Scott Adams's Blog, page 288

Trump VS Bush: Persuasion Wars

Introduction:

Someone accused me of having a man-crush on Trump because I keep writing about him. I plead guilty. I have no idea whether he would be a good President or not, and I don’t believe you know either. My man-crush is based on Trump’s persuasion skills. I have never seen better.

I hope that sharing some of Trump’s methods will make you more effective in your own life. And it is fun stuff. 

— start —

Who is the better persuader: Donald Trump or Jeb Bush? 

Let’s start with this article about Trump’s oft-repeated campaign theme “We have to take our country back.” The article suggests that the sentence is veiled racism and an intentional call to anti-immigration types.

Is it?

If you look at this situation with a political filter, it sure looks like a secret dog whistle to the anti-immigration folks, as the article suggests. But if you look at it through the filter of a trained hypnotist reviewing the work of another, you see a lot more.

You want to know what I see, right?

Hypnosis rule #1 is that you leave out the details and allow people to fill in the blanks with their own imagination. That’s why, for example, my comic characters have no last names while working in a nameless company for a nameless boss in a nameless location. I don’t want a reader in France to think Dilbert is an American and therefore of little interest. I want the French reader, the Elbonian, and the American to look at the Dilbert characters and say some version of “That character is me!” In order to achieve that effect, I intentionally omit details that would knock you off the track. For example, the minute I give Dilbert a last name it would over-specify his ethnic origins and give folks a reason to feel less connected.

When your intention is persuasion, you need to know when to drop a huge anchor that redirects everyone’s attention to one point and when to do the opposite and create a vague suggestion so people can fill in the blanks on their own. I’ll explain some examples of both.

In the first debate, Megyn Kelly asked Trump to explain his offensive comments about specific women. If Trump had engaged in the question, the headlines the next day would have been about him “walking back” what he said, or lying about what he said, or simply being smeared with the topic in general. It was a perfect media trap. Trump was expected to say something generic and defensive, and then the media would take it out of context and paint him as a horrible sexist. That ploy would have generated a week’s worth of “news” that required no research and no flying into a war zone. Very economical.

But Trump dropped an anchor on the media’s collective asses before the question was fully formed. He interrupted with “Only Rosie O’Donnell” (an unpopular name among core Republicans) and completely owned the headlines after that. That was some genius misdirection, and it was probably planned in advance. So that’s a good example of when to use a strong, visual anchor.

But how does a persuader know when to redirect attention to something specific versus being vague so the audience can fill in the blanks? Let me see if I can answer that for you.

A golden rule in sales is “Don’t sell past the close.” That means that once your customer says yes, you stop talking about the product because you might accidentally say something that stops the sale. You never add detail when the customer is already sold. The less you say, the more likely the customer (who is already sold) will continue talking himself into loving the decision because people like to think they are smart. (Google “cognitive dissonance” for more on that topic.)

Now review Trump’s empty sentence: We need to take America back.

From whom? Notice the intentional lack of detail? In this case, the lack of detail is the powerful part of the sentence.

The media’s political filter automatically goes to immigration, and that interpretation is probably somewhat right. The problem is that it is only 10% of the explanation. The other 90% is what is happening in voters’ heads when they get an open-ended suggestion that someone has somehow stolen the country. 

Who did this awful thing???

Is it the top one-percenters who stole all the country’s money?

Is it the liberals?

Is it the politically-correct people?

Is it the immigrants who are taking jobs?

Is it the wrong-headed people in general?

Is it the minorities? The women?

Is it just our reputation in the world that we lost?

Was it our former greatness we lost?

See how the open-ended suggestion works? Every voter is free to fill in the topic of their own greatest fear. Your brain is a movie that creates your personal history, and when the movie finds a gap, your imagination fills it in. It happens automatically and bypasses rational thought. As with the salesperson who has already made the sale, Trump says nothing you can dislike while giving you the freedom to fill in the blanks in the way that influences you the most.

In other words, Trump’s sentence “We need to take America back” invites you to hypnotize yourself to finish the thought. And you do.

Secondly, we know from studies that human brains are wired to have a greater response to loss, or potential loss, than to potential gain. Trump’s slogan about taking back America speaks to loss while retaining the optimism that we can get it back. That is pure, engineered, persuasion perfection. 

Trump’s slogan should, by design, make every voter spontaneously imagine the one thing they believe they have lost. It could be anything, from personal privacy to job opportunity to whatever. If you are afraid you lost it, Trump’s slogan makes you think of it automatically. And you just automatically paired your emotional sense of wanting something precious with … Donald Trump. 

Many of you still believe Trump’s rise in the polls is some sort of media-generated side show. It isn’t. It is a master class in persuasion paired with perfect timing and a weak field.

And I don’t think I need to explain why Trump’s hat is bright red, or why he is keeping his hair covered. There are no accidents in Trump’s world.

You might think that all world-class politicians have the same set of linguistic tools at their command. Let’s check that assumption by taking a look at Jeb Bush’s recent campaign utterances to see how they match up on the persuasion scale.

Jeb Bush recently said that Trump was a Democrat longer than he was a Republican in the past decade. That sounds like a good zinger, right? It got a lot of press, just as Bush wanted. Does Bush win that round?

Nope.

Mentioning Trump’s party change might have been a good thing to say before Trump was trouncing Bush in the polls and locking up the nomination. But today it sounds like Bush is telling independent voters that Trump is not a slave to any party. They love that. And independents will probably decide the election.

It would be hard to engineer a worse thing for Bush to say at this stage.

Bush has also been saying on the campaign trail that Trump favored a tax hike on the wealthy. Again, it would have been a great thing to say before Trump became the probable Republican nominee. But saying that sort of thing today is telling Democrats and Independents that Trump is not the greedy billionaire you were afraid he might be. It solves one of Trump’s biggest problems.

On the persuasion scale, and looking at only these few examples, Trump gets his usual A+ and Jeb Bush gets whatever is worse than a failing grade. I say worse because failing in this context would mean having no impact on voters, but Bush probably convinced voters to prefer his opponent. You can’t fail harder than that.

These are just anecdotes. The fun here is seeing how many of the examples going forward fit the persuasion hypothesis. 

I remind you that in my opinion all of the candidates on both sides are reasonably qualified for the job of president. Trump has a huge persuasion advantage, but I don’t know how that would translate into the job of president.

Update: See this political thinker dismiss Trump’s linguistic savvy and try to explain his success as nothing but the public’s distaste for government. That is one small part of it. I’m fairly sure the other candidates are promising to change/fix everything too. Why don’t we believe them?

There is a reason Trump’s message penetrates the crowd noise while the other candidates crawl back to their dark corners. Trump is trained in the art of persuasion, and literally wrote the book on it. His opponents are politicians. That’s comparing a bazooka to a fly-swatter.

Scott

In Top Tech Blog today, how about a 3D printer that can print ten different materials? That seems close to the point at which robots can build new robots. One futurist predicted that when robots can build robots, everything changes. For example, robots could build power generation plants in the desert on the cheap and solve the world’s energy problems. Not sure I believe that yet.

Have you read my book yet?*

(”yet” in this context is a persuasion word. It is meant to cause you to think “no” while accepting the “yet” part without reason.)

The Day You Became a Better Writer (2nd Look)

One of my blog posts from 2007 has been making the rounds on social media this week. (Thank you, Naval Ravikant.) I take that as a signal that I should re-post it here in case you missed it the first time.

And now a second look…

The Day You Became A Better Writer

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

Scott

If you want to see persuasive writing that uses this simple style, read God’s Debris or How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Those books do not include what I call the “humor layer,” so you can see the cake without the frosting in those examples.

12-Mile High Space Tower

You probably saw the news on Top Tech Blog about the proposed space tower to launch spaceships from its roof.

You will not be surprised to hear that skeptics believe it can never be stable against the elements. And its own weight would crush it.

So…what kind of tall shape would be more stable than a skinny tower? How about a mostly-empty pyramid (more like a skeleton of a pyramid) with a solid tube core for wind energy production (from the updraft)?

See my old blog post on pyramid-shaped space towers here. I didn’t think about launching anything from the top. I’ll add that :-)

Scott

Anchors Away

I hear you in the comments that you are tired of my Trump posts. 

But if he keeps delivering a master class in influence, you will hear a lot more about his methods. I’m not terribly interested in politics, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see influence as an art form from a master operator who doesn’t feel the need to cover his tracks.

For example, when CNN anchor Chris Cuomo asked Trump to react to the Pope’s criticism of capitalism, Trump correctly saw it as a trap. If he engaged with the question he would be quoted on this topic and smeared with the association of Trump-capitalism-corruption. Tomorrow the headlines would be some form of “Trump blah, blah, corruption.”

Trump couldn’t bluntly refuse to engage in the question because that would look weak. So how does Trump wiggle out of such a well-crafted media trap?

Trump responds that he would tell the Pope that ISIS is coming to get him, and that they have plans to take the Vatican, which I assume is true, or true enough.

Do you even remember the question anymore?

Now compare the wattage coming from these two thoughts:

1. A boring discussion about corruption in capitalism. (Cuomo’s question)

2. A mental picture of ISIS taking over the Vatican.

No comparison. Corruption and capitalism are mere concepts that have no visual appeal. The ideas are important yet inert. But an ISIS overthrow of the Vatican is so visual you wonder why it isn’t already a movie. And that visual is all anyone will remember of that interview in a week.

Do you still think Trump’s clown act is random?

[Here I remind you that I am not smart enough to know who would be the best choice for president. I am only interested in the persuasion technique Trump uses.]

Scott

In Top Tech Blog, the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters is starting to play out as expected for climate change. The law observes that when humans have lots of advance warning of pending disasters they always invent themselves out of it. Now we might be close to harvesting Co2 and turning it into fiber. If it works, that seems important.

Political Reporters Cover a Business Candidate

The presidential campaign is being covered by political reporters, for the most part. That makes perfect sense because the subjects of the reporting are mostly politicians.

But Donald Trump is a business person. If you apply a political filter to a business person, you get nonsense. Likewise, if you have a goal-oriented view of the world, as politicians typically do, a business person with a “systems” approach would appear crazy.

That brings me to Trump’s newly-published immigration policy. For our purposes here, you don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is that it sounds totally impractical and draconian. 

If you apply a political filter to his proposal, it is pure nonsense mixed with evil and flavored with crazy. That’s how the media is reporting it all over the Internet. Just like Trump planned.

If Trump were a goal-oriented thinker, or even a real politician, the reporters would be interpreting this situation correctly. They would report that Trump’s plan is ridiculously impractical and even inhumane. And they would be right.

But reset your filter for a minute. Remember that Trump is a business person who promises to bring a deal-maker to the job of President. Now look at his crazy plan again but use your business filter this time.

Trump sees immigration as a negotiation. His opening offer is an anchor. This is how world-class negotiators work. The first offer has no purpose except to create contrast to whatever you eventually agree.

For example, Trump’s plan has two ridiculous ideas that will never happen. One involves a change of the constitution to remove the right of citizenship for people born in this country. The other involves rounding up 11 million aliens and shipping them home.

Not going to happen.

If Trump were a goal-oriented thinker, or a politician, he would be setting himself up for failure. His plan has zero chance of success as it stands.

But Trump is a systems thinker. He plays the long game. Every move is a negotiation.

Trump wants a wall on the border, and he wants Mexico to pay for it. That is such a big ask that few people think it possible. I can only imagine one way a wizard with Trump’s skills could convince TWO countries to do this thing that is amazingly hard to get done. 

You start with an opening offer that anchors people’s minds to the most outrageous parts of the plan and then you trade those things away until you get the only thing you wanted: the fence. Negotiators (Congress in this case) will feel that a negotiation happened and all parties met in the middle.

But only Trump decided where the middle is. The debate is already over and Trump won. We’re getting a wall. But my guess is that America will create some sort of a path to citizenship for current illegals after the wall gets built. That will make both sides feel like they won something.

Trump can’t say he will give illegal immigrants a free pass while at the same time trying to get a wall built. That would trigger a wave of immigrants trying to beat the wall construction. 

There was exactly one path available for Trump to get his wall. He had to set an anchor in the negotiations that inspires his core anti-immigration crowd to vote for him while setting the stage to negotiate away the crazy parts of the plan and keep the fence.

Another way to look at Trump’s immigration plan is that he’s working on America’s branding. That’s Trump’s area of expertise. If you want your brand to have value, the first thing you do is make sure no one can get if for free. You need a sense of exclusivity. Tightening immigration does that. 

Keep in mind that trump is open to legal immigration for people who bring technical skill to the country. He wants more of that and less of the criminal element. That’s hard to argue against in principle. And if he succeeds in branding America as the only place you want to work if you have tech skills, imagine what that does to the economy over time.

Bonus Thought 1: When Trump stuck an anchor in the immigration problem by calling the Mexican immigrants rapists, he also established himself as the only Republican who is talking about violence to women. Name the other Republican candidate who is out front on a gender issue. You can’t. 

Bonus Thought 2: On the question of abortion, if Trump says he doesn’t understand why men even get a vote on the question of abortion he would take that issue off the table while keeping his personal views intact.

Bonus Thought 3: Much has been reported about Trump’s bankruptcies. If you view Trump as a goal-oriented thinker, those are examples of failures. If you view him as a systems-oriented thinker, he built a diversified portfolio of holdings and kept the bad ones from infecting the others by creating separate entities that could fail by themselves.

Bonus Thought 4: In all likelihood, Donald Trump will pick our next president. If he runs as a Republican, he will be picking himself, and winning, assuming he keeps going this way. If he runs as an independent he will be picking Clinton as president. There’s your republic: One guy gets to vote for President this year.

Here I’ll remind new readers that I have no idea if Trump would be a good president. In my view, all the candidates are within the realm of competence. How they might perform as president depends on what future they are paired with. For example, the best president for winning a war might be the worst one for fixing a recession. You can’t know who will be good on the job if you don’t know what the job will entail.

Scott

In Top Tech Blog, do you remember my dumb idea I posted here about generating power by building pyramids with internal chimneys? Canada might start building some towers that do just that, plus they launch space planes from the top.

Wizard Wars

Foreward: Everything that follows is true, to the best of my knowledge, but you can fact-check me on the Internet. Let me know if I got anything wrong.

As I often warn you, don’t get your opinions about anything important from cartoonists. This blog is for entertainment, not enlightenment. You’re on your own for the enlightenment.

I recommend that you postpone reading this post until you have at least 30 minutes of free time and your favorite beverage or state-legal prescription meds in hand. You are about to have an experience that might change the way you see the world.

The ideas that follow are not appropriate for children, people who might be offended by talk of witches, and anyone that disliked my book God’s Debris. 

Based on the public’s reaction to God’s Debris, my prediction is that 20% of you will have a truly interesting moment reading this post, and you will never see the world the same way. About 60% of you will be glad you read it for the entertainment value. The remaining 20% of you will be angry, and you won’t be able to articulate why. If you don’t like those odds, this is a good time to discontinue reading.

To avoid spoilers, don’t do any Google searches until you finish reading.

— End of Foreward —

In 1901 the first American-born wizard came into the world. His name was Milton Hyland Erickson. And to the wizards he later trained, he was their Merlin, or Dumbledore if you prefer. The main difference is that Erickson was real. 

Erickson was an autodidact, and maybe more. He discovered that he could arrange words in a way that cast spells on people and took control of their minds. If you have seen the Star Wars movies, you know all about the Jedi Mind Trick. Erickson’s power was like that, but slower, and with more words.

In earlier times, such a person would be burned as a witch. But Erickson was born into an age of science, and in the new world, non-science claims such as his were swept to the side and assumed to be bunk. 

Fortunately for us all, Erickson was a good wizard. And he made it his life’s work to train other wizards in his ways. As one might expect, the most talented of Erickson’s wizards went on to amass incredible wealth and breathtaking power. The new wizards were not saints, or even close, but they were generally a force for good. They built some of the biggest companies in the world. They led nations toward social justice. They ended wars triggered by evil wizards overseas. They stimulated economies.

These super-wizards live and work among us, but their powers are visible only to other trained wizards. The public believes these wizards achieved their success with luck, brains, hard work, and passion. Those things matter, but the wizards had more. They could shape reality by altering how people see the world.

Sometimes the wizards work publicly, and brazenly, knowing that their methods are only visible to other wizards. Other times they work behind the curtain, pushing buttons and pulling levers while the media looks in the wrong place and reports the wrong causes.

Now, for perhaps the second or third time in history, one of these Erickson-trained wizards is running for President of the United States. You can expect that candidate to win. His name is Donald Trump.

Allow me to connect the dots for you.

Donald Trump is buddies with the most powerful wizard alive, Tony Robbins. Robbins is the biggest motivational speaker, life coach, and self-help guru in the world. Here’s a video showing Trump and Robbins selling a National Achievers Congress event they partnered on. First, listen to Trump’s style (full of happy-sounding words but zero content) and compare it to Robbins who follows on the video and is also full of happy words with zero content. See the similarity?

Tony Robbins’ inspiration was John Grinder, an American linguist and a student of Milton Erickson’s teaching. Based on Erickson’s work, plus a lot of marketing ridiculousness, Grinder developed NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Critics say NLP is more garbage than science. In my experience, NLP is about 10% real and 90% marketing. But the real part is exceptionally powerful.

What other wizards have been trained by Tony Robbins, you ask? This article in INC explains why Bill Clinton had Tony Robbins “on speed dial.” Clinton had advice from at least one other known wizard, and that advice probably changed the course of history, but I can’t mention that name for ethical reasons. 

Another disciple of Erickson, Pierre Clement, opened schools to teach the Erickson method with some of his own flourishes added. One student of Clement’s school went on to write extensively about Erickson’s ideas. But to make them less “wizard-sounding” and more practical, he coined the phrase Moist Robot.

That would be me.

The moist robot philosophy, which I wrote about in my How to Fail book, is an outgrowth of Erickson’s teachings. In the moist robot view of the world, rational thought is mostly an illusion except for simple tasks and perhaps math. The good news is that the small, rational voice in your head can sometimes muster enough control to send you in a productive direction. 

Erickson’s discovery is that words are like a UI for the mind. If you pick the right words, the mind goes into admin mode and you can rewire things at will. It might take lots of repetition, but you can get a lot done with that wiring over time. 

Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. In this context, the magic involves the question of how someone like Donald Trump could be leading in the polls. But it isn’t magic, it is method. Trump is operating on a wizard level in terms of word choice.

Milton Erickson is known as the modern father of hypnosis. The word “hypnosis” is loaded with misinformation because people have been exposed to bad movies and stage hypnosis shows. Stage hypnosis is more “magic tricks” than persuasion. The “trick” is that it only works with an audience. If you give me a hundred people, I can find one that doesn’t mind clucking like a chicken in front of the rest. He might even enjoy the experience. To the other 99 folks in the audience, it seems this subject is under a hypnotic spell and doing things against his will. The reality is that he’s just a dude doing things he doesn’t mind doing at all, but experiencing it in a super-relaxed state. There is more to it, but the central “trick” is that the subject is not embarrassed in the way that you would be, so the effect seems greater than it is.

Real hypnosis, in my view, is closer to the science of persuasion. The best book on that topic is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Dr. Robert Cialdini. 

So how powerful is this stuff?

Ask Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. All wizards.

Have you ever wondered why Dilbert has an uncommon first name, no last name, a nameless boss, and he works for a nameless company, making nameless products, while living in a nameless city? That’s hypnosis. By omitting those details I allow the reader to better feel some version of “That’s me!”

Likewise, when you criticize Trump for being vague on policies, you should know it is intentional. The empty spaces are provided for you to fill them in with whatever you think is a good idea. For a skilled wizard, the less he says, the more you like it. The wizard lets your brain fill in all the blanks with your personal favorite flavor of awesomeness.

Two months ago Donald Trump was widely thought to be under-qualified for the job of president because he has never been a politician. Today most of the chatter is about how he is good at delegating.

Two months ago you thought he was just an annoying loudmouth and a braggart. Today a lot of people are thinking he is presidential stuff.

I don’t know what Hillary Clinton thought about Tony Robbins’ advice to her husband, or whether she did some wizard training herself, but one assumes so because of the association. And that means if the race comes down to Trump versus Clinton, two Erickson-trained wizards will be going toe-to-toe for the first time in American history.

You might be wondering if I could use my wizard powers to become president someday myself. The quick answer is yes, even with my obvious flaws, unless I ran into a stronger wizard along the way. But don’t worry about a third Adams presidency. I like my job better. And the world does not need my help because Tony Robbins seems to have things under control. Literally. But I will keep my eye on all of them for you :-)

Scott

At this writing, the #1 selling career guide on Kindle (priced over $2) is mine. You can find it here. It is full of moist robot goodness.

And check out Top Tech Blog for what’s new and exciting.

Can We Call a Trump Puppet a Trumpet?

When Donald Trump uses his persuasion skills to turn someone into a puppet, can we call that person a Trumpet? I vote yes!

Because I want America to be great again.

Anyway, yesterday I blogged about Trump’s masterful use of persuasion and I thought some of you would enjoy seeing a perfect example of a common technique. It is the sort of thing you can do at home.

Warning: Stop reading now if you do not want to take the risk of being influenced to buy a particular item. Seriously. What follows is an experiment in manipulating your opinion. If that sort of experience does not appeal to you, please stop reading. 

And this warning is serious. It is not part of the experiment. 

If you’re still with me, check out this screen grab of my book’s ranking on one of Amazon’s bestseller sub-groups. My book is just above Trump’s book, and I’m almost positive he is getting more publicity lately.

[If your firewall is blocking the image, it is just two books side-by-side.]

To be fair, this ranking lasted about five minutes and means absolutely nothing. The temporary ranking of my book in an obscure sub-group listing does not indicate its value.

But here’s the thing. My words have a LITTLE impact on your memory. But the image of my book next to Trump’s book is a visual you are likely to remember even though it has no impact on your life. In effect, my book’s image is leeching off the “value” people see in Trump, either because he is a successful business person or because he might be the next president of the United States. Even if you dislike Trump on an intellectual level, he is still associated in your mind with success, wealth and power. And I just siphoned off some of that goodwill for my book.

The way you influence people is by managing their dominant thoughts. And you can do that by associating things in people’s minds the way a dog associates obedience with treats. The brain is a natural connection-maker. It can’t turn that function off. A skilled persuader can chain together thoughts so one borrows the qualities of the other. Repetition strengthens the association.

Trump wants to “Make America Great.” All three of those words are winning words. That choice of words is no clown accident. Trump is making people associate his brand with America, greatness, and even “making” stuff, which is generally good. Every time you hear his slogan, or read it, the association is strengthened.

Compare Trump’s slogan to some dumb-ass intellectual slogan such as “I will make government smaller!” The words government and smaller are total loser words. The quality of that person’s argument will be lost on most voters. All they will know is that Trump wants to make them great while the other candidate wants to make something smaller.

My main point is that intellectual arguments lose to visual arguments and to powerful associations such as “America” and “great.” You think Trump is spouting calorie-free non-policies because he’s an idiot who hasn’t done his homework. The reality (as far as I can tell) is that he’s playing three-dimensional chess with two-dimensional opponents.

Here I’ll remind you that I don’t support any of the candidates at this point. My main interest in Trump is his persuasion skills.

Scott

Note: I am not including a link to my book because it wouldn’t seem sporting in this context.

In Top Tech Blog, how about an AI that can jam with a jazz band? If it works, and passes the jazz-Turing test, it will be one more blow against the superstition that music comes from the soul. Sometimes it comes from the algorithm.

Clown Genius

Like many of you, I have been entertained by the unstoppable clown car that is Donald Trump. On the surface, and several layers deep as well, Trump appears to be a narcissistic blow-hard with inadequate credentials to lead a country.

The only problem with my analysis is that there is an eerie consistency to his success so far. Is there a method to it? Is there some sort of system at work under the hood?

Probably yes. Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. (Most of you know I am a trained hypnotist and this topic is a hobby of mine.)

For starters, Trump literally wrote the book on negotiating, called The Art of the Deal. So we know he is familiar with the finer points of persuasion. For our purposes today, persuasion, hypnosis, and negotiating all share a common set of tools, so I will conflate them. 

Would Trump use his negotiation and persuasion skills in the campaign? Of course he would. And we expect him to do just that. 

But where is the smoking gun of his persuasion? Where is his technique laid out for us to see.

Everywhere. 

As I said in my How to Fail book, if you are not familiar with the dozens of methods of persuasion that are science-tested, there’s a good chance someone is using those techniques against you.

For example, when Trump says he is worth $10 billion, which causes his critics to say he is worth far less (but still billions) he is making all of us “think past the sale.” The sale he wants to make is “Remember that Donald Trump is a successful business person managing a vast empire mostly of his own making.” The exact amount of his wealth is irrelevant. 

When a car salesperson trained in persuasion asks if you prefer the red Honda Civic or the Blue one, that is a trick called making you “think past the sale” and the idea is to make you engage on the question of color as if you have already decided to buy the car. That is Persuasion 101 and I have seen no one in the media point it out when Trump does it.

The $10 billion estimate Trump uses for his own net worth is also an “anchor” in your mind. That’s another classic negotiation/persuasion method. I remember the $10 billion estimate because it is big and round and a bit outrageous. And he keeps repeating it because repetition is persuasion too. 

I don’t remember the smaller estimates of Trump’s wealth that critics provided. But I certainly remember the $10 billion estimate from Trump himself. Thanks to this disparity in my memory, my mind automatically floats toward Trump’s anchor of $10 billion being my reality. That is classic persuasion. And I would be amazed if any of this is an accident. Remember, Trump literally wrote the book on this stuff.

You might be concerned that exaggerating ones net worth is like lying, and the public will not like a liar. But keep in mind that Trump’s value proposition is that he will “Make America Great.” In other words, he wants to bring the same sort of persuasion to the question of America’s reputation in the world. That concept sounds appealing to me. The nation needs good brand management, whether you think Trump is the right person or not. (Obviously we need good execution as well, not just brand illusion. But a strong brand gives you better leverage for getting what you want. It is all connected.)

And what did you think of Trump’s famous “Rosie O’Donnell” quip at the first debate when asked about his comments on women? The interviewer’s questions were intended to paint Trump forever as a sexist pig. But Trump quickly and cleverly set the “anchor” as Rosie O’Donnell, a name he could be sure was not popular with his core Republican crowd. And then he casually admitted, without hesitation, that he was sure he had said other bad things about other people as well.

Now do you see how the anchor works? If the idea of “Trump insults women” had been allowed to pair in your mind with the nice women you know and love, you would hate Trump. That jerk is insulting my sister, my mother, and my wife! But Trump never let that happen. At the first moment (and you have to admit he thinks fast) he inserted the Rosie O’Donnell anchor and owned the conversation from that point on. Now he’s not the sexist who sometimes insults women; he’s the straight-talker who won’t hesitate to insult someone who has it coming (in his view).

But it gets better. You probably cringed when Trump kept saying his appearance gave FOX its biggest audience rating. That seemed totally off point for a politician, right? But see what happened.

Apparently FOX chief Roger Ailes called Trump and made peace. And by that I mean Trump owns FOX for the rest of the campaign because his willingness to appear on their network will determine their financial fate. BAM, Trump owns FOX and paid no money for it. See how this works? That’s what a strong brand gives you.

You probably also cringed when you heard Trump say Mexico was sending us their rapists and bad people. But if you have read this far, you now recognize that intentional exaggeration as an anchor, and a standard method of persuasion. 

Trump also said he thinks Mexico should pay for the fence, which made most people scoff. But if your neighbor’s pit bull keeps escaping and eating your rosebushes, you tell the neighbor to pay for his own fence or you will shoot his dog next time you see it. Telling a neighbor to build his own wall for your benefit is not crazy talk. And I actually think Trump could pull it off. 

On a recent TV interview, the host (I forget who) tried to label Trump a “whiner.” But instead of denying the label, Trump embraced it and said was the best whiner of all time, and the country needs just that. That’s a psychological trick I call “taking the high ground” and I wrote about it in a recent blog post. The low ground in this case is the unimportant question of whether “whiner” is a fair label for Trump. But Trump cleverly took the high ground, embraced the label, and used it to set an anchor in your mind that he is the loudest voice for change. That’s some clown genius for you. 

Update: When Trump raised his hand at the debate as the only person who would not pledge to back the eventual Republican candidate, he sent a message to the party that the only way they can win is by nominating him. And people like to win. It is in their nature. And they sure don’t want to see a Clinton presidency.

Update 2: And what about Trump’s habit of bluster and self-complimenting? Every time he opens his mouth he is saying something about the Trump brand being fabulous or amazing or great. The rational part of your brain thinks this guy is an obnoxious, exaggerating braggart. But the subconscious parts of your brain (the parts that make most of your decisions) only remember that something about that guy was fabulous, amazing and great.

If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it. Imagine what he could do if he gave up golf.

As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time.

Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.

I also saw some Internet chatter about the idea of picking Mark Cuban as Vice Presidential running mate. If that happens, Republicans win. And I think they like to win. There is no way Trump picks some desiccated Governor from an important state as his running mate. I think Cuban is a realistic possibility.

I don’t mean this post to look like support for a Trump presidency. I’m more interested in his methods. I’m not smart enough to know who would do the best job as president. There are a lot of capable people in the game.

Scott

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In Top Tech Blog, robots are learning how to evolve on their own. I don’t see any risk with that. Do you?

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The good reviews for my book keep coming.

Trump’s Plan to “Put a ring around” ISIS

Presidential candidate Donald Trump said today that he would “put a ring around ISIS” and take the oil, thus recouping some war costs and starving them of their resources at the same time.

I have no idea if that is a good plan or a bad plan. But in my 2004 book, The Religion War, I predicted that the the major powers would build a wall around the caliphate and starve it. And in July I updated that idea with the Filter Fence concept you can read here.

You can mock Trump all you want, and I plan to do plenty of that myself, but his plan is worthy of being in the debate.

If you don’t like the “ring around it” plan, please put in the comments the plan that you prefer and the names of the candidates that support it. I am not up to date on any better ideas but I hope there are some.

Scott

What Next on the Slippery Slope to Freedom?

One of my female friends has the view that monogamy is tantamount to slavery of men. Once you control a man’s access to sex, you own him. 

This discussion requires some background briefing. 

Fact: Men are happy when they are rubbing their penises on pleasant people or things. Or if they think they might soon. Or if they recently did. During other times, men are not as likely to be happy. But men are also human beings, and so they blame their bad moods on things like “stress” or a bad day at work.

Women can fact-check that claim by querying a man about his mood immediately before, during, or after sex. Now compare that answer to any randomly picked minute of the rest of his day. You might see a pattern.

That’s the Moist Robot idea in a nutshell. Our bodies and the environment jack our body chemistry, the chemistry changes what we think and how we feel, and the result is our moods. The more common view of the world is that our moods are somehow a mind-generated problem that can be fixed by thinking better, resolving annoyances, or by taking prescription meds. But sometimes the world is simpler. I can’t speak for women, but most men are going to be in a good mood if you offer them a sandwich and oral sex for lunch. Even if they say no. It just feels good to be asked.

And ladies, if a guy thinks he has a chance of getting that sort of lunch now or any day in the infinite future, and you ask him to hand-wash your car, he will probably rearrange his schedule and maybe power-wash your driveway too. Just in case. Because it might be a good investment in the future. 

Hence, some people would say monogamy is male slavery disguised by words such as soul-mate and “good man.”

The man might tell himself that he does nice things because he is a nice guy, or that no one can wash cars as well as he can. But in reality the man just loves sandwiches for lunch and he doesn’t want to die lonely. He’s not a liar; he just doesn’t know that his body is driving his moods, not vice-versa. We are all under the persistent illusion that our bad moods are caused by the “problems” in our lives as opposed to the chemistry inside your skulls.

But here’s the interesting trend I see emerging. This is where we get to the good part.

Monogamy and marriage made economic sense when the family model involved a working (or hunting) dad and a child-rearing, cooking, mom. In this arrangement the man gives up his option to pursue multiple sex partners and in return he gets the benefits of a mate who can do the things he can’t. The two halves of the marriage make a whole. Plus you get the soul mate thing, love, heirs, and other good stuff. And obviously married women are also giving up their options for lovers and whatnot as well.

Fast-forward to 2015 when gender distinctions are narrowing. The economic value of spouses has been reduced because of the rise of alternatives. Today women can do all the hunting and working they want. A man can hire a surrogate to carry a baby to term. A woman can go to a sperm bank for a father. The man can hire nannies, drivers, tutors, cooks, and more. So the job of “spouse” is simply less important than at any time in history. Women don’t need spouses for income or protection, and men no longer need a spouse to carry a baby, so long as a willing stranger wants to do it for money. And obviously there is adoption.

Today only the rich can afford to outsource the work of an entire spouse. But most of those “spouse functions” will soon be automated and less expensive for all. Food will arrive at your door by inexpensive drone, with perfectly balanced meals customized to each person. Self-driving cars with cameras are probably the safest way to transport a kid, and someday probably the cheapest. And I expect apps to come along that match bored senior citizens with neighborhood kids that need to be watched while a parent works. My point is that the option to outsource a spouse – either male or female – is moving down market quickly. I think it will be a middle-class option in ten years.

And then what happens to monogamy? Obviously many people will prefer monogamy and the traditional family unit for personal or religious reasons. It has its advantages. But monogamy will no longer be the economic and social necessity it once was. And at that point you might see a social movement to free men from the biological oppression of monogamy so they might seek happiness for the first time in modern history. 

Everyone is different, but generally speaking, men aren’t happy without a sex life. And monogamy usually leads to a sexless future (typically defined as sex once per month or less.) Science tells us humans lose sexual interest in a mate over time, and no amount of magical thinking can stop biology’s slow march. 

In 2015 men have the option of either giving up happiness to monogamy or being lonely and childless. I think we will see better options emerging now that the majority of adults in the United States are single. I predict that you will see an emergence of more complicated multi-person virtual “tribes” of single people who are taking care of each others’ needs in various areas so a spouse is unnecessary.

The only gating factor I see is the added health risks of multiple partners. But I’ll bet science can fix all of that in ten years with nano-robots, stem cells, and Indogene* skin. And let’s be honest about the negative health impact of a sexless marriage, recognizing there are trade-offs in all things.

Scott

In Top Tech Blog, here come the nano devices to play doctor inside your body. 

And it raises my usual question: How many nano devices can a human have inside its organic frame and still remain a human? A few nano devices is no big deal. But if the nano technology evolves in time from simply fixing health problems to making your body work better in general, you might be gulping handfuls of nano robots for breakfast. You’ll be more nano device than human at some point, offloading the tasks of your internal organs and eventually even your mind to the tiny robots that are, collectively, you.

In time (decades) I would expect the nano robots to handle your body’s basic needs better than your natural organs, thus making your human parts unnecessary one organ at a time until we are mostly robot and a little bit of skin.

The robots don’t need to conquer us. We will evolve into them as soon as they do a better job than our natural organs.

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The good reviews keep coming for this book.

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*Fans of Defiance will appreciate that reference. Great sci-fi show, by the way.