Persuasion – Page 5 – understand-culture

“… an idiot could lead”

“I’m looking for companies which an idiot could lead.” Warren Buffett. May 2015.

Buffett is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. With an estimated $72.7 billion he is estimated to be the third-wealthiest person in the world.

The majority of that wealth is in Berkshire-Hathaway, the investment firm he founded and leads. Stocks in Berkshire are the most expensive in the world.

His formula for successful investing: He looks to buy stocks in companies that are so successful that an idiot could run them. For sooner or later one will. Buffett has a few basic rules. One is investing in companies whose business model is immediately and intuitively understood.

“a tremendous whack”

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.” This statement is attributed to Winston Churchill, whose mother was an American.

Bill Clinton. Aretha Franklin.

From Merriam-Webster: a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident. Synonyms: story, tale.

The artful placement of an anecdote is key to being persuasive in the American culture. Stories are convincing. They speak to our experience. Storytelling. Great leaders in business, politics, culture know how to speak to the imagination of their audience. Listen to former President Bill Clinton speak at the funeral service for Aretha Franklin:

Opportunities in Problems

Americans recognize that problems are an inescapable part of life. Physicist Albert Einstein said that “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Americans, practical and optimistic, believe that “every cloud has a silver lining,” that there’s a “light at the end of every tunnel.” They see a half-full glass which others view as half-empty.

Instead of dwelling on the problem as such, Americans quickly begin the search for opportunities hidden in a given problem. Difficult situations often require making difficult choices. To be persuasive is to demonstrate that you have searched for and identified an opportunity.

Future

When the search term future is keyed in on Amazon.com, 134,329 search results are generated. Some titles found from the search include the following: Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz, and The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau.

“Super common with this breed”

The vet should have stopped after she got the dog-owner to accept the first three. Here are some funny comments:

“for anyone who thinks that eye removal joke is an exaggeration my mom’s yorkie almost had her eyes removed by the vet after years of treatment when another vet cured them easily with some drops and a cream”

“Sounds surprising similar to the last time I took my car in to the mechanic for a “general check-up.”

“When my dog started to have trouble walking the vet touched his belly for like one minute and told me he only has 3 months to live. Charged me $80 for it. He did die 3 months later tho so thanks for the heads up”

Forward Movement

In the United States, maintaining forward movement is critical to success. Americans purposely set high goals, hoping to “stretch” themselves. And although mistakes will be made, Americans see greater progress in learning from them than in setting modest goals. To be persuasive in the American context means to propose large steps forward and a vision of the future.

Americans say “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” The 19th century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Americans take action in order to make things happen.

“What’s in it for me?”

The benefits need to be clear, concrete, personal. They must answer the simple question: “What’s in it for me?” When Americans make a purchase the key driver is the personal utility of the good or service.

This practical understanding of value is rooted in the United States’ most important contribution to the field of philosophy. Although Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America writes: “I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States,” the U.S. became the birthplace of pragmatism.

American thinkers Charles Sanders Pierce, John Dewey and Henry James believed that the meaning and truth of an idea is a function of its observable practical consequences. All ideas are hypotheses which must prove themselves through experience. Statements are validated through action and consequences. Americans prefer practical success – benefit – over principles.

Richard P. Feynman

Richard Feynman was an American physicist who is best known for his work on QED (quantum electrodynamics, and a pun on the Latin phrase ‘quod erat demonstrandum’). He also developed the now-standard Feynman diagrams and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Feynman was a strong advocate for simplicity and explaining things so that the average person could understand them. He believed that anyone who understood something should be able to explain it to a layperson.

In fact, he believed this so vehemently that once, when he was asked to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics, Feynman initially said that he would prepare a freshman lecture on the subject.

Later he admitted “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” It’s also believed that Feynman said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t really understand it.”

State of Research

State of research: the state of knowledge at a specific point in time, as found in scientific or academic literature, including all agreement and disagreement. The first step in the study of any subject is to understand the current state of research.