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The James Altucher Show

Ep. 200 - Scott Adams: Subtly Hypnotizing Yourself And Everyone You Meet

The James Altucher Show

James Altucher

Education, Business

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2016

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How can you use mass hypnosis to control 60,000,000 people so they vote for you to become the leader of the world? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, knows the answer and has known it for years. So I called him and asked. I needed to know. He told me how Trump won. And he told me how anyone can use these persuasion techniques to improve their lives. What if you can get people to do whatever you want just by using the right words and subtly hypnotizing everyone you meet? It sounds like a science fiction novel. But it's true. It's what happened, and it happens every day. Who are the victims? You're the victim. Scott Adams predicted in September 2015(!) that Donald Trump would become President because, "he is the best master persuader I have ever seen." Scott Adams trained as a hypnotist and master persuader for years. "Once you realize that everyone is completely irrational," Scott Adams told me, "your life gets a lot easier. "You can start to use the principles behind this to see why people really do things, as opposed to using rational facts, and then use that to your advantage. "Understanding that people are irrational has made my life a lot better." But how did he predict a year and a half ago that Trump would win? I needed to know how. And how I could do it. Trump was the unlikely choice to be President. Just like Scott was the unlikely choice to be one of the world's most popular cartoonists with Dilbert. But we can all learn the skills that Scott learned. Scott heard a story that made him want to change his life in his 20s. His mother had delivered birth to his sister without the use of anesthetics. She was hypnotized. "She felt no pain," Scott said. So Scott, in his 20s, learned all the techniques of hypnosis. "You mean," I said, "You can take a gold watch and swing it in front of their eyes and make them do what you want?" "That has never happened," Scott said, "Except in movies. "What you learn is that basically everything people do is completely irrational. And then they rationalize it later. "Like, they might say they voted for Trump because of his policies but this is just a rationalization. Everyone is irrational and everyone is subject to persuasion." Everything seemed against Trump. But somehow he beat 16 candidates in the primaries and one big candidate in the election. And, Scott says, all the theories as to why he won have been wrong. So I called him up and asked him what happened. And he told me: ----------------- - THE LINGUISTIC KILL SHOT "Trump described everyone using two techniques: - words that had never been used in politics before - words that were visual. So every time you looked at the candidate being described you would look for confirmation bias." Example: Jeb Bush he described as "low energy". "Low energy" had never been used to describe a candidate before so they stood out. And whenever you looked Jeb, unless he was jumping around, you would automatically look for clues that showed he was low energy. Trump systematically did this with everyone who was frontrunner against him, including "Crooked Hillary" which referred both to her legal troubles and the persistent rumors that she was sick. ------------------ - CHARISMA = POWER + EMPATHY Scott said, "Trump clearly had the Power part down. But he was low on Empathy. "So he used polling to figure out what the critical issue was for the most amount of people and came up with Immigration. By going with this issue he proved he had empathy with his base. "Expect him as President to try to show empathy to a much larger group of people." ------------------ - OVERSELLING THE STORY "Trump consistently oversold his point. For instance, 'Build a Wall'." He used hyperbole because it's the direction that counts. "It didn't matter that the facts didn't support him. His base was listening to the direction while all the media was getting bogged down in the weeds. "And... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

0:06.4

This is the James Altiger Show on the Choose Yourself Network.

0:11.4

Today on the James Altiger Show.

0:15.0

Humans are fundamentally irrational creatures and you have to understand that in order to even be a heavensend.

0:23.0

It's very frustrating to think that you should be able to change somebody's mind with your facts and the reasons and your logic.

0:30.0

And then it just doesn't happen.

0:32.0

And you could try to 1000 times in a row and it's just never worth.

0:36.0

You keep wondering why can't I change anybody's mind with my facts and logic.

0:40.0

I live in a world where if I don't have something that will change them emotionally, I would not bother.

0:45.0

I try to change the mind in the other way.

0:48.0

So how can I personally improve my life?

0:52.0

Given that I just assume everything's, everybody makes decisions irrationally.

0:56.0

And there are some books about this. Dan Arieli has predictably irrational and freakonomics is sort of about this.

1:03.0

And the whole area of behavioral economics is sort of about this.

1:06.0

But viewing it from a persuasion point of view or hypnotist point of view, how can I make my life better today knowing this?

1:19.0

I'm on with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

1:22.0

Although this time we're not talking about Dilbert. Scott, welcome to the show.

1:26.0

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

1:28.0

This is your third time on the James Altature show.

1:30.0

You're actually one of my most popular guests now.

1:33.0

So it gets better every time.

1:35.0

Yes. And the reason it gets better every time is you just did, you just completed an incredible feat in my opinion.

...

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