We Read The Dilbert Guy's Attempt to Make Trump into a Religion

Robert is joined by Garrison Davis to discuss Win Bigly: The Dilbert Guy's Terrible Book About Trump. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, I just want to say I don't know
what we're getting into.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
I don't know what you and I want to apologize
to Garrison Davis Midvan.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
That's right, motherfucker's it's a book episode of Behind the Bastards,
the only podcast that's right.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
What we are?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
What? What?

Speaker 4 (00:22):
What?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
What have you done to us?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm having a great day, Sophie. I'm I'm feeling good.
I'm sitting down, I'm having my first cafe ola made
with milk from my You're making good for you. I
think that just means coffee with milk. If not, don't
tell me. I don't care anyway, Garrison, how are you
doing today?

Speaker 4 (00:43):
I'm doing fine. I'm having I'm having a Chai tea
of Brave. They also just said to make everyone mad
about seeing thing.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Anyway, I'm drinking some of this Cuban coffee that I
smuggled into the country to support the Castro regime, specifically
to make people in Florida angry. And yeah, it's it's delightful,
It's wonderful. I'll get you some when you come over
next to watch that Nazi movie.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
We're going to watch Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
But speaking of Nazis. Do you know what we have
to read today? Though not quite It's a book by
Dilbert creator Scott Adams.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
No why, I just saw the fucking dil Brito on
Twitter today. I'm like, oh, god, man, yeah, the.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Dil Burrito is a fun story.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
I am.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I am currently writing. I just finished part one last
night and I'm starting on part two today. The Scott
Adams episodes which will Jesus Christ soon with someone else
a cartoonist as the guest. But I wanted to sit
down with you and go over a Scott Adams book, Garrison,
because when I was was a wee lad, like literally
like ten or eleven, I read some of Scott Adams's

(01:56):
books and I felt like this would be an a
bonding experience for all of us and for Sophie too.
Why the book we're reading today is Win Bigley Persuasion
in a world where facts don't matter. Some versions of
the book, I think he credits Donald Trump as a
co author, even though he's not. It's his it's his

(02:18):
book about So for a little bit of context, Gare
Scott starts this comic called Dilbert in the late night
the right at the tail end of the nineteen eighties,
kind of the end of the Reagan era, and it
gets really big around nineteen ninety five, so early in
the Clinton era, right at the start of the dot
com boom, right after kind of a bunch of companies

(02:39):
of you know, these big companies like ge did huge
rounds of layoffs.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh no, oh, no, I looked at the cover. Oh no,
oh oh.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, Sophie, why don't you show Garrison that For a
while people thought Scott Adams liberal or maybe even kind
of stealth left wing guy because Dilbert was. Some people
saw it as kind of like an antivity.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Establishment or something.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, and it's a lot of it's about how stupid
these like mainstream like management tactics are and these things
that like all of these corporate leaders doing, how like
fucked up and often cruel they were. The reality is
that like Scott was just bitching about things that annoyed
him personally and is absolutely in no way anti capitalist
or anti any really anti any of the bad things

(03:26):
that he used to write about.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Christ the hardcover's thirty two dollars.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, it's it's it's not I didn't pay for it.
Don't worry. So I'm looking at the cover. I have
to read. I have to beak cagy about how I
don't pay for books now because the last time I
told people, Amazon closed the loophole. Oh really really yeah,
that they won't let you return a book when it's

(03:53):
past ten percent read or something like that.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Now, Ah damn, they caught me.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
So I've had to get creative. But don't worry everyone.
I'm still in compliance with the law as far as
you know.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah, I bet sure I've never seen you I legally
firaatemedia before.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
No, of course you haven't, Garrison. I would never do
anything like.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
That, can I Can I just say before we get
into more of your alleged crimes. Uh, really nailed the
hands on this cover.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Oh you've seen it yet, Garrison?

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah, looking at it, it's.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, he's a he's good at hands.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
Yeah he's yeah, all three fingers on, so they're very puffy.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
It was was uh, king Charles the the goal for
the hand model for this.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
It was probably just Scott Adams himself.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Does he also have really really really really swollen hands?

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Maybe he sees the world he draws Dilbert like what if?
What if? What if that's not just how he like
like interprets realities just through these Dilbert trawings.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
It would have to have an impact on your brain
after a while, and not a positive way. Clearly it hasn't.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
Yeah, so his brain's not working correct From what I
can tell.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Scott, one of the things that we all learned from
the great Bill Watterson is that the best thing you
can do as a creator of popular art is never
let anyone know anything about you. Quit at the height
of your fame, and then spend the rest of your
days as a hermit in the woods painting landscapes. Yeah,

(05:34):
Scott did not do that. He started a blog, which
was a terrible mistake.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
And then he took the Twitter approach.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
And then he got on Twitter, which was an even
worse mistake. And over time people became aware that Scott
had some pretty regressive opinions, specifically around women. He starts
posting some like insel adjacent shit, and then when Trump
comes around, everyone is kind of surprised who hasn't been
following him closely that he gets like super in to Trump.
And at first he takes this like Weasley approach where

(06:03):
he's like, well, I don't agree with him, about a
lot of stuff. But I'm really impressed by what a
master persuader he is. He's like a super genius communicator,
and he's playing He's one of these three D chess people.
He's like one of the first. Trump's playing a game
of three D Chess on all of you, and I
think one of the funniest things. So Scott, when you
really dig into all of his claims, is wrong about
nearly everything. Like Trump wasn't a master persuader, like he

(06:27):
took it. His first election was largely a product of
taking advantage of the way the electoral college works. He
never got most of the country on board with his ideas.
He's not good at persuading people. He was good at
speaking to the bigotry and the anger of a chunk
of people who are already bigoted and angry. But Scott
gets convinced that Donald Trump is basically like a magician,

(06:50):
like a psychic magician, taking over people's minds. Yeah, and
thinks that this is a good thing, because Scott is
into hypnosis and he's also into affirmations.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
In interesting I've actually read a there is a there's
a whole book about Trump's ties to like to a
to a New Thought church back in back in like
the sixties and seventies that focuss a lot on how
how like hypnosis became popular and like this weird like
New York business scene that Trump was in as a kid,

(07:21):
and how it kind of informs the way that he
goes about in in like interactions and the way he
does affirmation. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, there's the kind of guys that he's super that
Trump is kind of inspired by are sort of like
a mix of kind of quasi prosperity gospel dudes and
like Napoleon Hill think and grow rich kind of people. Yeah,
where it's it's talking about, like, yeah, the power of
positive thinking and all this sort of stuff in creating
wealth and opportunities for yourself. Scott's really into that stuff too,

(07:53):
And I noticed this as a kid. It was really interesting.
His first book, or not his first book, but the
first one I read, had some like pretty reasonable stuff
in it. Like he's very he was early on very
motivated by what's called the Peter principle, which is this
idea and like business theory that people tend to get
promoted past their level of competence and that this is

(08:13):
like a problem, right, that like people who are good
at jobs, who are good at their job, get promoted
to a point where they're no longer good at what
they're doing, and that this is what causes a lot,
which is, as far as I've seen, quite quite an
accurate thing. And Scott takes from this this idea that, like,
you should always be aware that at any given time
in the world, like most people are are idiots, right,

(08:34):
most people don't know what they're doing, don't understand the
world around them, are kind of like in over their heads.
And then he uses that to kind of pivot to like,
so I developed the system of affirmations, and you know,
I can't explain why it works, but it clearly does.
And if you develop, like adopt this system for yourself,
you know, maybe you'll be able to achieve things that

(08:54):
would otherwise be impossible, which struck me as odd as
a little kid. And as Scott gets kind of older,
he gets more and more into this stuff, and it's
it's interesting. He talks a lot about how, like, when
he was young, he took mushrooms and it was this
wonderful experience for him and it changed his life. But

(09:16):
people shouldn't do. It changed his life, specifically because it
showed him that like reality was largely a product of
thought and of like the perception. But then he came
to the conclusion that, like no one else should do drugs,
you should just read my books because I'm going to
recreate the psychedelic experience only enough to be able to
do this. Yeah, by my books, and I'll explain it

(09:37):
to you. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start by reading
the preamble, which he's called the day my reality split
into two.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Which is horrible. Oh boy, Carrison. I I have the
Amazon of Like preview, so I can look at all
the different names of all the different chapters and parts.
Oh yeah, and there's some there's some wild titles throughout
this book.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
You can once we get through this preamble, you can
let me know which ones you most want to hear about,
and we'll go into him. But I feel like we
should start where he does.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
In February of twenty sixteen, I began to experience two
separate realities at the same time. In one reality, candidate
for President Donald Trump had just ended his chances of
becoming president of the United States by refusing to disavow
the KKK and David Duke on a c In an
interview with Jake Tapper, Trump said he didn't hear the question.
This was a big problem for candidate Trump, and it
was also a big problem for me. I was one

(10:30):
of the earliest public figures to have predicted Trump's win,
and I was in the middle of an unplanned career
pivot from guy who created the Dilbert comic to something
like a political pundit. Sure, sure, yes, sure, funny that
is that is how people see you.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
I'll chake it. Look, let's check it all that in
twenty twenty three. Let's see. Let's let's see how good
that's going. Oh oh boy.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I have an unfortunate like fact dump for you, Scott,
and it's that, for till the day you die, the
only way people will refer to you is the Dilbert guy.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
Like they call you.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Someone will say like, have you heard what Scott Adams said?
And inevitably, who's Scott Adams? And then you say the
Delbert guy. So everyone talks about you. As I've been
writing this, the Scott Adams episodes, I've had that conversation
like eleven times. Yeah, I'm writing a piece about Scott Adams,
who you know, the delvert guy. Oh boy, My blog

(11:26):
traffic went through the roof whenever I wrote about Trump's
skill is a persuader. I don't know much about politics,
but I know skillful persuasion when I see it. As
it turned out, there was a big demand for what
I called my persuasion filter on the race. Producers for
news outlets both large and small were scrambling to get
me on their shows. I wrote and spoke so much
about Trump's persuasion skills that people labeled me a Trump supporter,

(11:49):
although not in the sense of supporting his policies. By then,
my writing about Trump had already cost me half of
my friends, my lucrative speaking career had dropped to zero,
and I didn't expect any new Dilbert licensing deals. I
had become toxic for any kind of mixed crowd. But
I was okay with my situation because I expected to
be right in my prediction that Trump would win it all.
Winning fixes most problems.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
So true, So true, buddy.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, You've only hit Your popularity only increased after Trump won.
Although the polls disagreed with me. I thought my prediction
of a Trump one was looking good until a Jake
Tapper interview on CNN. In this version of reality, I
had foolishly alienated my friends, annihilated my professional reputation, and
cut my income in half, and all I would get
in return was a Wikipedia entry under my name saying

(12:34):
I had supported an alleged racist for president. The situation
was less than ideal. I publicly disavowed Trump because of
his see in an interview, just to get out of
the blast zone. But by then it was too late
to salvage everything I had already lost. Like an idiot,
I had managed to turn a respected career as one
of the top cartoonists in the country into a grimy
embarrassment that wouldn't wash off. That was one version of reality.

(12:55):
I experienced a second version of reality at the same time.
This version involved Trump brushing off the cn NKKK controversy
and going on to win the presidency, and that version
of reality I would be redeemed in the end, at
least in terms of being a credible political forecaster.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
Winning always feels good.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
So it's interesting because, like I went through a period
of thinking, oh my god, Trump's going to win and
then oh my god, maybe Trump won't win, and then
oh my god, Trump's going to win during the twenty
sixteen election, and I did. I never interpreted it as
I was living in two different realities. I interpreted it
as American politics is very unpredictable. Almost anything can and

(13:32):
does happen, and I didn't know what was going to occur,
which is how most people would would put that, like
describe that. I think it's interesting his obsession with like
clearly he views predicting the presidential race as a win,
which I think probably is part of why he went
so crazy when Trump lost, because he takes it deeply

(13:52):
personally that Trump lost.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Interesting interesting stuff, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Especially because his prediction seemed to go hand in hand
with his own like affirmations. Yeah, so you kind of
need them both to come true order for your system
to make any kind of internal logic. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Part of this is because again he's like he's really
he's convinced, not just that like cold. He's not saying
what Trump is doing is a credible political election strategy,
which I think any honest person has to admit it
was obviously he won. What he's saying is that Trump
is a master persuader, and so for that to happen,
he needs to be actually convincing people he's the best

(14:29):
choice for president, as opposed to again kind of feeding
into this grievance politics that the right had been stoking
for forever and becoming the avatar of it, which is
a different thing. But Scott had to believe that. He
had to kind of buy into the idea that, like
the mass of Americans had come around to Trump's I
like political ideology, which was never the case. And so

(14:52):
he's got to like leap into contortions in order to
justify kind of what happens. Yeah, it's it's good stuff, Scott,
when's this this little chapter by saying, for the next
several months, I lived both realities, but I trusted only
one of them. I double down in my prediction of
a Trump win. If that sounds crazy to you, well
that's nothing. We're just getting started. There's plenty more crazy
in this book.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh boy. Sure is buddy.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Introduction, where I prime you for the rest. I'm a
trained hypnotist and I'm going to take book close book
return that shut. The only person I want to hear
talk about their hypnotism training is Werner Herzog because he's
going to hypnotize a chicken, and that is that was
a great time for everybody.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
I do not, I do not think that the Dilbert
guy could be a successful hypnotist. I'm sorry, I don't.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
No, No, for one thing, he has his eyes are
as lively as a Dilbert comic. Yes, like, it's just unsettling.
I'm not going to look into them. So here's Scott again.
I'm going to tell you about the spookiest year of
my life.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
Life.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
It happened between June twenty fifteen and November twenty sixteen. Okay,
that's a little more than a year. Everything you are
about to read in this book is true as far
as I know. I don't expect you to believe all
of it, but I promise it's true to the best
of my knowledge. I've waited decades to deliver the message
in this book. I waited because the world wasn't ready,
but also because the messenger, yours truly, didn't have the
skill to deliver it right. The story was too hard

(16:22):
to tell.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
Yeah, this just wants to remove from a religion. This
is so yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
No, well that's the thing. So when Scott talks about
and this is in a book that he wrote a
fucking twenty years before this one's almost like fifteen sixteen years,
he talks about how, like as a kid, he realized
that like prayer didn't work, and so he became an atheist,
but he didn't like atheism, and interestingly, like the thing
he didn't like about atheism is it didn't let him

(16:47):
predict the future like that that was where's his issue
with it? So like he developed this personal belief system
that aliens had like were like managing life on Earth,
and that he was like the child of an alien
sent to Earth for some like special purpose and lived
under that belief system for some period of time.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
I met a few people like that at the Oregon
Ghost Conference a few months Yeah, yeaheah.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
He's kind of always been a kook. So so he
talks about how he waited and waited and waited, and
he wasn't ready and he was learning and preparing to
deliver this important message. And then in twenty fifteen, Trump
rides his golden elevator down to announce his candidacy for president.
Like most observers at the time, I didn't fully understand

(17:38):
what I was seeing. It wasn't until the first Republican
primary debate that I realized what was happening right before
our eyes. Trump was no ordinary politician. He was no
ordinary business person either. In fact, he wasn't ordinary in
any sense of the world. Trump is what I call,
in bold letters, master persuader. That means he has weapons
grade persuasion skills. Based on my background in that field,

(18:00):
I recognized his talents early after watching him in action
during the election. I have to say that Trump is
the most persuasive human I have ever observed.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
I have to, I have to. I have to check
my persuasion skills when I when I'm at the airport,
they will they will not let me go in the
carry on with.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Your because their weapons grade. You're not allowed to take
those on t s A. Oh, catch it. It's an
easy way to They've got those dogs to sniffer weapons
grade persuasion skills. Scot's gonna drive everywhere.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
This is so many problems. This is the same thing
with all of with all, like the with all, like
the esoteric fascists and stuff. So many problems we solved
if we just force people to play d and d
we would just you just gotta get you gotta get
that out. You got to give his people like an
outlet for this ship. And if you're talking about like
weapons grade persuasion, you're just talking about D and D.

(18:50):
Just roll, roll some dice, get some friends together, have
a dinner party.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Cast charm like, for the love of God, they can
take a will save Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is. It
is remarkable. President Trump carried those persuasion skills into the
White House, where his supporters say he has gotten a
lot done and his critics say he hasn't. Oh boy,

(19:16):
no one says any like. Yeah, his supporters love the
stuff he does. His his his detractors don't say he
didn't get a lot done. They say he did a
lot of bad things that he did, Like.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
He was just sitting here there, he was just playing
golf every day. It's such a weird because he like
describes as like his supporters say, he did all of
you know, he fall vices and he did this, and
his detractors say he was it was a chaotic administration
that didn't get anyone. No is his detractors say he
did a lot of stuff that hurt people and like, yeah,
his the fact that his administration had a lot of

(19:49):
leaks and like internal chaos was kind of evidence of
the fundamentally bad people that were involved in it. But
like his no one was like nothing got done by Trump,
Like a lot of bad things were done by Trump anyway.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
President Trump's critics and mine in brackets asked me how
I could call the president a master persuasion. He capitalizes
the M and the P every time he says master persuader.

Speaker 4 (20:16):
He's tried to make it impro renown.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, he's trying. Yeah, he wants people to take this
very seriously, and like it's for one thing, a silly
thing to call somebody. We already have the term like charismatic,
we have the term demagogue. Like those those work, like charming,
that works, You don't need master persuader. Just is so
inherently silly that I'm not gonna take anything else that

(20:41):
you're saying very seriously. But you know what I do
take seriously?

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Garrison? Oh, is it is it the very very brave
and stunning products that allow us to continue this show?

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yes, yes, the heroic products some people are too scared
to advertise on this show.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
That's right. They want. They do not want you to
hear the truth.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
No, they don't want you to hear the wisdom of
a master persuader like me. Who's who's gonna gonna convince
you to You know, they don't want you to, but
they don't money into Blue Apron.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
You know.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
They don't want you to eye surgery do it all.
They don't want you to hear what's on page one
twenty seven, how to design a linguistic kill shot. They
don't want you to know.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
They don't want Scott Adams. It is so easy to
write a stupid book, Like writing a good book is
really hard, but writing this book, this is like forty
five minutes, Like this is a this is a solid
light afternoon of work. You knock this out while finishing
a Frene press of coffee. Anyway, here's ads. We're back.

(21:54):
And I just persuaded Garrison to support dominating the capital
gains tax using my weapons grade persuasion skills. I rolled
a NAT twenty.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
You know, I think I think we should just have
a federal sales tax and that's evenly distributed aggressive all
the money spent. Yeah, and that's that is the way
to solve all of our economic problems. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
A lot of a lot of people who get paid
by the Heritage Foundation are saying that. So President Trump's
critics and mine asked me how I could call the
president a master persuader when his public approval levels were
in the cellar. The quick answer is that low approval
didn't stop him from winning the presidency. No, but you're
you're not saying he's a master winner of the presidency.

(22:42):
You're saying he persuaded people. And the evidence is most
people never liked him anyway. Whatever, it's it's it's it's
not that he's so obsessed with the idea that Trump
is persuading people and that like, that's what the debate
is about, when really, like, nobody's nobody's arguing that, like,
the people who like him are saying that, like, the

(23:02):
folks who are against him are engaged in an evil
conspiracy against America, and the folks who hate him are like,
he's shitty and he took advantage of of fucked up
and archaic election system in order to win, Like nobody's
nobody's nobody reasonable thinks that Trump is good at convincing
the masses of things like, that's just not what he did. Anyway,

(23:23):
that's what Scott's convinced that he did. But here's the
fun part. I also believe that Trump, the master persuader,
keeps using that term, was going to do far more
than win the presidency. I expected Trump to rip a
hole in the fabric of reality so we can well
through it to a deeper truth about the human experience. Well,
that may have happened.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
That did actually happened, that is true. Oops.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, either either that or a series of decisions that
were made that included the development of a parallel digital
culture driven by algorithm like faded the divisions between realities
and a fucking homunculi was able to creep through a
political shock oth if you will, broke into our reality.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
And most of that is probably Zuckerberg's fault, but someone
was going to do it.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Somebody was going to do it, and it was Donald Trump.
But anyway, we'll give Scott that one. Okay, we'll give
Scott that one.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
You know, he he does title his next section why
facts are Overrated? So yeah, I don't think that.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Is that is true. We'll skip right to that one
after we finish this little bit the common worldview shared
by most humans is that there is one objective reality.
None of the most humans actually agree about that, and
we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application
of facts and reason. I definitely don't think human being
all human beings agree on that for one thing like
religions exist. This view of the world imagines that some

(24:53):
people have already achieved a fact based type of enlightenment
that is compatible with science and logic, and they are
trying to help the rest of us see the world
right way. As far as I can tell, most people
share that interpretation of the world. The only wrinkle with
that worldview is is that we all think we are
the enlightened ones, and we assume the people who disagree
with us just need better facts or perhaps better brains
in order to agree with us. That filter on life

(25:15):
makes most of us happy because we see ourselves as
the smart ones, and it does a good job of
predicting the future only, but only, because confirmation bias will
make the future look any way we want it to look.
Within reason. When I saw what I saw with Trump's
candidacy for president is that the within reason part of
our understanding about reality was about to change bigly. I
knew that candidate Trump's persuasion skills were about to annihilate

(25:36):
the public's ability to understand what they were seeing because
their observations wouldn't fit their mental model of living in
a rational world. But this is interesting because, for one thing,
I think the first accurate like warning about Trump, which
came out before or right around the time when Scott
started making his posts, was by my former colleague Cracked
Adam Todd Brown, who wrote a whole article about how

(25:57):
Trump was like very influenced specific by old fascist political
leaders and was using a lot of those tactics in
order to build a base of support within the Republican
Party and that he would indeed win the Republican primary.
Adam called that months before any of this happened, and
there were a lot of other people, and particularly a
lot of actual like scholars of fascism who were warning

(26:19):
about him well prior to him winning the.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
Primaries.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
And these were not people who were, like say, like
the attitude that like people were saying he can't possibly win.
It just doesn't gel to me with what a lot
of people who were paying attention were saying. I think
a lot of the And that's different from saying like, well,
I don't know if he's likely to win in like
say January or like December of twenty fifteen, but yeah,

(26:45):
I don't know. It's and I think he's silly here.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
The difference between what Scott's doing is right. Scott's saying
that the reason why this worked is because there's like
this magical thinking aspect where Trump is just like naturally
better at being this like mystical persua versus actual like
scholars identifying and like identifying the use of a playbook.

(27:09):
And those are those are two very very different things.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Yeah, and it's it's again, he's kind of he's obsessed
with this framing that he's put together of Trump as
a persuader, and it's I think kind of leading him
to lose what could be kind of some of the
actual useful conclusions that you could draw based on some
of this stuff. A lot of people's belief in normalcy
and like the in like political normalcy is what caused

(27:37):
them to not see Trump coming and not see the danger.
This was particularly a problem for a lot of establishment
Republicans who did not think that something like this could happen.
He didn't think like an outsider like this could one.
And I think most most people observing kind of looked
at the past of Trump's previous runs for president, and
generally of the long history of like weirdo candidates, and

(27:58):
thought that it was likely to go that way. That's
not like a belief about like I wouldn't call that
confirmation bias. That's kind of because again, like reality didn't
wind up bearing that way. And most people rightly saw
this as a problem right away. They didn't think, like
reality has broken. They were like, oh, American politics is

(28:20):
more broken than I had thought. The American electorate is
more fucked up than I had thought. The electoral College
is a worse system than I had realized. Which is
kind of like a reasonable way to translate this. But
Scott's got to make it all about like how Trump
like cunningly manipulated reality as opposed to Trump kind of

(28:41):
taking advantage to flaws within the system that people didn't realize.
A lot of people didn't realize were as flawed as
it was, but a lot of people in fact did
realize and warn about it and recognize what was happening here.
He's again kind of got to make himself the only
person who thought that Trump could win, which he clearly wasn't.
But anyway, whatever, it's it's fun.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
So yeah, uh d think we were we were we
were in Did we get to watch it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:11):
No, I've got his next here. So he's he's talking
about where what he where he lands Politically? I label
myself an ultraliberal, and by that I mean liberals seem
too conservative to me. I'll give you some examples. Generally speaking,
conservatives want to ban abortion, while liberals want it to
be to remain legal. I go one step further and
say that men should sideline themselves from the question and

(29:31):
follow the lead on the of women on the topic
of reproductive health, men should still be in the conversation
about their own money. Of course, what does that mean, Scott?

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Like?

Speaker 3 (29:40):
What what is what does that line mean? What are
you talking about?

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Means? Are they're not going to pay for an abortion? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Are you saying that, like men should not have a
be compelled to pay child support?

Speaker 4 (29:51):
Ever?

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Is that the statement? Because I'm I'm kind of trying
to interpret that, and I don't know where where men's
money comes up in the conversation of like reproductive rights,
other than if you're bringing up the fact that, like
you don't think men should be have to be compelled
to pay child support if they get someone pregnant because
it's the woman's choice. Is that I think that's kind
of where Scott's.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Coming in on this. I guess so.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, it's interesting. My personal sense of ethics says that
the people who take the most responsibility for important societal
outcomes should also have the strongest say. My male opinion
on women's reproductive health adds nothing to the quality of
the decision. That Part's fine. Women have it covered. The
most credible laws and abortion to the ones that most
women support, and while life or death issues are on
the table, credibility is essential to the smooth operation of society.

(30:37):
That's great, Good, Good for you, Scott. He says that
he is legal for or he is for legalizing marijuana,
and he also thinks doctors should prescribe recreational drugs for
old people. Yeah, I'm alright with that. That's fine. That's fine, Scott.
When it comes to complicated affairs about economics and foreign affairs,

(30:58):
my opinion is that I never have enough data to
form competent opinions neither does anyone else. Well that Scott
now actually have to have an opinion do have, especially
on like foreign affairs. It's like, well, actually, Scott, there's
people who's like entire lives are understanding the interaction of
for example, the United States and other foreign countries, or

(31:20):
understanding what countries that are having problems with like food
and security or like not lack of access to clean water,
or you know, difficulties like dealing with the AIDS virus.
There are people who dedicate their whole lives to understanding
those issues in the context of other countries. There are
a lot of people who have understandings about what are
good policy is there That's a very silly statement, Scott. Anyway,

(31:42):
that's that's the It's fine whatever, Scott generally speak, what
chapter is this? Then this is an introduction? Still okay,
over still an instruction? Yeah, yeah, we're still an introduction.
Generally speaking, Conservatives think we live in a country where
everyone always has already has equal opportunity. I don't know
that's what they say, though.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
I'll give him that.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
I'll give him that. That is a statement that gets made.
Liberals generally think the government should do more to a
guarantee equal opportunity. I go one step further and suggest
considering slavery reparations for African Americans in the form of
free college and job training funded by a twenty five
year tax in the top one percent. Hey, that's fine.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
Although I wonder if he still has this opinion. I
don't know that he does.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
It's also interesting that he's like, I'm not going to
state an opinion on abortion, because as a man, I
shouldn't have one. But he is like, here is exactly
how I think reparations for Black Americans should work.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
Yeah, yeah, that is.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Interesting, Scott. Maybe you could just say I support reparations
and let someone else figure out how it's supposed to
go the plan.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
But.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
As a reparations plan. But hey, look, at least he's
closer to the right on that side than I think
you would have expected, given his most recent racist statements
that got the Delbert comic cancel. Yes, okay, so I
guess that's the end of the things that make him
an uber liberal. Fine, fine enough, So I think we're

(33:08):
going to move on to Why Facts Are Overrated, Part
one of his book, The Most Important Perceptual Perceptual Shift
in History My spooky Year was fun for me, but
was also a dangerous time for the world's collective mental health.
Enlightenment can be a risky business when your old worldview
pulse apart. It can trigger all kinds of irrational behavior
before your brain rewrites the movie in your head to

(33:29):
make it consistent with your new worldview. We all have
movies in our heads that we believe are accurate views
of reality, and those movies are very different. Normally, we
don't notice the differences in our personal movies or we
don't care. But when politics are involved the stakes are higher,
then we notice. Emotions are already raw in election years,
and millions of people are focused on the same topics
at the same time. That's a barrel of gasoline and

(33:50):
a lot of matches in one place. The last thing
the country needed was millions of people simultaneously going nuts.
I hope it could reduce that risk by writing about
Trump's persuasion talents and preparing the public or what I
saw coming. It's interesting he is. There's a degree this
In some other parts of the book. He's like kind
of trying to repackage Robert Anton Wilson's ideas about like

(34:10):
reality tunnels and doing it number one in a way
that's kind of like overly simplistic, and also doing it
in a way where the goal is to bring people
to a specific understanding of reality rather than understand the
different kind of realities that people live in, and being
able to kind of move through different reality tunnels as

(34:33):
that's kind of advantageous for the things that you're trying
to do. YEA, Like, his attitude on this is so
much more brittle than I think the kind of elegant
concepts that Robert Anton Wilson brings up when he talks about,
like how kind of inhabiting letting yourself and figuring out
how to kind of like metaprogram your mind to inhabit
different realities can allow you to deal with stuff like

(34:55):
addiction can allow you to like become, you know, more
artistically productive. Certain ways can allow you to like achieve
things that you would otherwise have difficulty achieving. Because perception
dictates to a substantial extent, how we how we like
interface and experience reality. What Scott's talking about is like
so much more brittle than that, And you also get

(35:17):
the feeling that he believes that he and the master
persuaders are the only ones who can actually like see
the tunnels people are moving through. And and it's about
kind of manipulation of large groups of people as opposed
to understanding yourself and taking more control over your own
interactions in the world.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Yeah, and I because he's he's also he's like promoting
himself as like this figure that's like seen like I've
like seen the divine prophecy when Trump comes down the
Golden elevator and now I will distill the secrets onto you.
And it's all this like it is, it is, it
is a very it is it's from completely different ends
than what someone like Roberton Wilson's doing. It's also like

(35:58):
I'm not sure how I I'm not sure if the
dilver guy can recognize how far into a reality tunnel
he is in. Yeah, and how much like so, how
much of that like self awareness can to extend out
to other people you.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Scott talks a lot about his own ignorance of certain things,
like I think history, and it's kind of evident here
because he talks about how like you know, if you
watch the entire election and concluded that Trump was nothing
but a lucky clown you missed one of the most
important perceptual shifts in the history of humankind. And I

(36:33):
agree it's wrong to view Trump as just a lucky clown.
Trump is an authoritarian utilizing very time worn tactics to
take advantage of the worst aspects of American culture, which
have been evident as long as this country has existed.
Scott like, I don't think has a I either is
pretending not to have any kind of understanding of like

(36:54):
American political history and some of the different figures that
Trump learned from. He doesn't know about kind of the
history of of of I don't know how Nixon got elected,
of the the kind of the the Southern strategy, all
this kind of shit that you see echoes of in
the way Trump did his campaigning and is going to

(37:15):
do his campaigning for the next election. Scott, I hes certainly,
like I don't know if it's that he doesn't know
this or he doesn't think that it's profitable to bring
it up, but like the completely the framing of this
is like Trump hacked the human brain somehow and that's
how he run one, rather than like it's always been

(37:35):
profitable to trade on bigotry and fear in American politics,
and Trump figured out how to take advantage of social
media to do that extremely efficiently. But you know that's
not the way Scott describes this as happening.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Instead, Trump can then be seen as this like a
like a like a like a mystical persuader. Yeah, as
opposed to someone using like a very a very tried
and true playbook for gaining political power.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah. It's interesting, like when you when you talk about uh,
like this kind of stuff. It reminds me a little
bit about how people talked about and still does some
extint do talked about like Hitler's rise a lot where
they you know, they described it as like he he
kind of like brainwashed the German people and he was

(38:26):
somehow able to like gain this deep degree of control
over their minds using these almost like his his mythical
charisma and persuasion techniques.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
It was a it was a mass hypnosis. Yeah. No.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
He he engaged in a number of time worn like
campaign traditions, and he also understood new technologies like radio
and the airplane and their application in a democratic election
in a way that other people didn't yet. And so
as a result, there was kind of less immunity from
his political opponents to those strategies, he's in less understanding

(39:01):
of how to counter them, and he was able to
combine that with kind of the venal cowardice of a
number of folks who were, you know, his political opponents
but not diametrically politically opposed to his attitudes, and able
to sneak into power that way, Like like Hitler's there's
nothing like hard to explain about how Hitler took power.
It was a mixture of like savvy political techniques and

(39:25):
then social engineering and basically bribery. And it's it's you know,
with Trump, that's less on the bribery side of thing,
but it's like, yeah, he won election, Like there's not
much of a difference between how he came to power
and how George W.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
Bush came to power.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, exactly, Like it's it's yeah, but anyway, he's a
master persuader. So if you seek enlightenment, these are two
of the most important concepts you will ever learn. Cognitive dissonance.
This is a mental condition in which people rationalize why
their actions are inconsistent with their thoughts and beliefs. For example,
if you think you are smart, but you notice yourself
doing something that is clearly dumb, you might spontaneously hallucinate

(40:04):
that that was a good reason for it. Now, Scott,
you might want to read that part again. You might
want to go over that sentence a couple of times, Buddy. Yeah,
this is a common phenomenon in all normal humans, but
we generally believe it applies only to other people. I
think you're revealing a lot about yourself there, Scott. I
actually think most people are humble enough to be like, Yeah,

(40:25):
I often fall short of like how I believe I
should be acting or behaving. You know, I am not
always consistent with the things that I know are right.
Sometimes I'm dishonest, Like most people I know are capable
of admitting that they're flawed people. I think Scott is
it's interesting that he has this attitude that like, I'm
the only one who understands that cognitive dissonance is a

(40:47):
factor in my life. Like, no, I think most of
us are aware it's hard to be consistent with the
versions of ourselves that theoretically are the best anyway.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Whatever.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
He talks about confirmation bias, which he all so describes
as a common phenomenon that we believe only happens to
other people. I saw in the election of twenty sixteen
a dangerous situation forming if the public misunderstood Trump's methods
and intentions, and that seemed likely, things could turn ugly worse. Yet,
the public might not appreciate the extraordinary richness of their

(41:18):
choice in the election. No matter what you thought of
Trump or his policies, he certainly was different, and he
certainly knew how to make things happen. I thought the
public deserved to see the Trump candidacy as clearly as possible,
without the biased framing that his adversaries were applying. You
might be wondering how confident I was about my prediction
that Trump would win. Well, no one is psychic. I
can't say no with total certainty what the future holds.

(41:39):
For example, I couldn't predict what types of scandals would
pop up along the way. But I do know persuasion.
I know its power in a way that few people do,
and I recognize that with Trump's level of persuasion skill,
he was bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Speaking of there's a in part for there's a section
called how a trained persuader Ofugh was it how a
trained persuader evaluates scandals.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, Scott starts talking about how good he is at
predicting here, and he brings up his two thousand and
four book The Religion War. Now Garrison, this is one
of the worst books ever written. And you're inested in
reading some reviews of this and one of his other
terrible fiction books. The podcast House of Decline Haus has
been doing a read through that includes my friend and

(42:28):
cartoonist Rory Blank. That's quite good, but it Scott. Here's
how Scott describes it. I predicted the rise of an
Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and their use of
hobby sized drones for terror attacks. That happens to be
a good description of isis in twenty seventeen. Now, that's
not what Scott writes in this book. In this book,
he's writing about like a fictional war between like all

(42:49):
of the Western countries, like out like unite under this,
like Christian you know, democratic military alliance to fight the
Muslim world, which in this book, a Palacedinean man engineers
the destruction of Israel and then unites all of the
Arab countries. And also I think like Iran and stuff,
So like not just Arab countries, but like Sunni and

(43:11):
Shia all get together in this Islamic Caliphate and launch
a long term terrorist attack against the West that includes
like constant suicide drone bombings of like like Western cities.
That's actually not a good description of ISIS. ISIS, for
one thing, didn't destroy Israel. They didn't actually overthrow any state.

(43:32):
And while ISIS did use hobby drones, they didn't use
them for terrorist attacks. They used them as part of
a military like strategy, like they use them as spotters
for their mortars, they used them to drop bombs on soldiers.
In other words, Scott kind of imagined the use of
like this kind of like perpetual terror war against the

(43:53):
West by this evil Muslim empire created by a Palestinian
man who had used democracy to destroy Israel. And he's
saying that's exactly like what happened with ISIS in twenty seventeen.
It is not Scott, your predict this is not you
did not predict Isis.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
Are you saying Gilbert is not an ISIS understander?

Speaker 3 (44:13):
I I don't think that he is anyway, Uh, yeah,
what do you what do you want to go through
next here Master Persuader.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
There's there's a funny section called about facts. But I
mean a lot of these are pretty good. I mean,
there's the myth of the rational mind.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Pretty funny. Yeah, we'll probably check that out.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
Mass delusions, when reality bifurcated, which is it not a
cent when bifurcated?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
I guess it? No, yeah, because when reality yes, yeah,
okay works.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
I see what he means. Now. Yeah, anyway, Trump's rosy
O'Donnell moment.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
You know what Bifer, Well, we're gonna have to check
that one out.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
But you know what kated is well that he's also
a Casey Anthony Truther.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
I hope so, because because I am, you know who
else is a Casey Anthony Truther or Sophie?

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Uh this ad for the podcast that might come up,
but there was.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
A non zero chance that we get an ad for
the podcast. Here we go, Ah, we're back. I hope
the subreddits having a good time figuring out what was bleeped.
That's a real bleep. That's not one of the ones
where I like put in a fake like that was

(45:37):
a real bleep.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
And that about it. I don't yeah, I don't. I
don't sure how how much do we have to bleep
up there? It is really uncy.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
It's gonna be quite a bit because we can get
in trouble for that one.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
But I'm super pissed off about it because I'm so
fucking right.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
Are we gonna have to bleep Trumb's roso Donald the
moment to justice to just be Trump's bleep?

Speaker 3 (46:00):
No? No, we can say that. We can say Rosie
O'Donnell in that context. It's fine anyway, someone on the
subredd it'll figure out what we what we probably said,
But as long as we don't say no.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
I was really fucking proud of it.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
It was very funny. So about facts. On August thirteenth,
twenty fifteen, I predicted my blog that Donald Trump had
a ninety eight percent chance of winning the presidency based
on his persuasion skills.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Wait, why did he think ninety eight percent?

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, first off, that's a nonsense number, and it's funny,
he says. A week earlier, he talks about like Nate
Silver had put, the most respected political forecaster in the
United States, had put Trump's odds of winning their Republican
nomination at two percent in his five thirty eight blog yeah,
which is like, yeah, I guess it's fair that people
didn't note that he was going enough people didn't note

(46:50):
that he was likely to win the primaries early on,
although it also is worth noting that Nate Silver is
one of the people who actually accurately called the way
in which Trump was going to win, like when he
gave him like a thirty something percent chance, which was
higher than any of the other posters, and he laid
out basically the collapse of the Democrat firewall in kind

(47:12):
of the Midwest and how that could lead to an
electoral victory and was pretty much correct, which is more
impressive than Scott saying nine eight percent. Oh boy. Some
of the rare and notable predictors of Trump's win included
Mike Cernovich and Colter Stefan Malinu, Milo Ianopolis, Bill Mitchell.

(47:37):
Absolutely horrible. There's a bad yeah, just all terrible people,
good stuff, good stuff. In California where I lived, it lived,
it seemed as if most Trump supporters weren't hiding because
of the social and career risks of publicly supporting him.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Luckily he was wrong. Trump's Twitter followers had adopted him
immediately and have my back every step of the way.
And the critics he came after me on Twitter and elsewhere.
Trump supporters flooded into back me. I didn't ask them
to do it, they just did.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
So that's why he wrote this book. He did it
to as he did it of solidarity with Trump's Twitter followers.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
Oh that's great, that's good.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
It's it's good stuff. Okay, Well there suasion tips, some
great persuasion tips.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
One is reciprocity. If you're nice to people, they want
to be nice to you in return. That's a really
tip for you, Garrison. Yeah really yeah, yeah, that tip
number three. All of these his brilliant techniques, like being
nice to people work even if people know what you're doing.
That's that's good. This is all like very basic shit

(48:51):
like that. There's been scientific studies about how stuff like
reciprocity works. Like, none of this is like new. All
of this is stuff you can find in a different
books about like how to negotiate and shit, it's it's
it is pretty boring. Uh yeah, let's move on to
another chapter that's less boring than this. That's the next
third grade fucking persuasion tactic shit.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
The next section is how to see reality in a
more useful way? Which? Which? Which? Which? Starts off with
the myth of the rational mind?

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Okay, wait, Garrison, I gotta, I gotta give you this.
He keeps talking about Nate Silver later in this chapter.
I gotta go into this here. Yeah, Okay, this is telling.
I picked ninety eight percent as my Trump prediction because
Nate Silver of five point thirty eight was saying two percent.
I did that for branding and persuasion purposes. It is
easy to remember my prediction both because of the way

(49:44):
it fits with Silver's prediction and for its audacity, which
people perceived as wrongness. The prediction was designed to attract attention,
and it did. It was also designed to pair my
name with Nate Silver's name to raise my profile by association.
That worked too. Social media folks mentioned me in the
same sense with Silver countless times during the election, exactly
as I had hoped, and every mention raised my importance

(50:05):
as a political observer because I was being compared with
someone already important in that field. Keep in mind that
at this point in our story, I was playing the
wrong sport. I was a cartoonist writing about politics and persuasion.
I needed whatever credibility I could get to build an
audience for my Trump blog. It's interesting because he's talking
about how like I subtly hacked people's brains to make
myself seem more credible. No, the people who it wasn't

(50:27):
like serious political pollsters who were taking Scott Adam seriously.
It was like Rando Trump supporters on Twitter who liked
you because you were saying what they already believed. Again,
Scott could consistently talks about what he's doing is persuasion.
You didn't persuade anybody. You joined a crowd of people
all cheering for a guy, and they liked that you

(50:48):
were cheering for the same guy.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
Like in the same sentence where he talks about yeah,
confirmation bias.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
It's interesting because again it's like yeah credit where it's new. Scott,
you said before Trump one uh the primary, that he
was gonna win the primary. You know, I'll give you
give you a credit for being right there, But you're
talking about persuasion. You didn't persuade people. You went to
a group of people who all thought Trump was going
to win because they were Trump's supporters on Twitter and
they liked you because you were also a Trump supporter

(51:17):
on Twitter. That's not persuasion, Scott. Okay, now we can
move on. What is it you wanted me to get
into next?

Speaker 4 (51:25):
The Myth of the rational The Myth of the Rational
Mind on page thirty three looks pretty good, And then
there's then there is then there's mass delusions on sixty two.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
God, there are so many fucking chapters. It's this is horrible.
Uh wait, where the fuck is the Myth of the
Rational Mind? Thirty three thirty three?

Speaker 2 (51:45):
How many chapters are there?

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Well?

Speaker 4 (51:48):
I don't Well, there's like, there's like five parts, but
each part has its own little like sub grouping.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
He has a bunch of like short, shitty chapters and
they all have like dog shittle weird stupid titles.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
Go Bigley or go Home great great titles.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Wait, but what was what was Donald Trump's real Donald moment?

Speaker 5 (52:09):
We'll find out that there are so many little chapters
I want to read here, the making of a hypnotist
who could be hypnotized, hypnosis superpowers, finding a hypnosis school.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Oh fuck, all right, The Myth of the Rational Mind.
Students of philosophy, remember that Plato Jesus Christ. Remember that
Plato talked about the subjective nature of our personal realities
In the Allegory of the Cave. Plato asked, us, Oh God,

(52:45):
I don't want to go.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
We don't need to explain the allegory of the cave
to us. I'm sorry, No, you.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
All learned about this in a high school, right, which
is the last time Scott learned anything?

Speaker 4 (52:59):
Or matrix? Who cares? Matrix?

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Who carey?

Speaker 3 (53:06):
The points of Plato's allegory is that, figuratively speaking, the
humans might be chained to a cave created by our
own faulty brains and senses, experiencing a shadow world that
is entirely different from objective reality. Other famous philosophers, notably
David Hume, have questioned the nature cause the existence of
free will. If, as some philosophers claim, humans have no

(53:27):
free will and we are nothing but victims of cause
and effect, that means our common view of reality is absurd.
In this model of the world, we are little more
than meat robots who wrongly believe we control our own
decisions and actions. He's now, he's now, he's talking. He's
just this is like he's like summarizing, like Wikipedia pages
for four guys. It's about comp next just like Google,

(53:48):
cause than him talking about a manual.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
No, we have to read at least one sentence of Skull.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Uses a lot of words to say reality isn't necessarily
anything like the way we perceive it, laughing. Kant uses
a lot of words. You have to give him that.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
I just like that. That's his abbreviated version for CON's philosophy.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Well, he does say he have explained that our brains
don't have direct access to base reality. We have to
settle for interpreting the input from our faulty senses. Okay,
there you go, there you go. I only mentioned yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
Mas de dilutions on page sixty two.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
I only mention them to show that smart people throughout
history have made arguments about the subjective nature reality that
are compatible with what you will read in these pages.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Now.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Now not the case, Scott.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
That is, you're saying, like Plato, Plato, David Hume, and
Kant agree.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
With me, because for one thing, what Scott's been building
to this whole time is not like reality is entirely
subjective in the response and like the result of like
flawed senses. It's I Scott atoms understand reality and the
only one did I was the right one, and you
need to understand how I'm right about reality in this

(55:08):
weird specific way, like great I a manual count appreciateor.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Scott Adams, Jesus, fuck.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
It's good stuff. What are we what are we looking at? Next?

Speaker 4 (55:22):
Mass Illusions on page sixty two. Yeah, okay, and that
one is back to back with when when reality bifurcated?
So you know, good stuff. But then within those like
nine pages, I am excited to get into that. I
do like that Mass Delusions is a little like five
pages long.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
No, no, you don't need that much space to talk
about mass illusions. You know.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
It's after confirmation bias.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
There we go, and right before Salem witch trials and
orson Wells is more of the world.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
I feel like Robert, like the word searches you could
do to find things in this book would be incredible.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
I might do our good, old, our old stand by
word search and just see what he has to say
about the Jewish people.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
Control f Jew?

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, control f Jew. If you don't know how frequently
mass illusions occur in your daily experience, many of your
opinions about the world are likely to be nonsense in
your daily experience. Yeah, that's because mass illusions are the
norm for humanity, not the exception. Don't believe me. It's
easy to check. Just ask your neighbors about the religious

(56:38):
and political views. You'll find plenty of disagreement with your worldview.
And so, according to you, your neighbors and all the
people who agree with them must be living in some
sort of hallucion. No, they're not, are you talking about?
Like my dad is a conservative and believes different things
about the way rich people should be tact I don't
think he's hallucinating. I think he has a series of

(57:00):
opinions based on a mix of like things propaganda that
he's consumed, and what's financially best for him. But that's
not a hallucination, you can tell.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
And this MAT's never read a single page of Plato,
David Hume, or Cot and only read the Wikipedia Submary, because.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Like when I when I encounter somebody in my community
who expresses a racist view or drops a slur, I
don't think they're hallucinating. I think they're a shitty person.
Like that's that, Like there's a there's a difference between
those two things, Like it's it's like saying that, like
you have to believe if somebody disagrees with your worldview

(57:38):
that they're engaged in a hallucination. Like for one thing,
just a lot of times you encounter people who feel different,
Like when I encounter someone who is not a bad
person or not expressing anything mean, but is like I
don't know a Muslim or a Christian or something else
that I'm not. I don't think that they are a
Muslim or a Christian or whatever because they're engaged in
a mass hallucination. Like I didn't go to India and

(57:59):
meet a bunch of hind people and go, wow, look
at all these hallucinating people. Like no, it's just a
religion that's not my own. That's the way the world is.
Lots of people believe things I don't. It's like the
weird way to go about the world, so weird, like
that he believes everyone else thinks this way. Like there's
certainly like bigots who think that way, but like I

(58:20):
don't know. I've had a lot of conversations with people
of different religions and philosophical stances and political stances and
disagreed with them or not just felt the same way,
and neither of us walked away being like, well, that
guy's fucking tripping balls, Like that's such a strange way
to describe this.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
Anyway. Whatever.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
Do you remember when millions of Americans believed President Obama
was a secret Muslim? That was a mass illusion? Now,
who was pushing that massed illusion? Scott? Was it Donald Trump?
The master persuader?

Speaker 4 (58:52):
I guess he didn't persuade enough people.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
No, he didn't persuade Scott. Do you remember when President
Trump got arrested and there were protests in the street
because they thought he was the next Hitler? That was
a mass delusion. He did try to coop the government
and put himself in as a dictator Scott.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
To me, to be fair, this was what in twenty
seventeen when this book came out. Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
Yeah, but also that is just evidence the people who
protested may have caught something that Scott didn't, although I
don't think he thinks J six was bad, So it's fine.
Do you remember the dot com bubble that was based
on mass illusions about the value of money losing startups?
Every other financial bubble was also a mass illusion. Well, partly,

(59:35):
but they were also largely cons like a lot of
the people who made money on the dot com bubble
knew it was going to collapse and very intelligently figured
out how to make as much money as they could
by taking advantage of dumb people, much like people did
with crypto or every other financial bubble. Like he's only
focusing on like the side that's delusion and of the
side that's bad people trying to take advantage of other

(59:58):
people also interesting to me.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
Oh, here we go.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Below is a starter list of more than thirty notable
mass delutions. Wikipedia lists over thirty examples of mass hysteria
through years.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
Did he say that his quote Wikipedia? In this Wikipedia
and now he's.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Just like, yeah, he's going through the same he's just
dropping the list he found a Honestly, this is extra.

Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
English Dictionary describes mass solutions.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
I do have some respect for Scott here because this
is a really like the next like mini pages of
the book are just him like summarizing the Wikipedia entry
for mass illusion.

Speaker 4 (01:00:39):
And that's an.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Easy way to write a book. It's hard to write
a book when you do real research.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
This would get like this would be like like if
you're trying to submit this in school, it would be
like sent back. You're like, no, you have to find
a real You can't cite Wikipedia. You can't. You can't
explicitly say I got this list from Wikipedia.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Uh yeah, Uh, it's it's funny anyway. This chunk of
the book ends on him saying Trump was wrong to
call climate change a hoax, but he was also right
because he called out the Paris Climate Accord and it
was expensive for the US and wouldn't lower temperatures. So
the fact that Trump said climate change was wrong is
fine because the Paris Accord was a lie that would

(01:01:22):
have benefited China. That's That's Scott Adams's opinion on the
Paris Climate Accord.

Speaker 4 (01:01:28):
I'm glad he's changed from being a cartoonist into a
political anist again.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
I'm glad. I love like switching from Scott being like
nobody understands politics, which is why I don't give my
opinions on politics too. The Paris Climate Accord couldn't lower
like Scott, I don't know, man like his stands. His
argument is that like no one disagrees with it any
of this, I don't know. I bet they do. Scott,
you haven't cited anything here. You just say I agree

(01:01:55):
on this, There's there's no citation.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
He's like, yes, side of Wikipedia.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
He did previously site Wikipedia on a separate topic. Okay,
So what do we want to close out on here?

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Zo? There's so many good ones, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
I do want to know what isis in the Vatican
means oh God, which is what immediately precedes ros O'Donnell i.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Also, I also want to briefly look at how to
design a linguistic kill shot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Just oh, you know what I think that this is.
So this is trump o Trump's Rosio o'donald moment. Okay,
so yeah, this is like him explaining how Trump's genius
strategy of like insulting people works. As the election started
getting traction in all of our minds in the summer
of twenty fifteen, I was experimenting with a new comic

(01:02:49):
that featured a talking robot that never moves, he just
reads the news. You can see in this comic that
I had already noticed Trump's successful use of persuasion that
was confusing the prop the public. And this is Robots
Read News by Scott Adams, And it is in fact
a poorly drawn robot reading the news. Donald Trump keeps
saying dumb things because he is so darned dumb, unlike you.

(01:03:11):
He is also surging in the polls while putting almost
no effort into it. So how is smart working out
for you? I don't know, man, It does seem like
he was constantly touring the country and doing events. I
don't think anyone thought he wasn't putting effort into it.
I guess this is a real own on the people
who said that Trump was dumb, which, you know, to

(01:03:32):
be fair, I have always thought was a mistake on
behalf of some Democrats.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
But I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Whatever, Scott, it's not really a joke, but we'll give
you that one. So but I didn't know how big
a deal this was until what I now called the
Rosi O'Donnell moment. In the first Republican debate on August sixth,
twenty fifteen. Megan Kelly was moderating, and her first question
to Trump should have ended his campaign on the spot.
Only a few people in the world could have escaped
her trap started.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Okay, okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
So what Megan Kelly was like, you call women you
don't like fat pigs, slogs or disgusting animals, and Trump
said only Rosie o'donald, right or o'donald. Sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
Yeah. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Scott calls this a master stroke of persuasion executed perfectly
in front of the world. He got goosebumps. Oh what
the mask? He insulted somebody he like, made a mean joke.
People do that all the time. I got they don't
usually do it while running for president, but they do
it all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:04:36):
I like that. I guess Scott describes this as like
as like a transcendent experience for him.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Yeah. Yeah, he's like full body orgasming over Donald Trump
making a mean comment about Rosio Donald thinking of his joke. Yeah,
it's uh, it's it's it's fun. So yeah, that's Trump's
weapons grade persuasion is insulting Rosy o'donald during an interview
with Megan Kell, an interview largely made for people who

(01:05:03):
were already voting for him, that I don't know if
I think actually convinced anybody of anything, but you know, again,
there's always like pieces of accuracy here. Yeah. One of
the things about Trump's political strategy was effective was that
he didn't do the normal thing of like apologizing and
backtracking when criticized, which is you know, effective. It allows

(01:05:24):
you to spend less time dealing with like the the
critiques of your of your political opponents. It's again also
a pretty well worn political strategy, particularly for authoritarians. It's
not wildly new, but there you go. That's that's Scott
Adams explaining how Trump persuaded America by calling Rose O'Donnell fat,

(01:05:47):
a thing no no other comedian had ever done before.
I think that multiple South Park episodes never did.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Oh there, there is there is an index at the
very end of the book that I have access to.
They they cite black Swan, So that's good. That's it's good. Yeah,
he's index. Yeah, is a mix to the back. He
cites Delvert one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
thirty forty. He sites Delbert fourteen times.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
He cites Donald Duck and trying to swap back to back.
That's good. The KKKA has a few shoutouts. The last
thing I do want to see is, let me is
is the how to design a linguistic kill shop? Because
I think we should at least give listeners one piece
of actionable advice.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Yeah, so they can do that so that you can
keep a linguistic kill shop loaded up, and can somebody
like mugs you on the street.

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
You can conceal carry it actually fairly easily shoulder. That's
on page one. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Over the course of the election, we saw Trump assign
one sticky nickname after another to his opponents. It seems
as if each new nickname was a winner. Clinton's team
tried a few nicknames for Trump, but they failed badly.
None of this is a coincidence. Trump's nicknames are deeply engineered,
and they were tested in front of life audiences. And
then he goes and like, I do think actually, if
you're looking at like, what are things that Trump did

(01:07:16):
that made him a successful campaigner? His ability to like,
that's part of why I don't think that Ron DeSantis
has any chance of beating him.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Is putting putting her on?

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
Yeah, putting her on, and then it's over. Then it's done. Yeah,
So let's let's let's let's give him here.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
It's also like the most obvious tactic that he engages in.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
But here we go.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Wow, he has two Elizabeth Warren nicknames on here.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
Oh, No, that's good. I bet you. I bet they's
somehow racist.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
It is interesting he doesn't have any of his nicknames
for Biden on here, maybe because against Biden.

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Yeah, Biden was not a big player in twenty seventeen.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Yeah, Anna, I think you're right. Uh yeah, if you
thought the names were nothing more than common insults, you
missed a lot of his persuasion engineering. I'll walk you
through it in this chapter. How powerful were Trump's nicknames?
So powerful that the day I heard Trump say low energy,
Jeb I predicted Bush was done and blogged that opinion
in August twenty seventh. Keep in mind that literally no
other pundits saw this nickname as important to the like

(01:08:25):
now that lady is true, but also everyone who saw
from the moment I saw Jeb Bush on the fucking
debate stage, I said, well, this is a guy who
can't be president. He was like everyone knew, he was pitiful.
I liked there were some I like that he raims.

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
I like I like that he frames like listening to
Trump as like reading tarot carts.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Yeah, it is interesting because again, there's a reasonable case
to be made for talking about the way in which
Trump uses insults and mockery as a political strategy, but
like being like, and that's why Jim Bush isn't the president. No,
Jeb Bush is the president because he was never going
to be the president. That was never in the cars
because he is jib Bush. It's that's that's so funny.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
Uh uh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
He just talks about why the nicknames are accurate nicknames. Okay, yeah,
that's that's that's good.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
Do you want him to read him analyzing lion Ted
for three pages?

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
He does. He does a three page analysis of lying
Ted lying Ted?

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
What does include the sentence lion Ted simply looked like
a liar. Look, he's not always wrong. And I saw
Ted Cruz, I was like, that guy is a liar.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
I like him. We can always turn to Scott Adams
for this cutting edge political analysis.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Absolutely, yeah, it's it's also funny. Like part of what's
fun about these nicknames isn't that like they're they're super complex,
and it isn't that they engineer opinion. It's that it's
so easy to like cut people who are kind of
obsessed with the like playing at being at the politests

(01:10:26):
of like a political etiquette and just being a dick
is powerful, right, if you're playing a different game than
everyone else. Yeah, that's powerful, but also like it only
worked the one time. He tried all of this again
in twenty twenty, and he lost by the most that
any president has ever lost in terms of like like

(01:10:47):
actual votes.

Speaker 4 (01:10:48):
Okay, I'm at the end of the book now. I
just found I just found three amazing, amazing things back
to back. So at the very end, after the acknowledgments,
there is there's like four appendixes, but the first three
are the ones that I think are really interesting. The
first one is the Persuasion Reading List, which might have

(01:11:09):
some really funny finds. At the end, there's also the
Appendix B is how to be a better writer. It's
two pages long. And then Appendix C is how to
find out if you are in a simulation.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Yeah, yeah, I was looking at that just a second ago.

Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
So you can first of all, get a get get
a list of books to read, become a become a
better writer, and then find out if you're living in
a computer. All within the span of seven fass.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
Ikun approached writing a fucking non fiction book, I think,
and I think he literally Appendix C is just one
of his old blog posts that he's quoting, he talks about,
he talks about simulation theory. Man, oh god, yeah, I'm
not interested in anything less than I am fucking brained

(01:12:05):
idiots talking about the theory that we live in a simulation.
Uh you know what's simulated, your fucking dick, Scott, this podcast,
your weird.

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
Penis is a simulation.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
Yeah, that's that's That's what I gotta say.

Speaker 4 (01:12:22):
Well, I think I think I think you should find
one book on on the reading list that we should recommend,
and then give one one writing tip via Scott Adams,
and then we can call it a day. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
His writing tip is to write whatever you're writing the
way Trump writes things, because are you writer?

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
Are you serious? Yes? Trump's not a good writer.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
I think there is like a difference between like Trump
was effective at a good ship poster on Twitter and
Trump was objectively a great ship.

Speaker 4 (01:12:54):
Post yea, but not on purpose.

Speaker 3 (01:12:57):
I don't know we can debate that. But also I
don't think like it's kind of like saying like how
to be a better right now, how to be a
better poster on Twitter? Like I would take you can
take you can take Donald Trump's advice on that writing
is a little bit wider of a discipline, and you
might wind up having some difficulty if you if you

(01:13:18):
try to take the Donald Trump approach to I don't know,
becoming an editor on Wikipedia so that Scott Adams will
appreciate your work. Nothing against Wikipedia, it's just funny that
that's the only source he's cited other than Plato. Okay,
here's some other advice that he has. Uh, your first

(01:13:42):
sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read
my first sentence in this post. I rewrote it a
dozen times. It makes you curious.

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
That's the key.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
His first sentence is good writing is also persuasive writing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Jesus Christ, Scott, that's the dry shit I've ever heard.
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
So for his his on his persuasion reading list, I
accidentally wound up on this, but it includes how to
Hypnotize Anyone, Confessions of a Rogue Hypnotist, and then in brackets,
I have not read this book, but what it probably
gives you a good taste of the topic.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
That's so funny. He's recommending a book he hasn't read
and he admits it. Yeah, he didn't even read reading list.
It's probably a good idea. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
He admits there's a Tony Robbins book on here. Yeah,
Trump The Art of the Deal, of course, Yeah, tells
you to take a fucking Dale Carnegie class.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
Uh great, Yeah, that that tracks.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Yeah, good stuff. So yeah, I think that's that's a
good look at Scott Adams's book.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Yeah, I think, I think I think that is a
that is a decent a decent dive into the mind
of Scott Adams.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Are you ready to go into the world now, Garrison
and become a master persuader?

Speaker 4 (01:15:20):
Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be working on my I think,
I I think if I get I mean organ does
not have the does not have the round capacity limit yet,
because I'm trying to figure out how many linguistic kill
shots I'm allowed to carry with me at at any
point in time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
But once Yeah, yes, I think you can still have
thirty linguistic kills loaded and in violation of state law.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
So I'll spend it. I'll spend it. I'll spend a
few hours coming up with those so I can just
have them at the ready. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
I'm just gonna call people low energy, Jeb, even if
they're not named.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
That was the that that that was pretty funny. Okay,
so uh yeah, that's uh, that's our man.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Garrison, you would like to plug.

Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
I guess the one thing I could plug is I
recently on It could Happen Here, I finished a shocking
five episodes worth of content about about the the last
week of action in Atlanta to stop cop City. I
believe we should have that put into a compilation as
well by now. But yeah, that that is. That is
on the you could Happen Here feed for the last

(01:16:37):
week of action. And uh, I mean as of as
of recording, the the city council process to to approve
the funding for that is ongoing. There's been there was
like five hundred people showing up I think like just
like two days ago as of time of recording to
give public comment. And that's that process is gonna last
a few more weeks, so we will see, we will

(01:16:58):
see how how that goes. You can you can keep
up to date with that with the with the Atlantic
Community Press Collective. So yeah, that is that is it?

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
Excellent? Well you can find me, yeah we can mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media. Visit our website coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.