Hold onto your hats, everyone, because Scott Adams has discovered something about politics that could be HUGE — if it weren’t something that literally every single person already knows.
He’s discovered that smearing your political opponents with lies can be a more effective strategy than telling the truth. Only he doesn’t call this brilliant new strategy “smearing your political opponent with lies.” He calls it “good persuasion.”
In a recent post on his blog (archived here), the Dilbert cartoonist and Dunning-Kruger poster boy lets us in on the “Wikileaks persuasion” we all supposedly missed.
Do you remember when Wikileaks first started releasing the hacked emails from the DNC? Julian Assange told us the good stuff was coming later. Then some more emails were released, but still no good stuff. Just stuff.
But the really, really good stuff was coming, Assange assured us. Not this next release perhaps, but soon. Just wait.
And then it never came. There was no good stuff in those emails. There was plenty of little stuff. But nothing that moves elections.
But by repeating this false promise, Adams notes, Assange convinced a good portion of the electorate that Wikileaks had indeed offered proof of dastardly crimes committed by the woman Trump called “crooked Hillary.”
Imagine my shock to discover that baseless smears of political opponents, repeated regularly and with apparent sincerity, can actually affect how people see that person. Even though Assange never came out with his promised proofs of Hillary’s alleged perfidy, his baseless insinuations did indeed contribute to the cloud of suspicion that hung over Hillary’s head.
You have to give Assange credit for this persuasion. He made the public remember something that didn’t happen. …
Assange turned … nothing into a something in our memories by making us remember that something big was coming. Even though it didn’t. That’s good persuasion.
Yes, it’s true. In politics, shameless bullshittery can get you a lot further than truthtelling.
Adams seems to believe that Assange was the first person to come up with this brilliant strategy, and that he is the first person to point this out.
Sorry to break it to you, Scott, but one famous “persuader” figured this out long before you were even born.
“[T]he great masses of the people … more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big,” this fellow wrote in his most famous book.
[E]ven when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick-a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of.
I’m surprised Adams didn’t realize he was reinventing the wheel here, because the quote in question comes from a “persuader” who is much revered in the Trump-loving corner of the internet that Adams has made his home.
The “persuader” in question is of course Adolf Hitler, though he liked to pretend that the “big lie” was a technique practiced by the Jews, not one that he regularly employed to great effect.
Scott Adams would no doubt know all this, if he spent more time reading and less time EATING PUPPIES.
NOTE TO EXCESSIVELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: That thing about the puppies is a joke. It is not true. Scott Adams does not in fact murder puppies with his bare hands and eat their still-warm flesh raw.
Oh, is this like how we praise Lee Harvey Oswald’s shooting skills but decry his choice of targets? Oh wait, NO ONE FUCKING DOES THAT.
@ shnookums
USMC rifle instructors do make a big thing about the fact that Oswald was trained by the Marines. Even down to the fact that by their standards he’d only passed the basic minimum qualification rather than the advanced rankings!
(Further reinforcement of my opinion that the military is actively interested in training amoral murder machines. Pretty sure I recall that they adopted a lot of the SS training regimen into a number of western militaries after the second world war.)
Oh, yeah, Scott Adams is an idiot. Had a friend recently say how impressed he was with Adam’s intelligence after hearing him on a podcast, though. That was a sad moment.
@ scildfreja
I’d very much have to disagree with you there; certainly that there’s an intention to do so anyway. But admittedly it’s a complex topic. I did once write a paper though on this very subject for the MOD. Be interested in your thoughts actually. So if you’d like to comment on it, do you have a burner email I could send it to?
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
Hmm, should I change my name to Schnookums Von Fancypants, Amoral Murder Machine? 😉
(I am a veteran, and no,I’m not offended. I understand that sort of opinion even if I don’t quite agree with it).
@ banned
I think Adams has to have convinced himself. With this startling discovery of one of the basic reasons that people lie, with his theoretical musings about geopolitics, and with virtually every comment he makes, he reveals that not only is he ignorant of his own ignorance, he’s ignorant of the possibility that he could be capable of being ignorant about anything. Time and again, Adams proves that he believes knowledge doesn’t exist if it hasn’t occurred to him (or if he doesn’t see a use for it). It’s like he lacks information permanence, to coin a phrase?
Just ’cause they’re training them to divest themselves of their ethical impulses doesn’t mean they’re at all successful! I’m sorry that I wrote that the way I did, I didn’t mean it like that at all. I know that the military can and does hold some of the most moral, clear-thinking and bright people out there.
I was referring more to the changes in military training after the second world war, which I seem to recall adopted some of the more cold-blooded techniques of some German training. I’m of course no expert on it, and will bow to your greater knowledge and experience on it. Wasn’t that the case? I can’t find the source where I got that from, so I could be entirely wrong.
Either way, that says nothing about the ethics of people who’ve been in or are in the military, and I apologize for even insinuating the idea. You don’t deserve to be tarred with that brush!
@ scildfreja
The main changes to military training (particularly infantry) came about following the realisation that firing rates were very low; i.e. very few soldiers tried to shoot at the enemy. The question became how to overcome the normal human inhibition on intra-species violence.
That mainly consisted of the abandonment of the use of stationary concentric ring targets on a standard range and the adoption of pop up human shaped targets in a more realistic environment. The military also introduced positive reinforcement for good performance rather than negative reinforcement for poor performance. It was basic operant conditioning to establish an automatic firing response. There were lots of other innovations (greater use of crew served weapons etc) but that was the gist of it.
I’ve not come across any references to emulating the SS.
I was given to understand that the firing rates were raised, at least in part, by the generation raised on first-person-shooter games getting old enough to enter the military. Is that just urban legend?
“Blimey! This Dilbert tossa, ‘e’s gonna give us lot wot’s inna comics a bad name, innit?” (hic!) –Andy Capp
@ podkayne
US firing rates were about 17-22% in WW2; 55% in Korea and settled at around 95% from Vietnam onwards. So that seems to pre-date FPS games.
It is the case though that there is some crossover between the simulators the military now use and game manufacturers. Generally though the idea that playing Call of Duty is a substitute for actual training is treated with some scepticism. However associations with video games is sometimes used as a recruitment tool.
@Alan Robertshaw
Thanks, the numbers do seem to contradict what I’d heard pretty flatly.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
Oh, don’t worry about it. I was kinda teasing you in any case, and I don’t entirely disagree with your premise either.
@ Ben
That’s a great way of putting it. He and Drumpf are two peas in a pod in that regard.
Well, I guess that’s true? But they aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, so it’s a moo point.
You haven’t included any compelling reason to think he’s not praising it. “It’s possible that he’s not praising it, therefore he’s not praising it” – see? Doesn’t follow.
Many people are saying Adams eats puppies, the best people. Why aren’t the corrupt and rigged authorities investigating Adam’s puppy eating? The media is lying about how Scott Adams eats puppies alive three or more times a day! Russia, hack Scott Adams and show the world his thousands of pictures of himself devouring puppies!
@A. Noyd,
I was going to make a comment about the fact that Adams has been a vocal supporter of Trump et al for a long time now, therefore yes, I think he’s not simply describing but approving – but you beat me to it with great panache 😀
As far as we know.
#HideDogbert
@dlouwe
Ha, that typo gave me a chuckle.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/hmwikia/images/8/8e/Cow_by_neko_kuma.jpg
No better proof of the concept than that some people still think Scott Adams is clever
Be fair: Adams only eats puppies at Christmas. And Easter. And on his birthday. And hardly at all during the rest of the year.
Steven Dutch says:
You all do realize there’s a difference between saying something is effective and praising it, right? Chesterton once said, if a man could pick off his grandmother at 300 yards with a rifle, we’d say he was a good shot, but not a good man.
If someone was to write a highly influential canon of whimsical, surreal and humorous novels and essays in the service of a bigoted and reactionary populist agenda, we’d say he was a good writer but not a good person to quote as an authority. The only objection I can see old GKC having to Trump’s agenda would be a lack of “chivalry”. Plus what everyone else said. BTW Scott Adams has never denied that he eats puppies. Why won’t he do that?