Scott Adams's Blog, page 359

Pegs and Holes

If you have a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole, do you blame the peg or the hole? You probably blame neither. We don’t assign blame to inanimate objects. But you might have some questions about the person who provided you with these mismatched items and set you up to fail.

If a lion and a zebra show up at the same watering hole, and the lion kills the zebra, whose fault is that? Maybe you say the lion is at fault for doing the killing. Maybe you say the zebra should have chosen a safer watering hole. But in the end, you probably conclude that both animals acted according to their natures, so no one is to blame. However, if this is your local zoo, you might have some questions about who put the lions with the zebras in the same habitat.

Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way. Things just drifted in that direction.

Consider Hugh Hefner. He had every benefit of being a single man, and yet he decided he needed to try marriage. Marriage didn’t work out, so he tried the single life again. That didn’t work out, so he planned to get married again, although reportedly the wedding just got called off. For Hef, being single didn’t work, and getting married didn’t work, at least not in the long run. Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg. All it offered were unlimited square holes.

To be fair, if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers. Everyone is different.  But in general, society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires. I don’t have a solution in mind. It’s a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa. And there’s no real middle ground because that would look like tweeting a picture of your junk with your underpants still on. Some things just don’t have a compromise solution.

Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond.  Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.

That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations.

Vacation Science

Humans love to go on vacations. But no one enjoys the high cost, the hassles of planes, trains, and automobiles, arranging for pet care, and so on. I wonder if scientists could find a way to replicate the good elements of a vacation without the bad parts. In other words, if you applied some serious science to the topic of vacations, could you create a synthetic experience that would be almost as good as the real thing but without the cost and hassle?

By now you are digging into your treasure trove of science fiction references and thinking about hallucinatory drugs and holodecks and that sort of thing. But I'm talking about using current technology and resources to cobble together a low-cost vacation-like experience without the problems of a real vacation. Is it something we could do today?

A scientist might begin by studying people's chemical compositions before, during, and after vacations. Obviously a day at the beach creates a different set of chemical responses than kayaking. You could probably catalog the various types of vacations and how they change people.  That would give you some sort of baseline to measure whether your artificial experiences are generating the same chemical results as the real thing. I assume scientists would be looking for changes in serotonin, oxytocin and other chemicals associated with relaxation and pleasure.

If you break down a vacation, it usually has some subset of the following elements:

1.       Novelty - experiencing something different

2.       Forgetting the stress of home and work

3.       Relaxation

4.       Learning about another culture

5.       Challenge (e.g. hiking, climbing, etc.)

6.       Physical beauty

7.       Everyone is nice to you.

8.       Shared adventure and memories with family and/or lovers

9.       Sun

10.   Exercise

11.   Water

That's not a complete list. But accept for now that a vacation can be broken down into its component parts, and that people will have different preferences for which elements they like best.

Now let's assume we try to build a synthetic vacation experience within one hour's drive from a major metropolitan area. Proximity eliminates most of the cost of transportation and simplifies the planning. Hotel rooms can be relatively inexpensive because they won't be on a beach or other prime real estate.

We don't want you driving home at night, even though you could, because that would get you back into your everyday head. So let's say our fake resort has luxurious pet care facilities so you can take Rover with you in the car and see him as often as you like during the day while he plays with the other dogs in a nice grassy area.

Obviously we could design our fake vacation facility to include physical beauty, challenging activities, water, sun, and most of the other elements of a real vacation. And while nothing feels the same as being on the beach, perhaps some combination of massages, extraordinary food, and naps in a hammock will create a similarly pleasing chemical reaction. Remember, we're not trying to imitate the specifics of real vacations as much as the chemical reactions they create.

The tricky part, I'm guessing, is reproducing novelty. While some people enjoy going to the same familiar vacation spots every year, many people need something new each time. They need mental stimulation. I was thinking about this after seeing Woody Allen's new movie, Midnight in Paris. The videography of the Paris streets was so well done that it started to evoke the feeling of actually being there. I would estimate that seeing Paris on film was 10% as cool as being there in person, at least visually. I'll bet you could get that percentage up to 75% if science were applied and the video and viewing rooms were created with that intent. Add 3D, headphones, maybe a wind machine and some smells, and you have an experience. You'd also want the user to control where he explores, and how quickly he moves, street by street. And perhaps you could add some video presence devices to a few foreign locations so users could literally speak with the locals, or simply sit in a British Pub, virtually, and people-watch. A novelty seeker could visit and interact with a dozen places per day, albeit at a lower sensory level. And all of this would be done using current technology. If you want a shared adventure, perhaps each virtual travel room could be family-sized.

I could also imagine having one of these synthetic vacation facilities outside every metropolitan area, each one staffed with a group of people from a particular culture. One facility might be staffed entirely by Mongols, another by Belgians, and so on. Every six months, the entire staff switches locations and brings their special flavor of service to a new location.

Let's all agree that a virtual vacation will never replace the real thing. But we don't always have the time, money, patience, and health for real vacations. I think the market for virtual vacations exists. If we could design the virtual vacation to be about 75% as good as the real thing, for 30% of the cost, we'd have an interesting business model.

Fixing the Economy

This idea might look familiar because it's a variation on some ideas I've noodled on before. The idea is to goose the economy by offering a dollar-for-dollar federal tax rebate for any sort of home improvement. That would include a wide variety of economic activity: Construction, furniture, appliances, drapes, carpets, landscape, furniture, green features (e.g. solar panels), home theaters, new roofs, and lots more. Anyone with a home could find something that needs an upgrade of one sort or another.

This idea has five benefits:

1.       It boosts local employment rates fairly quickly. Small businesses can often hire overnight, especially when the country is running at 9% unemployment.

2.        I'm assuming that the added economic activity would create more in taxes and reduced government spending for safety nets than it gives up in rebates. I could be wrong about that if the people who benefit most from the new jobs are also the people who don't pay federal income taxes.  But remember that those people will be spending more money if they have it, so those dollars should eventually reach someone who pays taxes.

3.       The stimulus would reach almost every neighborhood.

4.       Banks would need to get involved to lend taxpayers the home improvement money until the tax rebates arrived. If the system allowed banks to receive the rebate from the government directly, there's a low risk of default, so loans could be processed quickly and carry a low interest rate. When banks have a financial interest in a bill, it has a better chance of being pushed through Congress.

5.       The economic activity would happen before the government pays the rebates. This is opposite the normal approach in which rebate checks are given to taxpayers first and then the government hopes the economy gets stimulated.

Obviously you'd need experts to tweak this plan in a number of ways. The most important question is whether you'd produce enough in tax revenues and government savings on safety net programs to compensate for the tax rebates. Keep in mind that under this plan the government would also be paying for any home improvements that would have happened organically. You also need to account for the fraud that any new system creates.

On the whole, do you think the numbers would work?

I will stipulate that many of you believe government spending should be cut, period. And many of you believe that any new government plan is a mistake no matter what it is. I have a lot of empathy for those views. But I'm also a realist, and I wonder if there is any sort of plan that would appeal to both Republicans and Democrats.

 

Weiner Context

You're all following the story of Anthony Weiner and his escapades. The common view is that he had extraordinarily bad judgment and low self-control. That makes sense if you believe humans have something called free will. But let's hold the free will argument for later and look at the question of his self-control.

To begin, let's agree that as a general rule, the more you do something, the better you get. Practice makes perfect.  People who do lots of public speaking become smoother and more confident. People who live near train tracks probably sleep better in noisy environments. People who live at high altitudes can exercise longer in that environment than people who don't. Likewise, if self-control exists, it is probably the sort of skill you can improve with practice.

On the other hand, research has shown that self-control is diminished in all areas if you try to resist a temptation in any particular area. For example, if you successfully resist eating chocolate, you might have trouble resisting a glass of wine. But that sort of temptation has more to do with the moment. By analogy, a weight lifter gets stronger in the long run through repetition, but immediately after a strenuous workout he can lift less than before he started. So timing is important with any skill.

If we assume that self-control is something you can strengthen over time, but might be diminished in any specific hour if it gets overtaxed, that's the model we should use to examine Weiner's self-control.

We know a few things about Weiner - too much, actually. Apparently he is like catnip for women. He's powerful. He's smart. He's tall. He's famous. He's ambitious. He has a way with words. He has all of his hair. He's built like Wolverine. He also lives in the DC area, which has (correct me if I'm wrong) the highest concentration of young, single women of anywhere in the country. That's a random factoid I remember from somewhere.

In this environment, Weiner probably had to exercise his self-control more than anyone you have ever met. Before marriage, we can assume he gave in to temptation often. But I'll bet he had to practice his self-control a lot, just so he'd have time to exercise and do his job. In other words, he has far more practice at self-control than 99% of the public. If you look at his physique - and we all have - it's also obvious that he has a tremendous amount of self-control in terms of fitness and diet. There's also no evidence that he smokes, does drugs, or drinks too much. He probably studied hard in school too, or he wouldn't have the job he has. In other words, this man is probably a world-class self-controller.

But self-control is only part of the equation. The human body has a way of making you so horny that you're literally stupid. This phenomenon is unevenly distributed across the general population. Horniness in males is most closely linked to testosterone. And Weiner was a testosterone machine. Here's an abbreviated list of activities that boost testosterone in men:

1.       Eating right

2.       Exercise - especially weight-lifting

3.       Avoiding cigarettes, drugs, alcohol

4.       Being around attractive women

5.       Power, winning, attention

6.       Sleep (Weiner has no kids and sets his own schedule)

Weiner also has the classic sharp facial features associated with high testosterone. He probably started in the upper range naturally and sent his levels into the stratosphere through his healthy lifestyle. And it is worth mentioning that his lifestyle is exactly what any doctor would recommend.

Now we get into the gray area of free will and self-control. The mechanistic description of a "mistake" in this context is when the urge (testosterone in this case) is higher than the counter-urge (fear of consequences). In theory, some amount of urge will trump any amount of fear, including the fear of death itself. This equation would be true for any healthy male, from priests (obviously) to presidents (more obviously). And Weiner probably had testosterone shooting out of his ear holes.

Against this urge was his self-control, which I have argued is probably in the top 1% if you had some way to compare him to the general public. The problem is that his urges were also probably in the top 1%. One particular urge (horniness) lops about 50% off of a man's IQ. You can blame evolution for that. I assume evolution favored men who took stupid risks to get sex because those are the genes that were most often passed down. As a result, modern men are wired so that a boost in horniness shuts off half of the brain.

For the benefit of society, we have a responsibility to condemn Weiner's inappropriate behavior. Doing so will increase the fear level for other married people and make it harder for chemistry-driven urges to win in the future. And so I join you in condemning Weiner for his actions. Shame is useful. But it is also objectively true - or at least highly likely - that Weiner has more self-control than 99% of the people who condemn him. And it is also objectively true that the "devil" that raised his level of temptation to the danger zone was a combination of healthy living and public service. That's not an excuse. It's just context.

Psychics

What would you call a man who started with nothing, worked hard all of his life, amassed a fortune, created thousands of jobs, was kind and faithful to his family, and privately gave away 90% of his wealth in a variety of ways that directly helped the poor? Answer: Douchebag.

You don't get rich without screwing a lot of people along the way, right? That's common knowledge. That rich douchebag is probably paying a lower tax rate than his caddy. And the bastard could have created more jobs had he not chosen to maximize his corporate profits. Successful guys are arrogant, we assume; that's just part of the package. Rich guys also think they are above the law because they hire expensive lawyers when people accuse them of crimes. And let's not respect any guy who makes a billion dollars and only keeps $100 million for himself. We want our heroes to suffer way more than that.

The cover of TIME on May 30th featured a picture of a pig and the title "Sex. Lies. Arrogance. What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs." Interestingly, I heard no protests about TIME's characterization of powerful men (and by extension, men in general) as pigs. Apparently that worldview is universally accepted.

You all know the old joke: Why does a dog lick his own balls? Answer: Because he can. When you compare a man to a dog, both men and women think that observation sounds about right. Personally, I don't mind being compared to a dog, because in our society, dogs are more respected than men. The comparison feels like an upgrade. (TIME's comparison of men to pigs seemed like more of a lateral move, respect-wise, so no offense taken.)

Here's a quick quiz: What is the common word for "hatred of women"? Most of you got the right answer in less than a second:  misogyny.

Question two, what is the common name for "hatred of men"?

Um...

The answer is misandry. But I would have also accepted "normal," at least in America. Hatred of men for their supposed faults is pretty much business as usual in this country - so much so that we rarely label it. And if a man is powerful, that's two strikes against him.

But this isn't a post about men versus women, or the raging class war. It's about psychics. Watch me suddenly turn this oil tanker on a dime, also known as bad writing.

Let's stipulate for the sake of this discussion that lots of people think misogyny is a problem, and some people think misandry is a problem. Let's throw racism into this discussion too. And don't forget hatred of the rich. What do all of these forms of hate have in common?

Psychics!

A psychic is a person who can read minds. For example, a psychic can look deep into the private thoughts of a Tea Party member and know that the real reason he opposes the President's fiscal policy is racism. A psychic can look at men - millions of them at once - and know that deep down, in their private thoughts, they hate women. Psychics can also know the thoughts and intentions of the rich, using as clues the inaccurate reports of the media, and the out-of-context yammering of pundits who have financial incentives to distort.

My own view is that some small part of the general population, perhaps 5%, is comprised of people who are either sociopaths, or simply batshit crazy. Some of those people are literally racists, gender supremacists, and robber barons. The rest of us live in fear that one of the psychics will accuse us of siding with the sociopaths and the batshit crazy folks in our private thoughts.

Watch the news this week and see how many stories involve psychics (pundits) claiming they have the power to read the minds of others and find evil of various sorts. Then watch the media manipulate society into punishing the accused thought-criminals because doing so is good for the news business. It's the modern equivalent of witch hunts. In old Salem, you could identify a witch by a combination of coincidence and the ability to float. Today you can identify a racist and a misogynist and an immoral rich person using quotes taken out of context, guilt by association, and the accusations of psychics. We haven't come far.

Class War Rorschach Test

Boston Consulting Group reports that millionaires own 39% of global wealth. That is up from 37% in 2009. When you see that statistic, which way do you interpret it?

1.       The rich have transferred more wealth from the non-rich to themselves.

2.       The rich have created more wealth and kept it all.

3.       The rich have created more wealth for everyone and kept most of it.

4.       More people have achieved millionaire status.

5.       There is not enough information to form an opinion.

6.       Asset values went up as the economy improved. Rich people own most assets.

7.       Other (explain)

My hypothesis is that the data will fit whatever worldview you bring to it.

Tipping Point

Yesterday I went to Walmart and demanded that they give me a cartload of merchandise for free. This demand was not well-received, so I didn’t get to the second part of my plan which would have involved criticizing the job performance of the people who were giving me free stuff.

Okay, I didn’t really go to Walmart and demand free stuff. You probably knew that because it sounded ridiculous on face value. We all understand that no entity can survive for long if it gives away its resources while asking nothing in return. And this leads me to my point: In the United States, 51% of adults pay zero federal income tax, and yet they have the right to vote. That’s the very definition of a system that can’t last.

I’m not sure where the tipping point is. So far, the power of the non-tax-paying majority has been blunted by the influence of political parties and the misdirection of the media. If the majority ever figures out that they can legally confiscate the wealth of the minority, tax rates will double overnight. My best guess is that the United States will go into a death spiral at about the point that 55% of adults pay no federal income taxes. We’ll probably get to that point as baby boomers continue to retire in large numbers.

The minimum requirement for a war is that everyone has to understand which side they are on. Paying zero federal income taxes draws a dangerously clear line. As soon as someone influential (Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, etc.) coins a catchy name for the non-tax-paying majority, everyone will automatically know which side they are on. That’s when the United States will unravel.

My recommendation for putting a safeguard on the state of the union is that every adult citizen should pay federal income taxes, even if it is just one dollar per year. For the benefit of the country, it is important to blur the line between rich and poor. By analogy, no one cares that senior citizens get discounted movie tickets, but it would be an issue if the tickets were totally free. Every theater would be clogged with senior citizens and the theater owners would go broke. There’s a huge psychological and practical difference between discounted prices and free.

I realize that taxing the poor produces little income. That’s not the point. What matters is that everyone understands we’re ultimately on the same side. I think our system of government needs that. The poor obviously pay a variety of other governmental taxes, and that probably helps blur the lines. But it can’t be healthy that the people who have the power to control the federal government’s budget don’t have any responsibility for funding it.

[Note: The best way to quote me out of context is something along the lines of “Cartoonist recommends increasing taxes on the poor!”]

Video Game Design

I'm not a gamer. I'm not even a casual game player. But the other day I decided to try a game called Angry Birds just to see why it's so popular. I wasn't expecting to like it. I was wrong. The game is instantly addictive. But why? Or more generally, what makes one game a hit and another a dud?

My hypothesis is that we humans have a dozen or so natural impulses that evolution has provided. When we exercise any of those impulses, we feel most alive. For example, a first person shooter game primarily appeals to males, probably because it taps into a man's most primitive urge to eliminate other males as reproductive competition. And more generally, we males have a natural impulse to fight. A well-designed shooter game allows males to spend hours per day unleashing the urges that are socially inappropriate.

You can see in almost any successful game the elements needed for hunting, gathering, self-defense or reproduction. Puzzles probably use the part of our brain designed to figure out where the food is. Lots of games require us to gather up resources. And any game that requires you to quickly spot abnormality is the same skill you need to identify healthy mates. I would argue that Tetris and Mahjong are good examples of games where you have to quickly spot abnormality. And it is no surprise that both games have attracted female gamers.

Angry birds is brilliant because it touches several of our most basic impulses. The player flings birds from a slingshot and tries to destroy various structures and kill the pigs within. It's a basic hunting metaphor, and pigs are a symbol for food in Western cultures. That part is obvious. The less obvious part of the addiction is the joy of destroying structures that are man-made. I believe this taps into our basic need to tear down the accomplishments of others in order to feel better about ourselves. It's Shadenfreude - the satisfaction or pleasure we get from the misfortune of others.  Someone unknown built those structures, and presumably they would be unhappy to know you knocked them down. The game would be far less satisfying if you were destroying trees or other natural creations.

I first noticed this natural impulse for destruction when I was working my corporate job.  In those days, Dilbert was nothing but a nameless doodle on the whiteboard in my cubicle. I noticed that male visitors would "accidentally" destroy my drawings at a rate far higher than chance would suggest. Usually this took the form of needing to use a different part of the whiteboard and accidentally encroaching into the drawing, or absent-mindedly erasing too vigorously and whacking part of it. The first dozen times it happened I thought it was coincidence. Eventually I came to see it as an urge that couldn't be contained. There seemed to be a need to destroy what I had created.

All of this makes me wonder if I could come up with a hit video game idea by starting with basic human urges and designing up from there. The idea that immediately jumps to mind is a game that allows you to kill the rich and destroy all of their belongings.  Let's say that in this game's imaginary world, human-like aliens have occupied Earth and become our overlords, residing in huge mansions, mating with Earth's most attractive women, and generally living like Donald Trump. You're part of the resistance, armed only with the blaster guns you captured from the aliens. Your mission is to destroy the handsome and powerful aliens that have acquired vast fortunes here on Earth. The main story line would sound noble - saving humanity from aliens - while the addictive element is the feeling of satisfaction you get by destroying the yachts, sports cars, and mansions of the rich alien overlords. Obviously this game would appeal to males more than to women.

For female gamers, I suggest some sort of game that appeals directly to a woman's innate ability to notice imperfection. I assume women have evolved the flaw-finding skill to quickly identify healthy potential mates. Imagine a game that displays a crowd of men on screen, animated, and all milling about. The player has to quickly identify the only handsome man in a crowd of homely men.  In each round, the handsome man and the rest of the crowd are dressed differently and found in different exotic locations. When the player finds the handsomest guy, he offers a small gift and a compliment as reward. To make things as stalker-creepy as possible, the player can customize the handsome man with her own choice of hair, complexion, size, and other features. And if you want to add a layer of primal urge, the handsomest man could have some delicious food with him in his computer bag and present it to the game player as a prize for completing each level.

What other natural urges do we have that have not been exploited by game companies?

People Who Don't Need People

Have you noticed that humans are more overrated than usual? That's because technology is starting to acquire good manners, and it makes humans look worse by comparison. In some cases, your possessions are already more polite than your friends.

For example, when I get near my automobile, and my key is in my pocket, it unlocks the door and adjusts my seat position just right. My automobile always gives me its full attention. It remembers me. It accommodates me. In a word, it is polite. By my rough estimate, my automobile is nicer than 75% of all human beings.

My phone is always in my pocket and automatically synced to the car. When someone calls, the car automatically turns down the radio and doesn't interrupt the call. Try telling the humans in the backseat that they shouldn't speak to each other while you're trying to talk on the phone. Good luck with that. Obviously it's rude for me to take a call when I have passengers, but only humans think less of me for that sort of thing. My automobile doesn't judge me. Advantage: automobile.

The other day I was on the road and needed to call some local stores to see if they had a particular item. I completed the task without taking my hands off the wheel. I just talked to the car, which talked to my phone, which talked to the 411 computer at the phone company, which connected me to the store, and I asked my question. It was like frickin' magic.

Sometimes, during long drives, even if I know the route, I turn on the navigation unit just to hear its upbeat lady voice. That's not a joke. I actually do that. My wife isn't a fan of this practice. Sometimes Shelly gets into disagreements with the navigation lady about which route is fastest. In those situations, I try to stay out of it and let the navigation lady act as my attorney. I say, "You two work it out."

The navigation unit also feeds turn directions to a heads-up display on the windshield that is visible only from the driver's perspective. It's one more way that the automobile treats me as if I'm the only special one in the car. This secret navigational knowledge allows me to seem smarter and more confident than I am. That's what friends are for. Obviously this trick can only dupe my passengers if I turn off the voice prompts and, in effect, waive my right to an attorney.

The engine has a wonderful growl to it. It literally gives me the same sort of positive feedback that I get whenever I pet my cat and she repays me by purring. I'm sure the manufacturer of the automobile tweaks the acoustics to generate that sort of feedback loop. The result of this clever engineering is that the engine seems to express gratitude when I caress the gas pedal. It's like a huge, friendly cat.

Joking aside, I literally experience an emotional connection to my automobile because of the features I mentioned. Someday all of our technology will learn to emotionally manipulate us. Your smartphone is already doing it. Your desktop computer has been doing it for years. As your possessions learn to fill your emotional void, your need for the comfort of other humans will continue to decrease.  Eventually we'll be a society of sociopaths. I'm already halfway there.

That prediction is entirely serious, by the way. I do believe we will transfer our emotional connections from humans to technology, with or without actual robots. It might take a generation or two, but it's coming. And it probably isn't as bad as it sounds.

News Interpretation Question

Most of you follow the news. I'm interested in how you interpreted a recent story. President Obama made some comments about Israel's borders. Which of the following best represents what the President said?

1.  Israel should return to the 1967 borders, or something close to it. (Israel considers this border solution militarily indefensible.)

Or

2.  Israel and the Palestinians should start negotiating based on the 1967 boundaries and make land swaps until both sides get what they need for a lasting peace.

Obviously both sides want a number of other conditions to be satisfied too. But for this discussion, let me know how you interpreted President Obama's view of the border negotiation issue.