Transcripts For CSPAN2 Scott Adams Loserthink - How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America 20240713

Well jump right in. Scott here no interest of giving a speech before we start asking questions. Were going to start asking questions. Here we go, just in time for thanksgiving, a book to help you deal with people with whom you disagree. [laughter] so everyone get your copy. [laughter] all right. So intro, questions. Please send yours up. They dont have to be related to just the book. All right. Here we go. My name is melissa cane. Welcome to the Commonwealth Clubs hosting of scott adams. In his new book loser think, he dives into the epidemic of mental short cuts that he believes is making us prone to believing in bad ideas. According to scott, loser think is responsible for people stereotyping all the Trump Supporters as racist, believing that gun control is equal to full confiscation and most importantly avoiding selfreflection when personal relationships end. Were very excited to have him here with us tonight to discuss his new book loser think and whatever else you guys would like to ask him. Hes told me nothing is off limits. There you go. Please welcome scott adams. [applause] so whats loser think . It is a word i invented because i noticed when i was on twitter mostly, be debating with various trolls and real people too, and every once in a while somebody would make a really good comment and id think i dont quite agree with that but thats really well put, check on the profile, it would be a lawyer or economist, scientist, and then id see a comment thats just crazy, im not supposed to say that probably, and i look at it and i think well who sent this . I will click on the profile. It will be poet, musician, journalist, and im thinking to myself is that a coincidence or is there something about your experience in different fields that teaches you how to think . And i reflected on my own experien experience. I have a degree in economics and mba. They literally teach you how to think. It is not so much the specifics of economics, but they teach you how to compare things. They teach you about the time and value of money. These are just some of the techniques. They teach you how to think productively about your world. It is not just economists. Scientists have their own way of looks at things, historians, psychologists, and for some weird reason, i have had experience in all of those fields. Im a trained hypnotist. Please dont. [laughter] and i worked in Corporate America for 16 years and held a variety of jobs from strategy to marketing to technology, so just by chance, ive experienced a lot of domains, and you pick up how do they think in those domains, and i thought a lot of people havent been exposed to them, so i thought i would write a book and fill in your gaps, if you have any. Are you making the case here for journalists, and if you are, for people who are sort of multidisciplinary, and if you are, sit just the nonhumanities . Well, you know, it is not even learning the depth of those fields, so i can teach you how an economist thinks well i will give you an example. This is how easy it is. Have you ever heard of the concept of sunk costs . Raise your hand. Maybe less than half. [inaudible]. [laughter] so sunk costs refers to the idea that if youve already spent your money on something, lets say you have invested it, that you shouldnt look to that to make your next decision. In other words, you should say that money is gone. I cant get it back. Theres nothing i can do in the future that will change the fact that it is gone. Its sunk. So if you make your decision based on the money youve already spent, which people do, and they say ive already put x dollars into this, i dont want to waste it so i better double down and keep investing. Now that feels like common sense. But the first time you hear that you cant change the past, you say oh, yeah, thats sunk. Thats gone. I will just make my decision as if i were starting today, that i had never even heard of that other stuff. Thats how easy you can learn it. You dont need to be an economist. You have to hear some of these things once and it becomes part of your thinking. You call it loser think because you really write that you want to stay away from calling people names. You actually wrote a line that i underlined that said calling people stupid will not make them smart. [laughter] thats true. You said loser think because you want to address the behavior and not demonize the person. Can you talk about the use of labels and how thats one method of loser think . So one of the things i learned doing the dilbert comic is mockery is incredibly powerful. A lot of people have said to me over the years, they would write to me in email and say we were going to do this certain policy at work but we saw a comic of yours mock it so we decided not to because nobody wants to do the thing thats already been premocked. I mocked you in advance. You dont even have to wait. No waiting. [laughter] in fact, even elon musk who when he was writing a memo to his employees telling them how he wanted them to behave, what the culture should be like, one of his tips was to not do anything policy wise that would make it into a dilbert comic. [laughter] now the power of that is that he didnt have to explain what that meant because everybody who is familiar with the word dilbert and the comic they can kind of you know one when you see them; right . Thats a dilbert situation there. I used that same technique coming one the word loser think that people can use and say hey thats loser think. Heres a photo that i took on my phone with the page of the book that explains it better than i can. I get permission in the book to tweet out a page to people who have a gap in their thinking and maybe it can be filled in. Having a word like loser think makes it easier to mock people because nobody wants to hear hey, thats loser think. As i was just checking my twitter feed before i came in here, and i saw a lot of people have read the book accusing other people of loser think, and i thought its already working. [laughter] its already working. Hashtag loser think. Im using mockery in its most productive way to mock people into more productive thinking. Do you think that people who really need this book are going to buy it . Or are you counting on holiday sales for people to buy it for them . [laughter] well, when you name a book loser think, youre pretty much guaranteeing somebody is going to give it to the relatives for the holidays. [laughter] because the beauty is it feels like a gift, but youre not really sure. [laughter] its like hey, uncle bob, i got you this book, loser think. [laughter] you learn about other people. [laughter] so one of the chapters that you write talked about mind reading and, you know, pun intended, you read my mind with it because its one of the most frustrating things that i see out on the internet are people who are sort of trying to assert that they know whats in your soul, whats in your mind, whats in somebody elses heart. Yeah, heres another example where i tried to name it. Applying it in this way gives it extra power. If you look in the news, you will see the pundits jabbering one side or the other, and quite often their jabbering is about an assumption about what a stranger is thinking. What were their real motives . Whats the real reason youre doing this . Now, sometimes youre right. Sometimes its obvious stuff, political stuff is usually pretty obvious, but theres so many times that you couldnt possibly know what this stranger is thinking, and as evidence that youre not good at mind reading, give you every relationship you have ever been in because, you know, theres probably somebody sitting right next to you who in the last 24 hours assumed you were mad when you werent, assumed that you were hungry when you werent, assumed that you were happy my husband is in the front row. Be careful, sir. [laughter] all except you. [laughter] so mind reading is something that i call out and giving it a word, putting the book called loser think, it allows people to say oh yeah thats a bad thing. It was so pervasive, i dont know if i have ever heard a Single Person ever call it out saying no, youre imagining you can read somebodys mind, once its called out, it becomes part of the conversation and start spotting it. Wait till you see what happens in the coming weeks. You will start seeing mind reading all over the place. And you are going to say i guess i saw it before, but it crystallized because somebody talked about it as a word and now it is a thing. There are a lot of Great Concepts in the book, but there is something here where i really feel like you buried the lead. In one part you talk about the difference between coincidences and, you know, things that are actually, you know, anything you should take seriously. So hes writing about his day basically and hes talking about all these things that are happening that appeared to be, you know, magical, and i quote, a few days ago, i arranged my collection of flashlights, and i was like you have a collection of flashlights . This book should be called i have a collection of flashlights. Who doesnt have a collection of flashlights . How many do you have . Is there a community . I need to know. I really like flashlights. I confess that readily, and i built a shrine to my flashlights in my man cave in my garage. Literally i would put them on the board and make sure they had fresh batteries and everything. I had never done that before. I buy a flashlight whenever i see a new one. Thats a new one. I had my collection all there. They were all fresh batteries. I was so happy with it, and the First Time Ever that i have been living in my house, somebody ran into a power pole with an suv and plunged my neighborhood into darkness. The same time that id built a shrine to flashlights. And so i said to myself, no problem. I went to my flashlights and i was good. How many do you have . Well, you know, i recycle and throw some out. I have a good solid 25 that are the core collection. Are there antiques, hard to find ones . Is there a community where youre like that thats version, thats amazing. Well, thats a good idea. No, they are mostly plastic. I like how they look. I dont know, i like flashlights. Theres no explaining it. Okay, terrific, now we know, thank you. So you are not a fan of the press. As a member of the press, i was reading going ow [laughter] but i think it is fair. I didnt name you. [laughter] not this time. But i didnt feel like it was unfair. I thought, you know, attacking sort of the structure of the press is, you know, something i think a lot of journalists wouldnt even disagree with you about. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that feeds into the way people think . So i like to put it in the context of a small technological change that nobody noticed when it happened, which is the ability to measure with precision what people are clicking on and even why in some cases. Once that was the case, once everybody could measure these people click on this. These people click on that. It would have become obvious as it did that the things they want to click on are the crazy stuff, the things that make your hair catch on fire. I dont want to hear about the budget. I want to hear about impeachment. I want to hear a plot to overthrow the government. I want to hear about some really good stuff. Were all elevated in our opinions because the news model is forcing us toward more provocative stuff. Well before they would have said well, heres the news. Theres my news. Now its replaced entertainment to a large extent. I bet some of you would relate to this. How many of you watch the news like entertainment, like its not even for the news anymore, it is for the laughs . You know, you watch it so many liars in here. Everybodys hand should be up. Im kidding. [laughter] so thats the big problem. The big problem is that once you can measure stuff, there was no way that Public Companies that are beholden to stockholders could do anything but the things that get the most attention. Theres no way you could ignore that. We had to get to this point once the small technological change happened, and that caused us to bifurcate and to too complete almost civilizations at this point, and were in bubbles, and we dont really see whats happening in the other bubble because it looks crazy or insane or stupid or maybe theyre lying and we cant quite tell. We know theres something wrong in that bubble. But it doesnt make sense, and we cant make any sense of it. And its largely because people have become totally bifurcated in their news consumption. So conservatives are a little more likely i think statistically to at least sample cnn once in a while because its more pervasive. But people on the left typically are not even aware of the argument on the right, or they might know one of them, but not the good one, for example, not mine. [laughter] so thats part of the problem. You do get some tips for how to get out of your bubble, how to recognize if youre in one and then how to communicate, how to yes, i recommend pharmaceuticals. [laughter] no not in the way you think. Not in the way you think. If you watch the news, as i do quite a bit, there are pharmaceutical commercials that come on. Now, if you make the mistake of actually listening to one, you are going to hear more problems than you knew that a human could have health wise. [laughter] they will come on and say you can take this pill, it will solve your problems, but you are going to have diarrhea, you know, your heart will explode and your lungs will be congested. What i do is when theres a pharmaceutical commercial on, i say to myself, first of all, get this off of there, because i dont want to hear about all these problems because i dont have those problems but if im hear about them, im going to get them. Im going to get all those problems if i keep hearing about them. I think i do have a rash matter of fact. [laughter] so i will run to change or whatever, to change the channel as quickly as possible to the opposite. If im on cnn, i will go to fox news, vice versa, because they both have pharmaceutical commercials. In that way i miss a lot of the ugly commercials but exposing myself to content on both sides. I recommend that. You dont have to do it the way i do it. If youre not sampling both sides, you really dont know whats going on, but you might think you do, and thats the most dangerous situation. You tell a story about your dog snickers. Its a great anecdote. You write i think my dog snickers believes im an idiot because i dont take her outside to play when she is clearly communicating to me that it is time to do so. Snickers knows she is sending me the lets go outside signal so she knows i see it. She knows im physically able to go outside. So if i dont stop what im doing and take her out, does she think im stupid . And so you go on to say, you know, sometimes youre sickers and sometimes youre you sometimes youre snickers and sometimes youre you in this scenario in a way that requires empathy and imagination to think about where the other person is coming from. Yeah, heres an example of being an artist or creative person gives you maybe a little better vision on the world than perhaps the engineer or the scientist. So before when i was saying different professions have different styles of thinking, it wasnt to insult one because theres genius that goes across every kind of domain, but in this example, an artist or somebody who creates for a living might have a little more propensity to imagine their other explanations for the facts. In a story i use in there is that my car is perpetually dirty. Now if you saw my dirty car, you would say to yourself, thats kind of an expensive car, he could probably afford to get a wash. Hes a cartoonist. He has a flexible schedule. He could get it washed. If he could afford it, he has the time, and it is never washed, he probably is saving water or he cares about something or hes blind . You know, whats the reason . The real reason is the one you would never imagine. In fact, youre all trying to think of it right now. Youre thinking whats the real reason . Is he going to tell us . Yeah, im going to tell you. The real reason is i have an irrational fear of public instructions. I dont know if any of you have this, but i dont want to be in public where anybody can see me and i have to figure out the instructions while people are watching. And the problem is, im too literal because it will b very clear, for example, i use the example i go to a store and this will be a sign that says wait here. The cashier will say next come up here, for a moment i will be stunned because i will be like it says wait here, but youre saying go up, i dont know if you have that authority. Did you make the sign . Is this your sign . Is this your bosss sign because if its your bosss sign, im waiting here. [laughter] i dont want to get in this car wash, get halfway in, turn sideways, they have to dismantle the car wash to free me and the headlines are idiot cartoonist destroys car wash. Thats why my cars dirty. Did you guess that . Did anybody guess that . Anybody have that one . No. So the point is that you have to make assumptions to live, right . You cant live and operate in the World Without continuously making assumptions including assumptions about what people are thinking, no matter how poorly we do it. You have to do it, to survive. But just be aware that just because you cant think of the other reason that these things could happen, especially if youre watching the news, that doesnt mean that the one reason given is the reason. In fact, i talk about the 48 hour rule. Where you should just wait 48 hours when you see something in the news that makes your blood boil and you think how could that happen . Two days later the news says that didnt actually happen. It seems we got that wrong. Wait a couple of days until the fog of war dissipates before you get too worked up about anything. Excellent. We have a number of questions from the audience. So were going to kind of go back and forth between the book and some questions. This is a great question. Why does the dogs tail always wag . Dogbert is a part of my personality that says and does the things that i couldnt do because i would be beaten up or jailed. But there are thoughts. I think of those things. I dont do them because it is not polite or legal. Dogbert can do them so i show his light by the tail. I have ears or a tail to work with. Thats about it. Hes enjoying it. Yeah. Okay, so this question is when do you find yourself using loser think . Are there traps you fall into that you need to be conscious of . The one i find all the time is using analogies for more than they should be used for. It is so easy. It is a natural way to talk to make analogies. Analogies are great for explaining a new concept for the first time. So if youre trying to sell somebody what a zebra is, if they have never seen a zebra but they know what a horse is, you say its like a horse, but its got stripes. It is a good short cut. You dont want to use the analogy to predict. If you turn on the news, you will see all kinds of people doing exactly that. It makes no sense. If you see, for example, that your cat has a little marking under his nose that looks like a hitler moustache, that doesnt mean your cat is going to invade poland. It doesnt. It doesnt work that way. Likewise if you see the president criticizing the press, well, yeah, dictators did that, but that doesnt mean that hes going to invade poland either. It could mean that the press has crossed a line, its politically productive to criticize him, but dont take the analogy as predictive. Analogies are really bad ways to predict. And also so is the slippery slope. I mean you talk about a number of things that people do to sort of future trip as some people would say about, you know, sort of how the sky is going to fall and how bad things are going to be based on history repeating itself. Yeah, history repeats is one of the biggest loser thinking examples that youre all familiar with. You have heard it a million times; right . You see it in the news, see it in your own laugh. See it in your own life. History repeats. History doesnt repeat. It cant because you are in different situations. Youre familiar with the other history, the real one so that tells you not to do it this time. The reason it seems like history repeats is first of all were reminded of other things thats the analogy problem, but we dont notice all the times history doesnt repeat. If you can somehow see a chart for heres your chart, your chart, here are all the times history didnt repeat because it couldnt and the sliver sort of looks like something that happened before but its not predictive because you dont which sliver is the one thats going to repeat coincidentally and which is going to be the one you never noticed didnt repeat. repeat. You talk a little bit about your political views and in some ways they are very liberal although now you do a lot on twitter engaging people about allegations with the president how did that come to be and how you ended up in this position thats liberal on certain issues to defend a republican president quex. I called myself left of bernie a little joke on myself because there was nothing left of bernie so as a way of characterizing myself but then the democrats said people i had the space all to myself, weve ruined everything for you so what it meant was that at least on social issues i am left of burning. Bernie would like to i believe legalize marijuana. I would go further and i would legalize more drugs, certainly mushrooms and certainly do a test on opioids even if its locally drugs on commercials during the news. Another example just to make the point, on abortion, liberals and bernie would say yes, under the right conditions yes on abortion. I go left of that and i say i have a penis, im out. Whatever women want to do, i will be very supported so whatever is the consensus im going to be quiet and supported. Because i dont have that kind of skin in the game and i dont add anything. I dont have the extra nails smart to add on top of your decision. Its going to be the same whether i have an opinion or not so the most credible laws and amwhen you have laws that people will kill over, literally abortion, people kill over theirpreferences for that. When its that potentially destructive, you need a result no matter which way it goes thats credible. People say i didnt get my way and its really important to me but the way we arrived at, that looked credible to me and the more men who are involved the less credible it is and when it will have largely the same opinions. Ive never looked into it but i dont think men and that and women have that much difference of opinion on abortion. Our men and women about the same roughly . I dont add anything so i take myself out of that. Those are 2 examples so donald trump comes along. It was 2015 and i was writing blog posts about what ever and i have a background and days as a trained hypnotist and when i saw trump i said i recognize that technique. Thats grade a incredible persuasion so i wrote a blog post in saying he was a genius instead of clown, people said hes a clown. But why is it working . Theres a technique here and you dont see it if you havent had experience in that domain. Back to the loser think example but i could see it clearly and i could see the people who have the same background but also see it just as clearly. Mike cernovich is a classic example, he has the same training and he came up the same time i did and what we saw was a guy believe bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight and i didnt think it was a hard prediction because flamethrower beats stick almost every time. So by the time and so i was just writing about his persuasionskill , it wasnt about democrats or anything except his persuasion but you get pulled into it and there was more demand, the first article was massively viral and people wanted tointerview me about it and suddenly i got dragon. I will claim that i didnt get to meet the president a year ago. He invited me to the oval office and it was just the freakiestexperience. Hitting in the oval office with the president of the United States on the other side of the resolute desk just chatting. There is no experience however have that will come close to how weird and cool that was i did not steal the soap. I would still do so. There were a lot ofcameras there. So i will, to the fact that you cant hang out with him and still be as critical as maybe you could have been but i like him personally. Personally if you hang out with him 10 minutes no matter what you started with, 10 minutes later youre going to say but hes a nice guy. Hes really generous. Imagine this, the guy who has rmore responsibility than anybody in the world that for half an hour he made me feel like i was the only thing that mattered. Like i was the only person in the room and he could do that to you to so heres the thing. He does have that charisma, ability to make people like him and me to for Different Reasons so im not biased in terms of him personally. Personally i like him. What i thought the country would get him and of the recent i didnt feel any conflict about promoting his abilities which or promote him as i thought he was bringing tools that weve never seen before and sometimes your civilization will get a little ossified. You will get sort of stuck and its something anordinary politician cant unstick. Examples would be trade with china. Remember when he first arctic talking about it and everybody says trade war is bad. How about that record stock market . Trade war is not so bad. And in fact if we never make an agreementwhich by the way i predict , except maybe on some small stuff, i think we will be fine. It will just gradually decoupled from china as we should anyway. Anyway, so i think you brought to the mix a set of tools that i thought could break free some things that eajust needed to be, the box just needed to beshaken and see what we can do after you take the box. I knew it would be messy, i knew there would be breakage but everybody who voted for him knew that and they knew what they were getting. They got the breakage, they got the benefits. The benefits i would say are in numerous at this point if you like lack of war, you hilike beating the caliphate, if you like a good economy but if you dont like those things and you have a different opinion than on the personal stuffhes driving people crazy which is definitely a cost. The way people feel about each other and the just political heat definitely is an expense. But i thought that was a worthy expense to get some stuff done. The next president can bring the temperature down and we will bank those other benefits. Who do you like for the next president . Youre a super predictor. I think trump will win easily for reelection. I dont think thats much in doubt at this point but the one after, the one after. Thats where its going to get interesting. Sooner or later lucy and matt gaetz are going to be running against each other. Are they old enough . Shes not. He might bebarely. But sooner or later they will run against each other. Condi has said he is running. Before you laugh, well before he said that ive identified him as another master persuader. Long before he was talking about anything politically i had written blog posts saying theres something hes doing thats not like normalpeople. Heits not like i write about music but i was just seeing something that was another level. Asan extra persuasive level there and you see it. You see the impact he has on everything. Anytime you inject kanye into any topic its all changed and hes just such a force now hes doing sort of his religious revival stuff. I think maybe hes setting his sights higher than president , literally. I think he wants to be a spiritual leader in the United States and maybe saying hes going to run for president is sort of good for effect. But i think he actually has bigger sites than president. Bigger than president. We dont have, do we a spiritual leader who is nondenominational. Wedont have that, do we . Not quiet, didnt it. Oprah . You got your megachurches and every religion as a leader and someone you could name but we dont have somebody who is nondenominational and would be regarded by everybody as openminded to all the other religions. He does have a place that could bebigger than anything weve seen politically. Youdont think he will run for president , you think thats anything. He might but i think he might have a bigger role. You dont think any of the democrats now including bloomberg, now bloomberg have a shot. Years ago i actually wrote that bloomberg would be an excellent choice for president because i liked him. He was sort of middleoftheroad, he was pragmatic and he seemed to be able to break with his party. He had all the qualitiesbut hes also 77. And if you havent seen his speech or even worse, his mobile phone little video he did where youve got to tell these guys over 70 turn the phone sideways. If you cant do that, you cant be president. Turn sideways. So just if you havent seen Mike Bloomberg yet, give his speech announcing or as little video that i just mentioned with thephone, somebody holding up the phone. You have to see it because hes not like Mike Bloomberg he used to be. I hate to say that but its a little bit of the joe biden problem which is great patriots. Great contribution to the country. Total respect for both of those people but there is an age where we all need to know its time for somebody in the family to guide you off. I am there. Unfortunately bloomberg is there but i dont know if hes trying to be president or hes got a better play. Running for president allows him to go in strong and trash trump so effectively. His money plus the fact he will get tv time. He may be doing it just for the democrat who emerges just to wait a week in trump so they might have a chance and it might be a way to take biden out because bloomberg goes in and the people who said i might donate to biden will say ill open up a little bit because theres a guy whos the same age. Similar politics but he can fund himself so he might be doing it just to get biden out because biden cant possibly win against trump, its just a terrible matchup. That helps withElizabeth Warren for example. In the long term . Im sure bloomberg doesnt want Elizabeth Warren to be president. This by play of getting rid of bidenonly helps people. To imagine the four dimensional chess thing youd have to work hard to make it make sense. Probably hes just running for president but hes so smart and strategic that its hard to understand why he would do something he couldnt possibly win unless he surprises us all soit this point it looks like he couldnt possibly win. So in your book, you write about, and this is in the book youre writing about financial advisors. To somedegree some parts of the book are about how to be more skeptical. How to filter what youre hearing from the horrible people in the media. So but you write about the nature of libraries and how to be skeptical of them and then you write theres a little twitter ready parts. These twitter ready parts says be skeptical of any experts who have a financial incentive to mislead you and almost no risk at bear and and i wrote political consultants. So i wonder if a couple of dudes with a powerpoint didnt get in his ear and say here is the plan. You just give us a whole bunch of money and this is what happens in california, we see this all the time when you see wealthy people just burning their money. You say why . Consultants so that maybe part of it as well. Maybe somebody got in his ear and had the right chart to show him. Thats one of the best hypothesis, i havent heard that one before. When you think it through, how hard would it be for really persuasive consultants who know they get a big paycheck to convince a 77yearold this is your time. It borders on elder abuse. But if they only get 1 billion out of him, hes still okay. Some audience questions. Here. Somebody wrote please share opinions about Jordan Peterson and ken wilbers integral theory. Thats a big question. Jordan peterson for a long time i would ban people from mentioning him on myperiscope and people thoughtyou must dislike Jordan Peterson. No. It was because he was so popular i was sick of hearing him. What do you Jordan Peterson . Band, im sick of hearing him but then i listened to him. All right, ive heard his name 1 billion times and then i listened to a youtube video. Doesnt matter which one because theyre all amazing and i thought wow. This is powerful and different and important. Usually you dont go to youtube to find something important. This is way beyond just helpful. This is important. So i got hooked as many people do and i started watching hiscontent. He was just so useful and i didnt know how to explain it. It was so different and fresh and useful. You see people were changing. You may know the story. Hes checked himself in for rehab. So he apparently had some issues. Got on some whatever, doesnt matter but he checked himself in and i think hes still there working through it. T. I realized on one side you say to yourself you can see your heroes go to rehab. But i have a different opinion about that because hes a role model. And him going to rehab is one of the most important things that ever happened in thisan country. And wait until hecomes back. Its going tobe awesome. The other people i dont know about. Ive never heardthose other guys. His religious videos, his videos about religion are interesting and thinking about these spiritual leaders that can traverse various states. Various sort of preamble kind of way of pulling from all different strands. Just to put a pin point the fact that he hasnt sewn together in terms of how to live your life but he still had to go to rehab , thats an Important Message that the addiction thing is not about being smarter were clever or trying harder. The addiction is its own thing and it can get anybody and its important. Want to ask you once had a fear of publicspeaking. How did you get over it . I wouldnt say i ever had a fear but i took the Dale Carnegie course and if you havent heard of that is one of the best things ive ever done. Its like altering because what it does is it teaches you to do what im doing now which is talk to a group of people as easily as if you were talking to somebody you know and teaches you to do u that and what i watched was in the class i watched person after person who mostly had been sent there by a boss usually because i couldnt stand in front of people to talk and i remember watching a woman in the class and you have to volunteer to talk. You had to decide when you are ready to come up and everybody would talk to the class and she stood up there and i have to do the impression area and i think i can stand up here and she stood up there and she couldnt make words and she started sweating in an airconditioned room and i watched the sweat while shes standing trying to talk, sweat running off her nose down her chin and fall on the carpet in front of a room like this and she was afraid of public speaking and that was her experience. The thing you can know about the class is that there was only one rule. That everybody gets complemented and you never criticize anything. So nobody who speaks will ever hear a bad word about them. She goes back to her chair completely defeated. Were in the audience and were dying. Were dying for her and the instructor gets up and he says that was brave. And it was true. That was true. Next time she came up a little bit better. By the end of the class she was a professional speaker because she lived through the worstand got a compliment. Not a lot of compliments ot because we all complemented her so watching the transformation from nothing but positive words is just lifechanging. You realize the power of the complement to the point where my career philosophy is if you withhold a consulate that youre thinking, youre thinking some thing good about somebody, i dont need to say that, its almost immoral if youve got a compliment. Just let it out. What a great point. I feel a lot better now. Im letting it out. You do write about this in your book so i want to give you an opening to get to it. One person in the audience said what our go to questions you can use to bring in your colleagues thinking . Go to questions. I use a technique called the magic question. If there really arguing that the misleading thing, not my actual opinion and if i tried to correct that aand say thats not my opinion. Its actually this. Do they then argue the actual opinion . Never. They just turn that into a new wrong opinion so they can argue that one. Trying to get people to argue with my actual opinion as never worked in my entire life but this technique ive tested and it does work. Its the magic question. It goes like this. You say to the person whos arguing tell me something you think istrue that you think i dont think is true. Just one thing you think is true that matters to this topic that you think i dont thinkis true and they offer something and you say i agree with you. We try another one and when you get to the third one they usually disappear as they realize they didnt know what they were arguing about because youre agreeing on the central point. It seems im not on n twitter so im biased but why do you argue with folks . Thats the question. Because it just seems so futile sometimes. You get in there, youre spending your energy to try to change peoples minds and it just seems like assuming itits a person and not a box, assuming its a human then there you are spending our time trying to change the opinions of like red hat 52. Sorry red hat 52. I can only speak for myself there which is i get benefits that the ordinary person doesnt get. For one, people follow my twitter and they follow the comments as well and because im a cartoonist i have with your comments than other people because thats my job. So sometimes i like being witty because its part of the showso if i can argue in a witty way , its just in attainment but i also am drawn to it. I love it but its also educational because you can say okay, what response did i get . Youre learning what other peoples apartments are which strengthens your argument so to me its just all good but i have a very high tolerance for trolls and insults and a lot of personal insults. You get insulted a lot on twitter but i have a high tolerance for that so i can get most of the benefits because the bad parts, the trolls stuff it just doesnt bother me. Thats the superpower, thats amazing. What is your advice to someone who is a conservative but who works in a liberal industry like entertainment, movies or music. Is it possible to be openly conservative without ruininga persons career . No. [laughter] but ill give you some suggestions. To make you go down better. Certainly you probably want to keep the most provocative stuff to yourself but if you are surrounded by people who disagree with you try pacing area pacing is a hypnosis trick, its a sales trick and it means agreeing with people and all the things you can agree with and even matching them in style. You might match their body language, you might match the way they speak. Anything you can match, breathing, you name it. As many things as you match with somebody will make them feel more bonded and connected. They wont maybe think it in their head but theyll feel it. This is a person who is like me in all these ways so then if you need to disagree, they are at least primed. Youve set the table. This is someone who realizes ava agreed with you on 10 things are at least theyre compatible so now you can introduce that 11 thing. You dont want to walkinto the middle of it with your mana hat on and go trump. Dont play it that way. Gilbert is the only male linguist i have been a on subscriber for the for the last 10 years until the characters from their mistakes . If they did i need a new job. The beauty of the dilbert comic strip world is that the characters exist so i dont have to think too hard, its not like writing a new movie every day because youve already got the characters so i take the altopic and throw it ointo that world and Say Something a lazy guy would respond to, wally. Azso its easier to write once youve got your characters set in every situation works. Which dilbert character are you and i think you said you are all of them but is there one you feel especially close to and maybe then the maincharacter. Originallyover was based on me. So he had my lack of social graces. My nerdy interests. He was a single dive, i was a single guy at the time you so he was basically an extended version of me except he was smarter because he was an engineer, im not an engineer and his body shape is actually basedon a coworker. Do they know . Heres the fun part, he doesnt know. Ive never told him. Was his name, lets tell him. I didnt even know him that well, he was just somebody in the office and i see him walk by and he would look like a walking doberman i guess. A cartoon so i always wondered years later as he ever lied in a safeway and does anybody say you remind me, i cant place it. This person wants to know why you dont like the godfather film. You dont like the godfather . Did you hear the murmur . I feel like i need security to get out of this. I will make a general statement that i cant watch movies at all anymore. Ive completely given up on movies because my Attention Span as shrunk and shrunk until itstwitter size. And watching 2 and a half hour movie on anything is just painful now. Its like going to the dentist forme. Moving so slowly. And so thats the first thing but with the producer of the godfather recently who was making fun of the avengers films because they were all, scorsese. He was making fun of the avenger type films and superhero films. And im thinking to myself, theres a reason they make 1 billion. Because theyre really entertaining and those movies that dont make 1 billion, theres a reason they dont make 1 billion or not that entertaining. If they were they make 1 billion. So i have this weird background where i am part artist, part economist which is a weird combination so when somebody says is somebodys art good id usually say has anybody bought it . If theyre buying it its good. If they buy twice, its really good and if they dont buy it, i dont care how much art went into it, nobodys buying. Gilbert was created because the audience said we kind of like your generic cartoon in the beginning area it wasnt in the workplace so much but we like it when hes in the workplace so unlike scorsese i said what if what do my buyers want wasnt mark they wanted to be in the workplace , done so i moved into the workplace excellent gilbert took off. So i am not on the side of the artist. Theres this thing called artistic integrity ive heard of. I tried to avoid it at all costs because. Is that loserthink. It should be in the sequel. If youre an artist you should be making things so the audience, not for yourself so if the audience isnt willing toshell out hard cash , youdidnt make anything. Let the hate mail begin. This is probably related to your earlier question and this might be the same answer. What is the most interest idea that you have and you believe in riyadh not like in godfather. Is there Something Else . The most dangerous idea i guess would be dangerous to whom , to me or to other people . Other people i would assume. Im a believer in we live in a simulation. I hear a grown up there because youve heard too many times and anybody who watches me on periscope knows i talk about this too much. This requires a little explanation. The first one you say that our brilliant people who have the same opinion. Elon musk is one. Physicists, in fact it was invented by a physicist, nick bostrum i believe. Keanu reeves. All the smartest people and the idea is this. If would be possible in f our lifetime for us to go in a Little Software world where there are characters in the world and those characters live as if they are real and so they have a program belief that they are real characters. If we tried to build it today it would be a basic version but certainly in 30 years we will be able to make Little People who act like they are alive and as far as they know they are so ifthats going to be possible in their lifetime or even ifyou think its the one after , eventually its going to happen. How many are we going to make . Just one . Number the minute we can make a total world thats like a r. Real Software Simulation and thinks its a real world are going to make a bunch of them. How do you know it hasnt already happened . If it has ever happened, there are lots of them. The people in them think they are real. So the questions you would ask yourself is dangerous because it would rip apart everything you believe. Religions would fall apart, etc. And there would be chaos but let me just what this out here, food for thought. What would theworld look like if it were programs . For one thing, you wouldnt put things, you wouldnt program a world that hadnt been observed yet so in other words it would be like a Software Game where if your little character in the game is not walking to this adjacent property, it never gets formed. It doesnt exist until you needit to. Does a word look like that . At the quantum level it does so if you go down to the smallest level, things dont exist. They only probably exist until somebody sees it or measures it so we actually know that reality doesnt come into being and become solid until somebody needs it. Meaning that they observe it or they measure it with an instrument. You would also want to have a world where you couldnt get out of it and look for the outside. Can you get to the edge of the universe . No you cant you can go down the line of all the things that you would need to be true for us to be software and theyre all there. And then the math if youre going to have everyone, there will be lots of them and if they are welldesigned, the simulation will buildits own simulations all the way down. It sounds classify a though, is this a theory that you cant get out of. You disprove this theory . Its the magical monkeys theory. I dont have a solution for proving it. But like most of religious beliefs, they also are tough to falsify. Its like does god exist or is he hiding . If he is allpowerful he can hide pretty easily so thats why we dont find himso none of these things can be proven or disproven but ifyou live your life like its a simulation , you imagine that you can hack it , then that would be one explanation for my life as it is rightnow because my life is crazy. I just told you i just went and chatted with thepresident. Thats not normal. Ive got a bestselling book, ive got a cartoon strip, i get to talk to all you people. I dont have a yonormal life in any way butive lived it like i can program it. Ive taken the assumption from an early age that reality would be programmable at least for me. And treated that way and i programmed exactly the life i fantasized as a kid riyadh its literally exactly the life that i imagined when i was six years old. And what was the name of the book . How to lose everything and still left in mark. Plugging the book and all the hits of success. How to fail almost everything and still win big. This feeds into this, this one person in the audience asked the king of poets which youreference at the beginning , there is one poet who characterizes our desolate peggy culture as illiterate, tasteless, boorish, whiny and awash withmoney. Certainly as relates to that question. What do you make of that . What do you make of the tech culture . Is that Something Like sign me up . I want to be in the cryogenic chamber. The reason im the creator of dilbert is that i love thatworld. The technology world. I wish i had gone to school or some kind of technical degree because if i were not doing what im doing, thats probably what id be doing the building, i have a startup and i do build apps that i be doing more of it. So i love it. But i do hear terrible things from people who are in it. I hear that even the people who are making good money in tech are just desperately unhappy and unfulfilled for a variety of reasons. I dont know ifthats true, i dont know howuniversal it is oebut it sounds , doesnt sound good. But as long as its as problems, ill have material for dilbert. So theres a silver lining. This one person wants to know about persuasion and trumps mentors. Once you know your comments on Norman Vincent peele and roy cohn. Norman vincent peele, how many of you have heard the name Norman Vincent deal . Maybe half or so. When i was a kid he was already well known as one of the most influential authors and writers about the power of positive thinking. In other words the idea that you could program your simulation, he didnt use those words but the idea that you could program your reality, your life by changing how tyou thought. I was very influenced by that and so was donald trump. In fact Norman Vincent peele wasnot only a massive bestselling author , he was the trump family pastor and minister, i forget which word it is but thats who he would see in church area and so he would go to nchurch on sunday and see the most influential person maybe whoever lived in the nfUnited States and tony robbins would be maybe the new one. And so thats the influence he was getting every sunday area and i asked him about that he went on about how amazing Norman Vincent deal was and Norman Vincent deal was accused of being in his lifetime accused of being a hypnotist as he was so influential. So we know that the president picked it up. He got it honestly from the rest horse ever. I would love to see a study of all the people who attended that church. And compare them to the average. That would be interesting because i could almost guarantee you that their life results are completely different than ordinary people area so thats one. Then the roy cohn thing, i dont know too much about roy cohn except what you know, that he wasnt big on apologizing. He was on attack all the time. When winwin and you see all those qualities in trump but you also see persuasion part of him so hes got a lot going on there. You talk a lot in the book in the of various kinds of arguments and like to think about Climate Change and so this book here in Northern California , with wildfires, mudslides and theres a lot going on so talk a little bit about your perspective on how people should think about Climate Change in a way not loserthink. Try to change any of your mind your safe. Whatever you felt about Climate Change for your going to leave taking the same thing all i talk about is a productive way to analyze it. If that causes you tochange your own mind thats your business. But here is some insight on that area i think its useful to break up the Climate Change conversation into its parts and give them Different Levels of credibility area so the central part is what the scientists are doing which is the chemistry and physics. If you add co2 to the air, does it get warmer . Im pretty sure theyve got that right because that seems really right in their strike so. Then repeat it in a laboratory test. Just in every way thats solid. Now the question is how quickly and how much does it matter . The scientists, thats part of their persuasion and scientists are not good at persuasion. This is aproblem. They make thesemodels. Are those models accurate . Nobody knows and there is lots of debate and there are different models and theres a big range. What happens through the models that didnt work . Do they keep them . Or do they throw them away because if you have hundreds of models and there are and you throw away all the ones that didnt work this year , it will look to you exactly like your models work. Because youre throwing out the ones that are working. So theres a little bit of an illusion there. Is it true that the temperature is going up at a rate that we should be alarmed that . Probably. Probably the models are at least not good because we can measure the temperature were Getting Better at it. So weare probably reasonably solid although we dont know how quickly. Then theres the third part. Heres where it all goes to hell because the third part is the economics because to figure out how big a deal it is it all comes down to money. If you have to move your beach house, that cost money. If your crops fail, theres money so when you to the economics part now youre in my domain. I used to do financial projections for a living and i know that theyre all bogus. Everyone i ever produced was no better than a guess. So once against the economic part what level of reliability should you put on . Heres an eyeopener. The un said over 80 years if things go the way its predicted and so thats sort of a bad case scenario, if things go the way its predicted at the end of 80 years the un, this is an official production says that the gdp could be as much as 10percent lower. And im thinking to myself wow, 10 percent. Thats trillions and trillions of dollars and 10 percent reduction in our Economy Today would be massively expensive and people wouldstart it and it would be a big deal. But i also have a degree in economics and i know how to look at these things what i saw and i said hey, in 80 years, our gdp will be 5 to 10 times bigger than it is now. In 80 years after its gonna five or 10 times, if its 10 percent less than it could have been, would you notice . You wouldnt. You wouldnt even know the difference. You would think eggs are great humor people would be ngin poverty, the food would be cheaper, the robots are scratchingyour back and its going to be a Wonderful World in 80 years. In the simulation. Keep in mind that the uns dire, bad case, i dont know ifits worstcase but its most likely bad case production. That youre not even going to notice it. And until i told you that, did you realize that thats a complete phony number because the gdp will be so big that little 10 percent will be trivial . Is it accurate . Probably not because i did financial projections for a living. We have no idea what the act economics are. What company did you work for . Theyre all out of business, thats probably a coincidence. Crocker bank. Got swallowed up by wells fargo and pacific bell eating byverizon. So what do you do about all this given the great uncertainty . Heres the good news. Althere are already several startups building giant scrubbing machines that literally will hold the co2 out of the air and in several of those cases will turn it into products. One turns into jet fuel because at one of the things thats hard to make area talk to make an electric jet red one incident of plastics and others to other things. Which of those will be the winner . Maybe none of them but its sort of like the pc industry in the beginning where it was hard in the beginning to know which company would have , would last. But you knew pcs and computers were going to last so likewise with the co2 scrubbing stuff i dont know if any of these specific startups will last but its a thing and its going to be an industry and its going to be a big deal and governments will presumably pay a lot for if they thought it was a danger and you also have nuclear energy. If youre not up on Nuclear Power let me give you the 62nd thing that you need to know. Your grandfathers Nuclear Power was a little more dangerous than it needed to be in those versions of Nuclear Power or all of the knockdowns and problems you ever heard of from fukushima to charitable, those are early versions. We would never build any of those models today. Today you would build whats called generation three. A number of generation three reactors and theres lots of them in the world that have ever had a Nuclear Incident is zero. None. Its literally the Safest Technology for energy ever created because every other form of energy is killing people. People are literally falling off the roots installing solar power. Like literally more people have died solar power. More people have died putting up a window and have died from all the generation three Nuclear Power plants in the world and heres the better part. Theres a generation 4 . Generation 4 is backed by people like bill gates we split a ton of money into it theres a Company Called terra power and theres several of these so this is one of them. One of the things that their technologycan do generation for , it can eat existing Nuclear Waste as its fuel. It actually reduces Nuclear Waste in the world. You can put it right next to an old plant and have it eat all the Nuclear Waste until the old one closes the so if everything goes wrong, it just turns off. So the current versions you have to feed energy in it to keep it from melting down so if you lose energy its a catastrophe. The new versions as soon as the energy goes away, the reaction goes away. So thats, those are already designed and theyre already looking for a place to build and they can do it economically. They can make it safe. Youll want in your neighborhood because it will reduce the Nuclear Waste if you havent there. So if youre looking at an eight year projection for Climate Change im glad that some people are panicked because that gets them to invent things and do all the things they need to do but we as a population, as a species , we are really good at solving problems when we see them coming that far away so im not going to worry about it because i think weve got aw this handled but theres something to worry about, im just personally not going to worry about. On that optimistic note i want to thank you very much scott adams, dilbert creator and the author of loserthink. Copies are available for purchase just outside his room and scott will be taking photos on stage in just a few minutes. These form an orderly line on the left side over there. Im melissa came, on behalf of myself and scott adams and the Commonwealth Club , thank you for joining us area. Watching a special edition of the tv erring during the weekwhile members of congress are in their districts. Tonight america at war 31st historian Megan Kate Nelson looks at how the civil war impacted the American West as the union and confederate armies fought for control of the territory and author robert plumb looks at how harriet tubman, clara barton, Harriet Beecher still others at an impact on the civil war and later colonial historian Marybeth Norton set the year 1774. The lead up to and beginning of the revolutionary war. Enjoy book tv now and overthe weekend on cspan2. This weekend on tv, saturday at 6 pm eastern richard portray former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Its about consumers and the problems they face area and its about Consumer Finance and how its changed and its about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the importance of the work engages in to protect people across america. Sunday at 12 30 p. M. Eastern hr mcmaster former Trump Administration National Security advisor. The United States and other free and open society ought to do everything to protect ourselves against the efforts of the Chinese Communist party to subvert our freemarket economic systems and our democratic form of governance. 6 20 ruth gilmore, author and City University professor on mass incarceration in the us. The fact that most people leave prison do a little bit of analysis to see that we could be closing presence already and jails already if we just cut by two weeks and three weeks and four weeks much less years the kinds of sentences are serving. Watch this weekend on cspan2. The invention of yesterday, a 50,000 year history of human culture,