Scott Adams's Blog, page 384

Hunter Becomes the Prey

Shopping is broken. In the fifties, if you wanted to buy a toaster, you only had a few practical choices. Maybe you went to the nearest department store and selected from the three models available. Or maybe you found your toaster in the Sears catalog. In a way, you were the hunter, and the toaster was the prey. You knew approximately where it was located, and you tracked it down and bagged it. Toasters couldn't hide from you.

Now you shop on the Internet, and you can buy from anywhere on the ...

The Happiness Genie

Suppose a genie appears and gives you two choices. The first option is that he will give you $10 million dollars, but everyone else you know will get $20 million apiece.

Choice two: You get $5 million, but no one else gets anything.

As a bonus, the genie offers to erase your memory of having made the choice, so guilt will never be a factor. You will simply wake up the next day in the new situation.

Which option do you choose to maximize your personal happiness?

This might seem like an easy choice...

Invest in Whatever Makes You Angry

I wonder if you could make money by investing in whatever companies make you angriest. For example, when oil prices were climbing to the sky, it was popular to hate oil companies. It also would have been a good time to buy their stock.

Before any war, a lot of people start hating defense companies more than usual. And that's the best time to own defense stocks.

During Microsoft's long run to dominance, the company was widely hated. It also would have been a good stock to own for most of that ti...

The Cat's on the Roof

I saw in the news today that The United States is going to withdraw most of its military forces from Afghanistan. Okay, the news didn't say that in so many words. But they did say, "The cat is on the roof," which means the same thing.

Allow me to explain "The cat is on the roof" to those of you who are unfamiliar with the joke. It goes like this: Bob goes on vacation. He asks his moron brother to take care of his cat. After a few days on vacation, Bob calls to say hi. The moron brother blurts...

Choice as Happiness

Suppose a genie appeared and offered to give you regular access to all the things you desire. Let's say that in your case it includes golfing, exotic traveling, eating ice cream, and having a great career. The genie's only catch is that he gets to control your schedule.

Your first reaction might be to take the deal, since all of the activities on the menu are better than the things you do now. And maybe having a genie do all of your scheduling would be convenient.

But if you're smart, you'll d...

Defending the Function-as-Beauty Hypothesis

Yesterday I blogged that beauty is nothing more than our recognition of functions that are related to current or past survival. Many of you chimed in with counterexamples and arguments. I will address them here.

Q. Music is beautiful. Where's the survival benefit there? 

 A. Even the most famous musicians are generally only enjoyed by 10% of the population. Someone mentioned Miles Davis. I can't stand listening to him. But every person reading this blog would agree that ...

Function as Beauty

Researchers tell us that we find other humans beautiful when those hotties appear as if they could produce healthy offspring. In other words, our minds translate the perception of species survival utility into the perception of beauty. I wonder if survival utility is the ONLY thing we find beautiful about our world, but we don't realize it.

If you're a guy, you know the joy of walking through a hardware store and seeing all of the well-made tools. To me, a good power drill looks like art. It's...

Privacy

It's hard to be a teenager and get away with anything these days. Parents can determine from the phone bill who the teens have texted and when. Parents can even read the teen's text messages if the phone is left unattended. Parents can see e-mail messages, check what web sites have been visited, and stalk their kids via Facebook.

In some cases the parents can already track their kids via GPS devices in cars and phones. You know that trend will increase.

Yes, teens have countermeasures and worka...

Afghanistan

Recently I was thinking about the typical pathway to democracy. It seems to me the usual pattern goes something like this:
A dictator rules a bunch of uneducated idiots.The dictator realizes he needs smarter citizens to compete with other countries.The dictator educates his citizens.The educated citizens get rid of the dictator.Democracy flourishes. In Afghanistan, the literacy rate is about 26% in cities, and 9% in outlying areas. Not surprisingly, the recent Afghan p...

Decisions With Incomplete Knowledge

Yesterday I made dozens of decisions, on topics as varied as Dilbert licensing, landscape design, marketing, and investing. In all cases I was operating with incomplete information, which is typical. As a practical matter, most decisions happen without the benefit of all the data you would like.

It made me reflect on all of the little rules one develops over the years for handling decisions without the benefit of sufficient data. You always start with the easy questions, such as...
What do...