I'm currently on the chapter called The Math of Success.....
"The best way to increase your odds of success- in a way that might look like luck to others- is to systematically become good , but not amazing, at the types of skills that work well together and are highly useful for just about any job."
There are several sub-headings in this chapter regarding what he thinks the skills are you need to succeed. I'm focusing here on Psychology.
"Psychology is embedded in everything we do"
After the election of 2016, does anyone doubt that? If you follow Scott Adams on Twitter you know that President Trump is perhaps one of the best master persuaders of all time and you also know at some point in Hillary's campaign she hired Robert Cialidini who wrote Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Her persuasion game went from zero to so much better that it was obvious she had outside help giving her some good advice. Thankfully she was the worst candidate in presidential history, but I digress....
A lot of us also learned about how the MSM is basically one big Pysops operation. We knew they were fake news. We knew they minimized things that hurt the democrats and maximized things that helped them but I didn't really understand how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Everything put before us is one big Pysops operation and to defeat and conquer those perpetrating this sham, you have to understand Psychology. Scott Adam's is writing about this to give you advice to have success everywhere in life. I'm writing about this because those in the MAGA movement need to start honing their skills for 4th Generation Warfare because the frontlines of this war, the information war, are everywhere.
In this part of the book about Psychology Scott Adams has a list of about 200 psychological and cognitive traps that we can fall prey to. He stresses that Psychology should be a lifelong study so don't get overwhelmed thinking you have to learn all of this today. Google these terms, your lifelong study of this is free. What do you have to lose?
I'm starting with the A's and then working my way through but this one, Backfire Effect, jumped out at me.
Backfire Effect - The backfire effect occurs when, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger.
All of those arguments you get in on Facebook and Twitter? Just Stop. You aren't changing anyone's mind and you are wasting precious time. So many of these people on social media are paid trolls hired to distract you and/or waste your time. Have conversations surely but the minute you realize the other person is not really here to engage productively just ignore them or block them.
We have all seen how some of the bigger accounts on Twitter like Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Ali, and of course Scott Adams have had real world effects using the power of persuasion.Would you mind spending a few minutes out of your day every day learning how you too can persuade people? We would all benefit from this so just a few tips that I think can help yo get better at the social media game if your purpose is to change hearts and minds and not just win arguments or zing people.....
- People don't want to seem wrong or stupid...so don't tell them they are...BE NICE
- Ask questions....not snarky questions...ones that make people think...who knows how many you inspire to research a topic with the idea of proving you wrong only for them to have an oh sh!t moment and realize they were wrong. You may never hear from the again but you just might have changed someones mind.
- Show them visually the contradictions of the topic/Optics matter whether they will admit the contradictions or not...who you gonna believe me or your lying eyes?
- Find a way to show them something that benefits them/Everything is not a zero sum game...
There are other tips...I am still learning and will update this post with what I have learned but basically you will catch more flies with honey...so stop trying to zing everyone and work at trying to persuade and influence me.
We all want to live in a world more peaceful than it's been ....don't we?
Ben Shapiro is known for this worn out phrase facts don't care about your feelings but I say feelings don't care about your facts so learn how to persuade people if you want to win big.