One of our events for the very first time . Wow, welcome. Were glad youre here. We have your email address [laughter] we are in touch once or twice a week, sometimes we have new eventsre to announce and hope youll stay with us and not ask off the list, because wed hate you to miss events. Anyway, thanks to new roads school, wonderful partners of ours. We host a o bunch of events in this space, so a special welcome to you. Im just going to run through, its been a very busy fall for us, just some upcoming events, and then well get into the program. Next, this sunday we have a version of our series we call the newer voices series, and we have a terrific firsttime novelist, c. Morgan babst, and shell be talking about her novel at the Santa Monica Library k. And thats free. Thats what these events are. We p want to especially debut authors, give you no excuse not to give them a chance and come and hear their work. Monday night Chris Matthews comes to our stage. He has a new book out, Bobby Kennedy a raging spirit. Hell be interviewed by frank buckley, one of the morning hosts on can ktla, and tuesday night tim oreilly is with us. Hes, haso a new book out titled wtf, hes a technology prognosticator. And then we have Matthew Weiner with susan orr lean next thursday and also coming up conductor john macheri, dennis leafly, tom main was just with us last week, tina brown is with us on next friday, jennifer lewis, daniel else burg, and we Just Announced our first event for 2018, amy tan. Tonight its an honor to host scott adams. He is the cartoonist, many of you know him from the comic strip dilbert. Hes the author of several bestsellers, the dilbert principle, and how to fail at almost everything and still win big. Hes the can cofounder of he worked for 16 years in technology for a major bank and then a phone company and then is when he started the column. Interviewing him tonight is terence mcally whos been on our Terence Terence mcnally, hes been a longtime host of a favorite show of mine here locally on kpsk called free form, and now he hosts a podcast for the White Institute for biological inspired engineering at harvard. Scott adams new book is win bigly. A year to today, the election outcome was predicted by lots of people differently but not scott adams. So he has a lot to share about that and the whole world of possessor suasion. Im going to invite persuasion. Im going to invite scott and Terence Mcnally to our stage. Ing please welcome them. [applause] does this look like a hostile youd to you . I cant tell. [laughter] they look really friendly. Well, this part of town theyre at least curious, if not friendly. [laughter] i wanted to start by saying on november 11th, three days after the election, i wrote of trump and his voters. He spoke directly to people who wanted to be seen and heard, he aimed his campaign and his message at them. Though his facts were wrong, his story was right. I imagined the trump supporter. Now ive got a Major Political candidate talking to me, and hes not just a nerdy politician. Hes a macho, successful, celebrity billionaire businessman and tv star, and he understands me. He respects me. He cares about me. And you want to base your whole campaign on running him down, telling me hes not good enough to be president. Where have i heard that before . Not good enough . And several minutes into the first debate with hillary, i turned to my wife and i said, were in trouble. Hesct a narrative machine. And from e that night forward, i knew trumps election was a seriouss possibility. Scott adams, looking at the man and his campaign from a highly informed perspective, saw much more than i did. Adams calls trump the most persuasive human being hes ever observed, and he predicted trumps win with 98 certain a week after nate silver said he had a 3 percent chance. 2 chance. And as ted said, in his latest book, win bigly, adding ams not only offers a look at the persuasion strategies that trump used, but he goes beyond politics to look at persuasion strategies that can work for youen anywhere. I wont do the bio because ted just did, but scott, as i mentioned to you backstage, i like listener toss to get a feel for the people, not just the book or the idea. Tell us a little bit about how you see your path which is not a normal one by any means. You mean the path to cartooning . The path to well, no. You started, youre working in tech and corporations, and then you diverge into cartooning, and somewheree theres hypnotism. [laughter] well, so ill give you the fast forward version. At the age of 6, i saw my first peanuts cartoon book. I couldnt read yet, but i said, finally, a reason to learn to read. [laughter] i wanted to know what this was all about. And at about that age i decided to become a famous cartoonist, because i thought, well, you know, i saw other jobs, farmer, you know, mailman [laughter] i was, like, those dont look nearly as good as this. So lets see if i can do that. Around about the age of 11 you become rational, and you say, wait, there arese five billion people or whatever there were at the time, only one charles schultz, i dont like my odds. [laughter] so i put that on hold for many years, did the corporate route, worked for a big bank, a number of jobs, worked at the phone company and did a number of jobs. And when my career stalled at both of those places, now that enough time has gone by i can tell you the real reason that my career stalled in both places. At the bank my boss with called me in one day, and there was an opening for a promotion. And i was sort of obvious person for it. I was kind of an up and comer, you know, working on my mba and everything. And she said i dont know how to tell you this, but the companys getting a lot of heat because we have no diversity in senior management. And she said until further notice, we cant promote you because youre a white male. And i said, well, how longs going to last . [laughter] shes like, well, how long did it take us to get to this point, you know . Its not going to be fast. So i started looking for a new job right away thinking, you know, okay, you know . Im not going to let that slow me down. Went to the phone company and worked there and got in the fast track, was recognized as an up and comer, and one day my boss called me into his office, and he said the local newspapers all other us. They just all over us. They just discovered we have no diversity in senior management, and we just cant promote you, and i dont know when thats going change. Now,l i know what youre thinking. You thinking, that was a bad day for me, right . But youd be wrong, because it turns out that the day you find out that your effort and your reward are not related, it really frees up your schedule. [laughter] so suddenly, i had time for working on side projects, and i thought, well, lets see if i can have a comic published somewhere. And i asked for some advice from a cartoonist id seen on tv. He sent me some advice. He said its a tough business, but heres some tips where to send your comics, that sort of thing. Sent out some comics to some magazines. They were rejected immediately. I gave up. A year later i get a letter from the same cartoonist, jack cassidy was his name, and he said he was cleaning his office, came across my letter that was still in the pile, and he said he was just writing to make sure that i hadnt given up. What a i mean, thats an important moment. Yeah. It was the only point of the letter. There was nothing else in it. And i had given up. So i took my materials out and i decided to raise my sights and try to become a famous cartoonist in newspapers all over the world, and i created dilbert. So that was the beginning of dilbert. Was dilbert originally multipanel . Yeah, well, when i sent it to magazines, i singled had had singlepaneled it. Thats what i was thinking. And then i did three. A lot of cartoonists do four panels, but i was also a trained economist [laughter] ande im thinking thats onethird hardter than my threepanel idea. Ing and then fast forward, you know, worked for the phone company while doing dilbert until it took off. And then it was 2015, and im sitting in front of my tv like everybody else, and im seeing this orange ball of fury finish. Whos just got everybody jabbering. And i started to notice, because i have a background as a hypnotist. Im a trained hypnotist. But let me ask, because i was curious. You mentioned im a hypnotist. When was that . High school . Junior high . Later . When did you finish. Early 20s. And i was influenced by my mother who w was hypnotized to give birth to my younger sister. And my mother reported that she was, you know, awake and aware, used no painkillers and had a painless delivery. And i thought, well, what is this superpower, you know . Ive got to learn about this. Now, it tons out that maybe turns out that maybe one in five people could have that kind of effect. Most people cant. She just happened to be one of them. Butle i thought ive got to lean what this superpower is to add it to my other resources. Andrn so, i mean, i interrupd you, but being a trained hypnotist, how did people might not make the immediate connection how that, you know, immediately leads to your interpretation, if you will, of the way that you saw donald trump. So on top of hypnosis, i had also studied persuasion in all of its forms, you know, from communicating everything from listening to design to writing in my work. The dilbert comic is designed with persuasion mechanics. Ic talk about that later. But when i saw trump, i didnt know that much about him. You know, i knew his public figure, but i hadnt seen much of him. And i quickly noticed that he was using what i call weaponsgrade persuasion, the type of thing that was, essentially, he was bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight, and there were no sticks that could see it. It wasck like his hands were lie this, but there was nothing in them. Hey, watch this. Because if you dont study it, you dont notice it. It just looks random, it looks crazy, it looks provocative, and you say, well, this guy could never get elected with all this crazy, random, provocative behavior, and im looking at it and saying, oh, my god, thats perfect. It was so consistent. As i said, my analysis was on the narrative story thing because thats what i look for. I consult organizations about story. And i just thought this guy, everything is a story. Let me talk just a little bit more about dilbert because im sure there are some people that are here partially at least because of that. How do you write dilbert . Well, its changed over the years. I used to do one a day and do it on paper with a pencil and then ink over it with a pen and take it down to the post office, which worked until the post office figured ott where i was out where i was, and then theyd just steal them. [laughter] which, actually, was a common problem for cartoonists in those days. As soon as they figured out who you were, they were like, hey, these will disappear. But now i do a big computer screen thats made for drawing with a stylus. So i have, ive got a hand problem that caused me to move to it, but it probably reduced my workload by 70 . The, i mean, the drawings are simple. The words, the, changes are the juice there. Do you write them out . Hows the you know what im saying, the writing and the drawing, how does that relate . So in the early days i would write a sentence, draw it, write, draw, and i didnt know where it was going or how it was going to end. And that ended up being almost a trademark approach because it violated what was the standard punchline, you know . So it turned out to be the beginning of what i would call the age of realism being humor. Because if you look at humor, its changed over the years from, you know, vaudeville, punch liney stuff, and then in the 70s it was snl. And then it was like, oh, can we say maasture base on tv . Thats fun masturbation on tv . Thats funny. If you look at what qualifies as humor today, its reality. We watch reality tv shows to laugh. We watch politics. How manyo of you have laughed watching the news, right . You watch it like its almost designed as humor, because its so often funny. Yeah. Os so thats what we see as humor now. Anyway, so currently im more likely to write it first and then draw it second. But its evolved over time. Right. And in case youre wondering, he wrote a few ahead so he could be here with us. Yeah. There are no blank spaces in your newspaper. [laughter] and so you talked about how the technology has changed and so on. How hasas the culture in the stp changed as the economy goes up and down, aztec goes up and down yeah. What are some things about that little world that lives inside those panels . Well, it changes with society, right . Im trying to mirror society. In thes 90s the bosses had all the power, and, you know, they were firing people. You were just scram is bling to keep your scrambling to keep your job. But now if youre an engineer like dilbert is and his coworkers, they have more power, so theyre much more insolent and more likely to insult their bosse to his face because theye hard to replace. So i move with the times. Okay. So now were going to switch to win bigly. Youre sitting there in 2015, he comes down the escalator, you watch a couple of debates probably or even rallies, and you see this thing. How soon did you know this was something you had to write about, and then how soon did you know it might even be a book . Well, i cant remember exactly what keyed me off, but i remember the two big confirmation points. One was the first debate where he got the question from megyn kelly that, about his comments about women. Any normal politician dies that day. [laughter] thats the killbo shot. Its over. It doesnt matter what you say. You cant apologize, you cant explain it away, its over. And what does he do oh, by the way, let me just cut in for a second. That wasnt the big grabbing line, that was just youve called them pigs, youve called them yeah. Im just setting the, it was back ine 2015, august, i think. Instead of engaging like a normal human being, he cuts her off andg he goes only Rosie Odonnell. Right . So remember, his base had a real strong feeling about Rosie Odonnell. But heres the first confirmation point. Its visual. Be all right . That was the first thing you saw. Wait, this is visual. He took all of her energy from the question to the answer, and the genius was it wasnt an answer. It wasnt even an answer to the question. But you almost didnt care because it was so entertaining. [laughter] flash your energy just moved there. Now, if youre wondering, well, was that just a lucky play . I remind you, you may not have seen this, but there was an interview many months later with chris cuomo on cnn. And he asked him another gotcha question that was just as good. It was an impossible trap, and here was the question. Imagine how he would answer this. He said the pope has said some bad things about capitalism. What do you say to the pope . What does he do . Say things about capitalism while hes running for president of the United States . No. Say bad things about the pope when youre running for president . No. Theres no way out. So what does he say . Id tell the pope to worry about isis taking overr the vatican. [laughter] what was the question . I dont know. I dont know. [laughter]st they never got back to the question. It didnt matter. Again, its visual, its provocative, it takes your energy out. But before that, to answer the question, the second real confirmation was the low, low energy jeb. Right . I felt i was a little bit out of line because i started writing about his powers of persuasion based on the first clues. But, you know, it could have been wrong. Could have beenf luck. Maybe luck, you never know. But by the time he got to low energy jeb and thats just so engineered compared to regular insults. And i could talk about that later or now if you like. But that was deep technique which would be invisible to the audience, the people who havent had that training. They wouldnt see how much goes into them. Theyre not random at all. So lets lets talk about that. [laughter] so let me contrast it to the bad attempts that people use about him. One of the ones that minute on the clinton said came up with was dangerous donald. Problem, his supporters wanted a dangerous candidate. They wanted somebody who would beat isis hard, somebody who would drain the swamp. Danger was too easy to flip to a positive. They also tried, this is my favorite, cheetoh jesus. Remember that one . Which is hilarious, you know . Its, it mocks him. But heres the problem. People like cheetos, and they love their jesus. [laughter] they love their jesus. You put those together, cheetoh and jesus, and i want to buy a bag, right . [laughter] and so both of those had quality that there was something positive or something you could turn around. Now, look at his. Low energy jeb. Cant turn that into a positive. And the moment you heard it, you said thats an unusual thing to say in the context of politics, and watch how often he uses something thats just out of place. That is part of technique. Hehe is consistently operating n this thin band of wrongness. [laughter] not so bad that he must be executed, you know . [laughter] hes not going to get impeached. Its just, oh, hes a little not what a president should say, you know . And so thats the first thing he puts in his technique. Its a little bit wrong so you cant look away. Then he builds in for confirmation bias later. And in this case also contrast because he had this high energy campaign. Before you heard that you probably thought this jeb bush guy, he looks like a calm, collected executive. Kind of the perfect person youd want in an emergency, yeah, yeah, i b could see that guy as president. The moment you heard low energy and you realized it was comparison to high energy trump, you never could see him the same again. It was over. Yep. And same with his other nicknames, crooked hillary. Once he laid that on her, you could guarantee something would come up about the foundation or the email server. Doesnt matter if any of its true. It didnt matter. You would be, you would be drawn to that nickname, and it would be reinforcing. When you say it doesnt matter youd be drawn, how broadly do you mean that . In other words, do you have to be somewhat inclined toward him to, for it to really work, or will it sort of work with everybody . In well, in the context of a president ial race youre going to get Something Like 50 50 no matter what. All right . Thats the part where facts dont matter. [laughter] right. Right. Youve got to start there, and then facts dont matter toward decisions. They obviously matter toward the outcomes. But if people were really looking at facts and using logic, wed probably have more like an 80 20, you know, 20 just arent paying anticipation, but the others got it right. So really youre trying to persuade maybe 2 of the public who can be persuaded, the people who have not locked down a commitment over 18 months. And when you have the best persuader the world may have ever seen, and i know not everybodys buying intot this concept yet, but trust me. Or as he says, its true, its true. [laughter] youve got 18 months to work on the public, and you have nonstop coverage, youre going to get that done. And thats what happened. Okay. And by the way, you didnt as i pointed out, you didnt just say you predicted hed win, you predicted that there was a 98 chance he would win. And how to early did you do that . I referenced it to nate silver, but how early was it . It was 2015. Okay. It was early. You got that . It was at the same time you said theam 2 . Now, i also am trained in persuasion. Why did i pick998 . Because nate silver said 2 , and you couldnt, you couldnt get that connection out of your head. And i also intentionally tied my reputation to the most respected, you know, pricker in the field. Predicter in the field so it was easy to imagine us actually, and i would get some of his goodness on me. Right, right. In other words, you this was new business for you. And so you bask in the sentences that say 98 when he says 2. I often say that one of the tells, you know, one of the signals forsa someone whos trained in persuasion is that they can change fields without practice. You can become president without being a candidate without being a politician. He became a reality tv star without any practice. Steve jobs didnt go to college. He formed, you know, Apple Computer and then a few other businesses that also succeeded. So the people who have persuasion talent tend to be fluid across fields in a way that other people are not. Let me ask you this. Im, as i said, from as i watched him, i was both mesmerized, horrified, impressed all of that with what he was able to do including upending peoples world views. I mean, he was he would say yesterday you thought this is the way the world worked, this is the way you thought politics and candidates worked. And so even if he lost, his persuasion abilities would be worth a book. It wouldnt sell as well, obviously [laughter] but i also believe that a marginally smarter campaign in the rust belt might have beaten him. And what happens to your prediction of 98 then . I wouldnt be here. [laughter] and the book wouldnt youd be yeah. Full time dilbert. Im not stupid. So, you know, it was the sort of thing that if id been wrong, i would have been embarrassed for a year, and i would live through it. But i have an unnatural ability to deal with shame. [laughter] its a practiced skill, you know . I mean, i could disrobe in front of this im not going to, dont worry. [laughter] i was like everybody else, with a normal sense of em bairmtd. But its actually a learned skill. You can train it out of yourself. So what i hear there is youre complimenting him as the master. But youre in, in choosing the book, in choosing the 98 , in going out on a limb, youre following many of the same techniques. Yeah. I consider myself a commercialgrade persuader, meaning i use it in my work, and i contrast that to, say, a cognitive scientist who, if you hear anybody say that ive got something wrong and theyre a cognitive scientist, dont believe me. And then above the cog cognitive scientists are the master persuaders who are t bringing a full package to something about their personality, their risk taking. Theres something bigger than just the persuasion skills. And steve jobs you referred to, but you say that notion that he has a distorsion field reality distortion. Which is what theyve said about him. That, to you, is the description of a master persuader. Yeah. If you hear anybody has a reality distortion [laughter] they have skills. And jobs had them. To you once youre focused on this, youre thinking about it, youre blogging about it, youre writing about it, did you then go back and try to figure out how did this happen, you know . In other words, how did he become a master persuader . Yeah. A lot of people dont know his pastor when he was a kid was Norman Vincent peale, and he had, you know, a close connection to the most motivational, best selling author who wrote the power of positive thinking. And he really was the person in america who brought that idea that you could think your way to a better situation. That there was something about the way you framed your existence that would make you more effective. And you see that in trump. For example, the other day my favorite example, he was at an interview, and he said, well, we had 3 support disease gdp be, but without the hurricane, it probably would have been 4 . I think well have 4 president pretty soon. Now this, a normal president would have said, hey, we got 3 ing right . Its great. But hes already talked the economy into 4 percent. And whos watching . The people who invest. Yeah, maybe 4 . I better start investing. And thats what makes it 4 . He was actually Norman Vincent pealeing the old economy because the economy moves on psychology. Because theres no resource shortage here, right . So you have thate going. He had a father who was a successful business person, probably knew negotiating, probably saw it firsthand. He wrote a book, trump, on negotiating which is the art of the deal. Obviously, he knows branding, he knows sales, he knows marketing. He has a sense of humor. These are all related. Hes a great communicator, hes quick on his feet. Hes even tall, and hes got something going on up here [laughter] you cant look away. Watch how many persuaders have Something Weird going on up there. So, yeah. He has the full package of, you know, skills on top of his personality and just his size. Theres something about the size. It does and for a long time, reading your book actually made me stop and think about this, because ive often thought meter sort of a savant. My god, its like where did he get that . But youreh saying norman vincet peale, and youre guessing to become what hes become, hes been working at this. Yeah. If you write a book about how to negotiate, its important to you. Yeah. Its core to his being. Let n me ask about bernie sanders. Bernie sanders drew crowds at least as big as trumps. Hehe licited elicitedded the similar kind of passion and loyalty. And i, id say two things he does that i find effective is he does deal in narratives. He reallyy does. Theres a narrative of class and history and be all of that. He comes across as very authentic in contrast to most politicians. In fact, rough sort of in his, you know, hes not polished. But he doesnt seem to me to be the persuader trump is. Whats your how do you see . Well, you know, Donna Brazile probably has a better answer for what happened to bernie, but [laughter] wouldnt you agree, lets poll the audience. Wouldnt you agree that bernie outperformed compared to what you expected . Wouldnt you saysome. Yes. Right. Now, and did you notice, maybe you didnt, that hillary clintonsd . Persuasion game was pathetic until he dropped out. Did you notice that . That she got weapons grade over the summer, the final summer. There was just a real change, and it happened instantly. She went from let me tell you about my boring policy. Checked my web site, im not even really going to tell you about. And then she went to hes dark, hes going to destroy the world. She went fear which is your ultimate persuasion. And that word dark, as soon as i saw it, and all the pundits got the memo and they all started using it, its a speech after thet republican convention. Dark, dark, dark. I said i think i know whos ad vising her, and i think he was ad vising bernie before. Because remember bernie had the most awardwinning campaign ad. It was one where it was a simon and garfunkel america. Yeah, people streaming. I got chills when i watched it. That was so good. And he had all the game. And then suddenly she went from nothing to something. And i speculated that one of the greatest persuaders of all time may have joined her team after leaving the sinking bernie ship. I had been calling him godzilla in my blogs sort of like deep throat. Right. Because i didnt want to name him. I wasnt sure, but i thought i saw the fingerprint on the work. Andd i had seen a book called presuasion before most people had from robert [inaudible] the person who wrote influence, the most influential book about how to influence. And presuasion talked about things like using that word dark that would just prime you to see things in a different way. And i thought i see his fingerprint. And soju finally, i finally said it publicly, and there was i sent it to a reporter at one point, and he tracked him down and asked for a comment and asked him are you con sutting for clinton consulting for clinton, and his comment was no comment. Now, if youre not consulting for a president ial [laughter] do you say no comment . I dont think so. And then some of his associates confirmed that he, in fact, was. Now, keep in mind i picked that up from one word. Because that word was so well chosen. And i recognized it from his writing. I hadec w an advance copy of his book, which was a mistake for him because i caught him. [laughter] but i think people who had the same training i had could have also recognized it. So it wasnt magic, it was a result of training. It wasnt magic, its a result of training. Some of the things that i saw bernie with or without the raw, authentic, passionate how does that fall into persuasion . Working against them, he didnt have a good visual. His hair was the crazy hair maybe it needs to be crazier or more orange his biggest secret was he was promising people free money for nothing. You dont have to be the best persuader in the world, free healthcare, free college you get some energy. He had a good advisor have lots of questions. If i wash trump now his most successful move our executive orders in choosing the Supreme Court justice, neither of which call for much persuasion. Who is he persuading these days . Keep in mind he didnt get to do those until he persuaded enough people for him to be president. Now its a whole new bag. He has to persuade his face, even the republican senators who hate him and cant stop talking about what a bad person his. So the entire republican side pretty much dancing as long as his basis passionate. If we go on a point by point level is he persuading isis . Compare obamas approach which is where going to leave and at days which persuades isis to stay around, we just wait them out. Trump says that persuasion. Were you say were here forever when i can adjust tracy were to destroy you. Them worse in the first surrenders. Isis has largely been wiped out. Part of this is how they treated the military. He told mattis to figure it out and the morale is probably the best its ever been. Certainly the economy he has talked up, yes, obama is responsible for 75 of the good times. Obama was great. In 2009 when things were going to hell you dont want the orchard it on the the lawyer who says is going to be okay ive looked into it so he gets credit for the strong base. Clearly there is a trump bump to the economy. I have isis and the economy and i think pretty well true now, hes in china. China loves him. Hes a rock star. Shes clearly persuading. But they have this lovely dance at the time where this alliance is crucial to north korea. Are they persuaded . I have a feeling that little rocket man for the first time doesnt know if he will be a live in a month. That has never been the case before i would guess. That does make a difference. On like his brother. So, i would say maybe for the first time a chance something could happen in north korea if you counts chinas persuasion. What other topics,. Healthcare tax cuts. Healthcare, you notice he stood back and let Congress Take the lead. He did not persuade, not really. Didnt even care what was he said bringing something to my desk. Youve had years to work on this wheres my bill. He said im the guy who signs it. I can do my part bring me something i can sign, they didnt. The only way youll get a Health Care Bill is way he played it. Let the republicans go first, feel hard, try again, feel hard, realize they have no hope. Meanwhile, scare the pants off the left because theyre saying what they have in mind. The what is he do he says maybe i should talk to the democrats. If youre saying to yourself his and got healthcare done in the time you had hoped, true enough. But was there deadline for that . He is letting obama care fail, thats part of the persuasion. The way he is sabotaging it. Yes, hes making things worse until theyre desperate and people are ready for someone to come in and say the only way this works is if you meet in the middle. He cant predict exactly how long this will play out. If it look like that plays out 2018 and is not a republican midterm, in some sense visit theres two ways to in, no way to lose. I always had the feeling that his brand survives no matter what happens to the republicans. I think the surprise would be if the democrats had some big wins in them republicans lost the majority, think he has a better chance of negotiating something in the middle. The worst case is a republican majority shoving something down the throats of the last left in the country. You need somebody on the other side. Lets go back to the foundation. Youd think they are rational they think they understand their reality, they are wrong. It was my sense that its the foundation for everything else. One thing you learn is a hypnotist is the common view of the world is upside down. Humans are rational creatures, we use reason and look at facts. 10 of the time we get crazy but we figured doesnt happen to us. Hypnotist says where irrational 90 of the time and dont know it. Because we rationalize after the fact. Only a few things like balancing checkbook are searching for things online is rational. Until you understand word irrational you cant be a hypnotist. I learned this many decades ago, before scientific backing. The hypnotist to say just acts like its true and watch what happens. They did try to put science on it. But now theres books out there and tons of science so that humans dont use rational thoughts to make decision. If half the countrys gonna go the way they are no matter who runs, how much factors in the. You go to the Grocery Store and people with five different religions shopping next you, some are reincarnated something to look live forever, but look it turns out that evolution never cared if you understood your reality. He said if you read some cognitive scientist the difference from what i say trumps them. Is there anything in particular you recommend. If you google the phrase persuading reading list, youll come up with my list. Let me ask you about things we may or may not have mentioned falling from the were not rational, one key thing is confirmation bias, what is that . Dont have access stow facts. But i think already lest anything this is what we do when were in high school and we think a girl likes us the once you realize it is not the exemption, i talked about that in cognitive dissonance as the operating system for the human mind. These are not the flaws in the operating system. This is the operating system. This is our normal. Yeah, on his positive dissonance. It is almost hard to believe if you havent been exposed to it. After the top experience, most people have heard the term refers to the fact that something violates the fact that what is true about yourself you will rewrite the movie and had to rewrite it ridiculously so until it is something that other people look at h and say you are crazy. It the person whos been in thing she was perfectly rational. Ifo you think that is a terrible thing to have happen to other people, you are missing the point. We are all in a bubble all the time. An example not in the campaign, but in a row might of cognitive dissonance. Give you a a cigarette smoker, why dont you quit poking. People dont like to think of themselves as having no willpower and not being aware of the signs that it will kill you, so you get crazy answers like i am someone who smoked three packs away in at 16 barbecues and drank 10 beers in lived until 110. So why appeared what has that got to do with you. You mention this thing about visual persuasion. If you can say something, which make something appear in someone elses minds eye a few well, if it is worth a thousand words a visual piece of persuasion is worth a thousand words. If you were to rank the different types of persuasion, fear is that the topic of video take of your fear, you cant do anything else. In the nonfear tighter very, visual persuasion is very powerful because we are visual creatures. The visual party of mine just sort of overrules the other part. So imagine if candidate john did not have this visual persuasion and he was describing border security. He mightve said we would have border security, variety of means. Depends on the terrain print some terrain or do they send someone do that. He said we are building a wall. We all see w s a wall. We are all presenting the wall. And then it gets better. More technique. I will make mexico pay for it. That is wrong. That cant be right. It w is wrong. You obsess on it. And when we argue about who will pay for a wall. There will be some sort of wall. You see them use that technique a lot. By the way. In the book, these things are laid out, so you can get it, stew aboutet the campaign, get excited, but often delivering for you how you can use these techniques to make it useful. One thing i found curious, the sense of humor is one of his assets, one of his talent and i heard a number of people say i dont think have ever seen him laugh. Om what is going on there . I heard somebody say about animated set it on a periscope and then people send links of them laughing. Where . Perhaps in public it is rare. Nobody has a sense of humor and also doesnt last year that would be very unusual. The sense of humor is in things like the Rosie Odonnell languages and improper couldnt come up with a quicker. One thing people dont understand about a sense of humor have a little advantage there because i grew up in upstate new york. Theres a regional sense of humor. Theres things that new yorkers with a hindu can be appalling to californians. Having seen both worlds, and to play with that. My favorite example was the john mccain joked. I prefer people dont get caught. With all due respect to people in the military and the veterans. I dont mean any disrespect, but that is a well known joke. He was simply reminded of a common joke. What makes them funny to the people who laughed, you dont laugh in front of other people at thatt joke. What makes it funny is the wrongness of it. The people who were laughing at not laughing atpl mccain. They are not laughing at veterans. Theyre laughing at how completely wrong i was to say and he knew it was completely wrong. It was completely a bad move. I dont have that in his wins. That was a mistake. But it was based on a blind spot because in new york is a little funnier than it is in california. One thing i found interesting, scott talks about his own very up front come and this is sort of my politics and another interesting one is these are my filters. I found that very interesting. Let me ask about those filters because it is y fascinating. Youot dont vote. Why not . Correct. When you learn persuasion, one of the things you learn in this is one of the stronger effects is as soon as you join the team come you vote for the team and start to make you think everything the team does the smart and so i try to keep myself on the line from an unidentifiable team to try to preserve what little i can have my objectivity. Im not blind to the fact im a human being and therefore it may have an exaggerated sense of how object i can be. But i do what i can. There are things you can do to be object to. I will press you on it because it doesnt seem voting incisor on the team. When it came down to it, that day you made a choice, but you dont want your choice to do poorly. You made your decisionn way ahed of time. Likewise the act of voting is not a period once youre in that mode as you said you are sort of birding, very few people made up their mind in the voting booth. This happened long before that. Reinforcing your bias. For monts and months before that. What we have a problem if everyone began to go i want to be object is . If everyone else voted, i would vote. The value v of your vote would o away at. One interesting statistic. He won 49 the 29th among those who didnt like either candidate. Thats a huge hit to read. What does that have to do with persuasion . This is the first president whose popularity when they do the polls or approvals may forever stay in the toilet while peoples assumption about how hes doing in the job could float much higher. You see for example consumer confidence, and the stock market, and people who the biggest issues as being quite competent, but when you look at the approval they say do approve of them and something you said that was unkind, over the line and i can approve of that. I like my 401 k . Does his incompetence and i will put it in quotes, could not be what buffers from the effects of what we dont approve of . If he doesnt get anything done the stock market model do what it does for micromanaging. This is a fascinating thing. If i have a conversation with someone whos an antiterm for, and they can say what has he done ay but he hasnt gotten anything done. Think, thats my perfect example of what call the two movies on one screen. We literally are seeing a different movie although were sitting in the same theater. I predicted over a year ago the way the year would play out, start on inauguration okay with, my god, we have elect hitler lawsuit but after a few months of no hitler stuff, you havent rounded up anything in concentration camp but he is totally incompetent. Theres chaos. After the summer and we start to see some accomplishments, isis, economy, maybe some movement with north korea, healthcare still going to be problematic but people thing thats congress. In our mind thats more of congress. In a way he didnt with it. Yeah. But at the end of the year, all the news organizations are going to start putting together their lists of what happened, and its going be a long list. You are not going to like it because its going to be republican stuff, and if youre not one youll say i dont like that stuff. But its going to be a long list and that will we really interesting. Predict that by that team people would say, all right you did get a lot done but we dont like the regulations he has cut but he did cut a lot of them and that is stuff republicans want. Its that the appointments he made of people who wanted to do away with the agencies theyre running, are doing that that will make up a great deal of the long list, is that yeah. Its interesting how many executive orders he signed that i dont see a lot of analysis of all the damage its doing. Now, i assume that theyre not all good. On paper some of them look like really bad ideas. To get rid of this regulation or this protection. On the surface, they dont look like good ideas but you dont hear the counterpoint. Netting nerdy but an executive order only starts the ball rolling. Thats one thing about the wonderful flourish when you hold it up, its as if it is done and all that does is begin to move the levers and the bad effects or good effects going to show up for months or jeers so on. Ted, are we about ready to go to question . Okay. I will let ted take it from here. Time for questions. The rules are questions generally start with a w or an h, sometimes a d. Theyre typically short. There i no such thing as a twopart question, and only Terrence Mcnally tonight gets to ask followup questions. Thank you, scott. A question on godzilla. You say you think he was helping hill hillary but did he stop helping . Did it stop at some point . Because we didnt see the lets say, the wave overcome donald trump. Can you comment. Toward the end you had two of the best persuaders going headtohead, and sometimes king kong beats godzilla and that is what happened. I predicted more of a landslide than a win by trump, and i was actually surprised that it was as close as it was. I wasnt totally surprised because by the summer before the election, when he started the dark persuasion, i recognized that as weapons grade, and i thought, okay, now this is a whole new game. If she kept on the way she started, let me tell you about my policies and im a woman. Elect me because im a woman. That was just that would have been annihilation by election dade, but she upped her game. Next question here on your right. Thank you. If were 90 irrational over here hi. If were 90 irrational, whats your irrational thinking . I dont understand that. Well, if were being irrational. What are you being irrational about . Oh. What things in general aim irrational about . Yes. The beauty is that the only person who cant tell is the person who you ask the question of. If i could recognize my owner rationality i would say, whoa, i better cut this out right now ump lets use some facts. Thats the unanswerable question. Were all potentially in our own little bubble and we cant tell. What do you think trumps chances are in 2020 . Im not convinced he would run in 2020 if he has a really good four years, and i think things are lining up if he gets a little motion on north korea, maybe that looks better and theres something that looks Like Health Care and the economy is strong and isis stays beaten, he is going to be unbeatable, but he also knows how to go out on top. So, given his age, which is a real concern, it will only get worse, especially be hitting that age range where its hard to believe theres not a problem. Your best supporter is going say, you know, i dont know, what that clever or trump enough . His best play to preserve the trump brand and his presidency might be one term. But hes also competitive as hell, so if theres something undone, that he thinks he can do, might be just a pitbull and just say, give me four more years and ill try to get this other thing done. I think maybe 50 chance would even run no matter how the four years go. Hi, scott. What is your technique for floor confirmation bias in the news, given all the fake news . The first thing i do when i see something reported that is new and maybe a head scratcher, i check the other networks, because the networks are pretty good at getting the facts right. Just the basic factsment what theyre terrible at is a nonbiased interpretation because they use the amount of time they spend on one thing versus the other, the number of guests, the type of guests they have on what the guests say. So they bury the facts with opinion, and i just try to sample both sides, and it real if you go between fox news and cnn, youre changing universes. Msnbc even more so. Yes. So, i try to stick to the facts and see both sides of the confirmation bias, and then if i see that theres two completely believable interpretations, but completely different, tend not believe either one. That just tells you its easy to come up with my story that fits the facts, which is often the case. Hi, scott. Thank you for coming out. Do you have any predictions youre willing to divulge outside of the political arena . Yeah. So, this is probably my prediction that is least likely to come true. Im going to put it out there anyway. Think i messengered i dont have shame like regular people. The football kneelers, i think by the end of the year, the full season, that the teams who knelt, had more people kneeling, will underperform, meaning they wont beat the spread. They wont necessarily win because the better team wins but i think thats enough of a distraction and a mental distraction, first of all. You cant really do two important things at the same time. And the kneeling would take you out of the football mode and put you in a whole other mode and people look at you. Then the hatred from your on fans. The home,field advantage is sacrifice it. They say, yeah, i hate that asshole and theres something about the physical act of getting on one knee that might activate hires the speculation might activate the part of your brain that is submissive. Subjugated. The king is not the one who kneels. Understand its an act of defiance, and in this specific context, it is actually a strong an act. Heres the thing. Day one, its strong. By the 12th week, youre just kneeling. And heres the thing. Your body and your brain are pretty connected. Theres research that says if youre if you force yourself to smile, your happiness chemistry in your brain can be activated, the same in reverse, if youre happy, youll smile but if you smile you can cause yourself to be happen. Im jump income here but theres one i wanted to ask that i frogot. The being that you lacking shame. You the same thing about trump, one reason he can be so wrong is it doesnt matter. Is a watch him, he is both thinskinned and thickskinned. Both hypersensitive and a bull. What is that about . Confirmation bias. Heres the thing. Can you imagine that he didnt know how he would be treated when he ran for president . He made this choice to be just host start out with the whole rapist thing. Everything just indicated the knew what he was getting into, and he was okay with it. The think you call thinskinned, anytime somebody attacks him, he immediately respond. Thats how you interpret it some essence it seems out of proportion, thats just a flea . Hires the thing. Notice at least within the context of the campaign now, the people he attacks are the professionals. Hes not going after a citizen who said something on social media. Hes going after professional journalists, writers, politicians, and the case of, say, the khan they were guilty by association. Doing a political public thing for political people. The technique here is that dish had a coworker who became the model for the owl character in the strip because i saul the technique. If somebody did something she wanted, it was like favor or something, she would immediate glow to their boss say you have the best employees. You should promote this person because they were doing what she wanted. But if something didnt do what she wanted, the would good to the boss and say, you got to get rid of this idiot. This is horrible. Get rid of him. She would create this giant difference, gap, contrast, everything about persuasion is contrast, bad and good. Everybody knew that make her happy when she would give you flowers in the office, literally, bring you flowers. She would praise you. Get you promoted for doing what she santa and had amazing control over the office, at the same level as her peers because of that. When trump when somebody does something that trump likes, for example, when i was on cnn he liked what i said, and apparently he was watching from air force one, and the message came through, the one interviewing me got the message, and i got the word that he like it, and also got the word that he like it. Or that he was watching anything, the same thing. And he compliments and helps the people who help him and goes hard every time, every time, deputy matter if your republican but you have to be a professional. If you see him going after somebody who said something on social media, then you have to worry. That wouldnt be technique. That would be thinskinned. But as long as he keeps that line, i think youre okay. Time for two more questions. Hi, scott. My question is, how will trump persuade Robert Mueller . Well, thats a good question. Let me give you a related store so you can fill in the black. When he said that awful thing about judge curio. Cant gate fair trial because he is mexican. People say, my god, what a racist, cant be a fair judge because he is mexican. That wasnt what was going on. If you talk to your neighbor and say, tell me about yourself . Theres a good chance your neighbor will say, were italian, but it means theyre all born in america, just have italian heritage. The way people talk about them is exactly the way trump talked about the judge. I was at dinner not long ago where a young man was describing himself and said he was mexican. Three generations born in this country and he was 20 mexican, but he said, im mexican. The pay people talk about themselves help was using the shorthand, the common language, but it was big mistake. However, by bringing up the potential bias, which is common in the legal context, very uncommon in the political context and belong to every bay but in the legal context, which was more important to him at the moment, bias is very important. So you point it out, and then what happened when judge curial had to rule on when the trial would be held, it could have been before the election, which would have been a disaster, and that is normally when it would have been theres theres no reason to publish i out. Instead the judge gave him a little extra consideration, and he put it after the election, and it might have well been the difference between winning and losing the election. Now, did the judge have to do that . He didnt. Was he treating him like every other person in the legal system . I dont think so i. Think he gave him extra consideration there. Would he have done that if the president had not called out to the entire world this judge might be biased . He took away his option. In the context of the legal case, it was brilliant. In the condition texas of the way he word it and the political situation, just looked like a damn racist. But if you ask somebody like alvin dershowitz who was on the oj trial, among other things, is bias a legitimate thing to bring up in a legal context . He would say, yes, thats my job. That what i do. Bring up bias all the time on every level. Nothing off the table. Certainly if your entire family heritage is in a group that you imagine there might be some people who would not be happy with a judge at the next thanksgiving, if he has ruled in favor of trump, thats legitimate. The legal context. Its legitimate in almost every other context and we would like it that way. Dont want it so the point is, bob mule mueller . Look fog theirs trump says in public to moneyas mueller, to make him give the president a little extra consideration because he doesnt want to play into the trap that the president is setting, which im not sure youre being fair here. Has to try a little harder to look extra fair. One could even say that happened with comey. Yeah. Not the firing but the coming out on october 28th with the, were looking at new emails. You can exactly say this, yes, comey probably was persuaded to flip the opposite direction. To go above and beyond what he had to do. Because he was extra good to clinton at first and then went the other way. Probably true. Our final question for the evening. Your opening question when you came out and asked if this was going to be a loss style audience a hostile audience, was that a persuasive technique . [laughter] no, i was hoping it was going to be. The hostile audience just has lots of energy, and i have no shame, so it would have been actually kind of fun. Was hoping for anything short of violence to happen here today. But you have all been extra nice so far. A funny thing, when youre back stage you can hear things in the audience exheard it as murmuring and you used a word that was much more rumbling. You were already putting them na that role. Yeah. Thanks, terrence, thanks, scott, thank you all for coming. [applause] scott has a lingering issue with his hands so is unable to sign books but happy to sign happy to take a photograph. If you drove, please go gently and perhaps well see you at an upcoming event. [inaudible conversations]