Here is another persuasive trick: Be intentionally wrong.
This is not just being wrong to be wrong, this is being strategically inaccurate.
The power here is in being binarily correct, but wrong in magnitude.
A good example of this might be in sports.
Take a basketball game, for instance.
If you want to go unnoticed try this:
“They are a great team too. It will be a close game. I hope we can pull out a win.”
That’s boring.
If you want to make a splash try this:
“They are just bad. I predict we win by 100 points and their team scores less than 10 points total. I mean, they are so awful their team can be hard to watch play.“
Now you have people’s attention.
And after that, all that matters is that you win by 1 point.
It sounds weird, but it happens to work.
You saw Trump use the intentional wrongness persuasion play over and over, and almost always to good effect. The method goes like this: Make a claim that is directionally accurate but has a big exaggeration or factual error in it. Wait for people to notice the exaggeration or error and spend endless hours talking about how wrong it is. When you dedicate focus and energy to an idea, you remember it. And the things that have the most mental impact on you will irrationally seem as though they are high in priority, even if they are not. That’s persuasion.
-Scott Adams, Win Bigly
