Scott Adams

Jeez, everybody is all bent out of shape on this. The Republican establishment hate Trump nearly as much as they hate Clinton so with Republicans controlling The House and The Senate how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do.

The really interesting part of all this was reading Scott Adams blog who proposed the idea that Trump is a master persuader (probably this is just a fancy name for populist). He has been blogging about persuasion techniques and about cognitive biases and how humans are irrational creatures 90% of the time and are open to persuasion techniques.

This seems to offend everybodies sensibilities but for me it's been fascinating and a real eye-opener. The reaction (bias?) in the media has been particularly interesting and has forever changed my world view.

If you have the time it's probably worth reading the posts for the past year or so, http://blog.dilbert.com/ It won't be so interesting now that we know the result but the ideas and methods of persuasion he talks about will shape the future for a long time to come.

The cognitive dissonance being shown by the media is particularly funny. It's amazing that they really don't understand that a large percentage of the population voted for Trump because he probably represents for them a reasonable hope for change. I'm waiting for somebody to suggest that nobody actually voted for him and instead he rigged the election all by himself.

Does nobody read Scott Adams' Blog[0]?
He has had the best analysis of Trump so far. He seems a little out there so you have to go back all the way to the start of his analysis, but it is some pretty good stuff, and has been extremely accurate, pronouncing the Jeb! campaign dead the day Trump called him low energy, etc.

It is a very interesting way of interpreting the world, and the comment sections on the articles were usually pretty good, but in recent times has swiftly devolved from a discussion of the technique, so they are disabled.

Also, Hillary has someone who is actually understands persuasion now, which is resulting in some actual back and forth.
Its a great read to test your understanding and acceptance of what the human unconscious is both capable and in control of.
Here's a good article that has some links to his initial descriptions he used to describe Trump[1].

[0]: http://blog.dilbert.com/

[1]: http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/10/06/donald-trump-is-a-master-wizard

I'm standing by my prediction that Donald Trump will withdraw himself from the nomination prior to the Iowa primaries (and it will take these poll numbers continuing past Christmas for me to think otherwise) [1].

If anyone has a chance at derailing my beliefs so far, it's been Scott Adams (of Dilbert) and his ongoing series of blogs posts about the 'Master Wizard Hypothesis' [2]. He's essentially arguing that linguistic wizardry can trump (sorry) policy and credibility, and that the Donald is a master. Likely for entertainment purposes only, but he's been right on this matter more than Nate Silver so far! Every time you see 'low energy' Bush, 'nice guy' Carson, or 'that face' Fiorina in the press, Adams makes more sense.

[1] https://twitter.com/jacobaldridge/status/632163459388432384
[2] http://blog.dilbert.com/

He's blogged about it several times. According to his blog posts, he can track which posts get "shadowbanned" by blog analytics. Apparently, his posts regarding Trump or climate science aren't showing up in a lot of his followers' feeds. Even more remarkably, he seems to have gotten around it for now with code words - tweeting that the post is about kittens when it's really about a supposedly shadowbanned subject, which has supposedly restored his normal blog traffic rates from Twitter.

See http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156806516721/the-social-media-hive-mind and http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157904840851/dopamine-puppets

Sure looks like Twitter is in the business of censoring content that doesn't fit their political views. If they'll do that, there's no telling what else they'll censor.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― John Steinbeck

Also remember you are seeing a media/attention filter on everything. Nobody reports or passes on the mundane things. Instead controversies have to be found that outrage some people, all the better to get eyeballs on the TV/site and go viral on Facebook.

I do recommend following Scott Adams' blog (creator of Dilbert). He has an mba, is a trained hypnotist, and various other skills unrelated to comics. He has been writing about the various techniques Donald Trump is using, and why they are so successful. (Note not endorsing Trump, but rather observing.) http://blog.dilbert.com/

Disclaimer: I like SA

With that bias out of the way, I would recommend you go back to the source and then judge him.

I can't find the source post for the first one, but the second one is here: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881545031/pegs-and-holes

If you read it carefully, you will realize that he is not defending rapists, he is saying you can look at the situation as a mental health problem - similar to the EU view of drug abusers - they are not criminals, they are patients.

He has, multiple times on his blog, put forth his theory that humans are 'moist robots' - he does not believe in the concept of free will; so this post is entirely consistent with that.