Scott Adams's Blog, page 259

The Trump Chess Board

With the New York State primary tomorrow, let’s see how the chess board is set up for Trump. 

The Lead

Trump has the lead in delegates for the Republican race and that lead will grow with the upcoming primaries.

Momentum

After Trump wins the New York primary he will be the one with momentum for a few weeks.

The Colorado Innocculation

Trump cleverly used the Colorado “rules change” situation that denied him any delegates as a warning to the party for the convention. Trump’s Wall Street Journal article about Colorado was perfect because it primed voters to be touchy about any future shenanigans. The party has been warned.

The Colorado situation is a perfect fit for Trump’s story. Trump is trying to break the system at the same time the system is acting rigged right in front of our eyes. 

Victim of a Woman

Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski learned there would be no charges against him after journalist Michelle Fields’ accused him of grabbing her arm at a Trump event. Regardless of the facts, the court’s conclusion made Trump look like a victim of a woman. On the level of objective fact, the Fields situation has nothing to do with any of Trump’s policies. But as a matter of persuasion it changed the frame from Trump being less empathetic on women’s issues (or so it seems) to Trump being a victim of a woman (or so it seems). Watch how Trump’s “woman problems” seem to diminish going forward.

Moreover, Trump stayed loyal to Lewandowski the whole time. Voters noticed. 

Megyn Kelly Interview

As I predicted, Trump and Megyn Kelly are planning a one-on-one interview that will be a yuuuuge ratings event. Expect Trump to be polite and professional. Expect Kelly and Trump to be on good terms when it is over. Kelly has been a big part of the story of Trump’s perceived problem with women, and this will probably fix it. If this were a movie, Trump’s critical third act solution would revolve around the Kelly interview.

Bad Boy Transition Story

In movies, the hero has to undergo some sort of change in order to make the story compelling. Voters want Trump to moderate his obnoxious style and it seems that he is doing just that. We assume Trump’s new subdued style is because of hiring Reagan campaign veteran Paul Manafort. This transition from bad boy to responsible leader will be catnip for the press for months, assuming Trump keeps it up. 

The new approach will help Trump run out the clock without introducing any drama that might derail him. And obviously it sets him up for the general election.

Can Trump Take Advice?

The anti-Trump public worried that Trump would be a narcissist and not follow the advice of experts once in office. That was a reasonable fear because Trump seemed to be winging it on the campaign trail. But the hiring of Paul Manafort followed by Trump’s pivot towards a more leaderish vibe are clear indications that Trump can listen. If you were worried about Trump’s finger on the nuclear trigger, you can worry less now. Apparently he does listen to expert opinions.

New Haircut

Unless it is my imagination, Trump’s haircut has recently improved. I don’t know if that is because of Manafort’s advice or something else. But on the visual plane of persuasion, the haircut is far more than a haircut. It is another visible signal that Trump can be influenced by the public and his advisors. And it is part of his transition story.

In the 2D world of reason, no one ever rejected a presidential candidate based on his haircut. But in the 3D world of persuasion I would bet Trump loses 10% of voters based on them not wanting a clown-looking president to be the face of the nation. The new haircut is a big, big deal on the persuasion level. 

The Sanders Association

Trump has been painting Bernie Sanders as a victim of the rigged system to show that Trump is not alone. It is a smart way to make Trump’s claims of an unfair system seem less Trump-centric. And it makes it easier for Sanders supporters to jump ship to Trump later.

The Shame Test

Trump recently passed the shame test. And by that I mean he quickly changed his position on abortion penalties when he realized his first thoughts on the subject were immensely unpopular. The public saw that as a mistake, and it was. But on the level of persuasion it solved one of Trump’s biggest problems: People believed he was impervious to facts and shame. Voters believed Trump would be dictatorial and ignore the legitimate interests of the people. But the people just spun Trump like a top on the subject of abortion penalties. Now we know he can be managed when it makes sense to do so. That’s a big deal. It might be the most important thing that happened in the campaign because it solved Trump’s biggest problem – the idea that he would not be “managed” by the people. He just was.

It might be my imagination, but I think all of the Trump=Hitler memes stopped at the same time the public “managed” Trump back to a more popular position on abortion penalties. That would not be a coincidence.

New Clinton Linguistic Kill Shot

Trump is testing “Crooked Hillary” as his new linguistic kill shot. It lacks the visual reminder element that “low energy” and “liddle Marco” had, but that’s probably a good thing because it wouldn’t be classy or smart to go after Clinton’s physical appearance. (Because of gender.) Instead, Trump is using the same confirmation bias play that he used for “Lyin’ Ted.” And by that I mean Trump depends on a slow drip of future news that reinforces the label. Trump knows Cruz will say some things that are not true (as all candidates do) and it will reinforce his “lyin’” label. Likewise, Clinton will endure a slow drip of allegations about crooked dealings in the past, taking money from banks for speaking fees, and the email server situation. Every time another sketchy detail emerges, you will think “crooked.” The new name is sticky. And it is engineered with a timer so it worsens all year until the election.

Trump has also called out Clinton for her lack of “stamina.” That’s the second kill shot, and it too is engineered as a magnet for confirmation bias. Every time Clinton coughs, loses her balance, looks tired, or cancels an event, you will wonder about her stamina.

In the movies, the hero kills all of the bad guys with one clean shot until the final showdown with a super-nemesis. The super-nemesis doesn’t die from the first shot. You always need more. So don’t be surprised by Trump using two linguistic kill shots on Clinton. Crooked and stamina work well together.

Headlines and Confirmation Bias

Unfortunately, there’s a good chance of more terrorist attacks around the world before November. You can also expect more stories about Syrian immigrants in Europe causing problems. Those stories – which are inevitable – will strengthen Trump’s appeal.

Bill Clinton’s Sabotage Tour

It looks to me as if Bill Clinton doesn’t want Hillary to be president. That makes sense on a human level because it would wreck his lifestyle and diminish his own accomplishment. Before the primaries, people assumed Bill would be Hillary’s secret weapon. But that weapon might be pointed in the wrong direction.

Obviously I could be reading too much into Bill Clinton’s motivation. But you can already see that the public is starting to interpret his actions that way. 

Summary

This is the strongest position Trump has been in since he announced. The chess board is all set for him to win the nomination and then go on to a landslide in the general.

—

If you think this blog is ridiculous, you should see my book.

Ayatollah So

In Iran you can vote for anyone for President so long as that person has been approved by the Ayatollah Khomeini. We Americans call that system a dictatorship.

Voters in America recently discovered that they live under an Iranian type of system and didn’t know it. In the primaries, voters participate in some sort of ritualistic placebo voting while party leaders select the candidates. In the general election, the richest and smartest of the elite use money and psychology to brainwash the masses into imagining they have independent opinions and that their votes matter. We call that a republic.

Everything was going fine until Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders ripped the cover off of the American system and showed it to be more illusion than democracy/republic. In a way, this is the first contested election in our lifetimes. And by that I mean citizens are trying to wrestle control from the big money interests driving the political parties. 

Sanders probably has no chance. He will be super-delegated out of the nomination.

But Trump has improved his haircut and he started negotiating with Megyn Kelly for an interview. He also hired some campaign professionals who know what they are doing. You can stop wondering if he’s playing to win. He’s engineering his third act solution as we speak.

Thanks to social media, and Trump, America will get its first taste of real democracy. If it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to the Iranian model and hope for our self-awareness to diminish over time.

I’m not smart enough to know who would be the best president. But I certainly appreciate the richness of choice we have this election. We haven’t seen anything like this.

—

If you think my analogy about Iran is dumb, you should see my book.

Bono Says Send in the Clowns

Bono suggests using comedy to fight ISIS. The idea is completely stupid except for the fact that it is totally genius. I agree with Bono that psychology (persuasion) is the key to beating ISIS. I wrote about it here.

You shouldn’t be surprised when Bono is right. He has a genius-level IQ. Or to put it another way, if you think Bono makes no sense – about anything – the odds are good that the problem is on your side.

Bono is the real deal – a Master Persuader all the way down to his DNA. 

Bono’s suggestion to send in Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, and Sasha Baren Cohen to defeat ISIS is pure Trumpian hyperbole by design. Bono made it visual so you would remember it, and so you would quote it. He isn’t seriously suggesting we send stand-up comedians to war zones. The fact that you think he MIGHT be serious is the genius of it. That’s what makes you talk about it.

Listen to Bono’s quote about maleness, and about the power of mocking. He’s spot on.

How powerful is mocking as a tool of persuasion? It’s hard to say, but if you look at the growth of business books in the 1990s you might find that the growth stopped at about the same time Dilbert came on the scene and mercilessly mocked the industry. Maybe the business book industry had just run its course. Maybe it was a coincidence. But I can tell you I have gotten hundreds of email messages from managers and authors who say they cancelled plans because they imagined how those plans would sound when mocked in a Dilbert comic.

Mocking is powerful force. And it has special power among the young. 

Could we mock ISIS out of existence, thus killing it as an idea?

I say yes. I’m with Bono. Take him seriously.

Watching Me Work

If you want to see my work process this morning, I’ll be recording it on Snapchat: ScottAdams925

My Trump AMA on Reddit

I just finished a Trump AMA on Reddit here.

Resetting the Movie in Your Head

My coffee machine broke this morning, for no apparent reason. That’s a crisis situation. So I went to my emergency backup caffeine source of coconut water with espresso. I had to use tools to open the can because the tab ripped off without doing its job. That happened three cans in a row. I finally got into one with a hammer and screwdriver.

Then my WiFi failed for no reason. But I got that working.

Then my Airdrop stopped working. So I had to email myself a photo from my phone to my laptop. But that isn’t working either, for some reason.

I tried to print something but my printer is out of ink.

Then my Amazon affiliate account stopped working for no reason.

Then my Reddit AMA set-up disappeared, or maybe it didn’t. So I might be on Reddit today at 12:30 EST answering Trump questions. Or not. Depends if every other thing in my house breaks in the next ten minutes.

So far this morning, everything I have touched has broken.

Based on a lifetime of experience – and I know how woo-woo this sounds – my devices malfunction when my stress is high. Unlike most of you, I don’t believe in an objective reality that humans can directly experience. I believe life – or our experience of it – is a movie we create in our heads. So to prevent more damage to the technology in my house, I will go relax for a few minutes. That will reboot my movie and make all my devices work once again.

Nothing I said stands up to science, of course. But I’ve been doing this routine for years and my experience is that when I’m relaxed all of my problems go away on their own. I assume that is coincidence and confirmation bias. But the sensation is one of controlling my environment. And I like that feeling.

I’ll be back in a few minutes. Everything will be fine by then.

Food Psychology Experiment

Now for something different.

If you are familiar with my book on systems versus goals, you know I talk about creating your own diet system to replace willpower with knowledge. For example, you’ll need less willpower if you learn how to make healthy food taste great. To that end, I created a three-minute food psychology video to share some tricks I discovered. 

I’m not suggesting you will enjoy the specific foods in the video. This is more about finding ways to make boring (but healthy) food taste great with the least amount of effort. 

A big part of what I’m doing is changing how you experience the food, as opposed to its actual taste. In other words, I am using a knife to change the psychology of the experience. And all of these examples work best with fresh ingredients prepared in front of the person with whom you will share it. There is something about watching food prepped in front of you that makes it tastier. 

For the food nerds among you, I’m using a Shun knife. And I have years of professional kitchen experience from my youth. Don’t ever use a high-end knife of that type to cut an avocado the way I do in the video. You might lose a finger.

Also, I use more salt than your doctor might recommend for you. Don’t take health advice from cartoonists.

For more on systems versus goals, see my book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

Tip to men: Women will fall in love with you when you do the avocado trick in front of them. Try that one at home. It’s crazy. 

Creating a Low-Cost Life

Candidates for President of the United States talk about taxes and budgets and social services. But no one ever talks about lowering the cost of living. And that could be a big omission because American society has no way to take care of all the under-employed, unemployed, and retired people of tomorrow. There are simply too many of them and we can’t tax our way to a solution. The math just doesn’t work.

The Constitution of the United States says nothing about lowering the cost of living for citizens. That isn’t the job of government. And private industry is focused on keeping profit margins high, so don’t expect any solutions from that group. The rising cost of living, along with the rising number of non-working adults, is a time bomb that no one seems to be focusing on. It isn’t anyone’s job.

So I’ll take this one. You can help if you like.

It seems to me that the only way to lower the cost of future living is by some sort of massive open-source engineering and design project. Imagine the project managed by volunteers and segmented into areas of specialty. You would have subgroups working on the best solutions for sewage, water, power, construction, safety, interior design, and even psychology. It would take about a hundred different specialties to design a new type of city from the ground up.

Ideally, this project needs some sort of 3D modeling platform so people can compare ideas. And it would need smart collaboration and voting features to guarantee that the best ideas bubble up to the top. That all seems hard but doable.

I also imagine a new type of construction material that is essentially Leggo blocks made from light, nearly indestructible ceramic materials that are filled with dirt from the job site. The dirt could come from the underground tunneling and digging that would support any new city. That includes underground sewers, transportation, parking, cellars, and more. Robots would fill the empty building blocks with dirt and snap them into place on the construction site.

Imagine that each block has a barcode indicator that the robot can read. Send in a swarm of builder-robots that work all day and night, using super-simplified building methods, and cheap materials, and you have cheap housing. I can imagine getting the materials cost for a new home down to about $10,000. And robots could build an entire home in one day. I think you could get labor and materials cost under $25,000 for a 2-bedroom apartment/condo. That assumes economies of scale over time.

Now let’s say these new cities are built in deserts or someplace where land is cheap, and renewable energy (solar, wind, water) is available. And assume these homes are so energy-efficient with their dirt-insulated walls and proper design that the cost of energy is trivial. 

I think you could also achieve dramatic cost reductions in healthcare, insurance, child care, education, transportation and more if you designed those systems from the ground up for this new type of city. Get rid of private automobiles and plan for self-driving cabs from the start. Use Internet doctors for most diagnoses. Create online classes to replace schools. Create indoor gardens for local vegetables. And so on.

I think you could get the cost of living an amazing life down to about $2,000 per month per person. 

We know robots will be taking jobs from the lower and middle class. The only way society can survive is by dropping the cost of living for those same people.

Am I wrong?

Why I Disagree With All of the Candidates

I’ve said a few times in this blog, and elsewhere, that my political views don’t match up with Donald Trump’s views, or anyone else’s. 

How’s that possible, you ask? Let me give you a taste of it.

Take International trade agreements, for example. My opinion is that I’m too under-informed to have an opinion. I’m almost positive that the people running for president have opinions on our trade agreements. So that’s one difference.

I also don’t know the best way to fight ISIS militarily. But I do think we should be looking to use persuasion in its strongest form to fight the “idea” of radical Islamic terrorism. I think that’s different from any of the candidates’ plans.

On Supreme Court nominations, I’d like to see the number of justices stay at eight, which I believe is legal under the Constitution. And then I’d like to see new justices appointed in a way that deadlocks the court for most issues at 4-4. That way their decisions would be more credible to the public because there is only a decision if one side (conservative or liberal) has a defector. In other words, I think the president should be working on making the court credible instead of working to make it biased.

On college education, I think the country should be working toward creating inexpensive online alternatives. Like Bernie Sanders, I think college should be nearly free. But I think the free colleges should be online. That way the government can fund one college, in effect, and broadcast it to the entire world.

On social services, I think the country needs to get serious about lowering the cost of living for the elderly and the poor. We probably can’t produce enough money to care for our citizens in our current expensive world. But we can build cities where the cost of living is low while the lifestyle is extraordinary. It just requires good planning and engineering. I don’t see any candidates talking about reducing the cost of living a quality life.

On healthcare, I think we need to work toward making it universally available. But I think we only get there by making doctors available online, perhaps with lots of local nurses to apply bandages and do the simple hands-on stuff. My experience with my healthcare provider, Kaiser, is that their robust online service reduces my burden on the system by about 30% while improving my satisfaction. 

And I would want a president who can be a role model for eating right, even if it puts some big food companies such as Kraft or McDonalds out of business. I don’t see any candidates talking about diet and fitness.

On immigration, I don’t know how good the country is at vetting newcomers. If we’re spectacular at it, I’m all for allowing some sane levels of immigration. If we’re bad at it, security has to be the top concern. Call me under-informed.

On abortion, most people base their opinions on a starting assumption about when life begins. I take the Schroedinger’s Cat approach to abortion in which I believe that the fetus is a living human if you think it is. And if you think it is not a living human, it is not.

Ridiculous, you say?

Keep in mind that your brain evolved to keep you alive. It did not evolve to give you the one truth about the nature of reality. We all have our own little movies playing in our heads that we believe to be reality. And we all have a different movie. You might believe your prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse and I might believe I am reincarnated from a monk. According to my worldview, reality is subjective. And that means if you see a fetus at a certain age as living, and I don’t, neither of us is right. We just have different movies. And we’ll never know which of us is closer to reality, if indeed reality has some objective truth under the hood. 

But we humans still have some sort of need to make decisions within our illusions. My decision on abortion is to take a backseat to the collective opinions of women and try to support whatever women decide. With a topic as emotional as abortion, The top priority is to make the law as credible as possible so society can tolerate it. The opinions of men do not add to the collective wisdom about abortion but our involvement does reduce the credibility of whatever laws come out of it. 

I don’t think any of the candidates have my view on abortion.

I could go on, but I think you see my point. I’m either under-informed on issues or I take a totally different approach to them.

I have also been asked many times if I would personally be happy or unhappy with a Trump presidency. The answer is that a Trump presidency would probably be the worst possible outcome for me. Half the country loathes any new president and that loathing would extend to me (more than usual) should Trump get elected. Every time Trump does something unpopular, I would get dumped on for my past blogging about his talents for persuasion.

I also think Trump is the only candidate who can raise taxes on the rich. I don’t love that personally.

So a Trump presidency would be terrible for me. I don’t know how it would be for the rest of you. I’m not psychic, and I have no track record of predicting the successes of presidents.

—

If you think my political views are dumb, you should see my book. It is far worse.

My Billion-dollar CGI Movie Animation Idea

Years ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg invited me to Dreamworks to brainstorm some non-Dilbert movie ideas that would work well with CGI animation. By then the world already had CGI movies about toys, cars, bugs, robots, fish, aliens, animals, birds, monsters, and most of the other non-human entities.

That was the problem. The animation industry was running out of fresh fields to plow. They needed more creature types.

I didn’t have any ideas that day. It’s harder than it looks. All the easy ones are already done.

My creative failing at that meeting with Katzenberg has bugged me for years. I’m usually the person in the room with the commercially viable idea. That’s sort of what I do. But I failed that day. I had absolutely nothing.

But… I’m not a quitter. I have chewed on that problem for years without having so much as a whiff of an idea. Then one day last week, for no particular reason, and while thinking of something unrelated, a solution came to me. It had all the elements. It was born whole. I tested it on a few friends and their jaws dropped. 

It’s not just a good idea. It’s sort of amazing, if I do say so myself. And easy to animate. When you see the movie (and someday you will) you will laugh at how obvious it was.

Too bad I can’t tell you the idea. That would ruin its commercial value. So what I’m going to ask instead is that if any of you work for one of the big animation studios, send me an email at dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com. Or use Twitter @ScottAdamsSays to contact me. I’ll use Skype to pitch the idea to the first big studio that gets to me. It will only take ten minutes.