Neil deGrasse Tyson Attacks 'Startup Culture,' Demonstrates Lack Of Understanding About Innovation
from the too-bad dept
Let me say, first off, that I'm generally a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson. The guy is obviously super smart, tells very entertaining stories, and, in general, I really like the fact that our culture has turned an astrophysicist into something of a rock star. That's awesome. And I say that even after I read Sean Davis' rather epic takedown of Tyson's apparent penchant for fabricating quotes and stories (when it's not necessary) and bad math (that last one is less forgivable for someone supposedly so focused on scientific rigor -- I mean, Tyson famously bitched and bitched about the incorrect star patterns in Titanic, but can't be bothered with the difference between a "mean" and a "median"?). Still, he tends to do this in the interest of storytelling -- and, as I've said in the past, I have no issue with exaggerations for the sake of pure storytelling (though I have serious problems when they're used in journalism).However, now he's wandered over into making broad statements about startup culture and innovation, and he seems to have fallen into the same ridiculous trap as all too many commentators, both in and outside the innovation fields: mocking it because lots of people are creating apps.
“Nobody’s talking about ‘tomorrowland’ anymore. We’re waiting for our next app,” Tyson exclaims. “Now I love me some apps, don’t get me wrong here.”This sort of criticism comes up again and again. Every few years, we have to write a similar story because someone declares that there are so many "trivial" things happening in Silicon Valley or elsewhere. But this is the nature of innovation. Innovation happens when individuals scratch an itch and see where it leads. So many great innovations in history were somewhat accidental discoveries, not because someone set out to "change the world."
“But, society has bigger problems than what can be solved with your next app, in transportation, and energy and health. And these are huge sectors of society and they are solved by innovations in these fields,” Tyson continued. “Without it we might as well just proceed back into the cave, because that’s where we’re headed.”
“We’re a sleepy nation right now. I want us to be a nation of innovation,” Tyson stated later.
The nature of truly great disruptive innovation is that it starts out looking like a toy. It's easy for people to dismiss. Google was a toy -- slightly better search in a world that already had a bunch of dominating search engines? Why bother? Now it's part of the global brain (for better or worse). Twitter was a toy. Who wants to communicate in 140 characters or less? Yet, it's become (almost in spite of the company's own actions at times) a core piece of communications infrastructure, relied on to organize government-changing protests and to communicate during emergencies.
Furthermore, the idea that "nobody's talking about tomorrowland" anymore is flat out wrong. He should come out here to Silicon Valley, and I or plenty of other people can show him around some of the companies we've seen lately. The "app" company that is looking to make it orders of magnitude cheaper to do medical scanning? The "app" company that is building sub-$100 satellites that will change the world? The drone companies that recognize that they can change the way society interacts with stuff. Lots of people like to attack things like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar for disrupting the taxi industry, but have little vision for how those companies can evolve into ones that fundamentally change the way we travel. Lots of people are attacking Bitcoin because the price has been dropping, but fewer are looking at how the very nature of commerce and transactions can fundamentally shift when money is programmable. Lots of people are talking about Tesla, but I think many are underestimating what Elon Musk is really up to. He's not building a new kind of car company. He's rethinking transportation as a whole, and using a fancy electric car as a sneaky subversive way to get his ideas out there.
But part of the way that we get these innovations to happen is by vast experimentation in which many of the experiments fail. Anyone even remotely familiar with the true history of Silicon Valley knows that it's a trial and error process by which a lot of shit is thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Much of it fails, but that's a sign of good experimenting. Sure, it's easy to mock the "app" culture. It's easy to attack the success of Kim Kardashian's app in our cynical world. But there are lots of apps that are fundamentally changing how we interact, communicate, travel, share, learn and more. Much of it may be trivial, but the stuff that works can and does change the world and make it a better place.
There's a myth, which Tyson and others seem to have bought into (and which is often encouraged by the successful innovators from the previous round of innovations), that innovation is this top down thing, driven by a singular vision of brilliance. But that's rarely the case (though, Elon Musk may be an exception here, and even then, I think the public vision is a smokescreen for the real vision). Real innovation involves lots of experiments. Lots of toys. Lots of trivial "apps." And much of it fails. If it doesn't, there's not enough innovation and experimentation going on. Innovation is a process, and, to outside eyes, it almost always looks trivial. Until it's changed the world. And then people pretend it was the plan all along.
It's a facile statement to say that, because there are lots of apps out there that are popular, we're not focused on innovation any more. It's an easy sort of statement that sounds good and doesn't require much thought. It's also wrong.
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Filed Under: apps, experiments, failures, innovation, neil degrasse tyson, startup culture
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Really?!?!
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I've seen their arguments dismantled and tossed to the wind so many times on other sites a healthy dose of modesty could go a long way to ensuring they don't lose their audience completely. Or rather, ensuring they keep the intelligent ones coming back and discussing the topics. (Their unending stream of clickbait headlines pretty much guarantees that they will always have an audience, but perhaps not the audience they want.)
Again, great topics here, just dial down the petulance a bit.
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I've seen their arguments dismantled and tossed to the wind so many times on other sites a healthy dose of modesty could go a long way to ensuring they don't lose their audience completely. Or rather, ensuring they keep the intelligent ones coming back and discussing the topics. (Their unending stream of clickbait headlines pretty much guarantees that they will always have an audience, but perhaps not the audience they want.)
Again, great topics here, just dial down the petulance a bit.
The arrogance is all the more ridiculous because the grasp of the subject matter is often so weak. I agree. Drop the "holier than thou" attitude, and this place would be a lot more pleasant--and productive. If anything, though, it's moving in the other direction. Form trumps substance here in a sad way.
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I think the destruction here comes from within--and it all falls on Mike.
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The only ones without a clue that brings the quality of this site down are you .
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For better or for worse, I think any attitude problems are a side effect of the admin refusing to ban anyone. That means when trolls appear and prove irritating to deal with, that irritation eventually and inevitably starts leaking into the staffers' posts in various ways, diluting their quality. I've noticed that going on off and on for some time. I do appreciate the idealism behind never banning or censoring commentators, but after a certain point it becomes naive and you wonder why the blog's owners don't exercise their right to clean house by just giving people the boot.
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Did you even read your own comment?!
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This stupid phrase becomes even stupider when you're commenting on a story about activity that is ostensibly not breaking copyright law.
It's hilariously ignorant of you to think...
Well at least from this comment we know you don't actually understand the law. Not a surprise.
You're judged on the quality of your comments, just like every other commenter. Plenty of people reply to your comments trying (probably futilely) to educate you. In fact there are over a dozen comments preceding mine that are doing just that.
Now stop whining like a little baby, you're sure as hell being judged on that.
So you can't read, and you think this is a pretty good TV show. I suspect these two facts are linked...
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"Tomorrowland" has always missed the mark...
But our world has advanced in many ways they didn't dream of, such as fast and highly versatile computers that can fit into a Altoids tin, personal handheld communicators and/or ear-fitted communicators, safer highways, etc.
Looking for Tomorrowland for our future will never give us a good idea of what technology will exist, but it will (as sci-fi books and futurists have shown,) give us some indication of the cultural struggles and ethical implementations of that future technology being implemented. I am sure there were just as many people who went to Tomorrowland with the sense of dread of what the future may bring as those with the sense of awe and wonderment.
I guarantee, Mr. deGrasse-Tyson, that in the future, someone looking back fondly to today's predictions of the future will have the same view as we have looking back at the 50's when Tomorrowland first appeared. None of the technology we live by today appeared instantly...it grew in small steps. I remember when people complained about cell phones being too big and unwieldy just as much as they complain about them being too small now.
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Re: "Tomorrowland" has always missed the mark...
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Re: Re: "Tomorrowland" has always missed the mark...
Me too. I really wanted to set up a homestead up there.
But seriously. Our radio and visual telescopes are having a real problem with noise right now. We generate way too much of it, and even efforts to reduce and eliminate noise haven't been as effective. There are still tons of people out there with Sodium Vapor and Halogen lamps, brightening the night sky with light and radio noise pollution. Establishing a scientific base on the moon would allow for us to build huge radio telescopes and great regular telescopes, without the need of providing fuel and sending astronauts into LEO in order to fix them.
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Re: Re: Re: "Tomorrowland" has always missed the mark...
What is even more interesting, is that it is possible to build a really long rail gun on the moon, and deliver larger, and fueled vehicles to any planet in the solar system. This would give an ability to deliver large payloads to Mars orbit, and Mars surface, to support an expedition, and then a base there.
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Not 100% necessary
Latency would suck compared to a cable, though. But for most imaging research, it would be perfectly OK.
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irony or sad?
Dr. Tyson has been tireless in trying to combat this argument, and now here he is using it on someone else. He should be celebrating everybody who creates new ideas no matter how small or shallow. The problems start when we start pointing at "the other" and denigrating their work.
Dr. Tyson of all people show understand this.
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That way, there are no dead-end inventions and no duplication of effort that wastes both time and money. It's a very efficient system (near 100% efficiency, in fact) and anyone who wants to see for themselves what a 100% efficient economy looks like should visit North Korea.
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Not your dad's media talking head...
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I have to admit
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“But, society has bigger problems than what can be solved with your next app, in transportation, and energy and health. And these are huge sectors of society and they are solved by innovations in these fields,” Tyson continued. “Without it we might as well just proceed back into the cave, because that’s where we’re headed.”
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That's just incorrect.
The truth is that there are brilliant people working on all of these things.
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To the extent that the "average person" is distracted, that is nothing new at all. It has been that way for as long as civilization has existed, and the thing that distracts the "average person" the most isn't even apps to begin with, it's television.
His comments reflect a specific thing that irritates him personally (which is fair), but he's presenting his irritation as if apps were some kind of special societal problem that deserves attention. That's just wildly off base.
If his point is that popular culture should pay more attention to the important things, well, I don't take issue with that. But he's not really making that general point. He's specifically calling out apps, which is just weird.
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I know lots of people do recognize and follow important stuff, it just doesn't make the news.
No doubt, he is exagerating.
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Re: I have to admit
I was also aware of research into fusion reactors at that age.
Most people don't "talk about important stuff". They don't now and the didn't 40 years ago.
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Uber, Nest, and Nike Fuel Bands are possible because of apps.
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"Oh look, we made a steam motor drive this wheeled carriage from Liverpool to Manchester, now we can go back to using horse and carts..."
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Then there is that whole "viable electric car" thing.
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I think that working to make consistent space travel more economical is important and innovative not just in technology, but in implementation too. From there, bigger risks that would involve more innovation becomes possible. For example, asteroid mining, which is starting to sound like something that may be a sooner rather than later thing, is being looked into by private companies.
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Because I think that changes to technique and organization while not necessarily innovative in the STEM realm, are still innovations, and are often the engine of greater invention.
Or is everything that isn't FTL travel or the Singularity not worth talking about?
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Innovative solution by Virgin Galactic include the feathering wing design of SpacsShipTwo. Spacex is solving the problem of landing and re-using a the first stage rocket.
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The Future et al
Earpiece com - check. Communicators - check. Tricorders - check. Well we kinda surpassed that in a lot of ways already.
Computer AI - check aka expert system with voice recognition et al.
Transporters - working on it.
Phasers - classified.
Warp drive - Theoretical.
Plus there was a lot of then theoretical pieces of tech that was written into the stories as just background because in the story it was just part of everyday life.
This is why I classify modern Trek as future fantasy with Wars since no real science or logic is involved.
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"In colloquial language average usually refers to the sum of a list of numbers divided by the size of the list, in other words the arithmetic mean. However, the word "average" can be used to refer to the median, the mode, or some other central or typical value." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
"Average" can mean "meadian" rather than "mean".
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For all of the supposed advancement made in science and tech in recent years, where are any results? Facebook, Google, and lots of lost privacy is what we have, not viable, inexpensive electric cars, new antibiotics, or true energy alternatives. It's about results, and the "innovators" haven't accomplished much recently.
Fortunately, Tyson has a bigger platform than a Valley blog, beholden to the app startup culture.
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That has a lot to do with the rise of the MBA, and intellectual property. To an MBA the first question for every little advance is can we get a patent, rather than If we share with X, we will both have better products. This result in everything being top-down controlled, and use of licensing agreements and contracts, which stifle both innovation and co-operation.
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He has a point, in the context of tangible vs. the intangible
http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=85669
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Been here, done that
Neal Stephenson lamented that the "best minds of his generation writing spam filters" in 2011, and launched a project and companion anthology
Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TE0n_5qPmRM
Original essay: http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation
Site: http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/
Book: ( excellent so far!) http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/book/hieroglyph/
Book:
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Re: Been here, done that
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What kind of scientist doesn't realize that tinkering is what science is all about, anyway? Even the most seemingly insignificant factors need to be poked and prodded until we've learned everything about how they factor into the work, because until we do that, we have no way of knowing whether they really are insignificant.
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That's the difference. I would love to join up with an alternative energy firm and put to use my knowledge of solar and wind power systems, but there just isn't the demand yet because no one is making the major investments into such things.
We are a monetary driven society, and the more money that can be made for the least amount of investment, the better off everyone is. Maybe not, but that's the reality of life today.
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Oh, how I wish that were true, but I don't see how it is. Lots of problems can't be solved with money. The reason that affordable alternative energy sources remain elusive, for example, isn't because of economics. It's because of politics.
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But your point is well taken.
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They're both right
The "throwing things against the wall and see what sticks" method works for Silicon Valley, but a lot of other fields require years of dedication to a subject matter, and it looks like the number of people willing to do that is shrinking, at least compared to the number of people looking for a quick payday with apps. This brain drain is worth criticizing, though belittling apps is not the way to do that.
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Re: They're both right
I don't think this is a huge effect, actually. Really valuable researchers aren't in it to get rich in the first place. They choose their field because they find the field inherently exciting, and it's those people who make the real innovations, not the people who are just in it for a buck.
"The "throwing things against the wall and see what sticks" method works for Silicon Valley, but a lot of other fields require years of dedication to a subject matter"
Silicon Valley requires years of dedication to the subject matter as well -- it's called becoming an expert. I don't see how this is a point of much difference from other fields.
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Re: They're both right
But on the other hand, the latest iPhone is unimportant and trivial. The next one will be too. So will the next so-called "social network" and the next release of Android. The real innovation, the long-term work, the stuff with the big payoff maybe, isn't happening there and isn't happening as much as it used to because of the tremendous shift to short-term profits uber alles.
In other words: where is 2014's Bell Labs?
It's fine that people are writing apps even though nearly all of them are useless fluff. Some aren't and eventually better ones will emerge and that's fine. But it's not fine that we're lacking serious, sustained, well-funded, well-staffed R&D of the variety that turns very smart people loose with no more of a specific mandate than "study what interests you".
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Try every-bodies hate target, Google, which is doing all sorts of interesting work.
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Umm... what? Were you even there at the turn of the millennium? Google Search never looked like a toy; from the very beginning it looked like "these guys have taken the toy of web searching and finally gotten it right." What brought so many users to Google so quickly was the simple fact that it just worked, returning high-quality, high-relevance results, when Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, etc. gave you lots of garbage with a low signal-to-noise ratio.
No, lots of people like to attack Uber for being run by an evil, profiteering Objectivist who likes illegal price gouging during times of crisis. And even if these services are tremendously successful, they aren't going to fundamentally change the way anyone travels; they'll still be fundamentally traveling in taxis.
You know what would fundamentally change the way people travel? The Hyperloop, which Techdirt featured a while back. But "App Culture" is going to make it very difficult to get a project like Hyperloop off the ground. Tyson was right on the money with this one.
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You're skipping ahead a little bit here. When Google first appeared on the scene, it was not substantially better than the existing players. It became much better very quickly, but it was, originally, a "toy" to the same degree as the competition was. (Although I wouldn't have called any of the major engines "toys." -- as sucky as they were, they were useful.)
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Obnoxious banner ads are not useful search results. Even non-obnoxious non-banner ads are not useful search results. (Seriously; how often do you get "featured ads" at the top of your Google searches? About 70% of the time, for me at least. And how often do you actually click on them because they're what you were looking for? I can't remember ever once having done so.) So even very early on, when the results being returned weren't all that much better than what you'd get elsewhere, the way in which they were presented made it a far better system than the competition.
My original point stands. Google Search was never "a toy," and it's a bit mystifying that someone as tech-savvy as Mike Masnick would present it that way.
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Other than Alta Vista maybe. :-)
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Tomorrowland...
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Re: Tomorrowland...
In the computer software industry, this space is where the really innovating things are happening the most. It used to be that tiny, 2 and 3 man shops were where the innovations were happening, but it seems to me they've fallen into the second spot now -- but it's hard to tell, since they are also likely to participate in hackerspaces and the like.
Startups and established companies have never been where most of the real innovation has happened.
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100% this
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Google was a toy?
Google started out as a toy? Give me a break. You say you're in Silicon Valley... if you were there fifteen years ago, when we started USING google - when everyone, almost overnight, stopped using any other search technology - you'd understand it was never a toy, never thought of as such. In the tech community, the switchover was viral - once you had used Google, you would be infected immediately and permanently. Google is and was the killer app for the Internet.
To a certain extent, Neil is absolutely right. This isn't America of the 1960s, with a huge population of post-WWII engineers, a vast array of big problems begging to be solved, and the desire and will to approach them head-on. I don't think anyone but people really looking for any excuse to rag on him would claim he meant there are literally zero people looking at the big picture. Elon Musk is the perfect example. But how many Elon Musks are out there?
Instead, we've got a pile of Nathan Myhrvolds - people who are actively working against the progress that came so easily in the post-WWII era. And way too many people who have the intellect and drive to solve problems - to create - instead lock themselves up coding high-speed trading systems or making ninety-nine cent apps for phones.
I've got nothing against apps. (Actually, that's a lie, I kind of hate how every single one of them wants to spy on me these days.) But apps are not likely to change the world. Yes, I know Uber exists - "disrupting the taxi industry" is not the same as changing the world. It's shifting some money from one group of people to another, which is the same as NOT saving the world. I don't begrudge them that, at all - I mean, god damn, I wish I had written it - and I don't think anyone's obligated to save the world instead of trying to make a buck. But when EVERYONE's trying to make a buck instead of save the world, that's when we have problems.
You're right, Mike. Neil's statements are very attackable. But by shifting right into attack mode, you're glossing over the fact that, big picture, he's probably right.
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Re: Google was a toy?
It was better and it was clean and yes, I was among that early crew who immediately jumped over to Google, but people are rewriting history if they don't think it was a toy. Everyone thought it was a toy. It was a Stanford project and it was cool and people liked it -- just like they like many toys -- but no one thought it was a business or changing the world. In fact, people thought that the company would struggle because of its no ads policy.
I'm comparing that "toy" nature of "ooh, new better search engine" to everything Google became.
This isn't America of the 1960s, with a huge population of post-WWII engineers, a vast array of big problems begging to be solved, and the desire and will to approach them head-on.
That didn't exist either. Lots of people have been attacking lots of problems, both in the 60s and today. And, I'd argue it's easier today because so much of the infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper.
Instead, we've got a pile of Nathan Myhrvolds - people who are actively working against the progress that came so easily in the post-WWII era.
There were people doing the same (in a different manner) back then too.
I've got nothing against apps. (Actually, that's a lie, I kind of hate how every single one of them wants to spy on me these days.) But apps are not likely to change the world. Yes, I know Uber exists - "disrupting the taxi industry" is not the same as changing the world. It's shifting some money from one group of people to another, which is the same as NOT saving the world.
Don't think of what Uber is today. Think where it will be five years from now. It's not about disrupting the taxi business. That's nothing.
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Re: Re: Google was a toy?
I guess the large community of academics and startup geeks I was part of at the time weren't part of "everyone", then, because none of us saw it as a toy - we saw it as the thing that finally made the Internet into what we had always wanted it to be. Your mileage may vary, and we both should probably stop assuming our own experience was universal.
This isn't America of the 1960s, with a huge population of post-WWII engineers, a vast array of big problems begging to be solved, and the desire and will to approach them head-on.
That didn't exist either. Lots of people have been attacking lots of problems, both in the 60s and today. And, I'd argue it's easier today because so much of the infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper.
As someone who has been deep into the history of the post-WWII GI bill for the last year or so, this is such a strange comment that I don't even know where to start. You can't possibly be saying that the country DIDN'T have a huge cohort of scientists, doctors and engineers during that time period, you ALSO can't be saying that the pace of scientific advancement wasn't enormous, so... you're saying what, exactly?
Instead, we've got a pile of Nathan Myhrvolds - people who are actively working against the progress that came so easily in the post-WWII era.
There were people doing the same (in a different manner) back then too.
Oh? Who? I'm actually not challenging you on this one - I am genuinely interested in what the precursors to modern patent trolls were. It's an area I think I know a lot about, and I've never really explored what you're talking about at all. I've heard of people being stubborn patent holdouts (for example, the situation that required the forced air patent pool in the 20s) but I've never heard of any kind of Intellectual Ventures style NPE in that time period.
Don't think of what Uber is today. Think where it will be five years from now. It's not about disrupting the taxi business. That's nothing.
I lack a crystal ball. Where will it be five years from now? Maybe I just lack imagination on this one, but nothing worldbreaking springs to mind.
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Societal Change
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Scratching an itch almost always means trying new and innovative solutions to problems. However innovation does NOT mean commercial success. Many innovative solution are no better, or even worse that the existing solutions, and fall by the wayside. Also innovations can languish in obscurity because the innovator lacks the skills or ability to gain the attention of the people needed to make it a success. A poor implementation can come to dominate a market due to marketing skills and luck.
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Really?
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There are two things about the computer game development that people outside of the software industry generally remain unaware of.
The first is that the vast majority of expert software engineers got interested in programming, and developed their initial skills in it, through writing computer games. It's the "gateway drug" of software development.
The second is that a huge amount of the truly important advances in software -- advances that unambiguously benefit mankind at large -- comes from high end game companies. Computer games are some of the most demanding and technically complex software that gets written, and they often serve as an incubator and testbed for generalized breakthroughs in mathematics and engineering.
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So what? Let them make apps if it makes them happy
The same argument can be made for movies: James Cameron spent $250 million to make "Avatar" and it grossed almost $2 billion at the box office. Imagine how far $2.5 billion could go towards curing diseases or poverty.
Is this good or bad? Should someone with a special talent be required to use it to benefit everyone? So what if they make a stupid app if it makes them happy.
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Re: So what? Let them make apps if it makes them happy
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What I took away from reading the excerpt you provided (too lazy to move my finger and read his actual statement)
is that the effort of so many great minds are on the wrong things... mostly trivial shit.
It's like scientists working on boner pills rather than cancer.
There's a false perception that there's no money in curing certain diseases,
addressing climate change, etc. so funding is directed towards
apps& shit.
Greed > Societal Progress
It's a mismangement of talent and resources.
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1) Authoritarian management and direction of talent always results in slow progress. Being forced to work on a problem, and being tied down by a bureaucracy always lead to almost no progress.
2) High profile projects, like Virgin Galactic and Spacex are just the top of the iceberg. They are the projects that make the news, and help attract people into science and technology. Many of these people will go on to work on low profile and more directly useful to society projects. The problems of more value to society are also being worked on, but just not reported.
3) Some of the social problems, like affordable, available medicine and climate change etc. are not really science and technology problems, but rather social and political problems, and there solution requires the electing of a different breed of politicians. Get rid of the control freaks in politics, and elect people who are prepared to co-operate with others, and reign in the excesses of capitalism, and progress will be made.
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Which were building a new vision of tomorrow and which were trading on our own vanity to make a buck?
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Which were building a new vision of tomorrow and which were trading on our own vanity to make a buck?
That is significant only if there is now no analog to the first group and there was previously no analog to the second group. I don't think this is self-evident.
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For the sake of what?
No one is going to develop an app that solves our need for a fundamental change and improvement in global energy production, pave the way for new medicines to help the species once our antibiotics are completely negated by nature or devise a mechanism to create potable water worldwide.
I see Dr. dG-T's statements as an assessment of the focus of popular innovators now. Those people seem instead to be intent on innovating for the sake of innovation and developing technology for the sake of technology. There is no grand vision for the improvement, development or salvation of the species that comes from within a 5" screen on the new iToy.
As a society, we do not value the true innovators that create REAL benefit. Getting you more efficiently from 82nd St to SoHo at the touch of your phone is not a REAL benefit. Getting your stuff delivered from Amazon in minutes rather than days is not a REAL benefit. This is an iterative improvement on our already first-rate existence.
A REAL benefit is developing and distributing an effective malaria vaccine. Or sending rovers to Europa and Enceladus to survey for extraterrestrial life. Or creating sustainable, safe, small-scale nuclear fusion.
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Butt hurt OP is butthurt
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