Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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 out "Your cat is dead."

Bob is beside himself with grief. And he chastises his moron brother for breaking the news to him in such an abrupt manner. The moron brother asks how he could have done it better.

Bob explains "Well, for example, you could have told me the cat was on the roof. The next time we talked, you could say the Fire Department is trying to get him down. The next time, you could say the cat fell during the rescue and was in the veterinarian hospital. The next time I called, you could say the cat succumbed to his injuries and passed away. That way I would be prepared for the bad news."

The moron brother says he understands. Then he adds, "Oh, by the way. Mom is on the roof."

With that in mind, I saw in the news that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is warning Karzai to clean up the corruption in the Afghan government or else Great Britain will withdraw its forces.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gEBlJJibsvBmFQK5iQvBXDIIJRQAD9BQ3BQG0

That's the "cat is on the roof," as clear as I have ever seen it. Obviously Afghanistan isn't going to get rid of corruption. That gives Great Britain an honorable reason for withdrawing, which I assume they have already decided to do. Once that happens, Obama will be forced by public opinion to do the same, leaving behind some terrorist-hunting forces only.

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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 decline the offer. No matter how fun or fulfilling are the activities on your list, you can only enjoy them if you have control over WHEN and HOW LONG you do each one. On day one of the genie's deal, you might find that he has allocated nine hours for eating ice cream, and twelve minutes for golf. And your tee time is midnight, after you work twelve hours.

I'm exaggerating the genie's cruelty, but in general it's true that doing the thing you want at the time when you are most in the mood for it makes a gigantic difference in your overall happiness. If you eat when you're hungry, nap when you're sleepy, and work when you're feeling productive, life can be pretty great.

So let's test this concept. Tell me in the comments how much flexibility you have over your own schedule then rate your own happiness. Use a scale of 1-10, as in:

Schedule Flexibility: 8

Happiness: 7

 

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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 a lush forest is beautiful. So while music in general is universally enjoyed, any given song does not register as beautiful to the public at large. 

Q. What about art?

A. We speak of "appreciating" art, and I think that's a good word. Most art wouldn't be described as beautiful. The Mona Lisa, for example, is skillfully done, but the subject is homely. If other people hadn't told you it was worth a fortune, you wouldn't hang it in your living room. And like music, there is no universal standard for beauty in art.

But there's still a correlation between art and survival impulses. It's probably no coincidence that so much art includes food, babies, and well-fed women during childbearing years.

Q. You can concoct an argument that ANYTHING has a survival benefit.

A. What's the survival benefit of a spider or a human turd? If you break down either of them for their color and form, you'd find the elements that would be considered beauty in some other context. But since spiders and turds have no survival benefit, they don't appear beautiful to the public at large.

Q. What about an ocean? Or a sunset?

A. The ocean is full of food. That one is easy. And if you are an early human living outdoors, sunset and sunrise are probably the best times for hunting and gathering. Midday is too hot. After dark, you're more prey than predator.

Q. Why does a Corvette or a Porsche look more beautiful than an Edsel?

A. Fast cars have more function than slow ones. Most of the beautiful ones are fast. You need speed to catch prey and avoid predators.

]]>
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 literally beautiful. And of course tools have survival utility. So far, my hypothesis holds.

Little kids are drawn to playing with toy trucks and toy bulldozers. Kids wouldn't describe those toys as beautiful, but those items must be visually attractive in their own way. Obviously construction equipment represents tools that are highly useful, and help humans survive. Even toddlers realize it.

Speaking of toddlers, adults find babies to be attractive almost automatically, without regard to what the little creatures look like. Clearly the adult response to babies has survival utility.

There are plenty of areas open for interpretation under this hypothesis. For example, a parking lot is arguably more useful than a forest, depending on the context, but the forest registers as being more beautiful. Perhaps that is because we're not that far evolved from hunters and gatherers, for whom a forest means survival and a parking lot means no food.

In general, scenery that has a lot of variety in color and shapes looks more beautiful than something with less variety. That makes sense from a survival standpoint too, since eating a variety of foods is healthier than eating just one type. And it would be easier to hide in an environment with more variety. Variety seems highly correlated with basic survival.

I thought a lot about beauty as function during the design of our new house. At every step, it seemed as if we had to choose between function and some "standard" sense of beauty. In time, I came to see this as a false choice. The most functional choices register as beauty when you put them all together.

The best example of that idea, which I have mentioned before, is the formal living room. In a traditional home, the formal living room is somewhere near the front door, and it has no function but to look beautiful. To me this sort of room always looks hideous no matter how well the drapes match the furniture, because the space has no utility. In my view, beauty is a garage with some extra space on one end for a ping pong table. I might be stretching the "survival" concept to include recreation, but there's no point in surviving if you're going to be unhappy.

Another example of beauty as function is the layout of our ground floor. It has a circular flow, so you can head down the hallway, turn right twice, and end up where you started. You can never be cornered. The feeling you get in the space is one of beauty, but it probably stems from some sort of survival instinct. And you get that feeling  before the paint, baseboards, furniture, floors, or drapes are in place. The beauty seems to come directly from some primal sense of how the space flows. At least that's how it feels to me.

When you coordinate colors, for your outfit or your living space, you try to avoid introducing a color that doesn't match at least one other color that is already there. To do otherwise makes the outcome less beautiful. Here again, I think the survival instinct is informing our sense of beauty. As an early humanoid, I would think that any time a color appeared in your view that was inconsistent with the surroundings, that meant something was wrong, and perhaps dangerous.

That's my hypothesis: Beauty is nothing more than our recognition of functions that are related to current or past survival.

Okay, I'm sure other people have the same theory. But I'm the first one to write about it in The Dilbert Blog.
]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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 workarounds. But that's a lot of effort, and it's hard to hide all the electronic clues of, for example, an unapproved association. Even if you hide all of your own electronic footprints, you could still pop up on someone else's Facebook page.

This got me thinking about privacy issues in general. Most people reflexively believe privacy is a good thing, and a lack of privacy is a bad thing. But what if privacy creates more problems than it solves?

Let's say you have a secret carnal desire for broccoli. In our current world, where privacy is still somewhat attainable, you hide your dirty little broccoli secret. If anyone were to find out, you'd be ostracized and mocked. So you carry your little secret around like a bag of shame, sneaking trips to the grocery store to get a fix.

Now imagine a world where no one has any privacy and your inappropriate desire for broccoli becomes common knowledge. Suddenly all the other broccoli lovers know you are one of them. You start hanging out together, sharing your broccoli stories. You make new friends. You are understood. It's a relief in many ways.

In a world with no privacy, no one will seem like a freak because so many people will appear to be one type of deviant or another. In that world, the biggest losers would be the people who have totally uninteresting flaws and passions. They would seem boring.

Like it or not, that world is probably coming.]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Recently I was thinking about the typical pathway to democracy. It seems to me the usual pattern goes something like this:

1. A dictator rules a bunch of uneducated idiots.
2. The dictator realizes he needs smarter citizens to compete with other countries.
3. The dictator educates his citizens.
4. The educated citizens get rid of the dictator.
5. Democracy flourishes.

In Afghanistan, the literacy rate is about 26% in cities, and 9% in outlying areas. Not surprisingly, the recent Afghan presidential election didn't work out so well. I have a feeling that version 2.0 won't be a spectacular success either.

What Afghanistan needs is a dictator who values education for his own benefit, thus setting the stage for his own demise and the emergence of democracy. The Taliban aren't the right kind of dictators because they eschew education.

But I wonder if education is the one area in which the Taliban might be willing to negotiate, assuming there are moderates among them, in return for power. Suppose we agree to withdraw our military, leaving some hardly-noticed bases that we use for hunting terrorists, in return for the Taliban allowing the U.N. to set up non-religious schools, funded by foreign assistance, with mandatory attendance, including girls. We could agree to keep any political or controversial stuff out of the curriculum.

The Taliban could still teach religious absurdities to their kids on their own time, the same way we do it in our own country. We wouldn't like what the Taliban teach their kids, especially the parts about killing infidels. But in the long run, the Afghan education system would produce a citizenry that demands democratic reform. It might take 200 years, but that's not bad for a country that is in the Stone Age.

The risk, of course, is that once we leave, the Taliban beheads everyone who thinks education is a good idea, and spends all of their drug profits to set up Bed and Breakfast places for Al-Qaeda. I will stipulate that the beheading scenario is likely. My only point is that Afghanistan needs a pro-education dictator more than it needs a president who steals elections. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to skip steps.

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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...

1. What do the experts say you should do?
2. How much experience do the experts have with this question?
3. Does the expert have a conflict of interest?
4. What's the worst thing that could happen?
5. How easy is it to switch course if you choose wrong?
6. What information can you find on the Internet?
7. Who has made this choice before? Were they satisfied?
8. If I delay, will I learn something more that is useful?
9. Is there a way to do a limited test?
10. Does the decision make logical and mathematical sense?
11. Do the experts make this choice with their own money?
12. What do the well-informed people in my situation usually do?
13. What does the competing vendor say about this vendor?
14. Have I seen all of the alternatives?

Those are the questions with relatively clear or quantitative answers. It's the next category of questions that intrigue me, because they involve pattern recognition, and I can't always tell whether I am being influenced by fear and bias, or keen intuition informed by my experience. The questions in this category look like this...

1. Does this situation follow a pattern I've seen in scams?
2. Is someone giving answers that seem intentionally vague?
3. Is information conspicuously missing?
4. Is someone trying to rush me?
5. Could someone unscrupulous easily take advantage of me?
6. Have I regretted this sort of decision before?
7. How do I imagine other people will react to this decision?
8. If the expert is so smart, why isn't he rich?

 
What questions would you add to the list?

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Several years ago I wrote a non-Dilbert book called God's Debris. I called it a "thought experiment" because I used hypnosis techniques in the writing to give readers a euphoric mental sensation, as if they were learning some deeper truth about reality. Evidently it worked. Many people tell me they have reread God's Debris four or five times just for the buzz.

For others, God's Debris is like eating an onion. People who are on the outer fringes of either dogmatism or skepticism find it hard to relax and simple feel ideas that don't seem right to them. And if you have a doctorate in philosophy, or the like, you might not get the full impact of the book, in the same way that a guy taking an LSD trip doesn't need a bong hit. But if you don't fall into one of those categories, God's Debris can be an interesting experience.

Until now, there was always one thing holding back the full impact of God's Debris: The physical process of reading makes it difficult to fully relax at the same time. That's why I'm excited that God's Debris is finally available as an audio book, both on iTunes and Audible.com. Now you can slip in your ear buds, sit back, close your eyes, and take a 2-hour and 44 minute mental flight.

After an extensive search of voice talent, I chose DC Goode to narrate. In case you wondered, hypnosis requires no special type of voice. I chose DC because he made the material come alive. It's a rare talent.

If you recommend the audiobook to anyone, let me know how they experienced it. You can e-mail me at dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com.


Search for God's Debris on iTunes, or Audible.com at:

http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/enSearch/searchResults.jsp?D=Gods Debris&Ntt=DC Goode&Dx=mode matchallpartial&Ntk=S_Narrator_Search&Ntx=mode matchallpartial&y=9&N=0&x=2&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes

  (Warning: I don't recommend listening to it while driving.)]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I'm trying to come up with a good Halloween costume. I prefer something topical and funny. I don't want to be the guy who shows up at the party wearing sweat pants and says he's a baseball player. Maybe you can help.

One idea is to wear a Barack Obama name tag with my regular clothes. Then I'll wait for someone to say, "Barack Obama? How's that Barack Obama? I had such high expectations for your costume and all you did was...oh, wait. I get it."

Do you have a better idea? (Dressing as a Dilbert character is too obvious.)

 
]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The other day I was reading some first-hand accounts of the war in Afghanistan, in Newsweek, as told by several Taliban fighters. Throughout their stories they would refer to various Taliban leaders, and Newsweek would parenthetically point out that said leaders had been killed by Predator missiles. And today I read somewhere that 14 out of 20 Al Quaeda leaders in that neck of the woods have been taken out by Predators.

This made me wonder about the future of the war. Let's assume the conflict drags on forever, technology keeps improving, and the American public loses all interest in funding the hunt for terrorists. What then?

My prediction is that millionaires will start buying time piloting Predator-like drones (drone clones) from home, the same way big game hunters buy licenses. You'll be able to literally fly the drone from your laptop, supported by mercenaries on the ground in the ungoverned region of Pakistan. For a substantial fee, the mercenaries will help you launch and refuel the drone, and act as spotters to help you find terrorists. The wealthy hunter at home will stalk the terrorists via remote control and wait for a clean shot, then BAM!

Your first reaction to this plan is that it would be highly illegal and often unethical, especially when the wrong targets are attacked. But that doesn't mean my prediction is wrong. The customer would be involved in this activity via the Internet, the same way you might access a gambling website if you lived in a town where gambling was illegal. If some country passes a law against remote terrorist hunting via Internet, the wealthy hunter can simply go somewhere that the law doesn't exist, such as Las Vegas. And the mercenaries would be operating in a part of the world with no functioning government. So I don't see the law being an obstacle.

At the moment, I assume this sort of business model would be uneconomical, even for the very wealthy. Drones and mercenaries don't come cheap. But drone technology will continue to drop in price while improving in performance. And mercenaries won't be that expensive once the Pakistani locals start filling those jobs.

Any country with a military capable of stopping the mercenaries will have no incentive to do so, since killing terrorists serves the interest of all existing governments.

I'm guessing that a private citizen can't legally buy a Predator, but as other countries start producing drones, which seems inevitable, it won't be that hard for mercenaries to get them.

What part of my prediction is unreasonable?

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I was delighted to learn that The Economist ranked the business school where I got my MBA (University of California at Berkeley - Haas School of Business) as number one in the United States.

http://www.economist.com/business-education/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14632300

This makes me proud, even though there are a few minor differences in the program compared to when I attended. For example, the classes are now held in different buildings. The coursework is different. The textbooks are different. The entry requirements are different. I attended the evening program. And all of the professors are different. But the name of the school is totally the same! I'M NUMBER ONE! WOO-HOO! GO BEARS! I think this moves me one step closer to that Nobel for economics.

The rankings of business schools are highly reliable because they are derived by asking the opinions of students who have attended upwards of one business school each! You might think someone would crosscheck this sort of survey result with the psychology departments at those same universities. But on the face of it, I don't see any problem with asking students if they made (cough, cognitive dissonance, cough) wise decisions.

Kidding aside, I do credit Berkeley's MBA program for my success with Dilbert. It trained me to think more like a business person than an artist. For example, an artist listens to his inner calling and hopes the public agrees. A business person listens to the audience and gives them what they want; that's the approach I took. In 1993 I opened a direct line to Dilbert readers through e-mail, and adjusted the content according to their feedback. That was one of maybe a dozen key business decisions that helped Dilbert break through a crowded field. I joke about getting an MBA so I could become a cartoonist, but business school was literally the competitive advantage that made Dilbert a success.

You are what you learn.

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 From an Article in the New York Times, here is one of the coolest theories I've ever heard that isn't already an episode for Star Trek. This quote sums it up:

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the (Large Hadron) collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=3&hpw#articleBodyLink

Obviously the phrase "abhorrent to nature" has no precise meaning in science. So I figure if we're tossing out sensational interpretations I should add one of my own. As regular readers of this blog know, I believe our reality is a holographic simulation, and you and I are just software running within it. Our creator, or creators, who presumably had bodies like ours, made this simulated universe so they could live forever, in a fashion, because their own reality was about to be annihilated in some sort of cosmic catastrophe. Or maybe we're someone's seventh grade science project. The point is that we only think we are real because that's how we were programmed.

Or if you prefer a less "Superman's exploding planet" version of that idea, from someone with more credibility than me, check out Boltzmann's Brain theory:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html

If we are a software program, we might be constrained, perhaps by rules of the program, to stay within certain parameters of enlightenment. For example, we might be restricted from discovering that our reality is a simulation. And the Large Hadron Collider might be testing the limits of our allowed enlightenment. So you might expect some paradoxical, illogical, frightening thing to happen when knowledge starts to approach the programmed forbidden zone of knowing.

But apparently speculation about our software simulation reality is still allowed by the program as long as you mock me in your comments to prevent the idea from spreading.

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 During the peak ratings years of The Jerry Springer Show -- an alleged reality show -- a fight would break out among the guests during almost every episode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerry_Springer_Show

It seemed obvious to me that these fights were orchestrated by the producers. What are the odds that a fight would break out during every episode and yet no one would ever get hurt or arrested?

The surprising thing is that everyone I talked to about the show during its glory years believed the fighting was genuine and spontaneous. I found that level of gullibility to be mind boggling.

Likewise, when big name TV magicians perform spectacular tricks on TV, such as making a jet disappear, and the witnesses on the scene act amazed, it's obvious to me that those people are in on the trick, and/or their comments of amazement are taken out of context. The magician's only obligation is to entertain the gullible viewers at home. Paying actors to claim they don't know how the jet disappeared, and filming reactions out of context, is the easiest way to do it.

All of this gets me to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Both of them have been in the news a lot for their outspoken and controversial views. And once again, people don't seem to understand that their jobs are entertainment, nothing more.

I enjoy sampling the content from the far left as well as the far right. When I listen to Limbaugh, I generally have two reactions:

1. I don't agree with the viewpoint expressed.
2. This man is an entertainment genius.

Talk show hosts have no legal or ethical obligation to do anything but entertain. And judging by their successes, Limbaugh and Beck are brilliant at their jobs. I find it mind boggling that anyone believes a TV talk host is expressing his own true views.

You could make a case that the things Limbaugh and Beck say influences the gullible masses in ways that are not helpful to society. But that's probably true of every pundit, left or right. It's a price of free speech.

Do you think that Limbaugh and Beck have the same views in private as they spray into the entertainmentsphere?

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I just saw this article on the Internet about an economic prediction I made ten years before the recent financial meltdown.

http://www.ethics.org.au/ethics_forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?FID=3&TID=3566

This got me wondering, in jest, if I am eligible to someday win the Nobel Prize for Economics. (Okay, technically it's called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.) The surprising answer is yes. One only needs to come up with an original and useful contribution in the field of economics. You don't need to do any math.

http://nobelprize.virtual.museum/prize_announcements/economics/eco_questions_08.html

With that in mind, do you think the confusopoly theory is the simplest explanation of how the recent financial meltdown came to be? Obviously greed and stupidity were also factors, but those influences are well understood and common to all of economics.

 

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Suppose you had a system at work that allowed you to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of your coworkers. You could log on at any time and leave an opinion that would only be viewable by your boss and his bosses.

And imagine that you could be as unprofessional as you liked. If you think your coworker is an obstructionist idiot with fake credentials, you can express your opinion in those words. Management in this hypothetical world wouldn't want anyone diluting strong opinions with business jargon.

The idea would be to weed out employees who do a good job of concealing their treachery, toxicity, and incompetence in front of management. And in some cases it would force managers to do what they had been avoiding, namely getting rid of the bad seeds.

Obviously the system would be abused to some extent. You would have employees trying to settle personal scores, and paranoids falsely accusing coworkers of stealing and lying. But that probably happens just as much without this system. The point of the system is to gather input from more sources than just the crazies who tend to speak up.

You could call it a ratting system instead of a rating system. Would it make the workplace a better or a worse place to be?

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Regular readers know that my wife Shelly and I are building a home. We were warned that we would be overwhelmed by all of the decisions. I was ready for this, I thought.

For most of my life, including my school years, I worked two or three jobs at the same time. The exception was when I was getting my MBA at night while working during the day. I thrive on complexity. How hard could it be to design a house? You pick some doorknobs, choose your favorite color for the paint, and off you go.

Allow me to invent a new word to describe my feeling at this moment: Holyjeezamafuginkripes.

We're more involved in the details than most homeowners. That's part of the fun. And it has been a delight so far. But at the same time I have come to understand the true meaning of overwhelmed. To illustrate, take just one category out of several hundred decisions we need to make: paint.

Your standard paints have what is called VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. That means they release their particles into the air forever, even after they are dry. Scientists think that a high level of VOCs is very bad for you. (Yes, you are almost certainly breathing high VOCs in the room you are in right now.)

The good news is that paint companies are now making zero-VOC paint. But you can't easily do color matching with the zero-VOC paints, so you won't get the color you really want, except by luck. It's a crap shoot. And if you want to faux paint a wall, the glaze isn't low VOC. And what about the stain on your cabinets? And what exactly is the level of VOCs that is acceptable, given that different states mandate different maximum levels? And do these zero-VOC paints work just as well? And are the mandated low levels because of the release into the atmosphere during spraying, or do you really need those lowest levels to protect the inhabitants? And who has the answers to those questions? I have asthma, dammit, and I need to know!

Now imagine that you want as many as three colors per room. And each color has to be compatible with the door color, the furniture, the rug, the countertops, the floor, and your daughter's nail polish. And imagine that it is impractical to see all of those elements at the same time in one place before you decide. Oh, and the natural light in any given room completely changes how your paint will look.

But my point, and I do have one, is that I wonder how this concept of being overwhelmed works in a context of negotiations. I can tell you from my own experience than once you have too many choices to make, you start getting flexible fast, just to survive.

So imagine that you have a meeting in which you want to convince someone to do something your way. One good strategy might be to weaken the other person's resolve by overwhelming him with less relevant choices before the important one is presented.

That's what car dealers do. By the time the consumer is done considering all of the many options for a potential car, he is already overwhelmed before negotiating price.

In summary, if you want your business nemesis to agree to one thing, make him consider ten things first. It will seem as if you are generously offering your nemesis control over many choices when in reality you are a manipulating bastard or bastardess.
]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Men are story tellers. Women are schedulers.

That's the sort of overgeneralization that drives people mad. I suppose that's what attracts me to writing it.

First, let's all agree that there are plenty of exceptions to this or any other generalization. Perhaps you are one of the exceptions. Obviously there are plenty of great female authors and plenty of great male project managers. But that won't stop me from generalizing.

When I find myself in a conversation with a man, he often tells a funny story about something that happened to himself or someone else. Or he asks me a question that elicits a story from me, however brief. Or maybe one of us will tell a joke, which is a form of a story. Maybe one of us will mention a favorite movie we've seen recently, which is a reference to a story. And when men ask questions in conversation, it is generally to better understand the other person's story.

Women, on the other hand, sometimes appear to be telling stories, but they are actually recounting past events in the approximate order in which they happened. Men's stories usually have identifiable beginnings, middles, and often surprising ends. When women describe past events, men are often left wondering why the beginning of the story started a full day before the parts that seem relevant. Women are sharing feelings, and for that you don't need a neat story format. What matters is the sum of the experiences.

I'm not implying that one approach is better than the other. Obviously a neatly organized story is the best way to convey a joke, whereas a description of recent events, in approximate order of occurrence, is a perfectly good way to share an emotion. And sharing emotions is probably more important than jokes. But I wonder if this gender difference is also related to how men and women store information as memories.

For example, I can remember forever any situation that fits into a typical story form. But a woman can remember the dress she was wearing three birthdays ago, presumably because it made her feel a certain way.

Do you organize memories as stories or as emotions?

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I assume that most of you have heard about the so-called Ass Bomber. He was a terrorist who tried to kill a Saudi Deputy Interior Minister by putting a bomb up his ass and detonating it when they met. Unfortunately for the terrorist, the bomb was only big enough to kill the Ass Bomber himself.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090902_aqap_paradigm_shifts_and_lessons_learned

This raises many interesting questions. At the top of my list: Why did the Ass Bomber think that killing the Deputy Interior Minister was worth shoving a bomb up his own ass? Sure, I could see if it was the Interior Minister himself, but the deputy?

I think Saudi Arabia played this wrong. Instead of telling the state controlled media that the ASSassination attempt failed, they should have reported that the Deputy Interior Minister was dead, and so was everyone else in the building. And they should have said there was no way to stop this sort of brilliant attack. Within weeks, every member of Al Qaeada would have shoved a too-small bomb up his ass and detonated it in a market or mosque. The innocent bystanders would be startled and perhaps a little bit slimed, but otherwise unhurt. Terrorism would have a quick and amusing conclusion.

The other thing I wonder is whether the original Ass Bomber was the victim of a practical joke. I can imagine that conversation:

Ass Bomber: I wish I had an evil scheme to kill someone who is marginally important.

Joker: Maybe you could shove a bomb up your ass and surrender to the authorities.

Ass Bomber: Would that work?

Joker: Absolutely. It's the best idea ever.

Ass Bomber: How would I get a bomb up there? It's a little tight.

Joker: I know a guy they call Large Bruce. I think he can help you out. It might take a few weeks of continuous practice.

Ass Bomber: I don't now if I could do that.

Joker: Because you hate Allah or what?

 

]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I hear a lot of chatter about the rich getting richer. That sort of talk is a generalization of course, since obviously there are rich people who get poorer, some go bankrupt, and a few do the full Madoff. But as generalizations go, it's true enough.

I wonder how people would feel if instead of saying "the rich are getting richer" we said "the smart are getting richer." Would it be just as true, as far as generalizations go, and would it make you feel the same when you heard it?

Capitalism rewards hard work, risk taking, luck, and intelligence. But are all of those elements equally important?

Hard work is common to all income levels. I would argue that hard work has the weakest correlation to wealth because it rarely does the trick on its own. You also need intelligence, risk taking, and luck.

Likewise, risk taking generally only works in combination with intelligence, hard work, and luck. In fact, you could argue that risk taking is just a facet of intelligence, especially when it works.

Luck and intelligence can each work alone to produce fortunes. But after the initial fortune is made, only intelligence helps grow it. Luck reverts to the mean. People who win lotteries rarely continue to get richer. But smart people routinely parlay small fortunes into larger ones.

So if we are looking for the best substitute for "the rich are getting richer," I would argue that your best fit is "the smart are getting richer." It's a generalization, of course, with plenty of exceptions. But it seems true enough. The interesting question is whether it has the same emotional impact as "the rich are getting richer."
]]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In response to my math question from yesterday, some of you wisely pointed out that medical insurance costs have to plateau at the point where they become literally unaffordable.

This made me wonder about the trajectory of medical expenses. On one hand, you can imagine that technology will lower the cost of routine medical treatment. The cost of existing drugs will drop as they go off patent protection. And maybe gene therapy will, in time, end up being inexpensive relative to traditional medicine. One can hope.

On the other hand, scientists keep coming up with new and expensive medical procedures, and new and better drugs. For example, the surgery that gave me back my ability to speak is relatively new. So you can imagine a world where POTENTIAL medical costs rise indefinitely because science keeps coming up with ways to fix medical problems that might have otherwise gone untreated.

My prediction is that medical insurance will cover more and more procedures, but if you consider all of the things that can be covered, it will be a smaller percentage. In other words, if insurance currently covers 90% of what you might need, someday it will only cover 70%, because that's all the public can afford. But that might represent far more medical procedures than your insurance covers today, so it might not seem so bad.

As some of you pointed out, a person's health insurance should start out cheap when you are young, and increase every year as you age. So if you want to take a crack at yesterday's question by altering the cost/year assumption, I'd be interested in that result.

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