Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

What I do recommend is that we judge the character of others by how they respond to their mistakes, whenever that is practical. And the best response a person can make to a mistake follows this pattern:

Fully acknowledge the mistake and its impact. Display genuine-looking remorse. Explain what you plan to do to make amends. Explain how you plan to avoid similar mistakes.

The Forty-Eight-Hour Rule says that everyone deserves forty-eight hours to clarify, apologize for, or otherwise update an offending statement. The clock starts when the offender first realizes people are taking offense.

Shorter version: You are what you do, not what you think. Likewise, if you harbor some bigoted thoughts, but you have managed to use your sense of reason to override them and act in ways society approves, I’m good with you too. I won’t judge you by your thoughts. But I will certainly let you know if your actions (including your words) work against the greater good.

Now we have social media that creates a total slideshow of every dumbass thing you ever thought or did in your entire life. It turns out that most of us were worse people when we were younger. You wouldn’t want to know the teenage me. But I’d like to think I’ve improved since then. I’ll agree to judge you by your most recent twenty years on this planet if you will extend me the same courtesy.

If you belong to a group whose interpretation of reality does a good job of explaining the past (or so it seems) yet is bad at predicting the near future, you are probably in a cult, or something that acts like one.

Once you learn to embrace the realization that being right and being wrong feel exactly the same, you’re halfway out of your mental prison.

The clearest signal you’re in a cult is that other members of the group actively try to prevent you from exchanging ideas with outsiders.

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 about the least important topics.

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.

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

The past no longer exists. Don’t let your attachment to the past influence your decisions today.

If you haven’t mentioned the next best alternative to your proposed

plan, you haven’t said anything at all, and smart people would be...

Fairness cannot be obtained in most cases because of its subjective nature. The closest you can get is equal application of the law.

Don’t judge a group by its worst 5 percent. If you do, you’re probably in the worst 5 percent of your own group.

Understand the limits of expert advice, and be skeptical of experts who have financial incentives to mislead.

Thank you to Kristina Basham for accepting and loving me exactly the way I am. You are the best part of my life.