Well jump right in. Scott here no interest of giving a speech before we start asking questions. Were going to start asking questions. Here we go, just in time for thanksgiving, a book to help you deal with people with whom you disagree. [laughter] so everyone get your copy. [laughter] all right. So intro, questions. Please send yours up. They dont have to be related to just the book. All right. Here we go. My name is melissa cane. Welcome to the Commonwealth Clubs hosting of scott adams. In his new book loser think, he dives into the epidemic of mental short cuts that he believes is making us prone to believing in bad ideas. According to scott, loser think is responsible for people stereotyping all the Trump Supporters as racist, believing that gun control is equal to full confiscation and most importantly avoiding selfreflection when personal relationships end. Were very excited to have him here with us tonight to discuss his new book loser think and whatever else you guys would like to ask him. Hes told me nothing is off limits. There you go. Please welcome scott adams. [applause] so whats loser think . It is a word i invented because i noticed when i was on twitter mostly, be debating with various trolls and real people too, and every once in a while somebody would make a really good comment and id think i dont quite agree with that but thats really well put, check on the profile, it would be a lawyer or economist, scientist, and then id see a comment thats just crazy, im not supposed to say that probably, and i look at it and i think well who sent this . I will click on the profile. It will be poet, musician, journalist, and im thinking to myself is that a coincidence or is there something about your experience in different fields that teaches you how to think . And i reflected on my own experien experience. I have a degree in economics and mba. They literally teach you how to think. It is not so much the specifics of economics, but they teach you how to compare things. They teach you about the time and value of money. These are just some of the techniques. They teach you how to think productively about your world. It is not just economists. Scientists have their own way of looks at things, historians, psychologists, and for some weird reason, i have had experience in all of those fields. Im a trained hypnotist. Please dont. [laughter] and i worked in Corporate America for 16 years and held a variety of jobs from strategy to marketing to technology, so just by chance, ive experienced a lot of domains, and you pick up how do they think in those domains, and i thought a lot of people havent been exposed to them, so i thought i would write a book and fill in your gaps, if you have any. Are you making the case here for journalists, and if you are, for people who are sort of multidisciplinary, and if you are, sit just the nonhumanities . Well, you know, it is not even learning the depth of those fields, so i can teach you how an economist thinks well i will give you an example. This is how easy it is. Have you ever heard of the concept of sunk costs . Raise your hand. Maybe less than half. [inaudible]. [laughter] so sunk costs refers to the idea that if youve already spent your money on something, lets say you have invested it, that you shouldnt look to that to make your next decision. In other words, you should say that money is gone. I cant get it back. Theres nothing i can do in the future that will change the fact that it is gone. Its sunk. So if you make your decision based on the money youve already spent, which people do, and they say ive already put x dollars into this, i dont want to waste it so i better double down and keep investing. Now that feels like common sense. But the first time you hear that you cant change the past, you say oh, yeah, thats sunk. Thats gone. I will just make my decision as if i were starting today, that i had never even heard of that other stuff. Thats how easy you can learn it. You dont need to be an economist. You have to hear some of these things once and it becomes part of your thinking. You call it loser think because you really write that you want to stay away from calling people names. You actually wrote a line that i underlined that said calling people stupid will not make them smart. [laughter] thats true. You said loser think because you want to address the behavior and not demonize the person. Can you talk about the use of labels and how thats one method of loser think . So one of the things i learned doing the dilbert comic is mockery is incredibly powerful. A lot of people have said to me over the years, they would write to me in email and say we were going to do this certain policy at work but we saw a comic of yours mock it so we decided not to because nobody wants to do the thing thats already been premocked. I mocked you in advance. You dont even have to wait. No waiting. [laughter] in fact, even elon musk who when he was writing a memo to his employees telling them how he wanted them to behave, what the culture should be like, one of his tips was to not do anything policy wise that would make it into a dilbert comic. [laughter] now the power of that is that he didnt have to explain what that meant because everybody who is familiar with the word dilbert and the comic they can kind of you know one when you see them; right . Thats a dilbert situation there. I used that same technique coming one the word loser think that people can use and say hey thats loser think. Heres a photo that i took on my phone with the page of the book that explains it better than i can. I get permission in the book to tweet out a page to people who have a gap in their thinking and maybe it can be filled in. Having a word like loser think makes it easier to mock people because nobody wants to hear hey, thats loser think. As i was just checking my twitter feed before i came in here, and i saw a lot of people have read the book accusing other people of loser think, and i thought its already working. [laughter] its already working. Hashtag loser think. Im using mockery in its most productive way to mock people into more productive thinking. Do you think that people who really need this book are going to buy it . Or are you counting on holiday sales for people to buy it for them . [laughter] well, when you name a book loser think, youre pretty much guaranteeing somebody is going to give it to the relatives for the holidays. [laughter] because the beauty is it feels like a gift, but youre not really sure. [laughter] its like hey, uncle bob, i got you this book, loser think. [laughter] you learn about other people. [laughter] so one of the chapters that you write talked about mind reading and, you know, pun intended, you read my mind with it because its one of the most frustrating things that i see out on the internet are people who are sort of trying to assert that they know whats in your soul, whats in your mind, whats in somebody elses heart. Yeah, heres another example where i tried to name it. Applying it in this way gives it extra power. If you look in the news, you will see the pundits jabbering one side or the other, and quite often their jabbering is about an assumption about what a stranger is thinking. What were their real motives . Whats the real reason youre doing this . Now, sometimes youre right. Sometimes its obvious stuff, political stuff is usually pretty obvious, but theres so many times that you couldnt possibly know what this stranger is thinking, and as evidence that youre not good at mind reading, give you every relationship you have ever been in because, you know, theres probably somebody sitting right next to you who in the last 24 hours assumed you were mad when you werent, assumed that you were hungry when you werent, assumed that you were happy my husband is in the front row. Be careful, sir. [laughter] all except you. [laughter] so mind reading is something that i call out and giving it a word, putting the book called loser think, it allows people to say oh yeah thats a bad thing. It was so pervasive, i dont know if i have ever heard a Single Person ever call it out saying no, youre imagining you can read somebodys mind, once its called out, it becomes part of the conversation and start spotting it. Wait till you see what happens in the coming weeks. You will start seeing mind reading all over the place. And you are going to say i guess i saw it before, but it crystallized because somebody talked about it as a word and now it is a thing. There are a lot of Great Concepts in the book, but there is something here where i really feel like you buried the lead. In one part you talk about the difference between coincidences and, you know, things that are actually, you know, anything you should take seriously. So hes writing about his day basically and hes talking about all these things that are happening that appeared to be, you know, magical, and i quote, a few days ago, i arranged my collection of flashlights, and i was like you have a collection of flashlights . This book should be called i have a collection of flashlights. Who doesnt 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 readily, and i built a shrine to my flashlights in my man cave in my garage. Literally i would put them on the board and make sure they had fresh batteries and everything. I had never done that before. I buy a flashlight whenever i see a new one. Thats a new one. I had my collection all there. They were all fresh batteries. I was so happy with it, and the First Time Ever that i have been living in my house, somebody ran into a power pole with an suv and plunged my neighborhood into darkness. The same time that id built a shrine to flashlights. And so i said to myself, no problem. I went to my flashlights and i was good. How many do you have . Well, you know, i recycle and throw some out. I have a good solid 25 that are the core collection. Are there antiques, hard to find ones . Is there a community where youre like that thats version, thats amazing. Well, thats a good idea. No, they are mostly plastic. I like how they look. I dont know, i like flashlights. Theres no explaining it. Okay, terrific, now we know, thank you. So you are not a fan of the press. As a member of the press, i was reading going ow [laughter] but i think it is fair. I didnt name you. [laughter] not this time. But i didnt feel like it was unfair. I thought, you know, attacking sort of the structure of the press is, you know, something i think a lot of journalists wouldnt even disagree with you about. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that feeds into the way people think . So i like to put it in the context of a small technological change that nobody noticed when it happened, which is the ability to measure with precision what people are clicking on and even why in some cases. Once that was the case, once everybody could measure these people click on this. These people click on that. It would have become obvious as it did that the things they want to click on are the crazy stuff, the things that make your hair catch on fire. I dont want to hear about the budget. I want to hear about impeachment. I want to hear a plot to overthrow the government. I want to hear about some really good stuff. Were all elevated in our opinions because the news model is forcing us toward more provocative stuff. Well before they would have said well, heres the news. Theres my news. Now its replaced entertainment to a large extent. I bet some of you would relate to this. How many of you watch the news like entertainment, like its not even for the news anymore, it is for the laughs . You know, you watch it so many liars in here. Everybodys hand should be up. Im kidding. [laughter] so thats the big problem. The big problem is that once you can measure stuff, there was no way that Public Companies that are beholden to stockholders could do anything but the things that get the most attention. Theres no way you could ignore that. We had to get to this point once the small technological change happened, and that caused us to bifurcate and to too complete almost civilizations at this point, and were in bubbles, and we dont really see whats happening in the other bubble because it looks crazy or insane or stupid or maybe theyre lying and we cant quite tell. We know theres something wrong in that bubble. But it doesnt make sense, and we cant make any sense of it. And its largely because people have become totally bifurcated in their news consumption. So conservatives are a little more likely i think statistically to at least sample cnn once in a while because its more pervasive. But people on the left typically are not even aware of the argument on the right, or they might know one of them, but not the good one, for example, not mine. [laughter] so thats part of the problem. You do get some tips for how to get out of your bubble, how to recognize if youre in one and then how to communicate, how to yes, i recommend pharmaceuticals. [laughter] no not in the way you think. Not in the way you think. If you watch the news, as i do quite a bit, there are pharmaceutical commercials that come on. Now, if you make the mistake of actually listening to one, you are going to hear more problems than you knew that a human could have health wise. [laughter] they will come on and say you can take this pill, it will solve your problems, but you are going to have diarrhea, you know, your heart will explode and your lungs will be congested. What i do is when theres a pharmaceutical commercial on, i say to myself, first of all, get this off of there, because i dont want to hear about all these problems because i dont have those problems but if im hear about them, im going to get them. Im going to get all those problems if i keep hearing about them. I think i do have a rash matter of fact. [laughter] so i will run to change or whatever, to change the channel as quickly as possible to the opposite. If im on cnn, i will go to fox news, vice versa, because they both have pharmaceutical commercials. In that way i miss a lot of the ugly commercials but exposing myself to content on both sides. I recommend that. You dont have to do it the way i do it. If youre not sampling both sides, you really dont know whats going on, but you might think you do, and thats the most dangerous situation. You tell a story about your dog snickers. Its a great anecdote. You write i think my dog snickers believes im an idiot because i dont take her outside to play when she is clearly communicating to me that it is time to do so. Snickers knows she is sending me the lets go outside signal so she knows i see it. She knows im physically able to go outside. So if i dont stop what im doing and take her out, does she think im stupid . And so you go on to say, you know, sometimes youre sickers and sometimes youre you sometimes youre snickers and sometimes youre you in this scenario in a way that requires empathy and imagination to think about where the other person is coming from. Yeah, heres an example of being an artist or 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, but in this example, an artist or somebody who creates for a living might have a little more propensity to imagine their other explanations for the facts. In a story i use in there is that my car is perpetually dirty. Now if you saw my dirty car, you would say to yourself, thats kind of an expensive car, he could probably afford to get a wash. Hes a cartoonist. He has a flexible schedule. He could get it washed. If he could afford it, he has the time, and it is never washed, he probably is saving water or he cares about something or hes blind . You know, whats the reason . The real reason is the one you would never imagine. In fact, youre all trying to think of it right now. Youre thinking whats the real reason . Is he going to tell us . Yeah, im going to tell you. The real reason is i have an irrational fear of public instructions. I dont know if any of you have this, but i dont want to be in public where anybody can see me and i have to figure out the instructions while people are watching. And the problem is, im too literal because it will b very clear, for example, i use the example i go to a store and this will be a sign that says wait here. The cashier will say next come up here, for a moment i will be stunned because i will be like it says wait here, but youre saying go up, i dont know if you have that authority. Did you make the sign . Is this your sign . Is this your bosss sign because if its your bosss sign, im waiting here. [laughter] i dont want to get in this car wash, get halfway in, turn sideways, they have to dismantle the car wash to free me and the headlines are idiot cartoonist destroys car wash. Thats why my cars dirty. Did you guess that . Did anybody guess that . Anybody have that one . No. So the point is that you have to make assumptions to live, right . You cant live and operate in the World Without continuously making assumptions including assumptions about what people are thinking, no matter how poorly we do it. You have to do it, to survive. But just be aware that just because you cant think of the other reason that these things could happen, especially if youre watching the news, that doesnt mean that the one reason given is the reason. 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 . Two days later the news says that didnt actually happen. It seems we got that wrong. Wait a couple of 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 were going to kind of go back and forth between the book and some questions. This is a great question. Why does the dogs tail always wag . Dogbert is a part of my personality that says and does the things that i couldnt do because i would be beaten up or jailed. But there are thoughts. I think of those things. I dont do them because it is not polite or legal. Dogbert can do them so i show his light by the tail. I have ears or a tail to work with. Thats about it. Hes enjoying it. Yeah. Okay, so this question is when do you find yourself using loser think . Are there traps you fall into that you need to be conscious of . The one i find all the time is using analogies for more than they should be used for. It is so easy. It is 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 sell somebody what a zebra is, if they have never seen a zebra but they know what a horse is, you say its like a horse, but its got stripes. It is a good short cut. You dont want to use the analogy to predict. If you turn on the news, you will see all kinds of people doing exactly that. It makes no sense. If you see, for example, that your cat has a little marking under his nose that looks like a hitler moustache, that doesnt mean your cat is going to invade poland. It doesnt. It doesnt work that way. Likewise if you see the president crit