All Episodes
Previous Next
June 17, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
20:00
Episode 50 - Scott Adams Was Live
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody!
There's still some space in here, so come on in.
The internet is not full yet.
Plenty of seating. And happy Monday!
So let's talk about a few things.
I had said by Twitter that the stories that John Kerry was doing private diplomacy with Iran, I said that that sounds sketchy to me, meaning I didn't believe the story.
Now, the reason I said I didn't believe the story is that it was unbelievable by its nature.
I thought to myself, no, there's no way John Kerry is actually going around and trying to undermine American security.
Or at least undermine the current administration.
And I thought to myself, we're going to find out later that that's not what you thought, right?
Somebody's saying here the Scott Alexander test, and that's exactly what it is.
So the Scott Alexander test, he's a blogger.
Who once wrote this great concept, which he didn't invent, but he described it really well, where the idea is, in Slate Star Codex is the name of his blog, and the idea is that when you hear a story that just doesn't sound like it's possible because it's so outrageous,
usually, and when I say usually, I'm thinking 80-90% of the time, That's an indication that it's just not true.
The reason it caught your attention is because it was so fantastical that it stood up above all the ordinary things.
But when that happens, there's something like, I don't know what the real ratio is, but most of the time, it turns out you didn't have the story right, or somebody didn't have the story right.
But each day that goes by, I'm hearing more confirmation that he was doing something like that.
But just for fun, I'm going to stick with my prediction.
So here's the prediction.
The prediction is that whatever Kerry was doing is probably less than what it was reported.
Now, the news is definitely working against me here.
So everything we've heard would suggest that I'm wrong.
So we get to test the man bites dog theory.
Is the fact that it sounds like it couldn't possibly be true, is that telling us it isn't?
Let's find out.
So I'm going to keep my...
Keep my prediction against all information that we have.
All the information that we have says I'm wrong.
And I'm going to keep it anyway.
Let's see how predictive the rule is.
Let's change the topic a little bit.
I was looking at CNN's headlines today.
And there seems to be a theme that they're lighting on.
As you know, each time the president beats some claim or gets past some criticism, his competitors, his competitors in the media specifically, come up with a new theme.
So it looks like the theme they're going to go after is they're coming up with the fact-checking, he's the big liar theme.
Because here are the top headlines from the top left of CNN's homepage.
So that's the important real estate.
All right, homepage, top left, that's where the important stuff is.
Starts out with, Will Trump ever pay a price for his words?
Then it says, it's clear that rather than harming him, the president's rejection of facts enhances his political brand.
Hmm. Do you know anybody who ever told you that that would be the case?
Hmm. It goes on.
Here's some more headlines.
Tapper to Kellyanne Conway.
I'd like Trump to stop lying.
Hmm. Next, Conway denies White House credibility crisis.
Next, analysis.
Trump lied more than 3,000 times in 466 days.
Next, CNN anchor to GOP senator.
Do Trump's lies bother you?
Now keep in mind, there was other news this weekend.
How Trump's false claims about black support occurred.
Opinion. If Trump wants to end the Stormy Daniels scandal, he should follow her advice or tell the truth.
So all of their major headlines in the top left are about how he's not passing the fact-checking and everything's working really well.
Who is it who told you loudly and clearly...
How long ago? A couple years ago?
Two and a half years ago? That the facts don't matter.
They just don't.
We want them to.
They should matter. We want other people to hold to the facts.
We are so sure the facts matter.
But CNN is just finding out that they don't.
Persuasion matters. Now, of course, when I say things like facts don't matter, then all the detailed people are going to say, wait a minute, you can't tell me that in this specific situation the facts don't matter.
No, I'm not telling you that.
I'm telling you that the facts, of course, matter to our ordinary existence.
But in this leadership sort of political world, if the facts are at least directionally useful, directionally correct, that's actually better than sticking with the facts.
If your persuasion is on point and your intentions are good, facts can get you away.
They can slow you down.
So... It should not be a surprise to those of you who have been following me for a few years now that the President's, let's say his lack of caring about the facts is not going to hurt you.
We haven't seen it affect the economy, ISIS, we have not seen it affect trade, we haven't seen it affect Let me tell you the one place where the facts not being right made a difference.
Actually, let me put this to you.
Name a topic, let's say a political topic, where the facts being wrong...
Made a big difference. There actually is one.
Name one situation, we'll see if you can get it.
Healthcare? I don't think so.
There might be an argument for healthcare being the one.
But what is the biggest problem in the country, nationally, where having the wrong facts actually does make a difference?
Thank you. Charlottesville, yeah.
The Charlottesville hoax...
In this case, it's not the President's being off fact, it's the media.
So the media, by creating the hoax that the President was calling the actual racists the fine people, instead of simply saying that there were good people on both sides of the issue of whether Confederate statues should stay up or come down.
That was the fine people on both issues question.
The media falsely applied it to the To the racists and said, ah, he's calling these racists good people.
How can you support this president?
So that is the clearest example where not having the facts correct actually is making a pretty big difference.
But look who did that.
It wasn't the president.
So remember, the intention matters.
The intention of the media was to remove this president.
You know, there was a time when I would have not said that as unambiguously, but at this point, you know, can't we say, I think all adults can agree that the media has quite literally been trying to remove the president.
There was a time that I think that sounded a little crazy, but I think we're past that, right?
Aren't we at the point where we can just declare that to be too obvious to really pretend like it's not true anymore?
Now, I don't know that they had meetings.
I don't think that we'll someday find the secret CNN document where they colluded with MSNBC to have a conspiracy theory to remove the president.
But it is nonetheless true that they are staffed with people who were pretty unhappy when Clinton won, pretty frightened when Trump did win, and probably legitimately concerned for themselves and the country.
So, unlike some of you, I don't think that the media is necessarily trying to destroy the world.
I think that they're advocating for what they think makes the world better as well as them.
So if they were worried about this president, well, if they cared about the country, I can't hate them for doing something about it.
If they thought they were saving the country, they were just wrong.
I can't be morally outraged about somebody who was trying to make the world a better place.
They just had a wrong idea about it, or even just a different idea about it.
So, that's our situation.
The facts don't matter if the person who's persuading has the right intentions.
If he's trying to make the country a better place, well, that's probably okay.
If he says my crowd size was bigger, well, that gives him a little more clout with people.
It makes him a little more, you know, feel bigger, more popular.
It helps his powers.
To simply exaggerate his accomplishments.
It's good leadership.
It consolidates his support.
So, all the little stuff doesn't matter in terms of the accuracy, as long as the intention is good and the persuasion is in a productive direction.
Alright, let's talk about the President's tweet this morning.
Let me read it. This is one of my favorite tweets in a while.
So this is President Trump.
He says this morning, the 13 angry Democrats, angry Democrats is capitalized, the 13 angry Democrats in charge of the Russian witch hunt are starting to find out there is a court system in place that actually protects people from injustice.
And just wait till the courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of interest.
Just wait till the court sees your unrevealed conflicts of interest.
Now, let me tell you how great this is.
First of all, it's fun.
It's entertaining. He's doing his usual start the news cycle off right, give him something to talk about that is in his favor.
It's provocative.
It makes you think of that famous movie, 12 Angry Men.
And you question, are there really 13 of them?
And are they angry?
And calling them angry, the 13 Angry Democrats, is like insanely fun and provocative branding.
You know, it's not like a kill shot that is just going to take them out or anything like that.
But in terms of framing them and branding them, it's really fun.
It's very memorable.
And it's going to make, here's the key.
It's going to make people try to count whether there are really 13 of them.
So you're going to see media companies saying, 13?
13. How does he get to 13?
Well, there's this one and this one.
Wait, I'm getting to 11.
Does anybody have two more angry Democrats?
I got 11.
Okay, okay. I forgot that one.
Well, 12 angry Democrats.
How does he get 13, though?
13. Let's call around.
Can anybody get us to 13?
13. So, that is freaking great technique.
And by the way, that is a known, well understood technique of persuasion is to make people question the number.
It's essentially getting them past the sale.
The sale is, are there a bunch of angry Democrats?
You've accepted that if you're counting how many there are.
If you're fact-checking his 13, and you know they will, they're going to fact-check his number.
Yeah, number 7 will shock you.
So that's fun. The second part where he's using the principle of vagueness.
So there's some...
There is an advantage to using intentional vagueness in some forms of persuasion.
For example, when Hillary Clinton, I think she had professional help, you know that I think this, in the campaign when she started calling everything that the Trump campaign did dark.
Oh, it's a dark idea.
His speech is dark. The reason that works so well is that dark is this vague concept that captures lots of stuff.
You don't know exactly what does that mean to be dark?
Are you talking about racism?
Are you talking about war?
Being, you know, his past?
What is dark? So you fill in the blanks with your strongest self-persuasion.
So in other words, you're giving people an opportunity to fill in the blanks in a way that persuades them the most.
They remember the most. It's most compatible with their thinking.
So when he says, when he warns us, here's his exact sentence, just wait till the courts get to see the unrevealed conflicts of interest.
So he even puts it in terms of a mystery, which also activates your curiosity.
You just wait. Just wait.
It's coming. Just wait.
Just wait.
Now, I don't know if he has something good that he knows is coming, but we all think so.
And that's the important part.
We're all thinking, how about these conflicts of interest?
There's something good there. So what that's going to cause people to do, they have to report on it.
They sort of have to report on the conflicts of interest.
Now, here's the great part.
You've all learned about confirmation bias.
And you know that if somebody successfully frames the situation as, here is the situation, then you start seeing all the related factors as confirming it, even if they don't.
So you start seeing it that way, even if you're imagining a little bit too many connections.
So the moment he says, essentially he's telling us to imagine all of the conflicts of interest, we're primed.
So now your brain is like a new filter.
You're like, conflicts of interest, conflicts of interest.
I noticed a few before, but hey, there's another one.
Hey, there's another conflict.
I didn't realize there were so many conflicts of interest.
So you are now tuned As is the media.
He just tuned us. He tuned us to recognize conflict of interest and to heighten it a little bit in our calculations.
Because even if we looked at the conflicts of interest and said to ourselves, we've sort of seen that one.
I think I read about that one before.
But before, even when you read about conflicts of interest, I think Rosenstein's wife is connected to Mueller and Comey.
She was somehow a...
Connected with them. So, is that sort of thing, and more, that maybe you just went under our radar before?
You know, I saw some articles, because I'm always seeing these articles, it's like, yeah, conflict of interest, conflict of interest.
Now, personally, my brain filter had been set to ignore conflicts of interest.
Why? It's not that conflicts of interest are unimportant.
It was simply because I assume that it's Washington and everybody who achieved a certain level in Washington, they all seem to know each other.
Everybody's ex is married to the guy who was your mentor, who hired you, who once fired you.
They're all connected.
So when I hear a story in this world, this whole Trump collusion illusion stuff, and I hear that some lawyer is also donated to the DNC and his brother-in-law is Podesta's third cousin, I just say, eh, normal.
It's just part of the background noise.
Yeah, they're all connected. They all know each other.
What can you do? You wouldn't be able to hire anybody, right?
Because they all know everybody. But, now President Trump's tweet has made me curious.
Is there a good one?
Is there a really good conflict of interest out there that I haven't heard yet?
I'm all primed.
Now, I don't know if there is.
But everything I look at now is going to feel like it's a little bit more conflict-y of interest, if you know what I mean.
So this tweet, tuning our brains for the conflict of interest, took this ordinary...
Background noise of everybody's conflicted because everybody knows too many people to really do the job, but what are you going to do?
They're the only ones in Washington.
It just makes it look more important than you thought before.
So it's really good persuasion.
All right. I expect to be on later again today.
If all goes well with a special guest, someone who has been much requested to be my special guest.
I don't have the details of that, but I'm thinking later this afternoon.
And look for that.
So I'm going to keep this short today.
Have a tremendous day.
And I'll keep this as a surprise until later.
▲
Export Selection