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Dec. 12, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
37:20
Episode 334 Scott Adams: Wondering if we got Everything Wrong About Russia
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Some would say it's already too late.
I'm a little bit late this morning.
Sorry. But I did a periscope for you last night so you'd have one to wake up to.
This is sort of like a bonus.
And so, please join me in raising your glass to the simultaneous sip.
Grab your chalice, your mug, your glass, your container, your stein, and join me for the simultaneous sip.
So I have a new hypothesis I'm going to try out about Russia.
We keep hearing all these Russia stories.
Russia interfering with the election.
There's a Russian spy who's part of the NRA. Russia's doing all kinds of stuff.
And one of the things we kind of assume about Russia is that they're very capable.
And they're good at stuff, especially the KGB. So the assumption is that the KGB is this super capable group and doing all kinds of stuff.
But what if it's nothing like that?
What if Russia and all of its entities are just really, really bad at what they do?
What if they're just all bad?
What if the KGB just isn't very good?
What if the government is completely unorganized?
The most ridiculous thing that I keep hearing about governments goes like this.
Well, Putin would certainly have to know if something something was happening in his government.
And I say to myself, well, That sounds like something that might be true in the United States.
If some U.S. entity were messing around with some other country, the President would probably know.
Probably. But is that true in Russia?
Do you think in Russia, if there's, you know, let's take this alleged KGB spy, what's her name, Bettina or Bulimia or something, who is in the NRA, who was not trying to hide that she was a Russian citizen.
She was operating openly.
Trying to get this whole NRA thing going.
And then I saw a clip of Putin saying that when this whole thing came up, he contacted all of his heads of his security organizations, and nobody ever heard of her.
And I thought to myself, okay, okay, we know Putin's gonna lie about everything.
But on the other hand, Doesn't that sound kind of true to you?
Doesn't it ring true that Putin himself would have no idea who this little spy was if she was a spy?
Secondly, what kind of a clever spy uses her real name, says she's from Russia, and tells you exactly what she's going to do, and then does it right in front of you?
It's kind of a strange spy situation, isn't it?
So let's just test the hypothesis that instead of Russia being this well-oiled machine in which Putin knows everything that's going on, what if it's the opposite?
What if it's a very unoiled machine and Putin has no idea what's going on half of the time?
In any other big organization, that would be the case.
The United States might be unique, you know, maybe a few other Western countries, in which we probably would know everything that's happening, or something like that.
Look at any meeting with the president or any statement the president makes on any topic.
Does it seem like the president has talked to all the people who are experts in that topic and he knows the topic from top to bottom?
Not really. And that's not exactly just an issue with this president.
It's a big country.
He's a busy guy.
He probably doesn't know what's happening everywhere all the time.
Do you think it's any different in Russia?
And the best example of that is that Russian troll farm.
From the very beginning of that story, we've taken it for granted that Putin knew all about it.
And it's because the billionaire who ran the troll shop was actually close with Putin.
So you put two and two together and say, well, Putin knows everything that's happening with his spooks, and he certainly would know something that was happening with this billionaire that he knows pretty well.
So therefore, Putin was in honor and he authorized these bad memes that cost all of thousands of dollars.
Well, maybe.
Maybe. You can't rule it out.
But just try on this concept and see if it fits.
What if there are a lot of people in Russia at the billionaire level or at the government level who are just doing a lot of things and they don't run it all by Putin?
Because Putin is sort of busy.
He's busy. Is it more likely that there are plenty of things happening in Russia or by Russians that Putin doesn't know about?
Or is it more likely that he's got his finger on everything and, unlike every other leader of a large organization, actually understands what's happening everywhere all the time?
Does that seem realistic?
So, I think there are I think there are two ways to look at this Russian thing.
Some people are saying, absolutely.
Putin knows, I'm watching your comments, absolutely.
Putin knows everything that's happening.
Well, maybe.
You know, I think he knows what's happening in Crimea.
I think he knows what's happening in whatever he's doing with the Ukraine.
I think he knows that.
I think he knows if he sends his bomber over here to get too close to US territory.
He probably knows that.
But did he know that one of his billionaire friends spent a few thousand dollars to make some memes that went on Facebook?
Maybe. But it seems like if he knew that, he would have told them either don't do it or do it a lot better.
So, to me, it's a head-scratcher whether he actually knew all that stuff.
I thought this was the old theory.
Now, let's take the case of Prince Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and his knowledge of the murder of Cheshogi.
Does it feel more likely to you That he was in on the detailed planning and he knew where it was going to go down and what was going to happen?
Or does it seem more likely that he told his people, shut this guy up one way or the other and then let them figure it out?
Which one would be more likely?
Because it seems to me that, yeah, he may have ordered him to be either co-opted Or somehow silenced.
I believe the order was that he needed to be silenced.
And then what we watched was them first trying to co-opt him.
In other words, trying to not kill him, but rather bringing him into the kingdom.
And then when that didn't work, plan B. So it seems to me that the most likely explanation is that the crown prince...
Gave an order that was sort of generic, and then the way it was carried out was maybe up to the underlings.
That doesn't take him off the hook, by the way.
So there's nothing I said that would release the crown prince from responsibility, because it's his people, and he certainly would have given the order to shut him up.
But the way we think of this, if you're thinking that the crown prince said, yeah, bring the bone saw...
Eh, probably not.
Probably not. I'm seeing some of you say that Mika has done something you don't like, but I don't know what that is.
So I'm going to turn on my computer and find out what Mika said.
Must be good.
Something homophobic, according to your comments?
So Mika Brzezinski, I assume, is who you're talking about here.
Let's see what Mika.
Mika, anti-gay.
Let's see what she said.
I'm gonna look at something that happened in the last 24 hours.
Nothing from Mika.
You're probably telling me right now.
Hold on now.
I'll have it in a moment.
18 hours ago.
That looks good.
Something about Mika.
Nope. Can't find it.
Uh, it's on Mediate.
Alright, I'll do one more try.
Mediate Mika Persons.
No. Uh.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.
Uh, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch.
I don't see it.
Can't be much of a story.
Bye.
Go to Don Jr.'s Twitter.
Is that where it is? Alright.
I'll look one more place.
As you can tell, I am not as organized this morning as I should be.
So we'll go to Donald Trump Jr.
Let's see what he's saying.
All right.
So let's see.
So Mika just asked if Mike Pompeo is a wannabe dictator's butt boy.
What? As a homophobic term, as I've heard, Mika called Mike Pompeo a wannabe dictator's butt boy?
That can't be real.
I'm going to play this video.
I've got to turn off my headphones here.
Alright, hold on. For reasons that are unclear, my speakers don't work.
All right. I don't know why, but my computer speakers aren't working.
My headphones aren't working. Yeah, there's just some sound problem I'm not going to try to fix today.
But let's say that she really said that.
That's pretty outrageous.
So...
She should apologize.
Well yes, so the 48 hour clock is ticking.
Just like everybody else.
Everybody gets 48 hours.
Now, I'm not sure that You know, you and I, or maybe just I, I'm not sure that it's up to me to forgive her because she didn't insult me.
She insulted the LGBTQ community, and so it's up to them to either accept her apology or not.
But if 48 hours later she has not clarified or apologized, then that's who she is.
Her apology is not really an apology.
Oh, she apologized about 20 minutes ago.
Okay. Let's see if I can find that.
We'll go to her Twitter.
Totally agree with you.
Super bad choice of words.
I should have said water boy.
Like for football teams or something like that.
Apologize to Senator Durbin too.
So sorry. I should have said waterboy.
Like for football teams or something like that.
Yeah, probably should have said waterboy.
Well, let me give you some social media advice.
If you're tempted to refer to somebody in social media by the intakes to their buttocks, you're going to have some trouble.
You're going to have some trouble.
Go with water. Everywhere that you could have said butt, say water instead.
So instead of butt boy, water boy.
It works for everything.
Instead of a pain in the butt, it's a pain in the water.
Just put water in there every time and you won't be...
Now she's disparaging water boys.
That's funny, she is disparaging water boys.
Yeah, I didn't think about that, but that's actually what she's doing.
Because if you're a water boy, first of all, why are you assuming gender?
But second of all, isn't all work...
Worthy of respect?
You know, honestly, I don't even know if I would use the term waterboy.
Would you? Would you call somebody somebody's waterboy?
Because the essence of the insult is that a waterboy is worth less than the people on the team.
The waterboy?
I mean, it's insulting no matter what it is, right?
Yeah, a lap dog is better.
Doesn't insult the dog as much.
A water person.
So anyway, I guess that's the most fun thing happening.
So you have noticed that the news has become horribly uninteresting lately.
And it's because of the holidays.
Things are, well I mean every few days it heats up.
But it's not heating up with anything substantive.
When the news heats up, it's because CNN is hyperventilating over some new Mueller thing that doesn't make any difference.
Oh yeah, so Nancy Pelosi said, So I talked about this last night.
So Nancy Pelosi has cemented the Democratic Party as a place that's no place for men.
If you're a man and you're supporting the Democratic Party, it's an interesting choice, let's just say.
It's sort of rare...
To be on a team that considers you unworthy of being on the team, which is largely what the Democrats have become.
They've largely become a female-oriented party that has a bad attitude about men.
And if you said to me, hey, Scott, we're forming some clubs.
We're putting together some social clubs.
Which one would you like to join?
How about the one...
That men are considered second-class citizens.
How would you like to join the club?
And I'd be like, yeah, let me join the club that treats me like I'm a second-class citizen.
Somebody says, that's false, Scott.
What part? You are welcome to give reasons.
But it's pretty clear that women by a solid majority prefer Democrats, and it's looking like Republicans by a solid majority are supported by men and women who like men.
So I would say Republicans are a combination of men and women who like men as well as they like women.
That seems to be the branding that's happening now.
Where the Democrats are women and men who think that women are better than men.
Sounds like weak persuasion.
Yeah, there's no persuasion here at all.
I'm actually describing it in as close to an objective way as I can.
I'm not trying to persuade you of anything.
Uh... So I've been reading up a little bit on millennials.
So apparently millennials are 75% of the workforce.
And the stereotype of millennials, and by the way, I don't really buy into stereotypes of entire groups of people.
So these stereotypes I read in Forbes, but you can use your judgment about how accurate they are to any individual.
They're not accurate to any individual.
But the characteristics were that they're not so much about the money as they are about autonomy and recognition.
So autonomy and recognition and accomplishing things.
So they want to feel that they're doing something and they're being recognized for it and they have a lot of freedom to do it.
And it makes me wonder If that mindset is more or less successful than other mindsets.
When I was 21, when I got out of college and I was looking for a job, the only thing that really mattered to me was how much it paid and whether it gave me some path to something better that would be paying even better.
And so for me, I was willing to take almost any kind of paying To get where I wanted.
And I thought that that's how it worked.
I thought it doesn't matter how much it hurts, that's the deal.
The deal is you do stuff that hurts, they give you money, and over time you can work yourself into a better situation as I did.
But I think it was the Forbes article that was speculating that what might have really changed the mindset is video games and social media.
And the idea is that video games and social media are somewhat immediate gratification.
You have lots of flexibility of what you do, but you get this immediate recognition.
People like your thing and it's all kind of surface-y and you don't have to work very hard.
So imagine the rewards you get for posting on social media and getting lots of likes, or playing a video game in which you succeed within the video game.
You're getting all this feedback, all this positive feelings, you know, the chemicals in your brain are going, yeah, happy, happy, happy, happy.
And then you go to work.
And you go to work, and everything about work is opposite.
Everything about work is dehumanizing.
You've got to beg for credit.
It's going to take you forever to succeed at anything if you ever do.
So, I don't know what that does to people's success.
But, here's one of the things that I like to point out every now and then.
I'll put this in two different contexts.
One of the things that makes white people racist is they say, hey, look at all those white people who invented great things and they were very successful white people.
And then the racist says, but I'm a white person too, so white people are awesome.
But that white person who is the racist didn't invent anything.
How does the racist get credit for what completely different other people did?
It's a strange...
The whole racist belief system is so irrational that I don't even know how to call it racist instead of just stupid.
Because there are lots of things you can say that are scientifically valid about differences between groups.
But the fact is, the racists themselves, the actual individual racists, did not invent anything.
Didn't do anything.
So how does that person, who is doing nothing but making a racist website, trying to draft off of the successes of completely different people?
The people who actually make a difference in the world are 1%, or maybe it's.00001%.
And if you're not one of those people, you can't really claim credit because people who have a pigmentation similarity to you did great.
How does that work?
Same with men versus women.
I often hear men who are being sort of secretly sexist.
Usually they don't say this in public.
But some version of men invented everything.
Men invented everything.
Well, I'm a man.
I didn't invent anything.
I do have a patent, but it's for something completely useless.
And most men, 99%, they didn't invent anything.
They didn't invent a damn thing.
So, how can I take credit because I have a penis and some complete stranger 20 years ago or 100 years ago or 500 years ago who also had a penis who was far smarter than me Once invented something.
Like, how do I take that as my accomplishment?
What is the connective tissue?
It's like, oh, there are very smart, successful white people.
Therefore, all the dumb, unsuccessful ones get to be part of that success.
Doesn't really work that way.
Is any racial pride okay?
Well, okay is a vague way to ask the question.
I would put it this way. Racial pride is either useful to the person who has it, or it is not useful.
If you can find a way to make it useful, then I'd say it's a good thing.
For example, let's say you were a member of some ethnic group that was routinely discriminated against.
Doesn't matter who it is, just any ethnic group that is routinely discriminated against.
Would it make sense for them to have ethnic pride?
Probably. Probably, because it might be part of the mindset that helps them succeed, gives them a little bit of cushion and protection against other people's bad opinions and that sort of thing.
But suppose you're a generic white person, as I am.
I'm about as generic as you can get.
Would it be useful for me to have white pride?
I can't think of any way that that would be useful.
I mean, I don't have a lack of pride and nobody is discriminating against me because other white people are bad in some way.
So in my case, it wouldn't have a utility that I can see.
But if it did have a utility, then absolutely.
So if there's somebody who is feeling beaten up because of their ethnicity, Generating a little bit of, whether it's real or artificial pride in your group of people, it might have some usefulness as part of your overall mindset, as long as it doesn't dominate and push you in the wrong direction.
I guess my bigger point is that You should not be taking credit for the success of complete strangers who happen to have genitalia that is roughly similar to yours.
That just doesn't make any sense.
And I would go further and say that somebody says gay pride.
Gay pride had use.
So gay pride was a very smart Very effective mindset as well as a political movement because they were very much the ones who were being discriminated against and still, of course, by Mika and other people still discriminated against.
Yeah, black pride, gay pride, any group that feels put upon, it probably is useful.
To think of it in those terms, in terms of being proud of who they are.
But it doesn't make sense.
It can be useful without making sense.
They don't have to be the same thing.
And in my case, it wouldn't be useful.
So, I don't take it too far.
What's the opposite of pride in your race?
I would not think of it in terms of opposites.
I think you could either care or not care.
So, disliking your race is kind of rare.
I don't know anybody who discriminates against themselves.
I suppose it happens.
But I think it's either a question of whether it matters or it just doesn't matter.
It's more like a one or zero, not one or negative one.
Men are arguably being put upon.
Yeah, men are being...
I think we're at kind of a turning point, wouldn't you say?
I think we're at a turning point in society, at least in the United States, where being male...
Is widely considered, and I'll say widely meaning, I don't know, 40% of the public?
30% of the public?
That's pretty wide. I'd say 30% of the public thinks that men are just bad humans.
And of course, no two men are exactly alike, so it's a gross generalization like everything else.
The liberal indoctrination is to make you feel guilty about your white maleness, somebody said.
Yeah, maybe so.
So, somebody said, is Mika's comment about Butt Boy a firing offense?
It should be. Right?
I mean, in order to be consistent, it should be.
Now, in my opinion, if somebody apologizes, and by the way, she didn't apologize to the LGBTQ community, did she?
She said it was a super bad choice of words, and that she apologizes to Senator Durbin, too.
Which seems to be a different topic.
So sorry. Yeah, I'm not sure if saying you're sorry, generically, is the same as apologizing to the community she offended, the gay community.
Yeah, I guess all day long people are going to be talking about whether Mika should be fired since Kevin Hart was kind of fired.
Yeah. Personally, I'm not in favor of firing people who are being corrected and accept the correction.
So I would say in this case, Mika did something.
Society collectively corrected her.
She acknowledges the correction.
That's about all I would ask of anybody.
So I would apply the same standard to Mika that I would apply to Kevin Hart.
And it goes like this.
I don't judge people by their mistakes.
If you do, if you judge people by their mistakes, that's a case of loser think.
Because we all make mistakes all the time.
We're in a continuous state of failure and mistake making.
It makes more sense to judge people by how they handle their mistakes.
So I would look to both Kevin Hart and Mika and say, okay, What did they do about their mistakes?
And it seems to me that in both cases, they, let's say, improved or increased, but let's say they improved their understanding Of other people's sensibilities in this social world in which they live.
And they've learned how to navigate their society in a more enlightened way.
Now, is it just as likely that Kevin Hart would say an anti-gay thing today?
No, it's not.
He has clearly, you know, I hate to use the word evolved, but it kind of works here.
Kevin Hart started as an imperfect person, as we all have, and he got a little bit better, and this incident helped him get there maybe quicker than he would have.
Mika clearly made an insensitive comment that was inappropriate according to society.
She fairly quickly acknowledged it and said she was sorry.
I'm not sure it was the apology and needed to be, but still it's obvious that she has taken it as something that she needs to avoid in the future.
In other words, growth.
And I say that about every form of racism and sexism.
If there's one thing that we could say about everybody over a certain age, and that age is pretty young, but everybody over a certain age who is an adult, we used to be worse.
That's almost true of, I don't know, 95% of people, 98% of people, It's true of all of us.
We used to be a lot worse.
So if you judge me by who I was 40 years ago, I'm not going to look so good.
And guess what? If I judge you by decades ago, that thing you did, that thing you used to think, you wouldn't look so good either.
And so that's why I've proposed the 20-year rule.
The 20-year rule...
It says that you just don't judge people by stuff they thought or did or said 20 years ago.
Because we're not really the same people we were 20 years ago.
Now, 20 is sort of a random number, and you could apply it to 5 or 10 or 50 years, whatever you want.
But it's a good rule of thumb that if somebody's complaining about, let's say, George Soros, I'm no fan of George Soros, but when you tell me that I need to judge him by something he did when he was 14, when he's in his 80s, I can't go there with you.
Just can't go there with you.
Just too far away.
I seem to have a phone around here somewhere that just dinged.
I need to find it. Alright, but anyway, I will...
Talk to you later because I don't have much else to say today.
But let's let people grow.
Let's let people improve.
If they don't apologize and they don't improve, well, then judge them.
Judge them any way you like.
But if somebody used to be bad, even if used to be was yesterday...
And it's obvious to you that they understand what the problem is, and it's obvious to you that they've said their sorries, and it's obvious to you that something has changed to make them less like that in the future.
I say we should applaud it.
So, Kevin Hart and Mika, I put them on the same team, on the same category, which is two people.
Who were imperfect, just like the rest of us, and showed growth.
Let's be happy about that.
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