Scott Adams's Blog, page 341

Larry Page's Voice Problem

I saw some speculation in the news that Google's Larry Page might have the same "voice problem" that I had, called spasmodic dysphonia. I will add to that speculation because it fits what little we know about his situation. I'm not saying he has spasmodic dysphonia, but it fits the few facts I know.

I'll start by giving Larry Page, and Google, my trust when they say it's a voice problem and not something more serious. I wouldn't have trusted Steve Jobs on that sort of question because of his reality distortion field. But I think Google is genetically disinclined to lie about something so important to investors. I think they mean it when they say they try to avoid evil.

The mystery is that if Page has a simple voice problem, why not give more details and be done with it? That's a fair question and one that I have seen being asked in the press. Here's where my experience with my own voice problems can give you some insight. I think there might be a very good reason he's not providing details.

For starters, even the best doctors in the world would have trouble diagnosing spasmodic dysphonia. It's sufficiently rare that most doctors have never seen it, and most have probably never heard of it. It can present in a few different ways, and because it's rare, doctors would look for more pedestrian causes first and try to treat what they know how to treat just to see what happens. A patient with not-yet-confirmed spasmodic dysphonia might receive treatment for bronchitis and even get a brain scan to look for tumors. A sudden loss of your voice can come from several sources. Doctors start with the easy guesses and eliminate possibilities as they go. Page might not have a definitive diagnosis yet.

Here's the insight I'll add to this speculation: Spasmodic dysphonia usually presents itself in a way that appears to be a mental/emotional problem brought on by stress. One of the oddities of the condition is that you can often speak normally to your pet but you can't speak to humans. Sometimes you can sing or recite a poem but you can't answer a question. For many years the medical community classified spasmodic dysphonia as a mental problem. At one point in my search for a cure, I ended up in a psychologist's office turning down her offer for Valium. Her best guess what that stress had rendered me unable to speak in certain situations. I've heard from other people who have spasmodic dysphonia that they too got the "crazy" diagnosis before figuring out the real problem.

So if you're the head of a major corporation, and doctors haven't yet ruled out "crazy," you would be wise to keep it to yourself, especially if you don't feel especially crazy, and it isn't affecting other parts of your behavior. But I know from experience that loved ones, friends, and even doctors will tell a person with spasmodic dysphonia to simply relax, as if that is enough to make the voice problem go away. The implication is that you're emotionally unbalanced and everyone knows it but you. It's a living hell when you lose your voice and everyone around you treats you like a mental patient. Trust me on that.

I have no idea what Larry Page's actual voice problem is. I hope it's something simple and that he's already on the path to fixing it. But if the problem happens to be spasmodic dysphonia, I'd be happy to help him figure out what works and what doesn't. A brilliant doctor cured my spasmodic dysphonia with a relatively simple surgery on the nerves in my neck. But it took me three years to find the one doctor (at the time) who had pioneered the surgery: Dr. Gerald Berke at UCLA.

Interestingly, I diagnosed my own voice problem as spasmodic dysphonia by using Google. And Google Alert later provided me with the trail of breadcrumbs that allowed me to find the doctor with a cure. So, Larry, if your voice problem turns out to be spasmodic dysphonia, send me an email (dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com) and I'll shortcut your research for a cure. I owe you one.

Stickiopolies

One of the reasons our smartphone service in the United States is improving so quickly is an FCC rule from 2003 that says consumers can bring their phone numbers with them when they change carriers. If it weren't so easy for consumers to change phone companies, carriers would have a vice clamp on your nipples and they would feel less pressure to compete aggressively. In this case, government meddling in the free market worked like a charm.

The banking industry is a lot like the phone industry before the 2003 FCC rule on phone number portability. For consumers, changing banks is a gigantic pain in the ass. I have my automatic bill payments linked to my existing accounts. I'd need to reorder checks and make sure the outstanding payments clear. I'd need to learn what services the new bank has, and order new credit cards, and get a new ATM card. It's all doable, but I'm not going to jump ship just because my bank is being a jerk about one thing or another. It's too much work. Let's call this situation a stickiopoly. Banks do compete, but not as aggressively as they would if consumers could switch at the drop of a hat.

So what would happen if banks had to adhere to a "bank consumer portability" law? Suppose you could switch banks as easily as giving your new bank your social security number and asking them to switch all of your credit cards, mortgages, and bank accounts automatically. And let's say the new bank also has the capability to switch all of your automatic payments (water bill, energy bill, car insurance, mortgage, etc.) at the same time with no effort on your part.

If switching banks were easy, a bank would magnify its risk any time it engaged in sketchy behavior such as LIBOR manipulation, ridiculous overdraft fees, or lending discrimination. Consumers could punish banks for being jerks. For example, I wouldn't want to be associated with a bank that was guilty of LIBOR manipulation. I'd figure the rest of the bank's management was rotten too and they're probably screwing me in some way I'm not yet aware of. If it were easy to change banks, I'd do it. But it's not easy, so I don't. (My LIBOR example assumes at least one bank wasn't in on the scam.)

And this brings me, very indirectly, to my point for today. On 7/14/12 I published a Dilbert comic that mocked banks. The original version of this comic used coarse language that reads funnier to me. But newspapers wouldn't have found that language acceptable. Today I submit for your consideration both the published version and the unacceptable version. Which do you prefer?

This one got published...

 
This was the original version...

Some Random Guy Saves the Planet

One of the tricks I use to motivate myself is to have at least one project going at all times with the potential to change the world. Realistically, the odds of one person changing the world are miniscule, but for some reason that doesn't make the thought of it less motivating. People buy lottery tickets with near-zero odds of winning because the act of buying the ticket apparently triggers the production of some feel-good chemistry in the body. I use a similar technique, except that I think in terms of saving the planet because that sort of thought does a better job of hacking my body chemistry compared to buying lottery tickets.

I like to think that the bad ideas I describe in this blog might someday inspire one of you to come up with actual good ideas. That's how ideas evolve; you start with bad ones then tweak them. If I may borrow and modify a quote from Isaac Newton: If you can see further it is only because you're standing on the pile of manure I so generously provided. Bad ideas are the raw materials for good ideas.

I use bad ideas as the basis for writing comics too. Every Dilbert comic that made someone chortle started out as a bad idea that I tweaked and poked and molded into something that I wouldn't have expected at the start. Sometimes the end product retains the germ of the original idea, sometimes it drifts into something entirely different. One of the big secrets to creativity is that you have to start walking before you decide where you're going. It's opposite of how you're raised to think.

This morning, as always, I sat down at my computer at 6 am with my cup of coffee and started browsing the Internet. Sometimes I start with a question and just keep clicking links until I learn something. (Another one of my self-motivational tricks is that I try to learn something new every day.) This morning my click-path to nowhere turned up a random guy on the Internet who is promoting a craptastic idea for building huge towers in desert areas to generate clean energy, bring water to arid climates, and regulate global climate change at the same time. I don't know who this guy is, but I like his style. Here's his page.

http://www.superchimney.org/

The idea for a super chimney isn't new. In fact, Spain successfully tested one such tower years ago. We know high towers with sun-heated bases can generate airflow that powers turbines. But obviously there are lots of economic, legal, engineering, and political obstacles. And no one has tested towers that cool the atmosphere and produce rain clouds at the same time. But the idea seems reasonable to my untrained brain.

What I like best about this random guy is that he's thinking big. I'll bet he enjoys waking up in the morning and feeling a sense of larger purpose.

Also check out the awesome idea for a so-called SuperGrid that might involve a combination of superconducting cables, maglev trains, and a liquid hydrogen pipeline all in one tunnel. Perhaps that's how the super chimneys will one day distribute energy from remote deserts to the rest of the world.

The Religion War

About ten years ago I wrote a short novel called The Religion War, a follow-up to God’s Debris. The plot was set in the not-too-distant future, which would be approximately now, and I made some predictions about how terrorism and anti-terrorism would evolve. Let’s see how I did.

The main plot element involved the idea that Islamic terrorists would regularly bomb targets in the United States using small “suicide” drones equipped with explosives and GPS guidance. I figured it was an obvious application of technology and there wouldn’t be any way to stop it. Right on schedule, an American born Al-Qaeda sympathizer recently got arrested for planning multiple attacks on Washington DC that would have used GPS-guided model planes.

Another plot device in The Religion War involved what we now call Big Data. The idea is that someday there would be so much data available about individual behavior that skilled programmers could mine it to make freakishly accurate predictions. In the book, one character accesses Big Data to search for the most influential person in the world. The so-called Prime Influencer is at the seed end of a vast social network that ultimately connects all of civilization. For plot purposes, the Prime Influencer isn’t aware of his or her power. The Prime Influencer is thought to have a way with words and a small circle of acquaintances that are moved by his or her opinions. But those people know more people, and so on. Any catchy idea from the Prime Influencer has the potential to quickly travel through the social fabric of civilization and change the world. But that’s fiction.

In the real world of today, corporations use Big Data to predict individual behavior with freakish accuracy. And we’ve also seen that one influential guy with a Facebook account can organize a revolution and take down a government. For story reasons, I needed my Prime Influencer to be one person. It’s unlikely the real world only has one such influential person. But I predict that someday the world will be controlled, in effect, by a small group of unelected people who have vast social networks and a knack for forming viral ideas. (Imagine a Rush Limbaugh talent with no radio show but a lot of Facebook friends.)

The provocative part of The Religion War involves what happens to democracy and freedom when terrorism becomes unstoppable and intolerable. It’s premature to see how well the book predicts that situation, but if terrorists keep trying to build their own drones, we’ll find out the hard way.

Note: If you decide to read The Religion War, make sure you read God’s Debris first. God’s Debris is available on Amazon and also free for download on the Internet. Unlike God’s Debris, The Religion War is written with movie pacing in mind, meaning I left out the filler descriptions of how the leaves are shimmering in the cool morning light. It keeps the book short, and the style is not for everyone.]

Monetizing the Who-You-Know Asset

If you're looking for a job, the best asset at your disposal is who you know. Your personal network of friends, families, alumni, and past work associates is extraordinarily valuable. Those are the people you turn to for your job leads, career advice, and sometimes even start-up funding. Most careers grow out of personal connections. But once you get the career you want, your personal network instantly becomes a semi-stranded asset. It's nice to have it waiting for you if you need it later, but during the dormant time it does you little good. My idea for today involves a way to monetize your personal network and reduce unemployment at the same time.

My key assumption is that the long-term unemployed have relatively ineffective personal networks. This is obviously a gross generalization, but I think it is close enough for my purposes. Stated simply, rich people usually have valuable friends (in economic terms) and unemployed people often don't.

Suppose the federal government creates a plan in which any citizen in a high tax bracket can volunteer to mentor a person who has been unemployed for one year or more. To start, the government would randomly assign a local unemployed person to each mentor. The deal would be that if the mentor can find a job for the unemployed person, the mentor's own taxes would be reduced by the amount of taxes paid by the newly hired person over five years. I'll include payroll taxes in the calculation because many employed people don't pay federal income taxes. Serial mentoring would be allowed too, so one mentor could help find work for multiple unemployed people, one at a time.

We want to keep the government bureaucracy to a minimum, and keep freedom to a maximum, so let's assume the entire program is optional for all participants, and the mentors fill out simple tax forms once a year that list the Social Security number of the unemployed person, a log of what steps were taken to help him/her find work, and the date of employment. It's about the same amount of paperwork you might do to claim a home office deduction. And it would carry the same penalties for lying to the IRS. All the government needs is the Social Security numbers of both the mentor and the newly employed person in order to keep track of taxes paid and tax credits given.

In theory, getting more people working will stimulate the economy enough to compensate the national treasury many times over for the tax benefits given to the mentors. The newly employed will be buying more goods and services and they won't be a drain on unemployment insurance and social services. Everyone wins.

To make this plan work - and this is probably the most important part - you also need some sort of online system where mentors can "trade" their randomly assigned unemployed people with mentors more suited for the task. For example, one mentor might have better contacts in the technology industry and another mentor might have better contacts in the construction industry. The government should also make it legal for mentors to trade unemployed people for cash, the same way major league baseball players are traded. If I'm a mentor with extraordinary contacts in the technology field, I might be willing to buy from another mentor an unemployed person who has technology skills. I'll make my money back plus more through tax credits.

Let's also assume that mentors have no restrictions on how they can prepare their unemployed people for work. For example, a mentor might find a training program and offer to fund it personally if the potential tax credits down the road are tempting enough. Another mentor might fly an unemployed person to North Dakota for an interview in the oil industry. A generous mentor might even cosign on an apartment lease and pay the first month's rent to make relocation feasible for the unemployed. For the mentor, anything that is legal is fair game. I think you'd see a lot of creative schemes emerge.

Obviously this concept needs a lot of work to tweak the math, plug loopholes, deal with exceptions, and reduce the potential for cheating. All tax policies are imperfect, and this would be no exception. The best you can hope for is that the benefits outweigh the new problems.

A major assumption at the core of this idea is that enough jobs exist to accommodate far more of the unemployed if only we had a better way to match candidates with openings. If you look only at published job openings, you might think the real problem is that the unemployed have the wrong skills. That's certainly an important part of the larger story. But I think you could still take a big bite out of unemployment by doing a better job matching candidates with openings. Keep in mind that your personal network has invisible, i.e. not published, openings that are exactly the sort you would fill if you were looking for a job yourself. The job you get is usually the job that no one else knew about.

You may now shred this idea.

[Note to Gawker, Salon, Huffington Post, and Jezebel: The best way to take this idea out of context and turn it into fake news is to claim I am advocating that rich people should buy and sell the unemployed just like modern day slave traders.]

The Curiosity Seduction Hypothesis

When your brain registers happiness, it often sends a message to the muscles around your mouth to form a smile. But interestingly, it works both ways. Researchers have shown that forcing yourself to smile can make your brain feel happier. In humans, our cause and effect circuitry often works in both directions.

Another example is music. If you hear a new song at about the same time you're falling in love, that song can later become a trigger for your emotions. Your feelings of being in love probably helped the song sound better than normal when you first heard it, and years later the song can summon those same feelings in you.

There are lots of ways we can take advantage of these little triggers in our lives. My favorite example is that if I don't feel like exercising, I can often change that feeling simply by putting on my workout clothes and running shoes. My brain associates the feel-good chemistry of sports and exercise with the physical sensation that my athletic shoes have on my feet.

This leads me to today's topic: The Curiosity Seduction Hypothesis. We know that when two people are attracted they become intensely curious about the life and happenings of the other. In fact, the best way to know if someone has romantic interest in you is by paying attention to the questions that person asks. If someone asks you only a few typical questions, it's probably just polite conversation and nothing more. But if the curiosity starts extending to deeper questions, and more of them, that's a "tell" that something else is happening.

My hypothesis is that you can induce romantic or sexual interest in another person by exhibiting curiosity, even if the curiosity is faked. Since we know romantic interest generates curiosity, I would expect it to work in reverse as well. Pretending to be curious about the details of another person's feelings should cause that person to automatically form a positive feeling about you, including perhaps feelings of lust and romance.

Obviously this only works if the two people involved have some potential for chemistry in the first place. I wouldn't worry about falling in love with a banker who asks for your mother's maiden name to verify your password.

Do me a favor and try this method over the weekend to seduce someone new or to generate some action with your existing partner. If it doesn't work, the worst that can happen is that you will appear to be an interested and caring conversationalist.

If you report back on Monday that the technique worked, you will have earned your Moist Robot Reprogramming Certification, Level 1.

Fact Bubbler

In my prior post I asked for ideas on making political debates more fact-based. A reader of this blog, aaror2, made an interesting suggestion that I will now borrow, tweak, and present.

Let me start by saying that had anyone asked me prior to the launch of Wikipedia if it would be a good idea I would have laughed and scoffed and maybe mocked whoever asked the question. It would have seemed obvious to me that you can't trust the public to sort out facts from fiction. But I would have been wrong about that. In my opinion, Wikipedia is one of the great accomplishments of civilization. But what makes it work?

For starters, Wikipedia insists that you show your sources and do so publicly. That's a powerful concept. We know that pundits and politicians will lie through their teeth when they don't need to show sources. A politician can look straight into a camera and make claims that contradict all known science. Politicians can get away with it because they know their lies will be separated by time and space from any fact checking. But on Wikipedia, any claim without a credible source is eventually removed or labeled as iffy. It's not instant and it's not perfect, but it evolves in the right direction.

A second powerful thing that Wikipedia gets right is letting everyone participate. A Wikipedia page never feels like an enemy opinion that must be rejected by reflex. If you don't like what you see, you are literally invited to correct it and show your sources.

Wikipedia is a great way to capture and organize information. But I think public policy debate needs a simpler model that borrows the proven concepts from Wikipedia.

I'll call this idea a Fact Bubbler. The basic idea is a web page for any policy debate in which short statements of fact are submitted by citizens and organized in a list. The rules for submitting facts might look like this:

All facts must be brief, preferably one line.All facts must include a source.Sources from obviously political organizations would be removed.A trail of edits would always be publicly available for viewing.Facts in the list would be organized by category, e.g. economics, morality, safety.Users would vote for the facts that are most important. Facts with the most votes would "bubble" to the top of their categories. For example, the most important fact about the economics of a policy debate would show at the top of that category.Moderators might choose to make some facts "sticky" with others that are closely related, so some facts would stay together as they bubble up. For example, the fact that a tax will cost $1 billion would be sticky with the fact that it only applies to leprechauns. After a policy topic has been populated with facts, and the most important ones have bubbled to the top, a citizen could easily scan the list to get a quick feel for the issue. For facts that come from disputed sources, I could see those showing up as a different color on the list, so you can click through and read why some people doubt the source.

Part two of this idea is that proponents of any side of the argument can also submit opinion pieces that use ONLY the facts shown on the page and introduce no new facts. The best arguments for and against a particular policy would also bubble up to the top of their own section. I would also include a category for alternative approaches (neither pro nor con) that would also be voted up in a separate category.

This idea might also need a section for precedent and analogy. We citizens like to argue that a new policy is making the same mistake as some policy from the past. It would be helpful to see the best historical examples along with a list of what went right or wrong, and how that is similar or different from today. Perhaps the similarities and differences could be organized as short statements of facts as well. The important thing is keeping the analogy/precedent discussion separate from the list of facts and the opinion/interpretation pieces.

In time, each policy debate would have a list of facts from the most credible sources available, organized with the most important facts at the top of each category such as economics, morality, safety, or other. Below the list of facts you would see the top user-submitted arguments that reference ONLY the facts in the list. Beneath the best arguments you would see user comments, and the best of those would also bubble to the top.

No system is perfect. But I think this approach would do a good job of evolving any argument toward whatever level of objectivity is possible for a given topic.

National Intelligence

I wonder if a country as a whole can have intelligence. And if so, can that intelligence be increased?

I'm not talking about average test scores in schools, or average IQ levels. Those things are important, but they are only part of the picture. I'm talking about how effectively a nation as a whole can make decisions and navigate its position in the world. For example, China has a political system that seems to produce intelligent decisions. You might criticize China's leadership for being heartless and brutal, but that's a separate discussion. If you consider how effectively they pursue their country's interests, their national intelligence seems quite high.

The United States, on the other hand, produces laws and foreign policy that don't always seem to be the result of intelligence or even good intentions. Our actions are a weird stew of religion, politics and randomness. A sentence you never hear in America is "I wonder what the smart people think we should do."

I was thinking about National Intelligence (NQ) in relation to the debate on health care. It seems that most American voters have a strong opinion on the topic while perhaps 1% of the public fully understand the issue. So whose job is it to educate voters?

It certainly isn't the government's job to educate voters. Our system is designed to make candidates compete for votes, and the most effective way to compete is by appealing to emotion and ignorance. The last thing a politician wants is to be labeled professorial. That's the same as boring.

It's not the job of news organizations to educate voters either. The point of the news is to inform citizens of what is new and noteworthy. It wouldn't be practical for the press to do a complete history and context for every news item.

In our system, citizens are expected to self-educate. That probably made sense when issues were simpler. But in today's world, that would be like expecting people to become doctors and lawyers just by doing some reading in their free time. It's unrealistic.

Our only real hope is the Internet. Recently I stumbled across a site -- http://Diffen.com -- that allows users to create their own comparisons of any two things. It's generally used for simple comparisons such as the differences between two models of cell phones. But I was struck by the power of putting information in a handy grid so you can compare things line by line. It's a great way to simplify complicated issues.

Diffen.com probably isn't the answer for educating voters, but it makes me optimistic that a solution is possible. The problem, as I see it, is that there isn't any profit in educating the public, so private industry is unlikely to wade in. That leaves us with the government, and the government isn't equipped to educate voters because we expect leaders to be opinionated, not objective. It's never a good idea to trust the cat to guard the canary.

So I put the question to you, my brilliant readers. Suppose you start with a website funded by private donations from a variety of citizens, with a mandate to operate independently, and your task is to find a way to populate the site with unbiased and useful information on public policy. What system could you devise to guarantee that the information is unbiased and, importantly, it appears that way to all observers?

I will seed this discussion by suggesting that the Diffen.com model of a customizable, side-by-side comparison is a good start for most topics. But you also need a way to rank the importance of each dimension of the discussion. And you need an easy way to view dissenting opinions on each "fact" in the matrix.

The genius of capitalism and democracy is that both systems embrace the destructive forces of competition and self-interest and channel them in a positive direction. Something similar needs to be done with information. What we need is a Founding Father or Mother who can find a way for arguments and information to compete in a way that kills the weak ideas and leaves only the strong.

Any ideas?

Warning Labels for Colleges

Hardly a day goes by without a debate about the proper role of government. Some people view government as a huge sink hole for money whose primary function is to limit freedom. Some citizens want the government to be as helpful and active as possible, preferably using tax revenue from other people. I'm somewhere in the middle, trying to decide each case on its merits.

For example, I think it's a good idea that the United States requires banks to calculate consumer loan interest costs using a specific formula to produce something called the APR. Now consumers can compare loans from different banks. That law probably doesn't cost the government much to enforce, and it's good for citizens. Prior to the APR requirement, banks tried as hard as they could to confuse and screw consumers.

I'm starting to feel the same way about college majors. I think the government should require colleges to display the average starting pay and the estimated lifetime earnings for each of the majors they offer. Perhaps colleges should also display the unemployment rates for each college major. Let's also assume that colleges have to use their own graduates for the calculations because, for example, Harvard graduates would see higher starting salaries than grads from lesser schools.

Then I would take it one step further, the same way cigarette warning labels do. For majors with the lowest starting salaries I might include the warning: "Graduates with this degree are unlikely to be able to pay their bills. Their best career options include crime, marrying for money, or living with parents."

Proponents of small government might point out that information on starting salaries is readily available on the Internet. That's true, but I think there is value in presenting the information with brutal frankness, and including appropriate warnings with every description of course offerings. That level of convenience will make the parents' jobs easier as they try to steer their kids in the best direction.

Is that too much government?

Citizenship

It seems so old-fashioned that citizenship is primarily determined by the physical location of your mother at the moment of your birth. I suppose it's a practical way to keep everyone sorted out, but in today's modern world does it still make sense to favor birth location over all other factors when it comes to citizenship?

Thanks to technology, my body no longer defines where I "am." At any given moment I can be Skyping with Australia, texting to Canada, browsing a British web site, and planning my next vacation in Mexico. A company recently offered to let me operate their telepresence robot and attend meetings in their building without leaving my house. As I type this, people in sixty countries are reading what I wrote in Dilbert. My existence is smeared across a lot of time zones. But I'm legally an American because my mother's vagina was located in upstate New York at the time of my birth several decades ago. That feels oddly primitive.

In California I meet a lot of folks who aspire to be American citizens. Most of them are here legally, and I assume some are not. But they all seem to have a common spirit, if I can use that unscientific word. First and foremost, they want to be here. They work hard, respect the laws, pay taxes, and put great effort into speaking English. And they consider themselves Americans even if the law doesn't. If American citizenship had a character test, they'd pass easily.

As a practical matter, you can't let people become citizens just because they want to. That would be chaos. But I'm wondering if the future will bring a better concept of human organization than dirt-based citizenship. Personally, I don't care if you live in Elbonia and plan to keep your physical body there forever; if you want to be on my team, just bring something to the party in terms of character, ideas, or marketable skills. I'm happy to have you. We'll be like a club without borders.

Someday I can imagine social networks growing in size and power until citizenship becomes an unnecessary concept. When citizenship-by-dirt becomes a relic of the past, so too will wars over boundaries. My social network doesn't need to conquer your social network because we already live in every country.

Over time, private entities can take over the historical functions of traditional governments. We won't need armies, snail mail post offices, printed currency, or even physical schools. The Internet will make every current function of governments obsolete.

You might argue that people are people and we'll find dumb-ass reasons to fight no matter how we define the groups to which we belong. But I'm not so sure. I think evolution has wired us to believe geography is something you kill over and everything else is something you argue about. Take citizenship-by-dirt out of the equation in a few hundred years and war will be obsolete.