Our dogs are large. And strong. And young. And, sometimes, Sadie (the older one) does “good walking” but sometimes, she pulls. Hard. She’s had lots of training. And, as I said, she will often walk well, but still tends to pull after a small mammal or a hawk or a lizard. She pulls hard if she needs desperately to find the perfect spot to “do her business.” She pulls hardest to try to meet a friend (human or canine).
When she pulls, it is a strain on my feet and my knees and my back. I can hold her, but barely. To remedy the situation, we got another kind of leash/collar arrangement which includes a piece to go over her snout. We acclimated Sadie, and her brother Bailey, to the “gentle lead” and decided we’d try walking them together.
Safer leash, safer walk was the plan. Indeed, the dogs didn’t pull as they often do. Nonetheless, I managed to fall on the asphalt while walking Sadie–the first time I ever fell on the hard road. I’m not sure exactly what happened. The leash is shorter and Sadie has a tendency to weave back and forth in front of me. I may have tripped on Sadie herself or stumbled on a slight imperfection in the road.
Anyway, this morning, we decided to try again but this time, Bailey went with the gentle leader and I was going to use the “normal” leash with Sadie. The plan was to walk together.
Sadie had other plans. Instead of heading up the street as we normally do, she immediately turned right into our front yard, intent on following the scent of … ?? Most likely, she smelled the path of a squirrel that’s been frequenting our yard. Anyway, Sadie was in her “olfactory pulling” mode. Some days, especially when it’s been raining or there is dew on the ground, she goes into an “olfactory exploratory” mode. She takes her time to “smell the roses” and everything else. This makes for a very pleasant, though slow, walk. I call it good walking. She gets to explore a huge variety of scents and she doesn’t “pull” hard or unexpectedly. This is idle web surfing or browsing the stacks of the library or wandering through MOMA, the Metropolitan Art Museum, or the Louvre.
The “olfactory pulling” mode is an entirely different thing. Here, she is trying desperately to track down whatever it is she’s tracking before it gets away! She imagines (I imagine) that her very life depends on finding this particular prey (even though she is well-fed; and even though, in this mode, she shows zero interest in the treats I’ve brought along). Conversely, in the “olfactory exploratory” mode, she’s quite happy to stop for treats every few yards.
This morning, we never found the “prey” she was after, but she did her business and, since she was wantonly pulling, I took her back inside in short order and set out to catch up with Bailey and my wife. Before long, I saw them up ahead and soon closed the gap. Having both hands free allowed me to take many more pictures than I usually do when I take Sadie on a walk.
The sky, like Sadie, has many moods, even in the San Diego area. This morning, the sky couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether to be sunny or cloudy. I don’t mind the mood swings. It provides some interesting contrasts.
Bailey behaved pretty well though he still gets very vocal and agitated when any of the numerous neighborhood dogs begin to bark. He’s much like the Internet Guy (and, let’s face it, it’s almost always a guy) who has to comment on every single post. But the new leash arrangement worked well and didn’t cause any falls or prolonged pulls.
Bailey does, however, look rather baleful about wearing the extra equipment. What do you think?
And while on the topic of reading the minds of dogs, I did wonder if something like the following crossed Sadie’s mind this morning. She saw Bailey get fitted with the leash and the over-the-snout attachment. I put the regular leash on Sadie. Then, Sadie saw Wendy and Bailey walk out ahead and instead of following them, she immediately turned off in a different direction. Presumably, she caught a whiff of the scent she felt obligated to follow.
But I also wondered if she was partly avoiding the situation from two days earlier wherein Wendy and I both walked one dog, each of which had the additional lead on the snout–which ultimately led to my fall. Maybe Sadie wanted “nothing to do” with having that type of leash on.
I have observed that kind of behavior in humans. Perhaps you can think of a few examples even from your own experience? Sadie certainly has a kind of metacognition that she seems to use on occasion. When she begins to explore something she knows from experience I do not want her to explore (e.g., a cigarette butt or an animal carcass), she herself moves quickly away from the tempting stimulus seemingly with no prompting from me. It’s as though she realizes she’ll be more comfortable not being in conflict.
I’ll be interested to see how she reacts tomorrow or tonight when I again try the two-lead leash.
Meanwhile, enjoy the play of light on the flowers. You can see in this sequence that I “followed the scent” of the brightly lit fan palm tree to get a closer view. Getting a “closer view” is what Sadie does when she follows a scent. I wish to get more details in the visual domain whereas Sadie wants to get more detail in the olfactory domain.
Sometimes, I scan my visual field for something interesting to photograph (explore in more detail) and sometimes, I’m fixated on a particular “target” and looking for the right framing, lighting conditions, or angle. I enjoy sometimes getting to a particular picture, but I also enjoy the process of getting to the picture that pleases. I imagine it’s the same with Sadie. She’s quite happy to find a lizard or squirrel or rabbit, but she’s also happy to search for prey, particularly in promising conditions such as there being a strong scent or having wet ground to search for scents.
Plans?
Some management consultings will tell you that plans are seldom right but that planning–that is the real gold.
Website design is important. Let there be no mistake about that. That is an interesting and fascinating topic in its own right. What I am talking about though is much broader. You can have a very cool looking website; you can make it easy to navigate within that web site, but still make your overall customer experience totally SUCK! In fact, that seems to be pretty much the norm.
I am a customer. Let’s say I want to buy a pen on-line. Is it really necessary for me to create an account? Do I have to give you my e-mail and make up a user name? I can just about guarantee that the first N names I choose will already be taken. So I end up with some impossible to recall username like, PTERESWOODIRON465. Sure, I will write it down. Along with 43,235,309 OTHER user names I have. Then, of course, I need a password. Of course, I could make up something simple and easy to remember like PEN or even PENPASSWORD. How secure is that? Or, I could pick a password that I use on other sites. Even worse. Or, I can make up something really hard to crack and marginally hard to remember like trumpetpalmcandle. But I’ll probably still have to write it down because it will be YEARS before I go your site to buy another pen. Meanwhile, if you really suck, you are going to ask for demographic information as well.
Now, before we get stuck in the details of what the screen looks like that asks me for this information and whether to use a scroll down list for the state name, can we go back and ask WHY I really need an “account” to order a frigging pen? Of course, the dream of the site owners is that once I have an account and keep getting unsolicited email from them about all the wonderful deals they have on pens, I will be unable to control myself and buy another pen several times a day. NOT LIKELY! Extremely Unlikely, in fact. Here is my overwhelmingly normal pen buying behavior. I DON’T. I go stay at the Motel Six where they leave the light on for me and I take their pen. It doesn’t bother me in the least that it says MOTEL SIX on it. If it writes, I use it. This is not going to change because of your wonderful website design even if it is relatively simple to put in my username and password and then give the details of my upbringing. What I AM going to do is get so PO’d at the idea of yet another web account that I am not going to buy a pen at your site at all. I am going to go to Amazon where I already have an account and buy it there. If I’m really PO’d, I may even tell my friends what an idiotic company PEN INC (fictional name, I think) is for forcing me to create an account just to buy a pen for my nephew’s birthday. Even sadder is the fact that no-one in PEN INC will ever have the slightest idea that they not only lost a sale but created a really bad customer experience. — !PSI
Update addendum on Saturday, Sept. 20th, 2025.
As bad as is the customer experience outlined above, the Democratic Party has seemed to view that as a challenge goal: can we make something even worse. And–yes, they have succeeded! Don’t get me wrong; I generally do vote Democrat and I definitely don’t vote Nazi and I continue to contribute money, but certainly not because of the view that their “contributions consultants” apparently have of me. First, there is the sheer volume of requests which come through every conceivable crack in my electronic armor. Second, there is the degree of stupidity which they assign to me. E-mails are typically headlined with world-shattering news and any set of three e-mails will have at least five contradictions: “John Roberts destroys Trump!” “John Roberts is in Trump’s pocket!” “John Roberts resigns!” “John Roberts becomes POTUS!” etc. None of these headlines are true. It’s click-bait pure and simple. What they really want is money. Okay. Campaigns do take money. But don’t treat your users like idiots who will believe that all it takes is a five dollar contribution to take down the Trumputin Misadministration. It will take money but it will also take planning, coordination, and mutual trust. None of these is enhanced by scattershot e-mail, overblown rhetoric, and bad logic. If I wanted that, I’d be contributing to the Not-See Party (formerly known as the GOP).
Political parties may be the worst offenders, but they are not the only ones. On-line so-called news services are often nearly as bad. When I learned the very little I know about journalism, a headline was supposed to be constructed to inform the reader and the first paragraph of the article was supposed to fill in the most important facts. The rest of the article was meant to include more information in case the reader was particularly interested in that article. Instead, my so-called news feeds are filled with click bait headlines such as: Scientists confirm Life on Mars…; Gerontologists prove that immortality is simply…; Every Billionaire in America knows this simple trick…. And that’s it. That’s all you learn from the headline. If you pay to go behind the firewall and wade through the slog of pop-up ads and read the entire article, you will discover that the headlines should have been: Scientists confirm Life on Mars may be hard to find evidence of; Gerontologists prove that immortality is simply not feasible at this time; Every Billionaire in America knows this simple trick–don’t waste your time with on-line click bait.
Of course, the details of an e-mail or a website or a message make a difference to customer experience, but if everything you do is geared toward milking as much money from your user right now with no regard to what it means to your longer term relationship or credibility, your customer experience will suck even if you have a nice font and a good layout.
Donnie Dump arrived first. He sniffed. He sighed. The place stunk. He took a deep breath and ambled over to the plain wooden door with the brass numbers ‘4’ and ‘2’ glued on at a slight angle. The door looked to be plywood.
He dug around in the front right pocket of his too-tight Lee’s and found the crumpled piece of paper. He uncrumpled it. He nodded and mumbled: “Yep. This is the place.” He re-crumpled the paper and jammed it back into his pocked. Then, he turned the cheap brass knob and pushed. The door opened into a room without light. “Crap. I’m the first one here.”
Donnie fumbled around the door jamb for a light switch and flipped one. He said, “Let there be light.” And, there was light. A row of florescent lights flickered on to reveal a small arc of cheap chairs. In a corner of the smallish room, a vending machine offered a variety of salty and sugary snacks.
Donnie hated being late. But he hated being early even more. Yet, here he was. Early. The first one here. He thought, How the hell was I supposed to know traffic would be so light. The truth was traffic was always “unusually” light now, but he hadn’t yet connected the dots; he hadn’t noticed nor had he realized how that fact related to his own ‘second career’ as he often called it.
AI generated image.
Just then, he heard a noise and spun quickly to see another obese, masked marvel of manhood who raised a hand to him and said, “Hey. AA?”
Donnie nodded and began to regret having agreed to come. His wife Maggie had been insistent. Maggie the Naggie, he thought. She should just mind her own damned business. “I don’t need fixing!” He had told her.
She had countered, “I’m not saying you need fixing. But you’re just—understandably stressed. It’s not an easy job.”
Donnie now glanced at his watch. He could see several other guys out in the hallway. He was glad to see half of them were at least as old as he was. It was hard work chasing down folks trying to run away from you. He thought: True, the numbers and the weaponry made it safe enough but so is a carnival ride and they’re plenty scary too. But it’s whacking ‘em on the head I really get off on. Head wounds bleed a lot. The thought that they might be stupid the rest of their life from that one blow, or have a part of their body paralyzed or weakened. That was power. I like the taste. And, when the opportunity comes up, I’ll take whatever the hell I want. What’s everyone staring at me like that for?
Everyone had been seated for awhile and had been taking turns jabbering on about something or other. The so-called “Facilitator” had just said something to him. But what? That’s the question. Everyone’s staring at me.
Donnie stammered: “Sorry, what was the question?”
The facilitator faked a smile and said in a pleasant voice that Donnie just knew had to be rehearsed: “Have you experienced any unusual symptoms since joining NICE?”
Donnie shook his head and thought: Symptoms sound like I’m some kind of psycho or something. Aloud, he said, “No, nothing. No unusual symptoms. Like what?”
The F-man shrugged and said, “Like drinking more alcohol than you used to or using more pot or bad dreams. Anything.”
Donnie shook his head. Maybe I shook it too hard. This is weird. No wonder Maggie wanted me to come. This is chick stuff. Feelings and that crap. I wish I knew what the other guys said. Doesn’t matter. They can’t prove what I think or what I did. We’re all masked. I can hold my liquor just fine. Who cares? It’s good to celebrate our victories. Kids. Some of them look like kids but so what? They’re criminals at heart. And not America citizens. Not because some liberals wrote it into a Constitution. Not with skin that dark. Everyone’s staring at me again. I want my assault rifle. Why is everyone staring at me?
Donnie said, “Look, I feel fine. I like beer. So what? I do my job. I’m only here because my wife insisted. Well, that won’t matter much longer. Everybody knows it works better when women are property and we stop pretending their people with their own ideas. Go on to the next guy.”
The meeting only lasted an hour but to Donnie, it seemed like a lifetime of boredom.
It was late when Donnie got back home from the meeting and the post-meeting meeting at the “NICE GUY TAVERN.” Maggie had fallen asleep in her bathrobe staring at the boob tube. The twins must be asleep, he thought.
I don’t drink too much. I just want to feel good.
Donnie didn’t see anything wrong with that. But he did see something wrong with his damned wife being asleep when he got home. He didn’t exactly shout, but he did want to be heard over the sound of the frigging TV and he did want to wake her up and he had been drinking so his “Hey!” Sounded a lot more like: “HEY! Wake the hell up, Bitch!”
Maggie sat up and said, “Hey, Donnie. How was the meeting? I didn’t realize it would run so long. Was it fun?”
Donnie was already pouring himself a few fingers of Jack D. He bolted it down in one gulp before turning back toward Maggie and snarling in a soprano of swishy sarcasm, “Was it fun? Was it fun? Did you boys have fun talking about your frigging feelings?” He switched to his own voice and added, “No, it wasn’t fun! It was boringand useless just like you knew it would be. Do me a favor. Next time you get a brilliant idea, just keep it to yourself. I don’t drink too much. End of story.”
Maggie didn’t really agree, but she bit her lip to keep from…saying anything she’d regret.
Meanwhile, Donnie was pouring himself yet another Jack D but only got two fingers’ worth. He yelled, “What the hell? Drink your own damned drinks! Don’t drink my good whiskey! Ain’t lady-like anyway! Don’t you have some sprizzer chicker drinker? Leave mine alone! Now, I’m out of Jack!”
At the moment Donnie said that, he was not, in fact, out of Jack. There was another fifth, unopened, staring right at him from the edge of the countertop. The fifth stood just a little too close to the edge. It should have known better but it didn’t know better because, first, it was filled with booze and secondly, it was only a bottle and didn’t really know much of anything.
In any case, when Donnie staggered and stumbled into the counter top, his elbow toppled the bottle onto the hard tile of the kitchen. Maggie and Donnie didn’t own any pets and the twins were asleep, so when the bottle shattered into smithereens, Donnie could see no-one to blame but Maggie. His subsequent screaming did manage to wake the twins who toddled out to the kitchen in a daze to see what all the commotion was about.
Maggie saw them toddling forward in their PJs and yelled at them to go back to bed, but not before each of them managed to step on several broken shards. Maggie was horrified to see the blood of her darling toddlers mixing with the stinging whiskey. The toddlers were none too happy either. Their pain and confusion were exacerbated by the increased tension they had felt at home ever since Donnie joined NICE.
Tears streamed down Maggie’s cheeks. She shook her head and stared at her husband—a man whom she had once loved. She could see that he was smiling and that the smile was genuine. It was the happiest she’d seen him since he had started working at NICE. She gripped the her elbows with her hands, knowing she should get her kids and fix them, but suddenly, she didn’t know how. She just cried silently wondering what had happened to the nice man who used to live inside Donnie’s skin.
Apparently, everyone else knew I was supposed to go head first.
The instructions, however, were far from clear.
And, although I didn’t know much, four billion years of evolution had taught me to take a few things rather seriously—such as: “Gravity is real!” And: “Don’t dive hard onto something head first.” So, the vague instruction to come out head first made no sense.
I considered whether feet first seemed a sensible option. I decided “yes” but only for someone with a well-developed set of quads and a months of practice in balancing. Otherwise, a being such as myself would simply topple over and smash their head anyway.
Thinking about it as best I could, coming out butt first seemed by far the most sensible way to enter this world.
The only problem was that I didn’t fit that way. So—I was at odds with authority figures such as my mother and her doctors before I was even born.
After 72 hours of labor, I finally let them win that argument and came out head first.
All of us could have been saved a lot of time and effort had the instructions been clearer to start with.
Is that why I ended up with a career in “Human-Computer Interaction” AKA “Human Factors” AKA “User Experience”?
Probably not.
More likely, it has something to do with the agony of the feet.
I inherited “flat feet” and that has been something of a life-long inconvenience. For example, beneath my ankle is another bone that sticks out much more than it does for other people. That bone often rubs against the side of my shoes and boots and that causes a source of both bruises and blisters. The lack of a working arch also contributes to my never being able to jump very well. In high school, when I was very fit, I was capable of jumping up high enough to touch the bottom of a basketball net. On my best days.
I never got close to being able to jump and touch the rim, let alone being able to dunk the ball.
Nonetheless, I spent many years of enjoyment while on my feet—playing basketball, tennis, golf, table tennis, football, baseball, softball, racquetball, running, and walking. Running speed was never a strong point but I do have good eye-hand coordination and know how to concentrate and adjust my play to the opponent(s). As I sometimes like to say, I’be been violating expectations since 1945. I’ve enjoyed every sport I’ve ever tried. I’ve also seen many people with much more natural talent than I have enjoy sports less. That’s one reason I wrote “The Winning Weekend Warrior” which discusses the “mental game”; that is, “Sports Psychology.”
I’ve also discovered some things about mitigating the negative impact of the feet I was born with.
For one thing, I never buy shoes without trying them on.
Another surprise is that all hard surfaces are not equally damaging. A basketball floor, a dirt track, an asphalt road, concrete, and steel all seem pretty damned hard. But it turns out that running on concrete sidewalks is much harder on my arches (and shins) than running on asphalt. It also turns out that standing still for a half hour is harder on my arches than is walking for an hour.
I’ve learned a number of obvious things like: losing weight helps a lot! Strengthening the legs helps. Having good supportive shoes helps. Wearing cushy sox helps. Avoid (when possible) walking on stone, concrete, or metal.
I’ve tried a number of supplements too. For me, the ones that seem to help slightly are: turmeric, ginger, and sour cherries. I find that B12 seems to worsen joint pain. Elevation seems to help and so does ice. Of course, the trade-off is that ice and elevation are typically things that limit mobility.
I also use acetaminophen. I also use arnica gel which seems to help.
If there’s a real “solution” though, I haven’t found it. I was born with a bad design.
Everyone is.
Life is not, never was, and never will be about a “perfect design.” The environment keeps changing and organisms who adapt to the environment are always changing. That happens at the cellular level, the learning/behavioral level, and on a longer time scale, at the evolutionary level.
Not only that: change begets change. If, in response to one change in the environment, you make one adjustment, you might cause another problem. It’s the same with the design of physical artifacts, software systems, user interfaces, social systems, games, strategies, tactics, poetry, stories…
One can use knowledge to shrink a design space. Of course, there is always the chance that by shrinking the space, you are deleting the part of the space that has the very best designs. It took evolution billions of years to create multicellular organisms. Our own human bodies have a large variety of different types of cells. Within many of those types there are sub-types and sub-sub types.
Even within a sub-sub type, no two cells are precisely identical. They have different histories and they have different environments.
The feet that are “bad” are only “bad” in a certain set of circumstances. I’m sure that there’s some circumstance in which it’s better to have flat feet and pronated ankles. For example, it’s probably only a matter of time before there’s a top-rated “reality TV” show dedicated to the implications of odd body parts. That would be a show I would get to try out for because of my feet.
Recently, I got hearing aids. That’s a whole different story for another time, but they fit quite snugly and comfortably behind my ears. But we’ve all seen people who look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine. What do they do about hearing aids? Do they need a different type? Do they tape them behind their ears? What would be the best genre for the show about unusual feet or ears? Doctor Odds? Opera? Shure-Vivor? America’s Got Metatarsals?
Needless to say, we would have to make it extremely competitive and a little bit cruel. Maybe people with broken feet could run a race and the winner would live for another week and face a greater challenge the following week. The whole thing would be set in someplace chosen to be especially challenging for those with sore feet; e.g., uneven cobblestones, slippery concrete, on fallen tree trunks. Gorse, of course. Background music would be composed to add to the drama. Or, if the budget doesn’t permit human composers, we could ask an AI system to copy some Puccini or Bizet and change it just enough not be sued for copyright infringement.
The formula importunes for interviews. They need to be short, shallow, but filled with rage or tears. “So John, when did you first learn that your feet were…what is the PC term here?…Different? Weird? Horrific?” Before each competition, the contestants would be introduced with fireworks and flashing lights along with extremely loud and echoing words of exaggeration. We should get the same kind of introduction once reserved only for “Professional Wrestling” but now common in introducing contestants in Golf and Tennis. Why not insanely dramatic foot-offs in “America’s Got Metatarsals!”
It might be a bit expensive, but we can always cut costs to the bone. And then, just keep cutting!Who even needs real contestants? They can all be CGI. That, in turn, means there’s no need to limit contestants to the kinds of variations that actually occur. Flat feet? Okay. We’ve all heard about that. But how about flatiron feet? Elephant feet? Eagle feet! Grizzly bear paws! Duck-billed platypus feet! Amoebic pseudopods! Insect legs with pollen sacs!
Why stop there? Mice with elephant ears! Elephants with mouse ears! Whales stalking their prey on the Savannah, cleverly camouflaged in the tall yellow grass!Tigers leaping on Great White Sharks! It’s no more out of place than putting a thoughtless human being in a safari hunt And, the best part of CGI players is that we can interview them regardless of species and regardless of their native language. At long last, we can entertain ourselves to death while the actual ecosystem around us is being destroyed by the greediest members of the greediest species who ever existed.
What happens when greed exceeds needs and vital functions of society are left to the unfit, untrained, uncaring, uncouth, criminals? They’ll be about as effective as the Whales of the Serengeti and the Elephant-Eared Mice of Siberia.
Forty percent. That’s a wonderful number. Most people have a sense of what that means. It’s a large percentage but it’s not quite a majority. If you are a Major League Baseball slugger and you get a hit 40% of the time, that’s a lot! That puts you in rare company.
So, when President Mush Melon says forty percent of Medicare calls are fraudulent, that’s a lot! You quite understandably think: What’s wrong with an organization that deals so badly with fraud that 40% of the calls are fraudulent?
And, you might also quite understandably think: What’s wrong with so many of my fellow Americans? Forty percent of them try to cheat the medicare system!
But you know what? It was a lie. It wasn’t a hitter like Ted Williams or Ty Cobb or Aaron Judge. Not at all. It was instead someone who wouldn’t even make the farm team because they were batting worse than .001
Maybe there’s something special about baseball. Well, there is of course. There’s something special about everything. But it isn’t that there’s a big difference between 40% and less than 1%. That kind of difference is important almost all the time.
Let’s say you work for a company and you are reasonably satisfied with your job. Then, one day, you get a call from a recruiter who says:
“Say! Instead of working for the ABC company, we’d like you to come work at the XYZ company. Furthermore, we are offering you a 40% pay raise! What do you say?”
Presumably, you’d do some research, but you’d likely end up accepting the offer. Now imagine that you quit your old job, move across town, say goodbye to your old friends, start your take your new job and then you discover that you actually got less than a 1% raise. Would you just say, “Oh, well any raise is good.”? Maybe, but I doubt it. Most of us would be very angry to leave our job and our work colleagues under false pretenses.
Let’s take another example. Your “friend” will pay you ten million dollars to play Russian Roulette once. He shows you twenty ‘six-shooters’. He tells you (and you verify) that only one of the twenty six-shooters has any ammo in it. That one has one bullet in the cylinder. You’ll be blind folded and then choose one gun, spin the cartridge, put the muzzle to your head and pull the trigger once. If you live, you get ten million dollars. You might think of all the things you could be you and your family for ten million dollars.
You choose to play. But then, your “friend” loads every gun with two or three bullets. Are you still going to play? Would you be upset that he misrepresented your odds that blatantly?
Please understand that these are not “innocent mistakes” or “slight exaggerations.” That is the difference between 39% and 40%, not between 40% and less than one per cent. To make that kind of mistake, you need to have evil intent or suffer from gross incompetence.
Not an actual photo from hell but an AI-generated image.
But this President Mush Melon isn’t just someone setting out to destroy the American government and the confidence of people (though some snowflake liberals would say that’s quite bad enough). No, he’s also in charge of cars that are supposed to drive themselves. Would you want someone who has evil intent to be building cars that drive themselves? Oh, maybe he’s just grossly incompetent. Well—same question: Would you want someone grossly incompetent to be building cars that drive themselves? Oh, by the way, this same someone can download new software so that your car behaves differently!
No worries! The Cybertruck only has a top speed of 130 miles per hour and only weighs between 6600 and 10,000 pounds, so what could possibly go wrong? It’s not as though it could run over you in your driveway. Over and over and over and over.
AI-generated to the following prompt (keep in mind, AI technology is supposed to be driving your self-driving car). “A Tesla Cybertruck that is a dumpster fire”
But wait! There’s more! President Mush Melon also happens to own a company that controls communications satellites used for—-among other things—-war fighting and voting. No problems there, right? It’s all okay so long as there’s no evil intent or gross incompetence.
But wait! There’s more! The Mush Melon also happens to control a company that shoots missiles out over your head. And, the best part is—they never unexpectedly explode! Sure, they suffer from catastrophic unscheduled disassembly. But we’ve all had days like that.
Well, okay, sure there’s some danger having someone in charge of missiles when we know that person lies or suffers from massive incompetence, but hey—at least it’s not a pizza shop, right? You’d know a bad pizza soon after you bought it no matter how many lies the cook told you.
On the other hand, it might be some time before you see the impact of your self-driving truck under someone else’s control, or the results of cutting off crucial communications, or the havoc caused by missiles exploding—excuse me—-rapidly disassembling— at unscheduled times.
Though on the other hand, you might feel this is all worth it because, after all, this person makes billions and billions of dollars a year and therefore provides a huge influx of cash to the U.S. Treasure to the tune of nearly…
Wait…
Nothing? Nothing? Are you kidding? The supposedly richest man in the world pays zero income tax.
But he gives huge contributions of money to a Presidential candidate who then drops all the cases about Mush Melon’s frauds?
The Melon and the Felon: A marriage made in heaven. What’s a good name for the couple? I’m thinking just MF for short. We could call the Felon by 47 but what’s a special number of the Melon? Oh, there’s the form he is supposed to submit to Congress — FS-86. So, I suppose they could go by 8647 or 4786.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A blacksmith wields a large hammer. He strikes down on an anvil. The anvil is composed of people.”
There is no simple or universal answer to when “The Stone Age”, “The Bronze Age,” and “The Iron Age” occurred. The timing varied widely depending on the region. These names refer to the types of materials used for tools. More recently, many people refer to the “Industrial Age” or the “Industrial Revolution” and the “Computer Age” or the “Computer Revolution.”
Now, we see humanity entering a new age, perhaps best referred to as “The Irony Age.” At least in The United States of America, we are well into “The Irony Age” though we are not the only such country. I use the term “The Irony Age” to refer to an age where people’s behavior, individually and collectively, is determined by the informational world they inhabit rather than the real world in which they live.
I use the word “determined” and not the word “influenced.” Words, images, and stories have always influenced human behavior. Indeed, this kind of influence exists in the non-human world as well. The social behavior of ants depends on chemical signaling. Bees that have foraged and found sources of pollen and nectar “dance” for other bees so as to describe the size, contents, and location of these sources for other foraging workers.
Words can be used, not only to influence, direct, teach, or share but also to mislead and control. This is nothing new, but now the conditions are right for “The Age of Irony” in which these misleading communications actually override reality. Examples of such misleading communications abound.
Politically, we can see The Age of Irony in the names of countries. The official name of North Korea, for instance, in not “The Totalitarian Dictatorship of Kim Jong-Un” but is rather “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” In reality it is not a republic; it is not a country for the people and it is not at all democratic.
It is not only in the political realm that we find such ironies. People have been touting “miracle cures” my entire life and before. Various “tonics” have been sold by charlatans throughout the history of America. They often contained opium, tobacco, alcohol, and other noxious substances. Sometimes, people would fall for it and spend money on something that would supposedly fix a malady (or even every malady) and it would make them sicker. There has always been deception. Three things in modern society contribute to making it “The Age of Irony” and not just an age that contains some irony.
First, most people most of the time are not narcissistic sociopaths. Most people most of the time are decent and tell the truth. Studies show that people are particularly likely to be ethical and fair to those with whom they are in direct contact. (See, for instance, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely). If you are at a face to face meeting, for instance, and a tray of cookies gets passed around, there are very few people who will immediately grab all the cookies for themselves. As the physical distance grows and the bad behavior becomes more abstract, however, more people are willing to cheat a little and some few people will cheat as much as they can.
In the past, almost all of our interactions were fairly local. Charlatans who sold “miracle cures” tended to be itinerant. If they stayed too long in one place, they were likely to be “run out of town on a rail” (See, for instance, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain). Now, however, false cures are sold via podcasts, television, and social media. In The Age of Irony, a large proportion of our purchases are done remotely and the people who sell us nostrums are much harder to bring to justice. Equally importantly, it’s much easier for them to “live with” their evil deeds because they don’t have to face social consequences—they don’t know or see the people harmed by their lies. So, the first thing that contributes to making this The Irony Age is distance. Increased distanced means decreased accountability both legally and socially.
The second major reason that America is entering “The Irony Age” is the ubiquity and power of entertainment. This is partly a side-effect of increased prosperity. Increased prosperity means that people have more time to be entertained. In addition, television, for instance, now shows images that are larger, in color, and in higher definition. Perhaps more importantly, there are many more channels. Advertising is more targeted. And, a greater proportion of live TV time is advertising time.
More recently, podcasting, time on social media, and gaming are also more compelling and more targeted. People are spending less time in face to face interaction and more time is spent in remote interaction.
The pacing of entertainment is also changing. People are spending more time “channel surfing” and interacting in short sequences like chat. This means long, thoughtful discussions are relatively rare while clever one-liners and short videos are relatively more predominant.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A very large room is filled with robots typing on computers. Hung from the ceiling is a very large dollar sign.”)
While there have always been unusually talented storytellers and orators, now science has formalized these talents and made them essentially available to anyone with a huge amount of money. An extremely wealthy individual no longer needs to be clever or charismatic in order to influence people. He or she can pay for the expertise to make them appear clever and charismatic. Taken together, these trends mean that the tools to manipulate people are generally much more powerful than before.
There is also a potential counter-trend. People are more educated than they were hundreds of years ago. In theory, this should enable them to be critical thinkers and be less likely to believe a lie. In most cases, however, people do not use their education and intelligence to decide whether to believe something or someone but instead use their education and intelligence to defend their current beliefs whatever they may be. They come to view themselves and their “team” as being under “attack” when a belief is questioned and they view their role as to use their brain to defend their team—not to question whether they are on the right team.
The third trend is the self-reinforcing vicious cycle of wealth, greed, and power. This has enabled—some would say guaranteed—that the most sociopathic, greedy, self-centered people on the entire planet now control weapons, information and entertainment channels, and the wealth. It isn’t merely a random set of people in control—it’s largely the very worse people in control. Just to take one example, there are many hundreds of local radio and stations, newspapers, and publishers. But they are not independent of each other. They are controlled by a few major companies. The same applies to food and banking. Your experience is that you go to the grocery store and see hundreds of brands. They look different. They taste different. They are advertised to appeal to different groups. But, behind the scenes, there are a ten companies that control things. https://www.businessinsider.com/10-companies-control-the-food-industry-2016-9?op=1
Briefly, here are a list of some of the major Ironies which are prevalent in the attempted destruction of America.
Many people voted they way they did because the slogan “Make America Great Again” resonated with their love of America and they desired to make it great again. In reality, America, though far from perfect, was already great and Putin’s plans are aimed at making America much worse, not better. Plans are now being implemented to make nearly every aspect of America worse.
Many people voted the way they did because they thought they were voting for a “strong leader” who would do whatever it took to put America first. In reality, that “leader” is extremely cowardly and has been his entire life. He was so cowardly, he begged his daddy to bribe doctors so he could avoid military service. He has a long record of forcing himself on women because he’s too cowardly to risk being rejected. He’s so cowardly, he can’t even publicly tell the truth about his height and weight or the status of his mental faculties. He’s so cowardly, he can’t even admit to a single mistake.
Many people voted the way they did because they thought their candidate and his party were better for the economy. What’s the evidence of that? The party and the candidate claim to be better. Historical fact shows quite the opposite. But neither party has done such a remarkably bad job with economy as what we are now witnessing.
(AI-generated image to the prompt: “A ghost town with tumbleweed. Nothing grows. A sign proclaims: ‘Golden Prosperity Estates’.”)
Many people voted the way they did because they thought their candidate would restore law and order. Why? Because they said so. What actually happens when you vote in a serial rapist who is also a convicted felon, a fraud, and a tax cheat? He pardons traitors who viciously attacked police and he attacks judges who do not agree with him and ignores the rule of law and the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Many people voted the way they did because they were sick of the government telling them what to do. Instead, they voted for less regulation and more freedom. The reality is that while the current Misadministration is trying to reduce regulations on air quality, water quality, and food quality, they are also trying to institute regulations on whom you can love, what you can do with your own body, what you can say, whether and how you can worship, what you can read, and whom you can protest against.
Many people voted as they voted because they bought the story that illegal immigrants were a “drain” on the economy. The truth is that many such immigrants were contributing to the economy including paying taxes and social security and were unable to reap many of the benefits of citizens. Moreover, far from being disproportionally criminal, immigrants were less likely to be criminals than natural born US citizens.
Many people voted as they voted because they specifically thought a more complete wall and more agents at the border would keep immigrants out. In fact, walls are much more effective at keeping people in a country against their will than keeping people out against their will. If the Misadministration is successful in destroying the National Parks, the Economy, and the Rule of Law, a wall won’t be necessary at all to keep people out. No-one will want to come. But it can be quite useful in keeping people in. On the US side of the border, the military can be deployed along with machine guns, land mines, and search lights. The Berlin Wall wasn’t put up by East Germany to keep West Germans from coming into East Germany. It was built to keep the East Germans from fleeing the repressive and ineffective government of East Germany. That’s the real reason Putin wants walls around America—to keep American citizens in.
(AI generated image to the prompt: A large wall with many signs. Signs read: “Up is Down” “Good is Bad” “Power is Truth” “Truth is a Lie.” “Lies are truth” “Life is Death”)
In The Ironic Age, the Ironies don’t stop with the fact that many people voted as they did but got the exact opposite of what they voted for. It isn’t turtles all the way down. In The Ironic Age, it’s ironies all the way down.
Some people continue to “like” the current misadministration and think that by showing loyalty to it, they are helping their “hero.” In fact, supporting him in his bad policies and decisions is the very worst thing for him as well as for the country. It’s precisely like “helping” a drug addict by giving him heroin. Such an action doesn’t “satisfy” the addict. It just increases their tolerance for the drug and makes them want even more. It’s the same with narcissistic sociopaths. Telling them their ideas are wonderful no matter how stupid and counter-productive they are doesn’t help the person at all. It just encourages them to be more stupid and disconnected from the actual results. It won’t “moderate” or “reform” him any more than agreeing with a spousal abuser will make them less likely to abuse you in the future.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A doctor in a white coat tosses a bottle of vodka to a ragged drunk lying in the gutter.”)
As I said, it’s ironies all the way down. President Mush and his side-kick know that they are “smart enough” to view everyone else as a tool. To them, people who have actual friends, have empathy, or love? Those are fools. What they fail to see, however, is that Putin is like them. He doesn’t seem them as peers at all. To him, they are the tools. They are his fools. Once he achieves his goals about dividing and destroying America, they will have served their purpose and he will take over the reins. Apparently, they are too busy slaking their greed to have noticed what has happened to the enablers of Stalin and Putin once they become too successful.
Perhaps the most fundamental irony of all is that even Putin cannot win. Narcissistic sociopaths die too. They live their entire lives fundamentally disconnected from true love and friendship. Not only are their days on earth numbered as individuals—just like everyone else—they have traded in the joys of life for a grim fight that ends in their own destruction.
Cancer always loses in the end. Yes, of course, cancer causes destruction and even death. So, it can cause others to lose, but cancer itself always loses.
petersironwood 