Scott Adams' Blog

Tony Robbins Explains How to Beat Trump

Posted October 16th, 2015 @ 9:14am in #Trump

If you have been following my Master Wizard Hypothesis series, you know I called Tony Robbins the best hypnotist in the world. His job is motivating people to improve their lives, and apparently he is amazing at it. His persuasion skills trace back to famous hypnotist Milton Erickson, same as mine. Robbins has added lots of layers to that learning, but his understanding of how people are influenced is similar to my world view, and probably quite different from yours.

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Master Wizard Filter on the Democratic Debate

Posted October 14th, 2015 @ 8:08am in #Trump

The Washington Post’s Stephen Stromberg says Hillary Clinton won the first Democratic debate with her line about being a progressive who likes to get things done. Personally, that line didn’t register with me at all. It has no visual or emotional content. The Master Wizard filter says that line was irrelevant.

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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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My Explanation of Trump’s Persuasion Skills for Reason.com

Posted October 6th, 2015 @ 5:12pm in #Trump #Reason

If you have been following my posts about Trump’s persuasion skills, you might like to hear me pull it all together in this short video clip at Reason.com.

I love how they edited and produced it. Nicely done.

President Obama: Wizard or Failure?

Posted October 6th, 2015 @ 11:50am in #ISIS #trump

Russia is moving into Old Syria. Iran already owns the parts of Old Iraq that ISIS and the Kurds do not. Israel fears that the nuclear deal with Iran is a mistake of unthinkable proportions.

The data suggests that President Obama is a total failure when it comes to the Middle East.

Or… he is one of the most gifted wizards of persuasion and strategy our generation has ever seen.

The data fits both interpretations. You already know the interpretation that says Obama failed. Allow me to give you another interpretation – one that isn’t necessarily true – but happens to fit the data.

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The Trump Confidence Thing

Posted October 6th, 2015 @ 9:35am in #Trump

Politico got this right. Trump’s game isn’t as random as you thought.

Thanks to DJO for pointing it out.