All Episodes
Previous Next
July 11, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
39:49
Episode 135 - Russia, NATO, Song-Wars and DemBabies
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Summer of Love kicking into high gear.
Children are escaping from their prisons everywhere.
And the coffee is warm and delicious.
It even makes you live longer, they say.
I think it's time for all of you sleepyheads to grab your Coffee?
Grab your beverage, your beverage of choice, and join me for, you know, the simultaneous sip.
Here it comes. Oh yeah, that's some good stuff.
Well, I'm here a little bit earlier than normal because there's so much to talk about.
I think because the president was in the air yesterday, it seemed like it was a slow news day.
But man, did he hit the ground running.
Alright, so I'm going to start with a new meme video from Carpe Dunctum.
You'll see it in my Twitter feed.
And what it is, is it's one of your favorite things.
It's a... It looks like some anti-Trumpers screaming at whoever they're screaming at, but it's been given the soundtrack.
So the video is from some anti-Trumpers apparently, but watch what happens when you add the inspirational soundtrack.
Hold on.
It gets better.
Wait for the good part.
Here it comes.
Here it comes. Alright, we have to play just that part.
That part again. Because the lip sync is so perfect because the guy's been yelling and he goes...
And then just before he goes out, he goes...
You have to see that part.
Here it comes. Here it comes.
Watch. Oh, I've watched this thing probably 15 times, and I literally cry every time I watch it, like tears just shoot out of my eyes against my glasses.
Okay, carpe dunctum, carpe dunctum, this is some of your best work.
All right. Sorry, Dale needs to clean up some tears here.
Oh, what a day, what a day.
Oh, wait, turn that off.
Now, I want to show you a video from a Democrat.
His name is Dov Hykend.
I guess he's a Democrat in New York.
And he's got a video here in which he is asking Democrats to stop being crybabies.
You would think it's the end of the world, the choosing of this candidate.
The Supreme Court will be different.
Oh, my God.
Can we stop being crybabies in the Democratic Party?
Can we stop?
So the rest of the video is like that.
But what I thought was interesting is, you know how I've been telling you that the two parties have sort of fallen into an adult and child mode, with Trump sort of playing the adult, saying, yeah, these are hard choices, but, you know, it's a world of hard choice.
We're going to do what we need to do.
We'll be tough. You know, just sort of a stereotypical adult mode.
Long-term planning kind of a thing.
And the Democrats have gone completely into child mode, which is, I want candy.
Well, you know, candy would be bad for your health and, you know, it's time for dinner.
But I want candy.
No, but I just told you that it's almost dinner time.
Candy's not good for your health.
But I want candy.
So that's sort of the entire Democratic platform right now is I want candy.
So even the Democrats themselves, some of them anyway, this guy Dove Heikend is realizing that he's on the child side and he's not liking it at all.
All right, I got some more stuff for you.
That was good. Glenn Greenwald has, excuse me, Well, first of all, those of you who don't know Glenn Greenwald, one of the things I like about him, and there's plenty to like and plenty to not like, as a human being, he doesn't seem so pleasant.
If I'm being honest, I wouldn't want to spend a minute in the same room with Glenn Greenwald.
He just doesn't seem like a happy guy.
I think he and I have had some bad interactions on Twitter.
But, that said, he's one of the very few people in the world who is willing to criticize both sides whenever it is appropriate.
So, one of the things he does is...
There's some good articles I just tweeted about how...
We build up Putin like he's a great mastermind, but in fact, the Russians who are actually more familiar with the country, more familiar with the situation, don't feel he's much of a mastermind and think that the Russian interference in our election was real,
but it was so pathetic That it's almost laughable, and that any notion that Russia is this giant, dangerous, well, they're dangerous, but this mastermind kind of a country is just completely counterproductive because it's nothing like that, according to Russians. Now, who knows?
I'm no expert. So, that's interesting.
The other Russia story is, if you haven't seen yet the clip of Trump dressing down NATO, I think the headlines were something like, he unloads on them.
You have to see it.
It's a clip, it's only a couple of minutes, where Trump is talking about how we, the United States, pay so much for NATO, and the other countries are not stepping up.
But then he goes after Germany for having some gigantic multi-billion dollar pipeline deal with Russia.
And to watch him be the only adult in the room, again, the only adult in the room, is just really fun to watch.
I don't know, I enjoyed it more than I should have.
And his point was that why are we spending all this money to protect Germany when they just did a giant pipeline deal with the country we're supposed to protect them against?
Basically, Germany has essentially surrendered to Russia already.
It's like we're protecting them and they just surrendered.
Like, wait a minute. We're protecting you.
Why are we spending all money, all this money to protect you when you're surrendering?
Now, when I say surrendering, if they rely on Russia for their energy, and this pipeline would go, I guess it would go some of the distance toward that, it puts them in such a vulnerable situation.
Military situation that it doesn't really make sense that Russia's our enemy at the same time we, meaning NATO countries, are making gigantic financial deals with them.
What's up with that? Now, I happen to think that doing financial deals with Russia probably makes us safer, not less safe.
Whoever we do a lot of business with, we tend not to want to attack.
But you have to ask about that deal, because that deal is not like other deals.
It's not like we're buying their trinkets or their phones or some food we could get somewhere else.
Germany would be fairly dependent.
Maybe not right away, but they would have a lot to lose from making Russia unhappy.
So Trump's point about that is really strong.
And to see him lay it out in front of everybody in the room and watching even, basically it was like getting a dressing down from the only adult in the room.
And nobody really has a good answer for this complaint.
It's really, you need to watch it to watch him in action.
And by the way, You know, Trump came to politics as I'm going to make deals and I'm going to improve deals and I'm a deal maker.
And watching him push for more spending on NATO, watching him for pushing for trade deals, pushing for deals with North Korea, doesn't it make you think, what the hell was wrong with all of our other presidents?
And I'm not picking sides.
I'm not saying this was a Democrat or Republican failing in the past.
But watching him work, no matter what he gets, no matter how much he accomplishes, he's setting a completely different standard.
Can you imagine electing a president, Kamala Harris or something, and would she do any of this?
Would anybody? Would Bernie?
Would Bernie be over there, you know, kicking butts and trying to make deals?
My take on this is we don't know how successful he will be in all of his, you know, pushing for deals.
But there's one thing I think we should all agree on.
Doesn't hurt to ask.
Right? It's like the most basic rule of negotiating.
There's probably nothing more basic than this simple rule.
If you don't ask, you don't get it.
He's asking.
Now he's asking plus negotiating, plus persuading, plus deal making, plus all that.
But remind me why we haven't asked before?
What's that all about? Honestly, it makes our last ten presidents look like chumps.
And I'm not picking sides about Democrat or Republican.
They all kind of look like chumps.
Because now we've seen what it looks like when they try.
That's what trying looks like.
He may not succeed on everything he's asking for.
Likely he's going to get some of it.
Because he asked.
So, you know, in terms of negotiating, he's very close to getting everything right, even though it's ruffling feathers, because that's how it works.
It's a feather ruffling process.
So when you say to yourself, hey, some feathers are getting ruffled over there.
Stop that. What kind of an attitude is that?
Well, let's ask Dove.
He would say it's a childlike attitude.
A child would say, no, don't ask for that.
They'll ruffle some feathers.
We don't want to be a feather ruffler.
Don't cause any trouble.
That's a childlike view.
A negotiator says, that's what negotiating is.
I ruffle your feathers.
You ruffle my feathers. We get to some good place that we can both live with.
Alright, so that's all amusing.
Let's see what else we've got going on here.
Bear with me while I check my notes.
There's a funny Charlie Kirk tweet that I wanted to read just because it's funny.
So this is Charlie Kirk who tweets this.
If you think your life sucks, just imagine being a Democrat.
Your spokesperson rotates between a 28-year-old socialist, a low IQ con artist, a Marxist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, a criminal who lost the most winnable election of our lifetime, and a fake Native American.
And there's something funny about lists.
And from a humor writer's perspective, I like this because I like the way he finished it off.
When you do this kind of list humor persuasion, you know, when you put things in a list and that's your persuasion, it's really important to get the last element to have a little zing to it.
So his last element is, and a fake Native American, which is the funny one.
So it's just a perfect way to end a tweet.
If you get a tweet, a list, make sure your last one on the list is the one that leaves you with a chuckle.
That's always good form.
All right. What is wrong with my phone?
I think I had at least one other topic here.
Hold on, hold on.
Yeah, so I think this is very funny.
So Great Britain, in anticipation of President Trump's arrival, they have artificially driven to number one the song American Idiot by Green Day.
So, the UK charts have been artificially driven up by the critics of President Trump, so their number one song is American Idiot.
Now, for those of you who are worried about the fate of our relationship with our allies, let's say the UK in this example, if the biggest problem you're having with your allies Reminds you of a dance-off?
That's not a big problem.
So this is how siblings fight.
So the UK and the United States, we're essentially siblings, right?
We can do a lot of damage to each other, and it's not going to change the basic relationship.
And when I say damage, I mean words.
So to me, it's hilarious that the UK is doing this American idiot thing, driving it to the top of the charts.
It's just funny.
And I think we should respond in kind, as any good sibling would.
So I was asking people what is the song that they would like to hear as our answer to the American Idiot Driven to Number One?
So could we drive a song to number one in the United States?
Well, ironically, you'd probably have to knock Kanye West's songs out of first place in order to do that.
And, you know, Kanye said good things about the president.
So that part's funny.
But... Alexa?
Alexa? Play All I Do Is Win.
Alexa, play All I Do Is Win by DJ Khaled.
All I Do Is Win by DJ Khaled.
DJ Khaled!
All I Do Is Win, Win, Win, no matter what, boy!
Got money on my mind, I can never get enough.
And every time I jump up in the building, everybody hands go up.
- And they stay there, and they stay there, and they stay there, up, down, up, down, 'cause all I do is win. - All I do is win. - And if you go in and put your AGM, and you stay there, who the Chris going in on the first, 'cause I never went to see it and I won't stop now. - So people made a lot of suggestions, but my suggestion is DJ Khalid, Am I saying that right? All I do is win.
So, if you'd like to add to your music collection, even just for fun, Even just for fun.
It might not be your favorite kind of music.
I have to say, I hadn't heard that song before, but I immediately liked it.
It's just got a great energy to it.
Who doesn't like winning?
So it's a great song.
So I think it would be hilarious and appropriate as a response to our sibling, the UK, to do All I Do Is Win by DJ Khalid.
Yeah, I was worried that everybody else's Alexa would be triggered.
Yeah, there were a lot of good suggestions, werewolves in London, etc.
But I think in terms of a response song to American Idiot, All I do is win.
It just feels like the more response response.
You know, something about London or we're coming or something about the revolution feels a little dated, etc.
Oh, my hand has a...
somebody asked what's on my hand, just a paper cut.
So let's see what we can do for DJ Khalid.
And let's make him a little bit of money, I guess, as well as the other artists on the song.
And yeah, We Are Champions of the World by Queen is a strong second place.
But I think I would go for a more current song.
Scott listening to hip-hop?
What's wrong with that? Hip-hop's great.
I'm a fan, because I had stepkids who were into that music, so I heard it a lot.
There's a Kanye remix?
I don't know if there is. Yeah, except Queen is British, right?
Alright, so that's all I had for today.
And, oh, discuss Senk Unger and Sam Harris.
So I tweeted around an older interview, it's a very long interview, but it was interesting to hear, in which Sam Harris talks to Senk Unger, if I'm saying his name right, from the Young Turks.
And the discussion was about religion and, you know, Islam versus Christianity.
I didn't realize this Chank yogurt?
Alright, whatever it is.
And here's why I recommended it.
The reason I recommended it is you rarely see a discussion, a civil discussion in the long form between two people who know as much as they know and yet disagree.
Now, a number of you watched it and said to yourself, hey, it seems to me that Cenk or Cenk or Cenk, however you say his name, was intentionally misrepresenting Sam's points and then arguing against his own misrepresentation.
So people said, my god, that really was not really a fair discussion because Sam was saying real things based on facts and reason and Cenk was saying things that were just misrepresenting Sam and then arguing about his misrepresentation.
And to which I say, yeah, that is what was happening.
That's exactly what was happening.
But at the same time, they both had quite a bit of knowledge about the topic.
And here's how you should interpret that.
When you see somebody take what you've said, which is quite reasonable and makes a good point, and they turn it into something else just to criticize their own illusion of what you just said, that means you won.
So, if you were scoring the conversation, it was a knockout.
Sam Harris completely obliterated his competitor, if you will.
Now, my understanding is that after the interview, Sank or Cenk or Cenk continued to misrepresent Sam and say more bad things about him.
Now, do any of you remember my conversation with Sam Harris?
And do you remember how that turned out?
Do you see anything in common?
When you saw my conversation with Sam Harris, and many of you did, did you see any situation in which I misrepresented his views?
Let me ask you, did you see me do that at all?
Did you see me misrepresent Sam's views?
I don't think you did.
Right. I don't think you saw that at all.
Did you see...
Did Sam misrepresent my views?
And it's going to take a while for the answers to the first question to get through the buffer here.
But did you see Sam misrepresent my views?
After the fact, not so much during the fact.
Yeah, so most of you are saying yes.
So who won the conversation?
If you can put it in those terms.
It's not really a winning and losing situation.
But yeah, so my take on all of these conversations is that the one who has to misrepresent the other in order to make a point lost the debate.
Now in the case of my conversation with Sam, I believe his big criticism after the fact was that I had ignored the dimension of ethics.
And I had ignored it because it wasn't a topic.
Had he mentioned it, I would have been happy to talk about it.
And I believe he would have discovered that he and I were largely on the same page.
And what I mean by that is...
He would probably put it in the frame of, do the means justify the ends?
Is it okay to be lying and duplicitous if what you're doing is trying to get a good result?
To which I say, you're always looking at costs versus benefits.
There is no situation where you should not consider both the costs and the benefits and then decide which one's bigger.
So you could say something in the bumper sticker form, which is...
So here's the bumper sticker form of saying what I just said.
And it goes like this.
Scott, are you saying that the means justify the ends?
Because if you're saying that the means justify the ends, what you're saying is something that has been mocked on a bumper sticker.
And it must be true that this must be wisdom because it's on a bumper sticker.
I believe I've also seen it on the internet.
And so it must be true that it is dumb to consider the means justifying the ends.
What is another way to say the means justify the ends?
Here's another way to say it.
The benefits outweigh the costs.
Just the way you make every decision in the world all the time.
The means justify the ends is trying to win the argument with a dumb saying that never made sense in the first place.
In all cases, you look at all the benefits, you look at all the costs, and then you pick the one that's, you know, you make the decision based on that.
What does it mean to say the means justify the ends?
Or the ends justify the means, I mean.
Yeah, ends justify the means.
It doesn't mean anything.
It's just a saying that tries to substitute for thinking.
Thinking would be, what are my costs?
What are my benefits? Which one's bigger?
That's it. Just like every other decision you ever make.
It means a lack of ethics.
So somebody's trying to explain to me what the saying means, that it refers to a lack of ethics.
I understand what it means.
And your consistency of ethics is one, just one, of the variables in all of the costs and all of the benefits.
So again, somebody's going to walk away from this saying, Adams doesn't think ethics matter.
No, opposite.
Ethics, morality absolutely matter.
And I would put them in the list of costs and benefits.
They're either big or they're small.
But you've got to look at all the variables.
Do you know who doesn't look at all the variables?
Let me ask you.
Describe a type of human being who does not consider all of the variables.
Would you call that person childlike?
Children. Right.
The child's view is that the ends don't justify the means.
That's a child's view of the world.
Because there are a lot of variables in all these conversations, and if you're not looking at all of them, and you're not looking at the long run, you're not really in the conversation.
You're just the child who's observing.
So, The child mode is on display.
Now, I want to share with you a persuasion technique that someone shared with me on Twitter.
I'm not going to name names because I haven't asked for any permission to talk about this, so I'll just talk about the technique and tell you it didn't come from me.
So this is someone else who's testing a persuasion technique.
And the The question is the children in cages.
How would you respond to, my God, President Trump is putting children in cages?
What is anything you can say that makes that, of course, never okay, but at least explains it in a way that people can process and understand and not get too excited about it?
And here was the persuasion that this individual tried.
He said, everybody hates children in cages.
So first of all, you agree.
Children in cages, terrible situation.
Need to get out of that right away.
But, do you prefer children being tortured?
Because that was the other alternatives.
So if you let them out of the cages immediately and reunite them with the adult they came with, some number of them are going to be reunited with someone who will literally torture them.
They'll rape them, they'll hurt them, they'll sell them, they'll starve them, actually torture in different forms.
So when the people who are railing against the children in cages, do their children in cages imagery.
The only thing stronger than that, which is also honest, is that the alternative is children being tortured.
So if you're not on the children in cages side, you're necessarily on the children tortured side.
With the understanding that everybody on both sides would like the process of reuniting families to be faster and more efficient.
And by the way, I'm not going to give a pass to the Trump administration for the speed or lack of speed for which they're reuniting families and doing things.
Once they've decided to reunite, I don't know how long it's supposed to take, but I've heard some explanations of trying to do things carefully, etc.
And I've got to say, it's not convincing.
It just feels to me like things could be moving a little faster, or if they're not, a little better explanation of why they're not.
I would settle for an explanation, right?
But if you ask, why is it taking so long, you're going to get answers like, well, you know, we want to do things right, which doesn't really tell you anything.
It is likely that there are specific bottlenecks.
So if the government said, look, we're doing this as fast as we can, but our bottleneck is, for example, we don't have enough caseworkers, but we're scouring to hire them and they're moving in, then I would say, okay, there's a specific problem, not enough people to work these cases.
But I see your program to scoop in some more on a short-term basis, so at least I understand why it's not moving fast, and I understand what you're doing about it.
I don't see that coming from the government, do you?
Do you see the government saying, yeah, we're trying to do this, and it's taking longer than we want, but here's my specific bottleneck, and here's what I'm doing to get rid of that bottleneck?
I feel like there's just a disconnect.
Um... And by the way, I'm not going to say they're not doing their job, except that they're not doing the job of explaining how they're doing their job and explaining why we shouldn't be as concerned about this because everything's going to be okay, or some version of that.
So I think they need to step it up in the explaining what they're doing.
And if there's a bottleneck that they can't get past, tell the public.
Because the public can actually help you get past the bottleneck.
Let me give you another solution.
Somebody saying, this is apologist 101 stuff.
I'll get rid of the Nazi. Alright, I blocked the Nazi.
And if I've taught you anything, you should go Nazi first, remember?
I've been doing this all week, and oh my God, has it made my life better.
I really didn't expect it to make my life that better.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, people have been calling me a Nazi for two and a half years for just writing about Trump's persuasion powers.
And I decided that whenever anybody criticizes me personally, like the person here who was calling me an apologist, that's really just a personal...
It wasn't really about the point I was making.
Anybody who attacks the point I make If they attack my point, then I'm okay with that.
Because that adds to the portfolio of thought.
And I should be able to defend my opinions.
So I'm fine with opinion differences.
But when they come after me personally, and use words like apologist, I call them a Nazi.
Because what do Nazis do?
They go after people personally.
The whole point of being a Nazi is to say that there's something wrong with the people as opposed to the ideas or the system or the government or the process.
And so I call them Nazis and I block them right away and then I never have to hear from them again.
Which is just awesome.
Don't block.
That's why we love you.
I don't know.
But it's also important that you become part of the brand that blocks Nazis.
If you're not the Nazi blocking party, Then you're the party who doesn't mind Nazis.
So even though that's not true, it's going to feel like that.
So the best way you can be anti-Nazi, which is the best thing you could do for your brand, is to label your critics who come after you personally, only the ones who come after you personally, label them Nazis, Block them and be done with them.
And make that your brand.
You're a Nazi blocker.
And you can call anybody a Nazi you want as long as they come after people, you or other people personally.
Make sure you call them a Nazi before you hit block.
Yes, you call them a Nazi first.
Use their tactics, basically.
Yes. But their tactics do not include blocking.
So generally, they like to hang around and stay in your Twitter feed forever, just insulting you over and over, saying the same things over and over.
So this is a better technique where you say, Nazi once, bam, you're out.
The beta blockers.
Somebody calls us beta blockers.
It's Vox Dei advice.
Scott, isn't it more honest to say some of the kids may be tortured?
It would be more technically correct, but it is also true to say that if you're in favor of letting the kids go quickly without checking parental connections, You have favored torture over the cages.
Are you happy with Trump's messaging?
You'd have to be more specific.
Oh, the basketball video.
Yes. Some of you may not have seen my basketball video, so I'll play it for you.
I was doing a little test.
Why does the internet not work when I want to?
Okay. I was doing a little test to see if I could determine if we're living in a simulation.
So I'm going to show it to you here.
Is this all real, or are we living in a simulation?
Because if it's a simulation, you would think I'd be able to control it to get any outcome I want.
Are we living in a simulation?
Alright. Sometimes I ask myself...
Here again. Is this all real, or are we living in a simulation?
Because if it's a simulation, you would think I'd be able to control it Of course it was the first take.
It wouldn't be a test of the simulation if I had to do it 20 times.
Alright, so that's enough for now.
Oh, one more thing.
Apparently, there's a report, I tweeted this also on Zero Hedge, that the CO2 emissions have hit a 67-year low in Trump's America.
So CO2 emissions just from the United States.
Other countries are up.
But our CO2 emissions are the lowest they've been in 67 years.
Summer of love.
▲
Export Selection