Loserthink by Scott Adams

If a comic-strip writer wrote a book with a certain tagline, you shouldn’t be too surprised if there is a practical joke in there. If the writer is famous for one of the most successful comic strips of all time, which might co-incidentally rhyme with Shill-hurt, then I’d say the odds of that go up.

The tagline of Loserthink by Scott Adams is “How Untrained Brains are Ruining America” and is set in a time of increasing political polarization. But the book has very little to do with the details of the American political landscape. I don’t think this is Adams way of a practical joke (although it might be), but far more likely that it is the book tagline equivalent of clickbait.

Loserthink is a great book and is somewhere on the spectrum between self-help and social commentary. If I had to put a number on it, I would say that it’s close to 70:30, in favour of the self-help component. But this is based on memory, and while I have a fairly decent memory, all human memory can be surprisingly flawed. In any case, the personal components of Loserthink are far more interesting than the political and current events discussed in the book. Further those events are now outdated anyways and are of no use to anybody. Accordingly, in this book review I have only covered the points which are timeless and will likely continue to remain relevant moving forward. All facts, politics, trends (including the ultra-positive golden age trend) have been perfectly ignored because they are of absolutely no use to anyone anymore.

One technique that Scott Adams often talks about in relation to persuasion is framing. It’s a powerful one. The exact same set of facts can be look completely different depending on the frame you place on it. A few examples of this:

Peter Thiel donates a few million dollars to life-extension.
Effective Altruist: Peter Thiel is extremely altruistic and is willing to spend his money in risky ways that can benefit humanity in the long run.
Skeptic frame: A business savvy Peter Thiel got lucky with the internet, his networking skills and his financial wizardry to work on the right products, but is now squandering his wealth on projects that will never yield returns and this can only be done by someone who does not understand science and in particular biology.
Venture Capitalist frame: Thiel is investing in several high-risk high return ventures and he knows that if even one of them such as life-expectancy pays off, he will be many times richer in the future than he is now and will be a super successful venture-capitalist, perhaps the greatest of all time.
Elon Musk starts a rocket company to go to Mars, a car company and a tunnel company.
Engineer frame: Elon Musk is an engineering genius. The projects that he takes on are so grand and complex that his motivation must be to challenge his engineering prowess. This is inborn talent, the likes of which normal people cannot compete with, even though some people may develop expertise in some specific areas after decades of study and work.
Chosen One frame: There exists a prophecy that one man will save humanity by building rockets. He will combat global warming by making better cars and tunnels along which the cars can move.
Workaholic frame: Elon knows that he needs to put in long hours at the job or else he will go crazy. In order to stop him from having a soul crushing existential crisis, Elon needs to take on projects that are so grand just to keep his mind occupied and get his work fix.
Eliezer Yudkowsky writes fiction and a comprehensive blog on rationality
Genius frame: Yudkowsky is a genius and realized that some of his musings on human thought process is not just useful for his AI-themed work, but can also benefit others. A casual blog post for him might be life-changing insight for one of his readers and it often is.
Big mouth frame: Yudkowsky is very verbose and despite having a complicated subject that he works on, cannot resist the urge to stop talking and/or pen down his thoughts on a blog. He knows he’s smarter than 99.99999% of humanity but keeps writing his most obvious thoughts just for the love and attention he gets from us lesser beings.
Process frame: Even geniuses need process and having too many thoughts in your head at the same time can be maddening, so writing them down in an organized series of posts can help you get some much needed clarity of thought.

The point here is not to suggest that any one frame is right and another frame is wrong. That would be missing the forest for the trees. It’s about realizing that there are multiple ways to think about a single issue/process/phenomenon.

Charlie Munger, one of the most successful investors on the planet, has a phrase for this. He calls them “mental models”. And he attributes much of his success to be able to look at the same set of facts through different mental models.

If I had to describe Loserthink in one sentence, it would be “A book about using different frames or mental models to make decisions and take action”. That would make a much better tagline than some quip about America.

The important lesson from Loserthink is that recognizing which frame/mental model should be adopted for which situation is a skill in itself. And it’s a meta-skill which only gets developed once you have the underlying basic skill-set.

Some of this may sound intuitive if you are an action-oriented person that has dabbled in multiple disciplines. Otherwise, it might also sound slightly hand-wavy akin to an eastern mystic saying something along the lines of “All truths are equally valid.” Indeed, the big problem with much of philosophy books and business-advice books is not the advice that you find in those books, but knowing when to apply such advice.

One striking example of this problem from philosophy is the advice “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”. As pointed out by Naval Ravikant, what this is intended to mean is that if you are in search of enlightenment, there are many states of mind that look like true enlightenment, but are in fact not.

Loserthink has some practical ideas around this problem. Largely, the book is organized into many chapters titled “How to think like a ________”. The blank space is filled by (1) Psychologist; (2) Artist; (3) Historian; (4)Engineer; (5) Leader; (6) Scientist ; (7) Entreprenuer; (8)Economist.

At this point, if you’re thinking something along the lines of “Yeah, we get it. Separate magisterium and all that”, then I urge you to show a little more patience because Adams doesn’t keep all these chapters completely unrelated to one another.

He simply uses each of these professions as proxies for different ways of thinking, illuminating that each of these professions are aware of some secret about how the world works, which are not obvious to persons outside of that profession.

I’m not the expert, but I imagine that readers of this blog are largely familiar with Bayes theorem. It is hard to argue a better framework for truth-seeking. The universe is truly Bayesian.

However, success in life and truth-seeking prowess are poorly correlated (with the exception of a few specific domains). Loserthink is a book about how to take action and how some frames are more suitable than others depending upon the situation.

Think like a Psychologist

LessWrongers often talk about the illusion of transparency. A much bigger problem is the reverse, where people assume they can read others minds. Adams then goes on to attribute much of the polarization in the world to specifically this phenomenon. While Adams concedes that people don’t literally believe that they are reading another person’s thoughts, he does believe that everyone falls for this illusion. People believe based on out of context speech that even a simpleton could see [insert apparently obvious] intent.

Similarly, Adams goes on to identify the issue of psychological projection as a real problem but one that untrained individuals won’t be able to identify.

Adams talks about embarrassment and lays down strategies to deal with embarrassment, specifically learning to actively notice how fine you are after an embarrassing incident. Conversely, Adams recommends noting how little other people’s embarrassment mean to you. Usually this amounts to nothing. Adams then proceeds to mention that using the above techniques he went from being embarrassed about everything to having no shame whatsoever.

Another important lesson from this chapter is about noticing wrongness. This one is super important from a happiness point of view. Adams takes an example of how he notices that one end of his tablecloth is wrinkled and he is not able to move his attention away from that until it is resolved. He then goes on to marvel at how despite the fact he is wealthy, has fame, has a beautiful significant other, and generally has other things going for him in life, he is unable to shift his attention away from this one thing. This is Adams’ way of driving the point home that we need to count our blessings in life. We really do have limited shelf space in our minds. It is important to choose wisely what we do with it.

Most importantly from this chapter, Adams talks about ego, but I consider that important enough to warrant its own section in this book review.

Think like an Artist

According to Adams’ one of the defining features of an artist is their imagination. In general terms, I agree with this. The entire crux of this chapter is essentially this. Adams offers the parting words at the end of this chapter: “If you can’t imagine any alternate explanation for a particular set of events, it might be because you are bad at imagining things”

It’s important to note that Adams has consistently maintained in public that the individuals least capable of critical reasoning are often those trained only in the arts. This is not inconsistent with his world-view that cross-disciplinarily trained minds are superior.

Think like a Historian

Adams makes two important points about history. The first is that most history is probably distorted due to the incentives of the people writing it. This includes both that history is written by the winners, but also that history is taught in different ways in different countries.

The second point is more profound. History can often have a disproportionately strong hold on us. I have personally struggled (and continue to struggle) with this. At such times, it is important to remember that everything that we call history is in fact completely imaginary. It exists only in our minds.

This is best summed up with the following lines: “Focusing on the past when the present offers sufficient paths to success is Loserthink. It is better to focus on your own systems for success and when you succeed watch how winning fixes most problems.”

Adams also points out that the phrase is “history repeats itself” functions more like a stop-sign than as an actual predictor of anything useful.

Engineer

It should come as no surprise that the creator of Dilbert has something positive to say about engineers. Alas, this chapter had less to do with engineering per se as a discipline. As is the case, throughout the book, Adams uses engineering in the headline, to make the point about situations and their solutions.

The two key take-aways from this chapter: (1) the best solution to a problem does not consider whose fault the problem was; (2) most situations are far more complex and trying to point to a single variable for a solution is probably a bad idea that won’t work.

Leader

In stark contrast to thinking like a scientist, Adams’ notes that a strategy adopted by effective leaders is often to set targets that seem overly ambitious. Adams’ does not cite this in the book, but Elon Musk has been known to do this repeatedly. The argument is that the job of a leader is to inspire the troops and motivate them to work hard towards a specific goal.

For such a goal, the truth is often not the most useful weapon. Hyperbole is much more effective in such cases (Sorry, Bryan Caplan!).

Scientist

This is probably the most basic chapter of the book and if you’re a regular reader of LessWrong, SlateStarCodex or any similar blogs, then the contents of this chapter are the easiest and most intuitive. You could consider skipping it, but if you’re a reader of LessWrong, SlateStarCodex or any similar blogs, you’re probably the kind of person who reads every single word without skipping any.

Adams opens the chapter explaining how frequently coincidences occur and why they should be treated with skepticism. Adams then proceeds to give anecdotal evidence the same treatment.

Adams recommends (and I fully endorse this recommendation) of regularly engaging in an exercise of asking oneself what things would look like if the opposite of what you believed was true. Put in farm simpler terms, but somewhat less eloquently than Eliezer does when he is talking about Bayesian evidence.

Entrepreneur

Adams opens this chapter with an amusing anecdote on how to overcome couch lock. If you don’t know what couch lock is, it’s the feeling you get when you can’t get off the couch, probably because you’ve smoked too much marijuana. If you’ve never smoked too much marijuana, then you can consider smoking a lot of it just to understand what the hell I mean by couch lock. Alternately you can imagine yourself wanting to do something but completely lacking the motivation to do so. In other words it’s a form of akrasia.

Adams’ solution (which I recommend) is to start small. Wiggle your finger and eventually get to moving your entire body off the couch. It’s fairly standard self-help advice. But it’s a massively useful life hack.

Whenever confronted with a large project, stop thinking about the project as a whole as that will paralyze you into inactivity. Think about the micro-steps you can take and focus only on those micro-steps.

Adams has long been an advocate for talent-stacking or picking up multiple skills. In this chapter, Adams elaborates on the process. Adams claims that two of his favourite sentences [to hear in succession] are: (1) I don’t know how to do that; (2) but I can figure it out.

Adams also stresses an important principle that forms part of a lot of startup thinking today, namely the importance of being able to test assumptions in a way that no one gets hurt.

Economist

A personal gripe I’ve recently developed is that whenever I deal with something to do with economics, whether it’s a book, or a friend, I get drowned in models. No one ever seems to talk about the most important part of economics – incentives.

As a startup founder, I’m slowly coming to the realization that incentive structures are the most important and yet underrated tools we have to explain how the world works and modify it to suit our needs.

And yet, no one seems to be talking about it enough.

Another part of economics that needs to be spoken about is the issue of scarcity. But just like he did with all other professions, Adams takes out the best part of economist thinking and uses them to illustrate decision making principles.

Adams opens up the chapter by explain when it makes sense to speed and when it doesn’t by using reasoning on how the police department are likely to make their staffing decisions.

However, the important point on this chapter is that the people who understand economics and incentives can more easily spot hoaxes, because money can drive human behaviour in predictable ways. As a corollary it pays not to trust experts who have financial incentives that are not aligned with yours.

Adams also makes a point about making comparisons. Most people who aren’t trained in economics (or in rationality) do not have the ability to accurately compare things but are left with the illusion that they can with perfect confidence. Comparing things to alternatives is an important skill to develop and this is an important benefit that the LessWrong and it’s allied communities receive while practicing Bayesianism.

Comedian

To be honest, Adams doesn’t have a separate chapter on this. That’s a little surprising since he’s a professional funny man.

But a quote from Jerry Seinfeld, did come to mind recently for me. Seinfeld is walking with a fellow comedian (this was a TV show called Comedians in Cars with Coffee) and they are talking about how a comedian’s thought process is different from everyone else’s.

“You know how when you give your laundry, you have so many options? But when you collect your laundry, you only have one option”. Now this isn’t a joke in itself, points our Seinfeld. But it is a great example of how comedians think.

I think it’s important to learn how comedians think. Firstly, because we could all do with more laughter. But the truth is that comedians have great bullshit detectors. If an economist can detect a scam because he has a deep understanding of incentives, a comedian can detect an inefficiency because he has a deep understanding of wrongness.

There are some other ideas that Adams has woven into the book as well – new, novel ideas entirely of Adams creation which are, in my opinion, the most powerful portions of the book.

Using the Ego as a Tool

In my opinion, this is the most important idea by far. So much so that I pondered writing an entire book expounding on the basic idea myself. I haven’t done so, partly due to akrasia, but also partly because I would feel a lot better about writing such a book after my personal accomplishments are sufficient to inspire a non-trivial number of other human beings. Ironically, mastering your ego is enough to circumvent both of those hurdles.

The conventional wisdom on your ego is that one must always look to suppress it. It is also looked at as largely a social element and much less of a personal one. Yudkowsky has rejected this paradigm, drawn the distinction between fake social modesty and true humility.

Adams offers practical advice on exercises that you can adopt to increase or decrease your ego as the case my require. In certain situations, ramping up your ego can give you much needed courage. A good example of this would be public speaking.

Yet all improvement in any domain comes from iterations which necessarily mean admitting your mistakes and making changes. That can only happen with humility as both Adams and Yudkowsky have illustrated.

Upon thinking about the ego as a tool that can be raised up or decreased, I came to the realization that this goes far beyond just what Adams describes in Loserthink. All emotions can be dealt with in one way or another by controlling your ego.

Anger, is nothing but rapidly increasing ego and making a conscious effort to reduce your angers goes a long way in calming down.

Conversely, depression feels like it can be overcome by simply raising your ego. Having a big ego feels good and that’s why people do it (even when they are boasting of their modesty).

Discipline, is nothing but ensuring that you don’t get over-confident to skip even a single day’s work. That’s controlling your ego too.

Any entrepreneurial activity such as trying to build a company and a lot of what some of the smartest people in the world have accomplished are largely the result of high intelligence coupled with hard work and high productivity. But none of them would have tried out such ambitious projects without having an ego. Having a large ego allows world-class athletes to put in the extra hours of training, and startups on the verge of bankruptcy to continue with their mission.

What about rationality itself? The LessWrong community and the figures commonly associated with it are all paragons of the virtue of calibrating your confidence level to ensure that you are neither over-confident nor under-confident. Perhaps no one is a master of this more than Bryan Caplan. While the LessWrong community preaches tying this confidence to what is grounded in verifiable fact, Adams proposes that it can be used at the behest of its owner.

Following this train of thought, it led me to conjecture that perhaps this is the true function of religion. Humans have a need to maintain a constant self-image per Robert Cialdini. This makes it hard to modulate your ego, without deliberate practice.

But the presence of an all-powerful deity who has your back at every turn gives you all the courage in the world when you need it. And at the same time, it gives you all the humility that you need even when things are going perfectly according to plan. While I do not personally know a single religious person who thinks this way, I have a strong suspicion that this is in fact the case and that most religious people have not decodified it to absorb this information.

Conclusion

Adams at one point notes that “Stay in your lane” maybe the advice that he gives his worst enemy. Most progress in life comes from venturing out and performing activities that involve things outside of your comfort zone. This dovetails well with another piece of advice that Adams has now become well-known for: “The Talent Stack”.

In Loserthink, Adams lists out that he has developed skills in economics, business, sales, management, psychology, hypnosis, programming, commercial lending, project management, public speaking, design, art, writing, television production, negotiating, budgeting, persuasion, marketing, social media, video editing, engineering, drumming, cartooning, political punditry.

An important point that is worth mentioning: Adams throughout the book refers to various mental traps as being stuck in a mental prison. It is a fitting metaphor. One that even Kanye West approves of.

In conclusion, Adams’ work in Loserthink is to explain how sometimes truth and accuracy are at odds with practicality and effectiveness. There was no word to describe this process of thinking before, but Adams’ intent was to introduce exactly such a word into the language. He has succeeded with a few, but may take some more time to reach everybody.