Why do climate scientists lose debates to coal lobbyists? Why do epidemiologists lose to anti-vaxxers? Why does your uncle dismantle your PhD cousin every Thanksgiving?

Because they’re playing different games. One side is trying to be right. The other side is trying to win. And winning is easier.

This week we break down why being smart is actually a disadvantage in public debate. Turns out when you’re playing chess and they’re playing tic-tac-toe, the person who chose the simpler game already won.

We walk through the four mechanisms that make facts backfire, why confidence beats accuracy every single time, and how the coal industry used this exact playbook against climate scientists. (Spoiler: we know because Jeff helped them do it.)

By the end, you’ll recognize the status game when you see it. And you’ll realize you’ve been playing it too — probably unconsciously.

You’re not going to like what that means about democracy. But you’ll see it everywhere.

0:00 — Welcome0:55 — What we mean by smart and dumb3:16 — How arguments actually work (hint: not how you think)5:38 — The 5 mechanisms that make smart people lose12:00 — What happens when you point out they are wrong. 23:00 — what to do if you want to win

Okay, now that we, over here at Masters of Influence, have recovered somewhat from the shootings, we can dedicate some brain matter to critical thinking.

To get there, imagine this scenario: a teacher says to a 6-year-old and to a thirteen year old that when a feather hits a glass, the glass breaks. Then the teacher asks each, What happens when a feather hits a glass.

A 6-year-old says, “That’s stupid, feathers are soft.”

A 13-year-old says, “The glass breaks.”

I saw this in a social media post. The original post demonstrated how thinking evolves as we mature. The post I saw mocked it: obviously, education makes us stupider, we should all think like 6 year olds.

In fact the 13-year old in this scenario is demonstrating a higher level of thinking, more lateral thinking. Something like: sure I know that a feather, the way I understand it, won’t break glass, but if the rule is that a feather breaks glass then the answer to the question is that the glass will break. It’s an ability to step outside of what you think you know to look at something a different way.

The quick, emotional, social media, response to everything is the six-year-old response. It is an emotional reaction that takes no new information into account.

And it is almost always dressed up as common sense or logic.

But true logic, real common sense, allows for a feather to break the glass.

So in this episode we talk about when feathers can and should break glass, when you should consider the logical rules, when you should follow them and an even higher level of critical thinking: how to choose.

What you’ll hear:

0:00 - Experiments in psychology.

6:30 - When improvising will get you killed.

13:00 - Sully didn’t break the rules—he executed them perfectly under impossible conditions

18:00 - When critical thinking is dangerous vs. when it’s your only defense

27:00 - Who has the obligation to break the rules

33:00 - How manufactured discourse works and why you keep falling for it

38:00 - The cult mechanics of modern political loyalty

42:00 - Coming next: Your toolkit for detecting logical fallacies in real time

Join us, and let us know what you see in the world of critical thought.

Next time we’ll go into structures of logic and how to think critically.

My ambition is to empower people to become more critical thinkers and recognize the importance of power, how it’s being used, where it’s being used and how to both defend against it as well as claim some for themselves. Ourselves really, especially in this time of feeling powerless, how do we claim some power.

It is not to only talk about politics. I’m interested in how we apply these rules to politics and the political situation, and how we can use these rules to better master our world.

However, I saw that video yesterday and could think of nothing else. An execution by the government in the US and the regime is actively justifying it.

Yesterday’s shooting makes Good’s shooting seem less almost, well, mundane. At least she wasn’t shot in the back.

This week was supposed to be the follow up on the context episode from last week, but we decided it was important to join the voices condemning the shooting and calling for some action.

So, here are our thoughts on the Minneapolis situation. From wondering what the hell is going on to asking ourselves whether this is a state of war, we discuss what Alex Pretti’s murder means and where we go from here.

Join the conversation in the chat and we’ll be back next week with arguments and logic. I hope. Until then, Jeff

We’re watching something disturbing unfold in Minneapolis, and it’s not what you think.

The threat isn’t the guns.

A woman is dead, killed at point-blank range by the cowards at ICE, and that’s not the worst of it. As bad as murder is, it’s a distraction.

What everyone gets wrong is that they engage with the content, debate it, and get sucked into a world where they define the terms and create the context. It isn’t a war about what happened, that’s clear. It’s a war of context.

Key Takeaways:

* The Kuleshov Effect from 1920 and its relevance today.

* How the government uses context to minimize killing civilians.

* Similarities to Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing show where this can go.

* When information gets narrower, context manipulation gets stronger

Here’s your defense: Get suspicious when the frame gets narrow. One camera angle instead of five. One quote instead of the full conversation. One data point instead of the trend.

Narrowness is the tell.

And push back, because whoever controls the context controls not just how evidence gets interpreted, but what counts as evidence in the first place. You don’t need to lie when you can decide what people see first, last, and most often.

Robert Greene never quite named this in his 48 Laws of Power, but we may need a new one: Define the frame before entering the arena.

The only question that matters:

What context are they trying to hide?

Here’s the thing: you can believe you can fly unaided. You can convince yourself that it’s true. Your friends can tell you that it’s true.

But when you go to the top of a building and jump off, you will fall.

So what does it mean when those in charge make decisions based on made-up information? We may all soon find out what it’s like to hit the pavement…

What We Cover

* The eight levers of power—and why controlling knowledge sits at the center

* Jeff’s shameful participation in coal company manipulation.

* Why firing statisticians and promoting vaccine denialism follow the same pattern

* How to spot reality manipulation in real time (who benefits, what’s the quality of evidence, can it be disproven?)

We start off with the 8 levers of power and the current focus on Masters of Influence and then we move on to the dirt.

Because this episode is a confession of sorts. Jeff talks about work he did for a coal company, work that involved creating doubt, not through scientific study but perception. They perfected the playbook first written by Big Tobacco, which lost not because people were dying of cigarettes but because they admitted people died of cigarettes.

This strategy has evolved; now everybody gets their own strategy. Trump fires statisticians for the wrong numbers, RFK junior has decided that he knows more about vaccines than 99% of educated doctors in the world. That’d be fine if it weren’t your life he was messing with.

Here’s the thing: physics is physics.

Reality doesn’t care about your perception, your bias, or your beliefs.

Gravity works whether you accept it or not. Viruses spread regardless of your Facebook profile. Climate change accelerates even if you throw a snowball on the Senate floor.

The problem: humans are terrible at perceiving reality accurately. We trust our senses even when they mislead us. We see correlation and assume causation (hello, vitamin C). We make decisions based on incomplete information (Germans not allowing yeast in beer). It’s in that gap between perception and reality that manipulation thrives.

The scientific method exists precisely because we can’t trust perception. Double-blind studies, peer review, replication, these aren’t academic niceties. They’re the tools we use to move beyond bias and get closer to what’s actually true.

So when someone tells you “scientists are lying for grant money,” ask: who actually profits from the doubt? Scientists make their reputations by disproving established science, not confirming it. But fossil fuel companies with billions in infrastructure? Wellness gurus selling “vax-free baby” merch? They profit from the lie...

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Why This Matters

We’re living through a wholesale assault on shared reality. Controlling what people believe to be true is the ultimate power move.

This isn’t left vs. right anymore. It’s reality-bound vs. reality-optional. And the stakes couldn’t be higher because while you can debate politics, you can’t debate reality.

Or, well, you can debate reality, but reality always wins. The question is how much damage we do to ourselves before we accept it.

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Found this useful? Subscribe to Masters of Influence for breakdowns of power, manipulation, and how to think critically in a world that profits from your confusion.

Got thoughts on reality manipulation? Stories of your own? Hit reply or drop a comment—we’d love to hear how you’re navigating this.

—Jeff & Joe

For decades, one of America’s quiet superpowers was the boring reliability of government execution. The snowplow didn’t care if you voted Republican or Democrat—it cleared your street either way. The VA processed claims. The IRS answered calls. The EPA enforced regulations consistently, regardless of who appointed the administrator.

That neutrality? It’s a feature, not a bug.

Political leadership makes decisions. That’s inherently partisan. But once those decisions are made, the machinery of government has to run neutrally, or the whole thing falls apart. You can’t have the snowplow stop at the third house because that’s where the Democrats end and the Republicans begin.

Or... can you?

The recent government shutdown wasn’t about money. It never is. Shutdowns are about demonstrating who has the power to hurt people and who doesn’t.

Trump brushed it off and sent Republicans home for a month. Democrats, just as they were gaining leverage, capitulated. Again (much to our surprise). Say what you want about MAGA—and we will—but they understand power dynamics in a way the Democrats persistently refuse to.

But here’s where it gets interesting: out-of-office replies and department websites started promoting partisan talking points during the shutdown. Government channels became campaign literature. This isn’t just norm-breaking—it’s strategic. It’s using the infrastructure of neutral government to consolidate political power.

The snowplow is learning to discriminate.

Why This Works (And Why It Might Not)

Republicans have fully embraced a scorched-earth policy: win at all costs, never compromise, never see the other side as a partner, only as an enemy to be defeated. It hobbles Democrats who still believe in functional government. But it’s also a dangerous game with the potential to backfire.

Because people actually like it when the snowplow comes. They notice when it stops.

In this episode, we dig into how manufactured crises work, why neutral execution of law matters more than you think, and what happens when one party figures out that cruelty can be a strategy—until it isn’t.

Timestamps:

* 00:00 Introduction and Casual Conversation

* 01:19 ICE Incidents and Government Overreach

* 04:02 Government Shutdown and Political Dynamics

* 06:42 Partisan Use of Government Shutdown

* 11:37 Public Misunderstanding of Government Functions

* 15:42 Partisan Manipulation of Government Channels

* 23:28 State Media and Social Media Influence

* 27:05 The Importance of Historical Context in Decision Making

* 28:57 The Erosion of Soft Power

* 29:26 Strategies of Political Domination

* 30:30 The Republican Party’s Zero-Sum Game

* 31:00 The Backfire of Cruel Policies

* 32:46 Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Unexpected Stance

* 34:37 Inconsistencies in Political Rhetoric

* 41:56 Spotting Manufactured Crises

* 47:48 Conclusion and Future Speculations