Scott Adams's Blog, page 262

Let’s Talk About Hitler

Can we agree that calling the candidate with German ancestry “Hitler” is racist? It sure feels that way to me. I’m about half German, same as Trump. And it feels like a racial insult to me.

I’m not easily offended, but I don’t see any other way to interpret the incessant Hitler analogies directed at Trump. If he were female and Asian – with exactly the same policies – would we be comparing him to Hitler every five seconds?

I don’t think so.

I’m not defending Trump’s policies. His views don’t align with my own. (None of the candidates agree with my crazy-ass opinions.) All I’m saying is that if you are calling the German guy Hitler, and you are not German (which somehow makes it okay), then I see you as a racist.

I’ll say again that I’m not defending anything Trump says or does in terms of policies. He’s on his own to defend that stuff. Consider me disavowed. My fascination with Trump is limited to his persuasion skills.

Now let’s talk about Hitler analogies in general.

As I have explained in this blog before, analogies are not part of reason. Sometimes things just remind you of other things. That’s the beginning and end of the story. So if your opinion of Trump, or any other candidate, rests on an analogy to Hitler, it would be fair to say you are not using rational thought.

Analogies are excellent tools for explaining a new situation for the first time. And sometimes analogies help you recognize situations that are potentially dangerous before you have all the facts. It is completely rational to use analogies in those two contexts. It is not rational to make a final decision based on an analogy.

Consider the Trump=Hitler analogy that is clogging the Internet. I’ll mention just a few flaws with the analogy.

For example, Hitler wanted to conquer other countries. Trump is opposed to war unless for defense. That’s sort of a big difference right there.

Also, Hitler tried to exterminate minorities. Trump’s policies lean pro-minority:

1. Veterans are disproportionately minorities.

2. Aborted babies are often minorities.

3. Trump wants to avoid people “dying in the streets” with no healthcare, and that benefit is good for minorities.

4. Trump wants to keep Social Security strong, which helps everyone, but mostly people at lower incomes.

5. Trump’s spokesperson is half African-American. Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism. And so on, and so on.

6. Stopping illegal immigration reduces job competition for lower-income families. Some say it also reduces violence to women of all ethnicities.

7. Trump wants citizens to be armed. Hitler didn’t want that.

I could go on. The point is that Trump’s policies are nearly the opposite of Hitler. 

Unlike Hitler, Trump is happy to invite anyone with useful technical skills to the country, no matter their ethnicity. And unlike Hitler, Trump has never made reference to ethnicity. Trump often mentions countries of origin and also religion. But so far, not ethnicity. Not ever.

You might THINK Trump has said some ethnically insensitive things during this campaign, but that’s an illusion. He has railed against illegal aliens (regardless of ethnicity) and proposed a ban on Muslim immigration. I remind you that Islam is comprised of all types of ethnicities. Iranians are mostly non-Arabs, just to name one ethnic distinction. 

Trump has indeed suggested discrimination against incoming Muslims. But I think you have to see this situation as a special case because Sharia law is incompatible with the Constitution of the United States. And conquering infidels is part of the Islamic belief system in some corners of Islam. If we can’t tell the good people from the bad, it boils down to national security and risk-management. And we also have to assume Trump’s “opening offer” on totally halting Muslim immigration would get negotiated down to something that looks more like a deep vetting process than a ban.

People have asked me whether Trump has made any mistakes in persuasion so far. The answer is yes, emphatically. Asking his crowds to raise their hands and take a voting pledge creates Nazi-looking optics. How in the world – you ask – could a Master Persuader make such an obvious mistake?

I can explain that.

For starters, and according to science, asking people to do something – no matter how minor – greatly increases the odds that those same people will do the next thing you ask of them. So from a persuasion standpoint, asking people to raise their hands and take a pledge is solid-gold persuasion. The only way it could go wrong is if the optics looked like the start of a Nazi movement. And …they do.

So how did Trump miss that? 

Easily. We all see through our own filters. I assume Trump does not identify himself with Hitler. So from his perspective, nothing he does fits that analogy. It is only YOUR perspective that makes the voting pledge look ominous and dangerous. All Trump saw was a bunch of enthusiastic supporters. 

If you are still hung up on the Hitler analogy with Trump, spend two minutes trying to make a Hitler analogy with Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi. It’s easier than you want to believe. Confirmation bias allows us to fit any observations to any hypothesis.

Although analogies are not part of reason, people do have a lot of fear about Trump. I have witnessed that fear first-hand. I’ll blog about that another time. In my opinion – and at this writing – Trump is not qualified to be president because he scares the pants off of about half the country. That’s Trump’s third-act problem. If he can’t solve it, he can’t be president.

So you might wonder how hard it would be for a Master Persuader to remove people’s fears about him in less than a year. Answer: Easy.

Most politicians couldn’t pull off that sort of persuasion. But they don’t have Trump’s tool set. The fun hasn’t even started yet. This gets better.

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On a related note, if this were a movie script, the third-act moment was when Trump asked his crowds to raise their hands and take the pledge. That turned his already-bad image into complete poison for two-thirds of the country. No one escapes from the Hitler meme. 

But escape he will. That’s what makes this such a good movie. Get your popcorn.

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If you hate Hitler, you might like my book because I don’t mention him once.

Who Trump Offends with His Salty Language

You know who Trump offends with his cursing?

Answer: Other people.

You and I are not offended because we are awesome, and above it. We don’t get offended for dumb ass reasons. But we are quite certain that other people need protection from naughty words. I don’t know the names of any of those people, but surely they must exist. And I hope they live in bubbles because the world has a lot of awful words and ideas waiting for them in the real world.

Let’s stop pretending that other adults are offended by language. That isn’t a thing. We are offended ON BEHALF of people we imagine would be offended. But those people do not exist. Stop imagining offended people.

People might prefer civil discourse. But in the year 2016, no human is offended by words such as shit, fuck, pussy, and ass. That isn’t a thing. You might have a strong preference to avoid those words. That’s normal. But offended? No, you are not offended. No one else is either.

But what about the children, you say? Surely Trump’s language is a bad influence on children.

Said no one who has met a child in 2016. 

Those kids have the Internet. You can’t offend them if you tried. And if you tried to corrupt them with bad language, a 70-year old man isn’t their role model, even if that man is president.

Music is the “problem” if you want to call it that. By age 11, every kid has heard every word in songs. Unless they are home schooled and tightly controlled. And those kids should not be watching television at all. The television is full of offensive stuff.

If kids are using Trump’s policies to discriminate against their peers, they need to be punished. Kids find lots of ways to be turds. Kids are terrible. But the president isn’t ruining them with words. They started out terrible. Trump just doesn’t help the situation. 

If you want a role model for a president, Trump isn’t a good bet. Neither are the other candidates. We want competence. Give us that and the rest takes care of itself.

I’m on Quora now answering questions live for a bit. (March 9, 1 PM EST). I would tell you what URL but I can’t figure it out. Okay, figured it out: http://bit.ly/1W9jlu4

Resort USA

How will the United States employ the millions of unskilled workers displaced by robots and by cheaper labor overseas? I doubt we will see manufacturing jobs return in big numbers. Robots have that covered.

Our best bet in the long run is to turn the United States into the preferred tourist destination for the world. Resorts and tourist attractions hire lots of people with low skills. They can’t get enough of them.

At the same time, we could try harder to attract tech talent from around the world. We could become the tech and vacation country. Clean air, good transportation, low crime (in the right places), and English as the primary language. Las Vegas turned itself into a tourist destination; the country could do the same.

I don’t know what Plan B looks like for employing tens-of-millions of under-skilled workers. Retraining can be a solution for some, but that has its limits. 

I worked for a large resort all through high school and college. The work was hard and the pay was low. But the life itself was quite good because I was surrounded by fun coworkers, happy vacationers, and beautiful views. I also lived and ate at the resort (in employee quarters) so I didn’t mind the low pay.

People keep asking me whether I think Trump would be a good president. I am steadfast in my answer that it depends what the future holds. Some presidents might be good at war, some might be good at negotiating peace. You can’t predict what happens next, so you can’t know which president is the best fit.

But if we decide to become a resort country, Trump has some credentials there. And I think economics and opportunity will push us to become more of a vacation destination in any event.

Another Way to Make Mexico Pay for The Wall (Trump Persuasion Series)

Let’s say future President Trump pushes to make marijuana a state issue and get the feds out of it. Under this scenario, the federal government would remove any federal laws against marijuana and tax it like liquor and cigarettes.

Now let’s say those tax dollars are dedicated to the cost of constructing a border wall with Mexico.

And let’s say the loosening of marijuana laws in the United States dries up much of the illegal weed business coming from Mexico. You don’t need to import what you can grow locally and legally.

Under this scenario, Mexico would pay for the wall by losing billions in illegal weed money to U.S. growers who are then taxed on income.

I don’t think this is what Trump has in mind, but I have a hard time seeing why it wouldn’t work.

The Conservative Con (Master Persuader Series)

I wouldn’t call myself well-informed about politics. But I pay attention when I can. My best guess is that I’m in the top 20% of informed citizens. Yet I don’t know the political definition of conservative.

Neither do you, in all likelihood. 

Under the 2D filter of life, conservatives are united by a common ideology that is supported by reason. But under the Master Persuader filter, conservative is a word created for the purpose of identity persuasion. Nothing more. According to my filter, conservative has no logical or coherent reason for existing. While I assume it once had a noble birth, at this point it is just a hodgepodge of ideas that disagree with Democrats. Some of the individual ideas have merit, but they don’t belong together in the same bag for any reason that is obvious to me.

A year ago I could not have said what I just said without being drummed off of the Internet. But Trump has laid bare the ridiculousness of the conservative label. In 2016, the word conservative can be seen as a tool of influence – a shaming tool – used by the party elites to bring people together under their handpicked puppet. Conservative doesn’t have a normal definition that is useful and widely understood. That’s why it works so well for persuasion. If it had a rigid definition, lots of people could find a reason to disagree. But by leaving the definition of conservative in ambiguity, people see nothing with which they can disagree. That is classic persuasion.

Trump uses the same form of strategic ambiguity. It’s a thing.

Some of you will write coherent definitions of conservatism in the comments. I’m sure that definition exists. But if you walk out on the street and ask random Republicans to define what conservative means, they will probably say something about “small government” before voting for whoever is likely to increase its size, such as any of the Republican candidates still in the race.

Donald Trump has tried to game the system by labelling himself a “common sense conservative.” When you add common sense to the front of conservative you can effectively drop the conservative part. Trump correctly treats the word conservative as a throw-away, because it is. It has no independent meaning in people’s minds. Conservative is a word used by con men to maintain their power.

So, Is Marco Rubio correct that Trump is a “con man”? Yes, Rubio is 100% right. Trump is a con man in a party of con people running against another party of con people. 

He’s just better at it.

P.S. - What is a progressive? I have no idea what that is either. Same argument applies. It is a word of persuasion, not reason. You can test that by adding “common sense” to the front of it and seeing that progressive instantly becomes the throw-away part.

Scott Adams on Fox and Friends (clip)

Here’s a clip of me on Fox this morning, talking Trump. I come in right after the Trump speech clips.

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If you don’t like my thoughts in that appearance, there is no reason to believe you will not love my book. But if you do, you’ll totally like my book.

The Power of Ideas

Google “Republican Debate” and see where this blog shows up in the rankings. It’s on the second page, between Forbes and CBS news. I noticed because Google Analytics showed people coming to this site based on that search term.

The ranking might change by the time you read this, but it it shows you the power of social media. 

And thank you for all the attention. I wouldn’t blog if I couldn’t see your comments. You energize me, I write. Then you strangle the bad ideas so the good ones can rise.

Collectively, we put a nice ripple on the universe.

Kind of amazing.

Thank you for this experience.

Republican Debate (March 3) Scorecard (Master Persuader Series)

The FOX News debate moderators annihilated Donald Trump last night. They highlighted huge problems with his budget plan, showed inconsistencies in his policies, and hammered him for his Trump University “scam” as some would call it. It was Trump’s first bad debate night.

And when I say FOX annihilated Trump, I mean they guaranteed a Trump landslide. People don’t like the establishment, in case you haven’t heard.

We’re past the question of whether our politicians are lying to us. That’s a given. The system forces them to lie to get elected. I’m not sure the voters care at this point.

A good way to judge the persuasiveness of these debates is to sleep on them and see what sticks in your mind in the morning. The few moments that you remember are the things that matter. The rest of your memories got flushed while you slept. So Here’s what I recall from last night.

1. Trump’s penis is more than adequate, he says.

2. Trump’s immigration plans are his first offer, subject to negotiation, as I have been telling you for months. (Because all things are subject to negotiation.)

3. Trump has no good defense for the Trump University “scam” accusation. But voters probably don’t care. They heard it was a contested legal situation – a boring one – and that was probably enough for people to ignore it.

4. Trump’s budget plans are ridiculous, just like the other candidates’ plans. But voters probably know that already. No one believes a budget plan from a candidate.

5. Trump looked sweaty and flustered at one point. That’s the first we have seen it. But he still came off as powerful in general.

6. Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich were also on stage. I can’t remember if they talked. 

7. FOX seemed to be piling on Trump, but that could be the front-runner effect. You expect them to go after the leader and frame questions around the leader’s positions. 

Overall, I doubt this debate moved the needle much on the polls. People who watch debates at this point in the election cycle probably made up their minds before they turned on the TV.

If you are wondering how to make a decision in light of the fact that all the candidates appear to be either deeply flawed or toothless, I’m here to help. I suggest you use this simple trick: Assume all the accusations about everyone are 100% true. Then vote.

For example, assume Donald Trump has changed positions on some things and plans to negotiate on other things. Assume he has a ridiculous budget plan. Assume he has insufficient policy details. Assume his taxes have some ugly surprises and that Trump University seemed a scam to its students. Assume he has several notable business failures. Assume he has offensive thoughts about women and minorities and he will say more offensive things in the future. Assume he is a narcissist too. Assume all of it to be true.

But also remember that Trump has never offered himself to be the country’s role model. And I don’t believe anyone is questioning his patriotism or love of country. As far as I can tell, Trump is treating this more like an extended job interview. He’s offering to put his talent for persuasion (which you might call his flaw of being full of shit) in the service of the country.

A Trump presidency would be messy. It would certainly introduce a new type of risk that we have not seen before. 

Do you want more risk?

Generally speaking, you want to avoid risk when things are going well and accept risk when things are totally broken. If you think the country is doing well, and will continue to do so, Hillary Clinton is an excellent choice on the left, as is Marco Rubio on the right. They will keep things mostly the same.

But if you think government is rigged against your interests, and unlikely to improve on its own, you want a bloodless revolution. And the candidate you hire for the revolution is likely to have rough edges.

Here I remind you that I’m not endorsing Trump or anyone else. In fact, I disavowed Trump exactly because of the rough edges. I don’t want to be in the splatter zone with any of the accusations I mentioned. 

Naming Romney’s Upcoming Anti-Trump Speech

The results of my flagrantly unscientific Twitter poll suggest that Romney will not enjoy the rest of his week.

A Letter to Donald Trump (from a voter, not me)

This letter from Troy Morton was in the comments to my post from earlier today. I am reposting it here, with permission, because it is simply beautiful.

Breathtaking, actually.

Enjoy. 

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To: President Trump

From: Just a simple man

I’ve been following your campaign since your announcement, reading millions of words written about you, watching thousands of hours of video and speeches, listening to many talk radio show segments, and engaging in dozens of debates with people around me.

No candidate has ever captured my attention the way you have.

Now that it’s clear you will be the Republican nominee, I want to share with you something so personal, painful, and uplifting, that I almost don’t want to write it, but I will anyway…trolls be damned:

My whole life, up until yesterday, has been based on reaction to fear.

Growing up as a black man in Washington D.C. during the “crack 80’s”, when Marion Barry was mayor, I lived a lower middle class childhood in one of the most dangerous cities in America. Though I had many friends, I was also subject to the threats, intimidation, and bullying that happens when you’re not like the people around you.

There was no father in my life to steel me against the world I lived in. My mother was strong, but it’s not exactly the kind of strength I needed. I was a boy, and needed a Man.

Without strong male guidance, I learned to fear…but not how to face fear and win. Even joining the military and going to war didn’t overcome my weakness, and all my future decisions considered strongly the level of fear I had at the time.

As a result, my life has been full of conflict, as I have unintentionally signaled to adversaries that I am an easier opponent to beat than others. I have won victories, but never truly enjoyed them knowing the battle is never won for me…only endured. I have also suffered crushing defeats, and important people in my life lost confidence in me as a result. I have not reached my potential, and settled instead into apathy and stasis, content to only being “smart enough” or “good enough”…not great. Not strong. Not resolute…

Not a leader. Not a winner.

My life, in many important ways, mirrors the American experience. Potential to be great, but paralyzed by fear. Full of conflict. Enduring, not winning. No leadership. No strong Male inspiration. And occasional, crushing defeats that hit to the core of our country…most notably 9/11, but also with the erosion of our middle class and uniquely American culture.

Like you say so often: we don’t WIN anymore.

Watching your campaign, and being as invested in it as I am, has been an exercise in recognizing, and confronting, fear that I never expected. Every time your opponents hit you…I feel fear for your candidacy and our country. Every charge of racist, sexist, facist, etc. causes me to worry that no one, not even you, can really change the country for the better. That we’re doomed to failure…

Then…inevitably…you win the battle. You don’t “survive”, or “endure”…you attack, and put fear into your opponents. You don’t stop until they are buried under your feet. Until they become paralyzed…

Sometimes, you even bait them into hitting you, just so you can beat the crap out of them again. Your life is full of conflict, but it becomes yet another opportunity to WIN, and makes you MORE powerful…not less.

Then, once they are eliminated as a threat, you are generous to the vanquished. It’s not personal, and they are not evil. They were, simply…in the way. Once they are not, they become worthy of kindness and respect.

Furthermore, you’re not just a blunt instrument…your strategy is impeccable. You go into every conflict knowing exactly what your opponents weaknesses are, how to exploit them, and what levers to pull to ensure victory. Clearly, you spend good time before announcing your candidacy doing the things the military taught me as a young soldier: surveying, recon, intelligence-gathering, ammunition, discipline, execution…

You are defending America from our enemies within, and it’s an AMAZING thing to watch.

Last night, you also did something else. You became the Man that helped me see fear for what it is: an illusion of power, a powerful teacher, and the path to winning if used properly. There is no reason, regardless of the enormity of the task, to lose to fear if you prepare well, are disciplined in your execution, and have the faith necessary, in God, yourself, and in others…that leads to victory.

Winning is always possible, but becomes probable if you never back down, never quit, and become your dominant self. Once the battle is won, treat the vanquished with kindness and respect. Be the bigger man.

You taught me how to Win.

I appreciate what you’ve done for me personally, and what you’re doing for our country. I know I’m not the only man who admires you, and can’t wait for you to become the father, and leader, of our country. It’s been a long, cold winter for men in America the last 8 years, and I believe that your election will dramatically improve the level of respect, admiration, and love people will show for strong men and Fathers, and will create a new generation of leaders from impressionable young boys.

That, more than anything, will Make America Great Again.

-Troy