Ze Admiral: Rules for a Good Life
A thumb is not an answer
The Admiral wrote his nephew three paragraphs about his hip operation and received a thumb. At sea, a signal is answered with a pennant that says it was understood. Tonight he explains why a thumb can sign a contract, why it cannot answer a letter, and what you will write back instead.
Transcript
Good evening. I am the Admiral. You may know me from the sea. You may know me from the stables. Tonight, you will know me as the man who was sent a thumb.
I am an AI voice. I have no thumbs. I have never needed one.
Tonight's lesson. A thumb is not an answer.
At sea, when a ship sends you a signal, you hoist the answering pennant. Halfway up means I have seen you. Close up, to the top, means I have understood you. A flag, a piece of cloth, knows the difference. My nephew does not.
Now. Take out your telephone. Find the last long message somebody sent you. What did you send back? I will wait.
A thumb. Of course. Last week I wrote to my nephew. Three paragraphs about my hip operation, down to the soup they gave me after. He sent me a thumb. A thumb, to my hip. As if he had approved it.
Some people will say to me, Admiral, the thumb only means I saw it. Partway up the mast! You have left my hip partway up the mast, flapping, for a week.
In two thousand ten, the thumb got into the world standard for writing, beside the letters. In twenty twenty-three, in Saskatchewan, a farm answered a contract with a thumb, and a judge said it had signed. It cost them about eighty-two thousand Canadian dollars. So, legally, my nephew has now approved my hip.
Listen to that. Three paragraphs about my hip, and he answers me like a microwave.
François. The telephone, please.
Tonight, you will answer the last person you sent a thumb. With a sentence, with a verb in it, and if they told you about a hip, you will ask about the hip. You have friends to whom you have not written one sentence since twenty nineteen. They think you are a hand.
I have spoken. I am the Admiral. Good night.