Meth for Nerds: Why Programmers are So Irrational

...Nerds like me want the world to be clean and predictable and orderly and logical in the same way that our CPUs are clean and predictable and orderly and - most of all - logical.

Marketers practice shamanism but Programmers are intensely rational in their pursuits.

Marketing is squishy and unscientific while programming is rigorous and the very definition of scientific. 

Marketers should learn to program.

Right?

Bullshit.

Programming is the single most reality-denying craft ever devised by the mind of man.

Programming is less grounded in reality than porn. Programming is more fantasmagorical than Harry Potter. Programming makes Lord of the Rings look like the front page of the New York Times by comparison.

Marketers - at least skilled, successful marketers - operate at the level of reality and truth. Programmers live in fantasy world.

(And we all hate that, don't we.)

Trumping the "Facts"

From the mid-80s to mid-90s, IBM had overwhelming technical superiority over Microsoft. And Apple products were - by almost every measure - technologically superior to Microsoft products.

Yet Microsoft just kept winning and winning. Microsoft never, ever had the best software; they just had great marketing.

He mind hummed and clicked like a machine while his emotions sat in the corner and behaved themselves.

It wasn't till Steve Jobs returned to Apple and started casting his "reality distortion field" across the whole world that Apple finally beat Microsoft. IBM never did.

(And now that Jobs has left the scene, Apple seems to be losing its mojo. Anybody else notice?)

Want a more recent example?

Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election even though he ignored the issues and seemed to run roughshod over "the facts." Uber-wonk Hillary got steamrolled by The Donald, even though all the smart people insisted she was the more qualified candidate.

The difference?

The Donald is a marketer and The Hildebeast is a programmer. Marketing beats programming every time. Never, ever forget that.

Humanity is Not Logical - Get Over It

Nerds like me have always been offended by the success of the marketers because nerds like me want the world to be clean and predictable and orderly and logical in the same way that our CPUs are clean and predictable and orderly and - most of all - logical.

But we are doomed to disappointment. Forever.

We want humanity to be reasonable. But humanity isn't reasonable and never has been.

We want humanity to be logical. But humanity isn't logical and never has been.

Great marketers understand humans. Great marketers work with the material they are given. Marketers will always win over us idealists who imagine humanity "as it should be," whatever that means.

Yes, nerds have done amazing things with their silicon switches. Yes, they have made material life better by most measures. But nerds don't get it.

The Most Ridiculous TV Character Ever

People are irrational.

People do stupid things because they want to, even though those stupid things are - by every measure - illogical and irrational.

That's why the character of Mr. Spock captured the imagination of budding young nerds like me.

There on my TV screen was a character who had mastered his emotions. Reason and Logic dictated his every decision. He mind hummed and clicked like a machine while his emotions sat in the corner and behaved themselves.

Star Trek, The Next Generation brought the mirror opposite of Mr. Spock: the android Mr. Data. Data was a machine that longed to experience human emotion and - by extension - human irrationality. But Data was constrained by his programming. He was logical by design.

Behold the paradox: our human programming is what makes us irrational. We have responses hardwired into our circuits - even though our "circuits" are flesh and blood and tendons & neurons, not silicon. Those responses override reason, almost always.

That's how Microsoft beat IBM and Apple. That's how The Donald beat The Hildebeast.

That's how great marketing

We created computers to be what we wish we were. But they lack the one thing that makes us truly human: our irrational impulses.

Great marketers understand those irrational impulses. Great marketers know how to trigger those impulses and harness them.

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Jack Heald is a recovering programmer who built and sold a software company. He's the creator of Cult Your Brand, a program that trains leaders how to use the psychological shortcuts to loyalty.