Scott Adams's Blog, page 270

The Amazon Gift Predictor (Trump Master Persuader Series)

What follows is a deeply unscientific test of the public’s subconscious views of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Note: This might not work outside the United States

To play along, follow these steps.

Step 1: Open Amazon.com in a new browser window.

Step 2: In the Amazon search box, type….

                 “Hillary Clinton gifts”     <— or click the link

Step 3: When you are done chuckling, do another search for…

                  “Donald Trump gifts”    <— or click the link

In your capacity as judges for this unscientific competition, what – if anything – does it say about the two candidates and their odds in a general election? 

—

Side note to Clinton campaign: The logo with the big red arrow on it was great before Bill got involved. Now it just reminds me of his dog-boner. I wouldn’t let anyone where those around him.

Making Mexico Pay for the Wall

I can think of several ways a future President Trump could get Mexico to pay for (some) of the wall.

In a prior post, I talked about turning the border into a tourist opportunity that creates enough money to pay for the wall, but that’s the hard way.

The easy way goes like this:

President Trump: Mexico, pay for this wall!

Mexico: Um, no. That’s crazy talk.

President Trump: Here’s your first busload of illegal immigrants.

Mexico: Wait, what?

President Trump: Here’s your second busload.

Mexico: Maybe we could chip in a little, just to be good neighbors.

President Trump: Here’s your third busload.

Mexico: Here’s your check! Is it enough?

Under this scenario, Trump accepts some flexibility on handling illegal immigrants from Mexico in return for (some) construction funding for the wall.

The public will cry, “President Trump, you promised us that Mexico would pay for ALL of the wall, and you promised you would deport ALL of the illegal immigrants.”

And President Trump will say, “No, I told you I would negotiate the best deal. This is it.”

This is not a prediction because there are several ways to get Mexico onboard with the wall. My only point is that from a negotiating perspective, Trump has a stronger hand than you think. He can’t explain it like I did because it would make him less effective. So don’t interpret Trump’s lack of specifics as a lack of a plan. His history suggests he has a plan for negotiating this thing from strength.

Note for new readers: I’m not endorsing Trump or anyone else. I am not smart enough to know who would do the best job as president. But I do have a graduate degree in business from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, and one of the things I learned is that you can always make a deal when two parties want different things. The only time you can’t make a deal is when people want exactly the same limited resource.

The United States and Mexico want different things, generally speaking, so according to my business training, a deal is possible. If you think Trump can’t make a deal in this situation, you have to ask yourself if this is the exception to that business rule. I haven’t seen that kind of exception in my life, and I make deals for a living (licensing, angel investments, syndication, publishing, etc.). So while I have not seen an exception to that rule, I have met plenty of people who didn’t know the rule.

Now you know it. Trump already did.

Comparing the Candidates (Using the Master Persuader Filter)

As you know, I have been blogging about Trump’s persuasion skills. But what about the other candidates? We need some equal time here. Today I will tell you everything I know about the others. I have to confess I haven’t been following them closely. I only know what the headlines have been telling me, but I think that’s enough.

Bernie Sanders

Let’s not focus all of our attention on Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders has been running a strong campaign on his theme of not talking about Hillary’s damned emails and not wanting to talk about Bill Clinton’s sex life. I think he also wants to raise my taxes and give the money to Denmark for health care. I might have the details wrong, but that’s all I remember about him. And dandruff.

Chris Christie

Chris Christie has almost been ignored by the media. That’s not fair because he is a passionate advocate for not paying attention to Donald Trump. I believe he is also opposed to bridges, salad, and Obama.

Ben Carson

As a doctor, Ben Carson once separated conjoined twins, which is awesome, unless he did it without asking. But I’m almost positive he had permission from someone. He also attempted to stab a guy to death but was totally thwarted by a belt buckle. There are rumors he holds up his own pants with a rope because belt buckles prevent him from passing through doorways.

Rubio

I don’t remember his first name, but I think he has one. Rubio is handsome, young, and unusually moist under pressure. He enjoys drinking water. He also has policies and positions, but I’m not sure if he told anyone yet. He is the Republican elite’s best hope to thwart Trump.

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz is one of the smartest of the candidates. He is running a disciplined campaign under the umbrella theme of “Please, Donald Trump, don’t talk about me. I will do anything you ask. Say something about Rubio. That guy is sweaty.” Cruz has other ideas too, such as miscellaneous and etcetera.

Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina has run a strong campaign, powered by intelligence, hard work, and principle. She opposes dead babies, well-run corporations, and smiling.

Bill Clinton

I don’t know the details, but I think he’s in the race now too, primarily to meet women.

Hillary Clinton

Unlike Donald Trump and his divisive campaign messages, Hillary Clinton is a more inclusive candidate. Clinton is running to be the president for ALL women, not just the rich, white ones. Her campaign promise is to keep her husband’s junk on a short leash while bombing her own thyroid with medication until she has enough energy to take away your guns.

Rand Paul

Rand Paul has many smart things to say about the Fed and… that’s all I remember. And I don’t exactly know what the Fed does. But they must be doing it wrong. I think Rand Paul is still running, right?

John Kasich

John Kasich made a name for himself as a congressman and a governor. Lately he is more famous for doing his impression of a giant turtle that can’t find its own shell. He also talks about policies and whatnot. I don’t know the details.

I might be leaving out a few candidates, but it’s not my fault if they can’t make it into the headlines.

This is parody, obviously, but it isn’t far from the impression that Trump and his winged monkeys in the media have painted of the competition. As a humor writer, I’m trained to ignore the details and pick up the general vibe of things, because the vibe registers as reality to us, not the details.

(Note: True story - I wrote everything above this comment before remembering that Jeb Bush is still running.)

I will reiterate for new readers that I’m not endorsing Trump or anyone else. I am not smart enough to know who would do the best job as president. But I don’t think there is any doubt who is doing the best job of campaigning, for whatever that is worth.

Master Persuader Scorecard (Update Jan 4)

On December 4th, 2015 I predicted that Michael Moore’s “We are all Muslim” movement would not spread far beyond the faint gravitational field around his own body. I haven’t heard much about it lately.

How do you score that one, readers? (I know, that was an easy one.)

On December 7th I predicted that Trump would A-B test a new Clinton linguistic kill shot that speaks to Iowa’s conservative base. As readers pointed out, he was already going at her hard, so this would not be a new thing. But I was waiting for something darker and more delicious. And then it came: He started calling Bill Clinton a “degenerate.” Notice how open-ended it is, by design. Your imagination automatically populates that word with all manner of crimes against nature. That is persuasion perfection.

And that’s your Iowa kill shot. But as I predicted, he is only A-B testing it. Iowa isn’t crucial. And Trump isn’t running directly against H. Clinton in Iowa, but going at her so hard might be enough to make him look like the one to beat her.

How do you score those two predictions? I’m on the fence. 

Trump Prediction about the Wall (Master Persuader series)

Prediction: Watch for someone in Mexican politics to publicly agree with Trump that Mexico might pay for some part of increased border security.

Then watch that turn into a pundit battle about what that actually means.

Does it mean pay for the entire wall?

Does it mean Mexico already pays a lot for border control, and this is just business as usual?

Is paying for some of the wall enough to say Trump was right?

That’s when you will start hearing the word “landslide” a lot more. 

Update: Some of you wondered about the reach of this blog. Here is an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that quotes me and the Master Persuader filter. What’s missing is a mention of my 100% track record for Trump predictions. That’s the part I PREDICTED WOULD BE IGNORED. 

Wrap your head around that: I got nine-out-of-nine predictions (ten if you count my prediction that Michael Moore’s protest would not catch on) and that record is not the top headline in every publication? The Master Persuader filter predicts that my feat can’t be processed by normal brains. (Obviously my regular readers with their abnormal brains can see it fine.)

Trump’s First Ad (Master Persuader Filter)

All the buzz today is about Trump’s new ad. Some people on Twitter asked for the Master Persuader filter on it.

Note: For new readers of this blog, I don’t endorse Trump, or anyone else. I’m not smart enough to know who would be the best president. My interests are in Trump’s persuasion skills. I have a lot of background in that area.

My overall grade for the ad is A++++. It might go down in history as one of the best political ads of all time. I’ll break it down.

1. It is horrifingly racist FEELING to some people, and scary, and that is enough to keep it in the news and click-worthy forever. Literally. Your great-grandkids will be studying this ad in history class. This is an intentional part of the ad’s design, and perfectly executed.

2. The best part of the persuasion is cleverly concealed in all that noise. The most active part is the part you probably think is nothing but bad writing. It sounds too folksy, and out of place against the seriousness of the background images. That’s why those words stick out like a dollar on the sidewalk. Here is the active part of the persuasion:

“…until we figure out what’s going on.”

If you have been reading my Master Persuader series, you might recognize that as the High Ground Maneuver. It works every time, unlike weaker forms of persuasion. “Works every time” doesn’t mean it instantly changed your mind, but it does mean it nudged it. And you can’t go back. The High Ground Maneuver is a sign of a Master Persuader. 

The low ground on the immigration topic (the weeds) is where everyone else is. That includes endless chatter about the vetting process, the visa process in general, statistics, our national brand, terror recruitment, and on, and on.

 Weeds.

The high ground is that this is a complicated topic full of disagreement about just about everything except that the risk is greater than zero. So Trump says the one thing that everyone can agree: Collectively, we need to better understand our enemies. But in the short term, let’s lock the front door while we figure it out.

Who disagrees with that way of thinking? In other words, first you apply the tourniquet, then you figure out why the car crashed. You don’t do those things in the other order.

That’s the high ground maneuver. He moved the focus from the weeds – where everyone disagrees – to the high ground where everyone agrees:

1. We all want our fellow citizens and our government to better understand the terrorists’ motivations. (But personally, we think we already know.)

2. We all solve problems in the same order (tourniquet first).

But there is even more “work” in Trump’s sentence fragment, and that’s the magical part. You don’t often see this kind of layering.

In hypnosis class, we learned to avoid introducing any thoughts that a subject would reflexively find disagreeable. For the same reason, Trump isn’t giving us the answer for why we are under attack. He is letting you fill in the question with your own answer. Why?

Because you always agree with yourself. You’re a genius that way. 

None of this persuasion technique will flip the average Democrat, but a Master Persuader only needs to persuade 20% of the other side in order to win in a landslide. And a person with Trump’s skills can persuade 20% of the public of anything.

You will see lots of fuming and hatred about the ad, because it intentionally invites that response. It is part of the design. You can’t ignore it.

Persuasion or Coincidence?

If you have been following the Master Persuader theme in this blog, you know I correctly predicted nine-out-of-nine political events in 2015. And I did it right in front of you. That might blow your mind a little bit. 

Several people asked whether I have done this sort of thing in the past. The answer is yes, in the sense that I have consciously attempted to change national opinion using the tools of persuasion. I suppose you could call that a prediction, albeit a personal one, because I imagined the future and saw myself changing it. And I didn’t see failure as a possible path.

Had my Master Persuader series not enlightened you about the power of trained persuaders, you would think it arrogant of me to believe I could personally change the laws of the land. It looks narcissistic and egomaniacal to anyone in the 2D world. I see that too, of course.

That’s why I kept it to myself until now. But readers of this blog have looked behind the curtain, and you know that the best persuaders (Trump, Jobs, Kanye) have an off-putting confidence that is part of their tool set. You see it as character flaws that are coincidentally found in successful people. But successful people see their confidence as both intentionally cultivated and useful. Confidence is a tool of persuasion. I use the confidence tool all the time, and I enjoy similar criticisms as Kanye, Trump, etc. 

But with all of my confidence/arrogance/narcissism on this topic, what I don’t know – and can’t know – is whether my actions have the impact I intend. For example, most political decisions are binary, in the sense that something either happens or it doesn’t. And that means a monkey with a pointing stick can guess right at least 40% of the time, or whatever. When the sample size is small, you can’t detect causes.

With that caution in mind, and for entertainment only, I will describe what I did in 2013, and tell you how it all worked out. Your job is to use the Master Persuader filter to determine whether this is a story of coincidence, complete bullshit, or weapons-grade persuasion. (None of this makes sense unless you have been reading this blog since June.)

For the record, I have only attempted to go weapons-grade with my persuasion training once in my life. And when I did, it was because millions of lives were in the balance. I thought I could make a difference. 

I don’t know that my efforts had any impact at all. You will not know either. But it might make your brain spin in your skull while you try to figure it out.

This is my story. It is completely true, but I offer it for entertainment only. Your conclusions are your own.

— My Story —

On November 3rd, 2013, I published a blog post titled I Hope My Father Dies Soon. The statement was true, and he died within hours of its writing. If you have not seen it, you will need to take a look to understand what follows. If you already read it, read it again using the Master Persuader filter you have learned in this blog. You will see it with new eyes.

Look for my intention and my technique. The link is here.

Next, look at this Gallup poll on assisted dying and pay attention to this inflection point where public opinion reversed a multi-year decline and sharply ticked up. Notice the timing.

Link is here:

There are rock-solid “normal” explanations for this uptick. The high-profile case of Brittany Maynard was news for months. She died November 1st, 2014. That could easily explain the change.

Organized groups such as Compassion and Choices did tremendous work to influence politicians and the public. And a few states had by then established a good track record with assisted dying laws. So a lot of forces came together at about the same time. 

And maybe enough people had dealt with their own dying parents that the national mood changed. I imagine you can think of other perfectly normal reasons for the abrupt change in public opinion. I can’t rule out any of them.

All I know for sure is that my post was designed to make this exact change in public opinion – and rapidly – at precisely the time it happened. (And you have seen how well the Master Persuader filter has predicted its outcomes: 9-out-of-nine so far, including predictions on exact timing.)

Is this a case of persuasion, coincidence, or complete bullshit? 

One data point means nothing. But if you want to do some unscientific meta-analysis on the persuader topic someday, here’s one more data point for the pile.

Again, I remind you this is just for fun. Coincidences are usually just coincidences. I have NO evidence that my actions made a difference, and make no claim that they did. My personal belief is that the folks who did the organizing on this issue got it done. They consulted the right experts, A-B tested messages, raised money, and capitalized on events in the news. I give them 100% credit. It was a tremendous job. I had just enough contact with the main advocates to know they were the right people to get it done.

The only thing I know for sure is that I wasn’t willing to let the law on this topic stand. Had the recent vote in California not gone my way, I would still be all over it until I prevailed. And my odds of success, over time, would have been close to 100%, because persuasion is cumulative. I just needed to lean on it long enough, and hard enough, because there were no Master Persuaders on the other side to stop me. I’m glad it wasn’t necessary. Apparently compassion and reason came together with the help of advocates and organizers.

In my latest book that you’re tired of hearing about, I talk about the difference between wanting something and deciding to get it. In this case, I decided to get it. I’m reasonably certain nothing would have stopped me. I’m glad it wasn’t necessary. 

Unless it was. We can never know for sure.

Update: Some Twitter followers asked about my site traffic for that blog post. I don’t have stats because I lost that history with the site redesign, but that post was my biggest traffic of all time, by a big margin. 

Master Persuasion Hypothesis - (Try this one at home)

Here I will paraphrase the latest Trump/Clinton exchange:

H. Clinton: “Terrorists are using Trump in recruitment videos.”

D. Trump: “Of course they go after the person with a HUUUUGE lead in the polls. I predict they will make more.”

See what he did there?

Step One: Reframe the situation as validation of Trump being ahead in the polls. Every time he finds a new way to talk about his lead it becomes self-reinforcing. People like winners.

Step Two: Predict MORE videos! That’s a tell for a Master Persuader. It handcuffs whoever makes these videos by making it a validation of his predictive abilities (which he touts).

Step Three: If more videos appear, reframe them as clear evidence of who they fear the most.

Step three hasn’t yet happened, as far as I know.

Now the radical Islamic terrorist propaganda people have a dilemma, assuming they pay attention to this situation, and they probably do. If they make another Trump video, he uses it as a sign of his strength and predicting power. Doh! A trap!

But if they make the next one about Clinton instead, Trump already removed her reframing option by claiming it for himself. She will be left to wallow in the ISIS video stew she cooked up for Trump.

In other words, while you weren’t paying attention, Trump coopted ISIS to become the video production wing of his campaign, at no cost to him. 

I assume he’ll kill them when he’s done with him.

Because that’s how Lucky Hitler rolls.

Robots Read News about Former President Bill Clinton

The comic is below the break. (Contains naughty word.)

If your firewall blocks it, see on Twitter here.

Master Persuader Scorecard Update: 10-out-of-10 Coming?

I predicted toward the bottom of this post that Trump was setting up the country for a “mom versus dad” showdown with Clinton – at least in our irrational minds. When election day comes, if the country needs a hug, mom wins. But if there’s a noise downstairs, you probably want dad to get the baseball bat before mom does. (Because you’re a sexist.)

Here’s one of your first tells that this set-up is coming. You’ll find this quote toward the bottom:

You will see more of this effect when the Clinton vs. Trump face-off becomes exclusive. The voters will keep saying stuff like the quote above until the media reports it. Then everyone will see it. Then it’s all over. 

Keep in mind that terror gets bigger headlines than food stamps, so “Dad” has that natural advantage. But to be fair, if we solve radical Islamic terrorism before November, Hillary Clinton has an excellent chance of winning. 

For the benefit of new readers of this blog, I don’t endorse Trump or anyone else. I’m not smart enough to know who would do the best job of president. Nor am I well-informed on the big issues. My interest is in Trump’s persuasion skills. I have never seen better.