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Dec. 26, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:26
Episode 351 Scott Adams: Gaslighting...and a New Microphone
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Time Text
All right we're trying this again.
If my tests are accurate, this microphone should work fine.
Now, there may be a problem with this one triggering a defect.
I'm using the microphone now that was causing me all the problems the last couple of days, but it's the only microphone that works, apparently.
Alright, let's talk about gaslighting.
So, you've probably heard on the news, and by the way, if this glitches, I'm just going to turn it off, so don't look for me again.
I'll have to figure out what's going on.
If I get a technical error, I'll just turn this off.
Yes, let's start again with the simultaneous SIP. Get back on track.
Join me for the simultaneous SIP. All right.
Now, you've probably seen the word gaslighting a lot.
You'll see the pundits saying it, and you'll see it on social media.
And people are saying, hey, that President Trump is trying to gaslight us, or the Republicans are trying to gaslight us.
And here's the interesting thing about this.
I'm not entirely sure if the people who are using the word know what it means.
It looks like they've just invented a new word It's actually an old word, but they've appropriated it and they've changed it a little so that they can explain their own Trump derangement syndrome.
And I mean this literally, I'm not joking.
So the hypothesis here is that the reason that the word gaslighting is becoming popular in the world of Trump is that people can't understand Why they're so confused and why the world doesn't make sense.
Now here's what gaslighting really means, and then I'll tell you how it's being used by the pundits, which is the wrong way.
Now, what it really means is it's from a Hitchcock movie in which somebody intentionally, and here's the key point, if you take out the intentionally part, it's not the same definition.
But in gaslighting, you are intentionally trying to create a situation that makes somebody crazy because they'll doubt their own perceptions, they'll doubt their own sanity.
So if you are intentionally Intentionally, intentionally trying to make somebody crazy for some devious reason.
That's gaslighting.
The way it's used by the pundits is he's trying to make us believe something we don't think is true.
That's not gaslighting.
That's just politics.
Both sides all the time, in every race, in everywhere on earth, in every political transaction, two sides are trying to present you a version of truth that is the one that they prefer and they would like you to adopt it.
Labeling that gaslighting Doesn't change the fact that it's just completely ordinary.
There's nothing more ordinary than a politician trying to convince you that their not-quite-true version of reality is actually totally true.
Now, I keep talking to people on social media, which is probably a mistake, and when I say talking, I mean messaging, but People who tell me it's obvious that the gaslighting is happening because it's everywhere.
It's all over the place. Look at all the examples of the gaslighting.
And then I ask for an example.
And then you'll never hear from them again.
Because there are no examples.
In my entire life, you know, I study persuasion.
I'm a trained hypnotist.
You all know that. In my entire life, I've never seen or been convinced That gaslighting really existed.
Not in the sense of somebody intentionally trying to make somebody crazy.
So in the case of Trump, He is extra persuasive and extra uninterested in the fact-checkers.
So that's a different situation than what people are used to, but it's more just more of what's normal.
So what's normal is politicians fail the fact-checking, that's completely normal, and they exaggerate and they use hyperbole and they leave out context if it doesn't help them, etc.
And somebody was saying that their ex-husband tried to make them think they were crazy.
Nope. The odds that your ex-husband was intentionally trying to make you crazy...
Is very, very low.
I can't say it didn't happen because I'm not there and I don't know.
But I've never seen it.
I've seen lots of cases where people are crazy and they're telling you that the world is different than you think and it makes you crazy.
I've seen lots of people who suspected other people were trying to make them crazy.
But I have never met anybody who actually tried to make somebody else crazy.
I don't think that's a thing, you know.
Somebody said, I gaslighted my cheating ex.
Well, there's a difference between just messing with somebody and gaslighting.
There are pretty big differences. All right.
So, here's the larger point.
The fact that half of the country had to invent a word because they really invented it because the normal use of gaslight doesn't really apply here.
They invented a word To explain their own Trump derangement syndrome in a way that made it someone else's problem.
Have you noticed that?
Because if I say, I think I'm going crazy, whose problem is that?
It's your own problem, right?
So gaslighting is a way to take responsibility for your own mental state and blame somebody else for it and act like it was intentional.
Somebody is intentionally making me crazy.
It's not something I did to myself.
Oh, no. Somebody else is intentionally doing it because I know I wouldn't go crazy just on my own.
How would I go crazy just sitting here?
I'm just watching TV. How would that make me crazy?
Unless evil people who are very clever with their psychology are gaslighting me.
And that's what's happening. It must be a plot.
So when you hear gaslighting, just know that you're seeing a conspiracy theory.
Anybody who tells you that gaslighting isn't a thing, I'm sorry, anybody who tells you that they're being gaslighted by the Republicans, they're experiencing a conspiracy theory.
Because there is nobody behind closed doors who is saying anything like, I think I'll make them crazy with my clever persuasion.
Nothing like that's happening.
There are just people making their case.
There are people exaggerating.
There are people doing the normal things that politicians do.
But, because President Trump is so disliked personally by half the country or more, when he does something that is unambiguously good, what are people going to say?
They're going to say, I don't get it.
I know he's Hitler, but why did he do prison reform?
Well, he must be gaslighting you.
Or they say, well, we know he's a big dictator, dangerous, crazy man, but why is he making peace everywhere?
Why is North Korea making peace and Syria is making peace and Afghanistan is drawing down troops and Yemen is talking to each other?
Well, somebody's gaslighting us because our world doesn't make sense.
The things we think are true do not fit the movie that's playing on the screen right in front of us.
So somebody must be doing this to us.
That's not what's happening.
What's happening is the president is doing a good job on a number of levels and CNN is making them crazy.
Now, let's talk more about that.
When people are talking about the economy, It's traditional that you blame the president for anything that goes wrong in the economy, and you give credit to the president for anything that goes right in the economy.
And in both cases, it might have nothing to do with the president.
But traditionally, we kind of say, alright, good economy is good job for the president, bad economy is bad job, even if what they're doing doesn't make that much difference.
But what's different about today, compared to, say, 20 years ago, is that the president isn't the only player in the economy.
And here I'm not talking about the businesses themselves and the consumers.
Obviously, consumers and businesses are the economy.
But if you're talking about the economy, you're also talking about psychology.
You're talking about psychology.
And if The president is persuading people in a positive way.
That's all he can do.
You know, he can do some policies and some trade wars and stuff, but mostly it's all about persuasion.
It's how do people think about the economy, because that's what makes them invest or consume.
It's what drives the economy is the psychology of it.
So I would argue that Trump has largely gotten the psychology correct.
With the exception of Mnuchin's play where I guess he scared everybody with some phone calls to some banks.
So that was just a bad play.
But it also probably wasn't the president's play.
You know, I think he's got an advisor who needs to explain himself.
But let me put it in this context.
Imagine every bad thing you've heard about the economy.
And now imagine if the anti-Trump news had presented it objectively...
Instead of presenting it as the end of the world.
Just imagine every story that looks like hair on fire and then ask yourself, could this have been reported in a way that did not make people's psychology about the economy get worse?
For example, let's take the resignation of General Mattis.
How was that reported by the media?
Ah, my hair's on fire.
General Mattis is leaving.
He's the last adult in the room.
We cannot survive without him.
He's the greatest general who ever lived.
That's the way it was reported.
What does that do to markets?
It scares them, right?
Now, was that President Trump's fault?
Because here's the other way that could have been reported.
And tell me if this is inaccurate in any way.
So it could have been reported this way.
General Mattis did a great job winning in Syria.
Now that the winning is done, there are some differences in the administration, and he figures he's not the best one for the job anymore.
So he has resigned, as is very common for secretaries of defense.
It's very common for a person in his job, Mattis's, to have a short tenure, Here are all the examples of others in his job who also resigned because they had differences with the administration.
Oh, and by the way, President Obama also fired Mattis for also having differences of opinions.
Some of those differences of opinions included, for example, he did not want President Trump to move the embassy to Israel.
But it's pretty clear that Mattis was wrong about that.
And so somebody who disagreed with President Trump and has been wrong on some of the things that we can see has quit to make room for somebody who is more in agreement with the President.
Oh, and by the way, through the entire history of humanity, every time we thought there was a key employee who really made a difference and if that person quits, we're really in trouble, we've always been wrong.
Always. Turns out people are not that indispensable.
We just think they are. What happened to Apple, the company Apple, after Steve Jobs died?
Stock went up.
A lot. Turns out that people we think are indispensable are not terribly indispensable.
And guess what?
I'm going to stop saying guess what.
And the other thing we know is that That the second best general in the US military doesn't suck.
Imagine if the news reported this.
It's possible that the best general we've ever had just resigned.
But the second best general in the military is really, really good.
And you know what?
The third best general in our military Is really, really good.
And you know what about the fourth best and the fifth best and the sixth best?
Do you know what's true about the top 25 generals in the US military?
The finest military the world has ever seen?
They're really, really good!
Really, really good!
So we'll be replacing somebody who is really, really good with somebody else who is really, really good.
So the news is that General Mattis is going on to a new job, but not much is going to change.
Things are going pretty well.
Now, did I say anything that's not true?
I don't believe I did.
I don't believe I said anything that's not true.
So if the news had reported it that way, what effect would that have on markets?
The markets would have said, eh, personnel change.
Blah. Now suppose when the media was talking about trade, let's say the media reported trade this way.
Well, things sure were a little bit scary when President Trump opened up trade wars with basically everybody at the same time.
It's a scary situation.
But now that we've seen that NAFTA has been renegotiated, now that we see that he is actually getting better deals in his renegotiations, Now that we see that he's got a great relationship with President Xi, and we see that he seems to be making progress, it's going to take a long time to get where we need to, but China is definitely responding and making some concessions and lowering some tariffs.
It might take six months to get there.
It might take a year. But for everything, every dollar that we're losing, Because of trade problems with China, we're making it up in extra tariffs.
So we'll have to shift some things around, take care of the farmers for example, but in the long run we'll all be fine.
Suppose the news had reported trade wars that way.
Is any of that not true?
Did I say anything that's technically not true?
Now it's technically, let me be more precise, The tariffs that we're charging for Chinese goods, they probably don't completely make up for the benefit of free trade.
So it may not be a one-for-one, but it's not so bad.
It's a completely survivable, no big deal.
And by the way, our economy is stronger than it's ever been.
And by the way, there are more jobs available than there are people to fill them.
It's the best possible situation for having a trade war.
Now, suppose the news had reported it that way.
Is it the president's fault that they don't report it that way?
I don't think so.
I think it's just the business model of the press has learned that attacking the president and saying that everything's going to hell is good for business.
And, you know, there's no question about that because CNN has said that.
They pretty much said that directly.
You know, Jeff Zucker has said it in almost as clear terms as I've said it, that reporting about Trump is where they make their money.
And reporting positive things about him, he doesn't need to say this, Zucker didn't say this part, but reporting positive things about him would not really play to his audience.
It wouldn't be good for business.
So, there's Boo.
So ask yourself this.
If you're saying to yourself, is the president making bad decisions about the economy, you have to ask yourself, how much is what the president does and how much is what the media does on their own for their own reasons and for their own selfish profit?
I call it selfish, but it's capitalism.
They can do what they want. Now, let's take a look at the Fed's action.
People who don't follow economics probably say to themselves, well, there are a whole bunch of things in the news and they all sound kind of negative and Trump's even criticizing the Fed and basically there's this whole ball of things that Trump has done and said that are riling the markets.
That's the way it's being reported, right?
It's not true. That is fake news.
The true news is that the president's doing pretty much all the right stuff and the media is reporting that it's all the wrong stuff.
Where's the fault there?
If the president does the right stuff in terms of the psychology of the market and the press is reporting that it's all the wrong stuff, is the president doing it wrong?
I don't think so. Now you might say to yourself, well, Scott, it's the president's job to manage how we see these things.
If the president is so persuasive, Scott, you say he's so persuasive, why is it that the news can create this whole different story about him and it's believable?
The media is very persuasive.
It doesn't matter how good Trump is if the media has even more hours on TV and they're persuading in the opposite direction.
The media is destroying the economy right in front of us and here's the best trick.
The media is destroying the economy and they're actually convincing the country that it was because of Trump.
They're causing the problem That they're blaming him for.
Now those of you who have studied economics, fact check me.
Fact check me on this.
Is it true that all of our big stories that are riling the markets, roiling or riling, is it true that all of our big economic stories could be told honestly and objectively as not such a big deal?
So fact check me on that.
That there's nothing really going on that's such a big deal.
And two, that the business model of the press incents them to create a story where everything's a crisis and it's all President Trump's fault.
Is that true?
That their business model sort of forces them to go in that direction?
Is it also true that all of this negativity coming from the press has an impact on the stock market?
True. Now, is it also true that the Fed made a mistake?
Let's talk about that.
Now, the President has said the Fed should not have raised interest rates as quickly as they did.
Here's what the Fed did.
They took a market that was already nervous because of the trade war and because of the way the business model of the media forces us to think about it as more dangerous than it probably is.
And then the Fed said, we're going to raise rates on top of that.
Was that a mistake? Now, some people say, no, it's not a mistake because the Fed is independent and the Fed is looking at the long term and they know that they do need to raise rates in the long term because the economy is a little too hot.
I think that's true.
But, could the Fed have waited six months to raise rates?
Could the Fed have simply said, That the trade war is causing some uncertainty.
There also will be a little bit of a drag on the market.
And as long as there's another independent reason for the market to be dragged a little bit, we don't need to drag it more at the moment.
We'll just wait six months, see how this sorts out, and then if it still makes sense to raise rates, psychologically, economically, that would be the right time.
Now, I'm not enough of an economist to know if that six months would make any difference.
Can anybody fact check me on that?
If the Fed had simply said, we'll just wait six months, because all this trade stuff is too much froth, we'll just wait for the froth to calm down, then we know what we're dealing with.
Can anybody tell me, with some certainty, that the Fed made the right independent decision Given that the result was that the market tanked.
Historically, the market has mostly been correlated with the Fed.
People who do not study economics may not know that.
Let me ask you, how many of you knew Show me in your comments, how many of you knew before, let's say before today, how many of you knew that the direction of the stock market was highly correlated with what the Fed does?
If they raise rates, it's bad for the market.
If they lower them, it's good for the market.
How many of you knew that?
So somebody's saying no.
A lot of you knew that, right?
So I think in general, the folks who watch this Periscope are probably a lot more informed than the average person, right?
Because by the time you watch my Periscopes, you've watched all the news and you're ready to watch something else.
Alright, so look how almost all of you are saying yes, which actually surprises me.
Now let me ask you this.
If I did the same poll...
With Democrats, would Democrats know, as universally as you all do, would Democrats know that the stock market, the biggest variable is the Fed?
Because if they do know that, why are they complaining about the other stuff?
Because it seems like on CNN, the only people who will say that are the token Trump supporters that they let on once in a while.
But you don't see...
Do you see... Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo or Jake Tapper.
Do you ever see them say, well, we're going to talk about the economy.
First thing you need to know is that the stock market, the biggest variable tends to be the Fed.
Fed raised interest rates and we're seeing the market go down.
Now that you have the context, let's talk about some other things that might be bothering the market, but they would be smaller variables.
Have you ever seen CNN describe it that way?
And is there anything that isn't perfectly clear about that and accurate and passes the fact checking?
Passes all the fact checking.
So here's the frame.
Because President Trump is the focus of everybody's attention who's paying attention to the world lately, you automatically are biased to think That whatever happens in his domain is either because of him or not because of him.
Even the midterm elections, they were not really about the president, but we all talked ourselves into it being about him.
So everything that's even not about the president is still about the president.
It's just how we've tuned our minds now.
I got into a conversation online with David Pakman, who invited me on his show, by the way.
He's got a popular podcast.
Now, he's an anti-Trumper on the left of the political divide.
And he said online, I think it was yesterday, at what point do we get to say that the stock market is tanking because of the bad decisions of President Trump?
So his point was, at what point do you just say, all these bad decisions, they must be riling the market?
At what point do you say, alright, it's obvious it's him?
To which I say, and here's a technique that I'm going to teach you in my book, Loser Think, coming up, but I'll give you a preview.
You've heard this before, I think.
When somebody gives you a laundry list of reasons, which is what I got, it's like, well, what about this reason, this reason, this reason, this reason?
Here are the five or six things that the president has done that are affecting the market.
Now, when you get the laundry list, if you make the mistake of trying to deal with each one of them, they'll just keep adding to the list.
And when you get to the bottom of the list, you know what happens, right?
They start back with the one on the top that you've already debunked, like it never happened.
Like you never had the conversation where you told them their facts were wrong and that that reason wasn't true.
You've all been there, right?
You do the laundry list, you work through it, you get to the bottom, and then they act like the first one had never been discussed before.
Just like the conversation had never happened.
So you can't beat the laundry list by talking about the items on the laundry list.
So instead, here's what I coach you to do.
Ask them, what is the strongest point on the list?
And then you say, I only want one.
And if they give you three, which they will try to do, say, well, which of the three?
What's your strongest point?
And would you agree that if I can discredit your strongest point, that you'll go rethink the other ones?
Because they're weaker than the one that I just showed you is worthless.
Don't do more than that.
As soon as you engage with a second one, you've already lost.
You've gone the wrong direction.
Deal with one, make sure it's the best one according to them, and then dispatch it.
And by the way, if you can't dispatch their best reason, you should agree with them.
Right? If somebody gives you their one best reason and you go, oh, yeah, that's actually a pretty good reason, then you should change your mind.
You should change your mind and just agree with them if their best reason is actually pretty good.
Somebody's saying, but you said it's not a one variable world.
Correct. It is not a one variable world.
But it is true that if you can shake somebody's confidence in their top variable, they should go back and rethink everything else.
I'm not saying the other variables don't matter.
I'm saying that in terms of how you think about them, if your best reason is debunked, it should shake your confidence in the rest of your list.
That doesn't mean that they're fake, but it should shake your confidence.
Alright. So try that out, by the way.
It works really well.
And what you'll find is that people will not want to give you their one best reason.
Do you know why people will not want to give you their one best, strongest reason?
Because they will realize they don't have one.
They will realize that all of their reasons only work because they're together.
So what has talked them into the whole is the confirmation bias that comes with each of these little pinpricks.
Pinprick, pinprick, pinprick, pinprick.
Oh, there's a big... Somebody's got a knife because I'm feeling all these pinpricks.
So they've talked themselves into it with...
This indirect confirmation bias evidence.
And they will realize, if you ask them to give you your one best reason, that none of them are strong.
Alright. It's literally like an alternate movie.
I believe I've said that a few times.
Where do we stand with sorrows?
So for those of you who have missed my George Soros saga, let me summarize it for you.
So I've been hearing for years, George Soros is the devil and he's done all these terrible things.
And then I would ask people for what he's done.
And what would people tell me when I'd say, what's wrong with George Soros?
They would give me a laundry list.
So the laundry list is not something that just happens on the left.
It's a universal thing.
So when people would give me the laundry list of what George Soros has done, I would often say, give me the best one.
What's the worst thing that George Soros has done?
Because if the worst thing is baloney, then maybe the whole thing is baloney.
And people flailed and they flapped around and they talked about things he did when he was 14 that don't matter.
They talked about him making money in ways we don't like, which we could not like that, but it doesn't really matter to American politics.
Yeah, the people who said he was a Nazi collaborator when he was 14, they're wrong, of course.
So people would start with, oh, he was a Nazi collaborator.
And then when you debunk that, which is easy to debunk, he was a 14-year-old kid.
He didn't participate.
He just happened to be there pretending to not be Jewish.
But finally, after months, I think, after months of asking people, can you give me any example of Of what he's done that is directly so bad.
And the best answer I finally got was this.
That he's a major funder for lots of different liberal entities, some of whom do bad things.
And I thought, okay, that is one One easily stated reason that can be fact-checked, and you find out it's true, that he does in fact fund a number of organizations that I think 100% of them Lee left, and that they're organizations that you don't like.
And he has a lot of influence because he's putting a lot of money into them.
That's fair. But it took a long time for somebody to come up with that simple one reason.
Now, you'd have to dig in deeper and say, all right, but what are these organizations really trying to do?
The part where it gets crazy about Soros is when you try to understand his motives.
That's where it goes off the rails.
If you say he's doing things, That I don't like.
And it's objectively true.
He's funding organizations that have a different philosophy.
They're protesting.
They're doing things you don't like. That's just facts.
But if you take that to the next level and you say that Soros' internal thoughts Are something that you can see and understand and you see that they're evil and all he wants to do is destroy America and destroy freedom and make us all open borders and stuff.
If you think you can see that inside his head, that's not good thinking.
Because you can't.
In fact, I can see no...
Where I started asking about Soros was trying to understand what people thought he was trying to do.
What is it you think he's trying to accomplish?
And all of that turned into mind reading and conspiracy theories and weirdness.
The only thing you can know is what he does.
You cannot know what he's thinking.
At least you can't know it with any certainty.
All right. So I think you could be...
It is entirely fair to say that you do not like Soros' influence.
And here's my bottom line on it.
Because we can't tell...
How much he is influencing things because of the groups that he's funding because it's not transparent.
In other words, we don't know how much money he's giving to each group and therefore we don't know what he's asking of them.
We don't know how much influence he has over them.
We don't know how much of their policies are directly because Soros says, you know, I won't give you money unless you do this.
We don't know any of that.
And because we don't know that, You are properly in a good place to say he is evil.
Because of the lack of transparency.
If everything he did with his money was transparent, then you could disagree with it deeply, but still wouldn't say it was evil.
If somebody was giving a billion dollars a year to lefty organizations and he reported it all and said, look, I'm giving this much to this group, this much to this group, and by the way, I'm going to ask them to do X for me.
And if they don't do X for me, and that might be protesting, it could be anything, then they won't get money next year.
If we knew something like that, Then you could have an opinion about Soros that's based on the facts.
You could like his politics or hate them.
But he wouldn't be evil because he would be telling you exactly what he's doing.
Here's my money. Here's what I'm doing with it.
Here's what I hope to accomplish.
This is what the long-term vision looks like.
I think it's a better world.
I understand that some of you think that's not the way to go.
But here's why I think it's a good world.
And here's how I'm spending my money.
If he did that...
Then somebody saying, open up Open Society.
I don't think that's going to tell me what you think it's going to tell me.
Because it doesn't tell me exactly what he's funding with each of these groups, etc.
That's sort of conceptual.
Somebody saying, Soros invests to weaken the U.S. That's mind reading.
If you asked him, would he say, I'm investing to weaken the U.S.? Is that something he would say?
Because if he wouldn't say it, Then it's mind-reading to assume that that's true.
All right. So I agree with you that the current way he is funding things, it's enough to be influential.
And if he's influencing us and we don't know what the details are of that influence, you could call that evil.
I don't think it would be out of bounds to say that's evil.
You just don't know exactly the details.
Somebody says, you're wrong on this.
For those of you who want to prove I'm wrong, show me a quote in his words, in his words, that explain he has evil intentions in a way that is clear.
So send that to me and I'll change my mind.
He stated that the US is holding him back from meeting his goals.
Well, isn't that true of a lot of people?
I mean, that's such a generic statement.
The U.S. is holding me back from achieving my goals.
Isn't that every country?
Don't all the countries in the world want us to do something different?
The quote about being a young Nazi being the happiest time in his life...
He was a 14-year-old.
I think I'm going to ignore forever the whole 14-year-old Soros thing.
It's too dumb. It's just too dumb to talk about a 14-year-old's immature opinion when we're talking about an 85-year-old billionaire.
It's just too dumb to even make that part of the conversation.
Um... He said it when he was in his 70s, about when he was 14.
All right, I'm going to ignore those, all the rest.
It doesn't matter when he said it.
It doesn't matter when he talked about it.
He was talking about when he was 14.
Good Lord. How is that not obvious?
All right. He helped deplatform Alex Jones.
You mean one of his organizations did.
Alright, that's enough for now.
Don't get laundry listed.
Oh man, the conspiracy theories around him are insane.
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