[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #21 HOW A MASTER PERSUADER WON THE ELECTION

Sun Apr 28 22:44:17 EDT 2019

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #21

April 29, 2019

Thinking Clearly About 

Economics & Politics #5

HOW A MASTER PERSUADER

WON THE ELECTION

If you ever read the Dilbert Cartoons in the newspaper or seen them posted
on the walls in cubicles and business offices, then you know of Scott Adams
who created Dilbert.   As a cartoonist he wrote dialogue in those cartoons
exposing the non-sense and blindness of bureaucracies and organizations.
Well, to my surprise, on August 13, 2015 he predicted that Donald Trump had
a 98% chance of winning the election.  And he is not a Trump supporter.
Having voted Democrat for many years he even describes himself as
ultraliberal (p. 4).

Now while I know of Scott Adams as a cartoonist, I did not know him as a
persuader or a political pundit.  Sometime during the decades of producing
Dilbert, Scott Adams studied hypnosis, read extensively in the field of
persuasion, including books on NLP.  In his Appendix he refers to Anthony
Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within and the Bandler/ Grinder book Reframing.
And after reading the book, I would guess that he has read other NLP books.
He could have even had some training in NLP for all I know.  How I found out
about this was from Brian van der Horst, Paris, when he mentioned Scott
Adam's new book on the NLP Leadership Summit.

The book is Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter
(2017).   Adams here tells the story of how he predicted that Donald Trump
would win the election more than a year ahead of the election.  As he
documents the major events during the 2015-2016 of the two campaigns, he
explains his framing of Trump as a Master Persuader and why Trump's
persuasion skills convinced him that he would win (pp. 2, 6-7).  Along the
way he pointed out 31 sign-posts of "Persuasion Tips."

In my opinion, we can look upon Winning Bigly as an NLP Application book.
Although he only documents NLP in the first appendix, he definitely uses NLP
throughout the book.  He especially notes many occasions where Trump engaged
in "pacing and leading" (p. 28).  He describes the individual maps that we
operate from as "movies" that we invent in our minds and constantly
emphasizes that they are not about facts and reality and the only value in
them is as they are useful.  That is, if they make us happy and better at
helping us predict what will happen.

"The common worldview, shared by most humans, is that there is one objective
reality, and we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous
application of facts and reason. ... The only wrinkle with that worldview is
that we all think we are the enlightened ones.  And we assume the people who
disagree with us just need better facts, and perhaps better brains..." (p.
2-3, 35, 37, 45)

"... the human mind is not equipped to understand reality in any deep way.
Instead, we create little movies in our minds, and we live in those movies
until events in the observable world make that impossible." (p. 243)

"Humans only imagine that facts matter to our decisions.  The reality is
that we are inventing our own personal facts to fit the movies playing in
our heads." (247)

Adams presents himself as a persuader, a hypnotist, and political observer.
He warns about the Confirmation Bias throughout the book and the power of
cognitive dissonance which leads us humans to create movies and stories in
our minds (p. 16).  Confirmation bias is just a bug in the human operating
system.  "It is the operating system." (p. 61).  He writes about various
filters that we use that cause us to mis-read things (mind-reading . p. 59).
These are "not windows to reality." 

"All that matters is whether or not your filter keeps you happy and does a
good job of predicting." (p. 93).  

Adams explains how the media and pollsters got it so wrong and how it set up
so many people for cognitive dissonance on Election Day which then generated
mass hallucinations (p. 50).  He explains why Californians not only do not
understand New York humor or style, but positively mis-understand it (pp.
171-172).

"Sure enough, Trump's win set off a cluster bomb of cognitive dissonance the
likes of which history rarely sees." (p. 52)

"When ... New Yorkers laugh at 'offensive' jokes, we are usually reacting to
the awfulness of it. ...  It's funny because the idea is so awful." (p. 171)

He even explains something that I did not like in Donald Trump and which I
misunderstood.    What I considered just simple name-calling and negative
framing, Adam saw as high level priming persuasion.  Quoting Trump's
designations for his competitors, low-energy Jeb, lyin' Ted, crooked
Hillary, Pocahontas, Goofy Elizabeth Warren, cryin' Chuck Schumer (p.
129-134), he analyzed why these terms were powerful persuasionally and why
those that Hillary's campaigned used were not (135-136).

"Cialdini's newer book, Pre-Suasion, focuses on how to prime a person to be
persuaded.  It teaches how to put a thought in a person's mind that will
influence the next thought ion ways that would not be obvious to the
untrained." (p. 166)

Throughout the book Adams points out various persuasion techniques that
Trump used (and continues to use) which many people take offense at as his
New York humor.  What they don't realize, says Adams, is that it is a
technique.  "People who are not trained in persuasion would miss the
technique." (p. 137).  And so they do and as a result, still do not
understand him or his appeal or how he won.

Given that he has already written about NLP in his blog- written about
Milton Erickson, John Grinder, and others, my suspicion is that he knows a
whole lot more about NLP than he's putting on.  Even to write the following
statement suggests that: "Much of the NLP field has exaggerated claims, but
there is some strong reality at the base of it." (p. 263).

https://blog.12min.com/win-bigly-pdf/ 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

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