Transcripts For CSPAN2 Scott Adams Loserthink - How Untraine

CSPAN2 Scott Adams Loserthink - How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America July 13, 2024

Well jump right in. A speech before we start asking questions. Just in time for thanksgiving, a book to help you deal with people with whom you disagree. [laughter] all right so apple, intro, questions. They dont have to be related to just the book. Here we go. My name is melissa kane, welcome to the hosting of scott adams. In his new book, scott dives into the epidemic of mental shortcuts that he believes is prone to believing and bad ideas. Its responsible for peoples stereotyping Trump Supporters as racist, believing crime control is equal to full confiscation in front important, avoiding self reflection when personal relationships and. We are excited to have him here with us to discuss his new book. He toldev me nothing is off lims so they got. Please welcome scott adams. [applause] so what do you think . Thats a word iin invented because i noticed when i was on twitter mostly, various neutrals and real people, every once in a while you make good, to that i think well, i dont quite agree with that but it isgr well put. Lawyer or economist, scientist. Then its back shake crazy. There will be musician, journalist and things i thought, its a coincidence or is there something about your experience in different fields that teaches you how to think . I get a degree in economics and think bitterly teach you how to think. Its not so much running specifics of economics but they teach you how tohe compare thins and costs and value of running. They teach you how to think productively about your world. Scientists have their own way of looking at things, historians, psychologists and for some weird reason, ive had experience in all the most field. Im a trained hypnotist. I worked in Corporate America for 16 years. By chance, ive experienced a lot of delays. You pick up how to think in those delays. Fill in your gaps if you have any. L if youre making a case for them, is it just as a non humanities . Its not even learning the depths of those fields. I can teach you how and economist thinks. Ill give you an example. If youve never heard of a t concept of soap costs, maybe less than a half. [laughter] so some prefer strict as the idea if youve already spent your money on something, you shouldnt look to that to make your next decision. You should take that money is gone. I cant get it back. Theres nothing i can do in then future that will change the fact that on. So if you make your decision based on the moneyey youve already spent, which people do, they say a party put x dollars into this, i dont want to waste it so i better double down and keep investing. That feels like common sense but the first thing you hear that you cant change the past you say oh yeah, its gone. Ill just make my decision as if our starting today and ive never even heard about other stuff. You dont need to be an economist, you just have to hear these things once to inspire your thinking. You write that you want to stay away from throwing people names. Calling people stupid will not make them smart. [laughter] he said lose or think because you want to address the behavior and not demonized the person. One of the things i learned mockery is incredibly powerful. People would say to me, i cant tell you how many people have said this. It would write to me and say we were going to do this certain policy at work but we saw comic of yours mocking it so we decided not to. [laughter] nobody wants to do something thats been premocked. I mock you in advance, you dont even have to wait. So even you like musk was writing to his employees telling them how they want to behave, one of his tips was to not do anything policy wise that would make it into, to comic. The power of that is that he didnt have to explain what that meant because everybody was familiar with that word and the comic. Its like thats the situation there. I use the same technique by coming up the word lose or think where people can say lose or think. Explains it better than i can so i give permission in the book to tweet out a page two people who have a gap in their thinking. Having a word like loser think makes it easier to mark people. Nobody wants to hear hey, thats loser think. I saw lots of people who read the book, accusing other people of loser think. I thought its already working. [laughter] i said it. Its used in its most productive way, to mock people into more productive thinking. Or do you think people will buy it for do you think is just haughty sales and buy it for them . [laughter] when you name a book loser think, you can guarantee somebodys going to give it to their relatives. It feels like gift but you are not really sure. [laughter] hey uncle bob, i got you this book. Loser think. You learn about other people. [laughter] one of the chapters you talkedne about mind reading. Pun intended, he read my mind with it because its one of the most correct people who are trying to assert that they know within their soul, their mind in somebody elses heart. I tried to name them. Applying it in this way gives it a little extra power. If you look at the news, you will see the jabbering one side of the other. Quite often there jabbering is about an assumption about when a stranger is thinking. What were their real motives . Was the real reason you are doing this . Sometimes youre right, sometimes its obvious and political stuff but there are so many times you couldnt possibly know what the stranger is thinking. As evidence that youre not good at mind reading, i give you every relationship youve ever been in. Theres probably somebody sitting next to you who in the last 24 hours has assumed you are mad when you t want, hungry when you want, happy when you werent. So mind reading is something i call out. It allows people to say oh yeah, thats a bad thing. Weirdly enough, it was so pervasive, i dont know if ive ever heard a Single Person to call it out. You imagine you could read somebodys mind but the moment it calls out, it becomes part of the conversation. Wait until you see what happens in the coming weeks. You will see mind reading all over the place and say, i guess i saw it before but it crystallized because somebody talked about it and now its a thing. There are a lot of Great Concepts in the book but theres something here in the book, you talk about the difference between incidences and anything you should takee seriously. Hes talking about all of these things happening, it appears to be magical. Be a few days ago, i arranged my collection of flashlights. I was like you have a collection of flashlights . This book should be called i have a collection of flashlights. How many do you have . Is there a community . I need to know. I really like flashlights. I confess that. I built a shrine to my flashlights. On thely i put them up board and make sure they have fresh batteries and everything. Ive never done that before. I had my collection author and they are all fresh batteries and i was so happy with it. The First Time Ever in my house, somebody ran into a powerful and plunged my neighborhood into darkness. The same time that i had a shrine of flashlights. I said to myself, no problem. I went to my flashlights and i was good. [laughter] how many do you have . I recycle so i have a good solid 25, the court collection. Are they hard to find once is there a community where there theres thats a good idea. I just like the way they look. I just like flashlights. Terrific. C. You are not a fan of the press. I was reading going, wow. I think its fair. But i think its unfair. Attacking the structure of the press is something a lot of journalists wouldnt even disagree with you about. Talk about that and how that is in the way people think. Like to put in the context of a small technological change that nobody noticed happened which is the ability to measure precision while people are clicking on it. Once that was theyb case, once everybody could measure, these people click on this and that. It would become obvious as it did, the things they want to click on, the things that would make your hair catch on fire. I want to hear about impeachment and a plot. So we are all elevated in our opinions because the use model is enforcing us to more provocative stuff. Before the were just say heres lose. Now its replaced entertainment to a large extent. How many of you watched the news like entertainment . So many wires in here. Everybodys hand should be up. We cant make any sense of it and its largely because people have become totally bifurcated in their news consumption. So, conservatives are little more likely statistically to at least samle cnn once in a while because its more pervasive, but people on the left typically are not even aware of the arrangement on the right or they might know one of them but not the good one, for example. Not mine. So, thats part of the problem. You get some tips how to get out of your bubble. How to recognize if youre in one and then how to communicate. I rem pharmaceuticals of. Not in the way you think if if you watch the news, also i do quite a bit, there are pharmaceutical commercials that come on. I you make the mistake of actually listening to one youll hear more problems than you knew that a human could have healthwise. Well, you can take this pill solve allor problem but youll have diarrhea and your heart will explode and your lungs will be decongested and forget but six, all good drugs take that off the table. The first thing they do. When theres pharmaceutical commercial an i say to myself, first of all, ah, ah, get is a off of there i dont went to hear about all the problems because ill get them all if i keep hearing about them. Ill be like i think i do have a rash. So run to change or whatever to change the channel as quickly as possible to the opposite. So if im on cnn i go to fox news and vice versa because they both have pharmaceutical commercials and in that way i miss lot of the ugly commercials bus exposing myself to content on both sides. So i rem recommend that. I if youre not sam belling both side you dont know whats going on but might think you do and thats the most dangerous situation. You tell a story but your dog, snickers, that i think really its a great an neck it. You ride i mcmy dog believes im an idiot because i dont take her outside to play when she is clearly communicating to me it is time do. So knickers know she is sending mel the lets good outside signal so knows im physically able to go outside so if i dont stop what im doing and take her out does she think im stupid . You say, sometimes youre snickers snickers and sometimes youre you in a scenario that requires empathy and imagination to really think but where the other person is coming from. An example where being an artist or a creative person gives you maybe a little better vision on the world than perhaps the engineer or the scientist. So before when i was saying different professions have different styles of thinking, it wasnt to insult one because theres genius that goes across every kind of domain. In this example, an artist, or somebody who creates for a living might have a little more propensity to imagine other facts and the story i uses my car is perpetually dirty. If you say my dirty car youd say to yourself, its kind of an expensive car, probably could afford to get it washed, hes a cartoonist with a flexible schedule and he can afford it and he has the time and itser in washed, he probably is saving water or he cares about something or he is blind. Whats the reason . The real reason is the one you would never imagine and in factor ail trying to think of it right now. What the real reason. Im going to tell you. The real reason is, i have an irrational fear of public instructions. I dont know if you have. The it dont want to be in public where anybody can see me and i have to figure out the instructions while people are watching. The problem is im too literal. Because it will be very clear but for example, if i use the example of, i come to the store and a sign that says wait here and then the cashier will say, next, come on up here for a moment ill be stunned. It says wait here. But youre saying go up. I dont know if you have that authority. Did you make the sign . Does your sign is this your sign or you boss sign . If its your boss sign im waiting here. So i dont want to get in a car wash, good at half warp in and turn sideways and they have to dismantle the car wash to get me out and thats why my car is dirty. Did you guess that . Anybody have that one . No. So the point is that we have to you cantly and operate in the World Without continuously making assumeses including assumptions about what people are think no matter how poorly we do it. But just be aware that just because you cant think of the other reason these things could happen, special if live youre watching the news. Doesnt mean the one reason given is the rope. In fact i talk about the 48 hour rule. Where you should just wait 48 hours when you see something in the news that makes your blood boil and you think, how could that happen . Then two days later the news says, well, that didnt actually happen. We got that wrong. So, just wait a couple days until the fog of war dissipates before you get too worked up about anything. Excellent. We have a number of questions from the audience so well kind of go back and forth between the book and questions. This is a great question. Why does dogberts tail always wag help he does evil . So, the dogbert characters mostly versions of me. So you know how how have a lot of different personalities inside you . Dogbert is apast of my personality that says and does the things cooperate do because i would be beaten up or jailed. But theyre thoughts. I think of those things, just dont do them because its not polite or illegal so dogbert can do them and i like to show his delight by his tail because dogbert doesnt have eye balds or a mouth, so its not much i got years of the tail to work with. Thats out it. Hes enjoying it. So, this question is when do you find yourself using loser think . What trap do you fall in to be conscious of. The one i fall into all the time is using analogies for more than they should be used for. Its just so easy because its just a natural way to talk to make analogies. Analogies are great for explaining a new concept for the first time. So if youre trying to tell somebody what a zebra is, never seen a zebra but know what a horse is, its like a horse but has stripes. A good shortcut. What you dont whatnot to do is use the analogy to predict. In fact if you turn on the news youll see people doing exactly that, makes no sense. So if you see, for example, your cat has a little marking under his nose that looks like a hitler moustache, that doesnt mean your indicate will invade poland. If you see the president criticizing the press, well, yeah, dictators did that but that doesnt mean that hes going to invade poland either. It could mean that the press has crossed a line and its productive or politically product tonight criticize them but dont take the analogy as predictive. Analogies are really bad ways to predict. Also, so is the slippery slope. Talk about a number of things that people do to future trip as some people would say about sort of how the sky will fall and how bad things are going to be based on history repeating itself. History repeats is one of the biggest loser think examples. You have heard its million times. See it in the news or your own life, history repeats. History doesnt repeat. It cant. Becauseover in a different situation with a different variables and often youre familiar with the other history, the real one, so that tells you not to do it this time it but the reason it feels like history repeats is that were just reminded of other things. Thats the analogy problem. But we dont notice all the times history doesnt repeat. If you could see a chart, heres your chart, your pie chart, all the times history didnt repeat because it couldnt, and this little sliver, looks like something that happened before. But its not predictive. You dont know which sliver is the one that will repeat coincidentally and which will be the one you never notice didnt repeat. In win bigly you talk about your political views, and about how sort of some ways theyre very liberal. Although now you do a lot of i dont want to say defense but a lot of sort of at least on the twitter engaging people about allegations about the president. Can you talk about how that came to be and sort of how you ended up in this position of someone who may be really liberal on certain issues you find yourself sort of needing to defend a republican president. For a the long e time i called myself left of bernie and part of that was a little joke on myself because there was nothing left of bernie, so awould of not characterizing myself. Then the democratted found people who are left of bernie so, like, oh, come on, if i had this space all to myself. You rupeed everything for me. So, what it meant wasnt, ate least on social issues, i am left of bernie. Ill guff you some examples. Bernie would like to i believe legalize marijuana. I would go further and i would legalize more drugs. Certainly mushrooms and do a test on opioids. Even if its just locally. The drugs on commercials during the news. Another example just to make the point, on abortion, liberals and bernie would say, yes, under the right conditions, yes, on abortion, i go left of that and say, i have a penis, im out. Whatever women want to do, will be very supportive. So whatever is the consensus, im going to be quiet and supportive because i dont have that kind of skin in the game and i dont add anything. Dont have like the extra male smarts to add on top of your decision. Its exactly the same whether i have an opinion or not. So i think the most credible laws and i like when you have laws that people will kill over, literally, abortion people kill over their preferences for that. When its that potentially destructive, you need a result no matter which way it goes, that is credible. That the people say, oh, i didnt get my way, and its really important to me but the way way arrived at it, that looked credible to me, and to me the more men who are involved in it, the less credible it is and women will have the same opinions. Ive never looked spite but i dont thi men and women have that muff disopinion on abortion. Are men and women about the same roughly any dont add anything so i take myself out of that. Those are just two apples. Donald trump comes along. 2015, and i was just writing blog posts but whatever caught my station and have a background as a chained hypnotist. And when saw trump, i said, hey, i recognize that technique. Thats been grade a incredible persuasion. So i wrote a blog post in saying he was a clown genius instead of a clown people were calling, just a clown. Hes a clown but why is it working . Theres technique here and you dont see it if you havent had experience in that domain. The loser think example. I can see it clearly and i can see the other people who also had the same background could also see it just as clearly. Mike is a classic example. Some of the same training with hypnosis and stuff and he saw it early, the same time i did. And what we saw was a guy bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight. And i didnt think it was a hard prediction because flamethrower beats stick almost every time. So, by the time so i was writing but his per persuasion skill but you get pulled it and more demand the first article was massively viral and people wanted to interview me about it and suddenly i

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