A slept on book for this election year

In August of 2015, famous political statistician and analyst, Nate Silver gave Donald Trump a 2% chance of winning the election.

A week later, Scott Adams gave Donald Trump a 98% chance of winning the election, based solely on his persuasion skills.

Scott Adams continued to analyze Trump\’s persuasion techniques on his blog and slowly lost all of his speaking engagements and his reputation with his association to Trump.In a hilarious, almost troll-like fashion, Adams uses this book as a middle-finger to all of his naysayers to prove why he was right in his predictions. He ensures that people do not confuse his analysis of Trump as support of him by declaring himself as an \”ultra-liberal\” and then proceeds to give an excellent crash course in persuasion psychology through anecdotes of the election year.This is book gave me an essential lens to view politics through and I recommend it to everyone.

Politicians pretend to have enough information about economics to make informed decisions

We all have movies in our own head that we believe are accurate views of reality

Cognitive dissonance- gap between actions and beliefsWe wrongfully try to explain away and rationalize this dissonance

Confirmation bias- to see all evidence as supporting our beliefs

Reciprocity- humans are hardwired to reciprocate emotions

The things you think about most become the most important in your head, if it\’s on the news a lot(like Trump), people will start to see it as the most important

You can\’t talk someone out of their political beliefs by providing facts

Our brains delete memories that are routine, easily remember things that violate our expectations(what did you have for breakfast yesterday?)

Visual persuasion is more powerful than auditory persuasionHumans are irrational 90% of the time