Episode 310 Scott Adams: The Difference Between the Child Frame and Leadership Using Saudi Incident
Date: 2018-11-21 | Duration: 14:31
Topics
President Trump’s statement on Saudi Arabia “America First”
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript
[0:11]
hey everybody come on in it's time for a bonus unexpected coffee with Scott Adams you don't need coffee for this one but it would help I've got my special prescription strength coffee you might have just the regular stuff but it's time for the simultaneous sip of whatever you've got handy
so I couldn't wait until tomorrow to talk about the president's statement about Saudi Arabia and I wanted to point out how amazingly well done it is now when I talk about the technique um people sometimes say hey what about the ethics what about morality I want to assure you from the start that my ethics and morality are probably almost exactly the same as everybody else's in other words nobody likes
[1:11]
likes murder nobody likes uh critics being chopped up with bone saws nobody condones it so we're all on the same page about the morality of it okay but I want to uh and I'll get to the strategy uh of it but I wanted to start with how really well done the president's statement is from a persuasion communication um p u perspective and if you haven't seen it I'll just I'll just give you the first few sentences here so it's from the office of the press secretary for a media release today and it said state from statement from Donald J Trump on standing with Saudi Arabia so the first thing is the title says you know it gives gives away the uh the content we're going to stand with Saudi Arabia but then the very next sentence all by itself is America First with exclamation mark and and then he goes the world is a
[2:13]
mark and and then he goes the world is a very dangerous place exclamation mark what he did here is a variant of the Steve Jobs technique of making sure that we stopped thinking in the small and started thinking in the big Remember When Steve Jobs had the problem with antenna gate the phones would fail if you held them a certain way it was terrible for Apple phones but when Steve Jobs finally talked about it he did not say Apple phones have problems he said all smartphones have problems we want to make our customers happy here's what we're going to do it's the perfect way to approach it the president used a variant on that by making sure that he said America first um right up at the the top so before you read a single word of the statement you know where it's going right he's going to give you a statement of what's good for America that may not be as good for other people
[3:14]
that may not be as good for other people you know optionally it might not be bad for anybody else but we'll see and then he says the world is a very dangerous place that's where he's changed the frame so the question is not this incident it's the bigger picture and then he goes on to say very clear cly that we have economic interests and we have strategic interests um and working with them is more in the benefit of the United States than getting on their case too hard we're we're on their case a bit and individuals are being uh punished but in terms of the leadership in terms of the Crown Prince um it's sort of a sort of a standoffish you know we can't know exactly what happened but wink wink everybody knows what happened so the first thing that's funny about the news coverage is that they're acting as though the president is the only person in the world who doesn't know that Saudi Arabia planned this
[4:16]
Arabia planned this operation of course he knows he knows he knows everything that everybody else knows some people are saying hey he's doubting the cia's assessment no he isn't no he isn't he's not doubting their assessment we um we don't know exactly what the president is thinking I'm going to I'm going to give you my best uh my best description of what the smartest strategy would be but we don't know what people are thinking so it seems very unlikely that the only person in the world who doesn't think that the Crown Prince was behind it was the president of the United States Maybe but it seems very unlikely far more likely is that he's looking at it strategically instead of through what I would call a child's frame let's see if I can get the Shine off of that so here's a little diagram of the
[5:20]
that so here's a little diagram of the the two strategies so the Saudi incident of course is koki being murdered in the uh the embassy in Turkey there are two ways to go you can immediately go um we know you're behind this and we're going to go hard at you and we're going to punish you and we can never work with you that's sort of the end of the path right you're you're you're kind of done is in terms of progress or you could take this path you could pretend as though you can never be sure who ordered it even if you are sure you could certainly from a political and diplomatic perspective say you know we've got bigger issues we'll never know that's all we that's all we can say for sure is that we'll never know the details if you do that you have an option to leverage the Saudi interests and our interest to get something maybe
[6:20]
and our interest to get something maybe that looks like progress in the Middle East there are a number of ways that that might Express itself I'm not going to say Middle East peace cuz that seems like too big reach but there could be substantial progress on Yemen things with Iran maybe something with h hamash something with Israel now there are two things that could happen if we try to leverage Saudi Arabia one is that we have a big success it's not terribly likely because it's the Middle East right there it's hard to get a big success in the Middle East but if we don't get a big success or at least if we don't get the Saudi to get on board with whatever our plan is and we get no help then you just go back to phase one it might be 30 days later it might be 90 days later but you just say well we finally got all the information we need it really was the Saudis and now we have now we've got to punish them so the smart play here is to keep
[7:24]
them so the smart play here is to keep as many options on the table as possible so you're he somebody saying Scott looks foolish defending Trump who whoever said that this looks foolish can can you tell me that you prefer the other path do you prefer the path where we don't have a chance of leveraging Saudi help if you do just say that because I think that whoever said that has taken what I call the the children's frame the children's frame is where first of all you're not seeing the big picture you just want candy before dinner so a child says I want candy and then the adult says hey um you have to look at the big picture candy might be bad for your teeth it's bad for your diet uh it's too soon before dinner you won't e enough good food there are lots of good reasons not to eat candy what does the child say I want candy all right so the children's
[8:25]
right so the children's frame is anybody who doesn't understand this basically so what the president did and I've been saying this from the beginning that if you understand persuasion and negotiating is a a subset of persuasion if you understand negotiating and persuasion you're in in better position to predict coming events what did I tell you was the smartest way to play this so I've been telling you this for a few weeks right that the smartest way to play it is to react with a little bit of uncertainty and to keep our options open because that gives you know the Crown Prince is going to kind of owe the president one and it's a big one wouldn't you rather have somebody owe you if they're the most important you know player to get all the dominoes and row I mean they're not the most important in the world they're but they're important in that area so the president has found a way to
[9:25]
area so the president has found a way to keep all of his options open now when you say but is the is the president ignoring his CIA no CU this is just theater this is just pretend the cia's assessment of who did it is either right or wrong but it doesn't matter it just doesn't matter it wouldn't matter what the CIA thought this is still the way to go the other way is stupid or you know if you take the uh you you take the insults out of it you you could say that it's it's sort of a childlike frame where you're not looking at the big picture and all you're saying is I want candy in this case candy is hey we have to be on the side of ethics and morality we can't be on the other side of morality the trouble is there's no way to be consistent with this view the president's position can be completely consistent through as many
[10:26]
completely consistent through as many presidencies as you want and on every topic when he says America First that is a crystal clear message that you know maybe there's some difference in the details of how you get there but it's a it's a crystal clear standard which includes the fact that being a good moral player sometimes is the best thing way to go so I'm not saying that you always and my critics will look at this and say Let me let me give you an impression of my critics this will be my critics responding to this video oh Scott so you're saying that morality doesn't matter anymore doesn't matter so you're just saying anybody can kill anybody morality doesn't count there's you know a reputation in the world doesn't matter is that what you're saying Scott is that what you're saying scene no Dale that's exactly what I'm not saying what I'm saying is that
[11:26]
not saying what I'm saying is that adults look at all the costs of an option and they look at all of the benefits the the the morality Dimension is a big part of the costs and the benefits it's a big part it's just not the only part all right so Dale don't tell me that I forgot about the morality or that I don't care it's it's all in here so here's the thing that I keep saying that if if you have certain types of background you have a business background you've negotiated you know persuasion um if you've been a lawyer for example you know there there are certain types of professions and maybe even engineering I I would say that even an engineer would have seen this fairly quickly and I don't know what kind of education you have where looking at just one variable in a big complicated decision gets you to your answer
[12:29]
decision gets you to your answer who you know what kind of education tells you that you can look at one variable and ignore all the other things such as nuclear war all right if you go this way you might say we have preserved our moral standing if you go this way you have a nonzero chance of eliminating the risk of nuclear war those are not those are not similar one of those things is way better than the other all
right um so I thought I would just uh oh that's Christina's just got her piano tuned so she's uh she's testing it out um is it good that Trump can't listen to the tape but Trump is absolutely right he should not listen to the tape there's no chance that listening to the tape for just the president should change any
[13:30]
just the president should change any decisions the worst case scenario is that the president listens to the tape and that causes him to change his decision you definitely don't want that um so I think he's playing it right there's just no there's no upside there's only a downside to listening to that
not uh what do you think of trump calling Parise pleasure meaningless slip of the tongue uh what about the Yemen Factor well apparently Saudi Arabia would like to solve Yemen too and uh Iran's um situation is getting more dire apparently we're putting ever more pressure on Iran's economy so Iran might be kind of close to wanting a deal of some kind we'll see all right that's all I had for this afternoon I will talk to you later