So I'm on my winter break now, and I'll start going back to doing my weird diaries about interesting nonpolitical things after my insanely busy last week of "break" before classes start (there are lots of fun stories about people wondering why I'm a film major instead of economics or political science. I tell them I want to learn about stuff I don't already know). I was using the opportunity to read from my luxuriously leatherbound edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've read the series dozens, if not hundreds of times. My older brother gave me my first paperback copy on the occasion of my thirteenth birthday, and in the fifteen years since, I've worn out that plus three hardcover editions (and given my niece a paperback edition on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday).
Today I was reading from Mostly Harmless, and a passage stuck out to me. Watch for it below the fold:
Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does. the easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop. This was best demonstrated by the famous Herring Sandwich experiments conducted millenia ago at MISPWOSO (the MaxiMegalon Institute of slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious).
A robot was programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches. this was actually the most difficult part of the whole experiment. Once the robot had been programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches, a herring sandwich was placed in front of it. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, Ah! A herring sandwich! I like herring sandwiches!
It would then bend over and scoop up the herring sandwich in its herring sandwich scoop, and then straighten up again. Unfortunately for the robot, it was fashioned in such a way that the action of straightening up caused the herring sandwich to slip straight back off its herring sandwich scoop and fall on to the floor in front of the robot. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, Ah! A herring sandwich..., etc., and repeated the same action over and over again.
The only thing that prevented the herring sandwich from getting bored with teh whole damn business and crawling off in search of other ways of passing the time was that the herring sandwich, being just a bit of dead fish between a couple slices of bread, was marginally less alert to what was going on than was the robot.
The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development, and innovation in life, which was this: herring sandwiches. They published a paper to this effect, which was widely criticized as being extremely stupid. They checked their figures and realized that what they had actually discovered was "boredom," or rather, the practical function of boredom. In a fever of excitement they then went on to discover other emotions like "irritability," "depression," "reluctance," "ickiness," and so on. The next big breakthrough came when they stopped using herring sandwiches, whereupon a whole welter of new emotions became suddenly available to them for study, such as "relief," "joy," "friskiness," appetite," "satisfaction," and most important of all, the desire for "happiness."
I read all this, and I sat up and closed the book. I realized then, for the first time, the genius of Ronald Reagan. He convinced America that it liked herring sandwiches. We just happened to have a scoop of the proper shape.
This is coming from someone who was born just over a month before Carter left office, so I'll admit I never knew a time before Reagan. But somehow, after decades of government that actually worked, that took care of its people, that was the envy of the world, Ronald Reagan stood up and said "I think what America really wants is a herring sandwich."
And as I understand it, America thought quite rightly that he was a crackpot. But then he pointed to the economy, struggling as it was to pay off the debt from the Vietnam War, and said "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" And people said, "Hmm. If this is what not having a herring sandwich is like, maybe I would like to have a herring sandwich." And then, for reasons that continue to mystify me, they actually voted for the guy. And he, and his successors, brought us herring sandwiches by the truckload, running up the balance on our national credit card to do it.
And people were happy, because finally, our leaders had brought us herring sandwiches. It didn't matter that we didn't actually like the herring sandwiches, we were programmed to think we did. And this looming stack of bills to pay for the herring sandwiches, well, that wasn't important, because we had, joy of joys, herring sandwiches!
So, almost thirty years after Reagan convinced us all that we liked herring sandwiches, here comes this guy Obama from...well, from all over. He's been around the world. He's seen a thing or two. And he knows a little something about herring sandwiches. And this guy has the nerve, the unbridled gall to look right in America's face and say "Herring sandwiches are not good."
Well, what the hell do you say to that? We've spent thirty years acquiring a taste for herring sandwiches, and here's this guy telling us they're not good. And slowly, Americans begin to wake up to the fact that they've got thirty years of herring sandwiches to pay off and they smell like fish. And they elect the guy.
He spends two months preparing his programs to get us off herring sandwiches. He puts people into positions who know where the herring is located and how to get rid of it. He even creates a new position of Senior Herring Eradication Officer and puts someone who has dedicated her life to getting rid of herring sandwiches in it.
And what do we hear?
"He's just like any other politician. He's just going to give us more herring sandwiches."
And I think to myself, "For thirty years, politicians have been running on the platform of giving us more herring sandwiches, and this guy steps up and wins in a landslide with the promise of no more herring sandwiches, and he's going to break that promise when he steps into office? That doesn't make any sense."
So sure, keep the heat on once he takes office. Make sure that the herring goes away. But don't start bitching about your herring sandwich before the guy's even taken the oath.