Scott Adams's Blog, page 235

Good Example of Our Two-Movie Reality

I have been saying since Trump’s election that the world has split into two realities – or as I prefer to say, two movies on one screen – and most of us don’t realize it. We’re all looking at the same events and interpreting them wildly differently. That’s how cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias work. They work together to create a spontaneous hallucination that gets reinforced over time. That hallucination becomes your reality until something changes.

This phenomenon has nothing to do with natural intelligence. We like to think that the people on the other side of the political debate are dumb, under-informed, or just plain evil. That’s not the case. We’re actually experiencing different realities. I mean that literally.

I know, I know. When you read something like that, you probably shake your head and think I’m either being new-agey or speaking metaphorically. I am being neither. This is well-understood cognitive science. 

And here comes the fun part.

I’m about to show you some mind-blowing evidence of the two-movie effect. Figuratively speaking, I’ll hold an apple in my hand and show it to the audience. Half of you will see an apple. The other half will see a gun. That’s how dramatic this two-movie illusion is. I can be watching a comedy movie while you’re in the same theater, sitting next to me, watching a drama. On the same screen. At the same time.

Watch this.

Here’s a screenshot from a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. The bullet points purport to show the “crazy” things President Trump said this past week. Focus on the first bullet point, just to keep things simple. The point I’ll make applies to all of them, but we can simplify by looking at the first one. It says, “So-called judge.”

The bullet point refers to the recent court reversal of Trump’s executive order to ban immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

If you are a Trump supporter, all you see is an example of Trump talking the way Trump always does. He bluntly criticizes everything he doesn’t like. That’s one of the things his supporters like about him. Mmm, that’s a delicious apple.

Oh, and Trump is also directionally accurate in his criticism. Even Alan Dershowitz, who is no fan of the president, says Trump would probably win in the Supreme Court on the narrow question of whether the President has the right to order the seven-country immigration ban.

And Trump is sticking to the law and preparing a legal response to the court’s action. All normal stuff. Nothing here but some normal (for him) Trump words.

But if you are an anti-Trumper, and his unexpected election sent you into cognitive dissonance, you see “So-called judge” as exactly what Hitler might say before he lined them all up and shot them. Where his supporters see a delicious apple in Trump’s hand, his critics see a gun.

But here’s the freaky part: Both of our movies are intact. In my movie, Trump took a bite out of a juicy apple. In your movie, he cocked his gun and is ready to fire. But none of these movie scenes touches either one of us, at least not yet. We are observers. I can still drink my coffee and you can still brush your teeth. At this very moment, it makes no difference to our lives that I see an apple and you see a gun – except that you live in terror and I’m having a good laugh (literally) while watching my movie.

In order for our two-movie situation to merge back into a single movie, one of us needs to see our expectations violated in ways that even cognitive dissonance can’t explain away. As long as the movie with the apple and the movie with the gun both “work” in terms of their scripts, they will keep playing at the same time. You might see confirmation bias that tells you it really was a gun. I might see confirmation bias that it was a delicious apple. 

Let me give you an example of how the two-movie reality could fold back into one. It will take a lot of time plus a lot of observations like this one:

Try the line below on anti-Trumpers and watch them pivot to “But…he is also incompetent.” Then mention the rise in stock prices. Fun! https://t.co/2oyPc4Gx3R

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 12, 2017

—

If you’re a creative type, or you deal with schedules in any way, you will love WhenHub.com because it is a startup I cofounded. 

You might also enjoy reading my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because apples are good for you.

About the 97% of Climate Scientists

One of the most famous statistics in the world of politics is the claim that 97% of climate scientists agree with the idea that humans activity is boosting CO2 to dangerous levels.

Critics say the 97% is misleading, because the critics like to include in their own list the scientists that are working for energy companies. The industry-paid scientists and engineers have less credibility, say the critics of the climate science critics.

Recently I retweeted a link to a climate science whistleblower. I don’t have any way to evaluate his claims. But his story did a good job of illustrating the flow of data from the measuring devices all the way to the published papers and then to your brain. And what I got out of that was that very few people have direct access to the measuring devices and the original data. Let’s say 1% of climate scientists are actually involved in generating the temperature data and deciding what to include, what to smooth, what to replace, and so on. Apparently you can measure Earth’s temperature a number of ways, from ice core samples, to satellites, to ocean buoys, to land thermometers. I might be missing a few. Oh, and each of those methods probably change a bit over time, so you have some apples-to-oranges comparisons if you look at history.

In other words, even the 1% involved in direct measurements might not be involved in all the different forms of it. 

What follows next is pure speculation, based on my years of experience in corporate America and my understanding of human nature. But it seems to me that 99% of the 97% are relying on the accuracy and honesty of the 1% who actually produce the temperature measurements. Sure, the other scientists read the papers, and see whatever “adjustments” were made by the authors. But that seems like opening the hood of the car, looking at the outside of the engine, and determining that it’s all good on the inside. 

Speaking of my corporate experience, this reminds me of a situation when I worked for the phone company. 100% of the employees believed that one of the Executive Directors in our group was a PhD in some sort of technology field. After all, he said he was, and the Human Resources group does background checks before hiring. So he had to be a PhD, right? 

But it turns out he was a con man. He had no PHd. The Human Resources group was two years behind in their background checks. When they caught up with him, he was fired immediately.

I’m open to correction on my assumption that the 97% of climate scientists depend on the accuracy and honesty of the handful of people with direct access to the data. Let me know if I got that wrong. If I’m wrong, that supports my point that non-scientists such as myself can’t be expected to have useful opinions on science topics.

You just witnessed a little trick I learned from President Trump. I gave myself two ways to win and no way to lose. You should try it. It works every time.

—

Have you tried my startup, WhenHub, to create an amazing-looking training schedule or curriculum that you can share on social media, and people can add to their calendars? Create it once and just move any date in the range to adjust all the rest of the dates relatively. That’s just a tiny sample of what it can do. 

Sam Harris Induces Cognitive Dissonance in Ben Affleck

Ignoring the politics of it for the moment, check out this video of Sam Harris debating Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s Real Time show. I’ll teach you how to spot cognitive dissonance in the clip.

Watch for the moment Ben has to hallucinate Sam’s opinion from the reasonable position that many Muslims worldwide have non-liberal views to an hallucination about “All Muslims are bad.” Sam and Bill both clarify their viewpoints, with data, but Ben is struck deaf to it. All he can hear is the absurd absolute “all.” He is literally hallucinating.

I mean that literally. If you asked him after the show what happened, his memory would be sketchy. Ben is both smart and well-informed, relative to the general population and Hollywood in particular. If you think he’s being dumb here, you’re wrong. It just looks that way. This is a literal hallucination.

Cool, right?

The tells for cognitive dissonance in this case:

1. Smart person (Affleck) unexpectedly encounters a far smarter person (Harris). Apparently Ben didn’t read Harris’ bio before engaging. Oops.

2. Harris uses data to make Ben’s argument fall apart. Ben is smart, and knowledgeable, and his ego does not recognize that he could be annihilated on television in this way. This is the trigger for cognitive dissonance. His ego spontaneously generates a literal hallucination to protect his self-image.

3. The hallucination involves turning Harris’ reasonable statement that is backed with data into an absurd absolute about “all Muslims.” Nothing can talk Affleck out of this misinterpretation. He is in full hallucination mode.

4. Look for the outsized emotional reaction. You see lots of people arguing the same side that Ben argues, but rarely do you see that level of anger except in street protests where the average energy is higher. The exaggerated emotional outburst in the wrong context is a clear tell.

When you see that reaction in your debate opponent, you won the debate – hard – but you didn’t change anyone’s mind. Cognitive dissonance swooped in to to derail any actual mind-changing.

This is one of the best examples you will ever find. Recognize the pattern. You usually notice the “absurd absolute” tell first. Then look backwards for the trigger. It means someone lost a debate on the chessboard of reason, so they overturned the board.

My opinion on their topic of debate (Islam) is not included in this post. If you think you saw it…

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub, because you need to know when stuff happens.

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because you need a great book for your upcoming flight.

A Thought Experiment About Republicans

The left has done a stellar job of demonizing Trump supporters and Republicans in general. Their excellent persuasion involves conflating the bad apples with the entire group. Both sides do it. The right calls everyone on the left selfish snowflakes, and the left calls everyone on the right racists. They do it because it works. The brain likes to conflate things. And if the shiniest object in our view involves headlines about racists, or lefty rioters, those images stick in our minds and taint our impressions of the entire group.

So let’s try this thought experiment.

Let’s say there is a group of Trump-supporting racists – the violent kind that I have never met – that starts terrorizing an African-American neighbor of yours. And let’s say it turns into a violent confrontation between the racists and the victim family. The neighborhood hears some commotion and pours into the streets. The racists have weapons and they are about to kill the family that was just minding its own business. The police are on the way, but not in time. Violence is about to happen.

Suddenly a shot rings out. A bullet goes through the back of the scariest racist’s head and hollows out his skull. He drops like a rock. The other racists drop their weapons and flee.

Who fired the shot that saved the African-American family? Was it a Republican or a Democrat?

One of the most underrated qualities of Republicans is that they police their own ranks. If you have a problem with a violent Republican racist, call some Republicans. They’ll solve it for you.

But don’t call a Republican if you are simply offended by another person’s opinion. In that situation you want to call some Democrats to ridicule and physically attack the person with the objectionable opinion.

By the way, I’m not a Republican. This is just an observation. I’ve been watching Democrats not police their own ranks – after the Berkeley violence for example – and it occurred to me that you don’t see that on the Republican side. Republicans generally appreciate free speech, but if someone attacks your family, your country, or your freedom in some physical form, keep some Republicans on speed dial.

Try it. You’ll be surprised how well it works.

Are you bothered by the fact that I am making sweeping and unsupported generalizations about Democrats and Republicans? If so, call a Democrat. I await your combined ridicule and physical violence. 

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub, because you will love it.

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because you need a book for your upcoming trip.

The Social Media Hive Mind

You might have clicked on my misleading tweet to get to this page. I had to disguise the content so Twitter wouldn’t throttle it.

Here’s why…

This morning I tweeted a link to a great video that describes in detail how Twitter “throttles” the tweets of any content that disagrees with their political views. The video describes how Twitter gives a fake message that some tweets are no longer available, to discourage you from clicking to them. The tweets still exist, and you can access them by directly clicking the links in the tweets, but most people would not think to do that.

If you don’t think that’s a real thing, here’s my tweet about the video. They did it to me. And this is common for my tweets about Trump or climate science. They throttle me to prevent them from going viral. And it only happens with certain types of content.

And it isn’t just me.

I would argue that the human mind has recently evolved to include the thinking process of social media as a whole. We’re connected to social media like a great hive mind. And thanks to scientific advances in datametrics, the social media companies now have almost perfect mind control technology. We connect to the hive mind, the social media giants decide who sees what messages, and they program us individually. You get different persuasion than I do. 

I no longer have freedom of expression in the way that most of you still do because the social media platforms throttle my ideas. And you know why this isn’t the biggest story in the world?

LOOK OVER THERE! IT’S HITLER!

That’s the hive mind distracting you. Here’s the video Twitter didn’t want you to see.

By the way, I don’t think Twitter or any other social media platform have evil intent. But apparently they think I do. That’s a big perceptual problem.

Update: The misleading tweet that brought many of you to this page skirted Twitter’s throttle filter.

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub, because you will love it.

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because you need a book for your upcoming trip.

The Persuasion Advantage and Climate Science

As I have often said in this blog, I don’t have the tools to evaluate the basic science about climate change, and neither do you. The difference is that you might be under the illusion that you do have those tools. 

However, I do have a good eye for effective communication, and good persuasion, and most of that talent seems to be bunched on one side of the debate. The non-alarmists simply have more persuasive arguments than do those in the scientific consensus. That doesn’t mean the persuasive side is also the correct side. Persuasion is often divorced from facts. But I think the persuasion gap goes a long way in explaining why we can’t agree on climate science. 

Here’s a link to a persuasive geologist who tells us not to worry about climate change. Again, I can’t evaluate his scientific claims. But his persuasion is nearly perfect. The only problem with his persuasion is that he appears to have ties to the energy industry. That means his credibility is low while his persuasion is excellent. Strange combination. Most viewers of this clip won’t notice, or won’t care, about his industry connections, so the persuasion still works.

Obviously the climate scientists working in the field have strong arguments that make sense to other scientists. That’s what makes it a consensus. But that side does a terrible job of selling their point of view to the public. Mostly we’re asked to trust the experts. And we don’t trust experts who would be drummed out of their chosen field if they got out of step. And we trust them less when they say they aren’t influenced by that sort of thing. It’s hard to trust a scientist who acts as if the field of cognitive science doesn’t apply to scientists.

If history is our guide, it will take 30 seconds for one of you to produce a debunking link for the link I provided. And I will look at that debunking link and have no way to evaluate its credibility. 

On the left, the prevailing notion is that the folks on the right are ignorant of science, and that’s the problem. There are plenty of anecdotal examples that support that worldview.

On the right, the prevailing notion is that the left are gullible, and only half-informed because their news sources filter out the skeptics. If you are on the left, and haven’t seen the clip I provided, that supports this view.

My view is that the left has more climate science experts and the right has more persuasive arguments. My usual bias is to side with the consensus of scientists. But it’s hard to understand why their side is so unpersuasive. The side that has the scientific consensus behind it usually has an enormous persuasion advantage. Why is it different this time?

If I ever figure that out, I’ll let you know.

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub, because you will love it.

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because you need a book for your upcoming trip.

Berkeley and Hitler

Here’s the best article you are likely to read about the absurdity of calling ANY American president Hitler. This is the sort of persuasion (sprinkled with facts) that can dissolve some of the post-election cognitive dissonance that hangs like a dark cloud over the country. Share it liberally, so to speak. You might save lives.

Speaking of Hitler, I’m ending my support of UC Berkeley, where I got my MBA years ago. I have been a big supporter lately, with both my time and money, but that ends today. I wish them well, but I wouldn’t feel safe or welcome on the campus. A Berkeley professor made that clear to me recently. He seems smart, so I’ll take his word for it.

I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant who has an African-American boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus. 

Yesterday I asked my most liberal, Trump-hating friend if he ever figured out why Republicans have most of the Governorships, a majority in Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court. He said, “There are no easy answers.”

I submit that there are easy answers. But for many Americans, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias hide those easy answers behind Hitler hallucinations. 

I’ll keep working on clearing the fog. Estimated completion date, December 2017. It’s a big job.

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

President Trump and the Other Countries

Today’s news will be all about President Trump’s tense phone calls with the leaders of Australia and Mexico. The popular spin is that the president was rude and aggressive with both of them. Very unpresidential, say the critics. Maybe he is crazy! And orange! Chaos! Chaos! Chaos!

Another spin on the same observations is that both Australia and Mexico required their leaders to “stand up” to President Trump in a more aggressive way than you would expect with a normal president. I didn’t hear the details of the calls, but I have to think they were lecturing him, or talking down to him, or generally being dicks because that’s what their countries required of them in this situation. Trump just showed them what that strategy buys them.

If you see one phone call as an event that stands alone, you’re missing the story arc. Everything is an ongoing negotiation with Trump. Australia and Mexico just had to sleep on the idea that their relationship with the United States is worse today than yesterday. And it sends a signal to other leaders that lecturing President Trump with an eye toward grandstanding or embarrassing him isn’t the strongest strategy. He probably needed to make that point one way or another. That’s done. Now let’s see if the next foreign leader decides to lecture him or not. I’m thinking no.

There will be plenty of breathless commentary today about the end of civil diplomacy. What we don’t know is how it all turns out. Don’t judge a book by the first sentence. The fun is just starting.

Just to be clear, I’m sure the new administration is making plenty of rookie errors. It’s not all brilliant persuasion. But don’t assume you can tell them apart with limited information.

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Introducing the Chaos Drinking Game

Every time you hear the word “chaos” on CNN this weekend, take a swig of alcohol. You’ll be drunk in ten minutes.

As you know by now, the word chaos is engineered persuasion from someone on the left. (Godzilla?) All of the pundits, celebrities, and TV hosts that dislike Trump are using it as often as possible. It’s starting to become hilarious because word-thinking is all they have left.

Is it time to turn “chaos” into a drinking game? Take a shot every time you hear someone say “chaos” on CNN this Friday night. 

You’re still right. They still can’t stop using that word. @ScottAdamsSays pic.twitter.com/EwmcV28XaN

— Glacenoir (@glacenoir) February 1, 2017

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Hypnotists Flips Pro-Choicers to Pro-Life in Seconds (I explain how)

Here’s a link to a provocative (and disturbing) short video of a hypnotist (my word) flipping pro-choicers to pro-life in minutes. I judge it to be real because the persuasion technique is solid gold. I’ll tell you how he did it after you watch.

I’ll explain the steps he used. These are not necessarily in order. 

Step One: Choose your subjects carefully

Notice that the subjects were on the young side. Young people are easier to flip because they haven’t had as long to harden their opinions and to make those opinions part of their core self-image. The hypnotist’s method would usually fail with people over fifty. (I assume, based on what I know of persuasion.)

Step Two: Pre-suasion

Read the book Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini to see how mentioning one topic (in this case the Holocaust) can bias you for an unrelated topic that you discuss right after. The trick is to put the pre-suasion immediately before the persuasion. You don’t want time to pass. The immediacy is what makes it work. You want topic A to conflate in your brain with topic B, even if they are unrelated.

Obviously you need to pick your priming topic carefully, and that isn’t always obvious. In Cialdini’s book he discusses a study that says people are more likely to vote Republican immediately after seeing an image of an American flag. That wouldn’t have been obvious to me. But in the 180Movie.com video it is a bit easier to see why the hypnotist chose the holocaust as his primer before discussing abortion.

The hypnotist shows us his technique with a word-play game. He asks his subjects to spell the word “shop.” Then he immediately asks them what they do when they see a green light. They reflexively say “stop” because he primed them with the word “shop.” (The correct answer is that green lights mean go, not stop.) The hypnotist accomplishes two things with this question. He first makes the subjects start to doubt their own common sense, which helps if you want to change a mind. But it is also a wink to the trained persuaders watching the video. He is showing us his technique. 

As I have told you in this blog before, persuasion works even if you know the technique and recognize it as it is happening to you. 

Notice also that the hypnotist chooses the holocaust because it has maximum emotional impact and he can describe a bulldozer scene that is chilling and visual. He also uses trial jury legend Gerry Spence’s method of putting them in the imagined scene so if feels personal. 

For maximum persuasion you want high visual content and high emotional content. The hypnotist maxed out on both. (This guy is not a beginner.)

Step Three: Make them convince themselves

The hypnotist asks questions and lets the subjects talk themselves into changing their opinions. If he directly challenged their beliefs they would just harden in their resistance. But he gives them encouragement and the freedom to do it on their own. That freedom is an illusion. He is changing their minds for them.

I use this method a lot. 

Step Four: Get them to say “baby”

The hypnotist tries to lead the subject into calling a fetus of any age a “baby.” He does that by showing sonograms of a fetus just a few weeks old. Remember that our visual sense is our strongest. Seeing eye-indications on the fetus makes us think of a human. It makes us assume life. It’s a reflex. 

Then he asks the subject to fill in the answer to the following question:

“It’s okay to kill a baby in the womb when…”

That’s triggers the subjects to become pro-life at that moment.

Step Five: Move them from certainty to doubt.

Some subjects probably didn’t say “baby” when prompted, so the hypnotist takes another path. He asks them if they would blow up a building if they didn’t know for sure whether or not there was a living person inside. Of course the subjects say no.

Then the hypnotist connects the dots. You can’t be 100% certain there is no “life” in a fetus, even at a few weeks from conception. It is unknowable.

The subjects in the film give up at that point and express pro-life sentiments.

Notice that “blow up the building” is super-strong visual imagery. That is good technique.

Step Six: Make them say the new opinion out loud

The hypnotist makes his subjects state clearly and publicly their new position as pro-lifers. Cialdini’s book Influence teaches us that once you commit to a stance it becomes hard to change your mind. So as soon as the hypnotist got the conversion he wanted he locked it in by making them proclaim their new position in public.

Step Five: Ignore the failed attempts

I assume the video leaves out any failed attempts. This isn’t the sort of thing that works every time. It leaves the viewer with the idea that pro-choicers are just confused. All they need is two minutes of explanation and they will flip.

The reality is that most people are locked into their positions on abortion. The hypnotist in this video is crazy-good, but you can’t flip most people that quickly.

Still, the fact that it can work at all should tell you that everything you ever thought about human rationality was wrong.

Update: Some of you asked what method could be used to flip someone from pro-life to pro-choice. That’s harder because the emotional argument is heavily biased to one side. (You can’t top a dead baby-maybe.) And emotion is a big part of persuasion. The Persuasion Filter predicts a long term trend toward restricting abortion rights simply because that side of the debate got their persuasion right, finally. 

My own view on abortion is that men like me should sideline themselves on this topic and let women decide what situation is most credible and tolerable. I’ll follow their lead. I add nothing to the quality of the decision. (The financial dimension is a separate question.)

–

On a totally unrelated note, what is the most useful and entertaining book you have ever read? 

—

Scott Adams

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

—