The Psychology of Persuasion 🧠

6-Principles to Influence and Control every encounter.

Take Back Your Control 👊🏽

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SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

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The subconscious mind is the master of your reality. It is the man behind the curtain and the instinct in your blood.

It is more responsible for you, than your conscious mind. Humans are often a byproduct of their environment during infancy, this is when their subconscious mind is most malleable. This explains why John Locke's Blank Slate theory (Tabula rasa) is so widely accepted.

We are a “blank slate” at birth and people write the first initial lines for us, whether they realize it or not. I’ve always thought of the subconscious mind as your starting software. They are your thoughts that stem directly from God himself.

He’s implemented you with basic software, and that software adapts to its forever changing environment. Subconscious thoughts are different from the conscious because you can’t simply explain them away like you could a rational conscious thought.

Your environment won’t be the same forever, so your subconscious won't be the same either. In the beginning stages of life, it repeats what has been written on the “slate” since birth.

10 Lessons I Learned While Working With William O’Neil (Thread)

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1. The importance of trading psychology and emotional/physical well-being

Trading psychology and physical/emotional well-being is probably one of the least discussed, yet most important aspects of becoming a successful trader.

However, the large majority of traders spend little time if any focusing on this aspect of their trading and instead, dedicate their time to methodology, technique, and “special indicators.”

Start by taking good care of your physical and emotional health.

This means getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising, etc.

Next, pick up a couple of books and study trading psychology. Two excellent books on this subject are, “Trading in the Zone,” by Mark Douglas and “The Psychology of Trading,” by Brett Steenbarger

2. The importance of sound rules to avoid emotional decision making.

Having a sound set of rules that are proven to work is essential to success in the stock market. Why is this so important? Two words. Human nature.

Four years ago this month, there was an uproar among analysts (and the public) about whether Cambridge Analytica was a PSYOP. The word is triggering; it tends to get people animated, makes people think of conspiracy theories, implies a grand master plan, shadowy operators, etc.

I have a good memory of that. What's happening now re: QAnon and whether it was a PSYOP and by whom is comparable. And it's a pointless debate. Any operation that 1) does target audience analysis, 2) deploys messaging against audiences, 3) tries to alter behavior, is a PSYOP.

The origin of this particular operation is complicated, networked, and muddied by people who wish to both claim and disclaim it. But it is functionally a PSYOP, has borrowed from that heritage, and can be analyzed in those terms. Miss me with claims to the contrary.

Researchers, journalists, and historians need to get to the bottom of how it evolved (and it did evolve, vs. a unified top-down plan), and we can do that if we work in good faith together. But we have to accept the fact that these kinds of operations are now commonplace.

It also helps to use the lens of emergence; information ops evolve, and incorporate DNA from everything that has come before: LARPs, ARGs, PSYOPs, the general public's participation + gullibility. In that context, one doesn't need top-down orchestration, necessarily.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002.

His book Thinking Fast & Slow distills his work on human decision making. In doing so, it highlights both the brilliance & limitations of the human mind.

Here’s a summary.

🧵 Thread 🧵

Kahneman begins by introducing the mind’s two modes of thought.

System 1 is automatic, fast, unconscious & effortless.

System 2 is deliberate, slow, conscious & effortfull.

The first accounts for around 95% of all our mental processing. The second, 5%.

To operate efficiently, System 1 uses shortcuts to produce “good enough” solutions whilst expending as little time & energy as possible.

This creates imperfections in human decision making that economists, and their rational-agent perspective, rarely account for.

Here’s 12:

01: Priming

System 1 is an associative machine. When presented with a word such as “lime”, it will easily generate others, such as “green” or “sour”.

This makes us susceptible to priming, in which a common association is invoked to move us in a given direction.

02: Cognitive Ease

System 1 welcomes information which is more easily processed.

Cognitive ease can arise from repetition and simplicity. Even falsehoods will be accepted if they are simple and familiar enough to be effortlessly processed.