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June 14, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:07
Episode 104 - Propaganda videos, Peace with NK and racism
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I'm a little bit early today.
I've got lots of stuff to do today, but I didn't want to miss a chance for the simultaneous sip.
I'm waiting. I'm waiting.
Everybody, grab your beverage.
It's time to enjoy the unparalleled pleasure, the perfect moment, the simultaneous sip.
Ready. Oh yeah.
I hope it was just as good on your end as it was on mine.
Good stuff. I've got a number of topics today.
Let's start with President Trump's video that he showed to North Korea.
I've talked about this a few times, but I wanted to make a couple of points that I have not yet made.
So, you're probably watching the enemy press, the people who hate President Trump, Try to paint that video as ridiculous and weird and bizarre and oh it's crazy and it's over the top and you know how can you take something as serious as nuclear war and make it a little funny movie clip and you know is that only because you're a reality TV star and
you can't understand the world in any other frame but television and movies etc.
Now, if you remember in my book, Win Bigly, which many of you have read, I talked about the fact, two facts that are important here.
One, one of the facts is that people who don't understand the tools of persuasion walk through life confused all the time.
And you can see this with the way people interpreted the video, you can see this in stark relief.
So the people who don't know how persuasion works, they don't understand it, they don't know the mechanism, the tools, they wouldn't recognize it if they saw it.
They look at the video and on an intellectual level they say, yes, it was meant to persuade, but look at it, it's just a mess.
So that's their view of the world.
If they don't understand persuasion, they say, yeah, I understand it was made to persuade, but look at this, it's just weird and it must be a bad idea.
I don't see any technique.
Because they don't recognize it.
Those of us who have, you know, looked into persuasion a bit, looked at that video and said, oh my God.
This thing is brilliant because it is just chock full with the strongest, most well-executed persuasion that you've probably ever seen in one place.
So that's a whole different world.
So that's another one of those two movies on one screen.
But one of the things I told you that the under-informed don't know anything about is that persuasion works just as well When the person you're persuading knows exactly what technique you're using.
It doesn't seem like that should be the case, but it very much is.
And the simple example I always give is that if you see something priced $9.99, you know, $9.99, as soon as you see it, you say to yourself, oh, they just made it a penny less than $10, because psychologically I'll feel like $10 is a lot more than $9.99.
So at the very moment you're thinking that, and of course we all do, you know, everybody knows why things are priced $9.99 instead of $10.
It just feels cheaper.
It is, you know, a penny, but it feels more cheap.
More than a penny cheap.
And yet, you know, businesses still do it.
Why do they do that trick if everyone knows it's a trick?
And the answer is, because it still works.
And that's the weird thing about persuasion.
You can tell people what you're doing right in front of them and say, look, I'm going to make you look at this thing first because it will influence how you think about this thing.
And the person will say, I'm not so easily manipulated.
And then you can do it right in front of them and it will influence how they think about the other thing.
So you don't think that knowing the technique would make it not work as well.
That'd be great, because if that were true, then you could guard against it.
But it's not true.
Knowing it's made for persuasion, seeing the actual technique, no difference.
It's just as good. So, in putting that frame on it, when the critics are saying, my God, it's just so heavy-handed, this persuasion in this video, I say, so?
Apparently you don't understand how this works.
It is heavy-handed. It is obvious persuasion.
Every technique in there, even to the people who are not especially trained, can recognize that, oh, he's trying to say that your life will be better if you do this and that, etc.
He's using visual persuasion.
He's making it look like a movie.
Even if he didn't know too much, you'd understand that they're trying to persuade.
What you wouldn't understand is it works really well.
Now, should President Trump have chosen to look good in the eyes of the people who don't understand persuasion and just played it straight like a regular diplomat would?
Hey, how you doing? You know, let's talk.
Or should he do what is very, very effective, but...
He also knows that the media is not going to see it.
They're not going to know what they're looking at.
And I think, once again, he took the right choice.
He made the choice that although he will be mocked for it mercilessly, and is, today, it absolutely was the right choice.
So right that I've branded it as Branded it, the video that is, as perhaps one of the best diplomatic plays of all time.
And partly I'm positive about it because everybody wins.
If Kim Jong-un is influenced by it, he'll be influenced to build a great country.
Nobody loses in that.
Alright, so there's that.
I was just watching, I think it's a brand new podcast video with Dave Rubin interviewing Sam Harris.
Now if you've never watched any of Dave Rubin's interviews, I recommend them highly.
He's a great interviewer.
I've interviewed with him twice.
He's definitely in the top tier of people who do that kind of thing.
But beyond that, his choice of guests is just way better than what you'll see on television or anything else.
He picks really interesting people.
And then, and they talk about this in the interview as well, or discussion.
Maybe I call it a discussion.
They talk about how his format, which allows you to have a long form, it's just so much more useful than, hey, you've got 30 seconds to make your point on CNN before we go to commercial, and then somebody says something wrong about your opinion, and then it just hangs there forever.
So the long form and what Dave Rubin does is a whole level more useful than anything you're seeing on television.
So he was talking to Sam, and my name came up a few times, which is why I was drawn to it.
Somebody said, hey, your name has been mentioned.
So I went over and took a look.
And the parts that mentioned me were not especially interesting for our purposes.
But I was fascinated to listen to Sam's description of the difference between the left and the right.
Now, you know that Sam is one of the most vocal anti-Trumpers.
Very vocal. And you know that Sam and I had a discussion on his podcast about that.
And what Sam was saying is that when people on the right misinterpret him, And he points it out, they're more likely to just correct it and say, oh, okay, I guess I didn't have the information right,
so let me correct that. But the people on the left simply take his words out of context, make up a meaning that isn't his, something ridiculous, and then assign it to him, and then argue why he's an idiot because of the opinion they hallucinated and assigned to him.
I thought, you know, many of you probably thought, hey, I thought that only happened to me!
So, you know, I made a prediction a while ago that although Sam is the, you know, one of the most vocal and effective, I would say, anti-Trumpers, that over time his views might evolve.
And that he might move from being as anti-Trump as you could get to something closer to, well, okay, I don't like it, but he is getting stuff done.
And I don't think he's there yet.
But when you watch these little signs, like the fact that he's recognized the side that most agrees with him, About President Trump, the people who are all on his side on this big political issue are horrible, which he's understanding now.
They're simply misinterpreting him for Lord knows what reasons.
So he's already developed sort of a, I'd say, an affection for the people on the right.
That he's having trouble getting from the people on the left, just in the political realm.
And I would say that that mirrors very much my experience.
I've told you so many times you're tired of hearing it, that my own political views are sort of left to Bernie, at least in a lot of the social issues.
And the other stuff I usually just don't even understand, like trade imbalances.
Well, I understand an imbalance, but trade negotiations and the big stuff, I don't really understand that stuff.
But I'm left to Bernie on a lot of the social issues.
However, the people who are nicest...
Are on the right. Of course there's the crazies on the far right who are actual racists and stuff.
I'm not discounting that they exist.
But just in a day-to-day interaction, the people on the right are just nicer to me, even when they disagree.
So we'll see if Sam continues to evolve.
And I loved in the conversation with Dave Rubin, I'm forgetting the exact context, but I think Dave pointed out that although the president, as Sam would note, departs from the fact checking quite frequently and more aggressively than we've ever seen before, That the results seem to be fairly consistently good.
So we're seeing the economy good, you know, blah, blah, blah.
You know all the success.
And things with North Korea look to be moving at least in the right direction at the moment.
And Sam acknowledges those things That at least, I think where he is, and this would be my own interpretation, which could be wrong, but I think Sam would say that Trump at least hasn't broken the economy.
He hasn't broken North Korea.
He hasn't broken the fight against ISIS. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that he hasn't broken, which is better than a lot of people thought would happen.
Somebody said, not yet.
That's what I'm getting to. So if you listen to Sam's concern, what is it that he hates most about the whole Trump experience, I tried to understand his point in whatever would be the crispest, clearest way, and I couldn't get there.
So, let me see if I can even maybe restate it in my own words, and if Sam sees this or anybody has a better idea of his opinion, please fact check me.
Because I'd like to be one of those people who, if I misinterpret somebody's opinion, then I correct it.
It seems to me that Sam's concern about Trump is that his departure from the facts is so extreme compared to other experiences with politicians that it will cause a lasting damage.
That beyond the immediate Trump experience, which I think he would admit has not broken anything yet, you know, the economy is going okay, etc.
But that there's some lasting psychic damage or possibly precedent damage or possibly it encourages other people to be bad because they see that it works.
Or society loses its interest in facts entirely and maybe just stops caring about accuracy, which would be long-term lasting damages, according to Sam.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that that can't happen.
He describes a hypothetical world where the experience of Trump causes some lasting damage beyond the presidency.
But I can tell you, I don't see it.
That whatever that is that he sees as a big, obvious problem, I actually regard it as zero.
And that's such a difference.
The difference between an enormous problem that could, you know, have lasting negative impacts on the Republic and therefore the world because the U.S. is such a big footprint on the world.
I actually don't see it at all.
There are lots of things that I can disagree with that I can see.
You know, practically every point of view that I disagree with I can see it.
You know, if somebody says, I don't like the tax cuts because the deficit will run up, I can see a deficit, you know, conceptually.
I may have a different opinion about what's important, but at least I can see it.
You know, if somebody says abortion is killing and somebody says it's not, I can see both of those things, no matter which side I want to be on.
But when Sam says that there's a big problem with the Trump experience that will ripple on beyond Trump, if it isn't already a problem with him in his office, I can't see it.
It's actually invisible to me.
And I think maybe the difference is that I see Trump as such a unique character that I don't think there's any risk that there will be a second Trump.
Not at all. To me, that risk seems vanishingly small.
I would say there's a 99% chance that the president after Trump will be the antidote to Trump.
In other words, it's far, far more likely, maybe 100 to 1, that the next president is whatever is the reaction to Trump, not another one.
So in the way that Trump was a reaction to Obama, There will be a reaction to Trump because people will say, well, that was good, we had enough of it, let's try something else.
And the other thing where I disagree with Sam is that Sam has an assumption that's unfounded.
Which is interesting because his brand, and I would compliment him for this, his brand is rationality, rigorous thought.
His brand is facts matter.
Getting the facts wrong is dangerous.
And that the more factual, the more accurate, the better you think, the better your outcomes.
I don't think that. And I also think it hasn't been that true in the past.
Now, certainly in the situation of engineering and science, yes, facts certainly matter.
If you're engineering or you're in science or even if you're building a product, Yeah, yeah, you totally want to get the facts right.
You want to use the best reasoning, the best thinking, etc.
But in the realm of politics, Facts don't matter.
Now, let me clarify that.
Facts do matter to the outcome, of course.
If you walk in front of a truck, the truck is a fact, the truck kills you.
That matters. But the way people make decisions is so divorced from facts And always has been that Trump actually doesn't add anything that wasn't already there.
All he does is he does it better.
Let me say that again.
The world of politics was always 100% bullshit.
Always. It was just different bullshit.
The thing that Trump has added is that he just does more of it and he does it better.
Because he understands the field of persuasion and he puts a high priority on it, he understands that he can ignore the details, the facts, completely as long as he's moving things in the right direction.
So he prioritizes the outcome, a positive outcome, whether that's make America great again, making the economy better, winning against ISIS, getting a good result with North Korea.
President Trump prioritizes winning highest.
Now, in this case, winning is not a bad thing because he's not trying to make other countries lose in a way that's not a fair, let's say, not lose in some unfair way.
He would obviously like to get the better of the deals and make America first in every way.
That's his job as president.
But his priority is to get the good outcome.
Compare that to someone who is a politician whose, wait for it, priority is the truth.
Compare those two leaders.
Take away the Take away the personalities.
You don't even have to think about Trump.
Just two imaginary leaders.
One prioritizes winning.
In this case, winning doesn't mean other people lose.
It just means the best result.
You know, the best economy, the strongest military, the avoiding war, you know, the best result.
So one politician says, I'm going to ignore the facts to get you here.
I might tell you some things that are a little bit hyperbole to get you here.
Because that's, you know, and I'm going to get a lot of criticism about getting some facts right wrong, but I'm going to get you here.
I'm going to get you this winning place.
Winning is the priority.
And I think it'd be fair to say that the president, President Trump, has very clearly and from the start said winning is the priority.
Make America Great Again is the priority.
Nobody's missed that, right?
Do you ever remember a time when President Trump said, look, I'm going to put the truth above winning.
I'm going to put the truth above you being happy.
I'm gonna put the truth above a good result.
I'm gonna put the truth above national defense.
I'm gonna put the truth above feeding the poor.
I'm gonna put the truth above keeping you safe from terrorists.
Do you remember him promising that?
That he would put the truth as a higher priority than making our lives better and making the world a better place?
He didn't. He never made that.
No promise like that was ever made.
Now imagine a second hypothetical leader, someone else, who comes in and says, there's been too much lying in this Trump administration.
I will only tell you the truth.
I'll only tell you the truth.
And let's say that that person does that, only tells you the truth.
Which leader do you want?
Because the person who only tells you the truth has prioritized the truth over a good result.
In my opinion, those two are not even in the same game.
One is a Major League MVP and the other is Little League.
You could argue they're both baseball, but they're not comparable in any way.
So when Sam prioritizes the truth, I think that makes, of course, perfect sense for science, for engineering, for science.
I would say most corporations should prioritize the truth, give or take a little marketing spin, but everybody knows what's going on there.
In your personal life, I would recommend you use the truth as much as is practical.
If your spouse gets a bad haircut and it's going to grow back in, well, maybe you say it doesn't look so bad.
But that's not a crime.
So, in most realms, the truth is actually the way to go.
And the truth will also get you to the best result.
So for most of life, the truth is exactly the best strategy.
It gets you to a good place.
In politics, it's upside down.
In politics, the truth gets you not elected.
In politics, the truth gets your country destroyed.
In politics, the truth makes your economy sputter because people say, gosh, you're telling me the truth that we have some problems with the economy.
And then they don't invest because they think next year's going to be even worse.
But if you tell them that things are great, even if they aren't, and things are going to be even better next year, even if you're not sure that's true, What happens?
People invest. They say, hey, I think this guy says things are going to be great.
He sounds persuasive. I'll invest.
And next year, you do have a good economy because all those people invested.
So here's my point.
Sam's prioritization of reason and truth is are very strong principles that work in almost every realm of life except politics.
In politics, it would be a disaster.
Now, you may say to yourself, but I wish that weren't true.
And I can even agree with you.
I'll say, I wish that weren't true.
I wish you could have a politician who did nothing but tell the truth.
And that when that happened, you would get a good result.
Let me give you an example of what would happen.
Let's say President Scott gets elected.
So President Scott Adams takes office, and I got elected on the platform of always telling the truth.
So here, I'm going to do that right now.
President Scott Adams, can you give us a speech?
Well, sure. Let me tell you the truth.
The truth is that since I took office, the economy is up 5%, and I think it's going to do even better.
And then somebody else says, that's not right.
You measured it wrong.
That's not the truth.
The truth is that the last president is responsible for the economy.
You just inherited it. The truth is that you don't know it's going to go up.
The truth is that things are trending negative.
It's going to be bad. So here's the thing.
In politics, there is no truth.
In science, sometimes there is.
In math, sometimes.
Quite often there is.
There's a true answer that you can eventually get everybody to agree with if you use the scientific principle, you repeat your experiment, you publish in the right places, you get enough people to review your work.
You can get to something that's like truth.
In politics, that's not a thing.
It's just not a thing.
There is no process to get there.
And if you could, I don't know that you'd want to because it wouldn't get you to the right place.
What you want is to win.
What you want is to have your priorities right, which is winning.
That's why we elect the leader.
We don't elect the leader to tell us the truth.
And if they tried, we wouldn't believe it.
Or at least half the country wouldn't believe it.
The people on the other side are going to say, yeah, I know you got elected because you're the guy who tells the truth all the time.
But look at you. You're lying right now.
Even if you're telling the truth.
So in politics, there is no realistic endpoint where people tell the truth and you get the best result.
That's just not a thing. President Trump, in my opinion, this is my analysis you've been seeing for a few years now, understands his priorities better than almost anybody you've ever seen in your life.
And he's willing to take the heat for the fact that you don't understand priorities.
I like that sentence so much I'm going to say it again.
Trump knows priorities really, really well.
You saw in his campaign that he prioritized social media above traditional ads.
That was the correct choice.
You saw that he prioritized the Rust Belt states, spent a lot of time there, made sure his message fit there, and that got him elected.
You saw Hillary Clinton prioritize all the wrong stuff.
She prioritized her gender.
Hillary Clinton prioritized her gender.
It was the least important part of the election.
Because, yes, I would be happy to have a female president because I'd like to get past that barrier.
In the same way I was happy to have a President Obama.
There's some barriers that society is better off getting past.
But it's not a priority.
It's not better than beating ISIS, having a good economy, and all those things.
So, those aren't barriers.
Yeah, you know, to that point...
I can't think of any time during the election that I heard any Republican say that Hillary Clinton's gender was a reason not to vote for.
That just wasn't even a thing.
I literally heard it zero times and haven't heard it since then.
And when you talk to Republicans, The same people that Hillary would say are, at least far too many of them, are sexist and that that might have cost the election.
If you say to Republicans today, who do you think would be a good president after Trump, what do most Republicans say?
Yeah, Nikki Haley.
So Republicans, right, so you were there, Nikki Haley.
So the Republicans, the very same people who were accused of being sexist, if you ask them who would be at the top of your list for the next president after Trump, people say Nikki Haley.
So the whole, you know, Republicans are sexist or the glass ceiling, I argue that the glass ceiling was already broken by Clinton.
So my argument is that although Hillary Clinton did not get elected, she did win the popular vote.
And she took gender off the table.
So it wasn't breaking the glass ceiling in the normal way where you actually get the job, but she did break the glass ceiling in the sense that nobody will ever have that problem.
So the whole idea that a woman can't be president, completely gone.
If anybody even had that in 2016, I didn't hear it.
It wasn't even part of the conversation.
But Hillary Clinton extinguished it.
And I always think that as much as you want to criticize her if you're pro-Trump or Republican or just anti-Hillary, there are plenty of things you can criticize her for.
Any politician, that would be true.
But you gotta give her that.
She did break the glass ceiling.
She just didn't get the job, which is slightly different.
So I give her that.
Now, for those of you who have stayed toward the end, I want to share with you my most problematic ideas.
Some of you saw my tweet this morning.
There's a publication, if you can call it that, called Metro.
Metro US, or just Metro.
And there's a writer there who characterized my video that Kanye tweeted around.
This is how the writer characterized it.
He said that I said racism isn't a problem and that you can cure it with positive thinking.
Now that's pretty much the opposite of my opinion.
I think you've watched...
Enough of my periscopes to know that I've put a considerable amount of my own time and reputation into dealing with racism.
Trying to figure out how to minimize it.
So I put amazing amounts of personal risk, time, money, reputation, everything else, into that very problem and then some idiot characterizes it as I say that racism doesn't exist.
Anyway, so I'm going to do that again.
So I'm going to take a personal risk now.
And it's a pretty big one.
Because whenever you talk about racism, if you're not black, you're putting yourself in a dangerous situation.
Because people are going to interpret what you say incorrectly.
So I'm going to...
Bring up a topic that I'm pretty sure will be misinterpreted.
But I think those of you watching this know where my intentions are, so at least the people watching this will not take it out of context.
And here's the idea.
It seems to me that...
Well, let me back up.
I've said this before, that white supremacists...
We'll often say that white people are awesome because Thomas Edison invented things and Einstein was a great scientist and a whole bunch of white people did some amazing things.
And I look at that and I go, but none of those people are you?
How does the white supremacist living in a shack somewhere get credit for the fact that Einstein was smart?
Yeah, somebody said Einstein was Jewish, but let me just clean up my example then and say whoever it is, Edison.
So the point is, yeah, forget the Einstein example, you're right.
But the point is, how do you take credit For the accomplishments of other people.
It just doesn't make sense.
And let me explain why I think it is that we do that.
It seems to me that people have two identities.
Everybody has an identity which is their personal identity, the stuff that they've done, they've experienced, they feel.
But in addition to our individual identity, we have, yes, somebody said a tribal identity.
And I suppose people identify their tribe differently based on a number of factors.
But if your tribe is white people, You imagine that some of the goodness or badness of white people is also attributed to you.
That somehow that brand of white people, you know, for good or bad, is part of who you are.
And I'm going to tie together some ideas here, but I want to do it carefully.
So bear with me while I pull together some pieces that look disconnected until they are connected.
So I wrote a book called How to Failed Almost Everything and Still Win Big, which was largely a book on how to have a strategy for success, no matter how you define success.
So it was about having systems instead of goals, about building talent stacks, and about having a strategy for success in life, no matter what it is you wanted in particular.
And I've spent a tremendous amount of time thinking if that same advice works just as well, whether you think your tribe is white people or women or men or black people, whatever you think your group identity is, is my generic advice We're going to work just the same for everybody.
And I'm starting to think no.
And that there are some tweaks you need to account for the fact that people have two identities, their self and their group.
And if you haven't accounted for the group part, you're missing who they are and how they're going to act.
And I'm going to tie this together in a minute.
Just bear with me. So I had a neighbor years ago.
He was a 70-year-old guy, and this was 20 years ago.
So imagine he was born 90 years ago.
And he was born into poverty, white guy.
And he told the story, I think they didn't have electricity in his house.
Obviously, he didn't have running water.
He had an outhouse. And he had nothing.
Just absolutely nothing.
I guess he joined the military by lying about his age.
Got into the Navy at age 16.
But eventually he became very rich because he was my neighbor in a rich neighborhood.
He lived in a multi-million dollar home.
And one day I was talking to him about how he made it.
What was his strategy?
What was his big break?
And he told me this story.
One of his first jobs, just a normal job, Was selling salt to grocery stores.
So his boss was some salt manufacturer, I guess, if that's what you call it.
A salt vendor.
And he would go into stores and say, hey, instead of that other guy's salt, why don't you carry my brand of salt?
And I laughed when he told me this.
I said, how in the world do you sell salt?
Isn't salt as the most generic thing you could possibly sell?
What possible strategy do you use to sell salt better than the other people who sell salt?
Because in a free market, the price should eventually be exactly the same because the product is the same.
And he said, well, let me tell you a story.
And here's the story he told me about one particular sale.
He said he went into some smaller local grocery store, tried to sell his salt, couldn't make the sale.
He stopped back a few times, so he knew the guy he was calling on, but the guy already had salt.
He didn't need another vendor of salt.
Well, one day the guy mentioned that he was going to be reorganizing his store, reorganizing the shelves, which is, as you can imagine, an enormous task if you're a small business owner to reorganize all your shelves.
So this vendor of salt shows up at the store on, I guess it was a Saturday or Sunday or something, and he shows up ready for work.
This is the salt vendor who has not sold any salt to this guy.
He goes, I'm here to help you organize your store.
And the store owner is like, well, you know, I didn't ask for that.
But you're here. You're in your work clothes.
You've already allocated the time.
So he spent half a day, you know, working with this guy, just asking nothing in return.
All he did was help him organize his store, and then he left.
A few days later, he gets the order for salt.
So how did he get this sale?
What he did was he didn't sell salt.
He sold himself.
And he sold greater value than a regular salt seller can provide.
He sold credibility.
He used reciprocity.
He used the power of reciprocity to give this guy something which thereby improved his value.
Now I'm getting to an important point which will later be taken out of context to make me sound like a racist, but I'm not there yet.
I contend that part of my group identity is that guy, the salt seller.
So because I'm an individual and I have my own identity, but I'm also part of a tribe of, you know, even if I don't think of it that way, it's sort of automatic.
I'm sort of the tribe of white guys, just as, you know, if you're Jewish, you're part of the tribe of Jewish people, etc.
And my story...
My tribal story is all kinds of examples of the soul salesman.
They're all examples where somebody has built an asset out of nothing by giving things away.
And that you create value by what you do for other people.
And that that's the base strategy that I use it all the time.
My strategy, if I want something from somebody, and it would help me in some way, my first thought is, what can I do for them?
How do I create value by doing something that I'm not asked for and don't expect any kind of direct compensation for?
That's my strategy.
And I would argue that it's a really good strategy.
Now, imagine if you were Jewish, but you had no parents, no relatives who went through the Holocaust.
That would still be part of your group identity, wouldn't it?
Even if you had no connection, even indirectly, to the Holocaust, none of your relatives were there, you weren't there, it's still a part of your tribal identity.
I think you'd agree with that.
If you're black, and you were born in this country, and you think that your tribal identity, so to speak, goes back to actual slavery, would that have an effect on what you do today?
Well, there's evidence that that is the case.
And by the way, please fact check me on this.
I believe this is true, but it sounds racist.
So if it's wrong, I'll correct it in the future.
But I believe it's true that black immigrants from the West Indies, who never went through the whole slavery identity thing, Perform better in the United States, and also recent immigrants from Africa, perform better than people who were born here who identify themselves with the slavery experience.
I'm seeing lots of yeses, but be careful because those of you who read more conservative media, you're going to see that statistic, which doesn't mean it's true.
So be careful because that's a statistic you kind of see on one side and doesn't get reported on the other side, so you should be a little skeptical.
But assuming that's true, Let's just walk through the logic here.
So what is it about how people perceive themselves as part of a group which might be a big obstacle for the people who see themselves coming from a model of slavery as part of their past?
Have you connected the dots yet?
Imagine yourself.
I'm going to put you in this head.
Just deal with me or come with me on this little mental journey.
Imagine yourself as a descendant of slaves.
Put yourself in the head for a minute.
Just imagine that that's your reality.
You've never been a slave.
You've never met anybody who was a slave.
You don't know anybody who was a slave owner or descendants of slave owners.
You personally have no connection to it.
But your brand identity, your group identity that also influences your decisions is very much informed by the slavery example.
If that's who you are, yourself plus that group identity of slavery, how easy is it for you to give something away to a white person for nothing?
If your mindset...
Is that slavery is where your group identity is largely, you know, influenced?
Could you say, yeah, I think my strategy in life is to give things away for free, and because most of the people who, you know, are in the country are white, 75% or whatever it is.
No, it's less than that, but the people who have got resources and are bosses and own companies and stuff are highly skewed toward white people.
And those are the people that you need to influence to get what you need, to get the job, to get the contract to sell salt.
How could you feel good about yourself giving something for nothing...
To the group that you identify as the slave owners or descended from or benefiting from, you know, in some indirect way, how could you give them something for nothing?
Could you? I mean, be honest.
You know, imagine yourself in that situation and the most effective common strategy that white people use to succeed is figuring out how to give somebody else something for nothing.
Because that's how they get something.
It's how they create value.
But if your self-identity is that you came from slavery, the last freaking thing you might be inclined to do is give somebody something for nothing.
I put this out there not because I'm sure it's true or that I've identified the problem.
This is part of my larger strategy that I talk about, the diversification of ideas.
This might be something, it might be nothing, but it's certainly going to make you think about it a little differently than you did before.
So let me see if I hit just that one point.
Whether you think this is useful or right, let's keep that separately.
Did it make you think of this situation a little differently?
Have I accomplished the only thing I'm trying to do, which is to shake the box a little bit and just make you think of it a little differently?
Can you give me the yes or no on that?
All right, so most people are saying yes.
And thank you for that feedback.
Somebody else said the left is going to roast you for this.
They will. So I'm taking a page from President Trump in this regard.
My priority is to see how we can make the world a better place.
I have less of a priority about protecting my image from trolls, and I have less of a priority about protecting my ego, and I'm rich enough that even if I lost my job, I'd still be fine.
So my priority is to see if I can get us to the next level of thinking, even if my ideas are not the right ones, just to shake it up a little bit.
Now, yes.
So somebody is quoting back something that I've been saying for a while, that if you imagine that your ego is who you are, then it would be very hard for you to say, well, I don't know if I can give something for nothing to some group that I identify I don't know if I can give something for nothing to some group Who gives, you know, if you feel you're being abused, the last thing you do is give somebody a gift if they're abusing you.
Your ego doesn't let you do that.
But if you say, I'm not my ego.
My ego is something I can use as a tool.
I can ratchet it up.
Let's say I'm going to play a sporting thing or I'm going to apply for a job.
I ratchet my ego up so I feel good.
I feel confident. I go in and feel that good.
But if my ego is just in the way and it doesn't allow me to create value for myself by doing something first for somebody else, then your ego is just an obstacle.
It's not who you are.
it's just an obstacle.
All right.
I did an interview with Michael Malice yesterday on his podcast.
And He just sent me the links to them, so look for that.
A number of people have asked us to have a conversation, and so we did.
So I'll tweet that within the hour, and I hope you like it.
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