ce. This is just an objective statement of fact. But if you don't like those facts, you're going to do everything you can to scrub them out of the AI. So super intelligence will be whatever the people in charge decide sounds intelligent.

How many of you know that I invented a word years ago that became literally part of the vocabulary? Now, many of you have not heard it, but if you were to Google it, you'd see that I think it's in Wikipedia now, and it's defined as the word is confusopoly. Confusopoly. So it's where companies offer products that are so complicated you can't compare it to the competition. For example, if you wanted to buy insurance, would you really spend all the time to see, all right, well this one does this and this one will solve that? You don't really. So you kind of buy whatever insurance you encounter first. What if you wanted to get cell phone service? For years it's been kind of impossible to know which one to pick. Well, all right. This one costs a little bit more but they've got different plans, and this one I can get a free phone for my family member, and it's just too complicated.

So the reason they do that is that they're in a commodity business. Insurance is insurance, or it could be, and phones are phones or they could be. So they have to pretend that they're different and they do that by confusing you and essentially removing your incentive to really find out which one would be better for you. So you end up saying, "Well, the Verizon store is the closest one, so I'll just get that. I can't tell which one's better." But I noticed that politics has become a confusopoly. Meaning that the people who are like you, if you're watching this podcast, you're probably in the top 2% of people who follow the news and try to understand the nuance of it. There can't be more than 2%.

How many of you have had the experience of bringing up something that's just really well understood and talking to somebody who never heard of it once? So recently I did a conversation with Jordan Peterson and of course that was really kind of one of the highlights of my career because I have a high opinion of his skills and intellect and what he's added to the world. So I wanted to brag about it to the people I know in real life. And let me tell you how that experience goes. So you know Jordan Peterson, right? Who? Jordan Peterson. You've heard of him, right? No. Never heard of him. Okay. Seriously, you've never heard of Jordan Peterson? Nope. And that's the end of my conversation because it's not going to impress anybody that I talked to somebody they never heard of.

Now that applies to almost every story in the news. Now it's all a little too complicated. So the only people I can talk to about it are the very few people who follow this stuff, like most of you. But in person, one person in 20 you know might be following the news closely so that they've made their way through the confusing part to understand something about what's going on. But as I've said, complexity always hides fraud. Complexity always hides fraud. So if you look at our government and you realize I don't even understand how they do budgeting like what there's a rescission package and it has to go to the house and then the senate and then back to the house and then back to the I don't what's going on and is it 10 years or one year and is it making the budget worse or better? You can't tell. It's like impossible.

So what do people do instead? They default to rule of thumb kind of how do you feel? And usually that means, well, I've always been a Democrat, so I guess I'm one now. Well, I've always been a Republican, so I guess I'll agree with what Trump says. But we are not even close to being able to understand what's happening because both sides like to make it confusing. Trump is sort of the master at simplification. So that's one of the reasons he broke through.

But let me give you a little persuasion lesson. Everybody up for a little lesson. So this will be kind of a actually it's more of a lesson than how to predict. So those of you who have been watching me for a while might say, "Scott, how do you make predictions that are so uncanny and better than anybody who ever predicted?" Which, by the way, I think is actually true. And the answer is talent stack. So somewhat by coincidence and a little bit by design, I have exactly the set of skills that one would need to make good predictions. Now that doesn't mean I'm magic or awesome. It just means I happen to blunder into a bunch of domains that happen to be good for predicting.

For example, if you understand persuasion, it would be easier to have seen Trump coming because he's a master persuader. But if you didn't know, you would just think he's a big old crazy clown. So skill number one is hypnosis and or persuasion. If you understand those, you can predict the future because you can see who is likely to be persuaded by what. Do you remember when AOC first burst on the scene and Republicans wanted to slap her down and say bad things about her and I said, "Oh no, you don't see this one coming. This is a persuasion monster." So yeah, she doesn't have much substance, but she has a big game. And now the Democrats are wondering if she's going to be their next presidential candidate. So it was easy to predict if you understood persuasion. If you were looking at the facts, you'd say, "Well, she's not nearly experienced enough and her policies don't make sense." And you might have said that about Muhammad Ali too. But he's persuasive.

Another thing is if you have experience in big organizations which as the author of Dilbert you know that I do, two big organizations, a bank and then a phone company, but any big organization still has a lot of things in common such as ass covering and self-interest and marketing and stuff like that. So I would argue that if you're part of a big organization or ever have been, you can make better predictions about what any big organization will do. Do you remember when Gavin Newsom said to the people who wanted reparations, "Hey, why don't you go study that, form a study group, and come back with a recommendation?" And I told you, oh, I've seen this play before. It's a big organization play where the top guy or woman doesn't want to make a decision. So they know they can just put it off forever by sending you back to study it. So I could predict that he was just kicking the can down the road because I had big company experience.

Economics, I have a background in economics and an MBA. So when I say follow the money or it doesn't look like that could ever make sense economically, it allows you to predict if you understand how money and economics and profitability and all that stuff works. CapEx for example. And then I don't have any legal background but once you learn enough about how laws are created you can kind of logically guess all right you know I think I can predict how this is going to go without being a lawyer.

So you saw some of the news today or yesterday, I guess, that a judge said that we would not be able to see the grand jury testimony. Now, how did I predict that we would not be allowed to see it even though the administration asked for it? Well, I don't know much about the law, but I know kind of the general concepts, and one of them is that the grand jury is not reliable enough. It's not a place where facts are determined. That's where the regular trial would be that. So you don't want to let people's hearsay and opinions and stuff get into the world if they're not really confirmed. It'd be a big problem.

So persuasion, let's say hypnosis, big organization experience, economics, and just understanding how the laws generally work without the details allows you to make predictions. The reason I thought of this is because the judge that denied access to the Epstein sealed transcripts from the grand jury said quote that her hands are tied. Her hands are tied. Do you remember what I taught you about hypnosis? Hypnotists are taught, at least I was. I don't know. Maybe your mileage might vary, but I was taught that people will say exactly what they're thinking. Their inner thoughts will be revealed by their choice of words when they're speaking extemporaneously, like just off the t