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Oct. 4, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:46
Episode 245 Scott Adams: Asking Your Opinion on the Title of my Next Book
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Time Text
Hey Janice.
Hey Fracker Dave.
Fracker Dave.
Dan, come on in here.
I've got a quick question for you.
Good news?
I don't know. Is there good news?
So here's a question for you.
I want to put this out here. I've got a few book title names, and I want to run them by you.
The topic of the book, which is not...
Anywhere near finished, but the theme of it will be ways to know, essentially ways to know if you're thinking clearly and ways to escape your mental prison.
So it's a book on how to escape your mental prison, how to get past the psychological blocks that are really more like illusions and how to be more effective.
So that's the topic of the book, how to get down to your mental prison.
But I don't think I want prison anywhere in the title.
So I was thinking of something like Escape Your Mental Prison, but I don't like prison in the title.
Then I was thinking of something about how to find the golden age.
Escape your mental prison.
I don't mind putting prison in the subtitle, but not in the title.
But some people said the golden age sounds like a history book.
So that would mislead people.
So then the third suggestion is slap a filter on it.
So if you can imagine a filter and just slapping a filter on it.
And most of the chapters would work with that because most of it is about teaching you a trick so that you can slap a new filter on your reality and you can see past your mental prison.
And you can sort of have a filter where you can find the doorway to the prison.
So, what do you think?
Yeah, I don't want anything with jail or prison in the main title.
I might put it in the subtitle.
But what do you think of the idea?
Slap a filter on it.
And I'll wait for a moment to see your comments.
So that's the suggestion.
Slap a filter on it.
Somebody suggests I title the book, I Am Not Sam Harris.
Yeah, nothing. So I'm rejecting anything with jail or prison.
I don't want that anywhere in the main title, but it might be in the subtitle somewhere.
Yeah, I don't want mental chains.
That's all prison. So I want to get rid of all the...
There can be no prison, chains, handcuffs words in the main title.
Yeah, I might put it in the subtitle.
And somebody suggests prison, prison, prison, escape.
People who don't follow directions.
Although I assume that was sarcastic, but it was funny.
Don't say slap. Free your mind.
Free your mind is a little too ordinary.
Mind.
Woke.
Uh...
Somebody says they like Shake the Box.
Yeah, it's a good title, but it doesn't fit the content as well as it should.
Slap sounds imprecise.
Do you see the filter?
No, it's something that you understand which changes how you look at the world.
So the filter is a mental filter.
How about mental filter?
How about brain filter?
So slap a filter on it was the suggestion I'm looking for.
Ideas on too violent.
You might be right about that.
How about brain filter?
Mind filters.
It just doesn't sound active.
Yeah, I want a title that is not one or two boring words.
Two movies. Yeah, I use that too much in Win Bigly, so I need something different.
All right, so we don't like slap.
How you miss things, release your bonds.
Woke. Prison slap.
Switch your lens.
What have you got to lose?
Mental filters. Mental filters.
People have already done mental floss.
Filters. Your filter, bind filter, change your filters.
Filtering your reality.
Be your own. Filter change your channel.
New color pill.
Think bigly.
That's not bad at all.
Oh.
Because my last two books...
Yeah, I don't want Bigly, though, because that's a Trump thing.
Think bigger. Expand reality, idea jump, power wash brand.
Mind screening.
Pulling back the curtain.
Mentor filter matrix.
Opening your perceptions.
What's wrong with slap? Some people thought it sounded a little violent.
Maybe in this day and age that's true.
Filter framing. The art of the filter.
Reframe. Reframe.
Reframe's a good word to consider.
Switch your lens, escape the mental prism.
Mental, flossing mental.
Filter this. Shredding your filter.
Port of filters. Switch your filters.
Become unfiltered. Unleash your potentials.
You know, those of you who are looking for a greater entertainment on this Periscope, mindset filters.
That's a little too Mike Cernovich.
Red pills overused.
Break out of your brain box.
Mind filter, big thinkly.
The reframe brain.
How about reframe your brain?
Reprogram yourself.
Think figliest.
Scott, if I... For those of you just joining, so the book will teach you a number of techniques to reduce the illusions in front of you so you can more clearly see reality and escape your mental prisons.
So it's about escaping your mental prisons, but I don't want any kind of prison chain reference in the title.
Mind shake. Shake the brain.
Shake the brain box.
Think clearly with filters.
Persuasion filters. Well, it's not really a book about persuading anybody.
It's about removing your own filters.
Third eye. Somebody likes Think Bigly.
It is the most catchy, but Bigly is a Trump word.
And I don't want to leave that impression, because this is not a Trump-specific book.
How about tweaking the simulation?
Refind your mind.
Electrify your reality through the male veil.
How about the trouble with troubles?
Filter hacks. Filter hacks.
Reframe your brain.
So let me make sure that one's down there.
Reframe your brain.
Win simply. - Absolutely.
The Atoms filter.
That's not terrible.
The Atoms filter.
I'm going to write that down.
Feng Shui for your mind.
Soaring neurons. Unlock your mental filter.
It's all in your mind. Dog never escapes.
We escape. Clean your line.
Smoke is gone. Ego crush your mind.
Less. Seeing the elephant. Unbind your mind.
Seeing the elephant will be in there.
Deprogram yourself. Reframe your filter.
Turn your brain around. Meet the Dilbert.
Illusion solution. Filter reality.
Unlock your buried potential.
Simultaneous step. Yeah, it doesn't really say what's in the book, but I like it as a title.
Seeing through your simulation.
How about reprogram the simulation?
Persuading your reality.
The simulation stimulation.
Brain peel, open the pod bay doors, free yourself from mixes, filters.
How about just filters?
That's not bad. Filters.
It's funny, why did I think it had to be two words?
So whoever said just filters.
Not bad. How about, well I'm seeing a lot of people saying the atoms filter.
I wonder if that would work.
You are an NPC, non-player character.
I don't know.
That's just cruel.
Does the winter need a cut?
Filter fixer, filter fixer.
It's too many Fs.
The mind, filter, brain sip.
Open the blinds, filter swaps, how to filter everything and still think bigly.
Unlock the Adams rain filter.
All right, so here's what I like best so far.
The Adams filter.
I wonder why I like that.
Could it be because it has my name in it?
Hmm. Or I like just filters.
I'll still put a subtitle, but I'll work on that separately.
Free thinking. Shades.
filter stilter, the Adams filter.
Yeah, the Adam's filter tells you that it's a way of seeing things, right?
So if you just say any kind of filter, people don't quite know what the idea is.
But if you say the Adam's filter, it is immediately obvious that it's someone's way of looking at the world.
Is that seeing it through your filter?
It could be the atoms' filters.
Could be an S, but that's confusing.
Atomize your mind.
Brain smoothie, brain farts, 30 days to luxurious hair.
Unlock your mind.
Unlocked is still like a prison.
Brain with no walls.
Limitless brain.
Re-filter. The brain anti-atoms persuasion filter.
That's sort of what Winn-Bigley was.
No to atoms filter.
Filters is great.
So take this choice.
If you had to choose between only the two, just the one word, filters, or the more complete, the Adam's filter or filters, which of those is better?
filter, filters, one word, or the atoms filters, or filter.
Think in filters, control the simulation, Break your barriers. The new paradigm.
Filter, kilter. The flip side.
Forehead slap Dale's filter.
Make it wrong so people discuss it.
Yeah, there's a trick to that.
You want to be filter freak.
Yeah, that's not bad.
It's sort of too close to freakonomics, but I like where you're going there.
Hmm. Do you ever filter, bro?
So we like the Adams filter, filters for life.
It looks like there are more people who like...
Yeah, it's not a book about systems over goals.
State of mindlessness.
this.
Filter free. So some people like just filters.
Filters.
Yeah, the trouble is that, so I've been told that filters by itself feels like an Instagram reference.
Just filters, filters.
Looks like we're about...
Looks like we're maybe even between people who like the atoms filter and people who like filters.
The trouble with just filters is that won't make sense, but the atoms filter immediately tells you what you're going for, but it's a little narcissistic.
The golden filter...
Oh, I like where you're going with the golden filter.
By the way, how amazing is this that I can brainstorm with 1,200 people who are focused on the same topic, and God knows why there are so many people who would be willing to participate, but I'm very grateful that you are.
The value of the filters.
The filter makes you think of photography.
Rose colored filter, unfil your mind, the trickle down, the audience, Adam's coffee filter.
The coffee filter.
The coffee filter is not bad, or the Adam's coffee filter.
That could work because it doesn't quite work.
Pure filters.
Yeah, just filters by itself is too much Instagram.
I agree with you.
The Atoms filter is number one.
Atomatrix. Coffee filter.
So, one of the good things about the coffee filter, besides the fact that it makes you think of a coffee filter, is, and it makes you think of coffee, all good things, is that I could have a, there's a natural chapter that actually works perfectly with the book that would be a coffee filter chapter.
So that actually works.
Unfiltered, minefields are forever.
Coffee with filters.
Filtered, yeah.
Adam's Lens.
I like Adam's Unfiltered.
Adam's Unfiltered sounds like I'd be giving my own opinions about all kinds of stuff and swearing a lot.
Through the filter with Scott.
You're going to put us all in the acknowledgments, right?
Of course, I'll mention you all in the acknowledgments.
The golden coffee filter.
Adam's coffee filter. The distilled mind.
Simultaneous filter. Don't think you can free your bio.
Shitty coffee. Can't hear you.
Unfreeze your brain. Unfiltered truth.
Simultaneous truth. Reality. Unfiltered BS. Proof your mind.
Better proof that it isn't. These are the lenses we use on life.
Life lenses. Life lenses.
It's hard to say though. I don't like it.
Lens is an unsatisfying word.
Let me teach you a little bit about writing.
Here's a little writing tip for those of you who are nice to love too.
I'll keep reading these.
There are some words that just lay there and lens is one of them.
Lens. It's just like the air going by.
Lens. Compare that to win bigly.
Wind bigly is almost a solid object, right?
You can almost feel it.
Wind bigly? I think I could hold that in my hand.
It would be kind of rubbery.
Wind bigly. But if you say lens, it's just like a wisp of air that comes and goes in your mind.
So lens doesn't have any structure.
It's not sticky.
It won't stay with you.
Everybody is stupid. You're smart.
Scotticus filters worldview.
Filtered the lens through Adam's world.
Twilight filters filter quilter.
Adam's unfiltered is your biography.
Yeah, it might be. Pure gold filter.
Filter prosperously. No filters allowed.
No filter, I guess. Liberation theory.
Mocha filter. Mind games.
Taken. A clear lens.
Simultaneous sipping without the filter.
Seems like Adam's removes general applicability of your topic.
Yeah, there's also a rule in persuasion and a rule that works for writing, if you're writing fiction especially.
You don't want to give people a reason to not like you.
So putting my name in it will give some people a reason to like it, if they've liked anything else I've written, but it will give other people an automatic reason not to like it.
It's like, I've got an opinion, I don't need to hear his opinion.
So probably the Adams filter doesn't work because I'm a little bit too polarizing.
It would be better to take the focus off of me.
The filter theory.
So the coffee filter.
Hmm.
You know, I'm starting to like the coffee filter.
but maybe it doesn't tell you enough.
Filter no longer feels like a word.
Yeah, we said it too much, didn't we?
And it just stopped losing its meaning as a word.
Filter hacking, filter theory, change your mental construct beyond the filter, filter skilter.
Take the blue pill, filterism.
Something with filter that changes it to its own new word.
That's always sketchy.
You know, having a word that isn't a real word gives people a problem because they can't necessarily remember how to spell it.
Orthogonal filters.
That would be the least likely title.
Hair club for men.
It's not the worst.
Scott Adams filtered me.
He filtered me up.
Think freely. Think freely.
We might have a winner here.
Think freely.
That is now your current best suggestion.
So somebody has to beat Think Freely, which plays very well with my last book, which was Win Bigly.
So Win Bigly, Think Freely, Pretty good.
It's pretty good. Think freely.
Wow. I think that's it.
I might hate it in five minutes.
One of the problems with these titles is when you hear one that's catchy and it sticks in your mind, you start thinking, oh yeah, that's the one, and then you go back to it a day later, and it doesn't sound as good the second day.
All right, so... Now, the Adams filter has the problem that it concentrates on me a little bit too much as a personality, and it gives people a reason not to buy it.
You never want your title to give somebody a reason not to buy it.
That would be the ultimate title mistake.
I'm seeing some love for Think Freely.
I can't tell. I think that's the right way when you see it.
It looks backwards on my back camera.
Think freely. Wow!
Okay. Think freely absolutely has more positive response than every other thing.
Now, I feel terrible because I didn't see who it was who made that suggestion.
I was so eager to write it down.
So if you're the person who made that suggestion, and you know who you are, Be sure to send this to all of your friends and say, he didn't remember my name, but he liked my suggestion.
That doesn't mean I'll use it, because I have to check it with the publisher and make sure that it works.
But think freely is really good.
We'll have to make sure there's no other book with that name and everything else.
All right. I think I got what I need.
Let me talk about one topic from the news for those of you who are nice enough to stay here.
The news is all worked up about the fact that the president mocked Christine Ford.
He mocked Christine Ford.
Now, the interesting thing here is that how you think about that has a lot to do with whether you think she's definitely lying, definitely telling the truth, or we just can't tell.
So your opinion on his mocking really sort of depends if you've already made your decision whether she's a big old liar, completely honest and nothing but a victim who's trying to make the system better, or you just can't, you'll never know.
President Trump's assumption, clearly, is that she's not credible.
And he mocked her by mentioning the very things which show her to be less credible.
At least you can make that argument.
I think that was totally fair, given that he's quite certain she's not credible.
If you think she is, then it's, of course, it's an ugly thing.
But the people who say that there he goes attacking a woman again, that might be the dumbest pundit thing anybody ever said.
Think how dumb this is to say, there's the president attacking a woman.
Haven't we seen this president attack every male who's come across his path?
Hasn't he attacked 100% of the men who opposed him in any way?
Has he not mocked 100% of men who were on the other side in any context?
All of them. He has mocked every one of them.
Male, female, black or white, old or young.
He has mocked 100% of his serious critics that made any difference.
So when I watch what I call rally Trump, you know, when Trump does his rallies, he's very much intentionally and obviously taking on a character.
So when he's doing his rallies, you're seeing essentially live entertainment in which he inhabits a character who's sort of an exaggerated version of the president, in which he'll say a little more outrageous things, he'll be funnier, he'll be looser, he'll not care about political correctness.
So when he plays that character, he's insanely popular with his base.
And I gotta say, I watched just the clips of where he was making fun of Christine Ford.
And if you can separate yourself from if she is just a victim, it's actually quite horrible.
You know, I think I would agree with that.
But the president thinks she's not credible.
Many of the base thinks she's not credible.
So if you just look at his performance, like did he deliver the entertainment?
He really did.
No matter what you think of his politics or him personally, I think historians are going to agree that by a fairly large margin, He's the best that any president's ever been at that, which is holding a crowd, electrifying a crowd, getting a big crowd, making them excited, keeping them in the base.
I don't think, even historians who don't like this president, I think they're going to still agree that he's the best there's ever been at that, having those rallies and holding the audience.
So my take on it was very well done technique-wise, and how you feel about it depends on how you feel about her credibility in the first place.
So people are going to be all over the board on that.
Let's see. So now apparently the FBI report is submitted.
So do you all remember what I said when the FBI investigation was first approved?
Do you remember what I told you?
I said that in any big organization, you can't do anything in a week.
I mean, nothing of any importance.
So the fact that they constrained it to a week just sort of guaranteed that nothing terribly important or extra will be done.
A few extra interviews, you know, a few extra allegations.
But it's going to kind of sort of look a whole lot like it looked before they did it.
There's just not enough people to talk to.
There's no physical evidence, right?
So, and I heard Greg Gottfeld say this today at The Five, and I concur, which is we've been thinking in terms of the president is either going to get this Supreme Court nominee, and that would be good, but it might cost him in the midterms.
Or he could not get the nominee, and that would be real energizing for the base, so he might do better in the midterms than anybody expects.
So he has two ways to win.
But it's easy to forget that there's a third way to win, which is that he gets the nominee and it also energizes the base because they watched the process.
Let me put this to you in a frame that I think will make all this make sense when you're trying to understand who's energized by stuff.
There's probably nothing more energizing For conservatives, for Trump supporters, for Republicans, you know, they're not perfectly overlapping, but let's call that group.
I don't think there's anything more energizing than somebody trying to change the rules without going through the right process.
Am I right?
There's nothing more energizing than somebody trying to rewrite the rules To their advantage without going through a process.
Now if we go through a process and laws are changed and stuff, you know, you can often get people to go along with it even if they don't like it.
But if there is, for example, let's say you had activist judges.
Who are freely interpreting the Constitution and they're sort of doing things that maybe are not strictly in the Constitution.
Well, that is probably, it's like the third rail for Republicans.
It's like, okay, the only thing we have holding civilization together is an agreement about the rules.
It's all we have.
As soon as we lose our agreement on the rules, the whole frickin' thing falls apart.
So we gotta agree on the rules.
And so it's very energizing.
And I think that the way the nomination and the advice and consent process has gone, Although it's still sort of technically within the rules.
Nobody's quite violating the Constitution.
There's not really any kind of evidence threshold for this sort of thing.
It's not like a court.
But still, I think everybody would agree that the left is changing the rules and they didn't get permission.
You get that, right?
Nothing's more energizing to the right than the left changing the rules without getting some buy-in from the other side.
And it seems that that's what they're doing with changing the rules about how we see evidence, changing the rules about reasonable doubt, changing the rules about innocent until proven guilty.
So, and then the other thing that consistently amuses me, and I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again.
Although my, especially my social instincts lean far left, you know, left of Bernie, that's sort of where my moral compass points.
But I prefer the company of people on the right.
I don't know if it's because I grew up with Republicans.
I'm sure that has something to do with it.
But there's something about the consistency and the dependability and the way that Republicans and conservatives regard fair play that I just prefer.
And one of those is don't change the rules unless you've talked to everybody, right?
And I'm feeling like one of the other characteristics of Republicans, and see if you agree.
Republicans, Trump supporters, conservatives, if I can lump them all together just to make this one generic point, wouldn't you say that you could describe them as more action than talk?
Don't you think that's a good generalization?
That they're the sort of people...
Who might not tell you they're gonna vote, but they're very likely to vote.
As opposed to the opposition, the resistance.
It feels like the resistance talks a lot and they do act a lot too.
There's a lot of organization, there's a lot of stuff going on.
But it seems like with the left, the amount they talk And the amount they act are pretty correlated.
If they talk more, they're acting more.
If they're talking less, they're acting less.
But over on the right, it's a little less obvious.
Over on the right, there's people who don't need to talk.
They don't see the value of talking.
Maybe they're not complainers.
Maybe they say, well, my contribution is voting.
So, you know, I don't need to chat about it.
I don't need to have a protest.
I don't need to wear a pussy hat.
I don't need to make a sign.
I don't need to talk to my neighbors.
I don't have to tell my coworkers who I'm voting for.
I don't have to answer a poll.
I don't have to do any frickin' thing you want me to do.
It's a free country, and I don't have to participate in any way I don't want to.
But one of the ways I like participating, voting.
So it seems to me that we have a situation that would be at least similar in some ways to what we call the shy Trump supporters.
But I don't think it's shyness exactly.
That might be part of the story.
But that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about that it would be harder to measure the likelihood of Republicans voting.
Because Republicans are action, they're not talk.
So if they haven't talked to you and told you they're going to vote, you might make the mistake of thinking they're not that incented to do it.
So, yeah, I think you're going to see, because the trigger for voting on the right is, I don't know if I've ever seen a bigger one, right?
In terms of like a basic question about how the world works, how we're going to hold society together, the question of whether one side can rewrite the rules unilaterally should produce one of the highest turnouts of all time.
That would be my guess.
So I think you're gonna see, yeah, it's not a question of shyness.
It's a question of preferring action over talk and just taking care of business and knowing what you gotta do.
And I think there'll be some surprises.
Your dad always said no bumper stickers because cars don't vote.
So that just sounds so Republican.
Undercover rage, yeah.
Messing with pollsters.
Yeah, I wonder if Republicans are just sort of generally less likely to give their opinion to a stranger.
Might be true. You promised you didn't think this as a plan.
I'll promise you nothing.
So has anybody tried my method of encouraging somebody to vote?
And I'll recap it just so you know.
In the comments, tell me if anybody's tried it yet.
Because you're running out of time.
You need to do it in the next couple weeks.
And you can just regard it as a persuasion test.
So this would be a test to see if the technique works.
So let's say you've identified somebody who is likely to vote the same way you are, and you want to encourage them to vote.
And the suggestion is this.
You don't want them to think about the whole process, because that's too big a decision, too big a commitment.
People don't like that. You want to boil it down to the smallest increment that will get them to do something.
Anything. And that something might be open your email.
And there's a link there.
And the link tells you that's where you can sign up.
But importantly, and this is very important, you keep your email very short.
Just the facts. Here's the link to sign up.
Takes about 60 seconds.
That's important. Tell them that they're only putting in like a one minute investment.
And that they can request to vote by mail.
That's very important. You want them to request to vote by mail, because then they don't even have to leave the house, and you say, hey, maybe we can fill this out together, if you have any questions.
Or you can say, just vote for the stuff you know.
You don't even have to vote for anything that's on the ballot that you don't understand.
Just get your feet wet.
Just vote for the stuff you know.
Yes, and you also have to ask people more than once.
So somebody prompted me.
The more times you touch them, the more likely they'll act.
That's true. But you'll probably get a sense pretty early on whether somebody can be moved.
So if you get a real clear sense that it's not going to happen, just cut that one loose and maybe try somebody else.
But I'd be interested in your feedback.
Five for seven. Somebody said five for seven.
I hope that means that it worked five out of seven times.
Yeah, if you push too hard, they will resist.
So your pushing should be in a different context.
Once maybe you talk to them.
Twice maybe you send them an email.
Third time, once you've given them some time, you say, oh, did you see my email?
Because that's not really bugging him.
That's just sort of following up.
How many states vote by mail?
That's a good question. I don't know.
But if you don't have that option, then maybe you can offer to drive your friend to the polls.
Is that raining? I think there's a huge rainstorm happening right now.
I'm going to go out on my porch and enjoy the rain.
Anyway, let me know if it works for...
Let me know if it works for anybody.
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