Scott Adams on the Media

Occassionally I take a gander at Scott Adams' blog. Most know him as the cartoonist who created Dilbert, but his background is much more robust than that. He first caught my eye when he was explaining the Trump phenomenon, which baffled the left and the right. He was one of (if not the first) to say that he thought Trump would win in 2016. Aside from Dilbert, Scott Adams has a bachelors in economics, an MBA, and even training in hypnosis. He's an unusual character with often novel and unique insights, which are great for spurring thought.

I've often thought one of our problems is the direction the media has taken. While I acknowledge profit motive, I'm impressed with the clarity Scott Adams frames it. I also think he is missing the ideological bent (i.e.: conservatives and liberals each frame news to benefit their ideologies and parties).

Anyway, the below is an excerpt from his latest book.

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Our old understanding of reality is rapidly dissolving. Fake news and conspiracy theories have become the building blocks of what we mistakenly believe to be the world we live in. Any two of us can look at the same evidence and have entirely different interpretations of what it all means. Politicians, businesses, and even scientists routinely mislead us. Not always, and not necessarily intentionally, but often enough that we generally can’t be sure what is true and what is not.

Recently I saw a debate on television about the cost of single-payer health insurance in the United States. One side said it would cost $32 trillion over ten years. The other side said it would actually save money. That’s at least a $32 trillion difference in how the two sides are seeing reality. For reference, $32 trillion is approximately three times the GDP of China. You can’t get much further apart than that in terms of agreeing on reality.

The best way to get the sort of attention that drives viewership and profits today is with provocative fake news, which in my way of thinking includes not only factual inaccuracies but also biased coverage and emotion-based presentations. Bias usually reveals itself with something I call opinion stacking. That involves news programming that involves panels of pundits who hold the same biased opinions, joined by only one relatively unpersuasive pundit for the other side.

The technological change that broke the news business was our ability to measure audience reaction to every headline and every variation of every story. Once you can reliably measure the income potential of different approaches to the news, the people who manage the news have to do what works best for profitability or else they are abandoning their responsibilities to shareholders. On top of that, executive compensation is determined by profit performance. From the moment technology allowed us to know which kinds of content influenced viewership the most, the old business model of the news industry was dead media walking. From that point through today, the business model of the press changed from presenting information to manipulating brains.

I want to stress that no one in this story is evil. Everyone is acting according to the well-accepted rules of capitalism, trying to maximize the outcomes for shareholders and their own careers. The main thing that changed was our ability to measure what kinds of content worked best. And when you can measure what works, and you are managing a public business, you are highly incentivized to follow profits, so long as doing so is legal, and in this case it is. Ethics is a separate and important issue, but it isn’t predictive in the context of capitalism. If something is legal and profitable, it will happen, a lot.

The inevitable outcome of the press having a business model that rewards brain manipulation versus accuracy is what I call political warming. As the press becomes increasingly skilled at stimulating the emotion centers in our brains, one should expect the public to be in a continuous state of fight-or-flight anxiety. We’re more scared and angry than I imagine we ever have been, at least since World War II. And that means bigger storms ahead in the form of protests and divisiveness.

As I write this book, the news is full of appeals for more civility in politics. Nearly everyone recognizes that the country is becoming more divided and we are turning on each other in a way we have never seen before. The loserthink way of looking at the situation is that we need to try harder to be nice to each other. But that prescription misdiagnoses the problem. People did not suddenly become different in a fundamental way. The business model of the press manipulated our brains until our emotions overwhelmed whatever traces of rationality we started with. You can’t fix that by trying harder to be nice. The influence of the press is too strong, and all because they learned to measure the impact of their actions with extraordinary precision.

In such a world, where truth routinely loses to emotion-based, click-bait versions of reality, how can you know what is true and what is not? And more importantly, how can you act for the greater good—or even your own good—when you can’t reliably sort the truth from the lies?

If you buy into the full-scary narratives promoted by either the political left or the political right, you’re probably experiencing loserthink. A more useful way to think of the political news is that nearly every major story is exaggerated to the point of falsehood, with the intention of scaring the public. If you think the frightened feeling you are getting from the news is legitimate and appropriate, you probably don’t understand how the business model of the news has changed. Twenty years ago, if the media said something dangerous and scary was heading our way, you had to treat that seriously. Today, the news provides one fright after another, but an understanding of why they do it helps you avoid loserthink.

All the doom-and-gloom in the press, and on social media, could give you the impression the world is in big trouble. The reality is almost directly the opposite: things have never been better for humanity, and the future looks incredible too.

Adams, Scott. Loserthink (pp. 20-23). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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I follow Scott Adams since Dilbert, he made me happier at the office with his Dilbert books. His newer books give a very interesting approach to persuasion.
I have been watching him daily for five years on his periscope (now also live in Youtube), I absolutely recommend him unless the viewer suffers a severe case of TDS ;-) : https://youtu.be/eeEd0c7JvWQ

I browse Twitter a couple of times a week because it's easy to see what each side's current narrative is. Libs owning Pubs and Pubs owning Libs, and other drama-filled nonsense.

Scott Adams has a unique perspective, and I saw this series of "tweets" today.

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Talking at length to a Democrat yesterday was a wild experience. It’s as if they have a framework for how sentence structure works but it is populated with CNN talking points. Debunking them in the order presented created what?

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That’s right: The Democrat Logic Loop. With each slaying of their points they jump to a new point. Once all points have been debunked, they start over as if the discussion never happened. To infinity.

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The Democrat in question once told me he couldn’t own a television because it had too much power over him. He couldn’t stop watching it. His talent stack doesn’t allow him to complete the puzzle: The glowing box hypnotized him to believe it’s opinions were his own.

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The same thing could happen to any of us, and probably does. But at least I’m aware of the risk of misperception and I know what can trigger it. That’s why I prefer speaking in probabilities not certainties.

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A good signal that your opinions were assigned to you by our media brainwashers is that you speak in certainties. Check yourself for that.

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He makes fun of Democrats here, and he's not wrong; but it's true for Republicans too. Just replace R for D and Fox for CNN.

There are two echo chambers. If you only see one, you're in the other.

Sadly, both the media and politics is primarily populated by the two ends of the political spectrum. Each side trying to maintain its supporters by feeding it their one-sided propaganda.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

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Originally Posted by dneal

"In such a world, where truth routinely loses to emotion-based, click-bait versions of reality, how can you know what is true and what is not? And more importantly, how can you act for the greater good—or even your own good—when you can’t reliably sort the truth from the lies?"

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I don't have much problem sorting truth from lies.

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Originally Posted by dneal

"All the doom-and-gloom in the press, and on social media, could give you the impression the world is in big trouble. The reality is almost directly the opposite: things have never been better for humanity, and the future looks incredible too."

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Which rather overlooks the fact of global warming and climate change. Is he selling beachfront condos?

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Originally Posted by Chip

I don't have much problem sorting truth from lies.

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What percent of the population would say the same thing? With all the info sources available to support any belief, such confidence sets one up for mistaking some truths as all the truth. In math, we take nothing for granted. I try to minimize believing that I know the truth in things that I can't fully prove.

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‘Obvious’ is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
— Eric Temple Bell, Scottish mathematician

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Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

What percentage of the population is glued to big-screen TVs every night?

I studied math and got an A in statistics. I work from first principles such as gravity, thermodynamics, the water cycle: stuff I can see and verify with my senses.

Not sure what you consider proof. Do you exist? Why?

I don't poke around looking for so-called information in an idle way, fluttering like a leaf in the wind from the sewage plant.

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Originally Posted by Chip

What percentage of the population is glued to big-screen TVs every night?

I studied math and got an A in statistics. I work from first principles such as gravity, thermodynamics, the water cycle: stuff I can see and verify with my senses.

Not sure what you consider proof. Do you exist? Why?

I don't poke around looking for so-called information in an idle way, fluttering like a leaf in the wind from the sewage plant.

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Where do you get your incontrovertible "facts" (and how do you know there's not more to it) on complicated issues? Do you think you're smarter than 99.99% of the population? I ask because there's some VERY intelligent people (non-members) on all sides of most of the issues discussed here.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

By the way, statistics isn't math. Check most graduate programs.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

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Originally Posted by Lloyd

By the way, statistics isn't math. Check most graduate programs.

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So– statistics is not an application of mathematics?

sta·tis·tics | stəˈtistiks |—the practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities, especially for the purpose of inferring proportions in a whole from those in a representative sample: standard error is a mathematical tool used in statistics to measure variability. |

If you'd occasionally climb down from your high horse, you might say something that makes bloody sense.

Correct... statistics uses mathematics much like physics and engineering does. Notice that your quote states that statistics uses mathematical tools. If they were one and the same, why would your quote say that?

I don't ride a horse. I prefer other means of transportation where I live.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

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Originally Posted by Lloyd

I don't ride a horse. I prefer other means of transportation where I live.

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Any decent horse would die of shame for having you on its back.

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Originally Posted by Chip

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Originally Posted by Lloyd

I don't ride a horse. I prefer other means of transportation where I live.

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Any decent horse would die of shame for having you on its back.

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Are there indecent horses?

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

How could you tell?