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June 17, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
23:14
Episode 43 - How to Not Make Slavery Analogies
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Hey everybody, hurry up, get in here, gather around, and make sure that you've got your delicious coffee.
For the morning, simultaneous sip.
Coffee with Scott Adams, here it comes.
Well, unless you're living under a rock or you have no access to digital media entertainment, you probably know that Kanye West got in a little more trouble you probably know that Kanye West got in a little more You might also know that I did a quick periscope in which I said, no, no, they're misinterpreting him.
He obviously did not mean X. I said, he clearly meant Y. And then he later went and clarified that he didn't mean either X or Y. He meant Z. So I completely missed what he was saying.
His critics are completely misinterpreting what he's saying.
But let's talk about where it went wrong.
So rather than talk too much about his point, because that's for him to make his point, but let's just talk about where the communication part of it went wrong.
Problem number one.
He talked about the past.
Now his whole message is let's stop talking about the past.
So, he tried to use an analogy to the past to show why we shouldn't be thinking about the past and we should be breaking out of our mental prison in the present.
But, not only did he make us think about the past, which doesn't help, but he used an analogy.
Have you ever heard me say that analogies are problematic?
Has anybody ever heard me say that?
Probably the number one thing I've said more than I should is analogies don't work.
Analogies don't convince.
What do analogies do?
They do this.
They do exactly what happened to Kanye.
If you use an analogy, your critics will intentionally misinterpret it.
Or unintentionally.
I think in some cases there is, you know, genuine, you know, misunderstanding.
So, never use an analogy, especially on an important topic.
Because you see what happened is, you know, my best explanation, based on Kanye's clarification, is that he was trying to make a point using slavery as just an example.
It's like, well, by analogy, You know, slavery, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, that's where he made his mistake.
I'm trying not to say what he said, because the moment I say it, then it gets taken out of context, too.
But the point was, there may be, you know, we may be in a mental prison today.
And then if we thought about things differently, maybe we'd get a better result.
Let me tell you, let me tell you a better way to say what he was saying.
Okay? So let's just test this out.
I'm kind of thinking on the fly.
So rather than talk about the past, and it's an ugly past, and emotions come up, because just slavery is, you know, it's just, you know, it's probably about the worst thing you can think of that's not the Holocaust.
That's bad, and you don't want to use an analogy.
So what's the good way to make the same point?
What would be an improved way to do that?
Well, let me suggest this.
You could say that the old way of thinking got us where we are now.
And if that's good enough, we should think the way we have been thinking.
Did you catch that?
Let me say it again.
So instead of using the history analogy, which is just messy and causes trouble, you just say this.
The old thinking, the old way of thinking, got us to where we are.
If that's good enough, okay.
If you're happy, you don't need anything else.
If you keep thinking the way you are, you'll get to here.
This is where we are with this thinking.
If that's where you want to stay, keep thinking the way you're thinking.
It's an easy choice.
If you don't want to be where you are, and you think that thinking about things differently could be part of the solution, Kanye is quite honest about the fact that he's not giving you answers from God.
He's thinking outside the box.
He's throwing out some ideas.
He's mixing up the pot a little bit.
That's all good. He's increasing the, let's say, the diversification of ideas.
So, if you liked your old way of thinking, and you liked where it got you, which is this today, your current situation, you're free to keep it.
But if you think there might be an even better situation you could get to, Maybe thinking about your situation differently could be part of the solution.
Doesn't mean it's all of the solution, but it could be part of your happiness and your success.
Now that's the positive way to say it without the analogy, without the reference to the past.
Probably too late for that now.
But I thought it would be a useful lesson in how to stay under trouble.
Some of you might know that the biggest trouble I ever got in was because I made it an analogy.
So everything I'm telling you, I learned the hard way.
I mean the really hard way.
So don't make analogies about sensitive topics, ever, ever.
Now, because, well, I was gonna say I shouldn't get any further into the analogy, but I'm going to.
The point of an analogy, Is to just sort of make a point about today.
But what people are arguing about is not today.
They're arguing about the analogy.
They're arguing about the past.
They're relitigating slavery.
And what they're doing is they're taking Kanye's words to suggest somehow that maybe Kanye was saying it was a little bit...
What's the best way to say it?
That somehow they chose to be slaves.
That would be the most offensive thing you could possibly say.
He used words like that, but if you look at the context, he was clearly making sort of a generic point that if there were lots of slaves and there were fewer...
I don't even know if this is true, by the way, so I'm not sure that he passes the fact-checking.
But he was using an analogy of the past to talk about today.
So in that context, it doesn't matter too much That he got the historical facts wrong.
In other words, he wasn't even talking about the past.
He was just sort of making an analogy to talk about today.
And of course his critics, you know, went the other direction and said, oh no, we're not talking about today.
Let's talk about the past and how you're screwing everything up in your interpretation.
So, the adult way to see what Kanye said, the, not adult way, the, let's see, what's a better way?
The most objective way He was talking about today.
Did he get the historical stuff wrong?
Probably. I don't know.
I wasn't there. You know, he's got sort of an example that you could say, well, you know, under some circumstances, if everything was perfect, maybe he's got a point.
But probably not.
Probably not. You know, if it were easy to escape from slavery, I suspect people would have done it far more successfully.
So I would say his history...
Was perhaps imperfect, but he wasn't talking about the past.
He was just talking about the future.
Now, it certainly would be appropriate for his critics to say, I don't know, your analogy is bad.
That's a bad analogy, but let's talk about today.
So if his critics were being objective, and how could they be, really?
How could you really be objective about this topic?
If you're an African American in the United States and you're watching this whole Kanye situation, how could you be objective?
That's sort of too much to ask of anybody.
You can't be objective on some topics.
You can't ask Jews to be objective about the Holocaust.
You can't ask Native Americans to be objective about being kicked out of their native lands.
You can't ask African Americans to be objective about slavery.
That's not a fair ask.
Nobody can be objective about that sort of stuff.
But, if it were possible, the best approach would be, you know, you got some of your history wrong, we could debate that, but that's the past.
Let's talk about your point, which is today.
So, enough about that.
I'm starting to learn a little bit more about the Iran-Israel-Palestinian situation.
I would consider myself quite under-informed about the canvas over there.
And so what I'm trying to do is to see if I understood a little bit better If I could see my way to a path where some kind of lasting comprehensive peace with Iran and the Palestinian situation is possible.
I don't have an opinion yet, but I'm getting closer.
And there's one question that I probably have the biggest question on.
Which is, if you were to do a poll of the Palestinians, what would be their preferred outcome short of destroying Israel?
In other words, if you take the option of destroying Israel off the table, what do the Palestinians themselves want?
I don't know the answer to that question.
And so, I'm not even sure if anybody knows.
But I would think that whatever kind of piece we needed would require the majority of the people most affected to like it.
Because then they can, you know, deal with their own populations.
Like, hey, you know, the majority of us wanted this.
Can you play along? So here's my preliminary suggestion.
So I'm going to make a general statement subject to much reinterpretation later.
The thing that made North Korea potentially a good solution, we don't know yet, but it looks like it's going the right direction.
So what made North Korea work this time that didn't work any time in the past?
Well, some of it's obvious.
They're different players.
You know, President Trump wasn't there ever before.
So you've got that. President Xi wasn't there, didn't do what he did, etc.
So the people are different.
That's one thing. But here's another big thing that is different from prior Korean negotiations.
What's different is we used to say we only have one objective, and the objective is to get rid of your nukes.
So it was sort of a nukes, yes or no.
I guess there were some payments in return for that.
When the question was limited to that, it didn't work.
We couldn't get to a good place, they cheated, we cheated, whatever was the situation.
What's different is that North Korea and South Korea changed the entire conversation from nukes to reunification.
And all of the problems of negotiating nukes largely go away if you become the same country fairly soon.
In other words, you don't have to worry so much about what's going to happen in 10 years if they've developed nuclear weapons.
Well, in 10 years, North Korea and South Korea could be the same country.
So the process of negotiating the nukes became a whole different question as soon as you expanded it to reunification.
Let's look at the Middle East.
If you're looking at just Iran and should they have missiles and nukes or capability to produce them, whatever we're trying to stop, If you limit the question to Iran, do they have these weapons?
Yes or no. And if you have them, we might put economic pressure on you.
If that's the only question, there might not be enough variables.
So I'm thinking in terms of expanding the question for one kind of agreement that gives Iran no reason to have weapons.
Because I'm not exactly sure who Iran needs the weapons to protect against or attack, except Israel.
I mean, Israel being the obvious nemesis.
I'm not sure that Iran is so worried about Saudi Arabia, but this is where my knowledge gap falls apart.
Clearly, if your neighbor has a little bit of animus and a lot of weapons, you're going to take it easy there.
But I don't see Saudi Arabia having some kind of a Conquest mentality.
That doesn't look like their game.
Iran wants Yemen.
So if Iran is looking to expand, There's really nothing you can do.
There's no way to negotiate with a country that's looking to expand its influence.
So if that's the case, and that's the only thing they care about, then they probably would just have to be beaten into submission, or you have to live with it.
But my question is, could the Palestinian question and the Iran question all be packaged into something that looks a lot more, look, let's just not have weapons where they don't help, and everybody can have a better economic deal, and here's the key.
Remember I told you that for these big negotiations, you need to somehow have a story that both sides won.
If we say to Iran, hey Iran, you can't have these weapons, it just looks like they backed down and they didn't win.
But if you were to say, hey Iran, how about you get what you wanted in terms of you've been at least morally and financially supporting the Palestinians, how about if you win?
How about Iran? You win.
You get a good result for the Palestinians.
Then you don't need to send arms to them and stuff.
So it could be that coming up with a good result for the Palestinian situation might be the way that Iran has a safety valve where they can say, well, that's what we wanted, and now it's a safer world.
We don't need to attack Israel because you could make an argument that you don't need to attack Israel.
If Israel became part of the West Bank, or the West Bank became part of Israel, because then it's just one big country that's pretty mixed.
There is no good result for the Palestinians.
They only want to destroy Israel.
Well, I think as with North Korea, remember everybody said, and it was only two months ago, everybody was saying, well, the one thing we know for sure is that North Korea is going to keep its nuclear weapons.
It turns out that the most central assumption wasn't true.
Once you changed another variable.
The other variable that was changed is they started talking about reunification.
The economic sanctions were tremendously effective.
Yeah, so I am using an analogy, but I'm using it in a different way than persuasion.
What I'm doing is explaining a point.
And the point could be explained without the analogy, which is sort of the test.
If the only way you could ever make your point was with an analogy, then the analogy, that's problematic.
But my point stands independent of the analogy, which is, in the Iran situation, if you only had the variable of weapons or no weapons, can you keep them or not?
You have fewer buttons to push, fewer variables to make a deal than if you expand it and say, look, we're going to look at the whole situation.
Israel, Palestinians, who's got what, who does what.
Then you've got a lot of stuff to work with.
So that's the point.
If you can make your point without the analogy, then the analogy is just another way to explain the point.
And that works better. Uh...
Uh... Alright.
I'm just looking at your conspiracy theories as they go by.
So, I would like to test some of the assumptions about the Iranian leadership in terms of how willing they are to die.
Well, let me ask you this question.
So, imagine this thought experiment.
So here's the thought experiment.
Let's say God comes down from the sky, you know, inhuman, or at least he can talk, and he says to the Iranian leadership, he goes, look, I got a deal for you.
I will completely destroy Israel, you know, just the people.
I'll snap my fingers and all of your enemies in Israel will die, just like that.
But here's the price.
The price is that 75% of the people in Iran will die at the same time.
Just like that. 100% of Israel will die, but the price is 75% of all the people in Iran will die.
Just like that. Would the Iranian leadership take that deal?
Go. Tell me your opinion.
Would the Iranian leadership take a deal That would kill 75% of their own people immediately.
If they could get the...
If they could accomplish destroying Israel.
Alright. Somebody's saying bad question.
It might be. So, look at how many people are saying yes.
You know, a number of people say no.
It seems to be about split.
I would bet...
A pretty big number that they would choose life for their own people.
So in this example, the people who are making the decision get to live.
They just kill 75% of their own country.
But those 75% become martyrs and go to heaven.
And the other 25% are winners.
They got everything they wanted.
And they can rebuild the country.
Would they take that deal?
I say, not a chance.
But I also don't know if I'm right.
So that's the biggest unknown.
If you don't know the answer to that question or questions like it, I'm not sure you know what's happening over there.
Alright, I've got to go do some stuff.
And let's all take a...
Sort of a pledge to educate ourselves about the Middle East.
You should assume that anything I say or speculate about that topic is likely to be wrong, misleading, damaging, you know, inappropriate, you know, because we're all kind of trying to get up to speed on it.
But we'll see if the administration comes up with some kind of a peace plan.
And if it does, I would hope to see that it's comprehensive, because there are more variables in play.
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