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Nov. 16, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
41:14
Episode 304 Scott Adams: The Psychic News Network
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Hey everybody!
Hey Martin. Hey Duncan.
Come on in here. You know why.
Of course you do. Because it's time for coffee with Scott Adams.
Possibly the best time of the day.
Now, while you're coming in, I'm going to give you a peek of the fire condition where I live.
If you look out that window, you will see that it's still totally white out after...
Well, after you get past my neighbor's house, it's complete smoke conditions.
The schools are actually closed.
I believe I'm something like 170 miles away from the fire.
And 170 miles away, it's too dangerous to walk outside.
So just imagine what it's like if you're 50 miles away.
You're, I don't know, probably wearing a mask of some sort.
So it's getting pretty ugly here.
Schools are closed. And it's time for the simultaneous sip.
Join me, please. Raise your mug, your glass, your cup, your stein, your chalice, your container.
Fill it full of your favorite fluids.
Fill it full of your favorite fluids?
No, I don't think that's going to be one I'll keep.
But, join me for the simultaneous sip.
Now, let's talk about what I like to call the Psychic News Network.
work.
And the reason I call them that is because a lot of the news on this one network seems to center around the ability to read minds.
Let me give you an example.
The top headline on the Psychic News Network is, Twitter tirades suggest Trump has an inkling.
So the headline news is about Trump's inner state.
That he's got an inkling about Mueller.
That Mueller might have something coming.
For Trump, there's no easy way out of his funk.
So it's a story about Trump's inner thoughts.
He's in the funk. I don't know how you define funk, but I guess he's in one.
Then there's something about Julian Assange that doesn't make sense and I don't understand.
Then there's Anderson Cooper ponders why Trump is so angry.
It's another headline about President Trump's inner thoughts.
Ken Starr says there's another one about Ken Starr on Trump's tweets.
Please stop it.
Well, we've never seen anybody tell Trump he should stop tweeting before.
That's news. Then there's an opinion piece on Melania Trump beats Donald at his own game.
So it's not all psychic news.
Some of it is gossip.
And then why is Trump talking about serial and voter ID? It's a news about his hyperbole and they're treating it like it's real.
When the president said, you need ID to buy cereal?
I think everybody watching that understood that if you were going to pay and it was a lot of money and you were going to write a check, you might have to show your ID. Now, my grocery store doesn't even make me sign for the credit card purchase, so he's a little out of date.
But it's not real.
Yeah, it wasn't meant to be literally true that you show your Your ID to buy groceries.
It was hyperbole.
And apparently, here's the weird thing.
The psychic news network gets the news wrong because they don't read his mind.
I mean, it's not very hard to read his mind when he's signaling, here's a joke.
Watch, here comes a joke.
Watch me give you a joke.
And then the psychic news network says, nope, that's not a joke.
That's real. He really believes that you need to show your ID to buy cereal.
So the Psychic News Network goes that way.
Now, remember my prediction about the recount.
Who remembers my prediction about the recount?
My prediction was, yeah, there would be some problems here and there.
So there would be definitely some small stuff they find, because of course they would.
It's a big job, and there are seasonal workers.
Am I wrong about that?
I would assume that, not seasonal, but temporary, wouldn't election workers be people who don't do election night stuff every day?
They only do it every few years.
There's probably lots of people who haven't done it.
It seems to me that losing some ballots, shuffling in some questionable ones with some real ones, is probably pretty normal.
We just don't look everywhere, so it seems like it's all in one place.
So my prediction was that there would not be massive voter fraud.
But there would be some little stuff.
So far I'm right.
That doesn't mean I'll stay right.
Maybe they'll still find something.
But so far.
Now let's switch over to The other network.
I don't even have to put names on these networks, do I? If I just tell you the headlines, you could tell me the network, couldn't you?
Alright, so there's some more news about the election.
That's the top headline in the other network.
Then there's Korean American GOP trailblazer, whose name is, she has an interesting name, Young Kim.
So she's not only young, but she shares that popular Kim name.
So it would be very confusing for her to be in the news.
But apparently her lead switched.
So, again, I don't think there's evidence of massive fraud.
And she's not in Broward County anyway, which was the subject of it.
But we'll keep an eye on that one.
Might be something there. You heard that P. Diddy, the mother of his three children, died unexpectedly at age 47.
Did you all hear that?
So, condolences to Diddy, I'm not sure, Sean Combs, whatever he wants to be called now.
I lose track.
But feeling very bad about that.
And I hope the family has some privacy.
I'm not going to make a prediction about cause of death, but most of you already know what I'm predicting.
And none of it's good.
Alright. The Fox News has an article about Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris would be most famous for the fact that many people think she would be the front-runner for the Democrats for 2020, for President.
And apparently in some hearing, she compared ICE to the KKK. Now whenever you see the headline that somebody compared something to something else, your antenna should go up and you should say, what does it mean to compare?
Compare is usually when there has been fake news about me, I can tell you that that word compare is often in the headline.
So let me give you an example of what it means to compare things.
I like...
Let's see.
I like...
What would be a good example?
I like...
Babies...
Everybody likes babies, right?
I like babies. Dogs.
I love dogs.
Dogs are cool. So here are some of the things I like.
I like babies. I like dogs.
And I like, let's say, nature.
There are three things I like.
I like babies.
Babies are cool. I like dogs.
I love dogs. And I like nature.
Do you know what the headline would be?
Cartoonist compares babies to dogs.
Did you see that coming?
If you didn't see that coming, then you have never been a famous person that articles are written about.
The most trouble I've ever been in was because somebody used the compared word and took something out of context and said, oh, you use these things in the same sentence, therefore you've compared them.
But when I say I love babies, I love dogs, and I love nature, did I compare a dog to a baby?
I did. According to the way trolls and critics think, if they were in the same sentence and they had something in common, in this case it's something I like.
I like dogs. I like babies.
I like nature. If they're in the same sentence and there's something in common, and you put them in the same sentence because there's something in common, your critics will say, you compared a baby to a dog.
Now, that's not necessarily exactly what happened with Kamala Harris, right?
So don't take my analogy to mean it means the same thing as what her situation is.
But trust me when I tell you that.
If you see a headline that says, somebody compared something to something else, Probably fake news.
Not necessarily, but that's a red flag that's like, beep, beep, beep, compared to, in this case, Kamala Harris was, I guess she was in a committee talking about, it doesn't matter who, she asked somebody in a committee, she asked, let's see, I want to see what the So her question was this.
Are you aware of the perception of many?
Alright, so remember that the first part of her statement is that other people have this perception.
This is important. So the first part of her statement is not, I believe this.
She's saying other people have this perception.
She goes, are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels with the KKK? So she's asking him, does he see any parallels with the KKK? Now, that's a pretty despicable question, isn't it?
Because however this guy answers, What's going to happen when he answers?
Let's say this innocent...
Well, I don't know if he's innocent, but this poor guy is asked this question.
Do you see any parallels between the KKK and ICE? And let's say he says, no, I don't see any parallels.
What could be said of this guy?
The headline could be that he compared KKK... To ice.
Because that is literally what he was asked to do.
Now in the comparison, he said there's nothing in common.
But would it be true, if he answered that question, could it be said completely truthfully that he compared the KKK to ice?
Yeah, that would be exactly what he would be doing.
Because that was exactly the question.
Can you compare ice to the KKK and tell me what you see?
So when you see the word compare...
Big flag. Don't trust anything you see after compare.
Fake news coming.
So there are two things that I'm going to call out here.
First of all, the question Kamala Harris asked is despicable, in my opinion.
You can all have your own opinion, but to me, It's reprehensible and disgusting and despicable.
And it's not because she compared them.
I don't want to use that word.
It's because she brought it into the conversation at all.
Bringing the KKA into the conversation is horrible.
Now, did she have a point?
She kind of did.
She kind of did.
The point is not one that should have been brought up.
It should not have been framed that way.
It was disgusting and reprehensible and ICE doesn't have anything to do with the KKK. So as clearly as I can say it that was a horrible comparison.
It shouldn't have been brought up. Her point was that the way people feel about ICE is not that different Than how people felt about being threatened by a racist group.
So in other words, she was making the point that there are people in the country who regard ICE as a racist group.
Now, if she had phrased her question in some way like that, that's actually a good question.
Because she started out by saying, do you understand that there are a lot of people who feel this way?
She's not saying they should feel this way.
That would have been triply wrong.
She's saying that people feel that way.
That's actually true.
So she was starting with a fairly good point, which is from a brand perspective, ICE has a big brand problem with a substantial segment of the population, whatever percentage that is.
So her question wasn't so far off That is crazy.
It just didn't belong in this situation.
It was unnecessarily provocative.
But of course everything is amped up a little bit because of her potential race.
Not race in terms of race, but race in terms of the election.
So in this case, the headline that says Kamala Harris compares ICE to KKK, is that what she did?
Do you think the headline is fair?
Did Kamala Harris compare ICE to KKK? Well, not exactly.
She said that there are people who feel the same The same way.
Is that comparing them?
Is it? Because it's comparing them the same way that when I said I like babies, I like dogs, I like nature, I didn't compare a baby to a dog.
They're just part of the same conversation.
So, some of you are saying, yes, she did compare.
Not really. She found one element about how people feel about it, And she was clear about that.
It was the first part of the question.
People feel this way.
It's about feelings.
It is valid to say that some people in this country have a bad feeling about ICE. And it's a racial kind of a bad feeling.
I'm not sure this headline is doing the work it should be doing.
Alright. So, let's look at another headline.
Um... There's nothing else interesting happening right now.
So the fire in Northern California, I think it's killed 56 people.
What's the last natural disaster that killed 56 people?
Can somebody do me a fact check on that?
Let's say U.S. deaths by natural causes.
Let's say American deaths by natural causes.
Is that a natural disaster?
How many died from natural...
What is the dead list?
What natural disaster kills the most?
Wow.
In 1931...
There was a flood in China that killed between one and four million people.
Did you know that?
Have you ever heard that?
I have never heard this.
So according to Google, the number one death toll from a natural disaster could have been four million people in flooding in China in 1931.
How in the world have I never heard that, that four million people died?
Oh, is somebody saying that 66 or 67 people have died so far?
Wow! It looks like China has got some enormous disasters in the million people range.
A million people.
That's almost inconceivable.
Anyway, I'm not going to look anymore because apparently there are lots of natural disasters that are bigger.
But I can't think of one that was bigger.
Well, Vegas wasn't a natural disaster.
I'm not sure if you call the fire that's caused by power lines a natural disaster, but when was the last time that 67 people died in one event in this country?
Puerto Rican hurricane.
What was the death toll in Puerto Rico?
Oh, it was pretty high, wasn't it?
22,500 last year.
Number of missing is over 600.
Yeah, the California number with the number of missing, I don't know what to think about that yet, because I think that's just throwing every name on there that at least a neighbor hasn't heard from a neighbor.
So that 600 missing should be deeply, deeply inflated, I hope.
Hurricane Michael, yeah.
All right. Did you hear there was a...
Who was the representative?
Was it Jackie Speier or somebody who actually had traveled to Jonestown and got shot?
And she was talking about, don't call it drinking the Kool-Aid.
And she was saying that people have it wrong about Jonestown.
Jonestown was a mass killing Far more than it was a mass suicide.
I think she's right about that.
Well, thank you.
All right, let's stop talking about disasters.
It's bumming me out a little bit.
Have you noticed That the news is slowed down.
It might slow down and keep slowing down between now and Christmas.
Or maybe not. Oh, there was some news about Kim Jong-un developing some kind of a new weapon.
But we don't have details on that.
So, you should see anything that comes out of North Korea right now should be seen in the context of negotiating.
Weed reform...
I don't know that that's in the works.
It seems like we would have heard about it by now, right?
Yeah, I don't know if weed reform is going to happen.
I don't know what's happening with Julian Assange.
That's all confusing to me.
So it looks like all the Roger Stone stuff is going to turn into a lot of nothing because Roger Stone turned over his emails and the emails seemed to indicate he didn't really have any connections with WikiLeaks.
So yet another...
Giant story in the headlines turns out to be nothing.
Bitcoin prediction.
Well, some of you may not know that I started getting jealous of all the Bitcoin millionaires because they were getting filthy rich without doing anything.
And I thought to myself, I'm going to stop this.
So I bought myself some Bitcoin.
Bam! Just destroyed the whole market.
You're welcome. I don't have enough to make a difference, but as soon as I bought it, that was the end of Bitcoin.
It went up a little bit after that, but now it's underwater.
So I alone have found a way to lose money on Bitcoin, but I'm sorry I had to take the rest of you with me.
Is Trump not smart now?
He never did anything with marijuana reform.
Well, Jeff Sessions was probably...
The problem there. So getting rid of Jeff Sessions has to be considered partial credit because he may have...
There's some reports, and I don't know if they're reliable or not, that Jeff Sessions might have been one of the problems to get this bipartisan prison reform thing going.
So maybe that was a step that had to happen, and then maybe something on weed can happen.
But yeah, I saw a question there I'm not going to answer today.
Um...
But if you ask me, is it a mistake for the president not to have acted already on weed, I would say yes.
So you could add that to my list of things I think are a mistake.
So, for the Trump administration, I would consider that a glaring mistake that the feds have not acted on weed.
Because it's a free pass, or a free punch, or it's money on the table, it's found money.
There isn't any way that could go wrong.
Because all he'd be doing is kicking it to the states.
And he could kick it to the states with warnings.
And say, look, here's the news.
It's not all good, but it's up to you.
You have the best news.
Do what you can. I did warn you that Snapchat stock would go from 27 to something less.
Last I looked, it was around 7.
That was actually Christina's prediction.
The feds, Do you think he risks losing re-election if he goes after a weed issue?
The weed issue should just help.
I don't see how it could possibly be bad because it's so popular.
The Acosta situation is kind of boring.
Oh... Yeah, you know, the whole Acosta thing...
Thinking of that as a freedom of speech or access issue, it's really none of those.
It's just really good theater.
It's good for the White House, it's good for CNN, it's good for ratings.
Whatever. What do you say to those people who say Trump doesn't persuade them?
Oh, good question. What do I say to the people who say Trump does not persuade them, and therefore he must not be persuasive?
To which I say, we no longer live in the world in which you can persuade the other side.
That's a really big point.
We no longer live in a world in which it's possible to persuade the other side.
The most you can do is get as close as you can to 100% of your team.
Because if you can do that, you can be president.
But that's the only thing you can do.
You can't get the other votes.
The Democrats will get almost no Republican votes.
The Republicans will get almost no Democratic votes.
The variable of how persuasive you are, it's just not even a variable.
Because people don't cross anymore.
It has become such a team sport that people don't cross over.
For example, let's say your favorite team is the L.A. Lakers basketball team.
If you're watching the Lakers play and they're not doing well, do you ever just start rooting for the other team?
Never, right? Even if your team is losing, even if your team is stupid, you might not support them as much.
You might not watch them as much.
You might not buy the hat.
But what you don't do It's turned on the TV to root for the other side.
You just don't change teams.
And because politics has gone from something like politics to something more like team sport, politics has merged because of the When you include the theater elements that the president brings to it,
and the theater elements that Acosta brings to it, and the theater elements that a lot of the big celebrities bring to it, what you have is a gigantic team sport reality TV show.
If you're watching a reality TV show, people don't change sides.
They win or they lose.
But nobody says, I think I'll just, you know, it looks like the Mets aren't doing well.
I'll just go over to that team for a while.
You know, just walk out of the dugout and say, hey guys, I used to be in that dugout over there.
I'm just going to join your dugout for a while.
I'll just play on your team.
That doesn't happen.
Because it's a sport.
It's a team. You don't change teams in the middle of the game.
And so any thought that people...
Analogies are very good for explaining a new concept.
How many damn times do I have to say that?
I don't know. I might lose my frickin' mind if I have to explain this one more time.
Analogies are great!
Great! For explaining a new concept, as I just did.
The concept of the two teams.
They are terrible.
For persuading. If I try to use an analogy to get you to change from one team to another, then I've done it wrong.
If I use an analogy to tell you that two teams exist, I've done it exactly right.
I've explained a new concept.
Why is it that that idea is so resistant to understanding?
It's a little too concept, not enough picture, I think, maybe.
It needs a simplification because that little bit of complexity makes it hard to get across.
Just a little bit of complexity.
It's amazing. Anyway, so if you're going to judge the president's persuasion talents, you would say, how well has he persuaded within his own team?
It's the only measure that counts.
Today. In the old days, you could persuade a little bit, you could get some independence, etc.
But basically, the people who voted for him last time are, for the most part, the people who will vote for him next time.
You know, give or take some.
Probably the only thing that's going to change is turnout.
You know, almost all of the energy for persuasion is going to be on turnout for people who had already made up their minds which way they're going to go anyway.
Any advice for dealing with family members who won't talk to you because you support Trump?
Yes. Tell them you do not support Trump.
And then support him.
That's my advice.
Probably a lot of you have the same problem.
If your relatives are mad at you for supporting Trump, then just talk about the parts you don't like.
And agree with them as hard as you can.
When they say, race relations are bad in this country, you should say, man, they really are bad.
That President Trump should do more to help race relations.
Why? Because it's true.
He could do more.
Why do I think that the President could do more for race relations?
Because he's the most persuasive person on the planet.
And it would not even be hard to persuade better on that topic.
So, of course he could.
What about health care?
Are you happy with your health care?
If you're not, complain about it over the holidays with your family and say, yep, President Trump has not nailed it on health care.
And health care really costs a lot.
So if you do that, you can pace them.
Yeah, somebody's using the word in the comments.
Pace your relatives.
Agree with them as hard as you can on the things where you do agree.
There are certainly elements that aren't working as well as they could.
Just agree. Do not directly contradict their belief.
So if you think, for example, that the economy is doing well, and they think the economy is doing poorly...
Do not say, you fool!
Why are you so blind?
The economy is clearly up when other people think it's not.
Instead, you could agree that the deficit is too high and you don't like it.
Right? Because if you agree that the deficit is too high, you're in a much better position to get your relative to agree that the unemployment rate looks great.
And then if you can get them to agree that the unemployment rate looks great, You could say to yourself, you know, immigration is really not really being done well.
The Republicans aren't doing well.
Democrats aren't doing well.
It's just not doing well.
The government has failed us on immigration.
But here's one thing we can agree on.
Wouldn't it be great to get the people coming out of prison productively employed before we bring in people to take those jobs?
Wouldn't that be better?
Because you might be able to sell that to your relatives, because that is the proposition.
And by the way, I don't know if all of you quite understand what a big deal this prison reform thing is, because if you look at it in isolation, If you look at it in isolation, it's just a good idea.
Looks like good people doing a good job.
And let's give credit where credit is due.
Taking Van Jones' statement about Trump.
So credit to the Democrats for being on board.
Credit to Van Jones.
Credit to the President. This was one thing that apparently every once in a while something goes right and it works the way it's supposed to.
So this prison reform thing apparently It's a good idea.
But here's the thing.
It's really not even about that.
Imagine if you were in Trump derangement hysteria.
Let's say you were suffering from TDS. What is the primary thing you think if you're suffering from Trump derangement syndrome?
You think the president's a big old racist and he doesn't care about black people.
Wouldn't that be the primary thing you think?
And then he joins with the Democrats to strongly promote something that is absolutely, positively focused...
Focus is too strong of a word, but strongly in favor of black and Latino population in this country.
It's very directly...
Money out of the pockets of white people and into the pockets of prisoners who unfortunately are skewed toward the minority population.
Now, if you're suffering from Trump derangement syndrome and you see this guy who you thought was a big old racist coming out, he's not just coming out in favor of black people.
He's coming out in favor of black people who were too strongly punished by the judicial system.
Wrap your head around that for a minute.
If you had Trump derangement syndrome and you just came out with something that says, the people coming across the border, I'm going to bring the military down there to prevent people from another country from taking the jobs that we want black and Hispanic people, even with prison records, to have.
It's just hard to hold those thoughts in your head at the same time you're saying, well, all the evidence suggests that he's a giant racist.
This is so counterfactual.
It is impossible to hold this in your head at the same time you're holding it in your head that he's whistling to the racists.
Can you make any story in your head, in any way, can you construe this story about prison reform to make it sound like a racist whistle?
It's so obviously the opposite of that.
It's like a secret dog FU. If there's such a thing as a secret racist dog whistle, shouldn't there be whatever is the opposite of that?
This prison reform thing is like a...
It's not even secret.
It's like an FU dog whistle to racists.
Because this thing actually takes money out of the pockets of the racists, you know, indirectly because it's taxes, and puts it into the pockets of black and Latino people getting out of prison and everybody else, right?
I don't even know if they're the majority in prison, but they're over-represented in the prison population.
So... Any way you look at this, this is the opposite of a racist dog whistle.
This is a racist FU, no whistle needed, he's saying it right to their faces.
In public, with a smile on his face, his entire family is behind it, the administration's behind it, and the same week, the same week that he gets rid of Jeff Sessions.
What was the biggest knock on Jeff Sessions?
He was a racist. Now, I don't think Jeff Sessions was a racist, but that's the biggest complaint about him, right?
So the same week that he fires the guy who had the bad reputation as being a racist, he gets on board with prison reform and sends a big old FU to the racists who are watching him.
How in the world do you hold that in your head if you had Trump derangement syndrome?
You can't. Alright, we'll get rid of racist.
Goodbye racist. Did you see Acosta news?
Is there news on Acosta?
I haven't seen that yet. I don't read all the news, but I don't read all the comments, but I can see a lot of them.
Alright. So that's my point.
On prison reform, it's way bigger than prison reform.
It is the biggest poke to TDS that we've seen yet.
And it might be why the...
I just read you all the news, right?
So what did you notice was missing on CNN's coverage?
So here's your question.
If you have another screen open, open up CNN's top page and show me the article about how President Trump is a racist.
It's not there.
When was the last time the CNN did not have a headline piece of news about the president accused of being a racist?
I don't even know if it happens very often, does it?
At least one of the stories?
It seems like at least one of the stories is always the president's a racist.
It's totally off of the page.
Now it's about Mueller and what's the president thinking and a little bit about Melania and something about Stormy and Avenatti.
Right? It's the dog that didn't bark.
This prison reform thing just wiped racism off the page because It debunked everything they've been saying for three years.
It just doesn't fit.
If you were trying to figure out which movie was the real one, one movie says he's being misinterpreted and he's not a racist.
The other one is, oh, racist all the way.
Every single thing he does is racist.
It's just one racist thing after another.
Which of those movies just got proved out?
Well, in my movie, Prison Reform...
Absolutely made sense.
As long as the law itself, as long as the legislation made sense, doing it was completely compatible with who I imagined President Trump is.
My impression of who he is is completely compatible with his actions.
Half of the country has an impression of the president that doesn't make any frickin' sense If he's also behind prison reform.
It doesn't make any sense. Their whole movie just blew up.
That's the story.
That's the biggest story in the country.
And you know why it's the biggest story?
Because it's nowhere.
It's nowhere. You've seen this story?
Nowhere. It's the biggest story in the country.
Alright, I don't have much else to say today.
So I'm going to end on that note.
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