#70 Scott Adams: Avoiding Loserthink

We are rationalizers. We are people who make decisions for reasons we don't understand, and then we explain them to ourselves after the fact. We are a rationalizing irrational species who can be rational 10% of the time.

If you try to paint anything useful assuming that people are rational... it just doesn't work, because people aren't. But if you go the other way, and say, 'What if I assume that everybody's just irrational?' ... What you would do differently? Often, what you'd do differently is far more effective. Assuming people are irrational most of the time is a very clear way to see the world.

At some point, watching either a 2D or virtual reality lesson will be so superior to anything you could do in a classroom that the classroom just won't make sense anymore

It's pretty clear, if you're watching politics, that it doesn't matter what happens. People just take sides. You see it so clearly that it's laughable at this point.

Most of what we regard as fact is some kind of filtered truth

The most common explanation for something you don't understand is stuff you've never heard of

The main thing that you learn in media training is almost laughable, which is you don't have to answer the question... You probably have something you want to say. So, say what you want to say, and as long as it's interesting, you're probably okay.

We all have this illusion that the version of the world we’re seeing is the one, and if anybody has a different version, they must be wrong. It’s the most common illusion we all have.

Scott lacks the "artistic ego"

I'm massively criticized every day about probably hundreds of different things... One thing that they almost all have in common is that they're based on a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding of my opinion. It's actually very rare for somebody to criticize my opinion as accurately understood. Mostly, people get wound up and bent out of shape because they misinterpreted something I've said.

People will judge a thing without comparing it to anything except their imagined perfect state. But usually, the other alternative is nothing like a perfect situation; it's another imperfect situation.

The most effective approach to addressing critics who misinterpret you and then criticize their own misinterpretation as if it came from you is this challenge: state one thing you believe on this topic that you think I do not believe.