My Figures Are Being Compiled

I have never wanted my drinking normalized by time.

There have been occasions when I wanted it forgotten by morning. There have been occasions when I wanted credit for buying the round. But nobody needed to know how efficiently I had put the stuff away. I was not preparing to merge with another drinker. There were no shareholders to disappoint.

Now there is a benchmark, and I am annoyed to discover that I want to see where I would place.

Georgia Hennessy reports in Business Insider on October 14 that a tech podcast called ETN has compiled the “Cheeky Pint Benchmark.” It ranks guests on John Collison’s interview podcast by their Guinness consumption, down to the nearest sixth of a pint. Elon Musk leads with three pints.

A sixth. They have found a unit small enough to measure the part I would have insisted was still foam.

The whole exchange is a joke. The people making it know it is a joke. I know they know. This does not stop me from developing a serious objection to the rules, which is how you can tell the joke has found its audience.

For once the men running the future have selected a contest for which I might not need additional training. No coding exercise. No explanation of what happens inside a model. Just a glass and the ability to remain near it. I could enter without first watching a tutorial made by somebody young enough to have been named after a website.

There would be a difficulty with my historical results. Nobody recorded them. Some of my strongest performances may have been witnessed by people who were poorly equipped to take notes. I would be asking the committee to accept a body of work whose custodians had also been drinking.

ETN said it made an intern watch every episode to compile the chart, according to the post reproduced in Hennessy’s report. So the tech men have something my old results lack: a person whose job, for this purpose, was to pay attention.

This is a considerable competitive advantage. I could have had an extraordinary evening and still be listed nowhere. Musk can have three pints and leave an inspectable record. I am not alleging misconduct. I am asking that the committee recognize the unequal preservation of the evidence.

Then Will O’Brien, founder of Ulysses, objects to the methodology. Hennessy reports that he wants the pints adjusted for the length of the episode. Pints per hour. Other kinds of alcohol should count too.

The bastard has a point.

Of course someone who has longer to drink has an advantage in a contest counting drinks. I could pretend not to understand this, but it would require abandoning one of the few mathematical principles I have ever found personally useful. More time can accommodate more beer. I have arranged afternoons around less reliable information.

So now I need the duration of my unrecorded evenings. Start time. Finish time. Were we counting the wait for service? Did the long, dull story count against me, or could I claim it as an interruption beyond my control? A trip to the toilet might become a tactical mistake. I can hear myself explaining that I would have placed much higher if another man had got to the point.

I had imagined arriving with an unfair advantage. Instead I have found a new way to be inadequately documented.

Musk, meanwhile, says he “hardly ever” drinks. First place, without really trying. This is the kind of remark that could make me request a separate division for amateurs, only to discover that I was the one who had been taking the event professionally.

Mark Zuckerberg, whose apparent grimace helped set off the discussion, supplies the shortest defense in the article: “that’s just my face.”

I admire this answer. It offers the audience almost nothing. No revised methodology. No evidence that the face has enjoyed other beers. No promise to work on the face before the next appearance.

I have a proposed rule instead. This is for my imaginary entry, not an appeal I have sent or a committee that exists. I am willing to accept pints per hour, provided we stop the clock between the emptying of one glass and the arrival of the next. A man should not be punished for slow service.

Nor should he be punished for waiting until somebody else offers to buy.

This is a different kind of delay. It can last considerably longer. The other person may not even know the clock has stopped. He may believe we are simply sitting there, enjoying a conversation. I would not want to spoil that by mentioning that he was holding up my results.

For verification, I propose receipts. Dates, quantities, the whole business. Nothing vague about whether I looked like a good drinker. Under my proposed rules, I could assemble a perfectly respectable record without having to buy another round.

There is only the appendix to finish.

If you have ever bought me a drink, I need some paperwork from you.

Source: Silicon Valley’s hot new talking points: beer and cigarettes