The Jordan Harbinger Show - 202: Shane Snow | Cognitive Self-Defense Against Intellectual Dishonesty

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

Shane Snow (@shanesnow) is an award-winning entrepreneur and journalist, author of Dream Teams and Smartcuts, and the blogger who wrote How to Debate and Make Progress by Curbing Intellectual Dishonesty. What We Discuss with Shane Snow: What is intellectual dishonesty, how does it undermine meaningful debate, and what can we do to recognize it in ourselves and others? Why the cognitive diversity of differing perspectives and open-mindedness of intellectual humility make for healthy discourse. The six recurring problems in discourse: dodging, logical fallacies, deception, dirty debate, little accountability, and false endings. What we have to gain by rooting out intellectual dishonesty when it appears in ourselves and others. How to pull discussions back from the brink of intellectual dishonesty and put them on an honest track. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/202 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Does your business have an Internet presence? Save up to a whopping 62% on new webhosting packages with HostGator at hostgator.com/jordan! Eight Sleep is the first bed engineered with dynamic cooling and heating that keeps you at the perfect temperature all night long. Get $100 off your purchase when you go to EightSleep.com/jordan! Better Help offers affordable, online counseling at your convenience. If you're coping with depression, stress, anxiety, addiction, or any number of issues, you're not alone. Talk with a licensed professional therapist for 10 percent off your first month at betterhelp.com/jordan! Explore Blue Diamond for all your almond product needs. From delicious almond nut snacks to gift baskets, they've got you covered at a store near you or at bluediamond.com! Disgraceland is a true crime podcast about musicians getting away with murder. If you love true crime and you love music, get ready to love Disgraceland here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. Discourse and debate are more effective in both democracy and in business when we learn to be honest with ourselves and curb the subtle behaviors that get in the way of trading real ideas. Healthy discourse and debate are what makes us better. Iron sharpens iron. And when we argue with one another in the right way, we get smarter, we hone our ideas, we make our country and our company and our family, a better place to live. But often, things don't work out so. smoothly. But it's not because having different ideas is bad. It's because too often discussion of our different ideas falls victim to a thing called intellectual dishonesty. And today, we'll go over types of cognitive bias, logical fallacy, and sneaky tricks we see people use in politics, on television, especially on news programs, and even at work or in our own family. These intellectually dishonest tricks of the trade can confuse the issue, distract us from the real conversation,

and are ultimately used to control the way we think and behave. Shane Snow did a deep dive on this subject, and I think you'll really come away with an idea on how to spot people being intellectually dishonest before they get a chance to get inside our heads, manipulate us, and attempt to control the way that we think. Think of this episode as a primer on cognitive self-defense. I really enjoyed this one, and I think you will also.

Six-minute networking is our course that teaches you how to network and create great relationships, manage them, I've got a lot of great friends like Shane because of these skills. This course is free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. In the meantime, here's Shane Snow. I want to talk about intellectual dishonesty. You emailed me, or I emailed you a while ago to check in or something,

and you were like, hey, I wrote a new post. And like everyone does, when somebody says read my new post, I first archived it without looking. And then I was like, eh, that's not a cool move. Shane's your friend. Click on this. And then read like the beginning and skim it. And I read the beginning and skimmed it and went way, wait.

I love this topic. I read the whole thing. It took me like an hour and a half or something. Sorry about that. Yeah, it's a mega post. That's one of the reasons I was like, damn it. But then I read it and I read it again. And I thought, this is so good.

I need to talk more about this. Because intellectual honesty is a concept that is, first of all, new for most people. At first, when I heard intellectual dishonesty, I thought, that just means you're lying. But it's not quite that simple. Yeah. I mean, in the post, I have a sort of pie chart type diagram where basically, if you break down what intellectual dishonesty is, there's blatant lying, and that's a portion of the pie. And then the rest are things that are not blatant lying, but they're not being fully honest. It's like saying things that don't make sense, as if they make sense, knowing that they don't make sense. Engaging in conversations where you're dodging, answering the question, or you're using some tricky tactic to avoid telling the truth.

Those are examples of being dishonest, but it's shaded differently than blatant lying. And I think that's why it's such an interesting topic is that happens so much in day-to-day life, in business, and any kind of debate that we have. But all you've got to do is turn on CNN and see that any of the panels that they have or they're asking people to defend a viewpoint. Often they're not actually defending the viewpoint. They're using these sort of tricky tactics, rhetorical tactics, to avoid having to get out the truth or avoiding having to address the truth.

And I think it's a big problem. So, yeah, that's what got me interested is seeing so much of that. Starting to see that thing happen in all these different areas of my life and realizing that for me, what I like to do is I like to break down things and take all the parts and put them on the table and then sort of see how they work. So I wanted to break down honesty and dishonesty. And that was the start of this thing that you read, yeah. It makes sense to me because, first of all, I used to watch when I was.

I had cable a million years ago. I'd watch these panel shows, and you see them at airports. And it's one person's yelling, and the other person goes, Tom, Tom, Tom, but, but, Tom, Tom. And then the moderator, who's not doing their job is, like, just yelling at both, or not saying anything, and it's kind of smugly sitting back watching the chaos. Or they're like, well, looks like time's up. Yeah. Commercial break ends, and so you haven't resolved.

Anything that ends on this point that's, like, really bizarre or sketchy or whatever it is. And, yeah, it's not actually helping people with information or learn. More from Chris Matthews yelling at Tucker Carlson and John Stewart right after this. It's like, who gives a crap, right? And I didn't realize why I didn't like them. I thought it was just the yelling and the unproductive conversation. But there was more to it.

In the article, your megapost, which will link in the show notes, the megapost really details why I didn't like it. And it's because if I say something like, well, actually, let's go into examples here in a second. Because this is why people get annoyed with public discourse, not just that it seems unproductive because no one's listening, but because people are listening and they decide, I'm not going to address that or be fair about it. I'm going to switch to my talking points or whatever and get my agenda across. And that's a big problem because we need collaboration

and you bring this across in the article really well. You say we need people who think differently. We need people who are going to put their heads together. So cognitive diversity, cognitive friction, and be willing to change, which is intellectual humility, which is a whole probably different show that we should do. But such an important thing. I mean, anyone who's listening to this can infer intellectual humility means being humble,

but really that's about being willing to revise your viewpoint when you should. So taking a new information, actually listening to it, respecting it, and then deciding, should I change? And that's missing from a lot of these debates and public discourse as well. Yeah, nobody's really going into this thinking, I could be persuaded by the other side. And Sam Harris, I don't know if you ever listened to his stuff. He's stopped debating people, or at least in certain subject areas, other than his show, and he phrased this better than I will, but it was basically like, why should I get on a plane

at my own expense and fly somewhere and talk to somebody who has no intention of actually listening to anything I'm going to say, has no intention of actually changing their mind just so that I can sort of freely entertain their audience of people who, no matter how many good points I bring across, are just going to say, Sam Harris got destroyed by so-and-so. Right. Well, and the point of most debates in forms like that, And I think, honestly, when you and I are having a regular debate in real life about something important to us, most of the time the point of the debate is to convince the other person or the audience that you're right.

And so you'll do that at all costs. That's where a lot of this intellectual dishonesty comes in is, you know, Sam Harris is debating whoever the host that's hosting him. And their job is to prove that he's wrong and that they're right. Right. Even at the expense of getting at the truth or exploring things that you ought to explore if you're being honest. and, you know, the best kind of debate is a debate where you're trying to explore the mountain range of possibilities, right? And get somewhere that both of you couldn't get on your own. That's not usually what happens.

And sometimes it's because people are deliberately, people who are hosts of these shows, like Tucker Carlson's a great example, knows what he's doing. He's smart enough to know that he can get around anything you say, and often it's his tricking tactics. But often we do this subconsciously automatically because we're trying to protect our own identity,

which is really attached, really linked to what we think, we feel, what we've decided is true, what we've grown up with, because that leads us to do intellectually dishonest things when we debate. And that's part of why I was so interested in exploring this topic is seeing myself do this when I really badly want to be the kind of person who learns and who change it and who can listen and be open-minded. But I will fight dirty sort of rhetorically when my point of view is being threatened. And that's not good. It's not good. And when I catch myself doing it, I feel a twinge of shame. You know, someone writes in and I, reply and they're like, I'm surprised that you replied this way because blah, blah, blah. And then I have to

think, am I replying this way because this person pissed me off or am I replying this way because I'm right? And then sometimes I have this moment where I'm like, let me boomerang that email for two days so that I'm calm when I read it again. And half the time I have to reply and go, so I thought about what you said and I see your point. And it's just like you're just eating humble pie the whole time. But it's better than doing that one publicly or two, just going, shoot, I already commuting. to telling this person they're a freaking jerk, so now I have to double down on that and lose this person as a fan forever in front of an audience of thousands, because otherwise it means something about me that I'm wrong. Oh, yeah. It's hard. So I get it. Spoiler alert, one of the

biggest things you can do to exercise more intellectual humility is to put a gap between the thing that happens and your reaction to it. So you have time to calm down and think and actually consider things rather, but, you know, time is often our enemy when we're having hard conversations. It is, especially in a format like cable TV and news. So that's sort of uniquely suited to intellectual dishonesty and BS, which is why we're better off if we actually hold ourselves to a higher standard of what truth actually is. Because then we can actually decide that we want to get there, not just look good on Crossfire. I'm sure that show's not still on anymore, but if it were, it's... You know, it originally was canceled because John Stewart showed up on the show and called

them out on being dishonest. And it was such a, that went viral. That. I performance. Was that the one where he made fun of the Tucker for wearing a bow tie and then said you're ruining America basically? Yeah. Which is also kind of a little bit You know, he was actually shitting about that too. Yeah. It came back for a brief stint, but it didn't work out because

they're actually at that point when it came back, it was more of a recognition that, hey, just having a fight about these things is actually not that productive. So it turns out that most of, again, talking about cable political panels or whatever, most of those debates still,

they're more subtly kind of shitty than Crossfire was, which actually, to its credit, owned the fact that we're just going to fight and not get along. Yes. Yeah. I'm completely with you there. And it hasn't gotten rid of the format. I mean, we see this in public discourse. You see it in families arguing, couples arguing. I'd love to outline some examples of intellectual dishonesty. I mean, one, you mentioned earlier, dodging the question. I've got a whole list of your, well, your list of ways that people dodge questions. And there, it turns out, There's a whole lot of ways you can dodge questions that are really interesting. Also, answering something that wasn't asked. That's kind of a famous one. And we'll outline some of that as well. What are some other really common examples? And we don't have to get into the details because I did outline your whole list and we'll get to it in a bit here.

Well, you know, the details we should really get into is why we're letting so many immigrants into America. Nice. You just did it. So I just said, so I took a word. You asked me a question. Yes. And I took a word from that question, a key word that I zeroed in. on, and then I talked about what I wanted to talk about. Right.

And this is a classic dodge. This is something they teach you actually in PR training, which is even worse. It's a classic dodge of you don't want to actually address the question. You want to address the issue. Maybe you're on shaky ground. And because we have a different point you want to make, you can make it sound like you're answering the question by simply using some of the keywords from that other question. By the way, personally, I think that there's a lot of immigration problems we should solve,

but letting immigrants isn't the problem? Your fiancé is an immigrant. Exactly, yeah. I assume you didn't see that as a problem. I'm probably immigration, but that's an example. So the details. You'd still be a virgin if you did now. The details are, though, if it's intellectually dishonest to pretend like you're having a

conversation with someone, like you're answering a question, and then not actually answer it. And one of those ways is to switch the topic. That's really good. And you name these different types of doctrine. And we'll get to that a second. I did a little cheat sheet here, because they are. very quick. Did you make all of those? Yeah. I'm very proud of you for that.

Thanks. The intellectual dishonesty often hinges on what you call a technicality, right? You haven't exactly said a bald face lie. We kind of hinted at that in the intro here. But what you're saying, really, it's not quite above board. So it's like these half-truths or like quarter-truths, third-truths. I think intellectual honesty has to mean going after the truth, regardless of whether or not it sort of jibes with my own personal beliefs, which is not easy. Yeah, it's not easy. And it gets back to what I had said, that protecting your own ego and identity is often the subconscious factor in these conversations. But yeah, it's intellectually honest if you are trying to find the truth. You don't have to be correct.

You don't have to use good logic, but if you're trying, you're being honest about it. That's an important point because there are logical fallacies, which we've talked about on the show, and which we'll get into later after the types of dodging and deception, because this is really important. People will often be intellectually dishonest inadvertently by some sort of false analogy or other fallacy. And it doesn't mean that they're a jerk that's trying to ruin America or the family or their relationship or their friendship. It just means that they believe an argument

because they haven't quite scrutinized the logical flow of that argument, maybe. Right. Sometimes it happens because you don't get logical fallacies. You don't know that a slippery slope fallacy is a fallacy that you saying, Shane, if you marry an image, immigrant, then what are we suddenly going to be all speaking Spanish in this country, and then no one will be able to communicate. Like, that is a logical fallacy. It's a slippery slip. That just because my fiance speaks Spanish, so it's going to be a problem. Some people don't know that that's a fallacy. So part of this is education.

But in a lot of cases, when we do it, when smart people are well-meaning people do it, it's not because you're evil. It's not because you actually don't care about the truth, but it's because the thing that you've already decided is so important to you and often connected to who you are as your identity. that you're going to be willing to believe things that you wouldn't normally believe. So if, for whatever reason, and maybe the immigration analogy isn't the perfect one for this, but if for whatever reason the immigration thing was like a sticking point between us, we have different points of view, each of us would be more likely to believe the BS of our own slippery soap fallacy in the course of argument because we want the thing we believe to be true.

Right. And the reason that this is important in general, just by the way, of course, is that we can't make any progress if we're not actually trying to become more honest. So there's a difference between trying to win a debate on TV so that you look good and it's a completely polar goal post

than trying to find the truth of a situation. They might overlap sometimes, like you might be able to look good because you're telling the truth, but often you're just going to look good because you're playing identity politics or the group that you're a member of thinks you championed them well. You fought well. You fought well.

even if you fought dirty, rarely do we actually have a nice alignment of, well, we wanted to get to the truth, and it turns out the chain was right and I was wrong. Yeah. Well, and sometimes this happens because you believe in an underlying truth. And so you'll use a dishonest or a subtly, intellectually dishonest tactic or line that you know isn't quite true, but because you don't have all the information because you think the underlying thing is true. So, for example, it was Obama, who I personally really like. And he's an example of a rare politician who very rarely did this or does this. But when he talked about a recent midterms in North Carolina, he talked about the percentage of black people versus white people that voted in this midterm. And it was something like 80% or the details are wrong. It doesn't really matter. He made a tweet about this.

But the thing was, is that tweet, the statistic only held up for one county. Didn't pull up for the whole state. Gotcha. and he either didn't know that and was given that stat, or he knew that, but he wanted this stat to help people understand the issue that he believed was true, then he didn't have the rest of the data. But that's still, that's not the entire truth.

Had he said, this is only true of this county, but I'm convinced that this is, we'll see that this will be true of the rest of the state. That would be fully honest. There are a lot of ways in which you can, it's almost hard to be intellectually honest, because in order to do so, not only do you have to do a lot more work, you also have to admit that maybe there's a place

in which you could have gotten something wrong. And in a climate or environment where other people are really not going to do any of that, it's hard because if you say, hey, look, I'm 90% sure this is correct. And I say, I'm 100% sure that you're an idiot. Well, maybe I don't have this emotional reaction. But if I say, well, I'm 100% sure that you're wrong. Right. A lot of people are going to go, well, Shane's 90% sure.

Jordan's 100% sure. I guess I'm just going to go with Jordan. Meanwhile, I could be one percent sure. I could have just made that shit up on the way from the bathroom to the studio, but I just decided I want you to be wrong because then my fans will think I'm really smart. Yeah. This is another example of intellectual dishonesty, actually, is the delivery, the posturing you use when delivering an argument that makes it appear like you're more confident or that you are, it's just sort of like Trump cards. Like that's a Trump card.

It's like saying at work when you're talking about what we should do and someone's like, I have 30 years of experience, so my plan is better. that doesn't make your plan better. Right. It might, you know, we should listen to you because you have probably some good things to say, but like those two things don't quite connect. It gets used as a Trump card. And so people do that all the time. But I think what you're getting at is a couple of things.

One is if we really want to make progress, everyone has to be more honest. And same thing with intellectual humility. If we really want to make progress, everyone has to be willing to change their minds. So some of us talking about this sort of thing, learning about this, trying to be more mindful of this, that helps. but also part of the challenge is helping other people be more honest or calling them out when they're not having a good framework for doing that. I like this.

There's a lot of logical fallacy. I just bought, thanks to your article, there was a set of flashcards. Oh, yeah, yeah. And two posters that are not yours. They're from some... Your fallacy.com is or something, yeah. And it's great because it shows cognitive bias. They're all on these cards and all on these posters.

And then logical fallacies. And it's like, which one are you doing at the time? So I plan on putting those up in my studio because often when I'm... I'm having these types of conversations, I'll go, that sounds like that one where you make up an argument, you recharacterize their argument and it's wrong, and then you point to that. Oh, yeah, the straw man, but I don't have it like at the top of my head. And you get so good at calling people on their crap if you know all these logical fallacies. It's kind of like a superpower.

It's like knowing karate somehow. And you can use it against people who are being deliberate by being like, hey, that's a straw man fallacy. Let's get back to the real thing. You can also, knowing it, it can help you with people who, who are well-meaning, who don't realize what they've done, he like, hey, Brock, you know, that's actually a misleading statistic. You know, this doesn't represent the whole thing.

You want to clarify that. And you'd be like, oh, well, I think I should do that. Yeah, or they go, how does it not represent the whole thing? Well, you just picked one sample out of the whole nation in one area. How can you be sure that it represents a whole nation? And well-meaning people will... They'll pause and go... Yeah, I mean, I guess it's different for each place.

So is it possible that the opposite statistic is true in New York versus where you live in Florida? I guess that is possible. Like you can sort of see the gears turning. And I know this because I think everyone has parents or family that does this. And they don't, they're not telling you, they don't really care about, you're just having a conversation at Chili's, right? Like, the stakes are low.

So you can kind of get people to go, oh, all right, maybe this isn't the case. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Shane Snow. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes in your podcast player as they are released so you don't miss a single thing.

Now back to our show with Shane Snow. Let's talk about the types of dodging. Okay. Because this is probably one of the fun exceptions of your article. Yeah. Types of dodging questions. The first one creatively named the Hiller Reach. Oh, yeah.

Yes, because it's, and look, I know people are going to go, how dare you? These are named after people that do them a lot that are in popular culture. Right. Doesn't mean that she invented it. She's the only person that does it, et cetera. She may not even be the most prominent example of it. Sure. When I wrote this, too, I tried to pick people who were on TV pretty recently doing these things.

And also, just to make it memorable, right? Sure. Yeah, the Hill of Reach. Yeah. And I also tried to, there's an example of this, you know, a lot of this is through, I write about this through the lens of politics. But politics isn't even the most relevant place for us to have these conversations in many ways because most of the time we're not doing politics. We may watch or we may hear whatever. Most of the time this has to do with our relationships, has to do with work.

Yeah, let's take our political hats off because what I don't want is people to be like, Hillary should have won. She had the popular vote. Okay, cool, whatever, don't care for the purposes of this, right? Or if we have the Trump storm and the Trump-Nesiac or two of them, it's like, it doesn't mean that everyone here hates Donald Trump, like, calm down. These are things that this person does. In fact, if you're really a Trump fan, you should look at these and go, isn't he so smart?

He uses these great techniques. But also you should do whatever you want. Yeah. But you should scrutinize, even people that you support. I think especially people. Scrutizing their behavior in the way they talk and how that's not being productive is, and admitting that actually is very helpful. So the Hillerich,

that's kind of the classic politicians dodge. It's where you get asked a question and you kind of say the minimum that you need to in order to get people to feel like you answered the question, but then you just go on to the thing that you really want to talk about. So I forget the actual example that... It was something with Legos. Oh, yes.

So the example was the question that you're being asked is, what's your policy on Legos? And she, the Hill of Reach would be, you know, Legos are a complicated issue, but what we should really be talking about is the war in Afghanistan, whatever. And it's like, it's similar to that one where you take the keyword. You're actually, it's a little less intellectually dishonest because you're sort of addressing it. But it's, you don't really want to answer the question.

You don't want to talk about that. So you will blur through it. This happens so much in relationships, too. Where were you on Friday? And you're like, oh, I went out with some friends, but really, did you hear about what happened, you know, Saturday morning with this thing or whatever? It's like, you don't want to talk about what you were up to last night. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

This person had a lot of projects that failed. You know, a lot of people have had projects that failed, but one thing that we can't let fail is this latest initiative from me and Shane. It's going to be amazing. It's like, okay, you didn't dodge the question entirely, but you went and pulled into the driveway and then just steered right back out of the road and went towards your agenda. And we can't really have that.

It's not productive. The next one is the Hanatack. Oh, yeah. Of course, Sean Hannity. Is this the same thing as what aboutism? Is it like? Yeah. You basically turn it around in your opponent.

Yeah. Someone asks you a question, and instead of answering the question, you attack someone, either the person or their allies or someone that you are painting as their ally for the same thing. So, yeah. So in this case, you know, what do you think about Legos? And then he'll attack the makers of Legos. He'll attack you for liking Legos or whatever it is

and not actually answer what he thinks about Legos. Right. I think the example was Legos are terrible. I think we all know they're terrible. But where was Obama when all this Lego stuff was going on? How many years did Obama have to take care of the Lego problem? Yeah. And you'll notice that actually a lot of those hosts that do that kind of thing,

they don't like being asked questions. They don't like being on the receiving end of those questions, and they will turn in around into the attack, because they're used to having the power. And a lot of this actually is about power dynamics. Sure. If you're the one with more power or more perceived power, you can get away with this stuff.

If you're one with less power, just turning it back around and attacking, is a harder thing to do, so you'll resort to other dodges. Right, sure. It works really well if you control the forum. trying not to do that. Of course, this show's not really adversarial. But if it were, I could get somebody who's brilliant in here, not that you aren't. Just for example, I could get somebody else

who's brilliant. How's that in here? And I could probably do all kinds of stuff that they would never put up with if it were their house. Yes. Right. Because you're essentially in a studio on my show. There's this little bit of decorum where you're like, well, I'm not going to push him on this because it's embarrassing. Right. You wouldn't do that if I were in front of your audience in your studio. You'd be like, wait a minute. That doesn't make any freaking sense. What are you doing? So it's really easy for somebody who's controlling, who can, if shit gets really bad, just goes, cut to commercial. And the producer's like, don't dump it. Oh, yeah.

Right? And then they'd go, well, it's not, good thing that wasn't live. Let's cut out the part where he just spanked me on that argument. Right. And just go and put the Lego commercial over top of it. Yeah. Put some Folgers coffee in there. Then fade back in as I'm letting him have it.

Right. So he thinks he won. Let's also put up the title card in the lower third that says Hannity destroys activist over false views. or whatever. Like, that's fighting dirty too. Yes, exactly. Yeah. When you control the lower third, man. Lower third, for those of you that don't know, is the little bar that comes over the screen where it says my name on it or like Jordan Harbinger, the Jordan Harbinger show at Jordan Harbinger, ESPN, and then it animates and fades out. That's the lower third. And you can put things

on there on a news program that's like, when it becomes the YouTube thumbnail is like, dumb millennial gets owned by Jordan. There's a picture of you mid-laugh with your hat. add on that just makes you look like a 12-year-old bro. Can you please put that lower third on the video for this? Like when you produce it for just a segment. Jen, go ahead and throw that on there. That'll be the thumbnail for this. The next one is the con word. This is Kellyanne Conway. She, I have to say, politics aside, no matter what side of the fence you're on,

I can't believe that she's not the most infuriating person to watch on television because she will never talk about anything substantive ever. I've never seen it. And I've looked. and I'm not saying she's a bad person. I think she's really good at her job. She's the master at this technique. She is the best I've ever seen at not getting... Like, you think that Muhammad Ali was good at dodging punches.

Kelly and Conway could do this with no hands, no gloves, no hands, hands behind her back, dodge anything. I think there's two ways that you could... There's a lot of ways you could sort of characterize what's a foot there. One could be, she's really bad person because she never answers questions. That's super dishonest. Another could be her job is to avoid... avoid answering questions and she is the best at that. Yes, exactly. And part of it, too,

is the system is set up in a way that we don't punish people for that. We actually, uh, you almost can't fault someone for being good at this kind of dodging because we have created this system that, uh, that allows you to do that and that asks you to do that almost. So, you know, that's like, you know, a lot of what PR and crisis communication and these sort of cable, the cable formats are all about. So what the, yeah, her technique that she is the best at for dodging is the thing that I did at the first, where she'll zero in on a keyword. And then instead of answering your question, she will answer a question using that keyword or talk about something using that keyword. And anyone who's not paying attention will be like, wow, she gave a great

answer. So if you say, what's your policy on Legos, she'd say, you know, what we really need to let go of is this insane policy of letting murderers go free after 10 years or whatever. Yeah, exactly. What we need to let go of is that, yeah. And it's often funny, too, which is, you know, not helpful, That's part of why it works. Well, a lot of the things, the people that do this really well, including her, will often not just play off one word. They'll turn it towards a really, they turn it into a bumper sticker or like a, like a, what might seem like a knockout punch for an argument that wasn't made.

So it'll be, you know, what we need to let go of is the idea that America isn't first. We need to put America first, Shane. Yeah. That's what we need to do. We need to put America. And everyone, like, who kind of came in at the end of that sentence is like, Yeah. What are we talking about again? I guess she's right. I like America. Yeah. And then it turns into hats and say, Lego, my taxes or whatever.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. But it makes sense to just turn off of that one word. And it's like, wait, wait, we were talking about Legos. And suddenly it's like, hey, nobody cares. Now we're talking about America, patriotism. Right. Slow clap, cut to commercial. She's done. She ran out of time. And a good debate will stick to one topic. And this is a classic way of derailing that. Oh, interesting. So she can just sort of, or anybody who's using the con word. word to skip off on one word can turn the whole thing, derail the whole thing. Into a debate about something else. Sure. And that's more comfortable, because if you don't want to talk about, how are we going to

pay for all this? You know what? We're paying right now in the something, something, feelings about this, this other topic that people are passionate about. It's like, well, wait, you still didn't answer how we're going to pay for all this or whatever. The Colbert retort is one that I really like. Yeah, so this has to do with actually, you know, what I just said, that,

sometimes being funny is a really great dodge. So Stephen Colbert's character, when he was on the Colbert Report, he was this obnoxious guy. And when you'd watch him do interviews or debates, usually he's the one asking the questions. Usually he's the one making fun of them and trying to get them to be entertaining. But whenever someone would ask him a question,

he was great at not answering the question by making a joke. He's an incredible comedian. So, yeah, I'm trying to remember exactly what I put with the Legos, but it's like, what's your policy on Legos? And Stephen Colbert, in character, would say, my policy on Legos is never walk around barefoot at night in the dark because I've stepped on at least three Legos and that's how my last marriage ended or whatever. Something like that, yeah. Yeah.

And then everyone's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, right? And then it's no answer. Not going to go, no, but seriously. Right. I hate Legos. Right. You see this a lot in politics. And then you get the cheer, right?

And then, you know, in a political debate or an argument, someone answers in a funny way without answering the question, they get the cheer, they get the laugh and then they move on. You see this a lot. And in fact, we saw this a lot in 2016, where, was I'm backed into a corner, let me make fun of Rosie O'Donnell or call someone fat or like make a really inappropriate remark that gets a rise out of everyone. I mean, even I'm sitting there going, oh man, he just did that. That was ridiculous. Oh, wait a minute. We're not talking about that topic

anymore. Right. Oh, that was the whole point. And I think a lot of people understand this intuitively. And if you don't believe me, go to a high school where somebody gets bullied and then the bully gets called out on being a dumbass or not knowing the answer to a math problem and then goes, So yeah, your mom's so fat. Exactly. And the whole class is like, yeah, Tommy made fun of Shelley again. What an idiot. Yeah.

He's a silly's an idiot. Yeah. Then he kind of learned that right then. And people learn that right then. Bullies especially learned right then that all they have to do is go straight to the throat ad hominem style. And a lot of people will lose track of the conversation. This is maybe a good part to point out that a lot of times we'll do that one or any of these because we don't feel confident in our answer.

Yeah. We either don't know the answer or we know that we're wrong. away or we feel unmatched. And often people will use humor as a way to depressurize tense situations where they do feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable. We don't just do this in a dishonest way. We do this in general, right? Like, things are uncomfortable, so you make a joke to relieve the tension. And I think that's where the intellectual humility thing intersects with this, is if you're in a situation where you're, that's going to be your reaction because you're unmatched, you don't know the answer or whatever, you're in a corner, dodging the question by making a question by making a

a joke, feels like the thing, the natural thing to do, but the better thing to do is to say, I don't have a good answer for that yet, or I don't know the answer to that right now, can I have some time to come back to that? That's really hard to do, but that's that giving, adding that gap between the years, right? And I think the word yet becomes really powerful because it lets you off the hook of having to be perfect, but it also makes you still confident that you're not losing all of your face. You're saying, I will come up with an answer. I will get back to you with an answer, but I don't know yet. So I think that's, that's an important thing to, if you can have that ability to do that, then you don't have to resort to some of these

kind of tricky dodge tactics. Perfect. Well, good. Yeah, I appreciate that. That was, we were taught that in law school. If a judge asks you something and you don't know the answer or a client for that matter, you don't go, well, spitball off my, you go, you know, I'm going to have to research that. I don't actually know the answer to that right now. nobody wants to hear an answer that's wrong. And certainly nobody wants to hear an answer that is not what, like if the judge says, ask you a question and you turn it into a joke,

obviously that is a terrible idea. But if you zero in on a word and then twist it around, you've got about 10 seconds before you start really pissing someone off. Yeah. They've seen this before. Judges are lawyers in general are trained in argument in logic. They might not say, hey, that's the straw man fallacy. but they'll say, just answer the question.

Like, they will not suffer this BS for very long. Interesting, because in most of the time in real life, there's not that judge character to call you up. We have to self-police this. Even Anderson Cooper. I love Anderson Cooper, but he's extensively that judge, but he's not really able to play that role when he's moderating these panels.

But it's interesting that that's an example of where it actually does kind of work because you have someone who's there to zero in on when people are being tricky. Right, exactly. And look, even if a judge misses it, you could just rephrase the question and ask in a different way. And if they say, ask an answer, you can literally, which is the objection to it, a question that you're asking again, you can then just seek clarification. It's going to be really hard to dodge something

in court. That's why you see people who are lying about something say, I don't know. I don't recall it. Because that's the safest way to say, I don't want to tell you this right now, without saying that. Because you can't get away with that either. I don't know. Well, you kind of hit a dead end on that one. That's why, when somebody like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos goes into a deposition and says, I don't know 600 plus times, you know that they are lying because nobody doesn't know that much about their own business, for example. Anyway, moving right. Oh, actually, that leads nicely into the next one, which is the Trump Niziac. Pretend you never even heard of the thing that is being asked.

Yeah. Classic, you know, there's an honest way to do this and a dishonest way to do this. If you don't know or you need more time to think through an answer, saying that, I don't know yet, but I will get back to you, or I want some time to think through this because I'm not satisfied with the answer that I have right now. That's fine. That's being honest.

But the I have amnesia suddenly, you know, no one's ever heard of Legos. What are Legos? I don't know what Legos are. I and no one else in the world has ever heard of Legos. Like, that's the Trumpnesiac. It's insisting that you have no idea

what this thing is, so therefore we shouldn't be talking about it. Particularly dangerous when people can audit things that you've said. So if you're on the board of a company or, as we see now in politics, people get called out on this because I've never even heard of Michael Avanotti or whatever and then it's like, well, if we go back to a tweet

three months ago in a news conference, there's you with that person sitting there or talking about him saying he's a great guy, I love him, we just, we golf all the time. So you can get busted on that. It's harder to do if it's just two friends, but still, maybe the stakes are lower, but people know, right?

People know that you, of course, remember this. The opposite of that kind of is this, as you call it the Trump storm, which is, well, explain what that is, because I think this is. That's where you overwhelm people with information so that they either forget what the question was or it's not worth it

to proceed. This happens a lot of interviews. I think I actually do this sometimes where I know that I do this. I start rambling on the answer to a question and then suddenly I'm way over here. And sometimes that's because that's where the conversation takes it, but sometimes it's because I'm not totally satisfied with this answer,

and I'm sort of BSing my way through it. And then I end up over here where I'm pretty good at talking about this and great. But yeah, the Trump storm is, you know, he asks Trump about Legos and he starts talking about Benghazi and Hillary's emails and his election map and this and that. And it's like, what are we talking about at this point? And you just, you give up. To be fair, this isn't a unique to Donald Trump kind of thing. He's popularized it lately.

But I think you're right. In an interview, this happens. I'll do it a lot where I'll start to ramble and go off on a table. tangent, a good host, for me, it took me years to realize that if somebody was doing this, one, they're not doing it on purpose most of the time, but two, I then have to go, all right, mental note, go back to my original question because this isn't the answer to that question. This is this person flailing in the water. And I really do want to nail this question down.

And I have chosen not to air certain interviews because the person can't actually answer certain questions, but I'm keeping track of that. Whereas like five years ago, six years ago, I would have gone, wow, that was pretty cool. And then you listen again and you go, crap, that guy didn't answer any of my question. But it takes a lot of work. The person who's interviewing or doing the moderating has to track this manually. Right. And it's hard.

Yeah. And in a real conversation, this happened to me in a work setting not terribly long ago, or I asked a question in kind of an exec meeting. And the answer that was given was this scattershot answer about all these other things. And I had to gently, because this was a friend. group kind of bring it back and be like, okay, the question that I really want to know the answer to is this. And then it was second scattershot answer and then a little more firmly the next time. And that was clearly because the person didn't have an answer. Right. And sometimes, yeah,

like doing that in a tactful way can be hard, but that's really important. It doesn't just happen in politics. Did you ever watch Colombo movies when you were a kid? No, I remember my dad watched. Yeah, yeah. Me too. I could probably make it through like 20 minutes of Yeah. But one of the things that he did that he was good at, and I remember seeing this as I got older, or maybe somebody just told me about it. But he was, his thing was, he would go back to the scene, or to the suspect, like 40 times, and ask them these seemingly very trivial questions. So you walked past the desk, you tore off the printer paper with your left hand, and you went back into your office. Yeah, that's it.

Lieutenant Colombo, Wyatt, this is ridiculous. And then he's like, so you walked in and he tore with your left hand. What he did is he never went, you're not telling him. me the truth, he would go, I'm a little slow, explain it to me again. Can you clarify this for me? So I try to pull the Colombo card if somebody's dodging the question because I'll go, sorry, I haven't had my coffee today. I am still not getting it. What exactly did you say the policy was going to do? How exactly were we going to pay for this? I either didn't hear it. I had a brain fart or something. How are we going to pay for this? And you can just see when you ask enough and you're putting the blame on yourself, but here I am. It's my show. Help me. I'm, I'm

useless as a host. Just explain it to me clearly. Speak slowly. You know, explain like I'm five. And then you find out they have no freaking idea the answer to your question. But it's not, it's not their fault. It's all you. Sure. Right. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Shane Snow. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're checking out the show on the Overcast player, please click that little star next to the

episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Shane Snow. Aren't some of these, I know people are going to say, oh, well, the Hiller Reach, the hand attack, the Conward, the Colbert, retort. These are just ad hominem attacks. Isn't this an ad hominum fallacy itself to name these things after these people. It's interesting. I thought about that. And in the second version of the post itself, I updated it to add a little note about that. An ad hominem is where you are making an argument and you're attacking someone personally as a way to discredit their thought or idea. And it's a fallacy because the person and the idea are separate things. So just because you invalidate

this person's personal life doesn't mean that the thing that they think. think is completely invalid. That idea needs to stand or fall on its own. So in other words, just to throw an example out there, you say something like, well, you know, it is wrong for you to have gone into my wallet and taken out my cash. And then I'll say, well, isn't it true that you used to do heroin? And you're like, well, okay, yeah, but that has nothing to do with the fact that you robbed me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or I think that we should, I don't know, we should get Medicare for all. And And they're like, but you had an affair with your wife. Yeah.

Don't listen to that guy. You had an affair with your wife. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. It's the best kind of affair. No, but it's like that sort of thing, right? So that's what an ad hominem attack is.

Naming these dodges after real people who do them isn't the same thing as an ad hominem attack. It's because one, they actually do these things pretty consistently. On camera. On camera. In public. It's like, yeah. It's, you know, it's not nice of me, but it's not also dishonest of me. Right.

So your example that you gave in the article, I think, is, look, if you called fried chicken greasy, not really an ad hominem attack. Granted, fried chicken's not a person, but nobody who's being honest is going to say fried chicken is not greasy, how dare you? It's just, it is. Yeah, my favorite, as an aside, my favorite example of this was when we invented the electric chair. The state of New York invented the electric chair. they asked Thomas Edison for his scientific advice on this thing, and he helped them develop it because he was trying to discredit his rival George Westinghouse, they were in this war for market share or whatever, and he said, you know, electricity is really dangerous if it's Westinghouse's electricity,

so that's what you should use for the electric chair. Also, I heard that the word for being killed with electricity is to be Westinghouseed. It's kind of like the inventor of the guillotine, Mr. Guillotine. They named his, invention after him. So you should name the electric chair and dying from electricity to be Westinghouse. Wow. Which is pretty amazing. It's an example like he was attacking Westinghouse on all sorts of fronts, but that's my favorite example of naming someone after something. In this case, it was a dishonest named to name someone. But it's like calling Colonel Sanders the chicken man, like he's the chicken man. Yeah. Right. And he, in private company, he might go, fine. I don't love it when you call me the chicken man, but it is kind of funny and true. There's something called

the fallacy fallacy, which I wasn't going to cover because it seems too meta. But that, this is a really interesting point because I'll be saying something and go, someone will go, that's a straw man. I'll go, wait, is it? And then we're on this sort of, we're sitting there talking about logical fallacies. And then if you just kind of wipe that all off the table, you go, yeah, but I was still right. Yeah. So we can sit there and debate like which logical flow chart might look like if we drew it out. But what I'm saying is this is correct. Or just because what you see, said includes a fallacy doesn't mean that it's wrong. Yeah. Right, exactly. Just because what you said didn't make the path that you took to get somewhere didn't make sense doesn't mean that that thing

doesn't make sense. So there's not another path to get there to validate that. There's also a thing it's sort of a dodge that if we're having a debate and I say, that's a fallacy, I accuse you of a fallacy. So you're wrong. That's the fallacy fallacy. But also, just because I say it's a fallacy, doesn't mean it's a fallacy. Right. So that can actually be used as a tricky debate tactic as well. Right. So the whole your fallacy or your logical fallacy dot is, which is cool, because you can point

people to their logical fallacies, it's like, well, that's cool, but you also have to tell people how you're getting to your answer. You can't just be like, oh, you called me an a-hole, therefore everything you said is now wrong because you use the ad hominemian fallacy against me. It's like, well, no. We just have to back up to the point before then and then try again. Or you are an a-hole and I'm also right. You just happen to also be an a-hole, right?

So there's only one intellectually honest way to dodge a question, like you said, which is just to say, I don't know or I don't want to answer it. Yeah, right? Yep. Okay. And that's okay. I mean, it's not satisfying sometimes, but that's okay from an honesty standpoint. So logical fallacy, I think we defined further or defined earlier,

which is a logical fallacy is just logic that doesn't make sense when you scrutinize it. And they're dishonest because they take something that doesn't make sense. and they pretend essentially that it makes sense. But it's often done as an accident. And I see this all the time. I think we all do it a lot. So it sort of depends on your intent when you're using logical fallacies. Are you doing it to obfuscate or obscure the fact that you might be wrong and to follow your agenda?

Or are you doing it because it sounded really good and you just haven't thought about it hard enough? And so you're repeating it. Yeah. One is clearly more forgivable than the next. I think there's probably three categories of usage of logical fallacies. One is you're being intellectually dishonest. You know what you're doing. Two is you're lying to yourself.

And that's because you really want whatever it is to be true. And so you're willing to believe the thing that doesn't make sense. And three is you don't know. It's a fallacy. Basically, you're ignorant to it. And that's the most forgivable. Yes. The second one is totally human.

And then third one, you're a piece of shit. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Ad hominem, right? Yeah. So some other logical fallacies I'd love to go over. because ad hominim basically insulting the person, got it. False analogies, I think, are really

interesting. Yeah, that one's a tricky one, because analogies are really useful ways for us to help each other understand things. I use them all the time with the show. So, you know, saying, I feel like crap is an analogy that helps you understand how I feel, right? Maybe it's better for me to say, I feel sad or I feel frustrated or whatever, but analogies are very important for helping us to understand and learn things. False analogy is when the under scrutiny, the analogy does not hold up. And there's a lot of ways that this can happen, but often it's you're overblowing something or you're just equating to things that aren't true. And there's different people who study fallacies write about them, teach them, have different versions of this. They'll call them different names.

But one that you hear a lot is if we could, if we can land a man on the moon, why can't we invent toilets that never clog or whatever? Yeah. Like those are two different things. Right. That analogy is not good. You could, the argument underlying that, you could make another way without a policy, saying we have really advanced technology and we have not advanced the toilet technology in a long time. So my argument is that we should be able to make some progress on this piece of technology. That's a better argument. But you don't even need an analogy for that. Right. It's not that we can't figure out how to make, I make this, I make a joke about that all the time. I'll go to an airport. You know, they have those stupid infrared faucets.

Yeah. And I'm like, where's Elon Musk? You know, we're trying to get to Mars and this stupid faucet turns on for like one second, one second, one second. Soap shooting out 500 times, but I can't get the water to come, or it turns off and it won't turn back on, like, what the hell? So, but it's not like we've had our finest scientific minds on these infrared plates. They probably made it in the 90s. They've changed the shape of it twice, and that's it. Nobody cares.

So the analogy itself doesn't make a lot of sense, and we see this all the time. It's not helpful, yeah. And I think that's maybe the bigger point is false analogies are bad, but often analogies themselves aren't helpful because they're not helping you identify what is the actual problem we're talking about, what's underlying this. So if an analogy helps you understand a problem, if it's accurate, great. But it can only help you understand at a certain level. And so that's where I think a lot of public discourse, a lot of political debate goes really wrong is people use analogies that are so dramatic or funny or whatever that suddenly people hear this

are locked into thinking that the problem that you're really talking about is equal to this thing. And that is really toxic for getting anywhere. It's just trying to prove that you're right. Appeal to authority is probably one of the most common where, and it makes sense. Because we'll say, oh, well, you know, in fact, somebody told me this a long time ago. I was talking about how multi-level marketing is usually going to lose you money. And there are statistics and numbers that show that something like 98.8 something percent of people that invest in an MLM lose money. And somebody, this is years ago, even before the current administration, they go, well, Donald Trump, when he was just known as a wealthy guy, they asked him and he said if he had to make his fortune all over again, he would do direct sales. And it's like, wait a minute. First of all, direct sales is not multi-level marketing. It's totally one's a subset of the other, maybe, if you're lucky. Two, so what? So a guy who's not involved in this business said, by the way, what was compensated to say,

added like an ANWA event, said if he had to do it all over again, he would choose this method of business. Why is that credible in the least? Yeah. When you hold that under a microscope, it doesn't make sense. Where this happens a lot is with quotations from famous people. You know, Gandhi said that you need to obey the speed limit or whatever, right? Like, just because Gandhi said it, even though he was a great dude, and then maybe that's just my opinion, actually. A lot of people don't think so. Even though many people think Gandhi's a great dude and he's an authority figure doesn't mean that everything he says is true.

Right. The person and the idea are separate things. And you could say that if you have two authority figures and one has more experience and expertise and all that and you hold them together, you're more likely to get the right answer from the higher authority, sure. You know, like, God is a higher authority than your boss at Domino's Pizza. So if the two of them have a conflict, pick God or whatever. Like, that's fine. But really the fallacy is that you can't equate. just because it came from some source that that means it's true. And actually, that's

where data is interesting, right? Because data is a much more reliable way to get to something, but it's not just authority that people use this on. We use this on nature, we use this on age and history. Just because something's old doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. Just because something's natural doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. There's lots of counter examples of old things and natural things

and authorities that are wrong about things or that are worse than things before. So, yeah, that's a fallacy just because it's connecting to things that shouldn't necessarily. be connected, even if you could say that there's more of a predictive chance that something that comes from an authority is true. It doesn't make it true. Right. And that's, that's hand-in-hand with appeal to age, like you mentioned before. I have 30 years of experience. My plan is better. Well, that may be true, but one thing doesn't necessarily cause the other 100% of the time.

But you're throwing that out there because you want me to agree with you. Something in between these two things is why the idea is actually better, right? And in there is all this intellectual territory to explore that you just skip over by appealing to authority. Appeal to emotion is one that we see a lot now as well, where somebody just decides, screw it, I've kind of lost this. I don't think it's a conscious thought, but they screw it, I'm losing this, I'm just going to get really upset, get really angry, start crying, whatever it is. Yeah, it's a dirty way to win an argument that if it just, if you tip the scales because

someone's gotten emotional, then you're not really using logic to weigh whether this thing is right or wrong. One of my favorites recently is something called sloganeering, where just because what you say sounds catchy doesn't make it true. And this is, I've been loving just kind of dismantling the self-help BS that I see out there. So Instagram has a ton of this. But sort of all these self-help guru people, I was trying to find a more colorful word, but I'm going to not do that. They have these bumper stickers where they're like, the strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent. with how we define ourselves.

Wow, there's a lot of really powerful sounding words in there. Right. What does it mean? It could mean nothing. It could mean nothing, and it's also really absolute sounding. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

The secret to an extraordinary life is to demand more from yourself than anyone else could possibly expect. Raise your standards. Is that the secret to an extraordinary life? Let's define extraordinary life. There's so many things that just don't have any sort of definition in there. But when you read it, you go, yeah. And then you just forget it immediately.

because it's meaningless, but you like the effect that that slogan has on you. If it has alliteration or rhyme and is saying something as if it's an absolute truth, that's a tip-off. If something scares you and move towards it, that's a classic example of a really bad idea. Yeah, yeah, shark. Yeah. Oh, you know what? I'm really scared of it. Well, I didn't mean that.

I meant something that scares you in a certain kind of way. Okay, well, why didn't you say that? Well, it doesn't fit in my Instagram picture with me sitting in a carri. A lot of them are also these juxtapositions, like, If you've failed a plan, you've planned to fail. Oh, those are my, that's a good one. Very good. And that's actually probably pretty good advice in many cases,

but it's not absolute advice. It's slogan-eering. Yeah, it's, in some cases, actually taking the time to plan means that you're going to fail. Sure. Right? Like, as shark being another example, once again, sharks coming at you.

If you fail to plan, when you see the shark, then you might have swam away. Sure. Yeah. I mean, these things are sort of rooted. some of them, most of them maybe, in a bit of wisdom, but they're so vague because they're designed to sound good and be memorable. And if you ever go to a self-help seminar of any kind, have you ever

done one of those things? Any kind of seminar? I've ended up at things. So half the time they can only speak almost exclusively in these slogans. So when people leave, they're just like, wow, that was amazing. I just, oh, there's so many things. I have so many notes. But then you go, hey, what did you learn? And they're like, well, if you fail to plan, you plan to face. And it's like they don't even know what they learned. They just feel good about having heard that. Or they clap because it's like, wow, that sounded so clever. And it's like, well, was there any beef in that burger?

Or did that person just answer the other person's really well-rounded argument with a cool rhyming slang? Yeah. And if that's what's going on, you need to kind of back up and go, wait a minute. Was that the answer to the other question or did it just sound kind of cool? Yeah. So an example that I used in this post that I really liked is it almost went wrong. is again Obama. At one of the debates

when he was running for president the first time, someone asked one of the other guys who was well known to believe in aliens. So what's your thing about aliens or whatever? And the guy gave this

kind of kooky answer. He obviously didn't win the election. And then the host was like, okay, Mr. Obama, do you believe in alien life? And he said, I don't know. All I know is that there's a lot of people on this planet that need help.

And everyone cheers. And it's funny. And it's like, okay. But then he went on to actually like address and because he said, I don't know the answer to this, it ended up being okay. But if he just said, I believe there's a lot of people on this planet that need help or whatever, you're getting the laugh, you're getting the meme, but you're not actually answering the question. And it's actually, so that's an example of a dodge, potentially, but there's

also this sloganeering thing in because you dodged using a clever statement that made people feel satisfied. Sure. Okay. This makes sense. And people often employ fallacies to support their viewpoints because of what is called motivated reasoning. And you mentioned that before. Look, I want to be right about this because my platform is based on this and my nonprofit is based on this or my agenda is based on this. So I'm going to use fallacies and let those slide while maybe mercilessly calling out the other side for doing the same thing. Yep. And so we have to be careful of our own motivated reasoning that might happen when we, when we're arguing about something. It's a really human thing. Yeah, really human thing. I think for me, this

has been an interesting exercise in trying to change my outlook on life to one of seeing myself as the kind of person who is continually learning and growing and unlearning, and that being my goal. So therefore, that making it okay for me to decide that something I believe before wasn't true, because that will help me to not have this motivated reasoning. But until I started thinking of myself more as that kind of person that that's what I'm about is the learning and growth, then it was a lot easier to, you know, I was accused early in my writing career of doing this thing called shooting the barn, which is, it's where you're target practicing, you go to the barn, you shoot a bunch of holes in the barn, and then you draw the target around where you

shut. Oh, interesting. I like that. Yeah. And I think that was a bad habit that I had early in my career as a researcher and writer, and it was because I was motivated to find a certain answer. and when I change my thing is, oh, no, am I motivated by finding the right answer and by unlearning and learning, and that's okay because that's part of my identity, made it easier to

go down a path, realize it was wrong, and then go down another path. Right. So if your identity is, I just want to find the truth of the matter, or I want to get down to brass tax and figure out what the actual cause of XYZ is, that's better than, I'm a good researcher who understands things deeply, because then on one, you can't really be wrong, because then it screws with your identity. Right. But on the other one, it's fine if you're wrong. You should be wrong.

Hey, great, I'm wrong, which means I uncovered something I didn't know before, which enhances my expertise. Therefore, I'm just as good at finding the truth because, look, I found the truth. Turns out it was wrong. That's a better target for you to have than to be, I'm right all the time. It's kind of like how every season I've lost, you found out at the end of the season that it's really, the show's really about something else. You know, the show, like, annoyed a lot of people.

But it's kind of like that. It's like we keep getting bigger and better because the lens is changing and that's part of the fun rather than, oh, no, I'm not going to watch this show anymore. Or I'm done because the lens has changed. So the next section of your article is deception. And there's a lot to this. I mean, there's exaggerating. There's hiding and denying conflict of interest and whatever you're arguing for. You know, you're working for the big tobacco company.

But you've got a scientific study that shows smoking is not harmful, whatever. Inflating credentials, that's sort of self-explanatory. claiming the jury is still out on established facts, which is kind of climate change denial 101. Hey, there's this weird fringe of like, air quotes, scientists that are kind of not sure about this. But then you look at their work and it's like, well, I didn't really study that. I studied this. So it's like, it happens in business all the time when someone doesn't want. It's like, okay, data says that we should make this decision.

And someone says, well, we don't have enough data yet. but you do. You do. And that kind of thing happened a lot in my business where we are pretty sure we should do something, but someone will bring up, well, you know, we're not entirely 100% sure. And sometimes you can never get to 100% sure because in business or in life, you're trying to make a good prediction and then you have to go down the path in order to find out whether it's the right path.

But using that as a way to get out of talking about the truth or what you should do, or denying the truth, saying the jury's still out as a way to refute that 90% of the data is in, that's dishonest. Of course. And claiming an issue is settled when it's not. It's kind of the converse of that, right? It goes hand in hand with assuming facts not in evidence. Yes.

Where someone might go, everyone knows that Shane Snow doesn't pay his taxes. So people that are watching or listening might go, well, I didn't know that. But if everyone else knows, then I guess I'm just the one person who didn't know that. And it's like, wait a minute, that's a trick designed to get you to think that you're the only one who maybe didn't know that. Or to just go, oh, yeah, I knew that. As a lawyer, there's no way you could get away with that. You could never get away with that. If you go to, in front of a jury, you wouldn't even get there.

The judge would never allow you to do that. The judge would be like, whoa. And if somehow the judge was asleep, the other lawyer would say, hey, that fact is not an evidence. Yeah, it would be an objection immediately. And then it would be stricken from the record. The jury would be instructed to forget that they even heard that. And you can, if you do that too much during a trial, you can get a mistrial because they, you're deliberately trying to do things to persuade the jury that are not allowed in court

because it's unfair. Yeah. Yeah, you know, the, the, assuming things are settled when they're not, or saying, talking like they are, one of the ways this happens in everyday life is when people say things like, we all agreed that X. And so now we're going to do this. Right. When everyone didn't agree or a lot of people agreed, but it actually isn't settled,

but you're using this as a way to move on without having to include other viewpoints. This is a way that, you know, inclusion goes badly or doesn't happen. The other thing I'd say on that one is right now, egregious example of that, is the Mueller report comes out and the line says, this does not exonerate the president, and the president says, I've been totally exonerated, let's move on. Right. Be honest about that.

You know, there's a lot of complexity there, but saying it's so hard that this is done and it's over, when it clearly said it's not, that is completely dishonest. Yeah, of course. And we saw Bill Clinton do similar fudging the definition of words where he's like, well, it depends on what your definition of is. Oh, yeah, jury's still out on the word is. Yeah. It's like, no, I'm pretty sure that only in this case where you don't want to admit that you had

sexual misconduct, is there any sort of question about what's going on? Right. Being vague, deliberately misrepresenting or misinterpreting or skewing data is really common. I'm blowing through these because I feel like the audience is pretty. smart. They don't need, being deliberately vague, we've all seen this happen. Misinterpreting data happens all the time. And this is particularly dangerous. We saw, I think it was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who said something like, there are 21 trillion dollars unaccounted for by the Pentagon or in accounting errors. And Medicaid is only

$64 trillion for the whole country. We could have had one-third of Medicaid all paid for and done if the Pentagon would just learn how to account better. And it's like, hold the hell on. that's not with that 21 trillion figure means. That's not what that 64 trillion figure means. And you can't just plug these two simple-sounding things together and be like, you know, wash your hands of the idea that this, if you just plug that into that, it would have been fine. It's like, that's not how this works.

Yeah, like if your math teacher would not grade you correct on that, right? Which is an example of, and the reason that this works, this happens in debate and why it works is because people don't check. Like, these things happen in real time. we're not adding space to actually look at it. And the unfortunate thing is once an idea gets lodged in your brain, it's a lot harder to dislodge it than it is to, you know, lodge it. So it's like people that have heard that first thing when they hear the retraction

or the correction that the New York Times print is about, hey, these numbers are totally misleading. It's too late. People already believe, well, there's something there. Right. And then, of course, it mutates, right? Because someone who hears that goes, oh, one third of the Medicaid by, budget has been wasted by the defense department. And then you hear, oh, the defense department, and then there's some knucklehead with the conspiracy theory goes, the defense department is

deliberately losing money so that poor people die. Yeah. Or like have to get their medical care from joining the army. That's how, and then it just turns into this thing. And if you just sort of backtrack, you go, oh, so somebody misspoke or like didn't bother to look up the full facts. And now dot, dot, dot, the Pentagon's trying to convince poor people to join the army. Otherwise, they'll not make progress. We're talking about the wrong things. My favorite example of this and my phone example of my personal life is I started a startup company about 10 years ago. A couple years in, we raised a couple million dollars from investors.

And I gave an interview to Business Insider, I think it was, someone like that. I don't want to malign them if it wasn't them. It was some business blog like that. And I talked about in that interview how my bank account got down to like, 42 cents right before we raised money. And I was running on credit cards. And the headline that they printed was, Shane Snow starts out with 42 cents is now a millionaire. Oh, man. And you're like, first of all. Neither of those things are true. Neither of those things are true. Yeah. Unfortunately, right? Like, I like that story, but unfortunately, I still only have 42 cents. That's maybe an

example of a mistake versus a deception. Sure. No, it's fine. But I feel like the deception, somebody who's in charge of writing the article or the headline was like, you know what, this sounds This is clickbaiting enough. One that I really like that I'd love for you to explain is rejecting facts as mere opinion. That's more popular now than ever. And it's really annoying because it's Dr. Drew, and I've brought this example up on the show, Dr. Drew Pinsky said he will go and give talks at colleges. This is a medical doctor with like 30 years of clinical experience.

Is well-known, well-spoken, very, very smart guy. He'll go give a talk to like incoming freshmen at Dartmouth or whatever. And someone will go, stand up and raise their hand and go, I disagree with you on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, STD, sexually transmitted disease or substance abuse thing. And he'll just kind of pause and take a deep breath because he's going, you know, in his head he's going, I have 30 years of experience. I am a doctor. You're an incoming freshman who has yet to take a single college level biology course. And you disagree with my actual medical, scientifically validated opinion based on facts, because. Because you just don't like the sound of it or something.

Oh, that's so interesting because it's almost an example of the appeal to authority or experience thing, right? Just because he has that doesn't mean he's right. But all that experience, what that includes underneath all that is he has the scientific data to back up these things, right? And so it's a, you know, I could see a college student who knows their fallacies being like, well, just because you are like something muckety-muck doesn't mean. But Dr. Drew is drawing from actual facts. Right. And what he could do also is say, fine, I'm not going to play the doctor card. Jordan, please go to PubMed, which is where they keep medical stuff.

Look up this study that shows that what I'm saying is correct and has nothing to do. This guy who's stating this opinion, let's Google that on any website. And it shows up on like the truth about vaccines.com. Right. Right. And it's like, okay, you're just wrong. This is a troubling thing about the world now is this whole alternative facts thing. you hear people who are frustrated with finding the actual truth and what facts are facts and people throw up their hands and say there's no such thing as facts anymore, facts are all opinions,

that's not true, that itself is a fallacy. And it's tough because it's hard to dig down to the truth, but that's what all this is about. It does not help for us to be dishonest on the way to getting to the truth by saying that facts are opinions, or that that's just my opinion is that that's not true. That doesn't help us get to the truth. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, look, in the worksheet, we're going to craft some scripts for you from the piece, how to get discussions back on track. You've got a lot of literal scripts where it's like, look, if you spot a fallacy and in a discussion that you're seeing with somebody or if somebody's being deceptive by accident or deliberately, here's what you say to back things up. And one game that I encourage everyone to play after this show now is when you're watching the news on TV, cable especially, or when you're reading something, or when you're watching someone give a talk.

or debate of any kind. Try to spot the deception, try to spot the logical fallacies, and try to spot a lot of what we discussed here today, the intellectual dishonesty. It doesn't mean they're a bad person. It doesn't mean they're doing it on purpose. But looking for these weaknesses in argument will make you so much smarter in every area of your life. It's really, really great to be able to do this because it makes you better at arguing and it makes you better at seeing through things that might not be true or might even be designed to trick you in the first place. That's good for everyone.

Shane, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun. I also want to do some YouTube-only content, Shane. So, of course, if you're listening to this as a podcast, go to our YouTube channel. Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube will forward you to the channel. There'll be a YouTube-only video with some dirty debating techniques and how to get around those from Shane.

Great big thank you to Shane Snow. We'll link to that mega post where he talks about intellectual dishonesty here. the show notes. Coming away from the show, you should have a nice little primer here on when and how to spot people who are trying to mislead you. Some of this is not deliberate, of course, but most of the time, much of the time, I should say it is. And so when we're able to spot that from TV pundits, politicians, and things like that, we come away better equipped to defend ourselves and figure out how our ideas stack up to theirs, whether or whether they're even projecting their ideas or not. We'll also be able to spot our own arguments when we're doing

things wrong when we're being intellectually dishonest when we're switching to those ad hominem attacks or rationalizations or straw man arguments it's a really a great skill set to have i've sort of become a little bit obsessed with this lately having bought these posters and a deck of cards and logical fallacies and cognitive bias and so when i go through this deck of cards when i hear an argument and i know something's wrong but i can't think of the fallacy i will shuffle through that deck and find it and it's helped me become a much better arguer and understander of arguments as well if you want to know how I managed to book all of these great folks and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits. I'll teach you those tiny habits and those systems for free in six minute networking.

That's a free course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And I know you think you'll do it later, but you got to dig the well before you're thirsty. Once you need relationships, you are too late. This stuff takes six minutes a day, hence the name. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. It is not fluff. It is crucial. And it's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Shane Snow. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Survivor Bias de Philippo and Jen Harbinger.

Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast.

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