Persuasion Reading List – Updated 1/18

Update: New Book added: Win Bigly – By Scott Adams Readers of this blog have been asking me to update my persuasion reading list. If you wonder why people are asking a cartoonist about persuasion, it is because I am a trained hypnotist, and mention that skill often in the context of…

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How to Make Your Opponents Try (and fail) to Prove a Negative

Sometimes you can prove an alleged event did happen, but you generally can’t prove something did not happen. For example, if police have clear video footage of a crime in progress, several direct witnesses, and DNA evidence too, you can say they proved the defendant did the crime. But if your neighbor says an…

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Are the Fake News Awards Persuasive?

By now you know President Trump announced his winners for the Fake News Awards. You can see them here. Let’s talk about what he got right in terms of persuasion. The very idea of a Fake News Award is unusual and provocative. That guarantees attention. Getting attention is step one in…

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How North Korea Can Become Switzerland of the East

North Korea is playing nice with South Korea lately as they coordinate joint participation in the Olympics. But don’t get too excited about that niceness because it is a wedge strategy to separate South Korea from the United States in our unified position against North Korean nukes. Still, talking feels…

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Episode 369 Scott Adams: Whiteboard Discussion of Border Persuasion

Topics:  I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon [no longer active]. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a “boss” somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I’m trying in my own way to make the…

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President Trump Earns the Highest Presidential Approval Level of All Time

The Small Business Optimism Index hit an all-time high. That’s the new Presidential Approval Poll. In olden days (pre-2016), candidates for president were not so different from each other. I can remember pundits complaining endlessly about how similar the Democrats and Republicans had become. In that environment, you can easily imagine someone…

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Is President Trump’s Nuclear Button Tweet a Sign of Insanity?

On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper described President Trump’s recent behavior — including the President’s tweet about having a bigger nuclear “button” than North Korea — as abnormal and unstable. In other words, crazy. Is it? [missing image] One folksy definition of “crazy” is that it involves trying over and over…

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How President Trump Changed Your Imagination

Do you remember when candidate Trump told us (in effect) that he would be the first non-politician to win the presidency? It seemed impossible to even imagine such a thing. Then he did the impossible. Do you remember when it was common wisdom that if the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as…

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