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Sept. 23, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
49:59
Episode 231 Scott Adams: Dr. Ford, Unbiased News and the Democrat Brand
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Hey everybody, get in here.
Hey Joe, hey Sharon.
Come on in here. I'm a little bit late.
I overslept.
Sorry. Tyler, Morgan, come on in.
I hope you all have your coffee, because it's a day for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Well, we're almost at a thousand viewers, and that means it's time to hoist your mug, your vessel, your chassel, your cup, your glass, your container, with a beverage of your choice.
I like coffee. Join me for the simultaneous sip.
Mmm! You should do an A-B test later.
Try a sip without doing it simultaneously.
Won't be as good.
So, it's impossible not to talk about Dr.
Christine Ford, as she has captivated the country with her allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, that is also captivating the country.
Here are some questions I have.
Number one, Why is it so hard to find a good photo of Christine Ford on Google?
What's up with that?
There are only two photos you see, or three I think.
Two of them she has sunglasses on, so you can't see her eyes.
And one she does not.
So much so that I'm not even sure the one without the sunglasses is even her.
You can't really even tell it's the same person.
But why are we not seeing pictures of her?
Just a question. If I were her, if I were her handlers, if I were her lawyers, here's what I would do.
Since she's in the news, and since these old pictures of her are the ones that are flying around, I would make sure that there's at least one good photo that just puts her in a good light.
Like, literally just makes her look good.
Makes her look happy, smiley, you know, in control.
Just makes her look, you know, as good as she can look.
That seems like lawyering 101, doesn't it?
If there are no good pictures of her in the universe but they're still being printed like crazy, you go out there and you get a good picture.
Right, Peter Duke?
I know Peter Duke, photographer, is listening to me right now and agreeing with every word I just said.
This, again, is looking for the empty space.
So when you're looking at the picture, don't look at just the stuff that's on the canvas.
Look at the empty part of the canvas, too.
The empty part of this is any good lawyer representing someone whose picture is everywhere would provide a better picture.
So why are her lawyers not doing it?
Are they bad lawyers?
Possible, right?
Could be, but I understand that they're high-level lawyers.
Or number two, there's something about the picture that they don't think would help.
So should we ever see her live, I think it's going to be interesting because it'll be the first time we've actually Really seen her I would say.
I'm not sure we've seen her because the picture without her sunglasses is very old.
It's like a high school picture and the pictures of the more modern version of her with sunglasses and you can't really can't really get the measure of her.
So there's that. Remember I told you that The Democratic Party is starting to self-brand.
This is not my opinion of them.
They're starting to self-brand as the party of women, the party for women.
Which sort of leaves men a little bit out in the Democratic Party.
But that's their choice.
They can do whatever they want with their party.
I'm not saying it's good or it's bad.
It might actually be good.
Maybe it would be healthy to have a You know, a female-centric party that just goes with that theme.
You never know. Could be good.
I always like a healthy competition in all things.
But somebody just told me that Jeremy Corbyn referred to his party over in Great Britain as the party for women.
And I thought, that's interesting.
It's a thing that somebody actually calling his party, the party of women, the party for women.
And again, that might be good.
Maybe it's a good way to brand.
Maybe it's a way to win. Maybe it's a healthy way to compete.
Who knows? But here's where this all gets interesting.
At the same time, work with me here, right?
At the same time that the Democratic Party is branding itself very hard, I would say, as the party of women and for women, and I think you would agree with that characterization, right?
I think you would. At the same time they're doing that, who is the woman or women Who are sort of the face of the Democratic Party?
Well, it's sort of distributed, right?
There's Nancy Pelosi and there's still Hillary, but are they really the face of the Democratic Party?
There's Elizabeth Warren.
So I can go down the list, but none of them have quite Gelled as the one woman you think of when you think of the Democratic Party.
Because you might think of Hillary, but she's sort of a special case off in the fringe.
You have Maxine Waters, etc.
But here's the thing.
At the very time that the Democratic Party is branding it as a party of women, the biggest story in the news that's capturing all of our attention is Christine Ford.
Who is the most notable, talked about, prominent, photographed, argued about woman who is a perfect emblem of the Democratic Party, the way they're trying to form their brand?
It's Christine Ford.
Now, she did not volunteer to be the face of the Democratic Party.
I'm pretty sure that was not her plan.
But because there's a big vacuum there in terms of personality, her personality, just by being in the news, by being associated with that team completely, you know, it just maps to that team perfectly.
She was an activist.
She donated. The news says she considered moving out of the country.
Because Trump might appoint Kavanaugh.
So she is as solidly Democrat as you can get.
So she's becoming sort of the face of the party through nobody's intention.
It was nobody's idea, hey, let's make her the face of the party.
It just sort of became that.
Yeah, you think Kamala Harris, Jill Brand.
Mostly women.
Cortez. And when you name the men who are associated with the Democrats, it's sort of sad, isn't it?
You've got Joe Biden, who is, unfortunately, it's hard to take him completely seriously.
You've got Keith Ellison.
Well, that's not a male name you want associated with your party if you're a Democrat.
So whenever there's a man involved in the Democrats, like Cory Booker, Spartacus, they're just not presenting themselves well and they're not getting the same kind of attention.
So here's my wrap-up of this point.
The Democrats are self-branding as a party of and for women.
The biggest story is about Christine Ford.
She's identified with it.
There's a vacuum of personality to put on the Democrat brand.
And these two stories are now conflating like crazy.
These stories are conflating.
And so I propose to you that Christine Ford, should she end up giving her testimony in public, People are going to look at that and somewhat subconsciously they're going to say, there's the head of the Democratic Party.
Not the head in terms of being in charge, but the figure you think of, the brand, the vibe you get, the feelings that you associate with the Democrats.
She's the one who's carrying the banner right now.
Again, for good or bad.
I would say a lot of women would say that's great because she's exactly the kind of person we want out there.
She's brave. She's going up against power.
She was, you know, victimized by a white man.
So I think a lot of Democrats would say, bring it on.
She's exactly what we're talking about.
We want her to have a prominent voice.
But what's that gonna do to your elections in the future?
Is it the sort of thing that's gonna help you?
When Christine Ford testifies, do you think she's gonna come off well?
We know now that apparently all of the named potential witnesses to the party in question, all of them, have said they don't remember it.
In other words, they can't confirm that the event even happened.
None of them. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't happen because they were drunk.
It was a long time ago. They probably had parties every weekend.
Who would remember any one of them?
But there's also some discrepancy we're seeing in that the reporter's notes from the Washington Post apparently said that there was one woman involved, not three men, not four men, but rather at one point she had said there were three boys and a girl, because they were all under 18.
And now the woman who was a girl then who was named Doesn't remember it.
So in terms of credibility, now remember, credibility is not whether it's true or false.
Credibility is just how we're receiving it, right?
We don't know what happened, we'll never know.
But how we're receiving it is with a very low level of credibility lately.
When the initial accusation comes out and you don't know anything except that an accusation has happened, that's the moment when you probably put the highest level of credibility on it in terms of this specific story arc.
But every time something comes out, it's a little less credible.
It's like, yes, they were drinking.
He has no history that would suggest he's this kind of person.
Great character references.
Lots of women who knew him then said this isn't him.
So the evidence that's coming out is all somewhat pro-Kavanaugh at this point, and it's been somewhat consistent.
I'm not sure I would have expected that, actually.
I think I would have expected maybe it would go the other way.
But... One of the most beneficial things to come out of this, and I don't want to overlook the fact that what we have here is one or two victims in this story.
There are one or two victims.
So Christine Ford is certainly a victim of something.
I don't know if it's an event, I don't know if it's the event she described, a different event, or just something in her life.
But there's something, there's clearly some kind of issue, some problem, and I think calling her a victim is fair.
I'll take her word for it on that.
But Kavanaugh, should he be innocent completely, is clearly a victim.
So there's one or two bad victims here, not counting the country.
But there's always, whenever there's something terrible going on, sometimes there's some slight positive that comes out of it.
And you always ignore the slight positive that comes out of a tragedy, because the tragedy is the story, right?
Not the slight positive.
But there's a slight positive.
Let's talk about it. And the slight positive is...
At no time has the population of the United States been so well informed on the topic of false memories.
That's a really big deal.
Because remember I told you back in 2015 that President Trump would change not just politics, he would change the way we saw reality.
And I think I'm going to claim complete success on that prediction.
And you see that happening again.
The population has gone...
Well, let's put it this way. A month ago, if I said, hey, a hundred Americans, tell me what you know about false memory, the topic of false memory.
You know, talk about that.
They would have said, well, I don't know too much about it.
But now they know a lot more about it.
And that's good.
That's really good. Because the more humility you have about the quality of your own memory, the more accurate you're going to be about understanding your reality.
So the more you understand that memories are recreations, they're not actual memories like a photograph, Once you understand your memories are recreations, it takes you to another level of understanding your reality.
And I think the public has just gone for that ride.
We just took that ride.
Because there's one thing I don't think happened.
The thing I would think is the least likely explanation of what we're seeing, the least likely explanation is that Christine Ford just made it up.
Just lied.
Lied intentionally.
I think that's the least likely explanation.
Way on top of that is that something happened.
A way higher probability.
Something happened.
Might have been somebody different.
Might have been a different time. But the probability of something happening is pretty high.
So, the Democrats are having a terrible brand problem.
On top of that, as I mentioned, There's that New York Times story about Rod Rosenstein talking about the 25th Amendment and talking about wearing a wire.
People there say that he was joking.
I tend to be biased in favor of the...
I'm always biased in favor of whoever says it was a joke.
Because if anybody says something's a joke, And they took it that way.
It probably was a joke.
So I suspect that Rosenstein was being sarcastic, but also engaged in the conversation.
So it's probably true.
And you can tell from Rosenstein's, the specific way he denied what happened, he essentially confirmed that he was part of that conversation.
So he was part of a conversation talking about 25th Amendment, and he was part of a conversation talking about wearing wire, although it might have been sarcastic.
This is such a good week for the president.
It's like an insanely good week for the president for all weird reasons.
And one of them is that Rosenstein, as I said yesterday, was forced, forced is too strong, decided he needed to.
Write a letter, a public letter, saying that he's never seen anything to suggest that the president should be removed from office for the 25th Amendment.
And that was just at the time that the opposition was gearing up to make that the new line of attack because the Russia thing was falling apart.
So the Russia thing fell apart.
The racist thing, it isn't panning out as well as anybody hoped because the country is just running pretty well and the Supreme Court is not arguing about anything being racist at the moment.
So it hasn't quite gotten the bite it needed to get.
So they switched from Russia, switched from racism, but they thought, well, we've got this he's crazy thing going on.
And then the one person you should have been able to depend on, because he's no fan of the president, we assume, Rod Rosenstein, essentially gave him a clean bill of health in terms of his observations, which we would assume should be pretty good.
Now, as you know, I got to spend some time with the president last month.
And I spent enough time talking to him, just chatting about a variety of topics, that if he were crazy, I think I would have noticed.
I'm no mental health expert, but crazy people sort of signal it pretty well, don't they?
I feel like I would have picked up a little bit if there was even a whiff of it.
Like I would have just a little bit of question in my mind, but just nothing.
It was a completely normal conversation with somebody who was operating at a very high level.
Somebody whose mental process was very keenly focused on things that mattered.
And he was very good at ignoring things that didn't matter.
So he was more sane than anybody I've talked to in a long time.
All right, so the president's got now a reason to fire Rosenstein if he wants to, because the New York Times story gives him all kinds of cover to do that whenever he wants to.
It supports his story that there were deep state forces working against him in ways that nobody would approve of.
That works for him.
So the whole New York Times thing is just totally positive.
Now here's the other thing you've got.
What's one of the other biggest issues President Trump has?
He was accused by various women, primarily during the election itself, and then because of the Access Hollywood tapes, he was accused of bad behavior with a variety of women.
Now no specific evidence that anybody would call credible It came out of that except people talking during a highly partisan situation.
So, given the partisanship of the election, eyewitness accounts from years ago just don't have the same weight they would have as if it were not an election.
One of the weird benefits that the president gets out of this is that because Kavanaugh's accuser has only, I think, 25% believability or support, not believability, but 25% of the polled public believes the accuser,
the summary of that is that the vast amount of Americans Believe this is an invented or fake accusation.
That has nothing to do with the president, but it's this big public example of how, in people's opinions, we don't know the facts, but in 75% of the opinion of the public, There's an overblown or false accusation from a woman from years ago about a powerful man today.
What's that look like?
If you don't believe the Kavanaugh accusation, and I'm not saying it's true or false, I have no idea, if you don't believe that one, that thought bleeds over and starts to conflate with what you're thinking about the president.
So suddenly the accusations against President Trump are all being diminished in our minds because of a completely different story.
It's just that we can't help making an automatic analogy.
So whatever happens with Kavanaugh is going to bleed over to what you believe about the president's accusers.
You can't help it.
That's just how brains work.
Those two stories will just be too similar.
An old accusation from years ago.
Only evidence is a woman.
It's somebody who's at the highest level of the government today.
It's the president. It's Kavanaugh.
They're white guys of a certain height and size.
White women from years ago.
Just in your mind, there's too much similarity that you're not going to generalize from one to the other.
It's just going to happen. So that helps Trump, too, because we'll never know what the deal was with Kavanaugh and Ford.
We'll never know. But the fact that people don't believe it by three to one margin is good for the president.
Now, during this entire time, during this entire time, the only other news stories have been good economic news, right?
Good news on economics.
Iran has been well behaved to the point where the New York Times reported that Trump's gambit of canceling the Iran deal looks like it's working.
The New York Times reported that.
One of the biggest topics of disagreement, they reported, well, Yeah, it's kind of working.
North Korea? North Korea stopped their propaganda in their own country, talking about the need to keep nukes, and they changed their own propaganda to, let's become the cradle of peace.
Their own words. Translated, but their own words.
What does it mean that North Korea has changed their internal propaganda to make them look like they're winning by getting rid of their nukes?
Foreshadowing, all right?
Foreshadowing. What happened in Syria when it looked like Russia and Iran were going to wipe out this pocket of rebels that I guess the United States wants to protect for, I don't know the details.
Well, the United States got its way.
They decided not to attack.
And it turns out President Trump was the big player there.
And they backed down.
So, I don't know what you're seeing, but I'm seeing victory after victory after victory.
Now, the big wild cards out there are, you've got China, which is, you know, we're still not seeing much, I don't think any progress in terms of Chinese negotiations, but who has time on their side?
We do. The United States has time on its side.
So if you say to yourself, hey, it's been a week and we don't have a deal with China, what happens if it's two weeks?
I'll tell you what happens.
The longer it goes, the more leverage we have, because it's harder for China to wait than it is for us, just because of the differences in the economies.
So the longer it goes...
It's definitely going to squeeze some prices.
You know, Walmart's going to feel the pinch.
There are going to be some specific industries that feel the pinch.
And I'm not happy about that, right?
I don't want to overlook the fact that there will be American businesses and people who are going to really feel the pinch.
But that's what leadership is.
Leadership is, I know we don't like this, but this group is going to have to take a pinch.
Because if they do, and we can get to the other end of this, thank you patriots for taking the economic hit on this, but you understand I'm doing this all in public.
We're looking for the big deal that can help everybody in the long run.
But sorry about this.
We expect you to, you know, take a hit for the public.
That's what leadership is.
Leadership is saying clearly this group is going to have to take some sacrifice and we're doing it because the greater good looks like this.
Somebody has to make these decisions.
I just made it.
That's leadership.
Can China persuasion-wise give in?
China can do whatever it wants because their government is very capable and very credible within their own country.
So they do have they're capable and credible and I do think they have as much operating power as they need to find a way to make it work.
I guess. I'm not there so I don't know the details.
So Alright, what else we have going on?
Oh, so I've been having some back and forth with Hawke Newsome.
You know him as leader of Black Lives Matter at Greater New York.
I shared with him my document in which I show the two movies about President Trump.
The one that says Charlottesville happened the way CNN and MSNBC reported it, and the other one that says that's just a hoax, because when he said, for example, there were good people on both sides, the reality is he meant both sides of the statue question.
He wasn't saying that the white supremacists were good people, but that's the way it was reported.
You know, inaccurately. So I shared that list of all the hoaxes that are the headlines with Hawk and I was quite happy to see that he tweeted a question.
So he tweeted a question, where can I watch unbiased news?
That, my friends, might be the most important question anybody ever asked.
It seems like no big deal, right?
Let me say how important this is.
The leader of Black Lives Matter, Greater New York, one of the leading voices for that movement, said in public...
Where can I get unbiased news?
Because he understands now, and I think I was at least part of that journey to show him that there are two movies playing and they're not the same.
And if you're watching only one of these movies, you don't know what's going on.
It doesn't matter which one you're moving.
If you're only watching one of them, it doesn't matter which one you're watching.
They're different, and if you're only watching one, you don't know what's going on.
So somebody suggested that I was a source of unbiased news, and I would say I'm the only person I know who's attempting to be unbiased.
And when I have a bias, I'll call it out.
So there are issues where even I have a bias and it's either going to be obvious to you or I'll call it out if I need to.
But I'm at least trying.
It is my intention to be unbiased.
And I have the advantage that I don't have a financial advantage to be biased.
In fact, Yeah, you can tell.
I mean, I just lose money by doing this so far.
And he was looking for other suggestions, of course.
And so the only one I could think of...
Think about this.
I can only think of one unbiased...
Other person. And when I say unbiased, I don't mean he's completely unbiased.
I mean even intending to be unbiased.
Someone who's actually putting effort into being unbiased.
And I said Glenn Greenwald.
Greenwald? I hope I'm pronouncing it right.
I think he writes for The Intercept.
Now, I follow him on Twitter.
Now, let me give you my bias...
About Glenn Greenwald.
I think he's a dick.
Now he and I have had a little bit of an exchange on Twitter, so my personal opinion of him, he's a dick.
But my professional opinion is that he's just about the only person who's even attempting to do something that looks unbiased.
Oh, Alan Dershowitz, that's a good one.
But Dershowitz tends to limit his comments to the law, so I don't think of him as being that unbiased.
There are other people who get close to that.
Some of the names I saw go by were Greg Gutfeld.
I agree with that one. Greg is probably the most unbiased observer on Fox News, but if you're on Fox News, you're going to take a certain hit with you, at least in terms of people's opinions.
Cheryl Atkinson.
Well, everything that Sheryl Ekinson writes looks unbiased to me, but pretty much what she writes tends to always favor a certain position, isn't it?
Whatever she writes, it does seem like it's objective, but I don't see her ever write stories that seem to lean the other direction.
Chris Wallace, that's a good example.
See, your trouble is that if you're on either CNN or you're on Fox News, it's tough to get all the way to completely unbiased because it'd be hard to keep your job, right?
Joe Rogan is a good example, although I don't think of him as being about the news.
Somebody's saying Byron York.
Byron York blocks me on Twitter.
So I don't have any opinion on Byron York because I can't read his writing.
Ann Coulter. Oh, Dave Rubin.
Dave Rubin, thank you.
That's actually a good suggestion.
But Dave Rubin is not in the job of reporting the news or talking about the headlines so much.
He's more in the job of talking to people who talk about it.
But yes, he would be a great example.
Oh, Geraldo. That's a good example.
Geraldo is a good example of someone who is clearly on both sides of the issues and talks about the news.
Yeah, so the closest thing to unbiased on CNN is Chris Cuomo, in my opinion.
John Stossel, some people are saying, maybe.
So those are the names that are at least closest to unbiased.
Yeah, we said Dave Rubin.
Yeah, the trouble is if you work for one of the big networks, there's a limit to how unbiased you can ever really be.
All right.
Let's say that for a minimum requirement for me to call you unbiased is that I have to know about times that you've disagreed with what people would say would be your own side.
If you can have examples of that, and Greg Goffield does have examples where he has clear examples of times that he's gone against the green.
So he qualifies.
Geraldo qualifies because he has specific examples where he's gone against the green.
I don't know about Brit Hulme.
I'm not discounting that one as a possibility, but I don't know of any examples where he's gone against the grain.
Chris Wallace sounds completely reasonable when I listen to him, but I also don't know any examples where he went against the grain.
I think there probably are, so...
But anyway, the bottom line here is you saw that Lee Stranahan, I don't have enough information about his opinions to have an opinion on that.
So my bottom line here is look how unusual it is that anybody even attempts to be unbiased.
You don't really even see the attempt coming out of too many people.
And that has to do with the business models.
If your business model is making money for a certain network or a certain publication, you kind of have to stay in that lane or it's not going to work out too well.
And I have the same influence because, you know, I feel pressure, would I say?
I wouldn't call it pressure.
I'd say I feel influence.
To say things that the people who are the audience from my Periscopes are going to want to hear.
But I think...
Can you confirm this for me?
Have you all heard me say things that you didn't like?
Because that's the test, right?
Can people confirm that for me?
Have I said things that you are pretty sure you didn't agree with?
Because that's where I want to be.
I want to be where, you know, I have some credibility, but there are still some things you say.
I absolutely disagree with that part.
That's not what my team wants to think is true.
China news. Is there news from China?
Mike Rowe. Mike Rowe is a good, that's an interesting suggestion.
Yeah, I haven't seen Mike Rowe talk about politics per se.
I would say Mike Rowe is more like a person of the people.
So he's more about the people than the politics, in my opinion.
Yeah, well, look how small the pool was of people that you even assume could be unbiased.
Somebody said the No Agenda show.
I'll bet that's true.
Peggy Noonan.
Oh, there's a good suggestion.
Peggy Noonan. I don't know if Peggy Noonan is unbiased or I just want to think that because she's such an amazing writer.
Once you become such a good writer, you don't see the bias anyway.
It just looks like it's a good opinion.
But I'll bet that's true, though.
I'll bet there are cases where she's going against her side, yes.
So, yes, let's add her to the list.
Peggy Newman as an unbiased source.
Alright, so it took a while for your comments to come in, but I can see that many of you are agreeing that you disagree with me on a number of topics, and that's where I want to be.
I want to be where you all have something to disagree with me, because that's the only way I could be credible.
If you agreed with everything I said, then you would just know I'm saying things you want to hear.
Keith Olbermann. I assume you're joking.
Alright. You think it's okay to kneel for Anthem?
I don't.
Well, that's not exactly a restatement of my opinion.
Somebody said that I think it's okay to kneel for the anthem, and the person who made the comment says that they don't, therefore we disagree.
That's not exactly my view.
My view is that kneeling for the anthem is offensive By design.
It doesn't make sense to me to criticize something for being offensive when the person who did it is doing it for that purpose.
It's supposed to be offensive.
That's what gets your attention.
That's what makes it a protest.
There's a little bit of offensiveness baked into the design of it.
Which is, you know, my preference is people respect their country and its symbols.
That's my preference. Same as yours.
But as an observation, the people doing it have the right to do it and it got our attention and therefore it's effective.
So I can like it for being effective at the same time I can share your discomfort with it.
I don't think we're on we're not on different teams.
Tucker will go against his side.
I think I've seen that.
I'll give you that. Somebody just said, apparently somebody on the left is watching this and noted how many people who lean right are saying that other people are biased.
You all know you're biased, right?
Well, let me ask you this.
Let me ask you the most interesting question.
Have I ever seen anybody ask this question?
So here's the question, and it'll take a little while for your answers to come through because of the delay on Periscope here, but here's the question.
Do you consider yourself biased in your political opinions?
Do you consider yourself, just you personally, not people in your party, but do you consider yourself biased on politics?
Yes or no?
Are you biased?
We'll wait for your comments to come in.
And I actually don't know how this is going to go.
I don't have a prediction of whether people will say they are biased or they are not.
So if you've been listening, the reveal is so interesting because it's going to take a while for the answers to come through.
So somebody says no.
Let's get some more answers here.
Camille Paglia.
There's a good one. An unbiased person.
She's been all over the place.
Shepard Smith does disagree with Fox a lot.
That is true. But that's different than being unbiased.
Nobody is unbiased.
Correct. Good answer.
How could we not be?
Oh, I am so happy.
I'm happy about the people who say yes, they're biased.
That is really, really good.
Wow! I'm so impressed with all of you.
Not all of you. Some of you said you were not biased, but only like a sprinkle.
So it looks like the overwhelming number of people answering the question are saying of themselves, yes, we're biased.
Do you know how important that is?
If you're trying to get to this point where you actually do understand the world a little bit, and maybe understand the world as an impossible dream, but at least more effective an ability to predict the world and to navigate the world, it's very important that you understand how biased you are.
Because if you don't get that part, You're dead in order.
You can't start your journey toward understanding the world at a better level, more productive level, until you know how biased you are.
And all of you seem to know that.
That is tremendous.
I wonder if you would have had the same answer three years ago.
Do you think you would have? I'll hold that question for another time.
But it feels like that's the change that I predicted, you know, in 2015.
That how we saw the world would change, not just politics.
How we saw reality would change.
And this is the sort of change I was talking about.
Where people go from, I'm right and you're wrong, to, holy hell, we're living in two different movies and maybe neither of us are right.
How many of you are starting to see the world in terms of these two movies that the world is trapped in on a perpetual basis?
As soon as you start seeing the world as two movies, as opposed to right and wrong, then you start your journey.
That's where it starts.
To release you from your mental prisons.
Well, I'll tell you, it looks like a lot of you are halfway into your mental prisons.
So the book I'm writing right now, that you won't see for a year, will be about how to escape from your mental prisons.
And it'll be some techniques that some of you already know, but I'll put it all together in a way that you haven't seen before.
Biased but not prejudiced, somebody said.
Yeah, the other big...
Aha! The big perceptual shift that I think the world is starting to enjoy, and enjoy is the right word because it's going to make life better, looks like this.
Here's the old way of thinking.
Some people were biased and some people had risen above it.
That's the old way of looking at the world.
That way of looking at the world gives you bad results.
Let's see if I can fix my...
Oh, damn it.
A better way to look at the world is every one of us is biased because we're born that way.
Our brains are pattern recognition machines and you can't turn them off.
They can't not recognize patterns.
The problem is a lot of the patterns are false.
They're just coincidences.
They're just our experience gave us a special bias because, you know, let me put it this way.
If every time you saw somebody wearing a hat, they punched you in the face, eventually you would say people with hats are all bad people.
And that wouldn't be true.
You just happen to be the one person who got punched in the face by everybody with a hat.
So it's natural that you would be biased.
You can't turn that off.
But you can use your higher level of thinking to recognize it when it's happening and to develop systems to get past it.
That's the win.
The win is not be unbiased.
It isn't possible. So as long as you think that's possible, there's no hope.
It isn't possible to be unbiased.
It is possible to layer on top of your bias some systems, some technique, some practice, some greater awareness, some better understanding, a little more empathy.
And those things are like this little protective layer that keeps all your bad stuff under control.
So, having bad stuff is not something you should try not to do.
Because you can't.
Your bad stuff is the normal way your brain is designed.
It's designed to recognize patterns.
It's not your fault that some of the patterns you observe are not real.
That's not your fault.
So the natural way of your brain is to be biased.
You just have to figure out the stuff to layer on top of it to keep it down, you know, to keep the civilization safe.
Like civilization is up here.
You got to build this little barrier of, you know, empathy, technique, systems, laws, you know, checks and balances.
You got to get a lot of stuff right to keep the bad impulses away from civilization.
And as long as you're thinking of the world in those terms, the way I just described it, you can become a lot more forgiving of other people who have lapses.
And you can also be more useful, because if somebody's having trouble keeping those bad impulses under control, You might have some tools, and I'm hoping I can help you with that, or that I have, and I will with the coming book especially, give you some tools to help people recognize when they're acting on bias versus when they have some level of control on it.
And I think that that can be done.
And that's all I've got for now.
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