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Dec. 29, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
33:18
Episode 354 Scott Adams: Climate Change, AOC Sexism, Sonic Weapons, Syria and Open Borders
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Hey everybody, let's get in here.
It's time for a weekend version of Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm Scott Adams.
Most of you are not.
But you probably have a mug, a cup, a glass, a container.
It may have a beverage in it.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Ready? Ready?
Ready? Alright, well we've got a few things to talk about today.
There was a tweet by AOC, Alexandra Octavio No.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, whose name I will never master.
And she's talking about somebody who was saying something about her childhood upbringing.
So there's some conservative Twitter follower who says that she grew up in a nice neighborhood and went to a nice school, which conflicts with her story that she had a hard childhood.
And so her response to the critic is this.
This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's tweet.
She says, replying to the Republican's tweet, she goes, in which a Republican literally tries to mansplaining my own childhood and life to me.
She's got a few typos here.
And in true mansplaining form, he's doing wrong With a great degree of confidence, it begs the question, is the GOP really sending us their best?
Now, here's the thing.
The tweet that she's referring to doesn't have any main mansplaining about it.
It's somebody who just has a different opinion.
How do you distinguish Between someone who just has a different opinion about how you're presenting your story versus someone who's mansplaining.
What's the difference between having an opinion that differs from yours and mansplaining?
She's taken this criticism, which I don't know if it's true or not true.
I don't really have an opinion of whether the criticism is accurate or not.
And I'm not sure I care.
You know, it doesn't seem terribly important to me.
But she turned it into a sexist thing.
So she became the thing that she hates.
So if sexism is something you hate, You're not going to like this because this is pure anti-male behavior.
And here's the amazing thing.
She's totally going to get a pass for this when it is some of the worst behavior you'll ever see in public.
Can you imagine somebody else?
And I don't like to do the, I don't like to do the imagine you're a Republican thing, but Can you think of any other context in which it would be okay to criticize somebody just for their gender?
Because that's all this is.
She's criticizing him for his gender.
Because there's nothing that's mansplaining about what he's saying.
She just doesn't like it.
How in the world would a, let's say, for example, African American male Vote Democrat.
They've clearly thrown men under the bus in that party, and certainly black men.
What kind of policies are the Democrats promoting that would be good for black men in this country?
I don't know what they're offering.
So, that's enough on that.
So somebody on Twitter tweeted to me and says, Scott, do you still believe that the Cuban sonic weapon was a case of mass hysteria, which was my initial prediction, I guess you'd call it?
Now that doctors have confirmed, doctors have confirmed that there, and I think one other embassy, maybe Canada, that there is some actual damage To brains and actual health problems.
Now, Scott, now do you believe that it's a real weapon?
To which I say, no, it's more obvious than ever that it's mass hysteria.
Let's talk about how you could tell a mass hysteria from a real thing.
Now, keep in mind that If they discover a weapon, well then I'll just be wrong.
So keep in mind that I'm aware that the majority are all saying one thing and that I'm very conspicuously going against the majority of all the experts.
So if I'm wrong, it should be quite evident.
Here's what you would expect with a mass hysteria.
You would never find the person behind it, and you would never find the weapon.
Now, you might say to yourself, okay, but that doesn't prove anything because there are such things as crimes which are unsolved.
Unsolved crimes are not that unusual, are they?
Well, I would argue that unsolved crimes approach zero.
When you have this many resources, and it's in an area that's full of video cameras, and you have the entire resources of the United States, every possible resource you could have looking for this weapon, and now it's alleged to have appeared in two different places.
Well, maybe it would be hard to find it in Cuba, but isn't Canada the other place?
In Canada, surely, they have a similar situation of video cameras everywhere and you can find DNA and you can track people.
So, here's the thing.
My prediction is that there will never be a weapon or a specific person identified as the perpetrator.
Okay, so the theory that it's a mass hysteria says you'll never find the shooter because there is no shooter.
So, so far, I'm right.
Because how many crimes of this level, you know, of this level of importance where the entire government is putting all of its resources into it, how often does a crime like that not get solved?
Pretty much every time it gets solved, doesn't it?
Now we haven't waited long enough, perhaps?
Maybe give it another year?
But if five years from now we still haven't found this sonic weapon, which theory looks better to you?
Now keep in mind, there is no motive.
So if you had a crime that had no motive, including insanity, right?
Because whoever would be capable of having a sonic weapon probably is not insane in some classic way.
Likewise, if somebody is insane in a classic way, they might want to, you know, just kill a bunch of civilians or something.
It would be a weird, weird crime for an insane person to do.
So there's that.
There's no motive. Because who really wants the political people from different countries to be injured?
Even the host country doesn't want that.
Do you know who didn't want Americans to be injured in a Cuban-based embassy?
Nobody wanted them to be safer than the Cubans.
The Cubans do not need this problem.
There's nothing good in this for Cuba.
Who else would want to do it?
I don't know. I can't think of anybody.
Can you think of anybody who would want to do this crime?
I can't. Now, if it was, let's say it was a clever terrorist attack, wouldn't we see a lot more of these?
Because whoever it is has this great weapon that apparently you can use at will, and nobody ever gets caught.
So some people are saying, China.
But to what purpose?
They'd have to have a reason.
Can you imagine China getting caught attacking our ambassadors in an embassy?
Can you imagine that?
I don't think China would do it.
Now the real argument here is that the doctors have found lots of real problems.
So here's the question.
Have we done any kind of a controlled test with these same doctors who have analyzed the people who say they're afflicted?
Because if you took, I'll just say hypothetically, suppose you took a hundred normal people who did not have any kind of association with these embassies.
And you told the doctors that they might have been affected by a sonic weapon that might have affected their brains.
What would those doctors find when they analyzed their brains?
I'm pretty sure the doctors, if they thought they were looking for brain problems, would find them.
Somebody's saying, next topic, please.
I'm going to block you.
So anyway, I'm going to triple down on my prediction that that's a mass hysteria.
I also have a challenge.
I have a challenge to find me somebody who really wants open borders.
Now, I don't doubt that there's somebody in the world Who actually wants real open borders.
But I think that it's a mass hysteria.
Meaning that I don't really think there are actual serious people who want an open border.
Because it would be really weird that I've never met one.
And I can't identify one and I can't put a name to anybody.
And yet, it seems the entire Republican Party believes that this is a wildly popular notion.
Why can't I find one person to say that to me in person?
To say, yes, I like open borders.
I would like to get rid of all the borders.
Give me one person, just one person who's an American, not somebody from another country, but one ordinary American voter who wants open borders.
You're going to name people like AOC. They don't want open borders.
That's crazy. And here's the test.
It doesn't count if you're just pointing to somebody else.
I want to talk to that person.
So, if you would like to, if you can find one of these people, see if you can get them on my app, on the Interface by OneHub app, and right after I'm done, I'll check and I'll see if there's an open borders advocate.
And if there is, I'll call them.
I'll talk to them in person.
And I'll find out if there's any serious person who believes in open borders.
My challenge is, I don't believe it exists.
And look how easy it would be to prove me wrong.
Just one person.
Well, I need to talk to them myself.
I'm going to say that's my test.
But just one person.
And then I'll believe there is such a thing as people who want open borders.
Watch this not happen.
There's a lot of news this week about the tragic shooting of a police officer by an illegal alien, I guess, who was a gang member.
I prefer not talking about the anecdotes.
So, as useful as these stories are for selling various political purposes, I've talked to Nick Gillespie.
Somebody just said Nick Gillespie.
I don't think that he would say what you think he's going to say.
You know, I've spent time with him personally, so I don't think you're characterizing his view right.
Because I think his view is more hypothetical than practical.
Like, in a perfect world, we'd have open borders.
I don't think he says that it's a practical thing.
But we could test that.
So, the reason I avoid the anecdotal news is that it's nothing but persuasion.
So, it is very persuasive to show a real live person, well, a real deceased person, I guess, who was the victim of a tragedy.
If you're just trying to persuade, it works really well.
But if you're trying to present the news, It's worse than worthless because it biases you to think that there's more of a danger than there really is.
Now, the danger is real, but it makes you think it's even bigger than it is when you focus on the anecdotes.
So that's why I don't do it.
So a lot of people will ask, hey, why don't you talk about that policeman who got murdered or that young woman who was killed?
And I avoid those stories intentionally because they are nothing but persuasion.
And I don't need to amplify them.
All right. Story about the Kurds.
So the Kurds who fought with us against ISIS in Syria are concerned because we've announced that we're going to pull out our troops and that would leave them exposed to a presumed attack by Turkey who considers the Kurds terrorists.
Now, here's the first thing that's missing.
In the reporting. I've seen, check me on this, I've seen many news stories which say that the Turks consider the Kurds who fought with us to be terrorists.
But I haven't seen why.
Why is it that the Turks regard those particular Kurds to be terrorists against Turkey?
Are they? Because I'd like to see why they think that.
Shouldn't it matter to us that our allies have labeled somebody a terrorist?
Now, I get that they fought on our side, and I get that Matt has probably made them certain guarantees of safety, and we should take that all very seriously.
But shouldn't we also take seriously if one of our military allies has labeled a group a terrorist group?
Now that might be unfair, and we might not want them to label them that.
But can't we see some examples?
Can we not see why Turkey is labeling them that?
Isn't that missing from all the stories?
Has anybody seen an explanation of why Turkey would have such a death wish against people in another country?
Is it because they're allies of Kurdistan?
And what has Kurdistan done to Turkey?
Now, I'm biased in favor of the Kurds because they've been good allies for us for a while there, right?
So I'm biased in favor of them, but isn't the news lacking?
Isn't there something that's just missing in this?
So that's my first observation, that the story is incomplete.
That said, it appears that the Kurds started negotiating with the Syrian government to come in with their forces and present somewhat of a defense in case Turkey was thinking of attacking.
Turkey would be far less likely to attack the actual government of Syria, their forces, especially with the Russian backing.
The question is, would the Kurds be safe under this situation, or would they just be victimized by the Syrian government eventually?
You know, once we lose interest, will the Syrian government try to round them up and kill their leaders?
We don't know. So there's a lot we don't know over there.
It's sort of hard to have an opinion about what's happening on the ground and in Manbij, that's the name of the town, Manbij and Syria.
So I think any opinion that we have about that area has to be temporary, because there's probably a lot we don't know about the situation.
But here's the question I ask you.
If I had said to you five years ago, just imagine, here's the mental experiment.
We'll go back five years in time.
And I say to you, hey, the government of Syria is going to control a town in Syria.
That's a big problem, isn't it?
I would say, what?
Why would it be a problem if the legal government of Syria has control over something that's the legal property of the country of Syria?
How does that make me less safe?
Because it seems like Syria does own Syria.
Why would it make sense that they wouldn't own their own country?
Now, we know, of course, the reasons that things are the way they are.
But why is it that it feels so dangerous to us when if we'd gone back five years and just said, of course Syria controls that territory.
It's Syria. That wouldn't have sounded so dangerous, would it?
Isn't somebody saying, you are so dumb without any reasons?
We'll get rid of you.
Now, and by the way, for those of you who might be new, I'm always open for a different opinion.
But the people who come in like Dale and say, you're so dumb.
You're so dumb. I don't need reasons.
We don't really need you.
So if you have reasons, I would love them because my entire point here is that we don't know what's going on over there and we could use more information.
But on the surface of it, it's hard for me to see...
It's hard for me to see...
Oh, Boo is behind me?
I thought people were mad at me because everybody started saying Boo.
And I'm like, oh, am I doing something wrong?
Everybody's booing me. But it turns out you're talking about my cat whose name is Boo behind me.
So I don't know what to think of the whole Syrian situation, but it does look like the Kurds have more than one way to get safe, and we hope that they succeed.
There's a little debate online.
I'm having, I'm not sure how to call it a debate, but there's a question about whether the world is safer or less safe today.
Thank you.
poor during the Reagan administration to something like 9% desperately poor now.
And it seems like the desperately poor number will shrink to zero in a decade or two.
So that's all good.
But I made the argument that because of our extreme connectivity, meaning that all the countries have communications as well as travel, as well as commerce, that those connections will keep as well as commerce, that those connections will keep us safe.
And other people say, no, no, no, it's that hyper-connectivity that actually creates more systemic ripple effect kind of risks that, you know, if there's a problem in one place, it affects every place or something like that.
Or somehow it cascades, some kind of cascading problem.
But I gotta say, it sounds like professorial masturbation to me.
And One of the arguments is that, oh, this is what we said before World War I, and it's the same thing we said before World War II, and it wasn't true then, so it's not true now.
Here's what's wrong with that, and I will use an analogy to make my point.
Let's say you wanted to drive.
Let's say I wanted to drive to Tahoe from my house, and I put half a tank of gas in my car, And I run out of gas halfway to Tahoe.
Should I conclude, therefore, that there's no way to get to Tahoe by putting gas in a car?
Because I put half a tank of gas in my car and I only got halfway there.
Therefore, should I conclude there's no way to get to Tahoe?
No. I should conclude that it depends how much gas you put in your car.
Likewise, when people say, well, history repeats, and if we had connectivity in World War I, and that didn't stop World War I, and we had a connected world in World War II, and that didn't stop World War II, therefore, it's dumb to think that it would ever stop it today.
Well, I would say World War I was about a quarter tank of gas.
World War II was maybe half a tank of gas in terms of how connected we are.
And now we're closer to a full tank of gas.
At some point, the level of connectivity just makes it a different thing.
You know, you can't generalize from having a little bit of connectivity that having a lot of connectivity is exactly the same.
That is bad thinking.
And that's the argument I seem to be hearing from people And as I'll say for the billionth time, because I know I need to say it over and over again, analogies are great for explaining a new idea, a concept, the way I just used them.
But analogies are not good as reasons in themselves.
So they're not persuasive as reasons.
All right, I just tweeted right before I got on Periscope.
I tweeted a challenge, and it goes like this.
I challenge people on Twitter to provide to me in the comments the best link to an argument in favor of climate change alarm.
In other words, I wanted to see a link to the one best argument that makes the case most convincingly, the CO2 that humans are creating is warming the planet at an alarming and dangerous rate.
You might be wondering, Why am I asking for this link?
Because I'm going to do what I think no one has ever done before.
Or at least I've never seen it and I've been looking.
I have in my possession the most persuasive climate Skepticism link I've ever seen.
And I'll present it to you when I get the other side first.
But I want the best argument in favor of climate change.
And when I have it, I'm going to tweet it in the same tweet with the best argument that says it's bogus.
Have you ever seen that?
Have you ever seen the two best arguments in the same place?
No, you haven't. You've never seen it.
Now, I keep arguing that why can't we see the two experts on the same stage?
And it turns out that the reason seems to be that either nobody wants to host it or the pro-climate scientist people say, I don't want to be on the same stage because I would be legitimizing the other side.
And maybe...
Tony Heller is exactly who I'm going to tweet.
I saw an extended presentation of his yesterday.
Let me tell you this.
If you only see the climate scientist's point of view, if that's all you see, it is really persuasive.
Viewed by itself, it is completely persuasive.
If you see Tony Heller's presentation of his claims of what is bogus in climate science.
If you watch that, you will be completely persuaded that it's a hoax.
So those two different sides are completely persuasive, viewed alone.
So I'm going to do what nobody apparently has ever done.
I'm going to put them in the same tweet.
And I'm going to challenge the world to read both of them.
I'm going to say, spend 10 minutes looking at this side, the best argument, and then 10 minutes looking at the best argument on the other side.
And I've done that, right?
So I have spent time looking at the pro and the con arguments.
And I'm going to tell you, the The argument that climate change is literally a hoax.
Well, hoax is the wrong word.
Literally a scam, let's say.
In other words, that people are doing illegitimate things to get this result.
The argument that that's true is really persuasive.
Now, I want to be really careful because I'll be taken out of context here.
When I say something is persuasive, that does not mean it's true.
Right? There's a difference.
Something can be really persuasive and just be complete BS. And I wouldn't know the difference.
But here's the interesting part.
If you put the two arguments side by side, my prediction is that anyone who reads the two arguments side by side will become a skeptic.
And I don't think that I know anybody who believes in climate science who has ever looked at the good argument by a skeptic.
Because there are lots of different skeptics, right?
So some of the skeptics say, oh, it's all solar activity.
They are not credible.
So if you compare these solar activity people to the regular climate scientists, the climate scientists win.
Again, I'm not saying what's true.
I'm only saying what's more persuasive.
So the people saying it's all solar activity are not persuasive.
They could be right.
I would have no way of knowing.
But they're not persuasive.
The people who say that CO2 is good in any amount And that it doesn't matter how much we have.
It's a trace gas, etc.
Well, not the trace gas people, but the people who say that any amount of it is going to be better, they're not really credible.
Because it seems at some point there should be a problem.
I don't know what that point is.
It might be 100 times more than we're forecasting.
But at some point, you're going to have too much, aren't you?
Until I hear that argument, the side that says more CO2 is just fine, it's not credible.
It's like an incomplete argument.
But the argument that is most persuasive...
is showing historical records that the temperature that used to be reported by NASA used to be different than what they're reporting now.
And that case looks pretty solid.
Now what's interesting is that the case, the best skeptic, and I think Tony Heller is the name of the gentleman, is an engineer by training.
So the best skeptic is not a scientist.
He's an engineer by training.
Now you might say to yourself, hey, that's no fair because an engineer is not a scientist.
How can a scientist evaluate scientific claims?
And the answer is, he's not.
He's not evaluating any scientific claims.
He's just looking at the information that the scientists themselves have presented.
So he doesn't do anything except use the public information.
And he shows you the public information and you look at it and you go, okay.
He didn't make up any of that.
That is from the actual NASA records.
It's from the news stories from NASA. It's from, you know, sources that he shows you.
He explains every source so you can check it yourself.
It is really, really persuasive.
Is it true? Don't know.
That's why I like to put the two arguments together.
So, I'm hoping both of them will be video links, just to make it equal, because one of them is a video link, so I'd like both of them to be video links, because there might be a difference between video persuasion and text persuasion.
Did you share that video link on Twitter?
No. I'm going to wait until I get...
A link from both sides.
Scott, you're losing me on this one.
You can give a reason.
Tell me what your problem is.
Was my dad an engineer?
No.
He was a postal employee.
The first principles.
I don't know what that is in this case.
What's the dumbest experiment in history, according to according to Elon Musk?
I guess I don't know what that means. All right.
I did not watch Ukraine on fire.
Read Michael Crichton's.
I've read Michael Crichton's stuff.
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