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Sept. 24, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
43:35
Episode 232 Scott Adams: The Battle of the Sexes, 2018
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Oh! Peter Duke!
Come on in here. Hey Jen.
Hey Unix, Mark, Tyler.
Tyler, you're always in here early.
You got fast fingers.
Based Diva, hello.
Well, we got lots to talk about.
And when I say we have a lot to talk about, I'm mostly talking about Brett Kavanaugh's junk.
Right? Remember when we used to talk about North Korea and the economy and President Trump's tweets?
Do you remember those days?
It seems so long ago now.
Yeah, now it's pretty much non-stop talk about Brett Kavanaugh's genitalia.
So let's get to it after the simultaneous sip.
Join me, will you? Mmm, simultaneous sip.
Raise your cup, your glass, your chalice, your mug.
Coffee optional.
So there's a poll asking, who do you believe in the Kavanaugh situation?
And Christine Ford, people who believe her, 36%, Brett Kavanaugh, 30%.
So more people believe in Christine Ford, but almost an equal number of both of those categories are unsure.
Now, how does that poll compare to the poll you saw that said only 25% of women believed the accuser?
Completely different, right?
Right? And this is a Fox News poll, so you would expect that they would want the result to come out saying that nobody believed the accuser.
You would assume that that would be their bias.
So that first poll that people like me tweeted around, absolutely fraudulent.
Who did that first poll that said there was only 25 or 28% people believed?
Christine Ford.
I think Tucker highlighted it.
I'm sure I tweeted it.
And when I find out where that came from, I won't be tweeting that source again ever.
So the first thing you should keep in mind is that that first poll you saw is so different from this one that one of them is just made up.
This one, the Fox one, is opposite of what you think their bias should be, so it automatically is more credible, because it doesn't support their own preferred story, one assumes.
Whereas the other one was just, Yeah, it was a Huffington Post poll.
So Huffington Post had a poll.
This is weird. What's happened to the world?
So Huffington Post ran a poll result that was opposite of what they would want it to be.
And then it was debunked by a Fox News poll that was the opposite of what Fox News would want it to be.
Is that a step in the right direction?
Alright, let's talk about a few more things.
Doesn't it seem like it's shaping up, this Thursday event with Christine Ford and Kavanaugh, Christine Ford testifying in particular, doesn't it seem like it's battling up, it's forming the battle of the sexes again?
Those of you who are not old enough, let me explain what the battle of the sexes refers to.
So it was the 70s, I think, in which ex number one tennis player, male tennis player, Bobby Riggs, who was sort of a famous gambler, you know, crazy personality guy, he bet Billie Jean King, who was at the time the current number one female player, That he could play her in tennis and beat her.
She's the number one best female player in the world at the time.
And he was a retired, older, I forget, in his late 50s or whatever he was.
But he was way past his prime.
But he said that even past his prime, a man could beat a woman at tennis.
Now, it was all great fun and I remember watching it live when I was a kid and we didn't know who would win.
It was actually really interesting.
I had no idea. As it turns out, Billie Jean King won and it was considered a big event in terms of the overall arc of men and women.
Now, it seems to me that this Kavanaugh confirmation is lining up to really not be about Kavanaugh anymore.
It started that way, but it's not really about Kavanaugh anymore, is it?
Doesn't it seem like it's really another battle of the sexes?
Because the objections to Kavanaugh are almost entirely based on what people believe he would rule in terms of women's reproductive rights.
That's the main issue, right?
So it's primarily about a gender difference in preference.
All of the discussion of whether he did or did not do the things which he is accused of doing have everything to do with the credibility of women making accusations.
So this is what makes it a battle of the sexes.
Because the battle has left the field of these two people and whether one person gets a job.
It's no longer about that.
It's no longer about somebody getting appointed.
It's now elevated to the bigger question of power.
Who has the power?
Do women have the power?
In this case, it would be to be believed without the benefit of corroborating support.
Or do men have the power, which is the ability to, you know, presumably abuse and get away with it a lot, and also the power to not be accused of something you didn't do and to still be innocent until proven guilty.
So there's a lot on the line here.
That has nothing to do with the individuals involved.
It has a lot to do with our bigger impression of the patriarchy versus the matriarchy.
Who has power? Can a man ever run for office?
What will happen to the sons?
Will it be safe for men and women to even be together?
If you're watching this and you're in the corporate world, I just saw a tweet this morning.
Somebody in the corporate world said that they've discontinued all private contact with women.
Just discontinued.
In a business setting.
So in a business setting, this is someone who won't make a phone call privately to a woman.
We'll actually require someone else to be on the call.
It requires a witness to a phone call.
And you say to yourself, well, that's crazy.
You don't need a witness just to make a phone call, a man to a woman, in a business setting.
But maybe you do.
It's not crazy.
It's sort of the Mike Pence rule attenuated a little bit.
I'm sure he makes phone calls to women, but you could take it to that extreme and you wouldn't be crazy.
It wouldn't be crazy.
It would just be safe. So what do you think this is going to do to turnout, gender-wise?
Seems to me that women would be highly incented.
I would imagine that the turnout for the midterm among women would be very high.
What would be the turnout among men?
If you were to guess, would there be a greater increase in turnout of men or a greater increase in turnout for women based on what's in the atmosphere right now?
What would you guess?
Yes, more men or more women.
Now, here's a...
I was gonna say something and I'm pulling back.
We're gonna change the subject and keep myself out of trouble.
I noticed that Michael Moore's movie, did you see the box office results for Michael Moore's new movie?
It's called Fahrenheit 11-9, referring to the day after the election, and it's an anti-Trump movie.
I believe the Michael Moore movie Let me give you the actual numbers because it's shocking how poorly it did.
Michael Bohr is not a box office draw anymore.
But still, let's see if I can give you the real number.
That headline has already disappeared.
Darn it. Somebody will tell me.
But not only did it bomb, it almost didn't exist.
It did so poorly that it was almost non-existent in the box office.
I think the total income was in the low few thousands of dollars.
And you've noticed that if I were to ask you, all right, I'm going to ask you a question in a minute, and I want you to give me the first three names that come to mind, all right?
So I want you to name the first three people who come to mind, and here it is.
Male Democrats, go.
The first three male Democrats you think of.
Male Democrats, go.
Now, some of you thought of Michael Moore, Chuck Schumer, and And most of you are watching men being excoriated.
Is that even a word? And it seems to me that the brand, the Democrat brand, is just so flagrantly anti-male at this point that I just don't know how men can be members of that party.
Actually, I don't know how it works.
Oh, damn it. I was just going to tell you something very interesting.
Oh, here it was.
So I was watching Tucker Carlson's show the other day.
And there's an anti-Trump Democrat whose name I don't remember.
You'll recognize him. He's one of the regulars who comes on Tucker's show and argues against Trump.
He's got a shaved head, and he likes to leave the topic until Tucker yells in.
I can't remember his name. By the way, he's one of the standard representatives of the Democrats.
And here's an interesting thing he said.
He was talking about how the, I guess it's the Judiciary Committee, is a bunch of old white men.
Now, other people have said that, and it's actually a good point.
You know, we live in a Diverse society?
Why is some important representative group just a bunch of white men?
So it's the point, perfectly good point.
But here's the way the anti-Trumper Democrat explained it.
He said, the entire committee has no ethnic diversity whatsoever.
So far, good point.
So far, fair statement.
The Judiciary Committee has no ethnic diversity.
And then he went on to say, more importantly, it has no women.
More importantly.
How important is more importantly?
So here's the guy representing the Democrats.
And with nobody questioning the statement, he said that this group that are all just old white men has no diversity, no ethnic diversity.
And you go, good point.
And then he says, more importantly, it doesn't have women.
And I thought to myself, more importantly...
Interesting. Now, it might be more important.
I'm not going to say that the point is wrong.
The point might have been right.
That maybe that's the balance that we needed even more than ethnic diversity because it's the courts and there are more things about reproductive rights than there are things about other things.
So his point may have been completely good.
But here's the interesting part.
Even Tucker let it go as a non-controversial statement, something not worth following up on.
He said publicly and clearly, representing Democrats, and nobody questioned it, that having more female representatives on the group is more important than having ethnic diversity.
Now what have I been telling you is the brand problem that the Democrats have.
The brand problem is that they seem to have more interest in solving the problems of women than solving the problems of, let's say, African Americans.
And you can see that fairly clearly in that comment, mostly because it was non-controversial.
That a simple statement that getting more women on the committee is more important than getting, let's say, African Americans on the committee, and that nobody questioned that.
Richard Goodstein, maybe.
That sounds right, but I'm not sure.
I won't confirm that.
Let's talk about...
Let's talk about James Woods.
So he is apparently refusing to delete the offending tweet.
And so James Woods, as most of you know, got suspended from Twitter.
But he can go back on as soon as he defends the offending tweet.
Now part of the issue, which I didn't know about, is that apparently his girlfriend is the one who retweeted this thing that was an old meme that James Woods had.
He tweeted a long time ago and didn't get in trouble the first time.
But this time he did, but his girlfriend did not.
So his girlfriend tweeted it, but did not get blocked or suspended.
And I also wonder, what about all the other people who retweeted it?
Why don't they also get suspended?
If one person can get suspended, why can't all the people who retweeted it?
Now it's probably good that that's not the rule, that the only one who gets suspended is the creator of the, not the meme in this case, but the creator of the message that went with the meme, which is presumably what made it worse.
But it's a good question.
Why did the retweeters get a pass?
I don't know. So I told you my take on it, which is that because the way James Woods presented the meme is probably what was problematic.
Because he said it's probably not true.
But it could be true in this world.
Which leaves open the possibility it's true, which is just enough oxygen that you could expect other people to think it is true.
And since other people thinking it is true could influence the election, which I think it could actually.
It was a strong meme.
It was strong enough that it actually could move people.
Not many, but it could move a few people.
And so Twitter's rules are essentially they don't want fake news moving elections, which is a good objective.
It's just hard to execute because there's a lot of judgment called.
Now, here's the interesting point that comes out of the whole James Woods thing.
Before we could measure the impact of persuasion, we couldn't make it illegal, right?
Nobody would try to kick you off social media for being persuasive.
It's only in all of the questions about Google and the big companies, whether or not they're biasing the algorithms, all of that stuff, That stuff only matters because we've entered an age where our persuasion gets measured.
And we're thinking of measuring it even when we can't measure it.
So in the case of, let's say, the Russian persuasion, we couldn't really measure if anything happened.
I think the impact was probably so close to zero it didn't make a difference.
The fact that we live in a world where there is persuasion, and we understand what it is, and we can recognize it a little better, but we also now have technology to measure it pretty quickly.
You try this meme, you compare it to this meme, and you see which one gets more clicks.
So once you can measure something, it takes on new importance.
So here's the key point.
Once you can measure something, It takes on new importance, because things that we can measure, we care about.
Things we think are true and may be happening, but are hard to measure, we don't care about.
The reason that global warming, climate change, is such a big international issue, in part, is because it's measurable.
Now there's a big debate about whether it's being measured correctly or interpreted correctly, but that's less important Than the fact we've entered an age where we're making serious efforts to measure it.
Once you can measure it, or you think you can measure it, or someone thinks they can measure it, it gains new importance.
So, the fact we can measure persuasion almost guarantees it will someday be illegal.
Let me ask you this.
If you could measure How persuasive I am.
Let's just say that was possible.
It might be possible.
It's almost possible.
But let's say you can measure how persuasive I am, just personally, just as a personality on Twitter and Periscope.
If you could measure how I change people's votes, and I think we're very close to the point where at least the tech companies could measure that, even if I can't.
And let's say they looked at my persuasion and it was all weighted in one direction.
Let's say it was weighted Republican.
And it was measurable.
And let's say That I didn't have any gross factual errors that are clearly something I made up.
So I might be wrong on some facts, but that would be like everybody else, as long as it looks like I didn't make up facts just to change the election.
But let's say just...
I know you make fun of the way I say measure.
The measurements.
I come from upstate New York.
We measure. But you can measure if you want to.
Measure. So, would it be someday illegal for someone who is trained in persuasion to be super persuasive When,
and wait till I finish this thought, if we all agree that fake news that moves an election should be eliminated from the platforms, what about people like me who don't use any fake news, or at least not intentionally, I would never do that intentionally, but I can absolutely move outcomes, shouldn't I be kicked off the platform?
Shouldn't I? Because if I can move people's opinion without changing any factual news, nothing's untrue, I can just move people's opinion, do they have free will?
Is it free will If the information you get from me is exactly the same as what you read in the news, but the way I framed it, the words I used, the emphasis I put on things, the techniques I used, actually changed your opinion in a way you could measure.
Should I be illegal on social media?
Now, the reason that this sounds like a ridiculous question is because there are very few people who are actually persuasive.
It's kind of rare. It's one of the reasons that President Trump enjoys pretty much an empty field when it comes to persuasion.
He's sort of the only one who's good at it at the moment, who's even in the political realm.
On social media, there are lots of people who have big followings and stuff, but there aren't that many people who are actually trained to persuade.
Mike Cernovich, he's one.
He's trained. He actually has the background, the knowledge.
He's written books on the topic.
He writes about it. He's persuasive.
You can tell by the number of followers he has that it's pretty obvious.
So, would people like us someday be kicked off of social media just for being persuasive?
What do you think?
I think it depends how persuasive we are.
See, if you're thinking to yourself, no, you could never criminalize or punish just being persuasive, that would be going way too far.
And I say, Only because you can't measure it well.
The moment you could measure how much impact I had on the 2016 election, if it were possible to know how much impact I personally had on that election, I would be kicked off social media.
I'm pretty sure that's true.
Now, it might have to happen in an indirect way.
They might have to find something I did that violates a rule that I didn't know I was violating.
I don't think I've ever intentionally violated any rule on social media.
I can't think of any time I've done that.
I'll be falsely accused of something.
But just think about that point.
The only reason it's legal is because they have not yet found an effective way to measure it that is objective.
All right. Am I persuading Twitter to kick me off?
I'm not.
I would hope to persuade them otherwise.
Alan Dershowitz.
Okay.
So, what is your net-net of...
Let's go back to Kavanaugh for a minute, because it's the interesting thing.
Oh, by the way, I tweeted this morning.
It was a pretty popular tweet.
And I said, what are the odds we're going to get to the end of this week...
Without a description of Kavanaugh's genitalia and matching it to some kind of vegetable or fruit.
I'm going to say that the odds of getting to the end of this week without an actual description of his genitalia is low.
Now I'll tell you, I don't know who would try to get that job ever again.
Can you imagine? I've actually considered this in the past.
I've thought to myself, I'd make a pretty good Supreme Court justice if they took people who had never been lawyers.
And then I thought, who would want to go through this process?
I sure wouldn't. Can you make a persuasion scale to say who is more persuasive on 1 to 10?
Oh yeah, and by the way, the latest accusation is that he exposed his private part when he was 14.
Am I wrong that that's roughly the age that he's accused of doing this new thing, right?
Am I wrong about that, the age?
It was an accusation that he may have exposed himself when he was 14 years old.
And we're treating it, and that if he did, it was in the context of a joke, because they were pretending to do something, blah, blah.
So it wasn't, you know, I'm not defending it.
So let me say that clearly.
I'm not defending it.
I'm describing it.
And I'm describing it as the context was a joke.
Let me tell you an incident that happened at my restaurant I owned.
So years ago, my restaurant manager, her name is Stacy, The restaurant's closed now, so this is past history.
She was my co-owner and manager of the restaurant, and she was working in the walk-in freezer.
She was crouched down, organizing some boxes or something, so she was doing something on the floor.
And one of the servers, who was a friend of hers, so he worked there, so he was an employee, but they were also friends.
They knew each other pretty well.
He took a sausage, you know, just like a sausage, and apparently he spent a little time in the kitchen carving the end of the sausage so that it looked, let's say, a little more lifelike, if you know what I mean.
And he took the sausage and he put it through his pants zipper so that when he walked into the walk-in closet to surprise Stacey.
Oh, it was a freshman at Yale, okay.
So I had the year wrong.
He was 18. The accusation is that he was 18.
So that's a correction.
If everybody missed this, we're not talking about freshmen in high school.
We're talking about freshmen in college.
That's the accusation.
So Kavanaugh would have been 18 if what I'm seeing in the comments sounds right.
So the server puts the sausage through his pants so it looks like it belongs to him.
He's spent some time to do some carving on the end of it to make it look more realistic.
But it's still the shape and texture of a sausage.
So, he walks into the walk-in where my co-owner of the restaurant, Stacy, was, crouched down, so she was probably on her knees or crouched down, and he says something to her, and she turns around and comes face to sausage with a sausage that he has put through his pants zipper.
Now, here's the question.
How long did he keep his job?
So did the server get fired on the spot?
What happened?
Well, in this case, she thought it was the funniest thing she's ever seen in her life because it totally fooled her for a moment.
So when she turned around, she actually thought it was not only part of the server, so she did think it was part of his body, but because it was literally a carved sausage, it was hideous at the same time.
So she thought it was real and hideous Simultaneously as she was surprised as she saw and she screamed But when she realized the joke She she thought it was like the funniest thing she's ever seen and she told all her friends and you know She loves telling the story and not only did he keep his job.
He was you know one of the favorite employees now when you hear that story You're probably saying to yourself, well, if somebody did that in my office, they would not keep their job very long.
And, of course, everything depends on the situation and the people and how well do you know the person and, you know, is this really a joke or is this sexual harassment?
A lot of it just depends on the person.
In this case, this was clearly a situation where you could imagine someone getting fired or practically arrested.
Probably not arrested, but you could certainly see somebody getting fired for it or written up or something.
But because they knew each other, nothing like that was the case.
It was just a very inappropriate, funny time.
Yeah, she was not in the category of people who don't have a sense of humor.
That's true. So I asked you earlier to name three men that remind you of Democrats.
So who are the three men who are Democrats?
And I would think Michael Moore comes to mind.
Chuck Schumer. Cory Booker.
Who are your three?
Who are the top three Democrats you think of?
So anyway, my point is that if the three men you think about, if you're a woman and you think of political people, the three Democrats if you're a woman and you think of political people, the three Democrats you think of are Michael Moore, Harvey or
That is a sad, sad place to be a man.
Biden, yeah.
He got a raise.
Okay, that's funny. If Harvey Weinstein was good-looking, would this be an issue?
Of course he would. Of course he would.
So is intention the key?
Yeah, intention does make a big difference.
It's not enough to keep you out of jail, but it certainly should make a difference.
But think about this.
Here's something I've said before.
Why is it that rubbing against your own pants typically doesn't make you sexually aroused?
It's because the physical contact isn't really the thing.
It's always been a mental process.
So, intention does matter.
You know, there's a reason that your doctor can touch you and it's not arousing and something else can touch you and it is.
So, intention is a big part, you know, because we register intention as important.
Tim Kaine, yes.
Rosenstein resigning, somebody says.
I'll bet that's not real.
I'll just Google that to see.
If that were true, it would be a headline, but apparently it's not.
Not true. Oh, Booker and Schiff.
I guess there's I guess there aren't too many manly men on either side, but Yeah, somebody said McCain.
That's funny. Your answers are mean.
Anyway, I think the battle of the sexes is on, and Thursday will be the day.
Is the accuser's Is her testimony going to be public?
Can somebody tell me that?
Will Christine Ford's testimony be public and televised or not?
Because I would think she would ask for it not to be, but I haven't heard.
Somebody answer that for me, please.
Will the testimony be public?
I hate this delay.
I wish your answers could be here in real time.
Yes, you can't tickle yourself to my prior point about intention.
The reason you can't tickle yourself is probably because you know your own intentions and you know what it's going to feel like.
Swalwell.
Yeah, Swalwell's an up-and-comer.
He's my congressperson here.
I've met him a few times through mutual friends so you know if you're if you're let's talk about Avanadi Avanadi Now, when you think of Avenatti, who do you think of?
Stormy Daniels, right?
So, Avenatti, Stormy Daniels.
Avenatti, Stormy Daniels.
It's impossible not to think of Stormy Daniels and therefore porn and porn stars.
So Avenatti has attached himself to this new headline, because he's good at attaching himself to headline, that he has apparently some new witness who's going to say something about Kavanaugh.
Now, if you were on the side of fighting against Kavanaugh, so there were two sides, there's the pro-Kavanaugh and there's the anti-Kavanaugh, the Democrats mostly.
If you're on the Democratic side, You're saying, oh, we've got this.
We've got all the good people on our side saying, let's do the right thing.
Let's take accusations seriously.
We're on the side of the angels here.
We're looking good. Wait, who just joined our side?
Michael who? Who just joined our side?
Michael Avenetti.
He's on our side now?
Michael Avenetti, the guy who's defending the porn star?
Okay, this is not helping our brand.
This is not helping.
So the only thing that could make the allegations against Kavanaugh look less important and less respectable It's Michael Avenetti.
It has nothing to do with his talent.
It has nothing to do with whether the person he's representing is telling the truth.
It has nothing to do with any of that.
It's just we make this automatic association with Stormy Daniels, and because she's in an industry which has a low regard, presumably on the left, he just brings with it some psychological baggage That he's bringing to his new client, who may not be a porn star, probably not, but she's got a porn star.
The new client has a porn star lawyer.
As her lawyer. So that's not a good look either.
So in terms of the battle of the sexes, I would say that the Democrats were essentially the party of women at this point.
You know, primarily the party for and about women.
Again, not saying that's good or bad.
Just observing that there's a serious gender difference between the parties now.
Which is not to say that Republicans are the party of men, but they are the party that has men and has women who like men.
And it seems a little different than the Democrats.
So Fox News is reporting Rod Rosenstein.
Let's see that.
Let's see that.
Because I don't see that.
It's not on their website.
That would be the top thing.
Let's look on Rosenstein.
We'll find this out in real time.
Oh my god, CNBC is reporting it.
Rod Rosenstein is reportedly resigning, according to CNBC. He's expecting to be fired.
Duh. And it could be immediate.
So Axios is the base source for the reporting, and it cites a source familiar with the matter.
Okay, so...
We have an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
Does that mean he's really resigning?
No. It does seem likely he would resign, and it seems reasonable he would, and you could certainly predict it.
But so far we have a story that depends on Axios citing a source familiar with the matter.
That's nothing, if we've learned anything.
If we've learned anything, it's that that's nothing.
Anonymous source, familiar with the matter.
So I won't be surprised if he does resign, but I wouldn't put any credibility in anonymous source familiar with the matter.
No credibility.
We don't live in that world anymore.
Yeah, I know CNBC is reporting it, but they're reporting it based on Axios reporting.
At least that's the way it's stated here on CNBC's website.
And Fox News says reports say, sounds like every one of these reports say is probably going back to the same anonymous source that we can't check.
Wouldn't you be surprised if he's not resigning?
Doesn't Rod Rosenstein sort of need to resign?
So it was only a matter of time whether he was fired or resigned, so it doesn't matter that much actually.
Is it possible Trump is riling up women intentionally?
no, why would he even do that has resigned has resigned So that'll be interesting.
Who would replace Rod Rosenstein or Steen?
That matters. And would Jeff Sessions be the one to hire the replacement?
It's his job.
Somebody said, why are you surprised?
I said the opposite. I said, it's likely...
That he would resign eventually.
But whether or not this story is true that he's resigning right now, you can't give it credibility based on an anonymous report.
Okay, that's all for now.
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