Scott Adams' Blog

Who is Smarter - the Smart People or the Dumb People? - Part of My Trump Persuasion Series

Posted September 11th, 2015 @ 8:23am in #Trump

Today I will create cognitive dissonance in about 25% of my readers, assuming past patterns hold. Please do not read further if you don’t like those odds. 

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While the title of today’s post sounds like nonsense, that question is one of the biggest debates in the country now because of Donald Trump. The wording is different everywhere, but the idea is the same: Smart people believe smart people are smart. Dumb people believe dumb people are the real smart ones. 

They can’t both be right. I’ll help you sort it out.

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Trump Engineers a Linguistic Kill Shot for Fiorina

Posted September 10th, 2015 @ 9:09am in #Trump

Disclaimer: For new readers, this is part of my series on Trump’s skills as a persuader. I am analyzing events through the filter of my Master Wizard Hypothesis. The Master Wizard Hypothesis says that Trump is playing three-dimensional chess with a two-dimensional world and he will win the presidency in a landslide. (The alternative hypothesis is that he is nothing but the loudest “outsider” and will flame-out soon.)

I don’t know which candidate would do the best job as president. I am not that smart. But I am impressed with Trump’s game. I write about it for entertainment. Don’t take cartoonists too seriously.

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Unknown Wizard Delivers Linguistic Kill Shot via Twitter

Posted September 9th, 2015 @ 10:52am in #Trump

See if you can spot it.

And then there was Carly.

A Demonstration of Persuasion - Part of my Trump Series

Posted September 9th, 2015 @ 9:43am in #Trump

Today, as a demonstration of persuasion, I am going to show you one way Donald Trump could convince you to support his immigration plan, even though I don’t support the plan myself. (But I also believe it is a negotiation anchor, not a real plan in its current form.)

Some of you already love Trump’s immigration plan as is. I’m not talking to you today. And I probably won’t be making my case the way you make yours, so assume I’m not on your side either.

Today I’m talking to the skeptics who believe it is impossible to seal the border for less than a trillion dollars (give or take) and that it would be inhumane to deport 11 million people. You folks have a strong, common-sense argument. But I’m going to show you that Trump could persuade you to support his immigration plan before it is all said and done. And it won’t be that hard.

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The Time of Kings - Explained

Posted September 8th, 2015 @ 9:01am in #Trump

This post is a spoiler (and explanation) for my post The Time of Kings. You should read that post first.

After seeing the comments to my whimsical post about wizards in the time of kings, I am reminded that some of you subscribe to what I would call the “Wimpy Jesus” view of history.

Wimpy Jesus – should such a person have actually existed – would have said some version of “Turn the other cheek” because he wanted to avoid violence to others, even at great personal risk. For Wimpy Jesus, it is all about not fighting.

I subscribe to the Bad-ass Jesus view of history. In that view, “Turn the other cheek” was a call to psychological warfare as a way to prevail against a stronger enemy. And it was a reminder that an individual can topple governments with a good enough game. If the meek want to conquer the earth, Jesus was laying out the game plan.

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Obama the Stealth Wizard

Posted September 7th, 2015 @ 9:51am in #Trump

If you have been following my posts on Master Wizards that use hypnosis and persuasion tricks to control the entire world, you might have seen some tells in the Iran nuke deal. 

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment only. There is no scientific evidence to support the Master Wizard hypothesis. The fun is comparing this filter to your current one to see which explains the data better.

When most of the public heard about the Iran nuke deal, they saw a mortal enemy getting a free pass to build a nuclear weapon, albeit perhaps at a slower pace. That seems like a bad deal if you imagine there was some practical way to stop all of the Iranian nuclear advancements.

The government must be crazy!

But if you view the deal through the filter of the Master Wizard hypothesis, you see something entirely different.

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The “Outsider” Explanation - Part of my Trump Persuasion Series

Posted September 7th, 2015 @ 7:11am in #Trump

As I explained in an earlier post, when you see lots of different explanations for the same event, it probably means the public is in mass cognitive dissonance. Trump’s unexpected surge in the polls did just that.

And when an otherwise smart person offers an explanation that is clearly absurd, that is a tell for cognitive dissonance too. You will see a lot of smart people saying a lot of head-scratching things over the next year. More than usual.

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How to Spot a Wizard

Posted September 6th, 2015 @ 7:26am in #Trump kanyewest

Over the past few weeks I have presented to you an alternative filter for understanding your world. I make no claim that this filter is a true version of reality, if such a thing even exits. I offer this filter for entertainment only. The fun is seeing how well it fits the data and predicts the future.

According to my Moist Robot Hypothesis (that we are programmable meat) and paired with the Master Wizard view of the world, one can imagine a world in which all the big changes in society are engineered by a handful of living wizards at any given time. The wizards, in this context, have learned the rules of hypnosis and persuasion. This knowledge gives them access to the admin passwords for human beings. And they use it.

Today I will tell you how to spot a wizard, if such people actually exist. Look for these clues:

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Cognitive Dissonance: You be the Judge

Posted September 5th, 2015 @ 7:59pm in #Trump

Here’s an interesting article in the Washington Post that explains why Trump is still leading in the polls. At least so far. The explanation for Trump’s continued rise in the polls, according to a convincing chart in the article, is that the media is giving him all of the attention.

Now refer back to my post on how to spot a tell for cognitive dissonance, and take a look at the one titled nonsense rebuttal.

Okay, armed with that knowledge, you get to judge whether it is I who is experiencing cognitive dissonance or the author of the article. 

We both have a strong bias on this topic, so realistically, he and I have zero credibility on this question. That’s why I deputize you to be the deciders.

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“Nice Guy” - Part of my Trump Persuasion Series

Posted September 5th, 2015 @ 8:20am in #Trump

The press is reporting that Trump is being uncharacteristically kind to Ben Carson. People seem confused about it. The press reports over and over that, Trump has gone so far as to call Carson a “nice guy.” 

This is quite a puzzler to the press. Why would Trump be so kind to this one challenger?

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