Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

State ONE thing you believe on this topic that you think I do NOT believe.

If you let your critic focus on his hallucinations about your opinion, you will get nowhere. But if you change the focus to the critic’s opinion, it puts you in control of the conversation.

laundry list persuasion. That happens when none of the evidence is persuasive on its own, so there is an attempt to make up for the shortfall with quantity.

In my experience, if someone has up to three reasons for an opinion, that person might have a strong case. But people who present laundry lists of ten reasons rarely have a strong case.

you can easily test the validity of a person’s laundry list with this request: Give me the strongest argument or evidence on your list that supports your point. Just one, please.

In the interest of time, would you agree that if I can debunk your strongest point, you should rethink all of your points that are weaker than the one I debunk?

your goal is to reduce the other person’s confidence in their rightness. Taking their strongest argument off the table (if you can) should be enough to get that done.

Don’t play Whac-A-Mole with people who have laundry lists of reasons supporting their hallucinations. Ask for their strongest point only, and debunk it if you can. Target their undue confidence, not their entire laundry list.

Pacing involves matching the person you hope to persuade by agreeing with as much of their position as you can without lying, in order to build rapport and trust before taking on the disagreements.

Always talk first about the points on which you agree, to set the tone and establish yourself as a reasonable voice.

Agree with people as much as you can without lying, and you will be in a better position to persuade.

unimportant news can often be the most entertaining and most profitable.

Our human instinct is to assume that whatever subject we think about the most must also be the most important. That is backward, of course, because we should be picking the most important topics to think about the most.

The business model of the news industry and the design of social media almost guarantee we will be thinking the most ...

Don’t argue in the weeds of a debate. Dismiss the trivial stuff and concentrate on the variables that matter. That gives you the high ground.

Ask people with opposing opinions to describe what the future would look like if their view of the world were to play out. Does it sound reasonable?

If it doesn’t happen immediately after you cleverly label their behavior as mind reading, try this next: ask how many times in their personal relationships their mates or friends have incorrectly assumed what they were thinking. This approach hits people hard.

None of us are good at mind reading, and we know it, even if we don’t admit it.

The best way to avoid the mind reading illusion is to look for it in others. That will prime you to better catch yourself when you do your own mind reading.

In the world of politics, partisans frame things for selfish gain, not for solutions.

A better frame is to see climate change risks as something the public needs to understand better so we’re all on the same side, wherever that leads.

You can’t get the right answer until you frame the question correctly. And partisans rarely do.

THINGS TO REMEMBER