Episode 502 Scott Adams: A Linguistic Kill Shot for Religious Extremism. Persuasion Lesson
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Hey, everybody. I thought I would hop on here for a little quick lesson on persuasion, and I'm going to put it in the context of coming up with a linguistic kill shot for religious extremism, something that could potentially stop religious extremism no matter which religion.
So I'm going to teach you something that would work, whether it's radical Christian terrorism, or radical Islamic, or radical any other religion.
So it would be a universal kill shot for any religion that believes in some kind of a single god.
And I'm going to jump right into it.
Here's the linguistic kill shot.
To refer to people who are terrorists as...
Half believers. Half believers.
The idea is to create a frame that says that if you believe that God wants you to do violent things, you're religious, but you're only halfway to where you want to be.
You're halfway to understanding God.
I'm going to put a little meat on this, okay?
Here's what makes this powerful.
So here are some of the elements, and this will be your little lesson on persuasion.
First of all, half-believer is easy to translate into every language.
It would be difficult for me to come up with an English language kill shot that would work in another language.
But half is a universal concept, and believer is a universal concept.
So it can be easily translated into every language and would have exactly the same meaning.
The other thing that's good about it is that it's unique.
It has never been used in this context quite like this.
So if you used any word that already had some baggage with it, people would retreat to whatever they thought about that word before.
This is a Donald Trump trick.
You pick a fresh insult or label that hasn't been used in this context before.
So you want it easy to translate.
You also want it to be debatable.
That's actually part of its strength, not the problem.
If people look at this and say, I'm not a half-believer, then you've already done much of the work of persuasion.
If somebody stops and argues the point, you're already winning.
So you want them to say, half?
I'm not a half-believer.
I'm a 100% believer.
What's the half that's missing?
That's the provocative, conversational thing that you build into it to make people unable to go past it.
They're going to have to stop, and at least in their mind, they're going to argue whether half is a good estimate.
Of course, they'll think it's not, but they'll imagine themselves arguing it with you until it becomes something they think about more.
The goal of persuasion in this context is not to give them a logical argument, but to make them think about this more than they think about other things.
You're just trying to drive their attention to it.
That's it. The other benefit is that it's self-complementing.
So let's say you are a member of the church or a member of any other religion and you're a leader, you would like to compliment yourself by saying that you're a true believer, but the people who disagree with you and prefer violence are not up to your level.
But they're also not up to the level of all the other people who are also not killing anybody.
So it frames the terrorists as the people who need to learn.
It's a very powerful framing.
It also suggests that perhaps inexperience is part of the problem.
And here there's a clever side benefit to doing that.
If you suggest that inexperience Is why you're only halfway to being a proper believer.
Then you're also saying it might be something that is a little more common with youth.
And that as you get older and wiser, you're less likely to be a half-believer and more likely to be something like a true believer because you've learned over time.
Now, that's powerful because everybody at every age understands they know more now than they used to know.
At every age, you understand that the people who have lived longer have picked up a few things, all right?
Now, this can be confirmed Confirmed would be the wrong word, but part of the story would be have you ever noticed that there are rarely old terrorists?
Have you ever noticed that there are rarely old terrorists?
Now, the real reasons might be they get caught.
It might have to do with, you know, violence is something that young people do.
Could be lots of reasons for that.
It doesn't matter how true it is or if you know the real reason for it.
As soon as you put it out there, it's hard to forget.
So if you said, and there's a better part, you never see an old terrorist unless they're getting rich.
You do see old terrorist leaders You could argue that the Ayatollah is a leader of terrorists, and he's kind of getting rich.
So you can say that being a half-believer is something that's common to people who have not matured, and it's common to people who pretend to be the leaders of the half-believers because they're becoming rich.
But that is rare To have a half-believer who's, let's say, over 40.
It becomes more rare.
Now, this doesn't have to be true.
We're not talking about what's true.
We're not talking about what's accurate.
We're talking about things that once you hear them, it's hard to get it out of your head, and they can be influential over time.
It is shameful to be religious and commit your life to God and only be halfway there.
It is shameful to be a half-believer.
So that part is good.
Shame is a very powerful force.
You don't want people thinking, wow, the very best thing I can do for my honor for my family is to kill some people.
You want to create the frame that being, it's shameful, not the killing part.
If you say that killing people is shameful, obviously that doesn't work because we've been saying this forever and it doesn't make any difference.
But if you say that not believing in God fully...
Not going all the way to understand that God Doesn't want you to kill is the higher level of awareness.
And if you're not willing to go all the way, if you're only a half believer, you should be ashamed of that.
God expects much more of you.
He expects you to become a full believer, whatever religion you're in.
It also helps you think past the sale, which is a common persuasion technique.
So if you're, as I mentioned, if you're arguing whether that really is a thing, is it true?
That that describes a half-believer.
Well, if you're talking about it, you're already thinking past the sail that there is something like a scale of belief.
So if you can get people to accept uncritically that there is such a thing as somebody who'd be a half-believer, and the only thing they're arguing about is if it's them, Even if this argument is only happening in their mind, that's good persuasion.
You've got them past the point of believing that this is an existing concept, that there are people who are on the scale in different places.
That's an important place to move them to.
Another part of the argument to, again, just get people to grapple with the thought.
It's not trying to convince them outright.
You're trying to make them grapple with the thought.
And you say, was there a time in human history when perhaps God did approve of violence?
And wouldn't that time have been before the internet?
Why does that make sense?
And again, I'm not saying this is true or logical or factual.
None of those things matter.
This is just for persuasion.
So you bring up the topic.
Now that the internet exists, And we can communicate our ideas instantly and everywhere.
Is violence something that God would approve of now that the Internet exists?
Because if you trust your God, and you think your God has the right answer, and your version of that is the right answer, wouldn't you trust that the message alone, plus the Internet, would be all the communication you need?
If you're a real believer, You just need the internet.
If you're a half-believer, then first of all, you may not be compatible with God, and second of all, the internet wouldn't work for you.
You're just a half-believer.
Only a true believer could weaponize the internet in terms of having your religion be accepted.
So the idea would be that confidence in your God plus the internet is stronger than violence.
It's stronger than bombs.
And so you want people to argue this point.
You want them to say, no, no, no.
Sometimes bombs are better.
But you want them to at least engage in this, which is, are bombs really what the strongest, most confident person uses?
Or is the strongest, most confident person the one who's a true believer, not a half-believer, but a true believer who has confidence and really has God on their side, plus the Internet?
How is that not enough?
How is that not enough?
Seems like it'd be enough unless you're a half-believer.
All right. So that's the basic idea, is to create a frame in which the heads of all the major religions Could start considering the people who believe in a God of peace, they would be believers.
But anybody who's not there yet and still thinks that the God of old in the age of the internet still wants to kill people and that that's what God wants you to do, that they're only halfway there.
They're probably young and they probably have something to learn.
That is my suggestion for doing away with Radical religious terrorism.
Thoughts? I will look at your comments now.
All right. As I'm looking at your comments, I'm going to sign off here and wish you all a happy holiday.
And we're thinking about the people in Sri Lanka and hoping that nothing like that ever happens again.