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Jan. 10, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:10
Episode 369 Scott Adams: Whiteboard Discussion of Border Persuasion
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Hey everybody!
Hello Nicholas, Tyler.
Come on in. Gather around.
You still have a few seconds to go grab your beverage.
Because you know what time it is.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
That's me. And I hope you have your Mug, your cup, your glass, your chalice, your stein, if you will.
I hope it's filled with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah, that's the best.
So I hope you've all seen probably the best example of CNN mind reading you've ever seen.
Now when I say mind reading, I'm talking about a news organization that tells us without any sense of embarrassment, they say in clear terms that they believe they know what strangers are thinking in their private thoughts.
Now in what world is that not batshit crazy?
I want to read you the first line of an article in CNN Politics by Stephen or Stephen Collinson.
So here's the first sentence, the very first sentence of an article today on CNN. It says, Donald Trump's hatred of looking foolish And Democrats' conviction that they have a winning hand is leaving the president with no way out of the border situation.
Now, they've got two mind-reading bits in the first sentence.
The first one is that Donald Trump's hatred of looking foolish is what's driving his negotiating.
Now, first of all, Can you name somebody who doesn't hate looking foolish?
Are there people who don't like?
So is that like a special feeling that needs to be called out?
I'm pretty sure everybody likes to win.
I'm pretty sure people don't like to lose.
So there's a lot of nothing in that.
But more importantly, they single out the nothing as his primary thinking process.
I think there are other thoughts.
I don't think the entire policy is about not being wrong.
You know, there are issues about getting reelected, there are issues about serving the base, there are of course issues about what's good for the country, and I think some genuine disagreement about that, etc.
It's pure mind reading and then they, in this case, they did it also for the Democrats.
Talk about the Democrats' conviction that they have a winning hand.
Do you think that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are, they use the word conviction, so I feel that that connotes a sense of certainty.
Do you think they're certain they have a winning hand against this president?
Do you think Chuck and Nancy are thinking, yeah, we got him now.
I don't think so.
Now, I'm also not a mind reader.
So I'm just pointing out that this mind reader is working on a guess or a hunch, but he's presenting it as if it's some kind of an obvious fact that we should all agree with.
No backup needed.
Let me just put it out there.
It's President Trump's hatred of looking foolish, and of course the Democrats have a conviction of a winning hand.
Here's how that could have been written to also be true.
I'm just going to reverse the mind reading and watch how it's true even if you reverse it.
So I'll reverse it. Donald Trump's conviction that he has a winning hand.
Right? Just as good as the other way.
And then the Democrats' hatred of looking foolish.
Everybody hates looking foolish.
I'm pretty sure everybody hates that.
So anyway, the reason I point out the mind reading is that I don't see as much of it from Fox News, but I also, maybe I haven't been tuned to it, so I think I'll pay a little more attention to see if I'm seeing much of that on that side.
But it does seem like There's an epidemic of people reporting the news literally as if they could read other people's minds.
And just putting it out there like there's no question about it.
Alright. Let's talk about, there's an idea floated yesterday by a few people, Ben Shapiro among them, notably, reviving the idea from last year about putting some solar panels on the border wall and then selling it as good for climate change, I guess. Now, some critics say that will never work because of vandalism.
And I say, pretty good point.
I can imagine that vandalism would be a problem, especially because the direction of the solar panels would be on the Mexican side because they need to face south.
So actually the border barrier is perfectly directionally good for solar because it faces south just the way you'd want it to.
They are subject to, you know, being monkeyed with.
So, uh-oh.
I just said something that if I don't catch it, it's going to sound racist.
They are subject to people messing with them.
Where I grew up, it's common to say people are monkeying with things and it is not racist.
Let me point that out.
So yeah, they definitely are subject to BB guns and rocks and everything else.
But I ask you this.
I ask you this.
Is it something you could test small?
And the answer is yes.
You could pick an urban area that already needs a wall or should have a wall.
Because those are the places you want wall according to the border security people.
The places you might want a solid barrier is where there are lots of homes or businesses on each side.
You don't need it so much in the long barren areas.
But that's also where you need electricity.
So you could just try a little bit of a solar wall in a place that makes sense.
Put it up, run it for a couple years, see if it works.
You know, if the company that makes...
I guess there is a company that has a prototype that has solar panels on it.
So that exists as a design already.
Why not just try it?
You don't have to try a hundred miles on it.
You could try one mile of it.
You could try one block of it.
And just see if the folks on the Mexican side hate it.
Because if they hate it and they throw rocks on it, then it's bad.
Now imagine that, let's say we split the electricity or something.
Maybe we share a little electricity with Mexico.
So there are ways to test this idea, but I think it's perfectly valid to say it wouldn't work because people would throw rocks at it.
Let's go to the board and talk about the persuasion game.
I'm going to sort of score it in the middle of the game to see how we're doing on persuasion on the border barrier debate.
Who's winning? Who's got the best arguments?
So, two of the big arguments used by people who like the wall are that it's going to be good for drugs and crime.
The Democrats are winning the persuasion battle on the questions of drugs and crime.
Now remember, we're talking about persuasion.
So we're not talking about what's true.
We're not talking about the facts.
But on a persuasion level, I think the Democrats have made a convincing case that the drugs are mostly coming in different ways, and it's hard to stop drugs with a wall anyway.
And they're also making a convincing case that the crime rate of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, or you put them together, Special type of risk.
Now, of course, Republicans would say, wait a minute, it's not about the percentage of crime.
If somebody kills you, you don't care that they're part of a group that has a low percentage of crime.
You just care that you're dead.
But I would say that the Republicans have not made this argument.
They have not made the argument that the percentage of crime is a stupid way to look at it.
If you have a way that's economical and practical to reduce your risk of crime, you're not going to care if you're reducing your risk of crime in a neighborhood that already has below average crime.
You're not going to care about the ratio of crime.
You're just going to care about protecting yourself.
So I would say, although somebody said it in the comments here, it's not that the Republicans haven't made the case, but they've made it weakly, meaning weak.
They really haven't hammered that.
They've sort of let that sit out there.
It seems to me that the Democrats are getting the better of this argument.
And again, remember, I'm not talking about facts or truth.
I'm only talking about the argument of persuasion.
Here would be, in my opinion, the best way to handle both of these weaknesses in the Republican position.
So instead of saying we're going to stop drugs, because the wall won't do that, and nobody's going to believe it will.
And instead of saying that immigrants have higher than normal crime rates, or even suggesting it, don't do that.
Just say that we're going to funnel, if you have a better border wall, You're going to funnel people toward the legal points of entry.
So apparently most of the drugs and probably a lot of bad people are coming through the legal border checks.
Now my understanding is that part of this $5.7 billion budget is to improve the electronic, I guess, detection at those places.
So what you have here is a fairly I think, and you'd have to fact check me on this, but I think what the plan is, is that if you strengthen the external borders, that you help to funnel people toward the places where we'll be also improving detection.
So the question is, could you take this argument Where the Republicans are losing and describe it this way.
Just say, yeah, we know that walls don't stop everything, but it will be a point of friction that will funnel people toward the main points of entry where we do have people checking.
And we're also going to greatly upgrade the technology at those points.
So you need to do two things.
You need to funnel them into the place that you have the best detection.
That's actually a very rational plan.
If you say to me, there's too much crime coming in, I say, well, as a percentage, it's not bad.
And really, we're all just people.
So if people are people, and they don't bring in more crime than other people, why are we complaining about it?
It just sounds racist.
And it does. It totally sounds racist.
So as an argument, it's a bad one.
But if you say everybody agrees that the process should be organized and humane, so part of the advantage of getting people away from the illegal crossing areas and toward the legal crossing areas is that you have a humanitarian benefit.
There are fewer people trying to do it the dangerous way.
The other argument that the Dems are using, and I'm not even sure it's an argument.
It goes more in the category of using sarcasm and mocking.
So it's good for the base when they say stuff like, oh, the president said Mexico would pay for it.
I don't see Mexico paying for it.
So it's sort of good in the political back and forth, etc.
But it's not really the key point, is it?
The key point is not whether Mexico pays for it or not.
But here's the interesting thing.
The Republicans as a group are also saying that the wall is immoral.
Does it make sense that they're saying the wall is immoral unless Mexico pays for it?
Is the wall moral if Mexico pays for it?
Why are the Democrats talking about who pays for the immoral wall?
Is it because if Mexico pays for it, it transfers from immoral to moral because somebody else paid for it?
So I think the question needs to be asked to, let's say, Eric Swalwell, my representative, who was talking about this today or yesterday.
So he just tweeted mocking the president for saying Mexico would pay for the wall.
The question needs to be asked, if Mexico paid for the wall, would you suddenly be okay with the immorality of it all?
And if not, shut the fuck up!
Because that's not the point at all.
Stick with the point.
Make a point and live with it.
If your point is that it's immoral, die on that hill, dammit.
Die on that hill. Go to that hill and just die.
If that's your point, stick with it.
Don't talk about how if it were cheaper, it would be moral.
Is that your point? If I can get a discount, it's okay.
I'll do something immoral as long as the price is right.
Is that what you're saying, Representative Swalwell?
So, I think the answer to this is to market back Off the table.
Because it's just a distraction.
It doesn't work for either side.
It's not moving the ball forward.
I would just mock this back out of the system.
Here's another argument that I haven't seen.
Well, let me put it this way.
I don't think I've seen this from the President packaged in a very effective way.
And it's weirdly maybe the best argument.
The people who most want illegal immigrants are?
Go. What category of Americans, demographically, are most interested in having a lot of illegal immigration?
Who benefits?
Me. Me.
I gotta tell you, If there were not massive illegal immigration, life in California for rich white people would be a lot harder.
That's just a fact.
That is a fact. I don't think anybody doubts it if they're rich and white, as I am.
So our current immigration policy, which is a porous border, is really for the benefit of rich white people.
Now let me ask it the opposite way.
Who loses?
African-American, mostly men, who are the ones who are competing with manual labor type jobs.
The people who would like to maybe work hard in this generation so that the next generation can go to school and get, you know, even better jobs in generation two.
How does the African-American community Take the entry-level economic position so that the next generation or even many of the current generation can move up.
Well, if they don't have jobs, it's going to be harder.
So, here's the argument that I think is the strongest.
I would go after the strongest part of the opposition's argument is that all of this is a smokescreen for a bunch of racism, right?
All of these reasons are kind of not really the reason, are they?
The real reason is that people think in their mind, mind reading, thank you CNN, people are mind reading the president and his supporters and I think this is a racist thing to have fewer brown people.
I think that can be turned around by saying the current system benefits rich white people.
Fact check me. Fact check me on that, will you?
Who benefits by the current system?
I'm pretty sure that the big companies, which are probably mostly run and managed and owned by rich white people, I'm pretty sure they're the ones who want immigration to be just the way it is.
I'm pretty sure it's true.
That African Americans don't want to have more trouble getting jobs.
It's probably hard enough already.
I'm pretty sure that they're on board.
So here's the statement that I think captures it all.
That the president's border policy is designed to protect the people who are already here, which would include 22 million people who already came here illegally.
Because the only way to protect the people who are already here, including all the people who came over the border illegally, is to slow down the number of people who continue to come.
That's how you protect the African American community.
That's how you protect the immigrants who are already here, legal or illegal.
You know, they also need jobs and they don't want to compete any more than anybody else does.
And that the current system is racist as hell.
The current system is designed, it looks, just to benefit rich white people.
And it's working! And by the way, when I talk about this stuff, I should tell you that I actually have pretty mixed feelings about border security.
Living among and working with every kind of person.
And I can tell you personally, That illegal immigration has been nothing but good for me.
Just unambiguously good for me.
Because it's just, you know, I meet great people.
They can do work for me at a moment's notice.
And, you know, I pay them well.
Everybody's happy. So I would say that, you know, in every case, immigration has been good for me.
I've never been victimized by any crime.
And by the way, let me say this.
I'm going to tell you a story just so you can see that my bias is not all in one direction.
When I owned restaurants, it was well understood that the folks who came from Mexico, they all had identification and that's all the business can tell.
If they have two forms of identification, restaurant owners and small business owners are not asked to go beyond that.
If they have identification, that's all you know.
So we would hire people who had identification, like every other business in the area, and that's as far as you would go.
But it was our experience.
I'll tell you a real event.
There was a busboy who tried to steal a towel.
from the restaurant and he was stopped at the door by another Mexican immigrant who stopped him at the door and basically turned him in because he didn't want to be part of a business where somebody from Mexico stole from the business.
So there is some self-policing going on because the people who go through all the trouble and the risk and the hardship to get here, they really want to stay.
And they don't want somebody else ruining their stuff.
So I'm just telling you my own bias that as a rich white guy, immigration from Mexico has been unambiguously positive in my life.
So if there's less of it, I imagine that would be bad for me in a variety of ways.
But I think it would also be good For a lot of other people.
And I think that has to count too.
So if the president is making a case that he's the president of the people who are in this country, legally or illegally, you know, once they're in the border, they are sort of under your control and protection in a sense, even if you prefer that they were legal.
All right. The last point, just so I've covered it all, is that the Democrats make the case that most of the illegal people are coming in through the airports.
I haven't seen anybody address that in an effective way because it is true that the vast majority of the illegal immigration is coming through the airports.
But here's my question.
Is somebody who can afford a plane ticket The same level of crime risk as somebody who is snuck over the border.
I don't know that that's the same level of crime risk.
If you were to measure the crime rate of people who came in who could afford a plane ticket, those are the people who probably have college degrees.
I would think that anybody who could afford a plane ticket You know, and has ID and comes in that way, even if they're overstays, they're probably exactly the people who have the lowest level of crime.
So I'd love to see the stats on that, but my guess is that you're looking at, you're probably looking at a lot of people coming from, say, India and Europe and stuff who are overstaying, and they may have a lower crime rate than people who are coming from Below the border who are an entirely different economic group.
Now, so that I can be free from the accusations of racism, my statement is the following.
People from lower economic groups tend to have higher crime rates.
And why wouldn't they?
If I were poor enough that I needed to steal to eat, I'd probably steal to eat.
You know, I'm not so holy that I wouldn't do what I needed to do to live.
So I would say as a general statement, the less money you have, the more likely you're going to be drawn to crime.
And the people who can afford a plane ticket and come in through an airport probably have less temptation.
Because I would imagine a lot of them are coming in and staying because they have work, they've got relationships, they've got things going on.
Alright, so I would say that the best argument here is that there may be a difference in the crime rate of people coming in through airports.
But the second part of the argument is that it's just a separate problem.
So if you've got two holes in your bucket, let's say you have a bucket that has two holes, and one is bigger than the other, Do you not plug the smaller hole because a bigger one exists?
I don't think so.
I think you plug whatever you can plug and you hope that you can get them all.
It may take a while to get there.
But if you have problems, you solve the ones you can solve.
You don't not solve small problems because large problems exist.
So see my Dilbert cartoon that I tweeted this morning on analogies?
I've said this before, but let me just close on this thought.
I don't know how many of you have seen me struggle With the million times I've had to say this publicly.
So I criticize analogies as not being persuasive.
Usually it's talking about Hitler analogies as not being persuasive.
Those are the worst ones.
But analogies are great for explaining a concept.
So the concept I was explaining is that if you have two problems, why would you leave one, you know, unsolved if you didn't need to?
So that's a perfect use of an analogy.
A bad use of an analogy is, my cat has markings that look like Hitler's mustache, therefore I think my cat might try to attack Poland.
That's a bad use of an analogy.
Alright, I continue to dig in to the problem and the question of climate change.
I talked to a number of people yesterday using the Interface by WenHub app.
So yesterday I just said in the app, this is my startup's app.
It's called Interface by WenHub.
It's a free app. You can download it.
And you can talk to people like me.
And I'll tell you the coolest thing that happened yesterday.
So the coolest thing that happened yesterday...
I got a call on the Interface app from someone who had read a number of my books and followed me on Periscope.
It was a young man who had set his own affirmation to talk to me personally about the topic of affirmations.
So there was somebody in the world who was doing affirmations to somehow reach me, and I guess he tried a number of ways but hadn't found a way to do it.
He wanted to find some way to speak to me personally.
on the topic of affirmations and yesterday my phone rings and it's my my app calling and I answer it and it's this young man and he's and he succeeded by using my app now what are the odds that he would be doing affirmations specifically to reach me And that I would be working somewhere in the world to create an app that allows you to reach people like me without having my contact information.
So he actually got on a live video call with me and neither of us exchanged any contact information because that's what the app does.
It lets you talk to people just by who they are, not their contact information.
So he had probably one of the most unusual affirmations and it came in.
It worked for him. So that was kind of cool.
But I also got to talk to a number of people who were helping me fill in some blanks in my knowledge about climate change.
And the mystery just keeps getting deeper and deeper.
I will tell you that preliminarily I'm still on the fence as to whether climate change is either real or we need to worry about it.
I would say Here's my current prediction, is that the skeptics, and I'm not talking about any individual skeptic, because some of the skeptics are stronger than others.
Some of them are pretty solid and some of them are a little flaky.
I would say that the skeptical community, the ones who are skeptical about climate science risk, are at least 70% bullshit.
Meaning that a lot of it, like the correlation between the sun and the temperature, is so easily disproved by the scientists that it's just amazing that it still comes up.
So I would say that 70% of what the skeptics say is clearly and fairly easily dismissed.
The rest might also be untrue, but it's harder to dismiss.
In other words, it's credible and it's solid and they show their work and I don't see the response to it.
So in that case, in that sense, it's credible.
I would say on the climate alarm side, that without being a scientist, it's hard to know what is credible and what is not.
But at least 20% of everything the climate scientists say, as a group, not as an individual, but as a group, appears to be bullshit.
At least 20%. Which still leaves a solid 80% that would completely confirm their theory.
But there's about 20% of it that just doesn't seem believable at all.
Now some of what doesn't seem believable to me has been filtered through the skeptics.
So it may be that I'm hearing a biased presentation.
But I'll give you one example and I want you to fact check me on this.
So I'm not presenting this as true.
I'm presenting this as one of the many things that puzzle me because the two sides are just saying opposite things.
Is it true that the...
Why am I blanking on the name of the hockey stick...
Remind me in the comments here.
What's the name of the hockey stick graph guy?
Why am I forgetting him?
It's not Hanson. It's not...
Man! Yes, Michael Mann.
So one of the skeptical claims, and I have a hard time believing this is true, so I'm not going to present this as true.
I'm going to present it as a skeptical claim that I want you to fact check me on.
And the skeptical claim is that there was a gap in the, let's say, temperature records, or the temperature records were not reliable for a certain period, And then Michael Mann adjusted for that period where the other ways of measuring temperature were not good by using an analysis of tree rings.
So he used tree rings to fill in a gap in the temperature record.
Now so far, and I think I mentioned that there were other tree ring experts who said he didn't do it right, but you know, there's always that.
So, so far, There's a flag raised about how good that is, but we don't have a solid opinion yet.
And then the other part of the skeptical claim is that the tree rings don't match the actual measured temperatures.
That we have currently.
In other words, if you look at the tree rings for the period where we don't have good measurements, then that's the best you can do, so you fill it in.
But right now, the skeptical argument is that the tree rings clearly don't match the temperatures.
In other words, the correlation isn't good enough to use them as a temperature proxy.
Is it true That Michael Mann used tree rings to fill in a period where they didn't have good measurements in the history?
And is it also true, and this is the important part, that he stopped using them as a proxy because it became clear that they don't match the more modern readings of temperature?
True or false? Because if it's true, it tells you a lot.
And if it's false, it tells you that the skeptics are just making stuff up.
And I don't know the answer to that.
Somebody's making a bold prediction.
And they're saying that I will eventually come down on the side of climate alarm.
I don't know. You know, here's the interesting thing.
And I hope you know me well enough by now, because most of you have watched me for a while now.
I hope you know me well enough to know that if I tell you I'm not sure which way this is going to go, that I really mean that.
I mean, I really don't know what my opinion on climate change will be in one year.
I really don't know. My preliminary feeling is that the I'll give you a preliminary reading.
It seems to me that our ability to measure accurately enough, sea level and temperature historically, couldn't possibly be good enough.
But I realize that when I say that, I sound like a troglodyte or something, because that statement sounds like, oh, you don't believe science can do it.
Somebody gave me the argument recently that our satellites, even decades ago, could read the data on a dime on Earth.
So if a satellite can read the date on a dime, certainly it can measure the temperature and the sea level.
To which I say, can it?
Can it really?
Because it seems to me that the Earth It has a lot of variation.
The ocean has a lot of variation.
I'm just not so sure that we can measure those things from space.
Now, if you tell me that the satellites are pretty good at measuring the lower troposphere, I think I would find that in the believable range.
It feels to me, you know, as a non-scientist, like, yeah, if that's what you're trying to do, you'd probably do that.
But I'm not ruling out that scientists actually can measure the temperature that well.
Now one of the things that causes great conflict is looking at the map.
If you've seen the map of the globe with a dot for where we have physical measurements, it turns out that they're vastly concentrated in the United States.
Now it turns out, and I may have this part wrong too because this is a skeptical claim, so you have to fact check me on everything on this topic.
The claim is that apparently the temperature in the United States, which is the only one that has really, really good measuring devices that go back a number of decades, doesn't show the warming.
Have you heard that? Have you heard that the only place that we have really good measuring devices is, coincidentally, the only place it's not getting warm?
Because I believe that's the claim.
And I had to dig pretty hard to get to that.
But I'm still not sure it's true because I think there's also some issue of there was maybe some adjustments to the data to maybe make it look not like it's cooling.
And I think the argument was that sure, sure, there might be one region where things are not so bad, But it could be really bad in other regions.
I was just looking at one of those skeptical maps on Tony Heller's site.
Steve Goddard, under his pen name.
Anyway, I was just looking at one of his tweets and one of his maps, and it showed the difference between what the actual temperatures were and what the official people say, and it's very different.
But here was the interesting thing.
It showed that there was unusual warming in just different parts of the world.
So it told the story of, yeah, the Earth is warming on average, but it's not warming up like, you know, it's not warming everywhere in the same way.
Some places are actually cooler, you know, not as many.
So a few places are cooler, but other places are warmer.
But then you look at where it got extra warm, and the places that it was getting extra warm were places like northern Russia, you know, up where the one place in the world you'd want it to be extra warm, It's the place that's getting warm.
So the other thing that I don't see as an argument is, what's wrong with the cold Most places on Earth are staying the same.
Because that's largely what was happening.
So the map didn't show, for example, it didn't show that Death Valley was, you know, going to be 200 degrees.
It just showed that the places that are already pretty frozen are warming up.
Now, if the problem is that the warming up of those places that really could use a little warming, if the problem Is that it'll melt the ice, and the sea level will rise.
I'm just not sure that's the biggest problem in the world.
It's a big problem for certain places, and you can't discount that.
But I've got a feeling that 98% of the world...
Well, let me ask you this.
What percentage of the population of the world lives on the coast?
I don't know the answer to that.
Might be pretty high, huh?
But if you're talking about near the coast, it's very high.
But the number that are, let's say, close enough to the ocean to be in big trouble.
Somebody says 95% are near the ocean.
But how many are so near the ocean that they would be impacted by climate change?
Because that's a very different question.
Because poor people don't have homes on the beach, right?
those are mostly hotels and stuff.
So, yeah, how big of a problem is it if 1% of the earth had to relocate over 80 years and it was mostly the rich people?
A But there would be definitely some poor places where it would be a problem if the water level is going up.
Check evacuation info on hurricanes.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that there wouldn't be plenty of Poor areas as well.
Keep in mind that the rising sea level is not going to rise in an afternoon, because literally over 80 years, it's like an entire lifetime.
If the only thing that happened are the children of the people who live on the coast moved away, think about this.
If the only change was that the children of the people who live on the coast decide not to continue living on the coast, in 80 years, there's nobody left on the coast.
A few senior citizens.
Lots of military bases, yeah, they can be moved.
Have we talked about toxic male, toxic masculinity?
I have not talked about that.
The way that I've talked about it is it is increasingly clear that the power of women in society is increasing at an increasing rate and that it seems to be expressed primarily in the Democrat Partying, at this point, is really a party of women.
You know, if you look at Pelosi and Schumer, it just doesn't feel like Schumer matters.
I mean, it honestly doesn't.
I mean, he matters because of his job, but it just feels like Pelosi's in charge, doesn't it?
It feels like a woman's, sort of a woman's party at this point.
I'm not sure what is too much masculinity.
The trouble is when you argue about stuff like toxic masculinity, it all really depends on specific situations.
So it's hard to make some kind of general statement about it.
But in any given situation, I guess you could argue it out.
Now I do wonder...
I've wondered if...
I've said this before, and I don't mean this as a joke, but I'll just put this out here as something I would love to know the answer to.
So I'm not saying this is true.
I'm just saying it's something I'd like to know the answer to.
Apparently we do know that men are losing their testosterone.
So I think that part's true, that testosterone levels in men are dropping.
I don't know if that's in every culture and in every country, but I'm sure it's true in the United States.
And I would say that in my lifetime, it feels obvious to me.
Does it feel obvious to you, also, that testosterone levels in males are dropping, or have dropped, in my lifetime anyway?
Do others of you see that to be true?
Because I can't tell, you know, I think the popular, probably the popular understanding of that is that men are becoming more enlightened.
If you ask a woman what's happening in the world, I think, let's say a feminist, they would probably say, well, men are finally becoming more enlightened.
So they're treating women as their equal partners now.
They're taking responsibility for childcare.
They're becoming more equal partners.
So there's certainly a way to describe it where it's all good.
But I don't think That what's happening is that men are making a mental decision about what's the best way to organize the world.
And then they say, I think I'll fit into this slot.
I don't know that that's happening.
I think what might be happening is that their testosterone is low, and that causes them to make different decisions than if it were high.
And again, you don't have to put a value judgment on this.
It could be that they're less trouble, they're less abusive, less likely to cheat.
It might be that lower testosterone is just what Society needs, or it might be just what is safer for women.
It's hard to know what's the plus and the minus here because it's unevenly distributed.
But the other possibility, and I would like to present this, the other possibility is that the lifestyle that makes your testosterone rise is not the current lifestyle.
For example, if you are male, let me ask you this.
This is a question just for the men watching.
Men only answer this question.
When you spend time around kids, typically your own kids, I'm hoping, but when you spend time around children, do you not feel your testosterone going down?
Like actually feeling That your aggressiveness, even your sex drive, drop precipitously.
If you put me in a room with a bunch of kids, my sex drive goes from 10, where it's normally nailed, to gone.
It's a complete...
Right. Yeah.
Now, it's also true that men are spending more time around children.
Because in the old days, the guy worked all day and he came home and had a beer and went bowling and went to sleep and his spouse was taking care of the kids.
But now, if you go to the mall today and you see a couple with a child, Who is the one who's got the baby Bjorn thing on?
You know, the baby is always attached to the man, right?
And the man is pushing the baby carriage.
Now, it makes sense, because in all likelihood, the man may have done less of that during the week, and now it's the weekend, so he's, you know, jumping in and doing his part.
Nothing wrong with that. If you're going to get married, you've got to be a partner, right?
So there's nothing wrong with the situation.
I'm not criticizing it.
I'm just saying that there is a natural I believe a natural reflex for a ordinary non-pedophilia male that when they spend time with children, their testosterone plummets.
And so I think that might be it.
So I don't know what is cause and what is effect.
I will tell you that I tried recently to see how much soy I could get out of my life.
So I said to myself, Hey, I don't want soy in my body because it mimics some hormones, and I just don't think it's a good idea for men to have soy in their bodies.
Now, I'm not speaking necessarily in a scientific way.
This is one of those risks which, if I can easily remove it, I will, even if it turns out the risk was zero, you know, should I know more?
But since I don't know the risk of soy and I have a reason to suspect it might, you know, change my temperament or my effectiveness or my joy of life in some ways, just because I suspect it, if I can, I'm going to get it out of my life.
But I started looking at ingredients in food.
Do you know how many ingredients, I'm sorry, do you know how many foods, packaged foods this is, so anything in a can or a package, any frozen food, do you know how many things have soy in them?
That frickin' soy is everywhere.
Man, you try to buy a salad dressing that doesn't have soy in it.
I don't even know if you can.
At my local Safeway, I went right down the list.
I was going to buy whatever salad dressing did not have soy.
That was just my only filter.
Couldn't find one. They all had soy in them.
So there's probably two things going on.
One is that I think our food is reducing testosterone.
And two, I think that our lifestyle is putting us in situations where men are less competitive, spending more time in a cooperative way, spending more time around children especially, and I think there's just a natural genetic reflex to lower your testosterone when it would be a problem.
So, you know, if a man is always going hunting and killing and defending the tribe and stuff, probably testosterone is pretty high all the time.
All right. That's enough for today.
I'm going to close it on this.
We've covered everything from immigration to soy.
I think we're complete.
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