Scott Adams' Blog

How to Evaluate a President

Posted February 16th, 2017 @ 9:36am in #Trump

Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Richard Branson. What do they all have in common, aside from wealth?

They all succeeded without the right kind of prior experience. Apparently they knew how to figure out what they needed once they started. I’ll bet they are all systems-thinkers, not goal-thinkers.

If you see the world in terms of goals, you might think President Trump has failed at every important goal so far. He didn’t get what he wanted on immigration. He hasn’t gotten his Supreme Court nomination confirmed. He hasn’t replaced Obamacare. He hasn’t defeated ISIS. He hasn’t done a lot of things he said he would do. He even had to fire General Flynn. President Trump is a big ol’ failure when it comes to goals.

Maybe that’s because Trump just started on the job. Success generally comes after you start. If you think success comes before you start, the world probably looks confusing to you.

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How to Persuade the Other Party

Posted February 15th, 2017 @ 10:35am in #WhenHub #Persuasion

An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their opinions. 

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Posted February 13th, 2017 @ 2:32pm in #whenhub

I put this post over on WhenHub because it fit better there. See it at: http://bit.ly/2lcPbNi

Freedom of Speech is Now Largely an Illusion

Posted February 13th, 2017 @ 1:36pm

Here’s a fresh example (today) of how Twitter throttles back my free speech when it doesn’t fit their political views. This only happens for Trump-related content, as far as I can tell. I haven’t seen an exception yet. Notice the referenced tweet shows as “unavailable” but it actually is available when users click the link. Twitter does this trick so my followers will think the link is gone and they won’t bother to click. This Twitter censorship method is well-documented by others. 

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Two Monday Mind-blowers

Posted February 13th, 2017 @ 10:06am in #grammys #freewill #Whenhub

First we have a link to an example of how two movies can play on one screen (in our minds) at the same time. This is how hypnotists see the world. It is rare to see an example this clean.

If you like or hate science you will love this real life example of cognitive dissonance @ScottAdamsSayshttps://t.co/8l8xCkrKNv

— Andrew Fisher (@fortyseventogo) February 13, 2017

Next, a link to an article that gives you a preview of how machines are learning to chemically program humans. The machines are learning how to adjust our rewards to maximize addiction. There is no logical end to this. Once machines learn hypnosis (and they can), we work for them.

Dopamine Labs slings tools to boost and reduce app addiction https://t.co/3dgcHouf8O by @jshieber

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) February 13, 2017

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Did you see the Grammy’s? My startup was running a continuously-updated WhenCast of the winners that night. You can see them here.

Good Example of Our Two-Movie Reality

Posted February 12th, 2017 @ 10:26am in #Trump #RealTime #billmaher

I have been saying since Trump’s election that the world has split into two realities – or as I prefer to say, two movies on one screen – and most of us don’t realize it. We’re all looking at the same events and interpreting them wildly differently. That’s how cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias work. They work together to create a spontaneous hallucination that gets reinforced over time. That hallucination becomes your reality until something changes.

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About the 97% of Climate Scientists

Posted February 10th, 2017 @ 2:31pm in #climate science

One of the most famous statistics in the world of politics is the claim that 97% of climate scientists agree with the idea that humans activity is boosting CO2 to dangerous levels.

Critics say the 97% is misleading, because the critics like to include in their own list the scientists that are working for energy companies. The industry-paid scientists and engineers have less credibility, say the critics of the climate science critics.

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Sam Harris Induces Cognitive Dissonance in Ben Affleck

Posted February 5th, 2017 @ 2:48pm in #real time with bill maher #sam harris #Ben Affleck #cognitive dissonance

Ignoring the politics of it for the moment, check out this video of Sam Harris debating Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s Real Time show. I’ll teach you how to spot cognitive dissonance in the clip.

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A Thought Experiment About Republicans

Posted February 5th, 2017 @ 11:47am in #Trump #Racists #berkeley riots #Democrats

The left has done a stellar job of demonizing Trump supporters and Republicans in general. Their excellent persuasion involves conflating the bad apples with the entire group. Both sides do it. The right calls everyone on the left selfish snowflakes, and the left calls everyone on the right racists. They do it because it works. The brain likes to conflate things. And if the shiniest object in our view involves headlines about racists, or lefty rioters, those images stick in our minds and taint our impressions of the entire group.

So let’s try this thought experiment.

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The Social Media Hive Mind

Posted February 4th, 2017 @ 11:57am in #itsasecret

You might have clicked on my misleading tweet to get to this page. I had to disguise the content so Twitter wouldn’t throttle it.

Here’s why…

This morning I tweeted a link to a great video that describes in detail how Twitter “throttles” the tweets of any content that disagrees with their political views. The video describes how Twitter gives a fake message that some tweets are no longer available, to discourage you from clicking to them. The tweets still exist, and you can access them by directly clicking the links in the tweets, but most people would not think to do that.

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