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Nov. 2, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
20:56
Episode 283 Scott Adams: The Dumbest Voters in the Midterm Elections
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Hey Tyler!
Come on in here. The rest of you, grab your beverages.
Cause it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm not gonna say it's the best moment of your day, but it probably is.
And so, grab your cup, your mug, Your glass, your container, your stein, and lift it to your lips.
It's time for the simultaneous sip.
Let's talk about midterm turnout.
So we're seeing early indications that the turnout on both sides could be massive.
Could be massive.
And we'll talk about that, but I just saw a comment that said Q is back.
I believe Q is back to say everybody should vote, right?
Isn't that all Q said?
So, I'm not sure Q is back, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, let's talk about the voter turnout.
On CNN, there's an optimistic, from their point of view, article in which they say...
That the young might turn out in greater numbers for this election than any prior midterm election.
And if that's true, what does that tell us?
Now, number one, I don't know what it means for the young to turn out in greater numbers because their turnout is actually kind of bad.
Their turnout is bad among the young.
But I wanted to make this point that I've said before, but it makes sense when you're looking at the midterms.
If your party is the party that attracts the most young people, and that would be true of the Democrats, if the Democrats attract the most young people, should you be proud of that?
Seriously. I'm the only person I've ever heard say what I'm going to say, and you know it's true when you hear it.
Young people are the dumbest voters.
And I say that with love, because obviously I was once a young person.
Most of you either are young people or have been young people.
So I have nothing against the young.
I don't mean this to be an insult.
It's absolutely not an insult.
Every one of us has gained experience by living.
And here are some of the main differences that I think are worth pointing out between the young and the not-so-young.
At my age, I have the perspective of having experienced something like real news.
Think about it. Imagine if you were so young, let's say, I don't know how young that would be, in your 20s, let's say, and you had never been alive.
During an era of real news.
You've never even seen it.
You don't even know what it is.
Imagine that. Like, that's actually a thing.
In my lifetime, the early news reporters, it seemed to me, reported the same news.
And you were just competing to see who had the best production, the best, most charismatic presenter of the news.
But it was the same news.
The news was the news.
It was a reflection of what happened, and they talked about it.
But today... There's nothing like that.
Now there's only bias disguised as news.
There's opinion disguised as news.
And as I've described, there's a reason for that.
The business model changed as soon as we could measure, measure, as some of you say, measure, as soon as we could measure all of the variables when there was a story, a certain treatment of a story, and you could measure, measure.
Did this one get more clicks or more viewers than the last one?
The moment we could measure it, the business model just completely changed to focus on what got the most clicks, which tended not to be the truth.
The truth doesn't get you many clicks, because the truth is balanced and boring.
But the non-truth, I think the President of the United States is actually a Nazi.
Okay, that stuff, that'll get you some clicks.
I think Soros is actually a vampire who has come back to destroy humanity.
That's gonna get you some clicks.
So if you're in your 20s, you have never been alive During an era of actual news.
You've never even seen it.
Think about that.
What would your worldview be if you were born into a world where the people around you, the people you trusted, let's say, because most Democrats hang around with Democrats.
Most Republicans grow up in Republican families.
You know, not all of them, but enough for my point.
You would actually have grown up in a world where you believed that MSNBC was telling you the news.
Or the CNN or even Fox News.
It's true on all sides, right?
You would believe that you were getting something like the news.
There's nothing like that happening.
It used to happen. It happened when I was a kid.
And I'm not giving you the, well, when I was a kid, you know, people were better.
I'm not telling you that.
I'm telling you that there was something specific that changed.
Technology changed to allow us to measure how people respond to stories, and that guaranteed that we would no longer see the news.
We would hear some biased presentation because that's where the clicks are.
Now, Imagine if you were young and you had not yet experienced how many times you are lied to.
And I like to use climate change as the perfect example of young versus older point of view.
If you were young And you're born into a world that says, look, science is the standard by which we determine truth.
It's not perfect, but the standard is a good one to adhere to.
If scientists have judged and peer-reviewed and looked at it, and the consensus is in one area, that is really reliable.
And you should treat that like it's true.
That would be a good opinion for somebody in their 20s.
And it's what they're raised to believe.
Science is the truth?
Not every time, but it's good form, it's smart to act as if it's the closest thing to truth we have.
If you're my age, you have seen that be false so many times that it doesn't even seem like a thing anymore.
So whether or not climate science, I'll just use this as an example, is true or false, I'm just talking about how an old person looks at it versus how a young person looks at it.
A young person says, I've been taught to believe science gives us truth, not every time, but enough that we should treat that as the closest thing we have to the truth.
You're in your 20s, that's what you've been taught.
You're my age, and you've seen that that doesn't work so often that really, most of the time, what we think is science is really where the money is biasing people.
We've seen that science can be sure And then change its mind and be wrong.
We've seen scams.
We've seen the food pyramid.
We've seen peak oil.
We've seen the year 2000 bug.
So we've seen all of these things that science and the experts agreed were true, that were absolutely not true.
So here's my perspective.
When I look at climate science, I say to myself, it is important that the scientists seem to be on one side.
That does count. That means something.
You should not ignore that.
But I'm also bothered by the fact that the way climate science is presented to the public looks exactly like how scams are presented.
If you're young, you don't know that.
It's actually just something you don't know.
You haven't seen a lot of scams You just haven't seen them yet.
You will. Oh, you will.
If you're in your 20s, you've got a lot of scamming in front of you.
You're going to be fooled a lot of times.
You just don't know it yet.
You don't know how often it will happen anyway.
So, when I'm looking at climate science, I'm absolutely giving a lot of weight to the fact that the scientists seem to be lining up on one side.
That matters. I'm going to give that a lot of weight.
But I'm not going to ignore...
The fact that the way they're presenting it to me is very suspiciously exactly like scams are presented.
I've described why it looks like a scam in the past, and it really is.
There's a famous scam where you pretend that you can predict the stock market because you send lots of, let's say, lots of emails to lots of people and you pick different stocks.
Well, some of them are going to be true, just like some climate models are going to be true.
And then you say just to those people that got the right one, hey, look, I got that last one right.
Maybe I'll get this next one right, too.
So getting back to the original point, the midterms look like they're going to be really high turnout, and there may be extra high turnout among the young on the Democratic side.
What does it tell you that there's extra high turnout among the young on one side?
It's not the smart voters.
And again, I'm not insulting the young.
I'm just saying that all young people gain experience and context simply by being around longer.
So I wouldn't be bragging about getting all the young voters.
That's not necessarily a good sign.
Who reported that? CNN was reporting that the young were voting.
They believe they'll be voting in higher numbers because they're all worked up about Trump.
In other words, they have Trump derangement syndrome.
I saw today that the president is framing Republicans as the nice party.
So he's framing the Democrats as the angry mob of irrational fools, while framing Republicans as the nice people.
And I kind of like that.
But what I like better is, and I'm going to start reminding you of this between now and the midterms, keep in mind that you don't want to punch down And keep in mind that if you've got a gun and the other person doesn't, you can't act like peers.
Keep in mind that if you are a trained, let's say a trained professional MMA fighter, it's not fair to get into a bar fight with somebody who's never been trained.
So keep in mind there may be a tremendous power in balance.
That you should be mindful of after the midterm election is over.
Because if Republicans get angry, no matter which way it goes, whether Republicans hold Congress or don't, No matter which way it goes, Republicans still have the guns, they still have the President, they still have the Supreme Court, they still have the power.
You know, far more power than the Democrats will have.
And I would caution you to not get angry and to not rub it in their faces if you end up winning.
If it's a surprise result and Republicans do better than anybody expected, Don't rub it in.
Don't be dancing in the street too much.
You can enjoy it at home, but don't make it worse.
It would be real easy for violence to break out.
Now, let me give you a compliment.
Let me give you a compliment.
And when I say you, I mean most of the people watching this are probably Trump supporters because of the content that I present.
It attracts those viewers.
And you're probably a pretty good proxy for Republicans and conservatives in general.
That's my guess.
I'm going to compliment you.
Because you've watched a whole lot of violence and bad behavior by the losing team, the people who did not win the presidential election.
And for the most part, you know, there's some crazy people that just have to be judged as crazy.
I'm not talking about the synagogue shooter.
He was mentally ill. I'm not talking about the mail bomber.
He's mentally ill. But I'm talking about Republicans and conservatives, I'm going to say, have been really well behaved.
In other words, I would say on average, not counting the crazy people and not counting the trolls online that have bad behavior everywhere on both sides, but in general, in the real world, in the physical world, Republicans have been very, very restrained.
Relative to what it could be.
You still want to keep the temperature a little bit lower.
I think we all agree temperature is starting to get a little high.
But that temperature is being kept as low as it is entirely by one side.
One side is trying to raise the temperature.
It's the side that's on the losing side at the moment, the Democrats.
The Republicans, on the whole, I'm talking not about the crazy ones, but on the whole, Have been the side that's keeping the temperature low.
They're not taking out their guns.
They're not starting fights.
They're not punching down as much as they could be.
I'm not talking about social media.
Social media is its own evil animal.
Sort of the jungle in there.
But in the real world, Where you have fists and clubs and guns and cars and stuff.
Republicans have been well behaved for two years.
Better than I might have expected actually.
So I'm impressed.
And I think it would be terrific if Republicans could take that same attitude, win or lose.
Win or lose.
Wouldn't it be nice If Republicans maintained the respectable approach to our system and the Constitution and the country and our fellow citizens, That has been maintained so far.
So I'll make my appeal to niceness, amplifying what the president's saying, that you've been nice so far relative to what you could have been, right?
You could be a lot nicer. We could all be nicer.
I put myself in that category.
We could all be nicer.
All right. I'm going to end a little bit early on that note.
So... I'll reiterate that if you're planning to tweet an American flag, Sunday is the time to do it in numbers.
If you go too early, people will get used to it.
You don't want people to get too accustomed to see tweets of flags until it gets closer to the actual election.
That's when you want to start peaking energy.
So, peak the energy.
Starting Sunday. And don't put any words with your flags.
I know you're all going to want to.
You're going to want to say, go vote.
You're going to want to say, do something for the country.
It will be less effective if you add words.
I guarantee it. Whatever words you think to add, don't do it.
Because as soon as you add the words, you're a partisan.
If you show the flag without the words, That's not partisan, or it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be in this country.
And the science behind it is that people who have been exposed to the American flag are more likely to vote Republican if that's the outcome that you want.
People have been accusing me lately of, what's the word they use?
Supporting? I guess campaigning for or supporting the president.
Let me be as clear as I can.
I always support the sitting president, doesn't matter what party.
I'm generally supportive, not every policy, because I've got my policy differences with every president, but I'm generally supportive of the sitting president.
So there's that. Secondly, I'm not pretending to be unbiased about President Trump.
I've met him. I liked him.
So it's hard to be biased about somebody that you've met in person and you had a very positive response to him.
He was very nice to me.
So I'm not going to pretend I'm unbiased about him personally because I like him personally.
It's just weird that I've actually met him.
So There's that.
But I will continue to say where I disagree.
That's as close as I can get to anything like a lack of bias.
I'm always going to say his technique is strong because it's been insanely strong and insanely effective, and I think the rest of the world is catching up to the fact that what he does works.
So that much I think we all agree on.
We're coming to the point where we agree.
You can't argue against the fact that he became president.
You can't argue against the fact that he got stuff done, he got people in the Supreme Court, etc.
But here are the areas I disagree, just to put them on record.
I think healthcare, Republicans should do a lot more.
I'm disappointed. Now, a lot of that is Congress.
It's not just the president, but he's the boss.
You know, the boss takes responsibility, even if it is the underling's fault.
Immigration should be a lot better.
I think environmental stuff, I got a real big question mark.
I read some scary things about rules that have been relaxed under this administration.
I'm not in a position where I can judge whether those rules should have been relaxed or not.
I don't know how to judge that, but I got a big question mark, so I would say I'm not delighted.
about environmental stuff, but I don't have all the information.
Most of you don't as well.
I'm not happy about race relations under this administration.
I disagree on Confederate statues.
I think they're just decorations and they're offensive to enough people in this country that we should be kind to our teammates and it doesn't matter that you disagree.
It's offensive to enough people that we should just treat that as the fact and act on it to be nice people.
And so there are other things which I have minor disagreements about.
But as long as I'm open about where I disagree, I feel like I can be a credible person by saying what he does well, the president, and persuasion he does very effectively.
I need to go right now, get some other stuff done.
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