Posted on 11/30/2016 9:11:31 AM PST by Uncle Miltie
When Trump started his historic run for the White House last year, I blogged that he would change more than politics. I said he would forever change how we view reality. And so he has.
The mainstream media and the public now accept the idea that Trump ignored facts, science, and even common decency… and still got elected. I have been telling readers of this blog for a year that facts don’t matter.
Policies don’t matter. The only thing that matters is persuasion. And Trump has plenty of persuasion. To be perfectly clear, when I say facts don’t matter, I mean that in the limited sense of decision-making. If you make the wrong decision, the facts can kill you.
That’s not in debate. I’m talking about the process or arriving at a decision – whether it is a good decision or not. The decision-making process is largely divorced from facts and reason. We live under a consistent illusion that facts and logic guide our decisions. They don’t.
The exception to this rule is when there is no emotional dimension to a decision. For example, if a mechanic says it will cost you $1,000 to fix your car, and you can see no other option that makes sense, one could say that facts and logic guided your decision to approve the repairs. But emotion-free decisions are unusual. You rarely see emotion-free decisions when it comes to politics, relationships, or even your career.
And this brings us to the question of President Elect Trump’s seeming disregard for facts as he plowed through the competition to reach the presidency. The common view from his critics is that Trump is an idiot. The common view from his supporters is that his facts are not so wrong, or at least they are directionally accurate. I don’t subscribe to either interpretation. I find the
Master Persuader filter is a better way to understand this strange situation.
A Master Persuader – and anyone trained in hypnosis or persuasion in general – knows that humans don’t use facts and reason to make important decisions. Most persuaders prefer sticking to the facts when possible, but that is mostly to avoid looking like idiots. They know that sticking to facts will not persuade.
Trump just takes things one step further. He doesn’t pretend the facts matter when they don’t. To put this in more practical terms, Trump does the things that matter and ignores the things that don’t. He just has a better idea than the public and the media about what matters.
For example…
The public thinks facts matter for decisions. They don’t.
The public thinks being “presidential” matters for getting elected. It didn’t.
The public thinks Trump should have studied the issues more deeply. And he will, as needed. But he didn’t need detailed policy knowledge to get elected (evidently).
The experts said Trump needed more ground game. He didn’t.
I could go on, but I hope you see the pattern already.
Trump ignores the things that don’t matter – even to the point of looking the fool – and pays deep attention to what DOES matter. That’s what made him our next president.
When Trump was running for election, facts and reasons and policy details didn’t matter to the outcome. He knew that. I knew that. Every trained persuader knew it. But the general public did not, and that is the realization that is beginning to dawn on the world.
Once in office, facts and reason do matter more. Trump is moving from the job of talking about issues to the job of doing something about them. In his new role, he will pay attention to details and facts and reason as much as humanly possible, with the help of advisors. You already see this transformation happening as Trump moderates his positions on waterboarding, prosecuting Clinton, and even climate change.
If you have not studied persuasion it makes perfect sense to be in a panic about a Trump presidency. You see a pattern of irrational-looking behavior from Trump during the election and you assume the trend will continue into the presidency. But if you understand the tools of persuasion you see a Master Persuader ignoring what doesn’t matter and paying close attention to what does, for the benefit of the country. That is literally the safest situation I can imagine.
As president, facts do matter. Reason matters. Logic matters. But persuasion does too – and it is still hugely important to the job of being president. Don’t expect Trump to embrace any facts that are not important to “making America great again.” But I do think you can expect facts to influence Trump when they do matter.
If you are worried how a President Trump will address climate change, here’s what to expect. You can expect him to dissect the topic in terms of the facts that matter and the ones that don’t. You can expect him to eventually agree with scientists who say human activity is contributing to climate change. But when it comes to the prediction models, and America’s ability to fix the problem at a reasonable cost, expect him to be more skeptical than the general public.
That isn’t crazy. Complicated models that try to predict the future rarely succeed.
I realize that the stakes are high if I’m wrong. But keep in mind that a year ago I was giving Trump a 98% chance of winning the presidency when experts were at 2%. And my prediction was based on the persuasion filter.
I don’t believe human brains evolved to understand reality at an objective level. The best we can do is pick filters that do a good job of predicting what’s ahead. The Persuasion Filter predicted Trump’s win when most other models did not. Now I use the same filter to predict that Trump will turn from totally ignoring facts (because facts don’t matter to elections) to embracing the facts that do matter to the country.
You can still expect Trump to ignore any facts that don’t matter, such as the exact number of non-citizens that voted for Clinton. In that case he was making the press think past the sale (that non-citizens voted) and forcing them to spend time talking about the exact number until our brains uncritically accept his central premise that lots of non-citizens voted for Clinton.
That is pure persuasion. He won’t change the methods that work. Watch and learn.
He's brilliant. Folks, you should read his blog and improve your understanding of humanity.
In the early 1980’s, I was a commercial real estate agent in Seattle. One of the sales training courses I took listed the types of emotional decisions people make, and then listed the type of logical decisions people make. On the first list was stuff like sofas and on the second was stuff like investment decisions.
Then they taught that they are ALL emotional decisions. They taught that even when you are trying to be logical, your emotional needs ultimately trump the logical facts to one degree or another.
That information served me very well even in IT. All of life is sales and marketing.
Granted salesmanship is what gets one elected- we all know that- and Trump was the better salesman.
And, granted, ‘facts’ aren’t the crux of a sales spiel by any measure.
Nothing supports his claim that Trump ignored facts.
It’s whom determines what is ‘fact’ that Trump fought- not facts.
BS, I voted for him because I agreed with his policy positions. What Adams describes applies to a lot of people, but not to all.
Semper President Trump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This guy is as good as it gets; and better than it has ever been, I think!
+++++
Gunny G: ~ OK, President Trump Is mad As Hell, and we’re Not Going To Take It Anymore…???…So,…..
Posted on November 30, 2016 by Gunny G
President Trump is mad as hell and America is NOT going to take it anymore!
So, Now, when will the obama syndicate be brought to justice?
***
Will the guilty just walk-away scot-free??????????
******
Watch…and see???/!!!!!???
Pie In Da sky Bye.N.Bye?
+++
TIME OVERDUE TO GET OFF THE POT!!!!!!!!!!
NOW!...RIGHT NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
********************************
He says things that make sense, but then he spews this global warming nonsense and says that the integrity of the voting process doesn’t matter...
Weird guy, but definitely worth reading.
He’s brilliant. Folks,
His global warming comments are an example of persuasion. They are meant for the true believers, not the deniers. Persuasion begins where the target’s emotions are and then moves them from there. He know he cannot tell a true believer who like the kids protesting that they are wrong. They have too much emotionally invested in their position. He can start with agreeing with their premise and then begin moving them.
Has he actually taken action on those items? When he does Scott can then look past his emotions and look at those actions as "facts".
Facts AND emotions for those facts that Trump ran on got him elected...
I think Scott is somewhat a flim flam man, I don't think Trump is.
Yeah, I saw it that way too.
I am not all that impressed with Adams’ self-promotion either.
Facts sometimes dont matter in the short run. But in the long run they are what matters the most. Why they wont matter temporarily I when manipulators obfuscate. Sometimes the manipulators cam succeed for a long time. But the truth can strike anytime and win. Fiction only wins when the coverups keep getting away with things.
This really helps me explain to myself my gut reaction to Trump, because really, I haven't been exactly sure how to do that. My reaction to him from the beginning has been, "I like this guy. He gets it." Gets what? I dunno, he gets it. Why do I like him? He cracks me up, and... I just think he gets it.
It makes sense. Scott got a LOT of push back for taking the position that Trump isn’t Hitlers evil twin. And, in his blog, he does talk about the “yes and” approach to persuasion. When someone talks about some “scientific consensus” that global warming is caused by humans it always makes me wonder what is in their head where a persons brain should be. But I can give him that he was tailoring that to his audience.
In the long run, if Trump pretends to believe in the globally warming religion but doesn’t do anything about it, I’m cool with that.
And the vote integrity comment was geared more toward Trump making people focus on the number of illegal votes while letting him push the premise that illegal votes exist.
Somebody, Trump, congress, somebody needs to true the vote. Illegal voting strike at the public faith in the idea or representative government.
As I said, Scott Adams says interesting things that are worth reading.
All the testing I took in high school indicated that I should be headed for a degree in a liberal arts area. I was very good in economics, literature, political science, etc. I was also very good at math and science. I took a lot of grief in high school over supporting conservative ideals in my liberal arts classes. I did not look forward to four years of similar abuse in college.
I did not want to get into a field where there would be endless battles over ideology. So I decided to become an electrical engineer. After my bachelor's degree, I hired on at Honeywell to work on their mainframe computers. Most of my work for the last 40+ years has been on software.
Early on in my computer software career I was surprised about how many engineering decisions are based on emotional criteria. We used to jest that you could tell a lot about the temperament of the system programmers by how the user interfaces behaved; e.g., were they forgiving or were they abruptly rude.
I contend that whole technology fields like "object level programming", "relational databases", and, more recently, "big data", are driven by emotional responses rather than rational thinking. The people making these largely emotional decisions are sometimes the technologists, but many times it is the IT managers.
Many an IBM mainframe server was chosen because it was the "safe" purchase. After all, how many managers had been fired for choosing IBM over some lesser known product. Not buying IBM was a gamble for IT management.
Trump had to persuade the voters that Hillary was not "safe" and he succeeded. Hillary tried to convince voters that Trump was not "safe" and she (and her sycophants in the media) failed.
Blah,blah,blah... Master Baiter filter... Blah,blah.
Trump wasn’t Hillary. Scott Adams is still trying to convince us he’s a genius.
There were only about 20% of the public who were possibly persuadable. 40% will vote for a Communist, and 40% will vote for the approximately conservative candidate.
So Trump’s whole gambit was to move just enough of those persuadable people. Those people do not pay attention to facts. If they did, they would have chosen conservatism. If those people were purely emotional, they would have already been communists.
So he aimed at who he could persuade, and moved their dials just enough. They didn’t care about facts. They cared about what they feared and hoped for. Trump showed them they should Fear Hillary and Hope to Make America Great Again.
Simple enough.
Everything else was noise.
Cruz wasn’t Hillary.
Proving Adams’ point.
Given the economic hit he has taken because of his point of view, and don’t think he’s hasn’t taken a hit, then a little self promotion is understandable.
BTW: The man we just elected, has been a master of self promotion for 50+ years. Or did you miss all those building and resorts, and the plane with TRUMP prominently displayed.
To all those who are bagging Trump to ‘go after’ HilLIARy and Obama, I think it would be VERY unwise for him to even hint at vigourous prosecution not.
They are still in control.
Let him say he won’t prosecute anyone... Maybe they will let their guard down.
But AFTER he becomes President I will be one of those demanding accountability.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.