“As you can see, Captain Kirk is a highly sensitive and emotional person. I believe he has lost the capacity for rational decision.” – Star Trek (TOS)
I fired my dermatologist. Too many rash decisions.
Back several decades ago when I had more hair on my head than on my back and ears, I read an article about Nucor Steel™ and how they made decisions. I don’t remember it, and after 20 seconds of looking I couldn’t find it.
That doesn’t make a difference, because I said so. At the point in company history when the article was written, Nucor© was experiencing a resurgence in growth and profitability. It was almost like they were steeling.
One of the things that surprised me was the culture of humility at the company. One of the executives made the comment that, if they did everything right, they would get just over 50% of their decisions right. That’s flip-a-coin level of accuracy, yet the company felt that was an excellent result.
Nucor© was right. Decision making isn’t easy.
Part of the reason is that decisions are, mostly, made in a fog of uncertainty. Except for my hairline, the future is uncertain. If Jerry Seinfeld would have told me in 1988 that experts said that the Soviet Union would have dissolved completely by 1992, I would have said right back to him, “Who aaaare these people?”
I tried to write poetry about the Seinfeld television show, but I could never get past the first Costanza.
A few people actually did predict the Soviet collapse, but most people viewed the Soviets as an unstoppable force. If you would have asked the average Joe in 1988 if the Soviets were more likely to:
- produce a space robot that would claim Mars as rightful Russian territory and then rip Rocky Balboa in half while playing the Soviet national anthem out of speakers tastefully mounted on its butt, or,
- collapse into a pile of wet borscht,
the average man on the street would have stored up WD-40® to properly welcome their new Soviet Robot Overlords with appropriate levels of lubrication.
When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, they had lost their national pride, and were so tied up in internal dissension that they tore themselves apart.
Huh. History may not repeat. I wonder if it rhymes? Corollary: does Joe regret the Afghanistan pullout as much as he regrets the pullout that led to Hunter?
Discuss. Difficulty adder: PG-13.
Hunter Biden: “Paying taxes is like smoking crack. I can quit anytime I want to.”
But the point of this digression was to show that decisions are hard because the future is uncertain, especially if you run out of CCP members to “buy” Hunter Biden’s paintings. Seriously, someone should tell the Biden family that corruption is not a race.
Nucor™ showed courage in admitting that nearly half of the time, making a good decision was something they didn’t do. Most people put far too much stock in their ability to predict the future of a world that can turn upside down faster than a car driven by a Kennedy.
Reality has a way of making decisions difficult. But it gets worse. Decisions are hard even when the only uncertainty is the future. But what happens when there are groups that are actively attempting to influence you?
I recall the war in Bosnia. Why was there a war in Bosnia? Because the Soviets tried to mash multiple ethnicities together in a region that had been using Archdukes for clay pigeons since 1914. Since the Soviet Union was based on mashing together the jet engine from a MiG-21PF with a T-34/76 tank chassis and calling it a “recreational vehicle” mashing together people that have hated each other since Hadrian was building walls made sense to them. Making the Balkans Soviet Stronk!
Please don’t ask about the mileage it gets. And don’t ask to see the Sport Edition.
I bring up Bosnia not to make jokes, but to recall a time when propaganda worked on me. I recall picking a newspaper (or magazine??) up, and seeing an editorial cartoon. In the cartoon was a soldier holding a dead child. I don’t exactly recall the words underneath, but the idea was that Bosnia kids were being killed, and somehow this was the fault of the United States for not intervening.
I’ll admit, the cartoon won me over. I don’t want kids to die. Where was Bosnia? I could have come close to it on a map, there’s a reason that the CIA recruited me (this is actually true), after all, and it wasn’t only for my flowing locks of golden hair (the hair part isn’t so true).
But why was it so important that the world suddenly cared how I felt about some backward place in the eastern Mediterranean where it seemed that Albanian plumbing was so advanced it seemed to be magic to the Bosnians? Where people fought about (for all I know) who had the better hat?
Because I was being manipulated.
Albania: still better hats than Bosnia. I apologize if this starts a war.
I’m not sure that it matters why I cared, but what I learned from that experience was that I was being manipulated. The easiest way to convince people to do something is to manipulate their emotions. People ultimately make decisions based on . . . emotions.
Car dealers do it. They depend on it for every aspect of their playbook. With a young buyer, they heighten the importance of the decision. “This is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make,” is a line I heard when I was in my 20s.
Then they manage the buyer’s emotions, step by step, until they have a signature on the bottom line. They do this a dozen times a week. Buyers do it a dozen times in their life. Who do you think might be better at this?
In my thirties, I decided to use this evil power for good. When I gave a safety speech at a company lunch (where family was invited) I emphasized my point by giving my speech while holding a baby in my arms. It was one of the employee’s kids. My speech was about the importance of fathers coming home.
It was planned.
Someone came up to me afterward and told me what an impact the speech had on their life, they even remarked what emotions it brought up in them, watching me holding an employee’s baby while I emphasized employee safety and the idea of dads coming home so they could raise their children.
As if it was an accident.
All work and no play makes Jack an indentured servant.
I used emotions to manipulate people that reported to me to keep them alive. Was it just as manipulative as the political cartoon that made me feel something about a European nation that has only visited my blog 20 times?
Yup.
The Albanians have been here 39 times, and they only have one computer in the entire country, and it has a pull start like a lawnmower, so by definition I like them better than the Bosnians. Go, Albania! I hope you get that second toilet soon!
Almost every decision you and I make are based on our emotions. It’s amazing how easy it is to hack those emotions. I’ve tried it. People standing in line to make a copy at the copier?
Try this, “Hey, can I jump ahead? I just want to make a copy.”
Every single person in line in front of you wants to do exactly the same thing. They just want to make a copy.
Yet? Most times if you give them a reason, they can emotionally rationalize letting you cut in front. People (mostly) want to be nice. So, if you can give them a reason to feel good about themselves? They’ll take it.
You should be glad I rarely use my powers for evil.
I auditioned for a part in Hamlet. The director told me to come back when I was older. He thought I’d be a good Yorick.
All of the current debate about the ‘Rona has been couched in just such manipulative terms. “Two weeks to stop the spread!” “We won’t stop this until we have herd immunity!” “Coronavirus? It’s what’s for dinner.” “Kill the Unvaxxinated, they are Unclean! Burn them like witches!” And, to be fair, there has been no shortage of emotional rhetoric from the right, either, but since most people on the Right just want to be left alone, it’s a lot more boring.
In World War II the use of “chaff” was introduced. Small aluminum slivers dropped from aircraft were used to produce false RADAR echoes. The idea was to introduce so many signals that the real signal of where the enemy aircraft was overwhelmed by the false signals of the slowly fluttering and falling strips.
We are in a time and place where information, real information, is attempted to be drowned out by pleasure, distraction, and disinformation. These are the chaff of modern information.
First, pleasure: Let FaceBorg® and Twitttter™ and Instaham© are used to distract our attention online. Top it off with Netflax® and YouTubs™ and Otheronlineservice©? Pleasure and distraction were achieved.
Second, there is a halo of false news. I’m not sure when the peak of real news existed, but I do know it’s not now. People who are speaking the absolute, provable truth are censored from social networks. Why? To reduce signals that compete with the “official” signal, even if that “official” signal is false.
The common consensus truth isn’t the real Truth. It’s been filtered and sanitized and set for our consumption. It’s what we see after they release the chaff.
Based on my sense of humor, my sense of humor says I’m 12, my brain says I’m 28, and my body says, “How is it not dead yet?”
Decisions are how we determine the fate of our lives, yet groups are continually attempting to get into our OODA . OODA stands for the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, not what I call The Mrs. at 2am on a Saturday morning.
In 2021, the attempt to alter observations and increase disorientation is blinding. It’s chaff.
If successful, your decisions are owned by people who want to manipulate you, and not for good.
The solution is a difficult one. It involves examining the data you take in, understanding the source, and really making as careful an observation as you can. You can’t make a decision without emotion, but the best bet is to be as autistic as possible.
Pull your emotions as far away from the decision as you can. Look closely.
Be autistic. The train is fine.
Orient yourself with values and beliefs. Those should change only very slowly in any person’s life. Does your decision match with your values? By the way, you do keep track of those, right?
Then decide. If you’re as good as Nucor™, you’ll get a little more than half of your decisions right.
(Post inspired by 173dVietVet’s comment last week, even though this probably wasn’t what he was looking for.)
You laugh, but that Soviet leaf blower still holds the record, even after 60 years.
BTW, no TV or social media for me for decades. I guess that explains some things.
I still watch movies. As you’ll see tomorrow.
”Based on my sense of humor, my sense of humor says I’m 12, my brain says I’m 28, and my body says, “How is it not dead yet?
I’m at the same place. My reaction to it all is “what the hell happened?”
And…I’m just one of those guys who just wanna mind my own damn business and be left alone. The controllers answer to that is “sorry pal, we don’t work that way.” My counter answer is “try me.”
I at least identify as more than 21.
“Alas, poor Wilder … I knew him well.”
I knew him, Anon: a fellow of infinite dad jokes, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me up on bad days a thousand times
Ha! Thank you.
What a piece of work is a WIlder! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Speaking of autistic…
The jet engines on a tank chassis were used for clearing snow.
Albania has more than two toilets. If by “toilet” you mean an outhouse with a seat. (Most don’t, by the way.)
Nothing good has ever come from Albania, except the inspiration for Dilbert cartoons.
Albania has a lot of toilets spread across their countryside. In bunkers.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181102-the-cold-war-bunkers-that-cover-a-country
Been there, seen hundreds of the concrete mushrooms. No, most of them don’t have toilets. They are toilets.
At the Tirana airport, there are two lines of bunkers at the end of the runway, with the gun ports facing each other.
Hahahahahaha
In Soviet Russia, snow plows you!
Turn off the TV, cut the cord, and don’t read mainstream news. Your decision-making abilities will double overnight. That’s common sense, but hardly anybody will do those things unless we wrap it in a study, call it Science, and broadcast it on The View.
Ohhh, Science Juice!
Pour some ¡Science! on it!
Here’s the science – or some of it – https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/4Args4ElimTV.html#X
streamfortyseven: Do the world a favor and do NOT recommend the Jerry Mander guy on your ratical/ratville link. He is the exemplum primi of a bad case of the classic Dunning-Kruger syndrome of the stupidity of the ignorant.
Apparently, he found a youtube kids channel on how cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs work. Of course, he only spent 2 minutes watching it, which obviously gave him enough insight to completely screw up the physics and physiology of what is involved. Partial list:
1. Everything we see is pixelated. The eyes are a collection of cells (rods and cones), functionally similar to a digital camera.
2. Airy disk size: Physics requires a lens of a minimum diameter to focus a detail of a distant object. The spacing of the pixels are blended into a uniform image because the eye’s lens is too small of a diameter to resolve the pixels, unless sitting much closer to the screen than recommended.
3. The old CRT TVs used a phosphorus with a long persistence that minimized fading before the next sweep.
a. Modern LCD monitors are also slow, to the point of causing ghosting.
4. 30 times a second: No! Modern screens are 60 to 120 screens per second. High-quality motion films in classic theaters were 24 images per second and are uniformly accepted as great.
5. Subliminal: Mander has absolutely no understanding.
Delete this numbskull from your bookmarks and avoid for your and everyone else’s best interest.
Since Mander wrote that back in 1978, when a fast modem had a speed of 110 baud, youtube wasn’t around, and the internet was still known as DarpaNet, and you had to have an AUTOVON number to get on… The rest of your criticism is of like calibre. There’s a lot of good science there, which you might know if you’d ever worked with evoked potentials on EEGs…
Section 10 that your link referred to is less than junk. It is idiotic ramblings.
And yes, I do understand the physics of the matter he is screwing up.
Then get specific with your objections. Refute what is being said, and cite references. Otherwise, you’re just blowing a lot of smoke.
How did you not see the 5 specific points of error in section 10 that were defined in the original comment?
Introductory references for each are:
1. Any text on the rods and cones of the eye. To help with the search: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/rods-and-cones-in-the-eye-omikron.html?product=poster&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4_ToiMPe8gIVha6GCh2vtwn8EAAYAyAAEgIL9PD_BwE
and specifcally 167 cones per mm in article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770065/
2. Airy disk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk Also consider the retina screens by Apple. They are just fine enough to avoid palatalization at normal viewing distance of a phone (close). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display
3. Persistence: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-physics/chapter/applications/ and see the summary in the article “Foundations of Television” at https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/cathode-ray-tube which links to https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780750657211/newnes-guide-to-digital-tv
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube ,see refresh rate.
4. Refresh rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube
5. Subliminal: Too stupid to waste time discussing.
streamfortyseven: How about you providing justification for this quack’s section 10?
” I’m not sure when the peak of real news existed, but I do know it’s not now.”
I would argue that it IS now, it’s just that the real news doesn’t have the distributive reach that fake news has.
But major mass communication vehicles have ALWAYS been fake news, so it’s always been in the gutter. At least now there are a handful of truly independent and objective news sources, making this the peak.
I agree. Many people don’t realize that previous to the internet virtually all publicly dispensed information went through multiple filters dominated by people with a similar mindset. ABC, NBC, CBS were just variations on a theme, and contrary views were non-existent unless you subscribed to some crank’s newsletter. Now I can spend entire days reading kooky theories about 9/11 without hardly trying. The weirdest theory was that it was just a bunch of arabs who hopped on the planes and flew them into buildings; totally unbelievable.
Close to now. The censorship is crazy.
My wife complained that I’m too phlegmatic. I took some Mucinex®. She said it didn’t help.
“We ride . . . with Mucus!”
It isn’t just the fake news that is obscured, it is also the enormous flow of real news. There is so much that you can’t process it all.
Actually, I don’t see much that is real news. What they push is almost entirely political gossip or feelings about a tragedy. There is no objective info on even things such as food prices. Or anything that reasonably puts into perspective the change in crime, house prices, or the vast number of illegals streaming it. World news is nonexistent. Financial news is only the change in the DOW, or if lucky, they mention the S&P500. Again without perspective. Raw numbers are functionally useless.
The closest thing to news is the weather which is so dumbed down as to limit the info. The biggest thing in the south that should be reported in the summer is the dew point. The locals rarely even mention it. Dew point drives the bearability of the day, i.e., just how much has to be taken off.
I wished we had the autistic reporter. Big step up.
You can find real news if you know where to look. thesaker.is has a lot of good links. Most articles by Pepe Escobar. Larry Romanoff (who has a lot of great articles on how the media manipulates you.) Paul Craig Roberts. etc. etc.
I don’t agree or believe in everything they write, but I think that they believe it; they are truth seekers but of course we all fall short of perfection.
Yup. At least the part that isn’t censored.
One thing that helped me allot thru the years when it comes to decision making is not to assign one option as being right, and hence, the other must be wrong. Rarely is one course of action totally right, and one totally wrong. They are just different decisions and will encompass different outcomes – not wrong outcomes. It helps stop all the agonizing.
I try to create trees and look at pros and cons.
Shortcut for decision making –
Ask yourself what the commie pinko democrats would do. Then do the opposite.
This works most of the time.
Does anybody know if Michael Falk is single?
.
Does anybody know if Brooke has a twin, a spokes-model selling shampoo on HomeShopping?
(‘Yes’, I noticed this alliteration also.)
.
A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with a detailed explanation about your decision(s) would be helpful.
To me.
What about a discount version of Peter Falk?
The only constant is unpredictability.
Yes. So, choose, and live with it.
“Choose and perish!” – Gozer the Gozerian.
I’ve done a fair amount of research on this topic, and it is literally true that most if not all decisions are made based on emotion. There was a study showing that 90%+ of our decisions are made by an autonomous unconscious use of emotion. If you have 2+ options, you go with the one that makes you feel ‘good.’ Which is why advertisers stopped using facts and data some decades ago, and now just go with bright flashing colors and hot chicks in bikinis. The research involved fake stores that were wired for video such that they could see where the customers/ test subjects eyes were looking. Advertise 2 identical products in a different way, and the customer’s eyes were drawn to the one that had gave the most positive connotations, which they then bought.
There are instances were people suffered brain damage, often from over-heating, and it destroyed their ability to feel emotion. It also destroyed their ability to make decisions, as it was impossible for them to feel better about 1 option over another, no matter how logically obvious it might seem.
[No, I’m not autistic! This is me riffing off the autistic reporter bit in a deeply meta way! OK, you got me, I am at that end of the spectrum.]
“There are instances were people suffered brain damage, often from over-heating, and it destroyed their ability to feel emotion.”
That… explains so much. Thank you!
“Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain”, by Antonio Damasio is a good book about this (rational vs emotional decision).
The train really is fine.
Because I said so is all you need for decision making.
Regret is for the weak and tender hearted.
Count to ten or have a good rake fight if you are in the queefy Karen muh emotions zone.
Regarding autists, they were born with a that condition or got it from muh vaccine or a TBI but this society has chosen to go full retard of its own free will.
Amish Rake Fight Club. Glorious.
It really has chosen to go crazy. And that’s the scary part, because someone has nukes.
Dear John (and everybody else):
I checked in with you this AM. All good.
Checked in again in the last few minutes (almost 1500 EDT) and got this notice:
“Website blocked due to reputation
Website blocked: wilderwealthywise.com
“Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocks pages that come from websites with relatively light traffic and have been reported to have malicious activity. If you trust this website, please click CONTINUE TO SITE. Otherwise, choose GO BACK.
“We strongly recommend you do not continue.”
OK, so who did you piss off this time?
Verified on my Windows/Firefox version of Malwarebytes Browser Guard that John’s website is blocked due to “Reputation”. John, how you have moved up in the world ;>).
I submitted a ticket. It would help if anyone else that uses Browser Guard point contact them at
https://support.malwarebytes.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360002090753
to ask for a revaluation since you use it without issue.
(Shrugs).
At least they claim (after a few hours) that they have unblocked me. Look good now?
(And, THANK YOU!!!!)