Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

by Scott Adams

The common worldview, shared by most humans, is that there is one objective reality, and we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application of facts and reason. This view of the world imagines that some people have already achieved a fact-based type of enlightenment that is compatible with science and logic, and they are trying to help the rest of us see the world the “right” way. As far as I can tell, most people share that interpretation of the world. The only wrinkle with that worldview is that we all think we are the enlightened ones. And we assume the people who disagree with us just need better facts, and perhaps better brains, in order to agree with us. That filter on life makes most of us happy—because we see ourselves as the smart ones—and it does a good job of predicting the future, but only because confirmation bias (our tendency to interpret data as supporting our views) will make the future look any way we want it to look, within reason. What I saw with Trump’s candidacy for president is that the “within reason” part of our understanding about reality was about to change, bigly.

My personal sense of ethics says that the people who take the most responsibility for important societal outcomes should also have the strongest say.

PERSUASION TIP 1 When you identify as part of a group, your opinions tend to be biased toward the group consensus.

That is classic deal making. You start with a big first demand and negotiate back to your side of the middle.

I saw it as Trump recognizing that people don’t use facts and reason to make decisions. A skilled persuader can blatantly ignore facts and policy details so long as the persuasion is skillful. Candidate Trump matched the emotional state of his base, and matched their priorities too. His supporters trusted him to dig into the details once elected, with the help of advisers and experts.

You should never take financial advice from cartoonists, but let me tell you one thing that feels safe to share: If the CEO of a publicly traded company is routinely described as having a “reality distortion field”—as was the case with Steve Jobs—keep an eye on that company. That’s a sign of a Master Persuader.

PERSUASION TIP 2 Humans are hardwired to reciprocate favors. If you want someone’s cooperation in the future, do something for that person today.

PERSUASION TIP 3 Persuasion is effective even when the subject recognizes the technique. Everyone knows that stores list prices at $9.99 because $10.00 sounds like too much. It still works.

You saw Trump use the intentional wrongness persuasion play over and over, and almost always to good effect. The method goes like this: Make a claim that is directionally accurate but has a big exaggeration or factual error in it. Wait for people to notice the exaggeration or error and spend endless hours talking about how wrong it is. When you dedicate focus and energy to an idea, you remember it. And the things that have the most mental impact on you will irrationally seem as though they are high in priority, even if they are not. That’s persuasion.

PERSUASION TIP 4 The things that you think about the most will irrationally rise in importance in your mind.

Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason.

PERSUASION TIP 5 An intentional “error” in the details of your message will attract criticism. The attention will make your message rise in importance—at least in people’s minds—simply because everyone is talking about it.

If you have ever tried to talk someone out of their political beliefs by providing facts, you know it doesn’t work. That’s because people think they have their own facts. Better facts. And if they know they don’t have better facts, they change the subject. People are not easily switched from one political opinion to another. And facts are weak persuasion. So Trump ignores facts whenever they are inconvenient. I know you don’t want to think this works in terms of persuasion. But it does.

PERSUASION TIP 6 If you are not a Master Persuader running for president, find the sweet spot between apologizing too much, which signals a lack of confidence, and never apologizing for anything, which makes you look like a sociopath.

For more science on the topic of how intentional “mistakes” can aid in memory retention, I recommend the book Impossible to Ignore, by Dr. Carmen Simon. The gist of it is that you need to surprise the brain or make it work a little extra to form memories. Our brains automatically delete our routine memories fairly quickly.

A good general rule is that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts.

And I propose that the best way to objectively determine the usefulness of a filter is by asking if it makes you happy and also does a good job of predicting the future.

cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. These two concepts explain almost everything that puzzles you about why people act the way they do.

having lots of different explanations is usually a clear tell for cognitive dissonance. Having multiple explanations—no matter how reasonable they sound after the fact—means people are trying to make sense of their observations, and they are generating different illusions to do it.

PERSUASION TIP 7 It is easy to fit completely different explanations to the observed facts. Don’t trust any interpretation of reality that isn’t able to predict.

An analogy is literally just two things that remind you of each other on at least one dimension. When I see a cauliflower, it reminds me of a human brain, but that doesn’t mean you should eat brains in your salad. When your debate opponents retreat to analogies, it is because they have no rational arguments. You won.

When people realize their arguments are not rational, they attack the messenger on the other side. If you have been well behaved in a debate, and you trigger an oversized personal attack, it means you won.

You can sometimes spot your own cognitive dissonance via the same set of tells you would observe in others.

And by the end of this book, you should have a lower confidence in your ability to identify base reality, which gives you psychological permission to be wrong without needing to hallucinate that you are right.

And if you do see the pattern, don’t rule out the possibility that you and I are both experiencing confirmation bias and there is no real pattern at all.

If you don’t understand confirmation bias, you might think new information can change people’s opinions.

Confirmation bias isn’t an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system.

That’s because mass delusions are the norm for humanity, not the exception. Don’t believe me? It is easy to check. Just ask your neighbors about their religious and political views. You’ll find plenty of disagreement with your worldview.

In the 2-D world, the scientific method and peer review squeeze out the bias over time. But in the 3-D world, the scientific method can’t detect bias when nearly everyone including the peer reviewers shares the same mass delusion.

PERSUASION TIP 8 People are more influenced by the direction of things than the current state of things.

PERSUASION TIP 9 Display confidence (either real or faked) to improve your persuasiveness. You have to believe yourself, or at least appear as if you do, in order to get anyone else to believe.

Hypnotists use the same method to create a quick connection with the subject. If I tell you what you are thinking at the exact moment you are thinking it, I can create the illusion that our minds are somehow connected. And once connected, and comfortable with the connection, the subject is more likely to let the hypnotist later operate the controls.

PERSUASION TIP 11 Guess what people are thinking—at the very moment they think it—and call it out. If you are right, the subject bonds to you for being like-minded.

PERSUASION TIP 12 If you want the audience to embrace your content, leave out any detail that is both unimportant and would give people a reason to think, That’s not me. Design into your content enough blank spaces so people can fill them in with whatever makes them happiest.

A far better seduction strategy would involve participating in any kind of coed group activities at which you happen to excel. When you display any kind of talent, it triggers other humans to want to mate with you. We’re biologically hardwired to be attracted to anything that helps the gene pool, and talent is a signal for valuable genes. So instead of being nice, focus on being talented, or attractive, or smart, or muscular, or something that suggests you have good genes.

The power of the talent stack idea is that you can intelligently combine ordinary talents together to create extraordinary value. The key concept here is that the talents in the stack work well with one another. If you acquire the right combination of ordinary talents, you don’t need to be the world’s best at any of them.

I remind you that filters are not intended as windows to reality. Our brains did not evolve to understand reality. We’re all running different movies in our heads. All that matters is whether or not your filter keeps you happy and does a good job of predicting. In my experience, the Persuasion Filter does both of those things better than the alternatives.

Our visual sense is the most persuasive of our five senses, so using a real person whom we recognize, and can imagine, is a great technique.

pacing and leading. First you match your audience’s emotional condition to gain trust, and later you are in a position to lead them.

He converted Kelly’s attack into pure energy and then moved that energy where it suited him best.

The persuasion stack isn’t science, so I recommend viewing it as directional. Big fear Identity Smaller fear Aspirations Habit Analogies Reason Hypocrisy Word-thinking As I will explain in more detail in an upcoming chapter, visual persuasion is stronger than oral persuasion.

The High-Ground Maneuver involves taking the conversation out of the children-are-bickering mode and reframing it as you—the adult in the room—explaining to the children how things work.

Hypocrite Accusation Pundit 1: Your side didn’t do enough to end street violence. Pundit 2: Well, don’t forget that your side failed at it too! Result: Tie. Both sides are bad. High-Ground Maneuver Pundit 1: Your side didn’t do enough to end street violence. Pundit 2: I agree. Luckily we have learned a lot since then. A number of cities experimented with different approaches and some worked better than others. Let’s try to find the best practices and see if we can spread them to other cities. Result: Pundit 1 is framed as the child who has nothing to offer but complaints. Pundit 2 demonstrates an adult understanding of how to solve problems over time.

PERSUASION TIP 13 Use the High-Ground Maneuver to frame yourself as the wise adult in the room. It forces others to join you or be framed as the small thinkers.

But if you ask people why they recycle, they will tell you it is good for the planet. They won’t tell you they do it to avoid social embarrassment, or to be consistent with their identities as “green” people, or to be good role models for the kids. The recycling example is somewhat typical of how we run the rest of our lives.

PERSUASION TIP 14 When you attack a person’s belief, the person under attack is more likely to harden his belief than to abandon it, even if your argument is airtight.

As I explained, the first reason analogies fail at persuasion is that they are not designed for that job. Analogies are not logic. They are just a quick way to explain a new concept. The second reason analogies fail is because they are imprecise by definition. That gives people on the other side of a debate all kinds of ammunition. And no one changes their mind when they have that much ammunition for a defense. As it turns out, all of the ammunition provided by bad analogies is in the form of blanks, because analogies are not persuasive, and neither are the criticisms of analogies. If you are arguing about the details of an analogy, you are not persuading, and you are not being persuaded. You are just wasting time.

HOW TO CREATE MENTAL ANCHORS The first thing you hear about a new topic automatically becomes an anchor in your mind that biases your future opinions. In the comic above, Dilbert’s nemesis got to Dilbert’s boss first and told him Dilbert was a liar. That would prime the boss’s filter to expect Dilbert to lie, with confirmation bias nearly guaranteeing that he would see things that way in the future.

going first makes a big difference. You see this technique most often from good negotiators. They open with a ridiculously low or ridiculously high offer to bias the other side in that direction.

The initial number becomes a mental anchor that is hard to move. That’s why you should always be the first to offer numbers, even if you are talking about an entirely different situation.