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

by Scott Adams

A direct attack usually just hardens people into their current opinions.

For the people who didn’t already know Trump, the Hitler analogy was effective,

The first thing you hear about a new topic automatically becomes an anchor in your mind that biases your future opinions.

Associations matter more than reason.

Fear can be deeply persuasive. But not all fear-related persuasion is equal. To maximize your fear persuasion, follow these guidelines.

If you don’t have an opportunity to scare people into doing what you want them to do, the next-strongest technique is an appeal to identity.

The next time someone is doing something you find objectionable, don’t attack that person’s actions. Instead, ask if this is who the person wants to be.

People who saw the flag image became instantly more amenable to Republican positions.

Whenever there is mass confusion and complexity, people automatically gravitate to the strongest, most confident voice.

we are attracted to those who offer clarity and simple answers, even if the answers are wrong or incomplete.

if an environment is not chaotic already, a skilled persuader who understands both social media and the news business can easily stir the pot to create an advantage through chao...

Trump’s strategy of sucking all the energy out of the news cycle until his competition had no way to breathe.

Trump didn’t tiptoe. He went in so hard, and so provocatively, that the media had no economic choice but to focus on him. He was pure gold for the press. And because of that, he came to own them, at least in the limited sense of dominating their news cycle.

Trump deactivated the incoming attacks by ensuring there were too many of them. The news business has to cover the newest stories, at the expense of the old ones. Trump could relegate any unflattering story to the back burner by introducing new provocations (often via tweet) every day.

What ever did happen to the story about Russia paying the Taliban to kill American troops? Trump will quickly create a distraction piece so there is not time to resolve issues like these. :(

People prefer certainty over uncertainty, even when the certainty is wrong.

Trump’s nicknames were deeply engineered and then tested in front of live audiences.

I find the use of nicknames despicable and a low move. Is that an example that we should be putting in from of our children?

Visual persuasion is more powerful than nonvisual persuasion, all else being equal. And the difference is large.

When persuasion is simplified to the point of being inaccurate, do the ends justify the means? It depends what you think about the alternatives.

Isn't that misdirection?

I’m having a fun time watching President Trump flood the news cycle with so many stories and outrages that no one can keep up. Here’s how the math of persuasion works in this situation: 1 outrage out of 3 headlines in a week: bad persuasion 25 outrages out of 25 headlines in a week: excellent persuasion At the moment, there are so many outrages, executive orders, protests, and controversies that none of them can get enough oxygen in our brains. I can’t obsess about problem X because the rest of the alphabet is coming at me at the same time.

Trump has flooded the playing field. You don’t know where to aim your outrage. He’s creating so many opportunities for disagreement that it’s mentally exhausting. Literally.

If you give me enough time, and I repeat the same message often enough, I can sway 5 percent of any crowd to believe anything. And 5 percent is usually enough to win the presidency in the United States because most elections are close affairs due to party loyalties.

Goebbels used this method...

You need a VP running mate whom the country takes seriously, but one who also has far less charisma than the top of the ticket. Pence created a perfect contrast to Trump. Not only did he add the seriousness that voters wanted, but when he stood next to Trump, he literally looked like the washed-out version.

voters respond to contrast more than they do to facts and reason.

You can program yourself all the way from a funk to a good mood if you change the inputs. And best of all, you can do the same to others. Fill their heads with positive thoughts and they will associate those good feelings with you. They couldn’t separate those feelings if they tried.

people won’t always remember what you said, but they almost always remember how you made them feel.

When you associate any two ideas or images, people’s emotional reaction to them will start to merge over time.

“Dark” is the kind of word that pundits can work into almost any answer when talking about Trump.

The only way to top identity persuasion is with the number one best persuasion form: fear.

for many people Trump’s personal style was annoying to the point of painful. I also knew the public would have a full year to get used to his personality. And I knew that the longer they experienced it, the less outrageous it would seem—at least for some portion of the public.

The people who mattered were the ones who disliked his style but didn’t yet have a final opinion about his politics.

The persuadables - as identified by Cambridge Analytica

Notice how “crooked” became a sponge for soaking up confirmation bias.

Trump’s supporters dismissed it as meaningless “locker room talk.”

If you look at the scandals individually, they seem like the types of things that can move elections. But collectively they involve too much information for voters to process. So instead, voters likely defaulted to their biases.

Trump’s scandals contributed to his “dark” reputation.

He also fixed his fake tan, or whatever was making him orange. Today you don’t see the orange.

Um - I still see orange.

Trump likes to punctuate the ends of his statements with “believe me.” That’s a direct command disguised as throwaway words.

With Trump, you get to fill in the blanks with your most potent self-hypnosis.

I don’t vote.

We all know that the vast majority of our fellow citizens are too underinformed and simpleminded to make good voting decisions.

the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States, and the tradition of singing the national anthem before big events, are examples of government-grade mind control. Those traditions have no other purpose.

I don’t speak the actual words to either the Pledge of Allegiance or the national anthem. I just move my lips while thinking, Blah, blah, blah.

I am completely in favor of my government brainwashing its citizens,

My blogging and tweeting about Trump’s persuasion powers made me a Trump supporter by default. I couldn’t hide my admiration for his skill set and his entertainment value.

This was also the day I decided to move from observer to persuader. Until then I was happy to simply observe and predict. But once Clinton announced her plans to use government force to rob me on my deathbed, it was war. Persuasion war.

And yet he doesn’t recommend choosing a political party or voting...

Clinton supporters have been telling me for a few days that any visible support for Trump makes you a supporter of sex abuse. From a persuasion standpoint, that actually makes sense.

If you take allegations of sex abuse seriously—and you should—vote Johnson. To vote for Clinton or Trump is to be seen by others as an enabler of sexual abuse.

Project Veritas was funded in part by Donald Trump, and, has been debunked.

I also wanted to destroy the entire Democratic Party

Trump supporters on the Internet were also terrible bullies in many cases.

I prefer not to join any kind of tribe. Doing so triggers an automatic bias toward tribe opinion and blinds one to better thinking. It also marks you as an enemy to competing tribes.