Episode 208 Scott Adams: Socialism, Woodward’s Book, Nike, Airplane Fear Persuasion
Date: 2018-09-05 | Duration: 44:30
Topics
Amy Siskind took down her tweet accusing Zina Bash of white power signal Bob Woodward’s book says things denied by the people referenced He begins with a fact and devolves into mind reading over and over Understand President Trump’s mindset, and how he’s successful is obvious Selling healthcare for all without getting stuck in the Socialism bog Uses for the Interface app by WhenHub
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## Transcript
## [New Studio Setup and Potential Interviews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=8s)
Hey everybody, what's taking you so long? I'm finally on time; you should be too. I'm putting together a new studio system pretty soon. I've got a couple of components I'm waiting for in the mail and then I'll be able to do some split screens if all works out. I'm using the SlingStudio setup—this is not it yet, this is still just running off my iPad—but if I can get that going in less than a week or so, then these podcasts or these Periscopes could get a lot more interesting. I'll be able to do a split screen and have somebody call in on FaceTime or Skype or whatever, and then we're going to have some fun.
Think about this for a minute. You've seen me interview some people, and when I have interviewed people on here with my bad technology, people have loved those episodes. But they've also been friendly interviews. How much would you like to see me interview somebody I disagreed with? So far, the only people I've had on with you here on Periscope are people who I knew in advance would be pretty compatible with your thinking and mine, but just imagine somebody who disagreed with me. Yes, it would be just as fun as you think it would be.
## [Amy Siskind and the Zina Bash Controversy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=129s&v=w3B6D5S8nyQ)
We got a few topics. Most of you saw that Amy Siskind and other people were tweeting about Judge Kavanaugh's assistant, Zina Bash, who allegedly had her hands—and I'm not going to put my hands in those positions because then you'll be screenshotting—but let's just say her hand was in a position with the "OK" sign but looked accidental. It was just a random placement. People said, "My God, it must be the white power signal," which was a little bit crazy. I think it did reveal the level of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I tweeted out that the 48-hour rule was in effect. People said, "For whom? For Amy Siskind who blamed her for being white power, or was the 48-hour rule for Zina Bash who did that allegedly?" I said both. The 48-hour rule is optional, so anybody can clarify anything they want. The rule is that if they clarify, you accept the clarification.
Amy Siskind took down her tweet, I noticed this morning, which I would take as a retraction. That's the reason you take down a tweet. Should she apologize? Of course she should, but that's not exactly what the 48-hour rule is for. If she doesn't want to, that's a personal decision. I don't really care, but she did retract it, and that was the more important part of it.
Likewise, the husband of Kavanaugh's assistant tweeted that it was disgusting, basically, and that they didn't even know that symbol existed until they read it in the news. Normally, I wouldn't accept someone else's clarification; you need it from the person themselves. But for a spouse, my ruling is I accept that. I don't think she needed to clarify, and she certainly didn't need to apologize—I'm talking about Kavanaugh's assistant—but it's nice that she did clarify. She clarified it was exactly what you and I thought it was, which was a random thing. The 48-hour rule has, in my opinion, worked because both the people involved have clarified. That's good.
## [Trump, Nike, and the Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=252s)
Next topic: I haven't seen the exact quotes, but apparently Trump was soft on Nike and Nike signing up Kaepernick. It's pretty clever for Nike to do this because they did get tons of publicity, but we'll see what that does to their long-term revenue. I have reason to believe it may have been a clever play, but I don't think we can know in the short term. In the short term, it'll knock their stock back; I just don't know if it'll have any long-term effect.
I've been reminded that I have not shared the simultaneous sip. I think it's time. Grab your mug, your cup, your vessel, your glass with the beverage of your choice—I like coffee—and join me for the simultaneous sip. Ah, good stuff.
Trump went soft on Nike, and one of his reasons was that they rent a lot of space in one of his buildings. That's actually a perfectly good reason because he has a conflict of interest. He said it right up front: conflict of interest. He played it soft because it was a conflict of interest, which he told you right up front. I don't expect anything else from him. He doesn't need to do more on that topic; he said what he needed to say.
## [Analyzing Bob Woodward’s Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=378s)
Let's talk about the Bob Woodward book. We might assume that because of his resume, it's the most scholarly, credible, and dependable of all the insider Trump books. That's what you think should be happening, right? Is that what happened? Because it's feeling like the Woodward book is like the poor man's *Fire and Fury*—too little, too late. Doesn't it seem like if the Woodward book had been first, it might have been big news just like *Fire and Fury* was? But now it feels like we already heard this book.
Here's the bigger framework I want to put on it. I don't know if Woodward or even Michael Wolff has ever worked in proper big companies. Michael Wolff has; he's been an editor of something. Certainly Woodward's been with the Washington Post. They should have experience with at least one or more big companies apiece. Here's the context that they're not giving you when they talk about all the underlings who are allegedly saying bad things about their boss: as somebody pointed out, Mattis, Kelly, and I think Dowd as well have all basically said they didn't say the quotes that are attributed to them in the book.
We're in a world where nobody can believe what anybody says. Whether or not some of the quotes were true is less important than the following point: these stories that you heard about the President are identical to any story you would hear about just about any CEO of any major corporation. The stories you're hearing about Trump where he's so dumb he doesn't understand things? Totally normal. That's everybody talking about their own CEO, their own boss. People saying that they managed what information they gave him, that they were stealing documents from his desk so he wouldn't sign them? Is that unusual? Nope, totally normal.
Everything Woodward reported—and I believe a lot of it is fake—we don't know what percentage. I don't know if 80% of it is made up. Probably not made up; I imagine his sources actually told him this stuff. But it's possible that up to 80% of it is not true. His sources may have actually said that, and he might actually trust his sources, but as you see the denials coming in, the denials sound fairly credible as well. But let's say it's true that underlings were saying unkind things about their bosses which, if they had been quoted, they wouldn't want anybody to hear. What does that describe? Every large organization everywhere.
## [Persuasion, Systems Thinking, and Trump’s Success](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=621s)
Trust me, I literally am the guy who wrote the book on this. I'm the Dilbert guy. I spent 30 years writing about this. The reason that Dilbert is one of the most popular comic strips in the history of humankind is because people recognize the situation. I have an entire comic that's about people managing what the boss sees and what he knows because they think the boss is an idiot.
To me, this looked like the most normal situation I've ever seen. Everyone thinks the boss is less smart than they are. But here's the thing: those other people didn't become President, and they couldn't. One of the problems that I have as a person who has studied persuasion is that if you put me in the meeting—if you just air-dropped me into a Fortune 500 meeting and they didn't know who I was—and then they go around the table and everybody says what they think we should do in this situation, what would my ideas look like? Remember, I'm always dealing on this psychological persuasion level, and the people in the room are not going to be familiar with it. What would my ideas look like if they were just unfiltered and I didn't have any time to explain any context? Crazy, stupid, uninformed, childish.
All of my ideas look like that to people who don't know where they're coming from. Systems, not goals. When I talk in systems and people are goal-thinkers, what do they think of me? They think I'm crazy. They think I must be inexperienced. Most of the things that I talk about on this Periscope are very similar to things I've been saying all of my life because I've been studying this field for decades. What do you think people said to me in my corporate life when I was 30 years old? I would have a wonderful idea that was either persuasion-based or systems-based versus a goal. They didn't get it at all. It wasn't what we used to do. It just didn't make any sense. It was so far out of left field.
When President Trump ran for president, what did people say about just about every single thing he did? They said it was stupid, uninformed, ignorant, can't possibly work, destructive, crazy, racist. They said he's not spending enough money. They said he's using Twitter too much. They said he was too mean. They said he didn't know enough. They said he was lying. Just imagine how stupid his plan would sound to advisors like Gary Cohn or Kelly or Mattis. They would walk out of the room and say, "Good lord, this guy's an idiot. He's going to tweet himself into the presidency? Are you serious?"
When President Trump said, "Yeah, I think I'll go talk to Kim Jong Un," what do you think all the smart people said? What did that get us? Well, it got us a lot further than we've been before. Critics will say we're stalled now, but it looks to me exactly like the way I mapped it out for you. There had to be walk-aways in this process. North Korea had to walk away at least once. We're in a walk-away period where nothing much has changed, but are we in a more dangerous world or less dangerous world? To me, it seems unambiguously less dangerous. So who was the smart one who said, "Let me just talk to Kim," and who were the dumb ones who had all the information and were the experts who would have said, "No, you don't talk to him until we've got a deal where he gives up everything and we give up nothing"?
President Trump continually makes systems work that the experts say won't work. Do you remember what everybody said about trade deals? End of the world, he's stupid, he's crazy, don't start all these trade deals at once. Well, I thought it was a good play to do them all at once when our economy is the strongest it's ever been. If you can do them all at once, you show everybody how serious you are. He said, "Let's do them all, let's do them hard," and if some of them start falling in line, the other dominoes are going to fall. It looks like that might happen; I think we might get Canada lined up pretty soon.
## [Mind-Reading in Media and the Jeff Sessions Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=1118s)
The other thing I want to say about the Woodward book is look for the mind-reading. Look for how many times the book starts with a fact and then it devolves into mind-reading. It would look like this: "This or that aide was quoted as saying that," and then the next sentence will be something like, "the staff were panicked that the President might do this or that." There is no evidence for the panic; it's not in the quote. You've taken the fact but then you've exaggerated it into imagining what people were thinking.
Now that we have some retrospective perspective, what does that tell you about what he's doing in office? Is it all dumb and stupid and wrong? Would anybody have advised him to insult Jeff Sessions repeatedly in tweets and in interviews? Literally no one would tell him that's a good idea. But I'll bet it's working. I think Jeff Sessions will probably resign if the President keeps the pressure on him, and resigning makes the President not the bad guy. He's just a guy who had an opinion and he was transparent about it. Can you hate him for being transparent? No, you cannot. And if Jeff Sessions quits because he doesn't like the pressure, well, now you have a gray area. Was that obstructing justice, or was that just a President giving you his opinion?
## [The Persuasion Counter to Socialism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=1244s)
Let's talk about socialism. I'm hearing people ask, "What is the counter-persuasion to socialism?" because socialism suddenly became very popular, at least on the left. I've heard people say we should compare it to Venezuela, or call it communism or Marxism, or say they can't afford it. But notice that none of those counter-attacks are effective. Have you ever seen anybody who said to themselves, "Oh, Venezuela? I guess I don't want healthcare"? When people think Democratic Socialism, they just think of Europe. And Europe looks fine.
I would say the Venezuela thing doesn't work because people think that's a special case with bad management. As long as there are big, successful European countries making it work, people are going to say the problems are the other stuff. Arguing against socialism, even to my ears, sounds like greedy rich people who don't want poor people to have education and healthcare.
Here is what would work from a Republican: "We also want everybody to have quality healthcare, but the problem is the cost. We can bring costs down the same way we've boosted the economy. We can get rid of regulations, maybe make medical devices get through faster, do some small trials, or more direct-doctor stuff." You make a story where you can get to low-cost healthcare and lower-cost education without all the debt. Maybe that looks like apprenticeships or job training. That's a strong counter.
You need to "pace and lead." Pacing means to agree with the side you disagree with at first. When somebody says, "We want socialism because we want better healthcare and better education so people don't have crushing debt," you don't say, "How do you pay for them? You're going to be Venezuela." That just doesn't work. A better way is: "We want those things too. We have a plan to get there; you don't. Your way literally doesn't have a plan because the numbers don't add up."
Why is it that the European countries can afford all this stuff but we can't? The answer is that we pay for the big part of their defense. They don't have our priorities. Probably half of all the money they're putting into their healthcare would not be available to them if they had to have their own robust individual defenses. So, you pace: "Yes on healthcare, yes on getting rid of student loans. Here's what we're doing about it. Our plan already works; you can see it working."
Take the example of direct-pay doctors or physician's assistants. This is from Dr. Shiva, I believe. Currently, to become a doctor, you have to go through more than four years of education. Why don't you just have a four-year medical degree so that doctors can come out without a huge crushing debt? It's the sort of thing that could lower the cost of medical care. Don't say socialism is scary; say you have a better plan to get the same benefits.
## [Persuasion Lesson: Overcoming Fear of Flying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=1741s)
I'm going to give you a persuasion lesson on fear of flying. One of the ways people always try to help a friend who has an irrational fear is to say, "It's more dangerous to be in a car," or "It's more dangerous to slip and fall in your shower." That is a bad technique. If people are operating from a starting place of fear and you mention more things to be afraid of, that does not reduce their fear. You're adding to their mind the fear of car accidents, the fear of falling in the bathtub, the fear of being robbed. When you're done, they're more fearful. You can't talk them out of an irrational feeling with data and facts.
Here's a better approach. It's the positive way to say exactly what I already said. Instead of saying other things are way more dangerous, you say, "You're afraid of flying? That's interesting, because one of the reasons I love flying is it's the safest, easiest thing I do. It's literally the safest place in the world based on any kind of statistics. When I'm there, I feel so safe because there's nothing safer than being on the plane. In fact, I can't even think of anything safer. It's probably safer than taking a nap." Now, one little speech isn't going to change somebody's mind, but if you're trying to take the edge off of their fear, that would be a better approach. It's so safe, that's how they move the President around.
## [Interface App Updates and Use Cases](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=1923s)
Total change of topic, but if you're following my startup, the app is called Interface by WhenHub. It allows you to immediately connect to an expert who is online right then on any topic in the world, and the expert sets their own price. We've just updated the app so it will allow you to pay by Apple Pay. We still have some approvals to get from the Google side, but right now we have Apple Pay.
We're building up our expert list. We'll get to the point where with your thumb, you'll be able to connect in like a minute with an expert on any topic. I told you I was trying to put together my split-screen studio thing; you cannot find directions on how to do what I want to do. It doesn't exist. But a very nice person saw me complaining and offered to help me. I talked to him and he answered all the hard questions. I solved my problem talking to an expert in five minutes that just was unsolvable any other way.
Imagine you need medical advice, or you're a low-income person who wants to know how to start a company, or you've got a tax question. If you've got a thumb and an iPhone, pretty soon you'll be able to get any question answered in minutes. Think of all the lonely people in the world who would pay just to have company for a while. You could be an expert at just being good company or an expert at listening. You could just be attractive and people want to talk to you for 15 minutes.
Imagine a health care professional is visiting your grandmother and you want to be able to talk to her at the same time. That professional might want to get paid for that extra service, so they just use the Interface app. Imagine you're a parent and your kid needs help with homework. You can find a tutor on the app who will be there in literally 60 seconds live on the screen.
When you sign up as an expert, you just put in your different keywords. You can change your price any time you want. Experts also rate themselves when they sign on, and once people have connected to you, they can also rank you. So you'll have a rating from users and a rating from yourself.
## [Guest Strategy and Diversity of Opinion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3B6D5S8nyQ&t=2414s)
I don't think Alan Dershowitz will sign up for the app, but I do expect you will see some well-known people very soon. Somebody says I associate with too many creeps. That's my brand. My brand is: if you think somebody's a creep, I'm going to talk to them. If you think somebody is awesome, I'm going to talk to them. If you really hate that person, I'm going to talk to them. That protects me, because if I only talk to "good" people and then I talk to one "bad" person, you'd say, "I can't get it out of my head that you talked to a bad person."
If Farrakhan wanted to talk to me, would I have him on? Yes, I would. Would I talk to David Duke? I would love to. Remember, my brand isn't that I agree with you; my brand is that I'm going to talk to you. I assert that as my inalienable right to talk to anybody I want. I'm not going to agree with them, and you'll know that. And by the way, can you tell me you wouldn't enjoy me talking to an actual white supremacist? You'd like that; that would be good watching.
For those of you who are new, I'm not a white supremacist. That's what would make it fun. I would talk to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she'd be very interesting. That's why we all talk about her, because she's so interesting. Like her or hate her, she's interesting. I would make it the most diverse group I possibly could. Tucker Carlson talks to people he agrees with and people he completely disagrees with. Kim Dotcom? Absolutely, he'd be fun. I think that's enough for now, and I will talk to you later.