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Feb. 20, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
43:35
Episode 424 Scott Adams: Bombshell Fake News, Unwitting Russian Assets, More
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here, because you know what time it is.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And if you're well prepared, you already have with you a cup, a mug, a glass, a stein, a chalice, possibly a thermos.
I'd like to think it's filled with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Simultaneous? How about simultaneous?
Let's do it. Oh man, there is so much fun news today.
This will be one of my best periscopes.
Oh yes, it will be.
And I'll start with my invention.
I've invented something, but I'm too lazy to get a patent.
So I'm going to talk about it here, and maybe somebody will patent it so that I can have it as a product.
Have you noticed that some people have trouble opening bottles of water?
Children, the elderly, anybody with any kind of a problem, if you have oily hands, sometimes it's hard to open these.
But what if the bottom of each water container, where it's indented, and there's sort of a design in here, what if this was changed to match a distinct shape of the cap?
Because then if you had two water bottles, you could sit the first one on top of the second, the cap of the one below would fit directly into the hole that's shaped the same way, and then you could twist it.
You're welcome. It's the best idea you've heard all day.
So there's news that Nest, a subsidiary of Google, neglected to tell people That the Nest thermostat device that they had on the wall has a built-in microphone.
And it's connected to the internet.
That's right. Google, with their Nest subsidiary, put microphones in homes all over the world and didn't mention that.
They didn't mention it.
Now, they did say that none of them were activated and that the user would have to activate it, but it was a microphone they put in your house, connected to the Internet.
It's going to be hard to explain it, but I'm sure they will.
They say it's a mistake. I would say they're right.
All right, what else we got going on here?
Let's talk about nicknames.
So people have been asking me about what nicknames President Trump should use for his many Democratic opponents.
He busted down, I think he's used this one before, but Crazy Bernie.
And people said to me, but what about Bread Lion Bernie?
Wouldn't that be better? To which I say, no.
Crazy Bernie is the model that Trump uses to success.
Breadline Bernie would be off model and not the kind of nickname the president uses because it's not that good.
A breadline is a concept and not everybody knows the story.
Most of the people who are opposing Bernie know the story, but they're not the ones you want to convince.
So, Breadline Bernie is a bad nickname, but Crazy Bernie, every time you see him unkempt and talking about socialism, it's gonna make you wonder, well, he's 77, he's got his wild hair and his, you know, rumpled suit, and he's talking about stuff that sounded a lot crazier before.
So I would say that Crazy Bernie is a better nickname.
But I would like to give Bernie some respect.
As Bernie has noted, he made a lot of conversations that were impossible to have routine.
So the things that he was asking about, you know, for health care for all and free education, etc., those things seemed crazy.
Speaking of crazy, when he first was talking about them, but now because the Democrats have an even further left view of things with the Green New Deal, suddenly Bernie looks a lot more mainstream.
So you have to give him success or give him credit for taking crazy ideas and moving them squarely into the topic of conversation.
Bernie did that.
That was him. So you can't take that away from them.
Alright. One of my favorite stories today is that Clapper went on the Don Lemon Show and said that President Trump is either, it looks like, he might be, he might be either a winning or unwitting asset of Russia.
Now, what would it mean to be an unwitting asset of Russia?
Well, I think what it means is that you're doing things that help Russia, even though that's not your intention.
Do you think that Russia is happy or unhappy that James Clapper went on CNN And that Don Lemon and he talked about the President of the United States being a possibly illegitimate President and maybe even a spy for Russia.
Do you think Putin enjoys that?
I think he does.
And so Don Lemon and James Clapper became at the very least unwitting assets of Russia.
With that interview, they reduced the credibility of the government to the United States for no good reason except political.
And who benefits most by destabilizing the United States?
Russia. So, I try to resist Doing the obvious gotcha stuff with politics.
You know, the obvious stuff is like, oh, you did this, but you're accusing me of doing this, but you did that too, so I'm going to use the hypocrisy move on you.
It's just sort of the boring, obvious stuff.
But quite literally, Don Lemon and James Clapper Reduced the credibility of the government of the United States, specifically the commander-in-chief, without evidence to support it, or at least evidence that I would consider valid.
We'll know when Mueller does his report, we can know for sure whether Don Lemon and James Clapper were unwitting, unwitting, using James Clapper's own word, unwitting assets of Russia.
And it looks like they are.
I mean, if you had to put a bet on it right now, they are unwitting assets of Russia, trying to decrease the credibility of the United States government.
Maybe some of the worst things you've ever seen happen.
It would be hard to imagine what would be a greater crime, potential crime, potential crime, against humanity.
All of humanity. Because if you imagine that the United States government lost credibility, what would be the outcome?
Well, it could destabilize the United States, which could destabilize the world.
So, when somebody like Clapper goes on TV and says something like President Trump might be a witting or unwitting asset of the Kremlin, he's putting the entire world in jeopardy.
For a paycheck. All right.
I won't assume he does it for a paycheck.
That would be assuming too much about his internal thoughts.
I'll just talk about what he did.
What he did was decrease the credibility of the commander-in-chief of the biggest military in the world without really any solid evidence to make that case.
Solid, in my opinion.
All right. An interesting thing is happening in the Zeitgeist.
Do you know what the Zeitgeist is?
Zeitgeist is a word that pretty much only writers use.
If you're not a professional writer, you have probably never used the word Zeitgeist.
It's something you put in articles to make you look smart so that other people have to look it up.
So Zeitgeist It's a German word because there's no American word that captures the same meaning.
And what it means is the thoughts that everybody is simultaneously having.
So the zeitgeist is whatever common thoughts are sort of springing up all over the place at the same time.
And there's something really interesting about this Jussie Smollett event when viewed in context.
And here's the context.
We had the Virginia issues with the blackface.
Mostly the blackface stuff, right?
We had the Covington kids falsely accused.
And then we had Jussie Smollett.
We believe the best information currently is that he may have unjustly faked a crime.
Now, if you look at any one of these things that is happening independently, they tell you one story.
But if you start looking at them collectively, there's a very interesting story that hasn't been told.
And here's what it looks like.
In my opinion, the black and white population of the United States understands each other Better than ever before.
And that the past month or so is a big part of that.
Let me give you an example.
It was very useful to be reminded that there were two major adult white politicians in Virginia who in the 80s wore blackface and thought that was okay.
Now, I don't want to get into the details of that.
I just want to say that it reminded our public consciousness of what it's like, let's say, to be a black person.
Let's say if you're not black, the whole Virginia thing was this just slap in the face.
It's like, okay, racism isn't gone-gone.
You know, I don't think anybody claims that it's gone.
But it's a reminder.
At the same time, the Covington kids' situation was a reminder of how easily we could be fooled about reality.
It was also a reminder how easy it is to accuse the other side on thin evidence.
And then we had the Smollett case, in which I think black observers of the situation Having watched the Covington situation and now the Jussie Smollett situation, which also sparked a number of outlets to list all of the hoaxes that have happened recently,
it starts to create a picture of what it's like to be a white person in America, which is a picture that I think the black citizens of this country hadn't quite seen this way before.
So there's something about the last several weeks of hoaxes, and there's the Virginia situation, which are not hoaxes, but they all are influencing the zeitgeist.
They're collectively making us feel different than we felt before.
And the way I feel it is that, stop me if I'm wrong, you know, I'll look for a fact check on this.
Is it true that That black Americans and white Americans have just figured out in the last month that they're both being absolutely screwed by the illegitimate media.
In other words, it's becoming more clear what it's like to be the other.
It's also clear there's a common enemy, the media.
The media's business model requires them to keep people worked up against each other.
That was always something that the smart people knew, the people who really paid attention, the people who studied the media, the people who were deeply involved in this stuff, understood and have understood for a while.
That black Americans, brown Americans, white Americans, men, women, whatever demographic you want to put yourself in or anybody else, starting to realize we have a common enemy.
It's the media.
I don't think that was as obvious before.
Oh yeah, and Mike Cernovich's film came out recently, also in the last month or so, highlighting the hoaxes.
The movie is called Hoaxed, and I gave it a tremendous review.
It's amazing. You have to see it.
It's on Hulu, and it's called...
No, it's not on Hulu.
I'm sorry. It's on Vimeo.
And it's called A Hoaxed, and you should watch it.
Then there was the Laura Logan interview, in which he talked about the extreme bias.
So here's what it feels like.
Do you remember when you saw that And then I'll add one more data point.
So you saw the polls in Virginia that said that black residents of Virginia were less bothered by the blackface stories of their politicians.
They were less bothered than white people.
Think about that.
Think about that. You're a black citizen of the United States.
You just watched this Virginia stories about blackface.
And then they do a poll, how bothered are you?
And we find that black people are substantially less bothered, less bothered by these politicians wearing blackface than white people are.
What's that tell you?
What's that tell you about the zeitgeist?
Well I'll tell you, if I'm a black citizen, I'm taking that as pretty good news.
And if I'm a white citizen, it turns out I am, I'm also taking that as good news.
There's a maturity about that that's evident in the poll results.
And the maturity is that the white voters kind of get the understanding, you know, they understand the offensiveness of it, and they're policing themselves, meaning that they have a harsh view of it within their own demographic.
On the other hand, Black voters get a lot of respect for treating this in a mature way, which is, it's not the biggest problem in the world.
It's something that everybody's now recognizing and saying, don't do this.
They're saying it happened years ago, but not that far away.
And you can see black voters, I imagine, and again, since I'm not a black voter, I don't want to read minds, but it feels like there was something good that came out of this.
Which is a universal condemnation of this behavior, the blackface in particular.
And the white people were more bothered by it than the black people, according to this poll in Virginia.
And I think that's an insanely positive sign for the country.
You know, it tells you something about the zeitgeist.
So here's my optimism about it.
It feels like there's a little bit of an awakening happening That black people and white people in this country have been sort of gamed, have been used by the media.
And let's say not just black people, but brown, LGBTQ, and everybody else have been set against each other because it's good for the news and the media business.
Now, in the context of this, in the same week that the Jussie Smollett thing happened, the administration unveils their global campaign to end criminalization of homosexuality worldwide.
As Joel Pollack said, It is the single most important thing any president has ever done for gay rights.
For gay people, I guess.
For the LGBTQ community, let's say.
It's probably the single most important thing.
That's ever been done for the benefit of that community.
Because we're in pretty good shape in this country in terms of the laws and equality and LGBTQ rights, etc.
But worldwide, it's a mess.
And watching the United States take leadership of that from a Republican administration, and one that, frankly, has been very suspicious of the intentions of this administration, it just makes your head spin.
Because that wasn't supposed to happen, right?
If you were in the movie where you've been imagining that this president has been the worst thing in the world for however many years we've been watching him, It doesn't fit your mental model that he would so strongly back an effort to help homosexual folks and LGBTQ people around the world.
It just doesn't fit.
But it perfectly fit my movie.
In my movie, Trump was always this person.
He didn't change.
As far as I know, Trump has always been this president, the one who would do a worldwide, global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world.
It's perfectly compatible with everything I thought about him.
Somebody's saying, is Pence happy?
You know, the most important thing that Trump did, if you're on the left, you're missing the best part of Trump.
The best part of Trump, if you're on the left, Trump took the people who are the farthest right and turned them into sort of a Trump kind of Republican.
So Trump has redefined and I think changed the attitudes on the right about the LGBTQ community in particular To essentially remove it as an issue.
So I've said this before and I don't think anybody believes me.
So I've been talking about politics and mostly interacting with Trump supporters for three years now.
And you don't hear anti-LGBTQ I just don't hear it.
It seems like it just sort of is not part of the conversation anymore.
So I think Trump won't ever get credit for that, but his, let's say, open-minded views on the topic probably are influencing the rest of the Democrats and the conservatives.
I would say that's almost a certainty that he's having a big influence in a way that somebody on the left couldn't have.
Alright, here's my favorite story of the day.
Oh, there's a North Korean update.
So there's a report from North Korea that they purged the dissenters against peace.
So the dissenters who didn't want to go non-nuclear have been purged, which is really good news, because we didn't need them.
Alright, here's the best fake story of the day.
There's, quote, a bombshell report from the New York Times.
What happens after you hear that there's a bombshell report from the New York Times?
And who are the sources of this bombshell report?
Let me list all the sources.
Okay, I'm done. I'll do it again.
Okay, I'm going to list all of the named sources for the New York Times bombshell report.
Here they come. That's it.
No named sources.
How believable is a story with no named sources?
Not. You should have learned by now just to ignore it.
Anonymous sources about what somebody said in a conversation are absolutely unreliable.
But it's better. Here's the best part.
Watch this. So I'm taking these quotes from a Business Insider report.
Business Insider is partly owned by Jeff Bezos, who is the owner of the Washington Post, and no friend to the President.
So this is from Business Insider.
And I want you to see how cleverly they worded this to turn nothing into something.
This is really clever.
And I'll probably be the first person to say it.
I don't think you'll see this on the news.
And I'm not going to make anything up.
I'm going to read the words from the Business Insider.
Okay, you ready?
Excuse me.
They say... So this is what Whitaker said to the Congress, I guess.
So Whitaker said this earlier.
He said, quote, So Whitaker's words are specifically, That the White House has not asked for, nor has he offered, promises or commitments.
So remember those two words.
The White House didn't ask for promises, and they didn't ask for commitments.
That's what Whitaker said.
Now he's being called a liar, potentially, because later, in the bombshell report, It says that it raised questions about whether Whitaker was entirely forthcoming when he denied any conversations with the President about ongoing investigations.
Listen to these words.
When Whitaker denied having any conversations with the President and then the quote that they give to support their summary that Whitaker Denied having any conversations.
He didn't do that.
And they show a quote which does not support their reporting because what he did was said he didn't provide any promises or commitments.
If I say to you, I did not provide any promises or commitments, have I said the exact same thing as I've denied having any conversation?
Those aren't even close.
Whitaker did not say, I did not have a conversation.
He did say, I made no promises, and they didn't ask for any promises or commitments.
That's very different.
Now, I would easily believe that the president floated the idea of having somebody work on one of the investigations for Cohen, I guess.
Who he thought would be, you know, more, let's say less biased than whoever else might be assigned.
If you're the president and you're watching the so-called deep state plotting to remove you, what do you assume about other people who will be working on these investigations?
You should assume that some of them are also out to get you.
Because there seems to be pretty solid evidence at this point that members of the government in investigative roles had strong biases.
Would it be inappropriate for the president to float the name of somebody that he thought maybe did not have a bias against him?
Now, if he floated that and Whitaker said, just listen to it, And then apparently informed him, according to this report, that the person that the president suggested was not available because he's already recused himself.
Now, that would be sort of a no-big-deal conversation, in my opinion.
The president could float the name of somebody in his administration that he thought was less biased against him.
That's not illegal, is it?
And if Whitaker says, now he's not available anyway, would it be fair for Whitaker to say, I made no promises and I made no commitments?
Totally fair. Because that's exactly what they reported.
So watch how illegitimately the media words this to turn a nothing into a something.
You watched it right here.
They had two quotes, one from Whitaker, and then right below it, like right below it, in the same article, they completely mischaracterized their own quote.
As obviously as it could possibly be.
So this is another example of fake news manufactured out of nothing with anonymous sources.
So this too will likely just go away like the rest of them.
All right. So, let me take you...
So at the end here, I'm going to talk about climate change and how to solve it all.
I'm changing topics here.
Here's a flowchart talking about some of our options for dealing with the presumed risk.
Let's see if I can get this situated better.
Risk of climate.
Here's a flowchart to tell you how to think about it.
So there are two possibilities.
Either climate change is a crisis, Or something closer to a hoax.
Now, I'm using the extreme words, but we can imagine there are things in between as well.
But just for conceptual purposes, let's say there are two views of the world.
One is it's a crisis, and one is that it's not.
Now, what do you do under those conditions?
Well, if it's a crisis, you've got essentially two paths.
One path is something like the Green New Deal, and I use that as a proxy for any kind of a plan that's an extreme get-rid-of-fossil-fuels plan.
So any extreme plan to get rid of fossil fuels, I'll just use this as a proxy because it includes that.
Or the people who believe that climate warming is a huge risk would be safe nuclear.
Now, Safe Nuclear is the so-called Generation 4, and there are a number of different nuclear power plants' designs.
It's not just one thing.
There are several designs that are under Generation 4.
And what they have in common is that they're designed to avoid meltdown problems.
In other words, everything could go wrong, and you still wouldn't get a meltdown.
Because they're designed that way.
They can also be built smaller and faster.
The details of that I'm not going to get into.
But yeah, whether you're talking about thorium or any of these other designs, if they're under the umbrella of Generation 4, they would be safe nuclear.
And if you did a Manhattan project to iterate these and test and maybe standardize them and put them next to existing nuclear plants because essentially people are comfortable with that already.
So there's a way to get there by getting real serious about safe nuclear.
Now what nobody wants Apparently, I don't think anybody on either end of the conversation wants the legacy nuclear option, where it takes 30 years to even try to build a plant.
It's got a meltdown risk.
Nobody wants that.
It's not a practical option.
So legacy nuclear, the classic old kind of nuclear, is not on anybody's wish board.
But the safe stuff would be on both.
It wouldn't matter if you believed that the climate is a problem or if you believed it wasn't, because it's still a great idea for lowering costs, making the world a better place, ending pollution, making electric cars ubiquitous.
So there are all kinds of benefits whether you think the climate is a problem or not.
Now let's do some odds.
If you do the Green New Deal or anything that's a crushing impact on fossil fuels, nobody really knows if that's good or bad for the economy.
You didn't want me to say that, right?
You wanted me to say, oh, that's bad for the economy.
But it turns out that there are smart people, and I'm not going to name any, but there's a very smart billionaire investor who has put a lot of money into green energy and tells me personally that he believes That doing so is a positive economic thing.
And that you create a lot of jobs, you create new industries, etc.
And you can actually command ahead By not necessarily the Green New Deal, but by being very aggressive on green technology.
So, is it true that the Green New Deal would cause an economic collapse?
Or is it true that it would actually, at least just the fossil fuel portion of it, I'm not talking about the rest of the socialism involved with the Green New Deal, but just the fossil fuel part of it.
Would that cause economic gain or collapse?
I would say, I have no idea.
But let's say, since I have no idea, I'll just 50-50 it, which is what I always do when I have no idea.
No idea. I don't know if it's 60-40, 90-10.
I have no idea. I could tell you that very smart people are on both sides of this conversation.
And they don't know either.
So let's just say for conceptual reasons, I'm not going to claim it's 50-50, but for conceptual reasons, let's say it is, just to complete the picture.
So if you get economic gain, that's great, and it leads you to the golden age where everything's great.
But if you get economic collapse, you end up with mass extinction.
So economic collapse means that not only does the United States economy collapse, but probably China is still polluting and adding CO2 at the same rate no matter what.
So you get economic collapse if you're wrong about this.
If you're right, everything's great.
But let's say you go this path.
It wouldn't matter if you thought the economy was a problem or not.
You go with safe nuclear.
You do a Manhattan Project where you really put a lot of focus on it, a lot of attention.
Do it as fast as you can, but as safely as you can.
There's probably about a 95% chance That this would be profitable, meaning good for the economy.
Because we know how to make these plants.
We know they're safe.
We know they're economical.
These are mostly knowns.
You would need some government help to get rid of some red tape, but it's known what it would look like if you did that.
So this would be an almost certain economic gain, which would lead you to the Golden Age.
And so, here's the bottom line.
No matter what you think about climate change, whether it's a big problem or not a problem, the rational path is the same path.
It still makes sense to develop as much green technology, green energy as you can.
So this is where billionaires disagree, but not on that point.
So Bill Gates, I believe, would be here.
I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I know he has invested in some Gen 4 companies.
And I know he's talked about green not being enough to save us, and that maybe the only way to get there is by being aggressive on nuclear.
I hope I'm characterizing his argument correctly.
Now, here's a general statement.
If your opinion disagrees with Bill Gates' opinion, change your opinion.
If your opinion disagrees with Warren Buffet's opinion.
Change your opinion.
That's my advice. Anytime I see Bill Gates disagree with me, I go, oh damn it, I gotta change my opinion.
Because he's smarter than you.
He's smarter than me, definitely.
He's way more informed, and he's deeply, you know, deeply researched a lot of different stuff, right?
He has a wide umbrella of understanding.
If Bill Gates...
Disagrees with you. You should seriously consider changing your opinion to whatever Bill Gates said.
He is credible.
He's not in it for the money.
He's a genius. And he's looked into it.
So that's my advice.
So he says this path is the way to get to the, I'm calling it the golden age when things are going well.
And there are other people who think that this might be The better approach.
But I would argue to you, and here's my reveal.
I would bet that most of the people who think this is the best path also think, and this is an assumption, so let's fact check this, the people who think this is the best path also think that nuclear means old nuclear.
I'll bet there are very few people who want this path Who know as much as Bill Gates does about this path.
And that the people who understand that this exists and what it could do for us if we manage it correctly, the people who know this would take this path every time.
So that's my claim.
And I like to say that all of these periscopes are starting points for fact-checking and starting points for just testing the hypothesis.
So my current view is that we do have a path that works whether you think climate change is real or not.
It's practical. The smartest people in the world agree with it.
And it is the lowest risk.
And the other path is probably not practical.
It might be, but probably not.
and riskier.
What's the downside risk for Gen 4?
The downside risk is the category of things you don't know.
I didn't want to make it 100% because it would be less credible if I did.
I don't like to talk in absolutes.
And 95% is only my number, so that's to be fact-checked.
Is it 80%? I don't know.
But it's still good odds.
Much depends on spent fuel management.
My understanding is that one of the designs that's under this umbrella of Gen 4 actually burns nuclear waste from other plants.
I'm not sure that I'm saying that right or that I have the information right.
But most of what you think are problems with nuclear have actually been solved.
With various designs within this category.
It's been a long time that people have been working on these designs, and they're in good shape now.
Yeah, somebody here says Generation 4 actually consumes spent nuclear fuel.
And I don't think that's true of maybe every design here, but I think there are designs within Gen 4 that do that.
And you don't have to wait for Fusion.
Fusion is something you can work on at the same time because this is accessible and doable right now.
Alright, how many of you found this to be either enlightening, meaning that you didn't know it before, or at least a useful framework for looking at it?
Can you give me some feedback?
Was this useful?
Because it took me a long time to get to this point where I could understand it as a flowchart.
Alright, so I'm watching your comments.
A lot of people are saying it's useful and some people are loving it and it's a good framework and very useful and yes, yes, yes.
Okay, good. Well, then I've done my job.
I'll post this as soon as I'm done.
I'll post it to YouTube and as a podcast.
What's Generation 4 cost?
I don't have all the details, but the essence of the Generation 4 is that you can build smaller reactors.
So whatever the classic one costs, it would be a fraction of that.
So it would be smaller than regular nuclear.
It would be similar to maybe something you'd see on a nuclear submarine, right?
And you could do lots of small ones.
But the smart people say it would be economic.
Now, I want to give you an update on the Interface app.
My company is my startup.
And we added a feature to let people donate to any artist within the feature.
Now, the main use of it is to contact any expert to have a video call.
But anybody who has a profile on the app, it's called Interface by WinHub, It's a free app.
Anybody can put their profile there and, you know, it takes about a minute, just put a picture and a couple of words about who you are.
And then automatically their profile has a button for donating.
So if you don't like donating through other platforms because you think they have a political bent against you, you have another option.
Now you don't ever have to make a call.
You don't ever have to receive a call.
You can just put up a profile and take donations.
And people are already using it for that.
A number of people donated to me already through the app.
And I thank you all for that.
But we're going to add, in the next week or so, we'll add a recurring payment option to the donation.
At the moment it's a one-time donation.
Patreon has an advantage in that you can say, I'll give a dollar a month until I stop it.
So we'll add that option for one time or repeating.
And And we're adding an option to take, we'll give you some code that allows you to put a donate button on your webpage.
So that if you already have a webpage or you've got a profile on social media, there'll be a link you can put there that takes you right to our app, which also runs on a desktop.
There's a browser version.
And there it will be, there will be your button.
And you can add it to your homepage, you can add it to your profile, You can add it to anything and then people can go give you donations.
All right. And we're also adding a bunch of doctors on the app and we'll tell you more about that as well.
Can you tilt the camera so I can see the whiteboard?
Yes. I'm going to take a picture of this and we'll add it to the download.
Alright, that's it for now.
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