Scott Adams' Blog

Jury Selection - Update

Posted October 14th, 2015 @ 7:28am

I am heading back to the court today for round two of jury selection. I breezed through the first round. Obviously I can’t mention the case itself, but let me tell you some things I learned.

People have immense respect for the court 

I recommend serving as a juror at least once, even if it is hard to do. It does wonders for your sense country. I found it a humbling experience to sit in a packed courtroom, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for half-an-hour while the judge was in his chambers, with no one speaking a word above a whisper. No one had asked us to be quiet. It just felt like the respectful thing to do. The power of the courtroom image, and especially the American flag, is insanely strong. 

Good job on that, America. The legal system always needs improvement, but we got the respect part right. That’s the hard part.

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Off to Jury Duty

Posted October 13th, 2015 @ 7:00am in #jury duty #hypnosis

I’m reporting for jury duty selection this morning. I have served a few times, and I recommend it to any citizen who has the opportunity. The experience does a good job of getting you invested in the system, and it makes you appreciate your country a bit more when you see your fellow citizens taking it seriously, which in my experience people do.

But I’m not expecting to serve this time. I will disclose that I’m a trained hypnotist and see what happens. I can’t imagine a lawyer wanting me on a jury. Seems like a good excuse for an appeal if the defendant is found guilty.

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Humor, Brevity, Virality

Posted October 12th, 2015 @ 11:34am in #Trump

This morning I engineered a five-word tweet to go viral on Twitter. I’ll explain the technique.

In this context, viral means I expect a lot of people to retweet it, relative to the size of my Twitter followers. Here is the tweet as it is just starting to pick up retweets:

(If your firewall is blocking the image, it says, “Bad analogies are like corn.”)

I engineered the tweet to have these qualities:

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Who Will Bill Clinton Vote for?

Posted October 12th, 2015 @ 9:56am in #Trump

I was just reading the transcript of Bill Clinton’s interview with Colbert. Based on that text alone, I wonder who Bill Clinton wants to win the presidency. Clinton talked about Trump’s “macho” appeal with the public.

But Clinton didn’t say macho was a bad thing.

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Does Trump Linguistically Engineer His Insults?

Posted October 11th, 2015 @ 10:24am in #Trump

On October 1st, I blogged that Trump was starting to define Rubio as a “rube,” although Trump had not yet used that actual word (as far as I know). 

The human mind automatically connects things that are related. If you tell me a man named Rubio is easily duped (as Trump suggests), the word “rube” automatically pops into my head. When I first made the connection consciously, it felt to me (as a trained hypnotist) that I was experiencing persuasion, not coincidence.

Recently Trump ran a Rubio attack add that portrayed the senator as “little RUBE.” So there you go. Connection complete, but not until you were primed to accept it as something you were already thinking but had not yet found the perfect word to describe. 

I remind you that I am applying the Master Wizard filter on this situation for entertainment only while we see how well it explains the current data and predicts the future. If you want truth, that is probably at a different URL.

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Narcissistic Accuser Syndrome

Posted October 10th, 2015 @ 9:30am in #Trump

The word “narcissist” gets tossed around a lot, especially when Donald Trump is in the news. That word can mean at least three different things, depending on who is saying it. For example, calling someone a narcissist could mean…

1. I don’t know what big words mean, but I use them anyway. (That’s at least 30% of cases.)

Or…

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Tells for Cognitive Dissonance (with some Trump flavoring)

Posted October 9th, 2015 @ 12:36pm in #cognitive dissonance #trump

When a skilled persuader exerts influence on a large group, people will generally react in one of three ways.

20% Will be heavily influenced right away, and be happy about it.

60% Will be mildly influenced, over time, with repetition.

20% Will be unusually angry, comparing the persuader to evil dictators and the like.

Under the Master Wizard Hypothesis, the folks who are the angriest are having a reaction to the persuasion that violates their self-image, throwing them into cognitive dissonance. The 20% who are easily influenced without anger had no skin in the game, in the sense that they had not yet picked sides.

The tells for Cognitive Dissonance are many. Here are some I haven’t before mentioned.

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Why This Tweet Went Viral

Posted October 8th, 2015 @ 9:55am in #funny viral memes

You already saw my Robots Read News comic about self-driving cars. This one got more attention than any other tweet I have done. Let’s see why.

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Florida School Board Believes Principal is a Hypno-Witch

Posted October 8th, 2015 @ 8:33am in #hypnosis

Before you read this post, you might want to read my post on why sensational stories such as this are almost always untrue. The context is perfect.

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In Florida, a school board paid settlements of $200,000 apiece to the families of three students who died after being hypnotized by their principal. (In this context, “after” does not mean immediately after.) Two students committed suicide and a third ran his car off the road after getting a strange look on his face, according to his girlfriend who survived the crash.

The principal in question had hypnotized 75 kids for various reasons. The other 72 kids did not try to kill themselves as far as we know.

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Iran Bans Further Negotiations with U.S. to Avoid “Influence”

Posted October 7th, 2015 @ 8:54am in #Iran

Iran’s Supreme Leader banned further negotiations with the United States because he wants to avoid “influence.”

That’s the sort of thing you say when you are dealing with a Master Wizard and you notice the influence is working.

No one looks for a solution to a problem they don’t have.

Bombs are always the biggest headlines. But this is the real story.