How to think instead of what to think

 

Scott Adams discusses Gell-Mann amnesia, systems, and how to think vs what to think.

Nov 21 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7Q0wrA447g

 

1:02:03

According to the New York Post, Emily Crane, there's a new report that warns that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated US colleges and it aims to quote transform Western society from within and that it's halfway done with its 100-year plan. So 50 of its 100-year plan has been done and they claim to be about half done in conquering the West via the educational systems.

Is that real? Do you believe that the inevitable future is that Islam and let's say Muslim Brotherhood in particular because that's who this is about.

Do you believe that the natural arc of history is that they will infiltrate? They will they will reproduce slowly but methodically. they will take over various institutions until the US is Islamic.

Well, unless there was a counterforce, I don't see how you could stop it because Islam is a very, I'm going to try to use the most respectful language.

1:03:16

So, you're going to watch me struggle here to to pick the right words. But Islam is a very successful system.

Now, there I did it. I wanted to make it not sound like it was biased.

Islam is a very successful design for a system. For example, if you're in the more extreme elements and you tried to leave the religion, they'd kill you, right? I mean, that's not the normies, but you know, for some part of the Islamic world, you can't really leave.

And even if they're not going to kill you, it's not going to be very fun. So it's a system that says if you leave, you're going to pay a price. And if you're competing against, and when I say competing against, I mean just trying to own the future.

If you're competing against some other religion or system that lets you go in and out, if you like, in theory, the one that kills you for leaving is going to do better in the long run. and has a number of other advantages such as the high reproduction rates and, I won't get into all of it, but if you were to design it on paper, on paper Islam would conquer the other systems just by being introduced and then you wait.

Am I right?

That it would conquer all the other systems one at a time just by being introduced.

Now it takes a while but its very design guarantees that it dominates over time.

So, that's going to happen.

I would say we're probably halfway to that. And, if you were going to ask me, Scott, is there any way the West can save itself to not be destroyed by this superior system?

And the answer is there might be one way.

There might be one and only one way that the West could save itself from an Islamic, just guaranteed system design takeover. Do you know what that is?

What is the one system that could defend against that?

It's not Christianity because Christianity is a you are a little too peace loving for that to work. I'll tell you what it is.

It's Elon Musk and it's AI. If AI becomes maximum truth seeking, which is what Elon is after, he says it almost every day that the AI has to be maximum truth seeking.

You can't give the AI morality. You can't program morality into AI. That would just cause the potential for the biggest problems in the world. But if you if you program it for ultimate truth, you could come up with something that's just purely additive.

Ideally, we don't know, but it would be worth a shot.

So now imagine that it becomes a normal thing that half of the country is teaching its own half to think better. My prior conversation. (see below)

Do you think that that is also a system that can reproduce? Yes. Yes. If you learn how to think better and you're sitting in the room with somebody who doesn't know how to do it and an opportunity comes up where you can kind of explain to them, you know, the way you should think about this might be this way instead of that.

You'll do it.

So there's something about the common sense learning how to think approach to life which would be Elon's and the other people I mentioned as well.

That is in its in its own ways sticky and it doesn't require a specific educational structure.

In fact, the whole college system might fall apart in 10 years. Who knows? But the idea of thinking better probably will just keep going because it's good for everybody who's exposed to it and it's easy to teach the whole technique of something being too on the nose. I haven't described that here but it's really easy to teach somebody how to spot things using a certain set of tools.

So that is a way that the west could possibly become immune from any external systems be they Islam or anything else.

1:07:58

How's your brain doing?

_____

How to think.

 

42:56

Now, we're going to talk about Grokipedia. So, that's Elon Musk's version of Wikipedia. It is still under work but Elon was talking about it and he said that it's going to be way better than Wikipedia blah blah blah.

And then Elon talks about the phenomenon where you would know that Grokipedia is better than Wikipedia if you were a public figure or an expert because you would understand your own domain and if you understood your own domain and then you read about what Wikipedia said—this would be his claim—and then you read what Grock said, Grokipedia, you would come away from it thinking that Wikipedia was wrong and Grokipedia was closer to right more often.

Now, this is there's a name for this, the phenomenon I'm describing. What is the name and watch this? Watch how many of you know the answer to this question. What's the name for the phenomenon where you know that the news is fake because you're an expert or the news is about you but the rest of the world might not know that.

What's that called? I'm looking. There it is. It took like one second for it to appear. It's a Gell-Mann amnesia. Now Gellman is a hyphenated last name of a physicist. G E L L-M A N. I I always forget how many double letters there are, but something like that.

So, here's the important part. Um, how many people have in in the public mentioned gal man amnesia maybe without using the words, but described it in a way that you knew that's what they were talking about recently. I'll give you some examples.

So, uh, Elon Musk has talked about it a number of times. I've talked about it a number of times.

45:02

Uh, Mike Cernovich has talked about it a number of times and has properly credited Michael Crichton, the author. I think Michael Kiteon might have also borrowed it. Somebody said there was some prior claim to it. It doesn't really matter. Um, I'm just saying that a lot of smart people have referenced it.

I'm pretty sure Greg Gutfeld has mentioned it on his show or shows. Um, I've seen some other Silicon Valley people mention it, but you've also seen Bill Murray.

Do you remember actor Bill Murray when he talked about his own experience reading some stories about John Belushi? And he knew Belushi personally and very well. So when he read the stories, he knew they were fake.

And then he had the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. It was like, wait, wait a minute. What are the odds that the only stories that are fake are John Belalushi stories?

Because it happens to be one of the few things I'm an expert on. What are the odds that's the only thing? Isn't it more likely that everything's fake and the way you find out about it is being an expert in one thing, you're like, "Hey, wait a minute. I am an expert in this. This stuff's wrong."

Um, what about Bill Maher? I saw him recently, was it on his Club Random or maybe the regular show? He's mentioned that because he's a public figure, he has extra vision on this, the fact that the news is so often fake. That wouldn't be obvious to people who are not public figures because they don't read news about themselves like people like me and people like him do.

All right.

Now, so you've got Elon Musk, Joe Rogan's mentioned it, Bill Murray's mentioned it on Joe Rogan show. Gutfeld, Fox News, me, my books, Cernovich, etc.

This is teaching people a way to think and a way to see the world.

If what comes out of all this Grokipedia stuff is simply that more people understand what Gell-Mann amnesia is, it completely changes how we see the world.

It will change how you see the Soros versus Musk. How in the world could both of them exist if they have this view that that's just are complete opposites?

So I say that what's different about the era you're in is that the Trump supporting part of the world, not not all of it. Oh, somebody's saying that Dr. Drew has mentioned Gell-Mann. I think he has. I think he has. So you're probably all thinking of other examples right now.

If I went over to the Democrat influencers, how many of the Democrat influencers have taught their audience the Gell-Mann amnesia? Any? Any?

So what happens over time if one side of the political world gets trained in how to think which is exactly what Elon Musk does every time he talks to you. He also teaches you how to think, like how you should think of entering AI.

How you should think of that risk etc

That's completely different than just telling you what to think.

The right leaning or I'll just say Trump supporting common sense part of the political world is really about teaching the other people in it how to think about stuff.

That's all I do all day. I teach you how to think, not necessarily what to think. All right.

So, what happens with that?

Do you think that the people on the political right are more able to identify a hoax? Yes, they are. because they're actually trained on what the hoaxes were, how they were created, and then how they were supported by the media.

So, you've got an entire political class that while the Democrats weren't paying attention, and this is the fun part, the Democrats don't see this coming, that that half of the world has been trained to recognize and the other half has been trained to accept it.

If you just fast forward that tape, let's see. One half of the country trained to accept as the truth. The other half of the country trained to identify as soon as they see it and to avoid it as quickly as possible.

Fast forward that. Where do you end up?

The where you end up is what you observe right now, which is the team that can't avoid the hoaxes just goes right off the cliff.

What happened to the Democrats this year?

They went off the cliff, did they not? Right now, are you having the feeling that I was hoping that you would have right about now? If I'm doing this right, and I think I am, the feeling that many of you are having right now is, wait a minute, did you just connect all the dots?  

Is that the fact that one part of the country has learned how to think, how to, for example, if if I use the phrase too on the nose, how many of you would know what I'm talking about if I said  that story, it's too on the nose.

You tell me in the comments. You tell me. How many of you would know exactly what I meant?

How many Democrats would know what I meant?

None. There wouldn't be any Democrats who know what that meant because again, too on the nose is teaching you how to spot BS.

It's just one of many ways.

So there's this entire, I don't want to say army because then you know what the Democrats will say if I say army, but in the very conceptual way an army of people who have been trained to spot hoaxes and even to know specifically why there's a whole bunch of them.

You have been trained in persuasion, right? That you actually know what works and what doesn't and it's not an accident. and the other part of the country is just flailing poop at you, I guess, because they don't have training in that domain.

And I I think people always imagined before I came on the scene, people imagined that persuasion was something you're either born with or, you know, maybe you just have it. It was not really thought of as a learnable skill, but I'm here to tell you it's a learnable skill. and I've watched people learn it and then I've watched them employ it and then I've watched them succeed, get elected, get promotions, get the get the partner they wanted.

52:10

Now, let's take this a little bit further.

When Grokipedia becomes sort of the standard for and I think it will become the standard for checking things then Elon will I think come close to completing one of the greatest reframes of all time which is the reframe is Democrats teach you what to think and Republicans teach you how to think.

Do you feel it?

Democrats tell you what to think. And at least in 2025, this was not always the case. This was not historically true at the moment.

And I would say that Musk is primarily the, you know, the reason for this is that we've all been taught how to think and a lot of it comes from him.

I think there were probably three probably three separate stories I saw today that all were some little clip of Elon explaining how to think about a thing, how to think about the, let's say, the economics of space. How many of you understood before, let's say, this year, uh, the importance of reusable rocket ships?

And it wasn't just that you learned that, you know, there's a thing called reusable spaceships. It's that you learned that that's important enough that if you don't understand that part of the question, you can't really see what's coming.

How many of you knew that if you put your solar panels in space, you didn't have to worry about cooling them being blocked by clouds or or that it's night? Well, now you know. And it's because you've learned how to sort of look at things like an engineer.

That's what Elon does more than anything else. Looks at it like an engineer. Once you learn that, it becomes your go-to. So, all right.

What would an engineer do in this case? Changes everything.

All right. So, I'm going to I'm going to call the the reframe.

We have now entered the golden age. And one of the defining factors of the golden age is that the left is being told what to think and the right is being taught how.

And how is going to beat what every time, eventually, but every time.

Mission accomplished. All right.

Did I give you something to think about today?

You know, the we're closer to the beginning of this teaching people how to think, but if you look at my books, you know, I I've got five books that are sort of in that domain of teaching you how to think. systems over goals. That's exactly right. 

 

Gell-Mann Amnesia definition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Crichton first described the "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" in an April 2002 speech about speculation to the International Leadership Forum:^[1]

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story—and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

— Michael Crichton, "Why Speculate?" (2002)^[2]

He explained that he had chosen the name ironically, because he had once discussed the effect with physicist Murray Gell-Mann, "and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have"