Scott Adams's Blog, page 279

Master Wizard Filter Scorecard

Pundits declared that Carly Fiornia won the most recent Republican debate. Her poll numbers surged, as you might expect.

Meanwhile, I was applying the Master Wizard Filter to the debate and predicting that Fiorina had self-destructed that night by pairing her brand with the image of a dead baby. INTENTIONALLY! In a blog post, I called that mistake self-immolation.

A new CNN poll says Fiorina’s poll numbers fell off a shelf. We don’t know all the reasons why, but the data conforms to prediction.

In other news, Trump released a funny edit of Bill Clinton’s interview with Colbert that makes Clinton seem to endorse Trump. If you recall, I made a similar observation here. 

Trump’s Third Act (Part of the Trump Persuasion Series)

This week the media is starting to realize that maybe Donald Trump has a chance of winning the presidency. Howard Kurtz is calling the turn. You will see a lot more stories and opinions along those lines, assuming Trump’s numbers stay strong.

But here’s the fun part: How do you write a story about Trump beating expectations without mentioning that one observer loudly predicted it in August and provided lots of details for how Trump is doing it?

Do you think no one noticed this blog? :-)

Realistically, I don’t expect any professional journalists to say my Master Wizard Hypothesis is credible. To do so would not be a good career move for them. And it would also require accepting the painful idea that Trump is smarter than the people who have been publicly calling him an idiot. So this is the perfect set-up for cognitive dissonance. I predict you will see some new explanations for Trump’s success that are truly bizarre. Look for some sort of weird conspiracy theory to emerge. We saw the same thing when Obama made his unexpected run to the White House. Some folks figured he must be a Muslim sleeper cell. You will see similar whacky stuff emerge about Trump.

But I doubt you will see the mainstream media write the history of this election as one that was predicted by a cartoonist with scary precision and lots of specific reasons. Don’t expect that to happen.

I am still predicting a Trump landslide in the general election, not a mere win. That should give me some distance from the rest of the pundit class while they try to adjust to the idea that Trump is competitive in this race. And it gives you a specific prediction to hold me to. I predict Trump gets at least 65% of the votes in the general election.

Here I remind new readers that I don’t know who would be the best president. I am not that smart. I write about Trump’s persuasion skills because I have never seen better. New readers should also know that I am a trained hypnotist and a lifetime student of influence in all its forms. So this is in my wheelhouse.

I am also a writer. And I have experience with movie scripts. And this is where I will blow your mind.

A movie script is almost always arranged in what the professionals call a three-act form. In this model, the protagonist always has some sort of life-changing event (such as suddenly becoming the frontrunner for president) in act one.

In act two, we see the protagonist living out the results of that change. In the Trump movie, we see a smiling candidate amassing popularity and defying the experts. Just like act two in any good movie. This is the calm before the storm.

At the end of the second act, nearly all movies follow the model where some unsolvable problem rears its head. The audience must feel that the protagonist can’t escape this problem. We know the movie is fiction, but we still feel the emotions of the actors. We love the feeling of the third act because it reminds us of our own unsolvable problems. The main difference is that the movie hero finds a way to solve the unsolvable. That solution is what makes it a movie. The audience needs to feel the third act tension followed by an unexpected solution in order to get the chemical rush of movie enjoyment.

Donald Trump, magnificent bastard, has created a three-act movie with an extraordinarily unsolvable problem : His immigration plan.

Experts and pundits will now tell you that Trump might win the nomination by being tough on illegal immigrants, but that same issue will sink him in the general election. That’s a third-act problem. Literally no one in the political pundit class can even suggest a possible way to deport 11 million illegal folks in a land of easy gun access. It seem impossible to do without major riots and bloodshed. Just like a good movie.

I am here to tell you that this movie set-up is intentional. That’s the part you don’t yet believe. Immigration was the perfect strategic lever for Trump. In the primaries it sucked all the attention out of the room and galvanized his base. In the general election, immigration will turn into an unsolvable third-act problem for Trump, as he planned.

Do you remember when Nelson Mandela went to jail? That’s a third act problem, and the perfect set-up for a movie ending.

Do you know the story of John McCain? He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. That’s a third act problem, and the perfect set-up for running for president. That’s why we like war heroes such as Bush senior and Bob Dole. They have the third act built into their natural stories. Obama’s third act, obviously, was the country’s legacy of slavery. Timing doesn’t seem to matter as much as whether the story has a third act problem that the public recognizes by reflex. Once we recognize the movie form, we root for the hero, automatically. We have been trained by Hollywood to do that. You can’t turn it off in your mind. You can’t ignore it. If a candidate can wrap his or her personal story into a three-act form, that is the highest level of persuasion.

But Donald Trump did not have a natural three-act story. He was born advantaged and stayed that way. Sure, he emerged from bankruptcy, but that story is boring and sounds routine in 2015.

So Donald Trump created his own third act problem: Immigration. 

Trump created that problem for himself because it has the special quality of a problem that Trump can solve. The problems one can’t solve are the ones that involve too many decision-makers, such as in the Middle East. But immigration is a problem a president can tackle and totally own. Within the class of unsolvable problems, immigration is special in the sense that one strong leader can solve it. You would be hard-pressed to find another problem with that wonderful quality.

So here’s the movie Trump is writing for you. You expect him to stumble in the general election because the mass deportation part of Trump’s plan makes him unelectable. I predict that after Trump has both the nomination and a VP running mate with some Latino credibility, Trump will unveil the beginning of a process to solve the unsolvable.

And here is how he might do it.

Trump could ask his running mate to be in charge of the immigration issue, and to bring Trump at least three plans for dealing with it. These plans should include the economics and human costs of doing nothing, a second plan that involves doing something humane (such as amnesty), and a third option that is more severe, such as mass deportation. Once the numbers are laid out, and the media has had time to digest the arguments, Trump will do what only Trump can do: He will change his mind based on better data. And what will emerge is a plan that has these qualities, roughly:

1. Illegal immigrants will have a path to citizenship that is based on contribution. For example, if you are adding more in taxes than you are using in services, you’re in. If you are a student, you’re in, because we expect you to add more than you subtract. If you find a citizen to sponsor you, perhaps financially, you are in. If you join the armed forces, you are in. And so forth. The idea is that The United States has a cover charge, and we don’t care how you pay, but you have to pay. If enough options are presented, the public won’t know what part to hate.

2. But what about Trump’s statement that they “have to go.” Trump makes it sound like he is going to physically move illegals to Mexico. But here’s a way to finesse it. Using the embassy model, the U.S. could pass a law that makes temporary Mexican embassies out of individual rooms in government buildings near every community. That way an illegal can drive to the Post Office (for example), go into the “Mexico room” and be back in Mexico, legally speaking. Then we process that illegal immigrant’s paperwork and make him a citizen, assuming he met the first criteria of adding value.

3. Criminals and newly-entered immigrants probably do need to go home under this plan. That part will not get much push-back. And the good folks who are not yet adding value, but are otherwise decent, will probably have some sort options for working their way to citizenship.

I won’t predict that Trump uses the precise plan I just outlined. But I think you can see that immigration is the most solvable of the unsolvable problems in the world. 

Putting it another way, if you believe Trump is serious about deporting 11 million people from a country that has easy access to guns, you are ignoring decades of Trump’s track record as a negotiator. Trump’s first offer of deporting 11 million people by force was never a real plan. Consistent with everything Trump has ever written or said, this is his first offer.

Trump wrote this movie. You have no idea how smart this cat is.

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Sometimes I write books.

The Right Amount of Government Transparency

Rand Paul recently live-streamed a day of his campaign. According to the media, it didn’t go well. (Paul’s dry humor did not survive the leap from video to text.) Still, we might be seeing the future with this live streaming stuff. 

If you haven’t tried the Periscope app, or one of the other life-streaming products such as Meerkat, you probably don’t know how big a deal this is. Yesterday, from the comfort of my home, I looked through the live-streaming phones of strangers around the planet. They took me on an African lion hunt (using cameras not guns), a hike in Thailand, a beach in Hawaii, and a Taylor Swift concert. All in five minutes. Live streaming of this type is compelling in a way you can’t understand unless you experience it. 

It feels inevitable that we will start seeing more of a president’s unscripted day. But how much is the right amount? We hear people saying they love Sanders and Trump for their “authenticity.” If that matters, we might want to see them when their guards are down, at least some of the day.

Rand Paul might not be the ideal personality for live streaming. So let’s imagine a Trump presidency with live streaming of everything except personal/family time and national security meetings. Otherwise, if the president is meeting with other Americans – be they advisors, donors, or other politicians – perhaps we should be seeing that play out live.

What’s the tradeoff?

Starting on the plus side, imagine Trump turning national debates into a version of The Apprentice for the benefit of the viewing public. Proponents of one plan or another would make their case to Trump on live video to the world, and he would attack their arguments until the last one was standing. Perhaps users could comment in real time and be part of the process in some small way.

Consider the issues of gun control, climate change, and immigration. How you feel about those issues has a lot to do with which study you believe and how you interpret it. Imagine Trump forcing both sides to present to him on live-stream, and tearing them both to pieces for being such obvious liars. You would pay to watch that show. And it would educate the public in a way we have never experienced.

My friend Naval Ravikant was the first to suggest to me the idea of a candidate (and later president) wearing some form of a camera on her head during the entire work day, not counting personal moments and national security stuff. I like that image because it is so outrageous that the right candidate could probably pull it off. Unscripted reality would be media catnip. It would suck all of the attention from the traditional candidates.

Clearly there are disadvantages to live streaming a president. For one thing, a president is not going to want to give away a negotiating position, show waffling before a decision, or display any random acts of dumbness or intolerance behind closed doors. On the surface it seems bad.

But consider the authenticity argument. Trump survives criticism with ease simply by being consistent. When people see consistency, they infer authenticity. My hypothesis is that seeing a candidate’s smaller flaws is humanizing. We might get the authenticity the public enjoys. 

Let’s assume that national security issues and meetings with foreign leaders are all done in private. Would you be okay with your president’s work day being live streamed to the world?

Trump’s Persuasiveness - per the Washington Post

This article in the Washington Post describes Trump’s persuasion skills as a function of his energy and big ideas. Or, as the article says, people respond to narcissists.

Look how hard some parts of the media are trying to push a narrative in which Trump’s success is not related to anything Trump is INTENTIONALLY doing unless that thing happens to be wrong.

He’s an outsider (without trying), and people love that.

He’s a narcissist (without trying), and people love that.

He’s is a hater (without trying), and other haters love that.

I wonder what how big Trump’s landslide needs to be before the media recognizes that influence is a real skill, intentionally applied by Trump at every turn.

I remind new readers that I am not smart enough to know which candidate would be the best president. I write about Trump because his persuasion skills are the best I have ever seen.

Bonus Update: Carly Fiorina is criticizing Hillary Clinton for proclaiming during the first Democrat debate that gender is an important criteria for a desk job. At least that’s how I heard it. See this post where I described Clinton’s gender strategy as career-ending. If you were concerned about a Hillary Clinton presidency, you can stop worrying about that now. Fiorina’s attacks are a glancing blow, but when Trump picks up that stick, don’t expect him to stop swinging until he has the landslide election victory I already predicted. 

Based on Clinton’s strategic mistake about gender, I predict Trump will get the support of more than 50% of women in the general election. Remember, Trump has a stellar record of promoting women in his own businesses. He wants that comparison. Imagine Trump saying, “Hillary promotes women too. For example, she hired that major security threat.”

Tony Robbins Explains How to Beat Trump

If you have been following my Master Wizard Hypothesis series, you know I called Tony Robbins the best hypnotist in the world. His job is motivating people to improve their lives, and apparently he is amazing at it. His persuasion skills trace back to famous hypnotist Milton Erickson, same as mine. Robbins has added lots of layers to that learning, but his understanding of how people are influenced is similar to my world view, and probably quite different from yours.

Many of you have asked me how to design a Linguistic Kill Shot that would take out Trump. I keep saying I don’t know how, because his defenses are so solid. His Trump persona can shake off almost anything.

But what does Tony Robbins think? Business Insider asked Robbins how Trump’s opponents can beat him. Listen to Robbins’ answer and tell me who he expects to be our next president.

Convinced yet? 

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Oh, and I forgot to tell you I wrote a book that is relevant to the topic of our Moist Robot selves. 

Update: If you want to boost your blog traffic, try posting about Taylor Swift, followed closely by a post on how to keep Trump out of the White House. Traffic just spiked hard.

Freeeeedom! (from jury duty)

After three days of punishment at the hands of my inefficient government, I am a free man.

It is a deeply unpleasant experience for a modern human to sit in a room for many hours without mental or physical stimulation. That is the method we use to punish children and criminals alike. No kidding, it felt like three days of serving detention for a crime I did not commit. 

On my third day, I got lucky. The jury filled up before I got into the final round, so I was released.

And that is probably a good thing for all concerned, since I had three days to do nothing but think up entertaining answers to the judge’s list of questions. It would have been a good show. I had not yet decided whether to go full-humor or pivot to an angry citizen tirade about my wasted time and taxes. Either would have been fun.

By the way, when the attorneys talk to potential jurors, that part is largely hypnosis. The attorney’s questions operate on two levels. The obvious level is that they are asking questions to uncover any bias in the potential jurors. Sometimes they are informing the jury about the standards of evidence. But the deeper level is pure persuasion, and well done I might add. It was fun to watch the pros work, although that part did not last long.

For example, the defense seemed to be babbling almost Trump-like about the concept of the presumption of innocence. On the surface, the attorney was explaining to the jury what that legal standard means and how to apply it. But on the persuasion level, the important part was pointing to the defendant repeatedly every time the word “innocent” was uttered. I think he did it fifteen times, minimum. Good technique.

I also liked the defense attorney making people think past the sale when he asked what was worse – a guilty person being freed or an innocent person being wrongly convicted. He made us all imagine, and feel, the sense of wrongly convicting his client. Good technique again. I assume that method is fairly standard practice.

Studies show that humans put a greater value on potential loss than potential gain, so making us think of how we could lose (by convicting an innocent man) is powerful persuasion.

My favorite part of the jury selection involved the prosecutor trying to make a Chinese-born engineer agree to the statement that he could make a decision with limited information taken out of context. The engineer wasn’t buying it. He just couldn’t say something stupid in public. The prosecutor took about ten runs at the engineer, but he would not retreat from common sense and logic. He was dismissed, along with the other engineers, for what I assume was their vexing sense of reason.

The appalling part was watching several non-engineers get intimidated by the prosecutor into publicly agreeing to convict the defendant based on incomplete information. The prosecutor’s wording was different, but all of the engineers in the room heard it the way I just described it. They all protested the notion of finding certainty with uncertain data, and all were released by the prosecutor. 

According to the book Influence, when you get someone to state an opinion in their own words, even if they do not hold that opinion, it influences the speaker to adopt the opinion over time. The prosecutor was literally rewiring these people in front of me like Obi-Wan Kenobi using The Force on a storm trooper. It was frightening and cool at the same time.

And that’s why I think we need to abandon mandatory jury duty and go to a volunteer system where potential jurors are pre-screened for multiple future trials. If we bumped juror pay to $100 per day, and provided good meals at the court, you would get faster trials with better results at lower costs.

I would limit each volunteer juror to a five year term, just so keep the pool refreshed with modern thinking over time.

Wouldn’t that be a better system?

Update: Or how about a law the says you can’t use excuse a juror for having too much objectivity. Engineers, scientists, lawyers, should all be exempt from any removal other than “cause” as legally defined.

It is disheartening to see your taxes fund a prosecutor who is removing the best critical thinkers from the process right in front of your eyes. And it is her job to do exactly that, depending on the type of case. She would be fired if she did otherwise.

Can we do no better? The bar seems so low.

—

Have I mentioned that I wrote a critically-acclaimed book about systems for finding success? Holidays are coming! It is the perfect gift.

Taylor Swift’s System

Taylor Swift had a system for not flaming out during her career. She continues to be the smartest player in her space.

Once you start seeing the world in terms of systems versus goals, it starts to explain why some people get better results than others. And as you know, my book has plenty on that topic.

My Commute to Day-Jail

Some call it jury duty selection. But it feels more like day-jail with a bad commute. 

I’m heading to day three of the jury selection phase, in which dozens of us sit in a court room for hours while a slow-talking and very deliberate judge interviews one citizen at a time. Those of us who are not being addressed by the judge are allowed to sit there doing nothing.

We can’t talk.

We can’t use our smartphones.

We can’t read.

For hours.

We have been ordered to pay attention to the judge’s conversation with each person.

I have not been this far into jury duty since my smartphone addiction became severe. At this point in my life, sitting motionless for hours, staring straight ahead, while my unattended professional life starts forming a death spiral, is extraordinarily uncomfortable. And so totally unnecessary.

Juries should be chosen by special jury-selecting lawyers with some notes about the specific case. There is no compelling reason for fifty people to watch one citizen at a time talk to the judge. For hours. Spread over three days.

This feels like welfare for lawyers. Those lawyers sit there, pretending to take important notes, while the meter is running. $$$$$$$$$$.

For no good reason. 

About a hundred citizens wasted one to three days for this one trial. So far, 95% of that wasted time is due to a poor system, designed hundreds of years ago. None of that inefficiency gives us better justice.

On my first and second days of jury duty I blogged positive thoughts about the value of experiencing this important civic duty. But on day three (still not assigned to a trial) I no longer think that. If you serve on a jury today, you will end up hating your inefficient, lawyer-bloated, money-wasting government, and that isn’t good for anyone.

Lawyers will never change a system that is designed to pay them for sitting in chairs doing nothing. Things will only change if citizens stop showing up for jury duty. And unfortunately, because this problem only bothers each of us a few days ever few years, and the risk of not showing up seems high, no one is invested enough to fix it.

But I ask you this question: Have you ever heard of a person getting arrested for not reporting to jury duty selection?

Imagine how many people forget their jury duty selection date, or don’t get the notice in the mail, or can’t make it for some legitimate emergency that day. Are they all in jail now?

I doubt it.

I am not encouraging you to break the law. But it is a fact that if everyone stopped going to jury duty, the system would change. And it should. 

It is also a fact that the system will not change on its own.

Have any of you Americans reading this ignored a jury duty summons? What happened when you did?

Update: Before you ask, the comic is already written. Wally will get called to jury duty. But it won’t run until Sunday Jan 10, 2016. (The Sunday comics have a longer production cycle. The daily comic is closer to a month out.)

Master Wizard Filter on the Democratic Debate

The Washington Post’s Stephen Stromberg says Hillary Clinton won the first Democratic debate with her line about being a progressive who likes to get things done. Personally, that line didn’t register with me at all. It has no visual or emotional content. The Master Wizard filter says that line was irrelevant.

According to the Master Wizard filter, the moment Hillary Clinton eliminated her chance of winning in the general election was by repeatedly saying a big part of her appeal is her gender.

Did President Obama ever say he should get elected because he is black? No. It would have cost him the election. 

It appears that CNN can’t report on that career-ending gaffe because it goes against the CNN narrative that the Democrats are talking substance and the Republicans are doing name-calling. CNN pundits are calling Clinton’s gender play a good move.

Update: In the field of persuasion, the name for Clinton’s mistake is called “selling past the close.” One assumes that her gender had already made all the impact on voters it was likely to make. The sale was already closed. Reopening a closed sale can only give the buyer a new reason to say no. That reason was provided when Clinton suggested her gender was a selling point FOR A FUCKING JOB.

I like to make predictions using the Master Wizard Hypothesis so you can hold me to them. I predict that Clinton’s poll numbers (for the general election versus Trump) will start dropping after a post-debate uptick, and never recover. The consensus prediction by others is that her debate was strong, and should keep Biden out of the race as she cruises to nomination victory and then the presidency.

Jury Selection - Update

I am heading back to the court today for round two of jury selection. I breezed through the first round. Obviously I can’t mention the case itself, but let me tell you some things I learned.

People have immense respect for the court 

I recommend serving as a juror at least once, even if it is hard to do. It does wonders for your sense country. I found it a humbling experience to sit in a packed courtroom, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for half-an-hour while the judge was in his chambers, with no one speaking a word above a whisper. No one had asked us to be quiet. It just felt like the respectful thing to do. The power of the courtroom image, and especially the American flag, is insanely strong. 

Good job on that, America. The legal system always needs improvement, but we got the respect part right. That’s the hard part.

People are not timely

I was 30 minutes late for my 9 AM court time, but I knew it would not matter because the average person is even less organized than I am. People were still streaming in a full hour after the designated start time. And even that turned out to be way too early because the court itself had more than a one-hour delay just to get through security at the front door. 

Individuals can be awesome, but “people” are a hot mess.

Presumed Guilty

The judge does a good job of explaining that the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But the court process involves every potential juror hearing the charges without any reference to the intended defense. I will spend more than a day marinating on the visual image of the defendant and the description of the charges. That seems a huge hole to put the defendant in before a case even starts. We say the defendant is presumed innocent, but the process assumes guilt because that is the thought you live with for a day before even hearing the defense case.

A better system would involve the judge summarizing the defense to come, based on a note from the defense council. That would sound something like “The defendant is charges with X. The defense will argue that the accused is the wrong person and the evidence is weak.”

Excuses that Don’t Work

I learned yesterday that the following excuses will not get you out of jury duty:

1. I could be in contract default if I get on a case. And Dilbert will go into hiatus/reruns for perhaps a week. That is not the court’s problem.

2. I work seven days a week, often starting at 4 AM, like today, and none of that work will go away if I am on a trial. At least three businesses would slow down in my absence. But it would not be an economic hardship for me, which is what the court cares about.

3. I have a cracked tooth that my dentist tells me I need to handle in a few weeks to avoid an emergency extraction should it become suddenly painful. I already have a prescription for that eventuality because it is so likely. But I guess that is why the court has alternate jurors.

4. The judge does not care that I produce Dilbert every day and that I am (by bad coincidence) simultaneously in the pre-beta stage with two startup projects this month. The court does not care that you are busy. Everyone is busy.

5. Being a trained hypnotist and a person who writes on the topic of persuasion does not automatically eliminate you from jury duty. As one lawyer pointed out to me, they allow sales professionals to be on juries. 

I am not on a case yet, so there is still the phase where the attorneys can question me in front of the other jurors. 

Time to go write a comic or two before jury duty. Gotta go.