To be persuasive, We must be believable,
To be believable, We must be credible,
To be credible, We must be truthful.

American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly — it is incredible to other men.

The most believable opinions are those of people who 1) have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in question, and 2) have demonstrated that they can logically explain the cause-effect relationships behind their conclusions. When believability weighting is done correctly and consistently, it is the fairest and the most effective decision-making system. It not only produces the best outcomes but also preserves alignment, since even people who disagree with the decision will be able to get behind it.

in order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Credibility is a basic survival tool.

Assess believability by systematically capturing people’s track records over time. Every day is not a new day. Over time, a body of evidence builds up, showing which people can be relied on and which cannot. Track records matter, and at Bridgewater tools such as Baseball Cards and the Dot Collector make everyone’s track records available for scrutiny.

Authenticity is boring, credibility is important

There's only really one belief you need to win:

Belief in your ability to figure it out.

That's it. Start - you'll figure out the rest.

Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.

If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.

The truth can be useful, sometimes. Assuming you can convince people.

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right

You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don't know everything. And since we don't know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.