The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Scott Adams: Humans Make Decisions Irrationally and Rationalize Them Afterward
“Hypnotists turn it around, and they say, no, 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, so that we are rationalizing irrational species who can be rational 10% o…”
Scott Adams: Artists Rely on Ego While Businesses Listen to Customers
“If you go to business school, rule number one is that you have to listen to the customer and you have to give them what they want. But that's the basic, you know, thing that a business person will do. That's kind of the opposite of what an artist normally does…”
Scott Adams: Evaluating Presidential Performance is Impossible Without Counterfactuals
“The only way you could know if a president did a good or bad job, I mean, short of, you know, being treasonous or something ridiculous that's obvious on its face, but you really couldn't tell If a Democrat had been elected, if the economy would be doing even b…”
Scott Adams: People Mistakenly Define Their Preferred Explanation as the Simplest
“What we think we're doing is picking the simplest explanation. What we're actually doing is defining our own preferred explanation as the simple one.”
Scott Adams: The Simplest Explanation Usually Comes From the Least Informed
“Well, I think what you'll find out is that the person who has the simplest explanation is almost always the least informed. Which is a problem. Because the part of what makes you think your explanation is right and simple is that you don't know the nuance of t…”
Scott Adams: Citing Historical Consensus Failures Shakes People's False Certainty
“So, if you point out how many times experts all agreed, and then were all wrong, you can start working on somebody's confidence, and at least introduce the idea That the majority doesn't mean they're right, and that there are plenty of times in history that th…”
Scott Adams: News Media Needs a Personality to Tell Abstract Stories
“You can't really do a proper story about something unless you have a face. You need a person, you need a personality to give a story a face.”
Scott Adams: Combining Complementary Abilities Into a Skill Stack Drives Success
“That was the big change, is that I combined my business skills, my MBA, my degree in economics, with the art, and it was those, that combination, I call it a skill stack, when you put together skills that are complementary, and that's really what made the diff…”
Scott Adams: Media Training Teaches You Do Not Must Answer Questions
“The main thing that you learn in media training is almost laughable, which is, you don't have to answer the questions.”
Scott Adams: Asking Critics to Name Disagreements Dismantles Straw Man Arguments
“So that's the question I've been testing online, and it's really effective, because what I've noticed is that virtually everybody who seems to be disagreeing with me online is actually disagreeing with a misinterpretation of my opinion. And so when I ask peopl…”
Scott Adams: Undisciplined Thinkers Judge Reality Against Imagined Perfection
“What you find when people are undisciplined into thinking, and you see this wildly on social media, is that people will judge a thing without comparing it to anything, except their imagined perfect state. But usually the other alternative is nothing like a per…”
Scott Adams: Phrasing Disagreements as Questions Helps People Expose Their Errors
“Technique number two is to put your disagreement in the form of questions as opposed to statements whenever you can. So you might say to somebody, what would it look like if your idea played out for the next 10 years? And get them to actually explain what the …”