Scott Adams argues that words (not abstract private 'thoughts') directly determine actions, habits, character, and destiny—an insight he links to how large language models show thought as word-patterns. He presents reframing (changing word frequency/arrangement) and hypnosis as practical methods to reprogram behavior (e.g., replace fear-based words with curiosity). Adams applies this idea to social issues, coining a 'glass imitation ceiling' to describe how teachings about oppression can block role-model imitation for some Black youth, and he suggests solutions must be developed internally within the affected community.
Chapters
There we go. And Lao Tzu said many years ago, he said, watch your thoughts because your thoughts become words. Watch your words because your words become actions. Watch your actions because they become habits. Habits become your character, and your character is destiny. Now I'm going to update this. Lao Tzu was a very smart guy, apparently, but he was smart before we discovered how to make AI work. So there's something we have to update on this. Words and thoughts, turns out, are the same thing. Whoops. So AI taught us the large language models that all you have to do is look at the pattern of words, and if you applied the right technology to it, just the word use alone would produce intelligence. But before that, we imagined we had some kind of reason and thoughts and stuff that was independent from our words. But AI kind of put the light of that, which is something, by the way, hypnotists have known forever. Hypnotists know that the words, what are activating you, the thoughts, are really word combinations because we think in words, right? Your thoughts, right now, your private thoughts are in words. If you were to change those words, what would happen? Well, if you change the words. So I'm going to treat words and thoughts as one thing, because AI taught us that, right? So if you change your words, you're going to change your actions, because that's how you're built. That's the only way it can work. The things you do are literally based on the frequency and combination of words in your programmer, your head, your brain. So to reprogram a person from something suboptimal to something that they would want, all you do is change the frequency and arrangement of words. Do you know what this is called? If you change the frequency and arrangement of words, and what you're doing is trying to change somebody's actions, what's that called? Wordsmithing? No. Reframing? Yes. Could be hypnosis. That's exactly what hypnosis is. Hypnosis is not a lot of people, if they watch movies, they think it's about the. Watch this clock. They think it's about the voice of the hypnotist. It's not the voice. It's not the mannerisms, although those are helpful parts of the process. It's actually the frequency and the arrangement of words. That's hypnosis. That's it. That's enough to change somebody's entire brain and their actions, their habits, their character, and then their destiny. So if you could optimize the words in your head, blah, blah, blah, Let me give you a real concrete Example the other day, I was showing this to somebody and the person said that they were working on a problem, they had a fear of rejection, right? They were considering doing something. It was somebody considering an action which would have been almost certainly good for them, right? A very obvious, you know, just really obvious thing to do that would be good for you, but couldn't get the action, right because of a fear of rejection. That, ladies and gentlemen, is word poisoning. You say to yourself, well, there's some bad thoughts there. No, words are thoughts. Words and their combinations, their frequency is your thoughts. There's no difference. Once you get that, you unlock this power. Until you understand that your words are a programming language that you can change on your own, you don't have access to the stack, right? And then what I heard the person say to me, fear of rejection. I had this thought, I don't use that word for anything. Anything. I'm never going to let that word in my head. When I heard it, I like, I recoiled. I recoiled. The actual word hurt me. I was like, shit. I don't want that in my head. I will never use that word because I don't want to stop myself from acting. Do you know what I say in those situations? This is going to be great. This would be great. Because keep in mind that in all of the situations I'm talking about, mine or anybody else's, people know what they're supposed to do. Am I right? Don't people almost always know what they're supposed to do? It's just hard to do it. And the reason it's hard is because you don't have your words right. You. If the word in your head is the word rejection, you're not going to do this. Whatever it is. If the word in your head is, this is going to be great, this will be exciting. This will be interesting. By the way, curiosity is one of the best replacement words. If you have some negative words and you want the easiest way to replace them, replace them with curiosity words. I wonder what's going to happen. Well, this will be interesting. I am fascinated about how today is going to turn out. You put those words in your head, you're going to act. You put the R word in your head. I'm not even going to say it again because it's such a damaging word. Or the F word. F A, I L. Nope, not when I say it's not in my vocabulary, I mean that I have consciously made sure that if it comes up, it's not about me. I'm talking about A system failure or something like that. All right, so how many of you are sold on this as a good way of understanding the world? Just give me a halfway point. Is this a good way to understand what you see? I think most of you say yes. Got one now. So now I'm going to. So hold on to this thought that words, not thoughts, words are what unlock habits. Okay? Words. And the combination of words is the only thing that unlocks habits. Not thoughts, just the words. If you don't get that, you don't get anything. Right. Now let's explain the world. This, by the way, would apply to other people more generally. But I'm going to give you a specific problem. So we have a problem. Let's say you're. Let's say you're a black kid and you want to succeed in this world. And you want to do it the way everybody succeeds. The way everybody succeeds is they imitate people who have successful patterns. So you look for somebody who's succeeding and you say, what are you doing to succeed? And then you try to do that. That's how everybody does it. Everybody, everywhere. Now, every once in a while, you might produce a Steve Jobs, right? Steve Jobs does seem magical. It's like he was inventing things that other people copied. Now, I don't think he actually invented anything, but he was better at noticing patterns. So he might be like a real exception where he's inventing patterns as opposed to following them. But the rest of us follow. We would follow him, right? She'd say, what did you do? All right, let's do more of that. But because we have an industry that tells you that, well, these all have something in common, the dei, the crt, the esg. One thing they have in common is the words that there were slaves, there is systemic racism, there's black and there's white, and that there is a oppressor class and an oppressed class. Those would be, you know, that's an example of the words, right? So don't think too hard about the specific words. But you would agree that all of these ideas, these concepts are built on words. You agree so far. It's a word related set of thoughts, as everything is. So these are not uniquely about words. Any three letter concepts I put here would also be supported by their sets of words. These sets of words create what I call the glass imitation ceiling, meaning that if you're a young black kid and you're asked to imitate successful people, you're going to be looking at the people that you have been Taught are your oppressors. Who can do that? Who could imitate their oppressors? I couldn't. If you said the only way you can succeed is by imitating your oppressors or a life of crime, I'd pick the crime. I would. I'm just being honest. If you put me in that same situation, the mental, emotional impact of having to imitate my oppressor, there's just no way I'd do it. I would take up a life of crime before I did that. So that's the situation you're putting black kids in. And again, if anybody's new to me, I'm never talking about all black kids. I'm never talking about all white people anything. I'm never talking about all black people anything or all anybody anything. People are amazingly different from each other. But this is just a good conceptual framework. So here's what I think has to be fixed. Black Americans have an imitation ceiling. They simply can't do the things that other people would do. But the tools are all there. The tools are there. I mentioned my book how to Fail. Almost Everything is still win big. My new one that is also coming out think this week if the last technical parts work with the online publishing. But those would be two examples of books that would tell anybody how to succeed because I've organized the words in the books to make that happen. The books are also hypnosis in the sense that they're built. They're built to be persuasive as well as, you know, utilitarian. So how do you fix this? I'm going to tell you, I have no idea. I have no idea how to fix it. The only thing I'm sure of is that it has to be fixed by the people who are involved, which is not me. This is something that can't be fixed from the outside. No matter how good your intentions are, no matter how good your skill is, and no matter anything, it doesn't matter how many resources you have, there are some things that have to be fixed from the inside. And I feel like every time you put outside pressure on a group that's already in a, say, victim and oppressor model, that outside pressure, depending on who it comes from, let's say it comes from somebody like me, is it helping? I don't know. I don't have a good argument that would say it would help, might actually make it worse. So somehow black America needs to figure this out. How do they either create enough black successful people or stories about them so that young black kids have lots of role models that they can imitate, but this is the basic setup. You don't know how much your problem is systemic racism until you deal with the fact that people are not pursuing individual success because they feel like it's denied to them or where it would be unpleasant to copy somebody. So that's my understanding of the world. Did it help?
