Speaker 1: All right, I just want to say I don't know
Speaker 1: what we're getting into.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you and I want to apologize
Speaker 2: to Garrison Davis Midvan.
Speaker 3: That's right, motherfucker's it's a book episode of Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 3: the only podcast that's right.
Speaker 4: What we are?
Speaker 1: What? What?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: What have you done to us?
Speaker 3: I'm having a great day, Sophie. I'm I'm feeling good.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting down, I'm having my first cafe ola made
Speaker 3: with milk from my You're making good for you. I
Speaker 3: think that just means coffee with milk. If not, don't
Speaker 3: tell me. I don't care anyway, Garrison, how are you
Speaker 3: doing today?
Speaker 4: I'm doing fine. I'm having I'm having a Chai tea
Speaker 4: of Brave. They also just said to make everyone mad
Speaker 4: about seeing thing.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I'm drinking some of this Cuban coffee that I
Speaker 3: smuggled into the country to support the Castro regime, specifically
Speaker 3: to make people in Florida angry. And yeah, it's it's delightful,
Speaker 3: It's wonderful. I'll get you some when you come over
Speaker 3: next to watch that Nazi movie.
Speaker 4: We're going to watch Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: But speaking of Nazis. Do you know what we have
Speaker 3: to read today? Though not quite It's a book by
Speaker 3: Dilbert creator Scott Adams.
Speaker 4: No why, I just saw the fucking dil Brito on
Speaker 4: Twitter today. I'm like, oh, god, man, yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Dil Burrito is a fun story.
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 3: I am currently writing. I just finished part one last
Speaker 3: night and I'm starting on part two today. The Scott
Speaker 3: Adams episodes which will Jesus Christ soon with someone else
Speaker 3: a cartoonist as the guest. But I wanted to sit
Speaker 3: down with you and go over a Scott Adams book, Garrison,
Speaker 3: because when I was was a wee lad, like literally
Speaker 3: like ten or eleven, I read some of Scott Adams's
Speaker 3: books and I felt like this would be an a
Speaker 3: bonding experience for all of us and for Sophie too.
Speaker 3: Why the book we're reading today is Win Bigley Persuasion
Speaker 3: in a world where facts don't matter. Some versions of
Speaker 3: the book, I think he credits Donald Trump as a
Speaker 3: co author, even though he's not. It's his it's his
Speaker 3: book about So for a little bit of context, Gare
Speaker 3: Scott starts this comic called Dilbert in the late night
Speaker 3: the right at the tail end of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: kind of the end of the Reagan era, and it
Speaker 3: gets really big around nineteen ninety five, so early in
Speaker 3: the Clinton era, right at the start of the dot
Speaker 3: com boom, right after kind of a bunch of companies
Speaker 3: of you know, these big companies like ge did huge
Speaker 3: rounds of layoffs.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh, no, I looked at the cover. Oh no,
Speaker 1: oh oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sophie, why don't you show Garrison that For a
Speaker 3: while people thought Scott Adams liberal or maybe even kind
Speaker 3: of stealth left wing guy because Dilbert was. Some people
Speaker 3: saw it as kind of like an antivity.
Speaker 4: Establishment or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a lot of it's about how stupid
Speaker 3: these like mainstream like management tactics are and these things
Speaker 3: that like all of these corporate leaders doing, how like
Speaker 3: fucked up and often cruel they were. The reality is
Speaker 3: that like Scott was just bitching about things that annoyed
Speaker 3: him personally and is absolutely in no way anti capitalist
Speaker 3: or anti any really anti any of the bad things
Speaker 3: that he used to write about.
Speaker 4: Christ the hardcover's thirty two dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's not I didn't pay for it.
Speaker 3: Don't worry. So I'm looking at the cover. I have
Speaker 3: to read. I have to beak cagy about how I
Speaker 3: don't pay for books now because the last time I
Speaker 3: told people, Amazon closed the loophole. Oh really really yeah,
Speaker 3: that they won't let you return a book when it's
Speaker 3: past ten percent read or something like that.
Speaker 4: Now, Ah damn, they caught me.
Speaker 3: So I've had to get creative. But don't worry everyone.
Speaker 3: I'm still in compliance with the law as far as
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet sure I've never seen you I legally
Speaker 4: firaatemedia before.
Speaker 3: No, of course you haven't, Garrison. I would never do
Speaker 3: anything like.
Speaker 2: That, can I Can I just say before we get
Speaker 2: into more of your alleged crimes. Uh, really nailed the
Speaker 2: hands on this cover.
Speaker 3: Oh you've seen it yet, Garrison?
Speaker 4: Yeah, looking at it, it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a he's good at hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah he's yeah, all three fingers on, so they're very puffy.
Speaker 1: It was was uh, king Charles the the goal for
Speaker 1: the hand model for this.
Speaker 3: It was probably just Scott Adams himself.
Speaker 2: Does he also have really really really really swollen hands?
Speaker 4: Maybe he sees the world he draws Dilbert like what if?
Speaker 4: What if? What if that's not just how he like
Speaker 4: like interprets realities just through these Dilbert trawings.
Speaker 3: It would have to have an impact on your brain
Speaker 3: after a while, and not a positive way. Clearly it hasn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so his brain's not working correct From what I
Speaker 4: can tell.
Speaker 3: Scott, one of the things that we all learned from
Speaker 3: the great Bill Watterson is that the best thing you
Speaker 3: can do as a creator of popular art is never
Speaker 3: let anyone know anything about you. Quit at the height
Speaker 3: of your fame, and then spend the rest of your
Speaker 3: days as a hermit in the woods painting landscapes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Scott did not do that. He started a blog, which
Speaker 3: was a terrible mistake.
Speaker 4: And then he took the Twitter approach.
Speaker 3: And then he got on Twitter, which was an even
Speaker 3: worse mistake. And over time people became aware that Scott
Speaker 3: had some pretty regressive opinions, specifically around women. He starts
Speaker 3: posting some like insel adjacent shit, and then when Trump
Speaker 3: comes around, everyone is kind of surprised who hasn't been
Speaker 3: following him closely that he gets like super in to Trump.
Speaker 3: And at first he takes this like Weasley approach where
Speaker 3: he's like, well, I don't agree with him, about a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. But I'm really impressed by what a
Speaker 3: master persuader he is. He's like a super genius communicator,
Speaker 3: and he's playing He's one of these three D chess people.
Speaker 3: He's like one of the first. Trump's playing a game
Speaker 3: of three D Chess on all of you, and I
Speaker 3: think one of the funniest things. So Scott, when you
Speaker 3: really dig into all of his claims, is wrong about
Speaker 3: nearly everything. Like Trump wasn't a master persuader, like he
Speaker 3: took it. His first election was largely a product of
Speaker 3: taking advantage of the way the electoral college works. He
Speaker 3: never got most of the country on board with his ideas.
Speaker 3: He's not good at persuading people. He was good at
Speaker 3: speaking to the bigotry and the anger of a chunk
Speaker 3: of people who are already bigoted and angry. But Scott
Speaker 3: gets convinced that Donald Trump is basically like a magician,
Speaker 3: like a psychic magician, taking over people's minds. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: thinks that this is a good thing, because Scott is
Speaker 3: into hypnosis and he's also into affirmations.
Speaker 4: In interesting I've actually read a there is a there's
Speaker 4: a whole book about Trump's ties to like to a
Speaker 4: to a New Thought church back in back in like
Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies that focuss a lot on how
Speaker 4: how like hypnosis became popular and like this weird like
Speaker 4: New York business scene that Trump was in as a kid,
Speaker 4: and how it kind of informs the way that he
Speaker 4: goes about in in like interactions and the way he
Speaker 4: does affirmation. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the kind of guys that he's super that
Speaker 3: Trump is kind of inspired by are sort of like
Speaker 3: a mix of kind of quasi prosperity gospel dudes and
Speaker 3: like Napoleon Hill think and grow rich kind of people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: where it's it's talking about, like, yeah, the power of
Speaker 3: positive thinking and all this sort of stuff in creating
Speaker 3: wealth and opportunities for yourself. Scott's really into that stuff too,
Speaker 3: And I noticed this as a kid. It was really interesting.
Speaker 3: His first book, or not his first book, but the
Speaker 3: first one I read, had some like pretty reasonable stuff
Speaker 3: in it. Like he's very he was early on very
Speaker 3: motivated by what's called the Peter principle, which is this
Speaker 3: idea and like business theory that people tend to get
Speaker 3: promoted past their level of competence and that this is
Speaker 3: like a problem, right, that like people who are good
Speaker 3: at jobs, who are good at their job, get promoted
Speaker 3: to a point where they're no longer good at what
Speaker 3: they're doing, and that this is what causes a lot,
Speaker 3: which is, as far as I've seen, quite quite an
Speaker 3: accurate thing. And Scott takes from this this idea that, like,
Speaker 3: you should always be aware that at any given time
Speaker 3: in the world, like most people are are idiots, right,
Speaker 3: most people don't know what they're doing, don't understand the
Speaker 3: world around them, are kind of like in over their heads.
Speaker 3: And then he uses that to kind of pivot to like,
Speaker 3: so I developed the system of affirmations, and you know,
Speaker 3: I can't explain why it works, but it clearly does.
Speaker 3: And if you develop, like adopt this system for yourself,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe you'll be able to achieve things that
Speaker 3: would otherwise be impossible, which struck me as odd as
Speaker 3: a little kid. And as Scott gets kind of older,
Speaker 3: he gets more and more into this stuff, and it's
Speaker 3: it's interesting. He talks a lot about how, like, when
Speaker 3: he was young, he took mushrooms and it was this
Speaker 3: wonderful experience for him and it changed his life. But
Speaker 3: people shouldn't do. It changed his life, specifically because it
Speaker 3: showed him that like reality was largely a product of
Speaker 3: thought and of like the perception. But then he came
Speaker 3: to the conclusion that, like no one else should do drugs,
Speaker 3: you should just read my books because I'm going to
Speaker 3: recreate the psychedelic experience only enough to be able to
Speaker 3: do this. Yeah, by my books, and I'll explain it
Speaker 3: to you. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start by reading
Speaker 3: the preamble, which he's called the day my reality split
Speaker 3: into two.
Speaker 4: Which is horrible. Oh boy, Carrison. I I have the
Speaker 4: Amazon of Like preview, so I can look at all
Speaker 4: the different names of all the different chapters and parts.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and there's some there's some wild titles throughout
Speaker 4: this book.
Speaker 3: You can once we get through this preamble, you can
Speaker 3: let me know which ones you most want to hear about,
Speaker 3: and we'll go into him. But I feel like we
Speaker 3: should start where he does.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In February of twenty sixteen, I began to experience two
Speaker 3: separate realities at the same time. In one reality, candidate
Speaker 3: for President Donald Trump had just ended his chances of
Speaker 3: becoming president of the United States by refusing to disavow
Speaker 3: the KKK and David Duke on a c In an
Speaker 3: interview with Jake Tapper, Trump said he didn't hear the question.
Speaker 3: This was a big problem for candidate Trump, and it
Speaker 3: was also a big problem for me. I was one
Speaker 3: of the earliest public figures to have predicted Trump's win,
Speaker 3: and I was in the middle of an unplanned career
Speaker 3: pivot from guy who created the Dilbert comic to something
Speaker 3: like a political pundit. Sure, sure, yes, sure, funny that
Speaker 3: is that is how people see you.
Speaker 4: I'll chake it. Look, let's check it all that in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three. Let's see. Let's let's see how good
Speaker 4: that's going. Oh oh boy.
Speaker 3: I have an unfortunate like fact dump for you, Scott,
Speaker 3: and it's that, for till the day you die, the
Speaker 3: only way people will refer to you is the Dilbert guy.
Speaker 4: Like they call you.
Speaker 3: Someone will say like, have you heard what Scott Adams said?
Speaker 3: And inevitably, who's Scott Adams? And then you say the
Speaker 3: Delbert guy. So everyone talks about you. As I've been
Speaker 3: writing this, the Scott Adams episodes, I've had that conversation
Speaker 3: like eleven times. Yeah, I'm writing a piece about Scott Adams,
Speaker 3: who you know, the delvert guy. Oh boy, My blog
Speaker 3: traffic went through the roof whenever I wrote about Trump's
Speaker 3: skill is a persuader. I don't know much about politics,
Speaker 3: but I know skillful persuasion when I see it. As
Speaker 3: it turned out, there was a big demand for what
Speaker 3: I called my persuasion filter on the race. Producers for
Speaker 3: news outlets both large and small were scrambling to get
Speaker 3: me on their shows. I wrote and spoke so much
Speaker 3: about Trump's persuasion skills that people labeled me a Trump supporter,
Speaker 3: although not in the sense of supporting his policies. By then,
Speaker 3: my writing about Trump had already cost me half of
Speaker 3: my friends, my lucrative speaking career had dropped to zero,
Speaker 3: and I didn't expect any new Dilbert licensing deals. I
Speaker 3: had become toxic for any kind of mixed crowd. But
Speaker 3: I was okay with my situation because I expected to
Speaker 3: be right in my prediction that Trump would win it all.
Speaker 3: Winning fixes most problems.
Speaker 4: So true, So true, buddy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, You've only hit Your popularity only increased after Trump won.
Speaker 3: Although the polls disagreed with me. I thought my prediction
Speaker 3: of a Trump one was looking good until a Jake
Speaker 3: Tapper interview on CNN. In this version of reality, I
Speaker 3: had foolishly alienated my friends, annihilated my professional reputation, and
Speaker 3: cut my income in half, and all I would get
Speaker 3: in return was a Wikipedia entry under my name saying
Speaker 3: I had supported an alleged racist for president. The situation
Speaker 3: was less than ideal. I publicly disavowed Trump because of
Speaker 3: his see in an interview, just to get out of
Speaker 3: the blast zone. But by then it was too late
Speaker 3: to salvage everything I had already lost. Like an idiot,
Speaker 3: I had managed to turn a respected career as one
Speaker 3: of the top cartoonists in the country into a grimy
Speaker 3: embarrassment that wouldn't wash off. That was one version of reality.
Speaker 3: I experienced a second version of reality at the same time.
Speaker 3: This version involved Trump brushing off the cn NKKK controversy
Speaker 3: and going on to win the presidency, and that version
Speaker 3: of reality I would be redeemed in the end, at
Speaker 3: least in terms of being a credible political forecaster.
Speaker 4: Winning always feels good.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting because, like I went through a period
Speaker 3: of thinking, oh my god, Trump's going to win and
Speaker 3: then oh my god, maybe Trump won't win, and then
Speaker 3: oh my god, Trump's going to win during the twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen election, and I did. I never interpreted it as
Speaker 3: I was living in two different realities. I interpreted it
Speaker 3: as American politics is very unpredictable. Almost anything can and
Speaker 3: does happen, and I didn't know what was going to occur,
Speaker 3: which is how most people would would put that, like
Speaker 3: describe that. I think it's interesting his obsession with like
Speaker 3: clearly he views predicting the presidential race as a win,
Speaker 3: which I think probably is part of why he went
Speaker 3: so crazy when Trump lost, because he takes it deeply
Speaker 3: personally that Trump lost.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 3: Interesting interesting stuff, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Especially because his prediction seemed to go hand in hand
Speaker 4: with his own like affirmations. Yeah, so you kind of
Speaker 4: need them both to come true order for your system
Speaker 4: to make any kind of internal logic. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Part of this is because again he's like he's really
Speaker 3: he's convinced, not just that like cold. He's not saying
Speaker 3: what Trump is doing is a credible political election strategy,
Speaker 3: which I think any honest person has to admit it
Speaker 3: was obviously he won. What he's saying is that Trump
Speaker 3: is a master persuader, and so for that to happen,
Speaker 3: he needs to be actually convincing people he's the best
Speaker 3: choice for president, as opposed to again kind of feeding
Speaker 3: into this grievance politics that the right had been stoking
Speaker 3: for forever and becoming the avatar of it, which is
Speaker 3: a different thing. But Scott had to believe that. He
Speaker 3: had to kind of buy into the idea that, like
Speaker 3: the mass of Americans had come around to Trump's I
Speaker 3: like political ideology, which was never the case. And so
Speaker 3: he's got to like leap into contortions in order to
Speaker 3: justify kind of what happens. Yeah, it's it's good stuff, Scott,
Speaker 3: when's this this little chapter by saying, for the next
Speaker 3: several months, I lived both realities, but I trusted only
Speaker 3: one of them. I double down in my prediction of
Speaker 3: a Trump win. If that sounds crazy to you, well
Speaker 3: that's nothing. We're just getting started. There's plenty more crazy
Speaker 3: in this book.
Speaker 4: Oh boy. Sure is buddy.
Speaker 3: Introduction, where I prime you for the rest. I'm a
Speaker 3: trained hypnotist and I'm going to take book close book
Speaker 3: return that shut. The only person I want to hear
Speaker 3: talk about their hypnotism training is Werner Herzog because he's
Speaker 3: going to hypnotize a chicken, and that is that was
Speaker 3: a great time for everybody.
Speaker 4: I do not, I do not think that the Dilbert
Speaker 4: guy could be a successful hypnotist. I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker 3: No, No, for one thing, he has his eyes are
Speaker 3: as lively as a Dilbert comic. Yes, like, it's just unsettling.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to look into them. So here's Scott again.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you about the spookiest year of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 4: Life.
Speaker 3: It happened between June twenty fifteen and November twenty sixteen. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a little more than a year. Everything you are
Speaker 3: about to read in this book is true as far
Speaker 3: as I know. I don't expect you to believe all
Speaker 3: of it, but I promise it's true to the best
Speaker 3: of my knowledge. I've waited decades to deliver the message
Speaker 3: in this book. I waited because the world wasn't ready,
Speaker 3: but also because the messenger, yours truly, didn't have the
Speaker 3: skill to deliver it right. The story was too hard
Speaker 3: to tell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this just wants to remove from a religion. This
Speaker 4: is so yeah.
Speaker 3: No, well that's the thing. So when Scott talks about
Speaker 3: and this is in a book that he wrote a
Speaker 3: fucking twenty years before this one's almost like fifteen sixteen years,
Speaker 3: he talks about how, like as a kid, he realized
Speaker 3: that like prayer didn't work, and so he became an atheist,
Speaker 3: but he didn't like atheism, and interestingly, like the thing
Speaker 3: he didn't like about atheism is it didn't let him
Speaker 3: predict the future like that that was where's his issue
Speaker 3: with it? So like he developed this personal belief system
Speaker 3: that aliens had like were like managing life on Earth,
Speaker 3: and that he was like the child of an alien
Speaker 3: sent to Earth for some like special purpose and lived
Speaker 3: under that belief system for some period of time.
Speaker 4: I met a few people like that at the Oregon
Speaker 4: Ghost Conference a few months Yeah, yeaheah.
Speaker 3: He's kind of always been a kook. So so he
Speaker 3: talks about how he waited and waited and waited, and
Speaker 3: he wasn't ready and he was learning and preparing to
Speaker 3: deliver this important message. And then in twenty fifteen, Trump
Speaker 3: rides his golden elevator down to announce his candidacy for president.
Speaker 3: Like most observers at the time, I didn't fully understand
Speaker 3: what I was seeing. It wasn't until the first Republican
Speaker 3: primary debate that I realized what was happening right before
Speaker 3: our eyes. Trump was no ordinary politician. He was no
Speaker 3: ordinary business person either. In fact, he wasn't ordinary in
Speaker 3: any sense of the world. Trump is what I call,
Speaker 3: in bold letters, master persuader. That means he has weapons
Speaker 3: grade persuasion skills. Based on my background in that field,
Speaker 3: I recognized his talents early after watching him in action
Speaker 3: during the election. I have to say that Trump is
Speaker 3: the most persuasive human I have ever observed.
Speaker 4: I have to, I have to. I have to check
Speaker 4: my persuasion skills when I when I'm at the airport,
Speaker 4: they will they will not let me go in the
Speaker 4: carry on with.
Speaker 3: Your because their weapons grade. You're not allowed to take
Speaker 3: those on t s A. Oh, catch it. It's an
Speaker 3: easy way to They've got those dogs to sniffer weapons
Speaker 3: grade persuasion skills. Scot's gonna drive everywhere.
Speaker 4: This is so many problems. This is the same thing
Speaker 4: with all of with all, like the with all, like
Speaker 4: the esoteric fascists and stuff. So many problems we solved
Speaker 4: if we just force people to play d and d
Speaker 4: we would just you just gotta get you gotta get
Speaker 4: that out. You got to give his people like an
Speaker 4: outlet for this ship. And if you're talking about like
Speaker 4: weapons grade persuasion, you're just talking about D and D.
Speaker 4: Just roll, roll some dice, get some friends together, have
Speaker 4: a dinner party.
Speaker 3: Cast charm like, for the love of God, they can
Speaker 3: take a will save Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is. It
Speaker 3: is remarkable. President Trump carried those persuasion skills into the
Speaker 3: White House, where his supporters say he has gotten a
Speaker 3: lot done and his critics say he hasn't. Oh boy,
Speaker 3: no one says any like. Yeah, his supporters love the
Speaker 3: stuff he does. His his his detractors don't say he
Speaker 3: didn't get a lot done. They say he did a
Speaker 3: lot of bad things that he did, Like.
Speaker 4: He was just sitting here there, he was just playing
Speaker 4: golf every day. It's such a weird because he like
Speaker 4: describes as like his supporters say, he did all of
Speaker 4: you know, he fall vices and he did this, and
Speaker 4: his detractors say he was it was a chaotic administration
Speaker 4: that didn't get anyone. No is his detractors say he
Speaker 4: did a lot of stuff that hurt people and like, yeah,
Speaker 4: his the fact that his administration had a lot of
Speaker 4: leaks and like internal chaos was kind of evidence of
Speaker 4: the fundamentally bad people that were involved in it. But
Speaker 4: like his no one was like nothing got done by Trump,
Speaker 4: Like a lot of bad things were done by Trump anyway.
Speaker 3: President Trump's critics and mine in brackets asked me how
Speaker 3: I could call the president a master persuasion. He capitalizes
Speaker 3: the M and the P every time he says master persuader.
Speaker 4: He's tried to make it impro renown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's trying. Yeah, he wants people to take this
Speaker 3: very seriously, and like it's for one thing, a silly
Speaker 3: thing to call somebody. We already have the term like charismatic,
Speaker 3: we have the term demagogue. Like those those work, like charming,
Speaker 3: that works, You don't need master persuader. Just is so
Speaker 3: inherently silly that I'm not gonna take anything else that
Speaker 3: you're saying very seriously. But you know what I do
Speaker 3: take seriously?
Speaker 4: Garrison? Oh, is it is it the very very brave
Speaker 4: and stunning products that allow us to continue this show?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, the heroic products some people are too scared
Speaker 3: to advertise on this show.
Speaker 4: That's right. They want. They do not want you to
Speaker 4: hear the truth.
Speaker 3: No, they don't want you to hear the wisdom of
Speaker 3: a master persuader like me. Who's who's gonna gonna convince
Speaker 3: you to You know, they don't want you to, but
Speaker 3: they don't money into Blue Apron.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: They don't want you to eye surgery do it all.
Speaker 4: They don't want you to hear what's on page one
Speaker 4: twenty seven, how to design a linguistic kill shot. They
Speaker 4: don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: They don't want Scott Adams. It is so easy to
Speaker 3: write a stupid book, Like writing a good book is
Speaker 3: really hard, but writing this book, this is like forty
Speaker 3: five minutes, Like this is a this is a solid
Speaker 3: light afternoon of work. You knock this out while finishing
Speaker 3: a Frene press of coffee. Anyway, here's ads. We're back.
Speaker 3: And I just persuaded Garrison to support dominating the capital
Speaker 3: gains tax using my weapons grade persuasion skills. I rolled
Speaker 3: a NAT twenty.
Speaker 4: You know, I think I think we should just have
Speaker 4: a federal sales tax and that's evenly distributed aggressive all
Speaker 4: the money spent. Yeah, and that's that is the way
Speaker 4: to solve all of our economic problems. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: A lot of a lot of people who get paid
Speaker 3: by the Heritage Foundation are saying that. So President Trump's
Speaker 3: critics and mine asked me how I could call the
Speaker 3: president a master persuader when his public approval levels were
Speaker 3: in the cellar. The quick answer is that low approval
Speaker 3: didn't stop him from winning the presidency. No, but you're
Speaker 3: you're not saying he's a master winner of the presidency.
Speaker 3: You're saying he persuaded people. And the evidence is most
Speaker 3: people never liked him anyway. Whatever, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: not that he's so obsessed with the idea that Trump
Speaker 3: is persuading people and that like, that's what the debate
Speaker 3: is about, when really, like, nobody's nobody's arguing that, like,
Speaker 3: the people who like him are saying that, like, the
Speaker 3: folks who are against him are engaged in an evil
Speaker 3: conspiracy against America, and the folks who hate him are like,
Speaker 3: he's shitty and he took advantage of of fucked up
Speaker 3: and archaic election system in order to win, Like nobody's
Speaker 3: nobody's nobody reasonable thinks that Trump is good at convincing
Speaker 3: the masses of things like, that's just not what he did. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's what Scott's convinced that he did. But here's the
Speaker 3: fun part. I also believe that Trump, the master persuader,
Speaker 3: keeps using that term, was going to do far more
Speaker 3: than win the presidency. I expected Trump to rip a
Speaker 3: hole in the fabric of reality so we can well
Speaker 3: through it to a deeper truth about the human experience. Well,
Speaker 3: that may have happened.
Speaker 4: That did actually happened, that is true. Oops.
Speaker 3: Yeah, either either that or a series of decisions that
Speaker 3: were made that included the development of a parallel digital
Speaker 3: culture driven by algorithm like faded the divisions between realities
Speaker 3: and a fucking homunculi was able to creep through a
Speaker 3: political shock oth if you will, broke into our reality.
Speaker 4: And most of that is probably Zuckerberg's fault, but someone
Speaker 4: was going to do it.
Speaker 3: Somebody was going to do it, and it was Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we'll give Scott that one. Okay, we'll give
Speaker 3: Scott that one.
Speaker 4: You know, he he does title his next section why
Speaker 4: facts are Overrated? So yeah, I don't think that.
Speaker 3: Is that is true. We'll skip right to that one
Speaker 3: after we finish this little bit the common worldview shared
Speaker 3: by most humans is that there is one objective reality.
Speaker 3: None of the most humans actually agree about that, and
Speaker 3: we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application
Speaker 3: of facts and reason. I definitely don't think human being
Speaker 3: all human beings agree on that for one thing like
Speaker 3: religions exist. This view of the world imagines that some
Speaker 3: people have already achieved a fact based type of enlightenment
Speaker 3: that is compatible with science and logic, and they are
Speaker 3: trying to help the rest of us see the world
Speaker 3: right way. As far as I can tell, most people
Speaker 3: share that interpretation of the world. The only wrinkle with
Speaker 3: that worldview is is that we all think we are
Speaker 3: the enlightened ones, and we assume the people who disagree
Speaker 3: with us just need better facts or perhaps better brains
Speaker 3: in order to agree with us. That filter on life
Speaker 3: makes most of us happy because we see ourselves as
Speaker 3: the smart ones, and it does a good job of
Speaker 3: predicting the future only, but only, because confirmation bias will
Speaker 3: make the future look any way we want it to look.
Speaker 3: Within reason. When I saw what I saw with Trump's
Speaker 3: candidacy for president is that the within reason part of
Speaker 3: our understanding about reality was about to change bigly. I
Speaker 3: knew that candidate Trump's persuasion skills were about to annihilate
Speaker 3: the public's ability to understand what they were seeing because
Speaker 3: their observations wouldn't fit their mental model of living in
Speaker 3: a rational world. But this is interesting because, for one thing,
Speaker 3: I think the first accurate like warning about Trump, which
Speaker 3: came out before or right around the time when Scott
Speaker 3: started making his posts, was by my former colleague Cracked
Speaker 3: Adam Todd Brown, who wrote a whole article about how
Speaker 3: Trump was like very influenced specific by old fascist political
Speaker 3: leaders and was using a lot of those tactics in
Speaker 3: order to build a base of support within the Republican
Speaker 3: Party and that he would indeed win the Republican primary.
Speaker 3: Adam called that months before any of this happened, and
Speaker 3: there were a lot of other people, and particularly a
Speaker 3: lot of actual like scholars of fascism who were warning
Speaker 3: about him well prior to him winning the.
Speaker 4: Primaries.
Speaker 3: And these were not people who were, like say, like
Speaker 3: the attitude that like people were saying he can't possibly win.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't gel to me with what a lot
Speaker 3: of people who were paying attention were saying. I think
Speaker 3: a lot of the And that's different from saying like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's likely to win in like
Speaker 3: say January or like December of twenty fifteen, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's and I think he's silly here.
Speaker 4: The difference between what Scott's doing is right. Scott's saying
Speaker 4: that the reason why this worked is because there's like
Speaker 4: this magical thinking aspect where Trump is just like naturally
Speaker 4: better at being this like mystical persua versus actual like
Speaker 4: scholars identifying and like identifying the use of a playbook.
Speaker 4: And those are those are two very very different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's again, he's kind of he's obsessed
Speaker 3: with this framing that he's put together of Trump as
Speaker 3: a persuader, and it's I think kind of leading him
Speaker 3: to lose what could be kind of some of the
Speaker 3: actual useful conclusions that you could draw based on some
Speaker 3: of this stuff. A lot of people's belief in normalcy
Speaker 3: and like the in like political normalcy is what caused
Speaker 3: them to not see Trump coming and not see the danger.
Speaker 3: This was particularly a problem for a lot of establishment
Speaker 3: Republicans who did not think that something like this could happen.
Speaker 3: He didn't think like an outsider like this could one.
Speaker 3: And I think most most people observing kind of looked
Speaker 3: at the past of Trump's previous runs for president, and
Speaker 3: generally of the long history of like weirdo candidates, and
Speaker 3: thought that it was likely to go that way. That's
Speaker 3: not like a belief about like I wouldn't call that
Speaker 3: confirmation bias. That's kind of because again, like reality didn't
Speaker 3: wind up bearing that way. And most people rightly saw
Speaker 3: this as a problem right away. They didn't think, like
Speaker 3: reality has broken. They were like, oh, American politics is
Speaker 3: more broken than I had thought. The American electorate is
Speaker 3: more fucked up than I had thought. The electoral College
Speaker 3: is a worse system than I had realized. Which is
Speaker 3: kind of like a reasonable way to translate this. But
Speaker 3: Scott's got to make it all about like how Trump
Speaker 3: like cunningly manipulated reality as opposed to Trump kind of
Speaker 3: taking advantage to flaws within the system that people didn't realize.
Speaker 3: A lot of people didn't realize were as flawed as
Speaker 3: it was, but a lot of people in fact did
Speaker 3: realize and warn about it and recognize what was happening here.
Speaker 3: He's again kind of got to make himself the only
Speaker 3: person who thought that Trump could win, which he clearly wasn't.
Speaker 3: But anyway, whatever, it's it's fun.
Speaker 4: So yeah, uh d think we were we were we
Speaker 4: were in Did we get to watch it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I've got his next here. So he's he's talking
Speaker 3: about where what he where he lands Politically? I label
Speaker 3: myself an ultraliberal, and by that I mean liberals seem
Speaker 3: too conservative to me. I'll give you some examples. Generally speaking,
Speaker 3: conservatives want to ban abortion, while liberals want it to
Speaker 3: be to remain legal. I go one step further and
Speaker 3: say that men should sideline themselves from the question and
Speaker 3: follow the lead on the of women on the topic
Speaker 3: of reproductive health, men should still be in the conversation
Speaker 3: about their own money. Of course, what does that mean, Scott?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: What what is what does that line mean? What are
Speaker 3: you talking about?
Speaker 4: Means? Are they're not going to pay for an abortion? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Are you saying that, like men should not have a
Speaker 3: be compelled to pay child support?
Speaker 4: Ever?
Speaker 3: Is that the statement? Because I'm I'm kind of trying
Speaker 3: to interpret that, and I don't know where where men's
Speaker 3: money comes up in the conversation of like reproductive rights,
Speaker 3: other than if you're bringing up the fact that, like
Speaker 3: you don't think men should be have to be compelled
Speaker 3: to pay child support if they get someone pregnant because
Speaker 3: it's the woman's choice. Is that I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of where Scott's.
Speaker 4: Coming in on this. I guess so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. My personal sense of ethics says that
Speaker 3: the people who take the most responsibility for important societal
Speaker 3: outcomes should also have the strongest say. My male opinion
Speaker 3: on women's reproductive health adds nothing to the quality of
Speaker 3: the decision. That Part's fine. Women have it covered. The
Speaker 3: most credible laws and abortion to the ones that most
Speaker 3: women support, and while life or death issues are on
Speaker 3: the table, credibility is essential to the smooth operation of society.
Speaker 3: That's great, Good, Good for you, Scott. He says that
Speaker 3: he is legal for or he is for legalizing marijuana,
Speaker 3: and he also thinks doctors should prescribe recreational drugs for
Speaker 3: old people. Yeah, I'm alright with that. That's fine. That's fine, Scott.
Speaker 3: When it comes to complicated affairs about economics and foreign affairs,
Speaker 3: my opinion is that I never have enough data to
Speaker 3: form competent opinions neither does anyone else. Well that Scott
Speaker 3: now actually have to have an opinion do have, especially
Speaker 3: on like foreign affairs. It's like, well, actually, Scott, there's
Speaker 3: people who's like entire lives are understanding the interaction of
Speaker 3: for example, the United States and other foreign countries, or
Speaker 3: understanding what countries that are having problems with like food
Speaker 3: and security or like not lack of access to clean water,
Speaker 3: or you know, difficulties like dealing with the AIDS virus.
Speaker 3: There are people who dedicate their whole lives to understanding
Speaker 3: those issues in the context of other countries. There are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who have understandings about what are
Speaker 3: good policy is there That's a very silly statement, Scott. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's that's the It's fine whatever, Scott generally speak, what
Speaker 3: chapter is this? Then this is an introduction? Still okay,
Speaker 3: over still an instruction? Yeah, yeah, we're still an introduction.
Speaker 3: Generally speaking, Conservatives think we live in a country where
Speaker 3: everyone always has already has equal opportunity. I don't know
Speaker 3: that's what they say, though.
Speaker 4: I'll give him that.
Speaker 3: I'll give him that. That is a statement that gets made.
Speaker 3: Liberals generally think the government should do more to a
Speaker 3: guarantee equal opportunity. I go one step further and suggest
Speaker 3: considering slavery reparations for African Americans in the form of
Speaker 3: free college and job training funded by a twenty five
Speaker 3: year tax in the top one percent. Hey, that's fine.
Speaker 4: Although I wonder if he still has this opinion. I
Speaker 4: don't know that he does.
Speaker 3: It's also interesting that he's like, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: state an opinion on abortion, because as a man, I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have one. But he is like, here is exactly
Speaker 3: how I think reparations for Black Americans should work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that is.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Scott. Maybe you could just say I support reparations
Speaker 3: and let someone else figure out how it's supposed to
Speaker 3: go the plan.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 3: As a reparations plan. But hey, look, at least he's
Speaker 3: closer to the right on that side than I think
Speaker 3: you would have expected, given his most recent racist statements
Speaker 3: that got the Delbert comic cancel. Yes, okay, so I
Speaker 3: guess that's the end of the things that make him
Speaker 3: an uber liberal. Fine, fine enough, So I think we're
Speaker 3: going to move on to Why Facts Are Overrated, Part
Speaker 3: one of his book, The Most Important Perceptual Perceptual Shift
Speaker 3: in History My spooky Year was fun for me, but
Speaker 3: was also a dangerous time for the world's collective mental health.
Speaker 3: Enlightenment can be a risky business when your old worldview
Speaker 3: pulse apart. It can trigger all kinds of irrational behavior
Speaker 3: before your brain rewrites the movie in your head to
Speaker 3: make it consistent with your new worldview. We all have
Speaker 3: movies in our heads that we believe are accurate views
Speaker 3: of reality, and those movies are very different. Normally, we
Speaker 3: don't notice the differences in our personal movies or we
Speaker 3: don't care. But when politics are involved the stakes are higher,
Speaker 3: then we notice. Emotions are already raw in election years,
Speaker 3: and millions of people are focused on the same topics
Speaker 3: at the same time. That's a barrel of gasoline and
Speaker 3: a lot of matches in one place. The last thing
Speaker 3: the country needed was millions of people simultaneously going nuts.
Speaker 3: I hope it could reduce that risk by writing about
Speaker 3: Trump's persuasion talents and preparing the public or what I
Speaker 3: saw coming. It's interesting he is. There's a degree this
Speaker 3: In some other parts of the book. He's like kind
Speaker 3: of trying to repackage Robert Anton Wilson's ideas about like
Speaker 3: reality tunnels and doing it number one in a way
Speaker 3: that's kind of like overly simplistic, and also doing it
Speaker 3: in a way where the goal is to bring people
Speaker 3: to a specific understanding of reality rather than understand the
Speaker 3: different kind of realities that people live in, and being
Speaker 3: able to kind of move through different reality tunnels as
Speaker 3: that's kind of advantageous for the things that you're trying
Speaker 3: to do. YEA, Like, his attitude on this is so
Speaker 3: much more brittle than I think the kind of elegant
Speaker 3: concepts that Robert Anton Wilson brings up when he talks about,
Speaker 3: like how kind of inhabiting letting yourself and figuring out
Speaker 3: how to kind of like metaprogram your mind to inhabit
Speaker 3: different realities can allow you to deal with stuff like
Speaker 3: addiction can allow you to like become, you know, more
Speaker 3: artistically productive. Certain ways can allow you to like achieve
Speaker 3: things that you would otherwise have difficulty achieving. Because perception
Speaker 3: dictates to a substantial extent, how we how we like
Speaker 3: interface and experience reality. What Scott's talking about is like
Speaker 3: so much more brittle than that, And you also get
Speaker 3: the feeling that he believes that he and the master
Speaker 3: persuaders are the only ones who can actually like see
Speaker 3: the tunnels people are moving through. And and it's about
Speaker 3: kind of manipulation of large groups of people as opposed
Speaker 3: to understanding yourself and taking more control over your own
Speaker 3: interactions in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I because he's he's also he's like promoting
Speaker 4: himself as like this figure that's like seen like I've
Speaker 4: like seen the divine prophecy when Trump comes down the
Speaker 4: Golden elevator and now I will distill the secrets onto you.
Speaker 4: And it's all this like it is, it is, it
Speaker 4: is a very it is it's from completely different ends
Speaker 4: than what someone like Roberton Wilson's doing. It's also like
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how I I'm not sure if the
Speaker 4: dilver guy can recognize how far into a reality tunnel
Speaker 4: he is in. Yeah, and how much like so, how
Speaker 4: much of that like self awareness can to extend out
Speaker 4: to other people you.
Speaker 3: Scott talks a lot about his own ignorance of certain things,
Speaker 3: like I think history, and it's kind of evident here
Speaker 3: because he talks about how like you know, if you
Speaker 3: watch the entire election and concluded that Trump was nothing
Speaker 3: but a lucky clown you missed one of the most
Speaker 3: important perceptual shifts in the history of humankind. And I
Speaker 3: agree it's wrong to view Trump as just a lucky clown.
Speaker 3: Trump is an authoritarian utilizing very time worn tactics to
Speaker 3: take advantage of the worst aspects of American culture, which
Speaker 3: have been evident as long as this country has existed.
Speaker 3: Scott like, I don't think has a I either is
Speaker 3: pretending not to have any kind of understanding of like
Speaker 3: American political history and some of the different figures that
Speaker 3: Trump learned from. He doesn't know about kind of the
Speaker 3: history of of of I don't know how Nixon got elected,
Speaker 3: of the the kind of the the Southern strategy, all
Speaker 3: this kind of shit that you see echoes of in
Speaker 3: the way Trump did his campaigning and is going to
Speaker 3: do his campaigning for the next election. Scott, I hes certainly,
Speaker 3: like I don't know if it's that he doesn't know
Speaker 3: this or he doesn't think that it's profitable to bring
Speaker 3: it up, but like the completely the framing of this
Speaker 3: is like Trump hacked the human brain somehow and that's
Speaker 3: how he run one, rather than like it's always been
Speaker 3: profitable to trade on bigotry and fear in American politics,
Speaker 3: and Trump figured out how to take advantage of social
Speaker 3: media to do that extremely efficiently. But you know that's
Speaker 3: not the way Scott describes this as happening.
Speaker 4: Instead, Trump can then be seen as this like a
Speaker 4: like a like a like a mystical persuader. Yeah, as
Speaker 4: opposed to someone using like a very a very tried
Speaker 4: and true playbook for gaining political power.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's interesting, like when you when you talk about uh,
Speaker 3: like this kind of stuff. It reminds me a little
Speaker 3: bit about how people talked about and still does some
Speaker 3: extint do talked about like Hitler's rise a lot where
Speaker 3: they you know, they described it as like he he
Speaker 3: kind of like brainwashed the German people and he was
Speaker 3: somehow able to like gain this deep degree of control
Speaker 3: over their minds using these almost like his his mythical
Speaker 3: charisma and persuasion techniques.
Speaker 4: It was a it was a mass hypnosis. Yeah. No.
Speaker 3: He he engaged in a number of time worn like
Speaker 3: campaign traditions, and he also understood new technologies like radio
Speaker 3: and the airplane and their application in a democratic election
Speaker 3: in a way that other people didn't yet. And so
Speaker 3: as a result, there was kind of less immunity from
Speaker 3: his political opponents to those strategies, he's in less understanding
Speaker 3: of how to counter them, and he was able to
Speaker 3: combine that with kind of the venal cowardice of a
Speaker 3: number of folks who were, you know, his political opponents
Speaker 3: but not diametrically politically opposed to his attitudes, and able
Speaker 3: to sneak into power that way, Like like Hitler's there's
Speaker 3: nothing like hard to explain about how Hitler took power.
Speaker 3: It was a mixture of like savvy political techniques and
Speaker 3: then social engineering and basically bribery. And it's it's you know,
Speaker 3: with Trump, that's less on the bribery side of thing,
Speaker 3: but it's like, yeah, he won election, Like there's not
Speaker 3: much of a difference between how he came to power
Speaker 3: and how George W.
Speaker 4: Bush came to power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Like it's it's yeah, but anyway, he's a
Speaker 3: master persuader. So if you seek enlightenment, these are two
Speaker 3: of the most important concepts you will ever learn. Cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3: This is a mental condition in which people rationalize why
Speaker 3: their actions are inconsistent with their thoughts and beliefs. For example,
Speaker 3: if you think you are smart, but you notice yourself
Speaker 3: doing something that is clearly dumb, you might spontaneously hallucinate
Speaker 3: that that was a good reason for it. Now, Scott,
Speaker 3: you might want to read that part again. You might
Speaker 3: want to go over that sentence a couple of times, Buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a common phenomenon in all normal humans, but
Speaker 3: we generally believe it applies only to other people. I
Speaker 3: think you're revealing a lot about yourself there, Scott. I
Speaker 3: actually think most people are humble enough to be like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I often fall short of like how I believe I
Speaker 3: should be acting or behaving. You know, I am not
Speaker 3: always consistent with the things that I know are right.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm dishonest, Like most people I know are capable
Speaker 3: of admitting that they're flawed people. I think Scott is
Speaker 3: it's interesting that he has this attitude that like, I'm
Speaker 3: the only one who understands that cognitive dissonance is a
Speaker 3: factor in my life. Like, no, I think most of
Speaker 3: us are aware it's hard to be consistent with the
Speaker 3: versions of ourselves that theoretically are the best anyway.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 3: He talks about confirmation bias, which he all so describes
Speaker 3: as a common phenomenon that we believe only happens to
Speaker 3: other people. I saw in the election of twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: a dangerous situation forming if the public misunderstood Trump's methods
Speaker 3: and intentions, and that seemed likely, things could turn ugly worse. Yet,
Speaker 3: the public might not appreciate the extraordinary richness of their
Speaker 3: choice in the election. No matter what you thought of
Speaker 3: Trump or his policies, he certainly was different, and he
Speaker 3: certainly knew how to make things happen. I thought the
Speaker 3: public deserved to see the Trump candidacy as clearly as possible,
Speaker 3: without the biased framing that his adversaries were applying. You
Speaker 3: might be wondering how confident I was about my prediction
Speaker 3: that Trump would win. Well, no one is psychic. I
Speaker 3: can't say no with total certainty what the future holds.
Speaker 3: For example, I couldn't predict what types of scandals would
Speaker 3: pop up along the way. But I do know persuasion.
Speaker 3: I know its power in a way that few people do,
Speaker 3: and I recognize that with Trump's level of persuasion skill,
Speaker 3: he was bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight.
Speaker 4: Speaking of there's a in part for there's a section
Speaker 4: called how a trained persuader Ofugh was it how a
Speaker 4: trained persuader evaluates scandals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Scott starts talking about how good he is at
Speaker 3: predicting here, and he brings up his two thousand and
Speaker 3: four book The Religion War. Now Garrison, this is one
Speaker 3: of the worst books ever written. And you're inested in
Speaker 3: reading some reviews of this and one of his other
Speaker 3: terrible fiction books. The podcast House of Decline Haus has
Speaker 3: been doing a read through that includes my friend and
Speaker 3: cartoonist Rory Blank. That's quite good, but it Scott. Here's
Speaker 3: how Scott describes it. I predicted the rise of an
Speaker 3: Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and their use of
Speaker 3: hobby sized drones for terror attacks. That happens to be
Speaker 3: a good description of isis in twenty seventeen. Now, that's
Speaker 3: not what Scott writes in this book. In this book,
Speaker 3: he's writing about like a fictional war between like all
Speaker 3: of the Western countries, like out like unite under this,
Speaker 3: like Christian you know, democratic military alliance to fight the
Speaker 3: Muslim world, which in this book, a Palacedinean man engineers
Speaker 3: the destruction of Israel and then unites all of the
Speaker 3: Arab countries. And also I think like Iran and stuff,
Speaker 3: So like not just Arab countries, but like Sunni and
Speaker 3: Shia all get together in this Islamic Caliphate and launch
Speaker 3: a long term terrorist attack against the West that includes
Speaker 3: like constant suicide drone bombings of like like Western cities.
Speaker 3: That's actually not a good description of ISIS. ISIS, for
Speaker 3: one thing, didn't destroy Israel. They didn't actually overthrow any state.
Speaker 3: And while ISIS did use hobby drones, they didn't use
Speaker 3: them for terrorist attacks. They used them as part of
Speaker 3: a military like strategy, like they use them as spotters
Speaker 3: for their mortars, they used them to drop bombs on soldiers.
Speaker 3: In other words, Scott kind of imagined the use of
Speaker 3: like this kind of like perpetual terror war against the
Speaker 3: West by this evil Muslim empire created by a Palestinian
Speaker 3: man who had used democracy to destroy Israel. And he's
Speaker 3: saying that's exactly like what happened with ISIS in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: It is not Scott, your predict this is not you
Speaker 3: did not predict Isis.
Speaker 4: Are you saying Gilbert is not an ISIS understander?
Speaker 3: I I don't think that he is anyway, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: what do you what do you want to go through
Speaker 3: next here Master Persuader.
Speaker 4: There's there's a funny section called about facts. But I
Speaker 4: mean a lot of these are pretty good. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's the myth of the rational mind.
Speaker 3: Pretty funny. Yeah, we'll probably check that out.
Speaker 4: Mass delusions, when reality bifurcated, which is it not a
Speaker 4: cent when bifurcated?
Speaker 3: I guess it? No, yeah, because when reality yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: okay works.
Speaker 4: I see what he means. Now. Yeah, anyway, Trump's rosy
Speaker 4: O'Donnell moment.
Speaker 3: You know what Bifer, Well, we're gonna have to check
Speaker 3: that one out.
Speaker 2: But you know what kated is well that he's also
Speaker 2: a Casey Anthony Truther.
Speaker 3: I hope so, because because I am, you know who
Speaker 3: else is a Casey Anthony Truther or Sophie?
Speaker 1: Uh this ad for the podcast that might come up,
Speaker 1: but there was.
Speaker 3: A non zero chance that we get an ad for
Speaker 3: the podcast. Here we go, Ah, we're back. I hope
Speaker 3: the subreddits having a good time figuring out what was bleeped.
Speaker 3: That's a real bleep. That's not one of the ones
Speaker 3: where I like put in a fake like that was
Speaker 3: a real bleep.
Speaker 4: And that about it. I don't yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 4: don't sure how how much do we have to bleep
Speaker 4: up there? It is really uncy.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be quite a bit because we can get
Speaker 3: in trouble for that one.
Speaker 2: But I'm super pissed off about it because I'm so
Speaker 2: fucking right.
Speaker 4: Are we gonna have to bleep Trumb's roso Donald the
Speaker 4: moment to justice to just be Trump's bleep?
Speaker 3: No? No, we can say that. We can say Rosie
Speaker 3: O'Donnell in that context. It's fine anyway, someone on the
Speaker 3: subredd it'll figure out what we what we probably said,
Speaker 3: But as long as we don't say no.
Speaker 1: I was really fucking proud of it.
Speaker 3: It was very funny. So about facts. On August thirteenth,
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, I predicted my blog that Donald Trump had
Speaker 3: a ninety eight percent chance of winning the presidency based
Speaker 3: on his persuasion skills.
Speaker 4: Wait, why did he think ninety eight percent?
Speaker 3: Yeah, first off, that's a nonsense number, and it's funny,
Speaker 3: he says. A week earlier, he talks about like Nate
Speaker 3: Silver had put, the most respected political forecaster in the
Speaker 3: United States, had put Trump's odds of winning their Republican
Speaker 3: nomination at two percent in his five thirty eight blog yeah,
Speaker 3: which is like, yeah, I guess it's fair that people
Speaker 3: didn't note that he was going enough people didn't note
Speaker 3: that he was likely to win the primaries early on,
Speaker 3: although it also is worth noting that Nate Silver is
Speaker 3: one of the people who actually accurately called the way
Speaker 3: in which Trump was going to win, like when he
Speaker 3: gave him like a thirty something percent chance, which was
Speaker 3: higher than any of the other posters, and he laid
Speaker 3: out basically the collapse of the Democrat firewall in kind
Speaker 3: of the Midwest and how that could lead to an
Speaker 3: electoral victory and was pretty much correct, which is more
Speaker 3: impressive than Scott saying nine eight percent. Oh boy. Some
Speaker 3: of the rare and notable predictors of Trump's win included
Speaker 3: Mike Cernovich and Colter Stefan Malinu, Milo Ianopolis, Bill Mitchell.
Speaker 3: Absolutely horrible. There's a bad yeah, just all terrible people,
Speaker 3: good stuff, good stuff. In California where I lived, it lived,
Speaker 3: it seemed as if most Trump supporters weren't hiding because
Speaker 3: of the social and career risks of publicly supporting him.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Luckily he was wrong. Trump's Twitter followers had adopted him
Speaker 3: immediately and have my back every step of the way.
Speaker 3: And the critics he came after me on Twitter and elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Trump supporters flooded into back me. I didn't ask them
Speaker 3: to do it, they just did.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So that's why he wrote this book. He did it
Speaker 3: to as he did it of solidarity with Trump's Twitter followers.
Speaker 4: Oh that's great, that's good.
Speaker 3: It's it's good stuff. Okay, Well there suasion tips, some
Speaker 3: great persuasion tips.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One is reciprocity. If you're nice to people, they want
Speaker 3: to be nice to you in return. That's a really
Speaker 3: tip for you, Garrison. Yeah really yeah, yeah, that tip
Speaker 3: number three. All of these his brilliant techniques, like being
Speaker 3: nice to people work even if people know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: That's that's good. This is all like very basic shit
Speaker 3: like that. There's been scientific studies about how stuff like
Speaker 3: reciprocity works. Like, none of this is like new. All
Speaker 3: of this is stuff you can find in a different
Speaker 3: books about like how to negotiate and shit, it's it's
Speaker 3: it is pretty boring. Uh yeah, let's move on to
Speaker 3: another chapter that's less boring than this. That's the next
Speaker 3: third grade fucking persuasion tactic shit.
Speaker 4: The next section is how to see reality in a
Speaker 4: more useful way? Which? Which? Which? Which? Starts off with
Speaker 4: the myth of the rational mind?
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, Garrison, I gotta, I gotta give you this.
Speaker 3: He keeps talking about Nate Silver later in this chapter.
Speaker 3: I gotta go into this here. Yeah, Okay, this is telling.
Speaker 3: I picked ninety eight percent as my Trump prediction because
Speaker 3: Nate Silver of five point thirty eight was saying two percent.
Speaker 3: I did that for branding and persuasion purposes. It is
Speaker 3: easy to remember my prediction both because of the way
Speaker 3: it fits with Silver's prediction and for its audacity, which
Speaker 3: people perceived as wrongness. The prediction was designed to attract attention,
Speaker 3: and it did. It was also designed to pair my
Speaker 3: name with Nate Silver's name to raise my profile by association.
Speaker 3: That worked too. Social media folks mentioned me in the
Speaker 3: same sense with Silver countless times during the election, exactly
Speaker 3: as I had hoped, and every mention raised my importance
Speaker 3: as a political observer because I was being compared with
Speaker 3: someone already important in that field. Keep in mind that
Speaker 3: at this point in our story, I was playing the
Speaker 3: wrong sport. I was a cartoonist writing about politics and persuasion.
Speaker 3: I needed whatever credibility I could get to build an
Speaker 3: audience for my Trump blog. It's interesting because he's talking
Speaker 3: about how like I subtly hacked people's brains to make
Speaker 3: myself seem more credible. No, the people who it wasn't
Speaker 3: like serious political pollsters who were taking Scott Adam seriously.
Speaker 3: It was like Rando Trump supporters on Twitter who liked
Speaker 3: you because you were saying what they already believed. Again,
Speaker 3: Scott could consistently talks about what he's doing is persuasion.
Speaker 3: You didn't persuade anybody. You joined a crowd of people
Speaker 3: all cheering for a guy, and they liked that you
Speaker 3: were cheering for the same guy.
Speaker 4: Like in the same sentence where he talks about yeah,
Speaker 4: confirmation bias.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because again it's like yeah credit where it's new. Scott,
Speaker 3: you said before Trump one uh the primary, that he
Speaker 3: was gonna win the primary. You know, I'll give you
Speaker 3: give you a credit for being right there, But you're
Speaker 3: talking about persuasion. You didn't persuade people. You went to
Speaker 3: a group of people who all thought Trump was going
Speaker 3: to win because they were Trump's supporters on Twitter and
Speaker 3: they liked you because you were also a Trump supporter
Speaker 3: on Twitter. That's not persuasion, Scott. Okay, now we can
Speaker 3: move on. What is it you wanted me to get
Speaker 3: into next?
Speaker 4: The Myth of the rational The Myth of the Rational
Speaker 4: Mind on page thirty three looks pretty good, And then
Speaker 4: there's then there is then there's mass delusions on sixty two.
Speaker 3: God, there are so many fucking chapters. It's this is horrible.
Speaker 3: Uh wait, where the fuck is the Myth of the
Speaker 3: Rational Mind? Thirty three thirty three?
Speaker 2: How many chapters are there?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I don't Well, there's like, there's like five parts, but
Speaker 4: each part has its own little like sub grouping.
Speaker 3: He has a bunch of like short, shitty chapters and
Speaker 3: they all have like dog shittle weird stupid titles.
Speaker 4: Go Bigley or go Home great great titles.
Speaker 2: Wait, but what was what was Donald Trump's real Donald moment?
Speaker 5: We'll find out that there are so many little chapters
Speaker 5: I want to read here, the making of a hypnotist
Speaker 5: who could be hypnotized, hypnosis superpowers, finding a hypnosis school.
Speaker 3: Oh fuck, all right, The Myth of the Rational Mind.
Speaker 3: Students of philosophy, remember that Plato Jesus Christ. Remember that
Speaker 3: Plato talked about the subjective nature of our personal realities
Speaker 3: In the Allegory of the Cave. Plato asked, us, Oh God,
Speaker 3: I don't want to go.
Speaker 4: We don't need to explain the allegory of the cave
Speaker 4: to us. I'm sorry, No, you.
Speaker 3: All learned about this in a high school, right, which
Speaker 3: is the last time Scott learned anything?
Speaker 4: Or matrix? Who cares? Matrix?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Who carey?
Speaker 3: The points of Plato's allegory is that, figuratively speaking, the
Speaker 3: humans might be chained to a cave created by our
Speaker 3: own faulty brains and senses, experiencing a shadow world that
Speaker 3: is entirely different from objective reality. Other famous philosophers, notably
Speaker 3: David Hume, have questioned the nature cause the existence of
Speaker 3: free will. If, as some philosophers claim, humans have no
Speaker 3: free will and we are nothing but victims of cause
Speaker 3: and effect, that means our common view of reality is absurd.
Speaker 3: In this model of the world, we are little more
Speaker 3: than meat robots who wrongly believe we control our own
Speaker 3: decisions and actions. He's now, he's now, he's talking. He's
Speaker 3: just this is like he's like summarizing, like Wikipedia pages
Speaker 3: for four guys. It's about comp next just like Google,
Speaker 3: cause than him talking about a manual.
Speaker 4: No, we have to read at least one sentence of Skull.
Speaker 3: Uses a lot of words to say reality isn't necessarily
Speaker 3: anything like the way we perceive it, laughing. Kant uses
Speaker 3: a lot of words. You have to give him that.
Speaker 4: I just like that. That's his abbreviated version for CON's philosophy.
Speaker 3: Well, he does say he have explained that our brains
Speaker 3: don't have direct access to base reality. We have to
Speaker 3: settle for interpreting the input from our faulty senses. Okay,
Speaker 3: there you go, there you go. I only mentioned yeah.
Speaker 4: Mas de dilutions on page sixty two.
Speaker 3: I only mention them to show that smart people throughout
Speaker 3: history have made arguments about the subjective nature reality that
Speaker 3: are compatible with what you will read in these pages.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Now not the case, Scott.
Speaker 4: That is, you're saying, like Plato, Plato, David Hume, and
Speaker 4: Kant agree.
Speaker 3: With me, because for one thing, what Scott's been building
Speaker 3: to this whole time is not like reality is entirely
Speaker 3: subjective in the response and like the result of like
Speaker 3: flawed senses. It's I Scott atoms understand reality and the
Speaker 3: only one did I was the right one, and you
Speaker 3: need to understand how I'm right about reality in this
Speaker 3: weird specific way, like great I a manual count appreciateor.
Speaker 4: Scott Adams, Jesus, fuck.
Speaker 3: It's good stuff. What are we what are we looking at? Next?
Speaker 4: Mass Illusions on page sixty two. Yeah, okay, and that
Speaker 4: one is back to back with when when reality bifurcated?
Speaker 4: So you know, good stuff. But then within those like
Speaker 4: nine pages, I am excited to get into that. I
Speaker 4: do like that Mass Delusions is a little like five
Speaker 4: pages long.
Speaker 3: No, no, you don't need that much space to talk
Speaker 3: about mass illusions. You know.
Speaker 4: It's after confirmation bias.
Speaker 3: There we go, and right before Salem witch trials and
Speaker 3: orson Wells is more of the world.
Speaker 2: I feel like Robert, like the word searches you could
Speaker 2: do to find things in this book would be incredible.
Speaker 3: I might do our good, old, our old stand by
Speaker 3: word search and just see what he has to say
Speaker 3: about the Jewish people.
Speaker 4: Control f Jew?
Speaker 3: Yeah, control f Jew. If you don't know how frequently
Speaker 3: mass illusions occur in your daily experience, many of your
Speaker 3: opinions about the world are likely to be nonsense in
Speaker 3: your daily experience. Yeah, that's because mass illusions are the
Speaker 3: norm for humanity, not the exception. Don't believe me. It's
Speaker 3: easy to check. Just ask your neighbors about the religious
Speaker 3: and political views. You'll find plenty of disagreement with your worldview.
Speaker 3: And so, according to you, your neighbors and all the
Speaker 3: people who agree with them must be living in some
Speaker 3: sort of hallucion. No, they're not, are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Like my dad is a conservative and believes different things
Speaker 3: about the way rich people should be tact I don't
Speaker 3: think he's hallucinating. I think he has a series of
Speaker 3: opinions based on a mix of like things propaganda that
Speaker 3: he's consumed, and what's financially best for him. But that's
Speaker 3: not a hallucination, you can tell.
Speaker 4: And this MAT's never read a single page of Plato,
Speaker 4: David Hume, or Cot and only read the Wikipedia Submary, because.
Speaker 3: Like when I when I encounter somebody in my community
Speaker 3: who expresses a racist view or drops a slur, I
Speaker 3: don't think they're hallucinating. I think they're a shitty person.
Speaker 3: Like that's that, Like there's a there's a difference between
Speaker 3: those two things, Like it's it's like saying that, like
Speaker 3: you have to believe if somebody disagrees with your worldview
Speaker 3: that they're engaged in a hallucination. Like for one thing,
Speaker 3: just a lot of times you encounter people who feel different,
Speaker 3: Like when I encounter someone who is not a bad
Speaker 3: person or not expressing anything mean, but is like I
Speaker 3: don't know a Muslim or a Christian or something else
Speaker 3: that I'm not. I don't think that they are a
Speaker 3: Muslim or a Christian or whatever because they're engaged in
Speaker 3: a mass hallucination. Like I didn't go to India and
Speaker 3: meet a bunch of hind people and go, wow, look
Speaker 3: at all these hallucinating people. Like no, it's just a
Speaker 3: religion that's not my own. That's the way the world is.
Speaker 3: Lots of people believe things I don't. It's like the
Speaker 3: weird way to go about the world, so weird, like
Speaker 3: that he believes everyone else thinks this way. Like there's
Speaker 3: certainly like bigots who think that way, but like I
Speaker 3: don't know. I've had a lot of conversations with people
Speaker 3: of different religions and philosophical stances and political stances and
Speaker 3: disagreed with them or not just felt the same way,
Speaker 3: and neither of us walked away being like, well, that
Speaker 3: guy's fucking tripping balls, Like that's such a strange way
Speaker 3: to describe this.
Speaker 4: Anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 3: Do you remember when millions of Americans believed President Obama
Speaker 3: was a secret Muslim? That was a mass illusion? Now,
Speaker 3: who was pushing that massed illusion? Scott? Was it Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: The master persuader?
Speaker 4: I guess he didn't persuade enough people.
Speaker 3: No, he didn't persuade Scott. Do you remember when President
Speaker 3: Trump got arrested and there were protests in the street
Speaker 3: because they thought he was the next Hitler? That was
Speaker 3: a mass delusion. He did try to coop the government
Speaker 3: and put himself in as a dictator Scott.
Speaker 4: To me, to be fair, this was what in twenty
Speaker 4: seventeen when this book came out. Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also that is just evidence the people who
Speaker 3: protested may have caught something that Scott didn't, although I
Speaker 3: don't think he thinks J six was bad, So it's fine.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the dot com bubble that was based
Speaker 3: on mass illusions about the value of money losing startups?
Speaker 3: Every other financial bubble was also a mass illusion. Well, partly,
Speaker 3: but they were also largely cons like a lot of
Speaker 3: the people who made money on the dot com bubble
Speaker 3: knew it was going to collapse and very intelligently figured
Speaker 3: out how to make as much money as they could
Speaker 3: by taking advantage of dumb people, much like people did
Speaker 3: with crypto or every other financial bubble. Like he's only
Speaker 3: focusing on like the side that's delusion and of the
Speaker 3: side that's bad people trying to take advantage of other
Speaker 3: people also interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Oh, here we go.
Speaker 3: Below is a starter list of more than thirty notable
Speaker 3: mass delutions. Wikipedia lists over thirty examples of mass hysteria
Speaker 3: through years.
Speaker 4: Did he say that his quote Wikipedia? In this Wikipedia
Speaker 4: and now he's.
Speaker 3: Just like, yeah, he's going through the same he's just
Speaker 3: dropping the list he found a Honestly, this is extra.
Speaker 4: English Dictionary describes mass solutions.
Speaker 3: I do have some respect for Scott here because this
Speaker 3: is a really like the next like mini pages of
Speaker 3: the book are just him like summarizing the Wikipedia entry
Speaker 3: for mass illusion.
Speaker 4: And that's an.
Speaker 3: Easy way to write a book. It's hard to write
Speaker 3: a book when you do real research.
Speaker 4: This would get like this would be like like if
Speaker 4: you're trying to submit this in school, it would be
Speaker 4: like sent back. You're like, no, you have to find
Speaker 4: a real You can't cite Wikipedia. You can't. You can't
Speaker 4: explicitly say I got this list from Wikipedia.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, Uh, it's it's funny anyway. This chunk of
Speaker 3: the book ends on him saying Trump was wrong to
Speaker 3: call climate change a hoax, but he was also right
Speaker 3: because he called out the Paris Climate Accord and it
Speaker 3: was expensive for the US and wouldn't lower temperatures. So
Speaker 3: the fact that Trump said climate change was wrong is
Speaker 3: fine because the Paris Accord was a lie that would
Speaker 3: have benefited China. That's That's Scott Adams's opinion on the
Speaker 3: Paris Climate Accord.
Speaker 4: I'm glad he's changed from being a cartoonist into a
Speaker 4: political anist again.
Speaker 3: I'm glad. I love like switching from Scott being like
Speaker 3: nobody understands politics, which is why I don't give my
Speaker 3: opinions on politics too. The Paris Climate Accord couldn't lower
Speaker 3: like Scott, I don't know, man like his stands. His
Speaker 3: argument is that like no one disagrees with it any
Speaker 3: of this, I don't know. I bet they do. Scott,
Speaker 3: you haven't cited anything here. You just say I agree
Speaker 3: on this, There's there's no citation.
Speaker 4: He's like, yes, side of Wikipedia.
Speaker 3: He did previously site Wikipedia on a separate topic. Okay,
Speaker 3: So what do we want to close out on here?
Speaker 4: Zo? There's so many good ones, Like.
Speaker 3: I do want to know what isis in the Vatican
Speaker 3: means oh God, which is what immediately precedes ros O'Donnell i.
Speaker 4: Also, I also want to briefly look at how to
Speaker 4: design a linguistic kill shot.
Speaker 3: Just oh, you know what I think that this is.
Speaker 3: So this is trump o Trump's Rosio o'donald moment. Okay,
Speaker 3: so yeah, this is like him explaining how Trump's genius
Speaker 3: strategy of like insulting people works. As the election started
Speaker 3: getting traction in all of our minds in the summer
Speaker 3: of twenty fifteen, I was experimenting with a new comic
Speaker 3: that featured a talking robot that never moves, he just
Speaker 3: reads the news. You can see in this comic that
Speaker 3: I had already noticed Trump's successful use of persuasion that
Speaker 3: was confusing the prop the public. And this is Robots
Speaker 3: Read News by Scott Adams, And it is in fact
Speaker 3: a poorly drawn robot reading the news. Donald Trump keeps
Speaker 3: saying dumb things because he is so darned dumb, unlike you.
Speaker 3: He is also surging in the polls while putting almost
Speaker 3: no effort into it. So how is smart working out
Speaker 3: for you? I don't know, man, It does seem like
Speaker 3: he was constantly touring the country and doing events. I
Speaker 3: don't think anyone thought he wasn't putting effort into it.
Speaker 3: I guess this is a real own on the people
Speaker 3: who said that Trump was dumb, which, you know, to
Speaker 3: be fair, I have always thought was a mistake on
Speaker 3: behalf of some Democrats.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: Whatever, Scott, it's not really a joke, but we'll give
Speaker 3: you that one. So but I didn't know how big
Speaker 3: a deal this was until what I now called the
Speaker 3: Rosi O'Donnell moment. In the first Republican debate on August sixth,
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. Megan Kelly was moderating, and her first question
Speaker 3: to Trump should have ended his campaign on the spot.
Speaker 3: Only a few people in the world could have escaped
Speaker 3: her trap started.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: So what Megan Kelly was like, you call women you
Speaker 3: don't like fat pigs, slogs or disgusting animals, and Trump
Speaker 3: said only Rosie o'donald, right or o'donald. Sorry.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 3: Scott calls this a master stroke of persuasion executed perfectly
Speaker 3: in front of the world. He got goosebumps. Oh what
Speaker 3: the mask? He insulted somebody he like, made a mean joke.
Speaker 3: People do that all the time. I got they don't
Speaker 3: usually do it while running for president, but they do
Speaker 3: it all the time.
Speaker 4: I like that. I guess Scott describes this as like
Speaker 4: as like a transcendent experience for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he's like full body orgasming over Donald Trump
Speaker 3: making a mean comment about Rosio Donald thinking of his joke. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's uh, it's it's it's fun. So yeah, that's Trump's
Speaker 3: weapons grade persuasion is insulting Rosy o'donald during an interview
Speaker 3: with Megan Kell, an interview largely made for people who
Speaker 3: were already voting for him, that I don't know if
Speaker 3: I think actually convinced anybody of anything, but you know, again,
Speaker 3: there's always like pieces of accuracy here. Yeah. One of
Speaker 3: the things about Trump's political strategy was effective was that
Speaker 3: he didn't do the normal thing of like apologizing and
Speaker 3: backtracking when criticized, which is you know, effective. It allows
Speaker 3: you to spend less time dealing with like the the
Speaker 3: critiques of your of your political opponents. It's again also
Speaker 3: a pretty well worn political strategy, particularly for authoritarians. It's
Speaker 3: not wildly new, but there you go. That's that's Scott
Speaker 3: Adams explaining how Trump persuaded America by calling Rose O'Donnell fat,
Speaker 3: a thing no no other comedian had ever done before.
Speaker 3: I think that multiple South Park episodes never did.
Speaker 4: Oh there, there is there is an index at the
Speaker 4: very end of the book that I have access to.
Speaker 4: They they cite black Swan, So that's good. That's it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's index. Yeah, is a mix to the back. He
Speaker 4: cites Delvert one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 4: thirty forty. He sites Delbert fourteen times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: He cites Donald Duck and trying to swap back to back.
Speaker 4: That's good. The KKKA has a few shoutouts. The last
Speaker 4: thing I do want to see is, let me is
Speaker 4: is the how to design a linguistic kill shop? Because
Speaker 4: I think we should at least give listeners one piece
Speaker 4: of actionable advice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they can do that so that you can
Speaker 3: keep a linguistic kill shop loaded up, and can somebody
Speaker 3: like mugs you on the street.
Speaker 4: You can conceal carry it actually fairly easily shoulder. That's
Speaker 4: on page one. Okay.
Speaker 3: Over the course of the election, we saw Trump assign
Speaker 3: one sticky nickname after another to his opponents. It seems
Speaker 3: as if each new nickname was a winner. Clinton's team
Speaker 3: tried a few nicknames for Trump, but they failed badly.
Speaker 3: None of this is a coincidence. Trump's nicknames are deeply engineered,
Speaker 3: and they were tested in front of life audiences. And
Speaker 3: then he goes and like, I do think actually, if
Speaker 3: you're looking at like, what are things that Trump did
Speaker 3: that made him a successful campaigner? His ability to like,
Speaker 3: that's part of why I don't think that Ron DeSantis
Speaker 3: has any chance of beating him.
Speaker 4: Is putting putting her on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, putting her on, and then it's over. Then it's done. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So let's let's let's let's give him here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's also like the most obvious tactic that he engages in.
Speaker 4: But here we go.
Speaker 3: Wow, he has two Elizabeth Warren nicknames on here.
Speaker 4: Oh, No, that's good. I bet you. I bet they's
Speaker 4: somehow racist.
Speaker 3: It is interesting he doesn't have any of his nicknames
Speaker 3: for Biden on here, maybe because against Biden.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Biden was not a big player in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Anna, I think you're right. Uh yeah, if you
Speaker 3: thought the names were nothing more than common insults, you
Speaker 3: missed a lot of his persuasion engineering. I'll walk you
Speaker 3: through it in this chapter. How powerful were Trump's nicknames?
Speaker 3: So powerful that the day I heard Trump say low energy,
Speaker 3: Jeb I predicted Bush was done and blogged that opinion
Speaker 3: in August twenty seventh. Keep in mind that literally no
Speaker 3: other pundits saw this nickname as important to the like
Speaker 3: now that lady is true, but also everyone who saw
Speaker 3: from the moment I saw Jeb Bush on the fucking
Speaker 3: debate stage, I said, well, this is a guy who
Speaker 3: can't be president. He was like everyone knew, he was pitiful.
Speaker 3: I liked there were some I like that he raims.
Speaker 4: I like I like that he frames like listening to
Speaker 4: Trump as like reading tarot carts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is interesting because again, there's a reasonable case
Speaker 3: to be made for talking about the way in which
Speaker 3: Trump uses insults and mockery as a political strategy, but
Speaker 3: like being like, and that's why Jim Bush isn't the president. No,
Speaker 3: Jeb Bush is the president because he was never going
Speaker 3: to be the president. That was never in the cars
Speaker 3: because he is jib Bush. It's that's that's so funny.
Speaker 4: Uh uh.
Speaker 3: He just talks about why the nicknames are accurate nicknames. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's that's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you want him to read him analyzing lion Ted
Speaker 3: for three pages?
Speaker 4: He does. He does a three page analysis of lying
Speaker 4: Ted lying Ted?
Speaker 3: What does include the sentence lion Ted simply looked like
Speaker 3: a liar. Look, he's not always wrong. And I saw
Speaker 3: Ted Cruz, I was like, that guy is a liar.
Speaker 4: I like him. We can always turn to Scott Adams
Speaker 4: for this cutting edge political analysis.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, it's it's also funny. Like part of what's
Speaker 3: fun about these nicknames isn't that like they're they're super complex,
Speaker 3: and it isn't that they engineer opinion. It's that it's
Speaker 3: so easy to like cut people who are kind of
Speaker 3: obsessed with the like playing at being at the politests
Speaker 3: of like a political etiquette and just being a dick
Speaker 3: is powerful, right, if you're playing a different game than
Speaker 3: everyone else. Yeah, that's powerful, but also like it only
Speaker 3: worked the one time. He tried all of this again
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, and he lost by the most that
Speaker 3: any president has ever lost in terms of like like
Speaker 3: actual votes.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm at the end of the book now. I
Speaker 4: just found I just found three amazing, amazing things back
Speaker 4: to back. So at the very end, after the acknowledgments,
Speaker 4: there is there's like four appendixes, but the first three
Speaker 4: are the ones that I think are really interesting. The
Speaker 4: first one is the Persuasion Reading List, which might have
Speaker 4: some really funny finds. At the end, there's also the
Speaker 4: Appendix B is how to be a better writer. It's
Speaker 4: two pages long. And then Appendix C is how to
Speaker 4: find out if you are in a simulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I was looking at that just a second ago.
Speaker 4: So you can first of all, get a get get
Speaker 4: a list of books to read, become a become a
Speaker 4: better writer, and then find out if you're living in
Speaker 4: a computer. All within the span of seven fass.
Speaker 3: Ikun approached writing a fucking non fiction book, I think,
Speaker 3: and I think he literally Appendix C is just one
Speaker 3: of his old blog posts that he's quoting, he talks about,
Speaker 3: he talks about simulation theory. Man, oh god, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not interested in anything less than I am fucking brained
Speaker 3: idiots talking about the theory that we live in a simulation.
Speaker 3: Uh you know what's simulated, your fucking dick, Scott, this podcast,
Speaker 3: your weird.
Speaker 4: Penis is a simulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's That's what I gotta say.
Speaker 4: Well, I think I think I think you should find
Speaker 4: one book on on the reading list that we should recommend,
Speaker 4: and then give one one writing tip via Scott Adams,
Speaker 4: and then we can call it a day. Okay.
Speaker 3: His writing tip is to write whatever you're writing the
Speaker 3: way Trump writes things, because are you writer?
Speaker 4: Are you serious? Yes? Trump's not a good writer.
Speaker 3: I think there is like a difference between like Trump
Speaker 3: was effective at a good ship poster on Twitter and
Speaker 3: Trump was objectively a great ship.
Speaker 4: Post yea, but not on purpose.
Speaker 3: I don't know we can debate that. But also I
Speaker 3: don't think like it's kind of like saying like how
Speaker 3: to be a better right now, how to be a
Speaker 3: better poster on Twitter? Like I would take you can
Speaker 3: take you can take Donald Trump's advice on that writing
Speaker 3: is a little bit wider of a discipline, and you
Speaker 3: might wind up having some difficulty if you if you
Speaker 3: try to take the Donald Trump approach to I don't know,
Speaker 3: becoming an editor on Wikipedia so that Scott Adams will
Speaker 3: appreciate your work. Nothing against Wikipedia, it's just funny that
Speaker 3: that's the only source he's cited other than Plato. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's some other advice that he has. Uh, your first
Speaker 3: sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read
Speaker 3: my first sentence in this post. I rewrote it a
Speaker 3: dozen times. It makes you curious.
Speaker 4: That's the key.
Speaker 3: His first sentence is good writing is also persuasive writing.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, Scott, that's the dry shit I've ever heard.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So for his his on his persuasion reading list, I
Speaker 3: accidentally wound up on this, but it includes how to
Speaker 3: Hypnotize Anyone, Confessions of a Rogue Hypnotist, and then in brackets,
Speaker 3: I have not read this book, but what it probably
Speaker 3: gives you a good taste of the topic.
Speaker 4: That's so funny. He's recommending a book he hasn't read
Speaker 4: and he admits it. Yeah, he didn't even read reading list.
Speaker 4: It's probably a good idea. I don't know.
Speaker 3: He admits there's a Tony Robbins book on here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Trump The Art of the Deal, of course, Yeah, tells
Speaker 3: you to take a fucking Dale Carnegie class.
Speaker 4: Uh great, Yeah, that that tracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good stuff. So yeah, I think that's that's a
Speaker 3: good look at Scott Adams's book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, I think I think that is a
Speaker 4: that is a decent a decent dive into the mind
Speaker 4: of Scott Adams.
Speaker 3: Are you ready to go into the world now, Garrison
Speaker 3: and become a master persuader?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be working on my I think,
Speaker 4: I I think if I get I mean organ does
Speaker 4: not have the does not have the round capacity limit yet,
Speaker 4: because I'm trying to figure out how many linguistic kill
Speaker 4: shots I'm allowed to carry with me at at any
Speaker 4: point in time.
Speaker 3: But once Yeah, yes, I think you can still have
Speaker 3: thirty linguistic kills loaded and in violation of state law.
Speaker 4: So I'll spend it. I'll spend it. I'll spend a
Speaker 4: few hours coming up with those so I can just
Speaker 4: have them at the ready. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna call people low energy, Jeb, even if
Speaker 3: they're not named.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: That was the that that that was pretty funny. Okay,
Speaker 3: so uh yeah, that's uh, that's our man.
Speaker 1: Garrison, you would like to plug.
Speaker 4: I guess the one thing I could plug is I
Speaker 4: recently on It could Happen Here, I finished a shocking
Speaker 4: five episodes worth of content about about the the last
Speaker 4: week of action in Atlanta to stop cop City. I
Speaker 4: believe we should have that put into a compilation as
Speaker 4: well by now. But yeah, that that is. That is
Speaker 4: on the you could Happen Here feed for the last
Speaker 4: week of action. And uh, I mean as of as
Speaker 4: of recording, the the city council process to to approve
Speaker 4: the funding for that is ongoing. There's been there was
Speaker 4: like five hundred people showing up I think like just
Speaker 4: like two days ago as of time of recording to
Speaker 4: give public comment. And that's that process is gonna last
Speaker 4: a few more weeks, so we will see, we will
Speaker 4: see how how that goes. You can you can keep
Speaker 4: up to date with that with the with the Atlantic
Speaker 4: Community Press Collective. So yeah, that is that is it?
Speaker 3: Excellent? Well you can find me, yeah we can mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media. Visit our website coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.