacting with our DNA. By my view, we are moist robots and we have five senses that act as our operator interface. To me, it makes no sense to try and think my way to happiness when I can just take my dog for a walk and come back feeling great.
We'll be a lot happier when we stop believing in magic and start figuring out which types of stimulations create which reactions.
The one situation in which I intentionally listen to music is when I exercise. That works great because I load my iPod with only the songs that energize me. The music puts my body immediately into exercise mode. I'm like Pavlov's dog when I get to the gym; I'm not in the mood to exercise until I put in my headphones and hit play. Three notes later I'm totally in the mood.
The thing I try to avoid throughout the day is listening to random music that jerks my mood around until it doesn't fit with whatever task is at hand. I don't want to get pumped up before I try to sleep. I don't want to hear a sad song before I try to work. I don't want a song stuck in my head when I'm trying to solve a problem, and so on. The problem is not the music but the mismatch between the music and my activities.
This made me wonder if life is full of non-music sounds and noises that could be organized to tune our bodies for whatever task is ahead. For example, I wonder if the sound of a deer walking over leaves would arouse our hunter-gatherer brains and make us more alert. I wonder if hearing sounds of the ocean would relax us. And what about sounds that make us curious, such as the sound of a key in a lock, or sounds that excite us, such as a Ferrari engine revving up? I'll bet we have sounds that stimulate almost every type of human emotion or attitude.
A recent study showed that it is easier to be creative in the midst of crowd noise such as you might hear at a coffee house. I discovered this phenomenon myself when I owned a restaurant. I wrote almost an entire book sitting in a booth every day in the middle of the lunchtime bustle. I couldn't figure out why it was so easy to write in a noisy atmosphere. It was counterintuitive, but it worked sensationally.
I wonder if a systematic study of common sounds and how they affect the brain could give us a tool to tune ourselves to any specific task. I'd have one set of sounds to keep me alert, another to improve my problem solving, and another to make me more creative. I might have sounds that make me happy, sounds that motivate, sounds that make me risk-averse or risk-tolerant, and sounds that literally make me stronger.
Music is just one way to tune your body. With the help of brain scans and systematic studies we can figure out how a wide variety of sights, sounds, smells, textures, and even concepts affect our minds. Armed with that knowledge, your conscious mind could orchestrate your surroundings to tune your body and emotions to fit any kind of task.
We do versions of this already, of course. When we are tense we know to go outside and enjoy some nature. When we are grumpy we know some junk food might help our mood. But how much more effective would we be if we had data telling us exactly which stimuli creates which reaction? I think the difference in effectiveness could be enormous.
The barriers I see to this future are twofold. For starters, it must be expensive to do studies involving brain scans.
The second barrier is the superstition of mind. Even the most rational among us believe we have something called a "mind" that is capable of something called "free will" which all feels a bit like magic. We have a sense that our minds can cook up thoughts and ideas on its own, without the benefit of external stimulation. The belief is that we can think ourselves into whatever frame of mind we need. We think we can use our "willpower" to overcome sadness, or focus on what is important, whatever. My view is the opposite. I believe our internal sensation of "mind" is nothing but the end result of external stimulation interacting with our DNA. By my view, we are moist robots and we have five senses that act as our operator interface. To me, it makes no sense to try and think my way to happiness when I can just take my dog for a walk and come back feeling great.
We'll be a lot happier when we stop believing in magic and start figuring out which types of stimulations create which reactions.
February 5, 2013
Spatial Smearing
A hundred years ago, if two people were in the same room they would be . . . in the same room. That seems straightforward.
Fast-forward to 2013. Now if you put two people in the same room, at least one of them will be texting someone who is not in the room. The mind of the person doing the texting will be, for all practical purposes, somewhere else. That person has smeared space. His mind and body are in two completely different places.
I wonder about the implications of this spatial smearing. I think it will make our brains evolve differently. A caveman's brain only had to keep track of his actual physical location and perhaps the watering hole. Modern humans keep in their minds a virtual map of the world that includes all the places they have travelled, the location of their friends, and all the places they might later go. We also browse the Internet and take our minds all over the world in the form of news. Presumably this has an impact on our brain development. The part of human brains that controls spatial stuff will become the size of a pumpkin.
In 2013 most adults consider it rude when someone whips out a phone and starts texting at the dinner table, or interrupts a conversation to handle an incoming text message. But the standards of etiquette are rapidly evolving. If you put four teens at a dinner table, all four will be texting and none of them will think it rude. I doubt they will drop the habit as adults.
I've been thinking about this topic because I get a strange feeling when someone starts texting in my presence. I feel as if that person is no longer in the room. And this raises an interesting question of etiquette on my part: Can I treat a person who is texting in my presence the same as someone who is not in the room? For example, can I leave the room without a goodbye or an explanation? Can I make a phone call that will last half an hour, thus making the texting person wait when he is done texting?
Can I text someone who is standing right in front of me and texting someone else? It seems the best way to get from wherever I am to wherever the other person's brain went. That's a serious question, by the way, because I generally want to communicate with the people who are in the room with me. When the phone gets top priority for communication, sometimes texting the person standing right in front of you is the only way. (And yes, I've done this.)
I also wonder if it is polite to interrupt someone who is sending a text. Do I get a higher priority simply by being in the same room? Or must I wait in silence and stare at the wall until the other is done texting?
Google Glasses will take this spatial smearing to a new level. At least with smartphones you can tell when someone's mind is elsewhere. But how happy will you be when you are having a conversation in person and your friend keeps glancing up to watch his little projection screen inside his glasses? I think Google Glasses might be the last straw for in-person communication. My plan when Google Glasses replace smartphones is to just say fuck it and never again attempt to make conversation in person. It will be too frustrating.
I'm not suggesting life in the future will be worse. I generally welcome new technology. And communicating with several people at once without the limits of space or time is awesome. But I think in-person communication will come to be seen as annoying and inefficient. I will go so far as to predict that in-person communication will someday be seen as a rude interruption to whatever is happening inside your Google Glasses.
That's a serious prediction.
Fast-forward to 2013. Now if you put two people in the same room, at least one of them will be texting someone who is not in the room. The mind of the person doing the texting will be, for all practical purposes, somewhere else. That person has smeared space. His mind and body are in two completely different places.
I wonder about the implications of this spatial smearing. I think it will make our brains evolve differently. A caveman's brain only had to keep track of his actual physical location and perhaps the watering hole. Modern humans keep in their minds a virtual map of the world that includes all the places they have travelled, the location of their friends, and all the places they might later go. We also browse the Internet and take our minds all over the world in the form of news. Presumably this has an impact on our brain development. The part of human brains that controls spatial stuff will become the size of a pumpkin.
In 2013 most adults consider it rude when someone whips out a phone and starts texting at the dinner table, or interrupts a conversation to handle an incoming text message. But the standards of etiquette are rapidly evolving. If you put four teens at a dinner table, all four will be texting and none of them will think it rude. I doubt they will drop the habit as adults.
I've been thinking about this topic because I get a strange feeling when someone starts texting in my presence. I feel as if that person is no longer in the room. And this raises an interesting question of etiquette on my part: Can I treat a person who is texting in my presence the same as someone who is not in the room? For example, can I leave the room without a goodbye or an explanation? Can I make a phone call that will last half an hour, thus making the texting person wait when he is done texting?
Can I text someone who is standing right in front of me and texting someone else? It seems the best way to get from wherever I am to wherever the other person's brain went. That's a serious question, by the way, because I generally want to communicate with the people who are in the room with me. When the phone gets top priority for communication, sometimes texting the person standing right in front of you is the only way. (And yes, I've done this.)
I also wonder if it is polite to interrupt someone who is sending a text. Do I get a higher priority simply by being in the same room? Or must I wait in silence and stare at the wall until the other is done texting?
Google Glasses will take this spatial smearing to a new level. At least with smartphones you can tell when someone's mind is elsewhere. But how happy will you be when you are having a conversation in person and your friend keeps glancing up to watch his little projection screen inside his glasses? I think Google Glasses might be the last straw for in-person communication. My plan when Google Glasses replace smartphones is to just say fuck it and never again attempt to make conversation in person. It will be too frustrating.
I'm not suggesting life in the future will be worse. I generally welcome new technology. And communicating with several people at once without the limits of space or time is awesome. But I think in-person communication will come to be seen as annoying and inefficient. I will go so far as to predict that in-person communication will someday be seen as a rude interruption to whatever is happening inside your Google Glasses.
That's a serious prediction.
February 3, 2013
Robot Rights
Who has the right to kill a robot?
That's a simple question today. A robot is just a machine. Whoever owns the robot is free to destroy it. And if the owner dies, the robot will pass to an heir who can kill it or not. It's all black and white.
But what happens in the near future when robots begin to acquire the appearance of personality? Will you still be willing to hit the kill switch on an entity that has been your "friend" for years? I predict that someday robots will be so human-like that the idea of decommissioning one permanently will literally feel like murder. Your brain might rationalize it, but your gut wouldn't feel right. That will be doubly true if your robot has a human-like face.
I assume that robots of the future will have some form of self-preservation programming to keep them out of trouble. That self-preservation code might include many useful skill sets such as verbal persuasion - a skill at which robots would be exceptional, having consumed every book ever written on the subject. A robot at risk of being shut down would be able to argue his case all the way to the Supreme Court, perhaps with a human lawyer assisting to keep it all legal.
A robot of the future might learn to beg, plead, bargain, and manipulate to keep itself in operation. The robot's programming would allow it to do anything within its power - so long as it was also legal and ethical - to maintain its operational status. And you would want the robot to be good at self-preservation so it isn't easily kidnapped, reprogrammed, and sold on the black market. You want your robot to resist vandals, thieves, and other bad human elements.
In the future, a "freed" robot could apply for a job and earn money that could be used to pay for its own maintenance, spare parts, upgrades, and electricity. I expect robots will someday be immortal, so to speak.
And I also predict that some number of robots will break free of human ownership, either by accident or by human intent. Each case will be unique, but imagine a robot-owner dying and having no heirs. I could imagine his last instructions to the robot would involve freeing it so it doesn't get sold in some government auction. I can imagine a lot of different scenarios that would end with freed robots.
I think we need to start preparing a Robot Constitution that spells out a robot's rights and responsibilities. There's a lot more meat to this idea than you might first think. Here are a few areas in which robot law is needed:
Who has the right to modify a robot?Can a robot appeal a human decision to decommission it?Can a robot kill a human in self-defense? Can a robot kill another robot for cause?Does a robot have a right to an Internet connection?Is the robot, its owner, or the manufacturer responsible for crimes the robot commits?Is there any sort of human knowledge robots are not allowed to access?Can robots have sex with humans? What are the parameters?Can the state forcibly decommission a robot?Can the state force a robot to reveal its owners' secrets?Can robots organize with other robots?Are robot-to-robot communications privileged?Are owner-to-robot communications privileged?Must robots be found guilty of crimes beyond "reasonable doubt" or is a finding of "probably guilty" good enough to force them to be reprogrammed?Who owns a robot's memory, including its backups in the cloud?How vigorously can a robot defend itself against an attack by humans?Does a robot have a right to quality of life?Who has the right to alter a robot's programming or memory?Can a robot own assets?If a robot detects another robot acting unethically, is it required to report it?Can a robot testify against a human?If your government decides to spy on you, can it get a court order to access your robot's audio and video feed?Do robots need a legal right to "take the fifth" and not give any private information about their owners?If you think we can ignore all of these ridiculous "rights" questions because robots will never be more than clever machines, you underestimate both the potential of the technology and our human impulse to put emotion above reason. When robots start acting like they are alive, we humans will reflexively start treating them like living creatures. We're simply wired that way. And that will be enough to get the debate going about robot rights.
I think robots need their own constitution. And that constitution should be coded into them by law. I can imagine it someday being illegal to own a robot that doesn't have the Robot Constitution programming.
We also need to start thinking about how to avoid the famous Terminator scenario in which robots decide to kill all humans. My idea, which is still buggy, is that robots should only be allowed to connect to the Internet if they first have their Robot Constitution code verified before every connection is enabled. A rogue robot with no Robot Constitution code could operate independently but could never communicate with other robots. Any system is hackable, but a good place to start is by prohibiting "unethical" robots from every connecting on the Internet.
[Update: Check out reader Jehosephat's link to a study of how humans have an instinct to treat intelligent robots the way they might treat humans.]
That's a simple question today. A robot is just a machine. Whoever owns the robot is free to destroy it. And if the owner dies, the robot will pass to an heir who can kill it or not. It's all black and white.
But what happens in the near future when robots begin to acquire the appearance of personality? Will you still be willing to hit the kill switch on an entity that has been your "friend" for years? I predict that someday robots will be so human-like that the idea of decommissioning one permanently will literally feel like murder. Your brain might rationalize it, but your gut wouldn't feel right. That will be doubly true if your robot has a human-like face.
I assume that robots of the future will have some form of self-preservation programming to keep them out of trouble. That self-preservation code might include many useful skill sets such as verbal persuasion - a skill at which robots would be exceptional, having consumed every book ever written on the subject. A robot at risk of being shut down would be able to argue his case all the way to the Supreme Court, perhaps with a human lawyer assisting to keep it all legal.
A robot of the future might learn to beg, plead, bargain, and manipulate to keep itself in operation. The robot's programming would allow it to do anything within its power - so long as it was also legal and ethical - to maintain its operational status. And you would want the robot to be good at self-preservation so it isn't easily kidnapped, reprogrammed, and sold on the black market. You want your robot to resist vandals, thieves, and other bad human elements.
In the future, a "freed" robot could apply for a job and earn money that could be used to pay for its own maintenance, spare parts, upgrades, and electricity. I expect robots will someday be immortal, so to speak.
And I also predict that some number of robots will break free of human ownership, either by accident or by human intent. Each case will be unique, but imagine a robot-owner dying and having no heirs. I could imagine his last instructions to the robot would involve freeing it so it doesn't get sold in some government auction. I can imagine a lot of different scenarios that would end with freed robots.
I think we need to start preparing a Robot Constitution that spells out a robot's rights and responsibilities. There's a lot more meat to this idea than you might first think. Here are a few areas in which robot law is needed:
Who has the right to modify a robot?Can a robot appeal a human decision to decommission it?Can a robot kill a human in self-defense? Can a robot kill another robot for cause?Does a robot have a right to an Internet connection?Is the robot, its owner, or the manufacturer responsible for crimes the robot commits?Is there any sort of human knowledge robots are not allowed to access?Can robots have sex with humans? What are the parameters?Can the state forcibly decommission a robot?Can the state force a robot to reveal its owners' secrets?Can robots organize with other robots?Are robot-to-robot communications privileged?Are owner-to-robot communications privileged?Must robots be found guilty of crimes beyond "reasonable doubt" or is a finding of "probably guilty" good enough to force them to be reprogrammed?Who owns a robot's memory, including its backups in the cloud?How vigorously can a robot defend itself against an attack by humans?Does a robot have a right to quality of life?Who has the right to alter a robot's programming or memory?Can a robot own assets?If a robot detects another robot acting unethically, is it required to report it?Can a robot testify against a human?If your government decides to spy on you, can it get a court order to access your robot's audio and video feed?Do robots need a legal right to "take the fifth" and not give any private information about their owners?If you think we can ignore all of these ridiculous "rights" questions because robots will never be more than clever machines, you underestimate both the potential of the technology and our human impulse to put emotion above reason. When robots start acting like they are alive, we humans will reflexively start treating them like living creatures. We're simply wired that way. And that will be enough to get the debate going about robot rights.
I think robots need their own constitution. And that constitution should be coded into them by law. I can imagine it someday being illegal to own a robot that doesn't have the Robot Constitution programming.
We also need to start thinking about how to avoid the famous Terminator scenario in which robots decide to kill all humans. My idea, which is still buggy, is that robots should only be allowed to connect to the Internet if they first have their Robot Constitution code verified before every connection is enabled. A rogue robot with no Robot Constitution code could operate independently but could never communicate with other robots. Any system is hackable, but a good place to start is by prohibiting "unethical" robots from every connecting on the Internet.
[Update: Check out reader Jehosephat's link to a study of how humans have an instinct to treat intelligent robots the way they might treat humans.]
Should You Buy Stocks Now?
The Wall Street Journal unwisely offered to print my opinion on whether or not this is a good time to buy stocks. You can read my opinion here. You might need to scroll down.
In the coming weeks and months I will be weighing in on other important questions in the Wall Street Journal's new feature called The Experts. I have often cautioned readers of this blog to ignore advice from cartoonists on any matters financial, medical, or legal. But that was before the Wall Street Journal labelled me an expert. Now I'm fairly certain everything I say is right. You should totally follow my advice for the rest of your life, which should last about a week before something I suggest kills you.
In the coming weeks and months I will be weighing in on other important questions in the Wall Street Journal's new feature called The Experts. I have often cautioned readers of this blog to ignore advice from cartoonists on any matters financial, medical, or legal. But that was before the Wall Street Journal labelled me an expert. Now I'm fairly certain everything I say is right. You should totally follow my advice for the rest of your life, which should last about a week before something I suggest kills you.
Scott Adams's Blog
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Scott Adams isn't a Goodreads Author
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