Scott Adams Is Describing Amygdala When He Writes About Persuasion

I thought this article was interesting:

As I have taught you over the past year, the strongest form of persuasion involves fear. And the stronger the fear, the better the persuasion. For example, in the primaries, the biggest physical-fear story on the Republican side was terrorism and immigration risks, and that favored Trump’s bad-ass messaging. Result: Trump got the nomination.

Fear triggers amygdala-flagging, to draw attention to a concept. The stronger the fear, the stronger the flagging. But fear also puts you in a conservative mood. This is an innate advantage to right-wing ideologies, if only we can eject the Cuckservative elites who would rather lose and see the nation burn, than exploit cognitive science to acquire support from the idiot lemmings in society.

Quite by accident, the Access Hollywood tape took the scare off of Trump. It made you think of Trump as an ordinary flawed human and not Hitler planning the Holocaust. Every minute you spent thinking of Trump as a horn-dog was a minute you weren’t worried about him blowing up the world…

And we already knew Trump was “no angel” as he once said of himself… Nor can we imagine that society will treat women worse because a guy with an appalling personal history is president. Frankly, we’ve outgrown that type of thinking. (Thanks to Bill Clinton.)

Interesting. Sex will also flag the amygdala. Survival is the most powerful instinct, but sex is not far behind.

This also shows amygdala-desensitization. The amygdala is always looking for abnormal things it has not seen before to flag. Wear a watch for the first time, and the amygdala will always be flagging the sensation and drawing your attention to it. Similarly you tie a string to your finger to remind you about something. But after a week, you suddenly don’t notice the watch. With enough exposure, lacking any consequence, the amygdala learns to ignore a stimulus.

This is the problem with corrupt leaders. Bill Clinton desensitized the entire nation to a plethora of shitbagery. Today, nobody even blinks at this type of thing.

In summary, Clinton’s message this closing week is that Trump is politically incorrect, offensive to many people, and sexually aggressive beyond the point of appropriate social behavior. That’s all the stuff you already assumed about Trump a year ago. And it doesn’t scare you, no matter how badly it offends you.

Meanwhile, the current news cycle along with Trump’s supporters have framed Clinton as a low-stamina liar with a drinking problem who is running a criminal enterprise (The Clinton Foundation) that sells influence to foreign countries and companies that are more interested in war than peace. While she trash-talks Putin. That stuff could get all of us killed.

Fear is the strongest persuasion.

Clinton is really trapped. If she plays up the fear, she conservatizes the nation, and that will cause people to not want a geriatric grandma with a history of stupidity and incompetence at matters of national security. But if she ignores the fear, Trump wins.

Either way, Trump wins.

r/K Political Theory will destroy liberalism – it is why the reviews here are so giddy about it