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Nov. 15, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:39
Episode 302 Scott Adams: Bipartisanship Blooming, Facebook, Monkey Attacks, Much More
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Hey Thomas, get in here.
Janice, grab your coffee.
Today is going to be a very special coffee with Scott Adams.
Now they're all special, but this one might be more special than most because the news The news is just serving it up today.
Some days I get on here and I think, man, I wish there were more news, more interesting news.
And then there are days like today where I look at the news and I go, there's not enough time in the day to drink all the coffee I need to drink to talk about all this news.
So please, will you join me?
Grab your cup, your mug, your chalice, Your glass, your container.
Fill it with your favorite beverage and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Now some of you are seeing me sideways, are you not?
Some of you are seeing me sideways.
I have determined that that problem is not on my end, because I've used different devices in different ways and I get the same thing.
If you want to fix it, I know you can fix it in replay mode, but possibly not in real time.
In replay mode, all you have to do is forward the video toward the end, And it will fix itself.
And then you take it back to the beginning and it will be the correct orientation from the beginning.
Alright? So if you're watching this sideways on replay, it won't work in live, I don't think.
But on replay, if you're watching it later, fast forward it to the end.
The orientation will fix itself.
And then just take it back to the beginning and it will stay fixed.
So it's a problem with Periscope apparently.
I hope they fix it. There's so much news.
Let's start with the monkey attacks in India, in Agra, the town of Agra, which is where the Taj Mahal is.
There are literally, one of their biggest problems is monkey attacks.
Monkeys are actually killing people.
Monkey attacks.
Alright, well we don't have that problem here.
I just have to mention that because it's not every day you get to talk about monkey attacks.
But today I got to. Did everybody see the attack by the Daily Beast on Jack Posobiec?
This is one of the worst despicable things you've ever seen in your life.
So there's a photo of Jack in which he's pointing at something and I'm not going to do the gesture but imagine if you had your finger out pointing And imagine, because I'm not going to do it, imagine if your hand was outstretched, such as you were reaching for something in that direction.
If they clipped off the hand in the photo, it would appear that your arm is outstretched in sort of a salute of sorts.
So the Daily Beast takes this photo of Jack Posobiec, they clip off his hand so you can't see that he's pointing at something, And they clip out the guy he's standing next to, who's an African-American guy who's obviously there with him at the same event for the same reason, who's got his hand over his heart.
It was some kind of peace event, and the Daily Beast turned it into a Nazi salute.
Oh my freaking God!
If you think the press could be worse than that, I don't know.
Speaking about the press, the New York Times had an expose on Facebook.
I believe it was last night or this morning it published.
And I tweeted an article about it, so you can see it in my feed.
But apparently when the Russia influence on the 2016 election came out, according to the New York Times, Facebook executives, Sheryl Sander and Zuckerberg, they hired political operatives To blame stuff on George Soros.
And also to blame people for being anti-Semitic.
So Facebook...
Was actually hiring people to smear George Soros and also to smear people for being anti-Semitic.
And the evidence for that seems to be pretty strong.
So strong that the Open Society, Soros' organization, has written a blistering letter against Facebook.
And... Wow.
So, in summary...
It seems that the people on the right of the political divide are very mad at Facebook for suppressing the voices of conservatives.
The people on the left are very mad at Facebook for all the reasons that the left are mad.
So Facebook only has two problems, everybody on the right and everybody on the left.
But the good news for Facebook is that most of the people who care about politics tend to skew older.
So the people who are older on the right hate Facebook at the moment, and the people who are older on the left hate Facebook for a moment.
But that still leaves all young people who don't care about politics, who, for the most part, are giving up on Facebook.
Okay, so there are three categories.
There are the young who don't like Facebook because it's not really their thing.
And then there's the old on the right who don't like Facebook and the older people on the left who don't like Facebook.
I think that's everybody in the world.
Okay, Facebook has a problem.
Not as bad as Snapchat's problem, but it's a problem.
So just calling that out as an interesting story.
Now, we have to mention the caravan every now and then in our two movie world.
Two opposite things have happened.
One is that the caravan is no big deal, and it's so trivial, and it's so far away, and it's no big deal.
And in the other world, it's an invasion.
Not a military invasion, but a physical, practical invasion.
If other people get to decide who lives in your country, I don't know the best word for that.
Maybe we need another word.
Because I've never seen a Non-military invasion before.
But it seems to be a non-military invasion.
And it probably needs a word.
Sometimes things don't get settled until you have a word for it.
Let's talk about Avenetti.
You probably heard the news that Michael Avenetti...
Michael Avenetti has been arrested and released now, but he was arrested and charged with beating up a woman who wasn't his wife but must have been some girlfriend situation.
Michael Avenetti went on camera and said he has never done anything like that.
I have made a habit of telling you that people who study persuasion, people who study hypnosis, are pretty good at detecting lies.
And so I've been trying to predict who's lying and who isn't in a variety of situations.
And so we have another clean situation in which Avenatti has been accused of something by a woman.
He came out and he said in public, nothing like this has ever happened.
It didn't happen.
And I watched his performance, and performance is the right word, right?
Because you're doing it in public.
You're trying to create an impression.
And I know you're not going to like this, but he looked like he was telling the truth.
Now, I'm not taking a side.
I'm not going to take a side or anything like that.
I'm just saying that performance-wise, I didn't see any hint of lying.
Now, keep in mind that he's a professional lawyer.
He's very good on television.
So he would know how to lie.
He either told the truth...
Or he told a lie with so much skill that I couldn't tell the difference.
If he had been a regular citizen, I would have a stronger opinion about whether it was a lie or not because regular citizens are not good at lying.
But he is a lawyer.
He's a professional television personality.
I thought his lie was, well, if it was a lie, it was very well constructed and delivered.
So, here's the question I ask you.
Does it seem like a total coincidence That the guy who is the lawyer for accusing Kavanaugh of doing bad things with women, is it a coincidence that as he's running for president, or appearing to do that, that he gets an accusation that's exactly sort of in the pocket?
You know, it's like the simulation offered up something with a little bit too much coincidence.
So there are two pieces of information here that I think you have to consider.
One is that he didn't look like he was lying, but of course he's a professional.
You really couldn't tell. Number two, is it a complete coincidence that he would be accused of something that nobody else saw that happened to be the perfect accusation to get revenge or to suppress him?
It might be a coincidence, but I'm going to say keep some skepticism on this.
We're in a world where people like him are being targeted.
Take a look at what I just told you about Jack Posobiec.
Jack has been targeted.
So there are people who are clearly working to destroy him personally.
And you've seen this with a number of different personalities both on the left and the right.
There are bad people who are creating stories about people on both sides, and you're seeing people getting picked off one by one.
Is Avenatti being picked off?
I'm not going to rule it out.
So I'm going to say on Avenatti, you can certainly have your opinions about whether you like him, don't like him, etc., and I know you have your opinions.
But on this specific case, I'm going to go with innocent until proven guilty.
I know in general we want to give credibility to the accuser, and I will do that.
So in the same breath, let me say, you have to take it seriously.
You can't dismiss something like this.
So you give it your utmost seriousness of investigation, but keep an open mind on this one.
Let me talk about something else.
I think most of you saw by now that Van Jones did a positive tweet about the president and about the prison reform stuff.
And let's see if I can find that positive tweet.
And the positive tweet from Van Jones says, Give the man his due.
And he's talking about President Trump.
And Trump is on his way to becoming the uniter in chief.
Wow. On an issue that has divided America for generations.
Congrats to everyone on both sides who fought for this.
And he links to a story on prison reform that the president has embraced.
Now, the prison reform story is interesting in and of itself, but I don't feel like I know all the details.
All I know is that both sides seem to like it and the president likes it, so it's probably something pretty positive.
It is the first piece of unambiguous bipartisanship we've seen, certainly since the midterms, and maybe the best one, maybe the best case of it.
I had predicted That having a split House and Senate, having them in different parties, would lead to an era of bipartisanship that would be surprisingly good for the country.
Prison reform seems to be the first example of that.
We have also, coming up, maybe marijuana.
Oh, and by the way, it seems that Jeff Sessions might have been one of the biggest obstacles to bipartisanship.
Apparently he was an obstacle on this prison reform stuff.
He left. It moved forward.
I'm sure he was an obstacle on marijuana.
I don't know if you'd call it reform, but decriminalizing it at the federal level.
Now he's gone.
That can happen. We also have at least the potential for some good stuff on infrastructure.
So there might be three bipartisan examples of good stuff happening.
Now there's some other bipartisan things happening.
Listen to this.
Well, I'm not going to call this bipartisan, but it sort of leans in the same direction.
The Black Caucus, so these are Democrats, the Black Caucus voted no confidence on Tom Perez, the leader of the Democratic Party.
So the Black Caucus is making a break with their own party Not a big break.
They're not leaving the party or anything like that.
But they've sent a warning shot.
A vote of no confidence to their own leader, Tom Perez.
At the same time that Van Jones is tweeting about the United in Chief.
What have I told you about Van Jones in the past?
I've told you that Van Jones is probably the smartest person in the game on the Democrat side.
So much so that if Van Jones ran for president, you Trump supporters better be worried, because he does have the full game.
I don't think he's running. I've seen no evidence of that.
But I'm going to describe Van Jones' strategy, and it's one that I've described before, but it always helps to give examples of it.
I've said before, and others have said this, that the African-American population in the United States gave away its power by voting for Democrats no matter what, and just sort of taking that side no matter what.
If you take a side no matter what, you're the least important person in the conversation.
Because your vote is not in play.
Tell me who's the most important senator right now.
The most important senator today is Jeff Flake.
Why is Jeff Flake the most important senator?
Because he's the only one, very few of them, but he's one of the very few who is willing to go either way.
That makes him the most important one.
Alright? So, yeah.
So, Yeah, Joe Manchin, also important.
So anybody who's willing to change sides is automatically the most important one in the conversation.
Van Jones has done what I will call the Anita strategy.
Anita is somebody I worked with who became the model for my Dilbert character, Alice.
Now what she was famous for, the real person, not the Alice character, was that she was one of the most effective people I've ever seen in the corporate world.
And the strategy that she used was she would create an extreme contrast Between being good to her, meaning doing what she wanted, agreeing with her, being on board, giving her stuff when she needed it, answering questions,
that sort of thing. So if you were good for her, she would go to your boss, tell your boss you should get promoted and what a great job you've done, sing your praise, and even I've seen her buy flowers for co-workers just for doing great jobs.
Now imagine having a co-worker on your side like that.
Somebody who becomes your best promoter for your career and talks about it all the time.
This person is great. I asked for something and it was perfect.
Now, here's the good part.
She didn't just praise people lavishly and loudly and effectively.
If you were not doing what she wanted and there were a lot of people in that category, she would literally destroy your career.
She would go to your boss and say, I can't get anything done because somebody who reports to you is completely worthless.
Here's the example. And by the way, I'll be back in your office tomorrow to tell you more about this person until you fire them.
I'll be back to your office every single day telling you you have to fire this person until I get what I want.
I know what you're saying. You're saying bully, right?
But let's just concentrate on the technique for a while.
There was a huge contrast between being her friend and being her enemy.
So on anything in the middle ground, what's going to happen?
You're going to do her stuff first.
The biggest problem in a corporation is everybody's too busy to help people who need help.
Everybody's got a project.
Everybody needs somebody to give them something to do something to show up for a meeting.
But I'll tell you, people did stuff for her.
Because doing stuff for her got you promoted.
And keep in mind, she wasn't your boss.
She just worked with you.
Doing stuff that she didn't like got you fired.
So you did what you wanted.
Van Jones is using a version of the Anita contrast strategy.
By publicly tweeting this and praising the president, specifically for one thing, What has Van Jones done?
Van Jones just became the most important black person in the United States.
Right? Just like my coworker did.
She became the most important person at her level.
By being willing to go extreme on either direction and making sure everybody knew it.
It's the public aspect of what Van did that makes him powerful.
He was one of the President's strongest, most vocal critics, and I praised him at the time for being what I consider the most genuine of the people who had a problem with the President.
His criticisms of the President consistently felt to me like an accurate expression of how he felt, and also expressing other people's similar views.
He didn't look like The political hack who was just going to say stuff on his team.
He didn't seem like that.
And now he has sort of shown that to be the case because when there was a positive thing to say about this president, he didn't simply just go along with it.
He went all the way to the left.
He went further to the left than you thought he would go by tweeting, give him his due on this topic alone.
He's not saying anything about other topics.
He's limited it to the topic.
That's smart. He said, give him his due.
He's being the uniter-in-chief on this.
Now let me ask you, when the administration...
It has another big topic in which they need some help.
Who are they going to go to?
Who are they going to go to?
First, they're going to go to Van Jones.
Why? Because he's the effective one.
He's the one who is willing to go where the truth is.
He's the one who's willing to go where the solution is.
He doesn't care who he talks to.
Have I told you before that the superpower of being willing to talk to people that you don't agree with is just an amazing power?
The president demonstrated that when he talked to Kim Jong-un.
He showed the power of talking to the person you're not supposed to talk to.
Van Jones showed it to you again.
Van Jones talked to the person he's not supposed to talk to, in this case, President Trump.
And he got probably a really good result for the prison community and for the country, because I think this is good for everybody.
So... So here are the small parts of bipartisanship that's breaking out.
As I said, the Black Caucus is showing some independence.
Small, just a signal, but it's important.
It's an important signal. We see that That Facebook is sort of being disliked at the moment by both sides.
In a weird way, that's bipartisan.
It's a small thing.
By itself, it doesn't mean anything.
But I'm starting to put together the clues here.
Then you see that apparently Tucker Carlson And Ocasio-Cortez are in agreement on the Amazon headquarters issue.
So the issue is, I guess, Amazon headquarters is going to cost the taxpayers $2 billion somewhere.
And Ocasio-Cortez said, hey, they're a big, rich company.
Why are the taxpayers giving them money when we need this money for social purposes?
And Tucker Carlson is saying, yeah, why are we doing that?
How does that make sense?
The main point here is that you're seeing the left and the right find a very specific thing to agree on.
It's a very specific thing.
They're not saying, I love everything you do.
I'm saying, I'm willing to say that that one thing is good.
It's a big deal, because you didn't see a lot of that, right?
How often do you ever see...
People on those two sides just say, okay, on that one thing we agree.
It's rare. So I'm calling it out.
Now, my own opinion...
Is that it's hard to analyze these things, meaning that the whole point of having the headquarters there is that it should produce a lot of income for the local environment.
Now, without knowing how much they will gain by putting in $2 billion, you don't really know.
So I don't agree or disagree with either of them on this issue.
I think we don't know enough.
I'm not sure we can even do that math to figure it out.
Here's some more good news, maybe.
If you're following the Khashoggi murder problem, Saudi Arabia has decided that some group of people are going to take the fall for that.
So there is now complete admission that he was murdered, that the murderer came from Saudi Arabia, that there are high-ish level people behind it, and that they will go to jail or be punished severely.
Now, I told you when this first happened that the probable arc of this is that Saudi Arabia would need to find somebody to punish for it who isn't Prince Salman.
It looks like that's the direction they're going.
Now, in order for the United States and for other countries to go along with what might be a little bit of theater, if you know what I mean, In order for other countries to be okay-ish with something that nobody should be okay with, Saudi Arabia is probably going to have to be a little bit flexible in other areas.
So I've said that the first dominoes to fall in what could be a really good larger Middle East stability or peace plan or some kind of a deal like that Would be something with Saudi Arabia and maybe something that happens in Yemen, that that could be the first couple of dominoes.
So we're seeing the first signs of something that could head in the right direction.
Too early to know, but it's a positive sign.
Let's talk about the general mood of the country.
I've got a whiteboard talk for you coming up.
You know you like your whiteboards.
And I mentioned this before, but I wanted to put some meat on this.
A critic of mine was saying that my predictions are bad, and he picked one in particular to say, you predicted X, and look what happened.
Except that the thing he mentioned, I got totally right.
More right than anybody's ever been right.
And I'm going to demonstrate that.
And here was the prediction. I said that things were superheated during the election, and that once the election happened, and the president just got to the business of being a normal-ish president, meaning not the worst of what they expected, but he would get some things done.
He would be sort of more of a typical Republican when things got going.
And my prediction was that the That the national hysteria would start coming down as the president just got on with the job of getting stuff done.
Let me demonstrate how much things have changed since 2016.
If you remember, and it's easy to forget something in 2016, right?
You just get used to your current day and you forget about what happened two years ago.
But just to take your mind back to that.
This is what people were worried about in 2016, that the trade war would destroy everything, that we were electing a dictator in Trump and he would have LGBTQ concentration camps.
I'm not even making that up.
I'm not making that up.
That's actually what people were worried about.
There would actually be concentration camps.
Krugman and others said there would be economic collapse if President Trump came into office.
He would deport 14 million illegal immigrants.
There would be nuclear war, of course.
He's a Russian puppet.
Oh my God, we've lost the entire country.
He's mentally incompetent.
We've elected the What do you call it?
The Mad King from Game of Thrones.
ISIS is still a big problem.
Not a President Trump problem, but still a big problem in the world.
In 2016, the things we were worried about were really, really big things.
Scary, scary big things.
That was 2016.
Now remember, my prediction was that the temperature would go down.
Let's jump forward to the current age.
What is it that's in the headlines today?
Melania wrote a memo.
She wrote a memo about somebody she didn't like in the White House.
They got reassigned. Jim Acosta Acted like a turd.
He might have his press pass taken away for a little while or a long while, but it doesn't make much difference.
They'll just put somebody else in that job if he goes away.
That's it. Jim Acosta.
Trump hasn't shown us his taxes.
We don't know that there's a problem there.
There's no indication that there's a problem there, but hey, he didn't show us his taxes.
He sends mean tweets.
Sometimes his tweets are bad.
Yeah, his tweets are mean.
And then, of course, there's a lot of mind reading.
There's an entire article, the main article on CNN is that the president is pissed.
The president is mad at somebody.
Well, maybe, but that's your opinion of what he's thinking.
That's it. Yeah, and then the Mueller stuff is, looks like it's not going to be much of anything.
Right? So, of course I'm summarizing and leaving stuff out and I'm, you know, there's a little bit of hyperbole here.
But the point is, there's no way that you could make the case, no way you could make the case The things today are the same temperature as they were in 2016.
Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Right? The country went from, my God, the wheels are coming off, Two, eh, things are pretty good.
Now, there's still a few wildcards.
I would call these incompletes.
We don't know what's going to happen with climate.
We still disagree on that.
We don't know what's going to happen with Roe vs.
Wade. Probably nothing.
Maybe a little bit. Maybe the states get to decide.
But, you know, it's not the same issue it used to be.
All right. Now, healthcare, of course, is still a big issue, but I'm not sure there's a big temperature about that.
In other words, people care about healthcare, and they certainly care if it affects their pocketbook, etc.
But it's not like some of these other issues that are destroy-the-country issues.
You know, the economic issues are sort of low-temperature things.
Yeah, we're still worried about the deficit, and we should be.
But we don't have a high temperature about it.
So I'm going to claim complete victory in my prediction that the temperature would go down.
Scott was wrong about temperature going down years ago, too.
Is somebody arguing that the temperature has not gone down?
Is there anybody who makes that claim?
If you're arguing that it took a year longer than I thought, I will accept that.
But directionally, I'm right.
The midterms and the recounts and stuff and the recounts are not really big deals.
They're all little office intrigue and maybe somebody left a box of ballots somewhere, etc.
Am I a climate denier, somebody says.
How do you deny the climate?
Since somebody is new here, let me explain to you.
On the climate science, there are three things that must be addressed.
There's the science, the physics, and the chemistry.
There's the models that predict, which are not science.
They're just a tool that scientists are using, sort of like a chair or a microscope, but they're not science.
If a scientist sits on a chair, The chair is not science.
It's just something a scientist sat on.
And likewise, then there's the economic estimates that are not science also.
So there are three components of the conversation.
The science, which I assume is probably right.
So I'm not a science denier, because I have no opinion that these scientists are wrong about the core science.
I have lots of doubt about the validity of the models, but they're not science, and no model of that type has ever been right.
So the odds of them being accurate are close to zero, and they're presented much the way a fraud is presented, meaning that they throw away the ones that don't prove their points.
If it's a model that doesn't show just what they want and the range they want, they say, that model must be wrong, let's throw it away.
And then there's the economic predictions that nobody can make.
It's just too hard to know the ins and the outs of the economics, even whether it would be good or bad.
So, if whoever came on here as my critic says, That believing the models is part of believing science, well then you don't understand science and you're worse than a science denier.
You're a science not understander.
What would Scott have done if Al Gore was elected in 2004?
What would I have done?
I supported Al Gore.
I thought as a politician that he was very strong.
And the reason I supported Al Gore was a little bit the same reason that I like Van Jones.
If you remember in the, I think it was the first Iraq War, do some fact checking on me, but I believe in the first Iraq War he's the only one who crossed sides and said, yeah, we have to go into Iraq.
Now it turns out that going into Iraq was a big mistake.
But I did like the fact that he was willing to cross his party, and that looked like independence.
Now, if you're asking me do I think that Al Gore is right on climate science, I would say he's clearly wrong on the speed of the predictions.
Certainly things have not turned disastrous yet, and I believe he suggested that they would by now.
So we can say that with some confidence that he wasn't right about that.
But I take a slightly different judgment about someone being wrong about something, which seems kind of normal.
Even if you're a leader, you're sort of guessing about some stuff, you're going to guess some stuff wrong.
But being a smart person who is willing to look on both sides is unique.
And I thought Gore was unique in that way, in that he was a strong player, and he was willing to look at both sides.
Not a lot of people can do that.
So you... You can hate him all you want, and I get that.
I hear all your arguments.
But I think he was a solid human.
He is a solid human.
Rand Paul, too. Yes, Rand Paul's in my pantheon of independent thinkers.
Where is the wall?
I think we're going to get a wall deal, and here's my prediction.
There's one change that both sides need to make in order to get their wall and to get an immigration deal.
It looks like this.
Stop trying to fund the entire wall because there's no reason in the world to do that.
No matter which side you're on, if you like a wall or you don't like a wall, in both cases it doesn't make sense to fund the entire wall.
Why? Because it's such a big project and it takes such a long time that it makes far more sense to build some of it.
Let's say five billion worth.
See if it works.
See if it makes people go somewhere else.
See if it reduces anything that you want to reduce.
I think you can test it.
And if you can test it and you can get it for five billion dollars, it's going to start to look like a deal.
So whether it's a virtual, yeah.
And it might be smart to build three types of walls, you know, a virtual one, a physical one, maybe a different kind of physical one.
So if you treat it like you're testing it, and then you'll decide whether you want to fund it later, both sides win.
Because there's nobody who should be against Testing something that could work, but some people doubt it.
That's why you test stuff.
It's exactly why you test stuff.
The most business-like thing you could do, and therefore Republicans should like it, because it's a business thing to do, is to test it small, 5 billion, 10 billion, whatever small looks like, and then decide, did it work?
Did it make everybody go down there to get across?
Because if it did, then maybe it works.
Alright. Yes, there are other prototypes for non-wall stuff.
And there's also... Have you seen the...
There's a...
Is it a microwave? Or a laser.
I forget what the technology is, but there's some kind of a beam that you shoot at people and it heats up their body so that they run away.
So apparently there's this non-lethal beam that's been developed that you can target somebody coming toward the border and just sort of shoot them with it.
And they go, ah, my body's on fire, but they're not permanently hurt.
And then they run away from whatever it is that's burning their body.
Now, I have my doubts that that doesn't actually hurt you, but it makes me think that there might be some technology there that's worth testing as well.
There's one that uses sound as well.
So why not build a little section that uses that?
Build a little section that uses the wall?
Build another section that uses drones and surveillance?
There must be at least three things to test.
If the Republicans said we have three plans and we'd like to fund a test of each of the three, Would the Democrats actually say they don't like that?
That's hard to say no to, right?
So I realize that you need to do a big ask and ask for the whole $25 billion in order to get what you want.
But in the end, if the public needs this to get settled, the only way to settle it is to fund it as a trial and then make a decision down the road about whether to do more of it.
Alright, an active denial system.
Yes, that's the name of it.
It's called an active denial system where they shoot the beam at you and heat up your body.
Alright, that's enough for now.
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