How can you win the information war when facts don’t matter? Here is Anthony J. Sadar writing at American Thinker about how to “go bigly…”:
There are so many poor souls still reeling from the outcome of the November 2016 presidential election. How, oh, how could that deplorable man have won? It’s a big mystery.
Enter the book-length page-turner and mystery-solver, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter (Portfolio/Penguin, 2017) by “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams. Win Bigly sheds light on the dark mystery of that fateful election night – that night that visited tears and Trump Derangement Syndrome on a multitude.
First things first. In case even the title sends some into uncontrollable trepidation, Win Bigly is not designed to “change your mind about politics or about Trump. All [Scott Adams] hopes to do is teach you some things about persuasion by wrapping it in an entertaining first-person story.”
Adams tells his story in five parts: “Why Facts are Overrated,” “How to See Reality in a More Useful Way,” “How President Trump Does What Others Can’t,” “How to Use Persuasion in Business and Politics,” and “Why Joining a Tribe Makes You Powerful and Blind.” He includes several practical appendices that further divulge the secrets of effective persuasion.
Adams argues a “Persuasion Filter” for an evolutionary “moist robot” worldview, where humans can be “easily influenced by emotional and irrational factors.” He goes on to advise that “[i]f you learn the mechanisms of this influence, you have found the user interface for human beings.” Adams further notes that “[w]hen our feelings turn on, our sense of reason shuts off. … [O]ur decisions are often made without appeal to the rational parts of our brains. We literally make our decisions first and then create elaborate rationalizations for them after the fact.”
“Cognitive dissonance” is a term used for how people rationalize their decisions. It’s related to “confirmation bias,” where all evidence is seen to confirm established beliefs. Both conditions were in robust operation during the past presidential election.
Read more: American Thinker
