Scott Adam's twitter buddy
Showing posts with label Scott Adams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott Adams. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2020
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Scott Adams Suggested Book List
Scott Adams Suggested Book List
and order to read them in
For Life Skills Degree
Order to read (preferred reading order)
1 Influence
2 Pre-suasion
3 The Power of Habit
4 Impossible to Ignore
5 How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
6 Win Bigly
7 Loserthink
8 Apocalypse Never
Save the Cat (optional for screen writers mindset)
Additional Possible Books in order (Scott Adams mentioned a few days later)
9 False Alarm Bjorn Lomborg
10 Half-Life Facts
11 How to Change Your Mind
I think the first 8 books were talked on a podcast near the very end of a tour of your house.
(anyone notice a mistake please post)
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Scott Adams - Biden Preview EXTINCTION
Scott Adams: The coming election is an extinction event *UPDATED*
Conservatives are right to take the coming election seriously, for a Biden victory could be a true “extinction event,” rather than the usual shift leftward.
A friend recommended that I watch the last few minutes of Scott Adams’ July 13 show. Her recommendation was illuminating, for Adams had a very interesting observation about voter enthusiasm. According to Adams, his sense about many Democrats is that, while they despise Trump and know that they ought to vote for Biden, watching the Black Lives Matter / Democrat party agenda go into effect is frightening them. This level of fear might keep them away from the polls or even lead to their voting for Trump.
Meanwhile, Republicans know what will happen if Biden wins: They will be facing what Adams calls an “EXTINCTION EVENT.” If the Democrats win this election, between open borders and amnesty, a shift to permanent voting by mail, and the end of American suburbs, the Democrats will ensure that a Republican never wins again. The video below is set to start with Adams’ discussion:
Adams is correct, but he doesn’t go far enough. There will be more things extinguished than a mere political party. We’ve already seen how the Jacobins on the left are busy purging their party of people who are insufficiently passionate in their support. The daily firings and forced resignations are, for now, the left’s guillotine.
Think of the McCloskeys, stalwart leftists who are being persecuted for exercising their Second Amendment right to defend their home when a mob marched onto their property. Think of Gary Garrels, a very left senior curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who was forced out because he said that the museum still had to accept works from white artists to avoiding engaging in racial discrimination.
Think of Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, both forced out of their jobs in the New York media because they were soft leftists, rather than hard. (Weiss and Sullivan were laughably categorized as “conservatives.” Neither is. They are conservative only to the extent that they are not from the hard left.)
Think of Leo Terrell, a lifelong Democrat and civil rights attorney, who happens to be black. He is now being ostracized by everyone who was once part of his world because he’s called out the Black Lives Matter movement for its criminal acts, whether destroying cities, killing cops, executing fellow blacks, or shaking down corporations for millions of dollars.
If the Democrat party and its fellow leftists are willing to do this to the people already on their side, just wait to see what they have in store for “the enemy” (that’s you — the white man, the white woman, the Jew, the Trump supporter of any race, sex, or faith).
I can see the notices go up now: The government will no longer deliver mail to people who openly supported Trump. They committed treason because he was colluding with Russia (never mind that even Mueller admitted there was no collusion), and they need to be grateful that they’re merely losing mail service. Oh, and did we mention that no Republicans can use Medicare or receive Social Security. Hey, that’s what happens to traitors. We’re just being fair to those Americans who honored black and transgender lives. And did you really think you could keep your job? America has too many new immigrants looking for work to allow traitors to hold precious jobs.
And again, if you think I’m exaggerating, look at how the left is upping the attacks against Trump supporters and other conservatives.
Think of Nick Sandmann, a 16-year-old boy, who was slandered across America and now lives under constant threat because he wore a MAGA hat. He was targeted because, after being insulted by racist Black Israelites and then having a scarily unkempt man pound a drum in his face, he offered a tentative smile to the man, trying to defuse the situation.
Think of Goya foods, which Democrats in Congress targeted for a boycott aimed at destroying a company that employs thousands of people, simply because the company’s president expressed a preference for the Republican candidate instead of the Democrat candidate.
Pay attention, as well, to how Democrats and their fellow leftists are “other-izing” and “demonizing” whole groups of people. We all thought “Well, that’s just leftist Seattle” when we learned that white city employees were being pushed into a “class” that would tell them how foul their whiteness is. That joke stopped being so funny when we learned that the U.S. Treasury Department used our tax dollars for a different seminar telling whites how vile they are. It became even less funny, if possible, today when Judicial Watch revealed that the Obama administration was already pushing this indoctrination on the American military.
Speaking of tax dollars, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is a branch of the taxpayer-supported Smithsonian, has dedicated a page at its blog to telling all visitors to the site that whiteness is a form of irremediable and irredeemable racism. The horrible irony of its approach is that, having defined whiteness as evil, the webpage includes a poster talking about white attitudes, values, and actions.
Aside from the insulting items on the poster (whites still believe in a 1950s-style subordination of women in the home and like their women to look like Barbie dolls), the other ones are profoundly insulting to blacks. According to the poster, things such as ambition, hard work, punctuality, self-reliance, a home with a father, politeness, rational thinking, etc., are all uniquely white traits.
(After drafting this post, I learned that this was also what the Obama administration told people in the military. I was too lazy to change the post, but check out this link.)
In other words, taxpayers are paying to tell blacks that they do not have these traits, values, and habits — nor should they cultivate them because buying into those traits means selling out. But all those beliefs and behaviors, which have nothing to do with skin color, are a necessity for achieving success in all aspects of American life.
That point — about discouraging black success in America — leads directly to the rising, openly-expressed anti-Semitism amongst black celebrities. Keep in mind that anti-Semitism has been at the heart of leftism since Marx. Despite being (or perhaps because he was) genetically Jewish, every fiber of Marx’s being despised Jews. (He was also a black-hating racist.) Hitler fused Germany’s ancient Christian anti-Semitism with Marx’s socialist anti-Semitism to create genocidal anti-Semitism.
Genocidal anti-Semitism has also been at the heart of Islam since Mohammed’s time. The Koran is filled with indictments against the Jews and exhortations to devout Muslims to slaughter Jews.
Black Lives Matter represents a fusion of these two strands of anti-Semitism: It’s Marxist and it’s closely connected with the Nation of Islam, which has long been led by the white-hating, anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan, incidentally, is no longer a fringe figure. Remember where he sat at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.
Farrakhan’s brand of anti-Semitism has been roiling under the surface of black American life for a long time. What’s frightening now is that it’s coming to the surface with a vengeance through the mouthpiece of black celebrities who are untouchable. For example, Disney is standing by Nick Cannon, who mouthed classic, terribly dangerous anti-Semitic tropes. (Fox is in on this too.) And Nancy Pelosi is endorsing Ilhan Omar, who perfectly blends Islam and leftism into open anti-Semitism.
Moreover, when it comes to the black community, these anti-Semitic words fall on fertile soil, and that’s because of the kind of race-hating crap in that handout at the Smithsonian’s black history museum (or the U.S. military).
After all, those handouts are marching orders to American blacks to fail. If you, a black person, follow the leftist advice you will not work hard, have ambition, create a nuclear family with a mother and a father, be polite, be punctual, be self-reliant, or get educated. In other words, if you are a black person who follows the race hustlers’ advice, you will have a life of virtually assured failure, as will your children.
And here’s where it’s get really clever: No matter what the self-destructive behaviors in which blacks engage, they are told that anything bad that flows from those behaviors is not their fault.
It’s not that you guys are murdering each other with abandon (which may be a byproduct of a leftist abortion culture that doesn’t value life); it’s that darned Second Amendment.
It’s not that your culture encourages kids to fail in school lest they appear white; it’s the school’s fault because the teacher’s are racist.
And it’s not that the welfare culture has stripped black families of father figures, a situation that pushes boys into crime and girls into promiscuity; again, it’s racism.
Indeed, we’ve been hearing for a long time about “systemic racism.” What’s different now, and very frightening, is that the fusion of leftism and Islam is encouraging blacks to be specific about the source of that systemic racism: It’s the Jews. Indeed, when “Charlamagne tha God” heard that Nick Cannon was getting grief for his openly expressed racism, his first response was that Cannon’s getting called out was proof that Jews have too much power, while other blacks with power in the Democrat party offered similar sentiments.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are some Jews who have too much power. You know which Jews? The leftist Jews in politics and culture, the ones pushing this intellectually corrupt, factually dishonest “systemic racism”crap on blacks who don’t realize they’re being played.
I’m thinking of people like Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Jeffrey Toobin, Noam Chomsky, George Soros, and all the other high-profile leftist Jews whose religion has nothing to do with the Torah and everything to do with Das Kapital. Their malevolent power resides in their abandonment of Jewish doctrine, with its focus on the worth of each individual, the recognition that we’re all God’s children, and a belief in the sanctity of the family. Just as evil is the refusal of these non-Torah, leftist Jews to share with blacks the cultural values that Jews have developed over the century: Hard work, ambition, rational thinking, etc.
So yeah, we’re facing an extinction event. What’s in the path of the oncoming political meteor is bigger than the Republican party. We’ve had a preview of the Marxist / Islamic policies heading our way — violence, racial division, purges, thought crimes, the erasure of our constitutional rights, and the type of dehumanizing anti-whiteness and anti-Semitism that put Nazi Germany on the path to the Holocaust. If you think it can’t happen here, you’re wrong. It can — unless we stop it at the polling place on November 3, 2020.
As for the polling place, remember that in this election there are no “wasted” or “safe” votes. Every conservative in a Blue state must vote just in case moderate Democrats have decided that their future safety lies in supporting Trump. If those Democrats make the effort to support Trump, their votes will be meaningless if you can’t be bothered to cast your own vote because “we’re gonna lose anyway.” That negative is how we lose the chance to turn a Blue state Red.
Likewise, every conservative must vote in a Red state, no matter how assured the Republican outcome has been in past elections. Expect voter fraud on an unprecedented scale. If you don’t bother to vote because “we’re gonna win anyway,” you may find that the graveyard votes are sufficient in number to turn a Red state Blue. The only way to prevent that from happening is for conservative Red staters to abandon complacency and show up in overwhelming numbers.
You’re always told that you need to vote because “this election,” whichever election it happens to be, is pivotal. As with listening to the boy who cries “wolf,” you’ve learned over the years that the elections have never really been pivotal. Instead, they’ve been predictable. Whether Democrats or Republicans control Washington, D.C., the outcome is always a leftist shift in American federal politics. The only difference is that the shift left is faster during Democrat ascendencies and slower during Republican ones.
This year, however, we truly face an EXTINCTION EVENT. The left is no longer keeping it secret that it wants you dead. Your choice, therefore, is the choice that, if made wrong, always precedes a country’s collapse: VOTE OR DIE. (By the way, Noam Chomsky understands this too, which is why he’s trying to revitalize climate change extermination panic.)
And just to give this whole post a musical vibe, a friend sent me the perfect video showing what the Jacobins have in store for those who don’t support their program:
UPDATE: The Trump team has been looking at Biden’s proposals. Just so you know what’s in store, this is a distillation of what the Trump team claims Biden is advancing.
Image: YouTube screengrab
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Bill Gates’ Nuclear Reactor Hits a Roadblock
Bill Gates is optimistic about the future—and the role of nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly energy source—but he faces significant obstacles along the way.
His company, TerraPower, is working on new technologies to revolutionize nuclear power. One of them is a traveling wave reactor (TWR). A TWR doesn’t rely exclusively on enriched uranium, which is expensive to acquire and the waste is problematic to store with a half-life of almost 4.5 billion years. Rather, TWR initiates the reaction with enriched uranium then switches to depleted uranium, the waste left over from uranium enrichment. A TWR could run on depleted uranium for decades.
Rather than cooling the reactor with water, a TWR uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The reactor can therefore operate at a lower temperature than conventional reactors and is less vulnerable to a Chernobyl-type accident.
TerraPower is also developing a molten chloride fast reactor, which uses molten salt as a coolant and as the fuel medium, giving it the potential to significantly boost efficiency.
At TerraPower’s state-of-the-art Bellevue lab, engineers put sophisticated computer models of the company’s technologies through real-world tests without having to use actual radioactive fuel. Powerful cutting-edge computers process the data at a complexity and speed previously unheard of in the nuclear industry.
“The new thing is advanced physics, enabled by modern computing power that was really only available in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Chris Levesque, TerraPower president and CEO.
TerraPower recently hit an important milestone: 1,000 hours of continuous operations on an isothermal loop that is testing the effects of moving molten salt through a reactor. This is a significant step forward in the company’s efforts to create a licensed demonstration reactor.
One major problem with a TWR power plant is the price. It will cost about $3 billion to build a demonstration reactor. Even Bill Gates isn’t rich enough to fund it himself. TerraPower had signed a promising agreement with China to build a demonstration reactor, but the project has been shuttered due to China-U.S. trade tensions. The company is now lobbying Congress for a public-private partnership to fund the reactor.
Despite the setbacks, Gates still seems optimistic about nuclear power’s potential.
“Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day,” Gates said. “The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.”
Read more about developments in nuclear power at Nuclear Propulsion: How We Could Reach the Stars with Current Technology.
Monday, October 30, 2017
WhenHub - Update
WhenHub SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens)
Today might be one of the biggest days of my life, and it will be impossible to explain why that is so unless you know at least a little bit about blockchain, dAPPS, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and the legal distinction between a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) and an ICO.
If those words look unfamiliar, one of the biggest technical revolutions the world has ever known is sneaking up on you. The folks in Silicon Valley – who live about three years in the future compared to the rest of the country – can’t stop talking about this topic. The smartest people in the Valley tell me blockchain will change nearly everything, and already is. It’s like “the Internet” before anyone had heard of the Internet. That’s how big it is.
One small example is that startups are raising funds by creating and selling their own digital “tokens” or “coins,” using blockchain technology, that serve as the payment mechanisms within their products. The tokens have an advantage over regular money in part because you can program simple rules for them using distributed apps, or dAPPS, to add function to your product. And blockchain brings its own set of advantages I’ll mention below.
In the case of WhenHub, a dAPP will trigger an automatic payment when certain conditions are met. The effect is to eliminate billing and invoicing efforts for micro-contracts while creating a distributed record of each transaction that is impervious to manipulation.
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My example doesn’t get at the full power of blockchain. It’s just one of the many things it can do.
The reason people buy these digital tokens from startups is that they hope the value will rise as the startup adds customers. The tokens are artificially limited in quantity, so the value of each token increases with demand. Customers of the startup won’t notice the rise in token value because prices within the product are pegged to nominal “real money” value. In other words, if one token is worth a dollar today, but worth ten dollars tomorrow, the startup auto-adjusts the price within the product to ten-percent of a token. The customer always pays the same “real money” price even as token values rise.
Tokens can easily be exchanged for Bitcoins or cash on websites that do that sort of thing. See Bitcoin Exchanges.
The process of creating digital tokens to raise funds is called an ICO (initial coin offering) when you do it the wild-west unregulated way. If you lawyer-up in advance, jumping through lots of (expensive) hoops to minimize future regulatory risks, your lawyers will tell you to call it a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT). A SAFT is a contract with the startup to issue you tokens if and when it is able to launch a network in which the token has utility value. That’s what WhenHub is announcing today.
To be clear, ICOs and SAFTs are not investments, nor do they give the buyer equity in the startup. But they do provide an easy way – compared to angel investing – to share in whatever success the startup experiences. With SAFTs and ICOs the startup describes its plans in a white paper so any potential token buyers can evaluate the risks. WhenHub already has several products on the market, with more coming soon, but we describe in our white paper a proposed new product that is based on our existing scheduling platform and takes advantage of blockchain. The proposed product (WhenHub Interface) is the one that will use digital tokens.
If you are new to this field, I hope I just gave you a toe-hold for understanding it. And I would be delighted if you share this post with friends.
Our tokens are only available in Australia, Canada, European Economic Area, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Russian Federation, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States (excluding New York State). If you are in the United States, you need to be an Accredited Investor (meaning kinda rich) to participate. Outside the United States, regulatory restrictions are lower.
Our Pre-sale is now in progress and our Public Sale starts on Nov. 10, 2017. During the Pre-sale, the minimum purchase amount is $50,000 and participants get an Early Bird bonus of 30%. For the Public Sale the minimum amount is $250, and the the Early Bird discount starts at 20% and decreases to none in two weeks.
Here’s the executive summary from our white paper. A link to the full paper is at the end.
— Executive Summary —
WhenHub proposes to build a mobile app for connecting consumers to experts of all kinds via two-way video streams, text, audio, or in person. The app will be part of a larger service ecosystem called the WhenHub Interface Network (WIN) (Patent Pending).
The service will use dAPPS (distributed apps) running on the Ethereum blockchain to create secure micro-contracts – that can be as short as 15 minutes – as well as to provide frictionless billing and payment service. At the end of each micro-contract, payment in the form of WHEN Tokens will be automatically transferred to the expert. No paperwork or billing is involved.
Users buy WHEN Tokens using a credit card or with Bitcoins at an online exchange via the WhenHub Interface app. The tokens are used within the app to pay experts for their time.
For privacy, your phone number and address are not shared with experts.
Our partners will provide verification services on participating experts to give consumers confidence.
No international billing and currency issues when WHEN Tokens are involved.
Pricing for experts can be fixed or auction-based.
In the gig economy, think of this product as a “long tail” market for expert advice. Experts of all kinds can display their availability whenever they like, for as short a window as 15 minutes.
The WhenHub Interface app will use the existing commercial WhenHub API for scheduling and geofencing features.
WhenSense is our proposed technology for allowing third-party sites to host ads about our participating experts’ availability and share in the income from completed contracts. Site owners paste our HTML code into their site to participate.
WHEN Tokens are not an investment vehicle, but because they will be artificially limited in quantity, their value is expected to fluctuate based on customer demand for the WhenHub Interface app.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
The Systems President - Scott Adams
The Systems President
Was President Trump’s first attempt at getting a healthcare bill a failure?
Your answer to that question probably depends on whether you are a goals-thinker or a systems-thinker.
If you see the world in terms of goals, you would say the healthcare bill did not get enough votes on the first try, and therefore it is clearly a Trump/Ryan failure.
But if you see the world in terms of systems, things look a lot better. I talk about the advantages of systems over goals in my book. The quick summary is that a system is something you do on a regular basis that improves your odds of success in a non-specific way. Systems-thinkers choose paths that allow them to come out ahead in the long run even if they appear to be “failing” along the way.
For example, if you are a founder of a startup that doesn’t work out, you usually end up with new skills. Maybe you also gain new contacts in the industry, more insight into the market, and that sort of thing. Those new assets make your odds of success on the next startup far better.
College students are systems-people. They go to class and study every day without knowing precisely where their careers will lead them. All they know is that a college degree gives them more options and better odds of success. That’s a good system.
I’ve blogged about my main system in life that involves building my Talent Stack. I figure out which skills I need to add to the ones I already have to make myself unique and valuable in the marketplace. For example, right now I’m building out my skillset for livestreaming over Periscope and YouTube. That skill goes well with my blogging. I don’t know exactly where that all ends up, but I know my options will increase with my Talent Stack.
With that bit of background on systems, let’s get back to healthcare. As a systems-thinker, I don’t see the first attempt at a GOP healthcare bill as a failure. I see it as part of Trump’s normal systems-thinking approach. The tell for a good system is that failure puts you AHEAD. And that’s exactly what happened.
By the way, I told you during the campaign that one of Trump’s signature moves is creating two ways to win and no way to lose. He did that again with healthcare. Here were his two ways to win:
1. Healthcare bill gets passed on the first try. Trump looks like an effective leader. The details of the bill get improved over time.
2. The healthcare bill does NOT pass on the first try. This softens up the far right by branding them villains. Now they have to compromise on the next bill or watch as centrist Democrats enter the conversation. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on Obamacare, and the conditions for compromise are IMPROVING EVERY MINUTE. That’s what the Master Persuader tells us happens when you “walk away from the table” like you mean it. Trump just walked away from the table to go work on tax reform. If you watch his Twitter feed, you know he is winking at the public and telling us to stay tuned on healthcare.
Meanwhile, a fascinating thing is happening outside of government. Watch how many private citizens are looking into the details of healthcare reform and even proposing their own solutions on blogs and articles. The nation is engaged on the topic in a way that looks like a self-organizing system. All the public needs is some sort of common website that is designed to discuss the pros and cons of the various ideas in plain language so the best ones can bubble up to the top.
I’ve blogged before that the United States is no longer strictly a Republic. Social media creates a direct-democracy option in the sense that public opinion can be so strong that politicians have to bend to it. But social media only has power if it can focus on something specific. Until the public comes up with its own healthcare plan, social media is powerless.
But consider our unique situation. As far as we citizens can tell, Congress is no longer functional for any issue that has as many lobbyists as the healthcare topic. They can’t get it done on their own. Too many industry-created roadblocks.
Social media, and the weight of public opinion, could overcome any roadblocks in Congress by making it impossible for politicians to get reelected if they ignore the public’s preferred plan. But the public has no preferred plan. There is only public confusion about the options.
As a citizen, I call upon the Trump administration to help the public create a system to sort out the best healthcare options for the country, free from the pressure of lobbyists. Just tell us which website to look at, and we’ll do the rest. When we (collectively) have a good set of proposals (let’s say three different plans), Congress can turn them into bills and vote. If the public takes sides with one of the bills, that helps to neuter the lobbyists. Lobbyists know politicians need to get reelected. And that means lobbyists are helpless when the public and the politicians are on the same side.
I don’t like living in the “can’t do” country. If Congress can’t get healthcare fixed, the public appears ready and willing to fill the gap. All we need is a preferred website to focus that energy.
Better yet, let’s see the debate on healthcare as a limited engagement reality TV show. Bring on the experts on each mini-topic (such as selling insurance across state lines) and have them try to convince a panel of business-expert judges that their plan is the best.
I’d watch it.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Healthcare Startups that Lower Costs - Scott Adams
Healthcare Startups that Lower Costs
This is just an update showing some more startups that could lower healthcare costs in the future.
Create your own Whencast49 Comments
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Twitter is Biased - Scott Adams
Nothing to See Here, Folks
I recently tweeted a link to my blog post that is unflattering to the proponents of climate science. I have 138,000 Twitter followers. My traffic from Twitter to my blog in a recent minute was only 14 people, while overall traffic from other sources was its usual robust self. For non-controversial topics, my Twitter-driven traffic for a tweet to my blog would be 200-300 per minute in the half-hour after a tweet. On this topic, it hovered between 10-14.
As many others have documented, Twitter throttles back the tweets of people who hold political views they don’t like.
Most of you have freedom of speech. I have it too, in a Constitutional sense. But in terms of social media – the dominant form of political communication in our culture – I have about 5-10% as much freedom of speech as other people.
In my case, that’s all I need.
It just takes longer.
And I do like a challenge.
That’s why I am building my own podcasting studio in my home. I’ll be spreading my creative content across multiple platforms to try and claw-back my freedom of speech.
For my new YouTube livestreaming and playbacks, see the link in my Twitter bio which is this: bit.ly/2lYiCRo
I’m also doing livestreaming on Periscope at @ScottAdamsSays. And I’ll be doing more live content on Facebook soon as well.
The live-streaming video stuff is all beta-quality production values as I work through the learning curve. I’m doing most of the research and tech myself as part of building my talent stack. (Plus, it’s crazy fun.)
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Berkeley and Hitler - Scott Adams
Berkeley and Hitler
Here’s the best article you are likely to read about the absurdity of calling ANY American president Hitler. This is the sort of persuasion (sprinkled with facts) that can dissolve some of the post-election cognitive dissonance that hangs like a dark cloud over the country. Share it liberally, so to speak. You might save lives.
Speaking of Hitler, I’m ending my support of UC Berkeley, where I got my MBA years ago. I have been a big supporter lately, with both my time and money, but that ends today. I wish them well, but I wouldn’t feel safe or welcome on the campus. A Berkeley professor made that clear to me recently. He seems smart, so I’ll take his word for it.
I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant who has an African-American boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus.
Yesterday I asked my most liberal, Trump-hating friend if he ever figured out why Republicans have most of the Governorships, a majority in Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court. He said, “There are no easy answers.”
I submit that there are easy answers. But for many Americans, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias hide those easy answers behind Hitler hallucinations.
I’ll keep working on clearing the fog. Estimated completion date, December 2017. It’s a big job.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Be Careful What You Wish For (especially if it is Hitler)
Be Careful What You Wish For (especially if it is Hitler)
As a trained persuader, I’m seeing a dangerous situation forming that I assume is invisible to most of you. The setup is that during the presidential campaign Trump’s critics accused him of being Hitler(ish) and they were sure other citizens would see it too, thus preventing this alleged monster from taking office.
They were wrong. The alleged monster took office.
Now you have literally millions of citizens in the United States who were either right about Trump being the next Hitler, and we will see that behavior emerge from him soon, or they are complete morons. That’s a trigger for cognitive dissonance. The science says these frightened folks will start interpreting all they see as Hitler behavior no matter how ridiculous it might seem to the objective observer. And sure enough, we are seeing that.
To be fair, Trump made it easy this week with his temporary immigration ban. If you assume Trump is Hitler, that fits with your hypothesis. But of course it also fits the hypothesis that he’s just doing his job. We’re all seeing what we expect to see.
But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it. Obviously they don’t prefer it in a conscious way. But the alternative to Trump becoming Hitler is that they have to live out the rest of their lives as confirmed morons. No one wants to be a confirmed moron. And certainly not after announcing their Trump opinions in public and demonstrating in the streets. It would be a total embarrassment for the anti-Trumpers to learn that Trump is just trying to do a good job for America. It’s a threat to their egos. A big one.
And this gets me to my point. When millions of Americans want the same thing, and they want it badly, the odds of it happening go way up. You can call it the power of positive thinking. It is also the principle behind affirmations. When humans focus on a desired future, events start to conspire to make it happen.
I’m not talking about any new-age magic. I’m talking about ordinary people doing ordinary things to turn Trump into an actual Hitler. For example, if protesters start getting violent, you could expect forceful reactions eventually. And that makes Trump look more like Hitler. I can think of dozens of ways the protesters could cause the thing they are trying to prevent. In other words, they can wish it into reality even though it is the very thing they are protesting.
In the 3rd dimension of persuasion, the protesters need to be proven right, and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen. So you might see the protesters inadvertently create the police state they fear.
If you are looking for the tells that this dangerous situation is developing, notice how excited/happy the Trump critics seem to be – while angry at the same time – that Trump’s immigration ban fits their belief system. If you see people who are simply afraid of Trump, they are probably harmless. But the people who are excited about any Hitler-analogy-behavior by Trump might be leading the country to a police state without knowing it.
So watch for that.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
The Trump Talent Stack - Scott Adams
The Trump Talent Stack
As I explained in my book, there are two ways to make yourself valuable. The first way is to become the best at some specific skill, the way Tiger Woods dominated golf. But not many of us can be Tiger Woods. So that path is unavailable to 99% of the world.
I recommend a different approach. Most people can – with practice – develop a variety of skills that work well together. I call this idea the Talent Stack.
For example, I’m a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humor, I’m fairly unique. And in this case that uniqueness has commercial value.
Now consider president-elect Trump. He doesn’t have one talent that is best-in-the-world, but he does have one of the best talent stacks I have ever seen. Consider all the ways in which Trump is better than average, but not best-in-the-world. I’ll list the obvious ones.
Public Speaking: Trump is an engaging speaker, and he knows how to entertain a crowd. But no one would say he’s one of the best speakers in the world.
Humor: Trump is funny. But he isn’t Seinfeld funny. He’s just funnier than most people. That’s all he needs.
Intelligence: Trump is smart. He probably wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton on a standardized IQ test, but he’s smarter than 90% of the world, and probably far more. That’s good enough for a talent stack.
Knowledge of Politics: Compared to career politicians and political pundits, Trump looks under-informed. But he probably knows more about politics than 95% of the public. And that seems to be enough. Advisors will fill in the knowledge gap.
Branding: Trump is a world-class marketer and brander. He probably isn’t the best in the world at those things. But he’s very, very good.
Hiring and Firing: One of the most important skills a president needs is the ability to hire good advisors and – equally important – fire the mistakes. Trump has plenty of experience doing both. He probably isn’t the best in the world at hiring and firing, but I’ll bet he’s in the top 10% just from practice.
Strategy: Trump won the presidency in large part because his non-standard strategy worked great. He focused on free media, big rallies, and the key swing states. That was good enough to win. Trump probably isn’t the best strategist in the world, but he’s very good.
Social Media: Trump understands social media in a way that people of his generation usually don’t. Trump might not be the most Internet-savvy politician of all time, but he’s definitely in the top 10%.
Persuasion: Trump might be the most persuasive person I have ever observed in the act of persuading. But keep in mind that persuasion requires a talent stack too. Trump is persuasive because he combines a bunch of minor skills into one big persuasive toolbox. For example, Trump is good at reading people, good at being provocative to attract energy, and good at sales technique. He probably isn’t the best in the world at any of those minor skills, but when you add them together, along with lots of other subsidiary persuasion skills, and now the Office of the President – Trump might be the most persuasive person on Earth.
Risk management: Trump understands risk. We see it in his business dealings as he isolates different lines of business in their own corporate structures so they can fail without bringing down the rest. We also know that Trump enters businesses that have an unlimited upside potential with limited risk. And he prefers gambling with other people’s money. Trump probably understands risk management better than 90% of the public.
Trump’s critics have a hard time understanding Trump’s success because he lacks any best-in-the-world talents. They mock his simple speaking style, his lack of policy knowledge, his provocative Tweets and more. But as they criticize the trees they lose sight of the forest. Trump has no trees in his forest that are the best trees in the world. But his forest is one of the best forests in the world.
The takeaway here is that anyone can develop a more valuable talent stack. Just figure out which talents go well together. If in doubt, add public speaking to your stack first. Learn a second language if you can – but only a useful language. And persuasion makes you more effective at nearly everything you do. Those are just examples. You’re the best judge of which skills you need.
President-elect Trump might not be a good role model in terms of his personal life. And you might not care for his policies. But when it comes to a role model for success, you will never see better. Trump’s talent stack is outstanding.
On a related note, Kanye West is another good example of a talent stack. He isn’t the best in the world at singing, dancing, writing, or any other skill you would assume is necessary for his job. But you won’t see many people with Kanye’s combination of talents, including his business acumen, his drive, and his knack for self-promotion. Kanye has been building his talent stack for years. And now he’s adding politics. You probably think Kanye has no chance to be president because of his current mental/emotional health hospitalization. But you’d be wrong. Hillary Clinton proved that health concerns are not disqualifying.
I’m not going to predict a future Kanye West presidency. But if you think it is unlikely, you don’t understand the power of talent stacks. It is possible that Kanye is doing nothing in the hospital but recovering. But I like to think he is using that time to learn Spanish. That’s how Master Persuaders roll.
You can read more about talent stacks and the value of systems over goals in my book.
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