Win Bigly Quotes

“We humans like to think we are creatures of reason. We aren't. The reality is that we make our decisions first and rationalize them later....Your illusion of being a rational person is supported by the fact that sometimes you do act rationally.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“We humans don’t like uncertainty, so we are attracted to those who offer clarity and simple answers, even if the answers are wrong or incomplete. Master Persuaders can thrive in chaotic environments by offering the clarity people crave. And 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 chaos. Candidate Trump was a champion of this method.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“I have no reason to believe humans evolved with the capability to understand their reality. That capability was not important to survival. When it comes to evolution, any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“The grand illusion of life is that our minds have the capacity to understand reality. But human minds didn’t evolve to understand reality. We didn’t need that capability. A clear view of reality wasn’t necessary for our survival. Evolution cares only that you survive long enough to procreate. And that’s a low bar. The result is that each of us is, in effect, living in our own little movie that our brain has cooked up for us to explain our experiences”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“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—”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“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.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“I could see from the start of the election that 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. Others would harden their resistance. But the latter group was never going to vote for Trump anyway. The people who mattered were the ones who disliked his style but didn’t yet have a final opinion about his politics. That group was going to get used to Trump’s personality over time.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Confirmation bias isn’t an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system. We are designed by evolution to see new information as supporting our existing opinions, so long as it doesn’t stop us from procreating. Evolution doesn’t care if you understand your reality. It only cares that you reproduce.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Philosopher Nick Bostrom takes things one step further by asking whether we are a “real” species or a simulation created by an intelligent civilization that came before. This idea comes from the simple fact that we will someday be able to create software simulations that believe they are real creatures. And when we achieve that level of technical proficiency, we’re unlikely to stop with one simulation of that type. In the long run, you could expect far more simulated realities than the real one that started it all. So the math of it says we are far more likely to be a simulation than an original species. The interesting thing here is that neither the real species nor the simulations would be in a position to know which one they are.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Humans think they are rational, and they think they understand their reality. But they are wrong on both counts.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“I have voted in the past. My first vote as a young man was for Jimmy Carter. In time, I came to see that vote as further evidence that the thing I call my common sense is an illusion. (Carter was a good role model but not one of our most effective presidents. He served one term.) As I got older, and more aware of my mental limitations, I came to understand that my vote adds nothing to the quality of the outcome. As far as I can tell, no one else adds intelligence to the election outcome either, but most voters think they do. And that illusion is necessary to support the government. It gives the voters a sense of empowerment and buy-in. That creates national stability. The democracy illusion is probably one of the most beneficial hallucinations humankind has ever concocted. If you think democracy works, and you act as if it works, it does work.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Success cures most types of “mistakes” you made or got criticized for during the process.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Trump ignores facts whenever they are inconvenient. I know you don’t want to think this works in terms of persuasion. But it does.

I want to be clear that I’m not expressing a preference for ignoring facts.

I’m simply saying that a Master Persuader can do it and still come out ahead, no matter how many times the media points out the errors.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“As a trained persuader, 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.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“It turns out Trump was up to the challenge. The solution to the Hitler movie is to act non-Hitlerish in public until people can no longer maintain the Hitler illusion and it falls apart.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“For example, consider the case of global warming. People from the 2-D world assume mass delusions are rare, and they apply that assumption to every topic. So when they notice that most scientists are on the same side, that observation is persuasive to them. A reasonable person wants to be on the same side with the smartest people who understand the topic. That makes sense, right? But people who live in the 3-D world, where persuasion rules, can often have a different view of climate change because we see mass delusions (even among experts) as normal and routine. My starting bias for this topic is that the scientists could easily be wrong about the horrors of climate change, even in the context of repeated experiments and peer review. Whenever you see a situation with complicated prediction models, you also have lots of room for bias to masquerade as reason. Just tweak the assumptions and you can get any outcome you want. Now add to that situation the fact that scientists who oppose the climate change consensus have a high degree of career and reputation risk. That’s the perfect setup for a mass delusion. You only need these two conditions: Complicated prediction models with lots of assumptions Financial and psychological pressure to agree with the consensus 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.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Do you remember when President Trump got elected and there were protests in the street because they thought he was the next Hitler?”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“We think we are reasonable and rational most of the time. But what hypnotists have long known, and scientists have in recent years confirmed, is that our decisions are often made without appeal to the rational parts of our brains. We literally make our decisions first and then create elaborate rationalizations for them after the fact.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“As a general rule, irrational people don’t know they are irrational.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Internet search for “the McGurk effect.” Click on the first video you see.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Generally speaking, conservatives are opposed to legalization of marijuana whereas liberals are more likely to support it. I go one step further and suggest that doctors prescribe recreational drugs for old people to make their final years enjoyable. What do they have to lose? (Yes, I’m serious. I know it’s hard to tell.)”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Generally speaking, conservatives are opposed to legalization of marijuana whereas liberals are more likely to support it. I go one step further and suggest that doctors prescribe recreational drugs for old people to make their final years enjoyable. What do they have to lose? (Yes, I’m serious. I know it’s hard to tell.) W”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason. I’ve”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“When nonscientists take sides with climate scientists, they often think they are being supportive of science. The reality is that the nonscientists are not involved in science, or anything like it. They are taking the word of scientists. In the 2-D world, that makes perfect sense, because it seems as if thousands of experts can’t be wrong. But in the 3-D world, I accept that the experts could be right, and perhaps they are, but it would be normal and natural in my experience if the vast majority of climate scientists were experiencing a shared hallucination. To be clear, I am not saying the majority of scientists are wrong about climate science. I’m making the narrow point that it would be normal and natural for that group of people to be experiencing a mass hallucination that is consistent with their financial and psychological incentives”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Confirmation bias isn’t an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“The start of the tweet generally contains contempt, mocking, or sarcasm. The second part of the tweet includes either an insult that seems too angry for the situation or a mischaracterization of your point as an absurd absolute.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Here’s an example of why the idea that humans are rational is pure nonsense. One of my Twitter followers copied President Trump’s inauguration speech and showed it to a “leftist friend,” telling him it was President Obama’s speech. His friend loved it.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“what hypnotists have long known, and scientists have in recent years confirmed, is that our decisions are often made without appeal to the rational parts of our brains. We literally make our decisions first and then create elaborate rationalizations for them after the fact.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter