Tall Tales

Don't Think of an Elephant notes

My learnings from the book. It is written for campaigners on the left. It's my summary with a few takes thrown in. I don't agree with of all it, though much of it I do.

Projects I thought would be cool as I read the book:

The left needs well developed ideas, which are communicated consistently for years so that the public become familiar with them and they can be easily referred during campaigns, arguments and such. This is more important than finding which issues poll well for a given election. The left suffers from 'hypocognition', a condition of lacking means to express the concepts and ideas held. The right does not suffer from this, because they've invested in the infrastructure to do this, comprising a system think tanks, university staff, news networks and other actors, working together. As an example, the Heritage Foundation was a very successful actor in Trump's Project 2025.

On the right the top value is preserving the moral value system itself. This supports good long term decision making (e.g.: funding media infrastructure). Whereas it says that on the left the highest value is helping those that need help…. Who is going to make the best decisions in such a world?

When you think you lack words, what you really lack are ideas. You can see this in action when someone sums up a case with a 1-2 word concept (eg ‘tax relief’) and their opponent speaks for ages to get their counter point across - because they are lacking a neat concept and established idea or frame around it. You need people to do the work around these ideas.

The ideas to develop should reflect the values of the left. Trying to capture voters in the middle by including some of the values of the right is a mistake, because doing so gives more airtime to the ideas and frames of the opposition. Much better to shape everything around your ideas and frames, so that people are talking about them and they are reinforced in people minds. In terms of neuroscience, the more often a thought is repeated the stronger the neural circuits and the easier it becomes to repeat. Whether mechanically true or not, this seems to hang well with the phrase 'familiarity is next to truth'. You should aim to have people be familiar with your ideas and that they be easily accessible to your political candidates.

Another way the author puts this: "saying it right - and saying it over and over - is advice that can be applied to issue after issue".

Avoiding using your opponents frame reminds me of antimemes: the theoretically perfect meme one would make to kill one's opponent's meme. 'Meme' here in the sense of an idea or concept or anything that replicates, not just the comedy captioned images. Such a meme wouldn't be the opposite argument to your opponent, as taking the opposite side strengthens their frame (e.g.: by generating noise on social media): better to change the whole conversation to the thing you're interested in, taking the wind out of their sails (and their social media impressions). Trump did this very well in the 2016 primaries, where he'd almost ignore other candidates, seeming to take all the oxygen in the room, leaving nothing left for the others: within his strongman frame the others appeared weak and stood no chance. His opponents very much did not follow the author's advice to "never answer a question from your opponents frame".

Much of the book is about frames, which it defines as automatic, effortless, everyday modes of understanding. A lot of our unconscious inference is shaped by the frames that live in our minds. These are the metaphors and concepts we use every day and barely notice. We want frames which show us in our best light of course, and also the positive side of our values. Another way of saying this: we want to frame events in terms of the values of the left (nurturing, kindness, community) rather than the right (authority - though maybe a strawman), making easy to grasp why a given policy option better reinforces one's values.

Yet another way of saying this: when you argue against someone, but use their language and frames, you are activating their frames, strengthening their frames in those who hear you. Slogans only work when the concept or framing of the issues have already been embedded in the public minds enough that the slogans will be accepted by the public.

The primary metaphor for government is family. For the left the family is nurturing. For the right the father is a strong protector who enforces discipline, without which the family would crumble. God is the ultimate strict father, who rewards virtue. Many messages stem from this. Nurturing need not be weak.

Reframing at scale requires a change in public discourse, which requires a communication system. I think of such a system as an engine or machine, constantly putting out messages, testing them, refining them, liaising with ideas people, moving it's pieces around the campaign trail, updating it's beliefs about what's most effective all the time... all of which might function in a manner not dissimilar to an effective start up.

Examples given on pushing frames which show the morals of your plans: 'freedom and life' for affordable care act, 'without education you aren't free' for school funding. I really like "a pension is a delayed payment for work already done": a way of framing pensions which seems obvious and yet I'd never thought it that way until now.

The book has a nice framing of framing itself, likely anticipating discomfort from some on trying to change frames... I feel none. "Framing is about honesty and integrity… the opposite of spin and manipulation… it is about bringing to consciousness the deepest of our beliefs and our modes of understanding".

Poor metaphors harm one’s own team - so what metaphors do we want? Says that both ‘reaching’ and ‘waking people up’ are inaccurate progressive metaphors.

I can imagine different ways of framing things or getting a message out, which have different lead in times to be effective. E.g.: metaphors which cover broad stable topics could benefit from long period of use and reinforcement. So prior to a general election want to look at when the election is happening, and work back from there re when to start getting the metaphors out. With the caveat it’s all very dynamic so one can't plan the granular stuff too far ahead. Feels like a tractable analytical task. The book implies it can take years for ideas and frames to be ingrained on public consciousness, so start early, and I agree.

There are various ways to be progressive, including socioeconomic, civil liberties, identity politics, environmental, and so on. The sad thing is people who are very into a single one of these fail to recognise the unity between them all. Among other things this is a desire for a nurturing world.

People don’t always vote in self interest. They vote with identity, values and sometimes in the self interest of their future self (e.g.: you may be poor now but anticipate making it big one day).

When you see or hear Orwellian language (language that means the opposite of what it says) instead of being annoyed you should take note and challenge on it - change the frame! - as it might be a point of weakness for the opposition (otherwise they wouldn’t need the language manipulation).

‘Strategic initiatives’ (the author's term I think): a policy which has automatic effects over many many other issue areas. E.g.: thing which make it harder for opponent to get funding, or lower taxes, or gerrymandering. Could call these plans ones with more knock on effects. Need to consider these, not just each issue at a time.

For weather events which were probably made more extreme by climate change, we shouldn’t pussyfoot around this highly-probable-but-not-100%-perfectly-prooveable causality, but just say that climate change did cause it, and get all players saying the same line to have coherence within the team.

To be persuasive "never be a victim, never complain, always be on the offence". I suspect that being defensive is a sign you're stuck in your opponent's frame.

Avoid negatives such as "don't spiral out of control" or "restraint" (the latter implies not doing things, even if the word "don't" doesn't feature). Use positives instead, e.g.: "responsibility". If I notice I'm using negatives that should be a trigger to change frame.

"Never answer a question from your opponents frame. Always reframe the question to fit your values and frames. This may make you uncomfortable" ... but do it anyway.

Books it inspired me to re(read) sometime: