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March 1, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:05:31
Episode 434 Scott Adams: LoserThink in the News, From Warmbier to Black Friends, More
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
Grab your beverage, because it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm Scott Adams, and if you're prepared, You have your cup, your chalice, your stein, your thermos.
You have filled it with your favorite liquid and you are prepared to enjoy the unparalleled pleasure that I like to call the simultaneous sip.
Ready, join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah.
Now, if you've had the simultaneous sip before, and you don't make the ah sound right after, well you're missing something.
Let me tell you that if you just let it out, just let it out, ah, because you wouldn't have a beverage you didn't want to drink.
So you know you enjoy it.
Let's talk about the news.
My favorite stupid news is, remember the story about the man who was hiking and he was attacked by a mountain lion and he wrestled that mountain lion and strangled it with his own bare hands?
Do you remember that story?
That was totally true, right?
Well, it turns out it wasn't so much of a mountain lion As it was more of a mountain kitten.
Because apparently it was only 24 pounds.
And it was basically a kitten.
He strangled a kitten.
Now it was 24 pounds.
To put that in context, that is double the size of my last cat.
My house cat. Now my last house cat was pretty big.
So I'm not saying that 24 pounds of fighting animal is nothing.
But it was a little exaggerated.
That's all. A little exaggerated.
I would like to think that I could beat up a 24 pound animal.
You know, I don't like to brag.
But I could probably beat up a 24-pound animal.
I'll bet I would win 85% of the time.
All right. Let's talk about...
There's an article in CNN. I want to talk about some loser think.
Now, loser think is...
The way I define loser think is that it doesn't mean you're stupid...
And it doesn't mean you're ignorant in some normal way.
Loser think is something that even smart people can experience.
And it has to do with not having experience across different realms.
So in other words, if you were only an artist, and that's all you knew, you could be very smart and still be a flagrant loser thinker.
Likewise, you could be just an engineer, and you could have different blind spots.
But if you have experience across a number of domains, and they happen to be the domains that are good at making decisions, you probably have a better view of the world.
So, for example, If you had some experience, you don't have to be an expert, but some experience with, say, business and economics and psychology, let's say engineering, you knew a little bit about science, you studied a little psychology, took a little logic.
You know, those are the types of classes or experiences that would teach you How to make better decisions because you've seen the thinking styles of a variety of different fields.
So when I talk about loser think, I'm not talking about dumb, and I'm not talking about somebody who's uneducated.
I'm talking about someone who doesn't have a view across disciplines, and that can blind you to some obvious things.
Best example? For those of you who read my book Win Bigly and or followed by blogging and periscoping during the election, and many of you were for the first time exposed to the field of persuasion.
Now you could say that's a subfield of psychology, I suppose, but they're a little bit different.
They're very different, but they overlap.
And I think a lot of you had the experience of seeing the world more clearly Because you had one extra discipline.
Now, you didn't have to be some expert in persuasion.
You just had to read a book that talked about some of the big themes, and that was enough.
That would be true of economics as well.
You would not have to be an economics major to be exposed to things like supply and demand.
Economics has mostly easy concepts with difficult math that you can ignore for the most part.
So, with that setup, I'm going to talk about a couple of examples of loser think.
Unproductive thinking by otherwise smart people.
One is an article in CNN in which...
In which, let's see, I want to get the name of the person.
Oh, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter who wrote the article.
There was, I think, an African-American man who wrote an article.
And by the way, it doesn't matter.
So for the purpose of this story, it doesn't matter if this is an African-American man.
But based on the icon, I think it was.
Maybe it does matter. Let's say it does matter to the story.
And the story said that it talked about why it's such a bad idea For white people to defend themselves from charges of racism by claiming they have a black friend.
Now, most of you are aware of this, that if somebody says, hey, you're a racist, and you say, I'm not a racist, look at my black friend.
Generally, that is considered something that is mockable.
In other words, you've made a joke of yourself By defending yourself in that specific way.
So from the perspective of black people, you just made the worst defense that could be made.
It's the most laughable defense.
So, is it a good idea to use that defense?
No, it's not.
But that's not the loser think I'm going to talk about.
The loser think is the black people who employ that standard.
If your standard is that white people can't say as part of the evidence that they're not racist, I have black friends, you are making the world a worse place by your defective thinking.
Because if you are a black person and you're talking about this topic, you're saying I want there to be less racism in the world.
Presumably, right? You're only having this conversation because you want less racism.
One of the worst ways to make that happen is to penalize white people for doing the right thing.
Because it's not enough of the right thing.
When somebody does the right thing, you should encourage it.
And when they do the wrong thing, according to you, You should discourage it.
If a white person tries to defend their lack of racism by saying, look, I have a black friend, what is the loser think approach to that?
You, racist, how can you say that?
You're making it even more of a racist by saying you have a black friend.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, strategically wrong.
Strategically, if what you want is a world where people get along and are less racist, you should say to that white person, well, you know, that's not exactly what I'm talking about, but I love the fact that you have black friends.
If you do anything but compliment that before criticizing, you know, why it's not really a defense, it's completely legitimate to say that's not enough.
It's completely legitimate to say, well, that's you just in your personal life.
I'm talking about structural, historical racism, which is different from you having a friend.
Those are all good points.
But you should start with, I'm really glad to hear that.
I hope that you make more black friends.
I have some white friends.
I would like to have more white friends.
Maybe this is part of the solution.
But it's not exactly what I'm talking about right now.
I'm talking about other kinds of institutional racism.
I'm talking about your policies.
I'm talking about maybe something else.
But for sure, It is the worst strategic thing you can do to say to a white person who says, I have black friends, to say to that person, you're just making it worse.
Terrible, terrible strategy.
Let me give you another example from the other side.
You may have seen a clip yesterday in which Van Jones, who was a good sport and went to CPAC, Which I love, by the way.
I love the fact that he went there.
And he gave the prison reform, which I love.
I love the fact that he's an honest broker in these discussions.
And he's saying, if you do something good, I'm going to compliment you.
And I'm going to do it in public.
It's very rare.
I mean, the reason the clip was set around is people said, I didn't know you could be reasonable.
I didn't know you could compliment somebody who's on the other side on different issues.
It was national news because a person acted reasonable in public.
Think about that. Just think about the fact that it excited the internet That a person acted like a human being, like a reasonable person, in public.
That was a story!
I mean, just the thought of it is mind-boggling.
But, another thing that Van Jones said is he talked about immigration and he talked about how the crime rate of immigrants is lower than the crime rate of citizens and you could hear an audible boo in the audience yeah somebody's ahead of me here in the comments he actually got booed now what's wrong with van jones comment well here's the problem if if you had sort of been isolated in the the left side of the world You would not know how the people you're trying to persuade,
and in that context he was trying to persuade, why else would he be there, trying to persuade conservatives.
The hardest job in the world.
If you're coming from a CNN universe, Jumping into the toughest audience you could possibly have, a bunch of conservatives, can you persuade them?
And bringing up that statistic is what I call anti-persuasive, because it doesn't have a full understanding of how conservatives think.
And here's what's wrong with it.
When you say that immigrants have a lower crime rate than citizens, you are accidentally Emphasis on accidentally.
You are inadvertently saying that I wouldn't mind if one of you Americans died at the hands of an illegal immigrant who happened to be a criminal beyond coming here illegally.
I'd be okay with that because the statistics are still low.
And so what it does is it accidentally says I would prefer letting in a number of people illegally Over you, living, surviving.
I would prefer that these, you know, 100 or 200 or 1,000 people came in to get better jobs, even if it meant you frickin' died, you American who was already here.
Now, that's not what he's saying, and by no means...
I'm not a mind reader, but I think it's safe to say that Van Jones is not thinking of it that way.
He's thinking conceptually, and he's thinking that if crime rate of this group is low, that it is illegitimate to say, let's bring in some more because the crime rate's low.
Why are you complaining?
Conceptually, he's completely accurate.
Statistically, I imagine he's also accurate.
But... It inadvertently ignores how conservatives feel about this.
It ignores how they frame these issues.
And conservatives do not care about the rate of crime.
Nobody who gets killed as they're dying from their wounds, you know, they've just been a victim of crime and it's their last breath, nobody ever says, ah, but at least the crime rate was low.
Yes, I'm dead, but thank God the rate of crime was low.
Said nobody ever.
Right? Conservatives see the world as Americans and then non-Americans.
So if one American gets killed for the benefit of a hundred or even a thousand immigrants who get a better life, that's a bad deal.
For people who see the world as, you know, we're the Americans.
Let's protect our world, protect our brand, and let the other people do the same.
It's a fair game.
These are the rules.
We protect our team. You protect your team.
You're not our enemies.
You're not our enemies.
We're just doing a system that works well.
So, my advice to Van and anybody who is trying to persuade on this point is And let me say it in the cleanest way I can.
When you say to a conservative, and by the way, fact check me on this.
Most of you are probably leaning conservative if you're on this Periscope.
Fact check me on this.
Is it not an insult when somebody says their crime rate is lower than the U.S.? It's an insult.
Because it devalues the value of your life.
As an American, so that other people can get better jobs.
That is just a straight-out insult.
I mean, it's offensive in such a deep way.
Now here's the thing.
Is Van Jones smart?
Totally. You can see that unambiguously.
Very, very smart guy.
Does Van Jones want a better world?
Apparently so. I would say that absolutely so.
But, you know, we're all in our bubbles.
We all have the experience that we have.
And that can blind us to some obvious opportunities.
All right. Now...
This loser think is not limited to one side of the political aisle.
So I can give you lots of examples where conservatives are having blind spots of their own.
I don't want to pick on Van Jones.
In fact, I want to compliment him for first of all going to the CPAC. Putting himself out there.
And he found out the hard way that that line just got booze.
So presumably he will adjust.
And I think he's the most, probably at the moment, the most productive thinker.
So that's a big claim, right?
So I'm going to make this claim again.
It's such a big claim.
In my opinion, at the moment...
Van Jones is the most productive thinker in the United States.
Productive because he's actually trying to figure out how to solve the biggest problem in the country, which is how do these two groups talk to each other?
How do you find common ground?
How do you scratch out the smallest little thing that we have in common and see if you can build from that?
Let's talk about the Nothing Burger.
Do you remember the news?
Was it Project Veritas that recorded Van Jones in some interview?
I forget how long ago it was.
Was it two years ago?
Something like that? In which allegedly the context was the Russian collusion and he said it was a nothing burger.
Do you remember that? Well, apparently that was fake news.
We just found out.
Apparently, according to Van Jones, who just got interviewed again by Project Veritas on the same topic, he was taken out of context.
And the nothing burger he referred to was a specific issue that was in the news that day that was a very small part of, The larger issue of Russian collusion.
So take it out of context, it looked like he called the whole Russian collusion a nothing burger.
But in context, he was talking about whatever the headline was that day that was no big deal.
Now, how do you feel about that?
Because you got taken.
You! And me.
I was definitely a victim of fake news.
And by the way, I totally believe Van Jones about that.
His clarification sounds way more believable than the original claim.
That was fake news.
And every time this happens to you, you should keep track.
I've got a little mental scorecard of my own.
So on my scorecard, I've got the Covington hoax.
I fell for that.
That's on my permanent record.
I also will add to that the Nothing Burger hoax.
That's on my permanent record.
I believe that. I believed he was talking about the whole Russia collusion thing and it just was fake news.
So, I may have other things on my list, but you should really try to keep your own list of how often you're wrong.
Now, on the plus side, here are the things I got right.
I got, of course, the Trump election.
That was a big deal. I probably was the only person who predicted the North Korea situation going in the right direction.
I told you that the Vegas shooter was not ISIS. Even when ISIS was claiming credit for the Las Vegas shooter, I was saying publicly it's not ISIS. And it wasn't.
I told you that the Cuban sonic weapon was a mass hysteria, and it is.
I said Russia collusion was BS, and apparently it is.
I said Q was a hoax.
Some of you still think that's real.
She was a hoax. I'm right about that.
So my list of things, oh yes, I also predicted the AOC was the real deal.
And sure enough, you saw her go from a little spark to the primary conversation in the country.
I called that early.
You said Kim's nukes were a liability and he should want resorts.
Yeah, that's still true. If we're just talking about the timing of things, I don't believe I ever had a prediction about timing.
In fact, what I said about North Korea is that they should be on a 100-year reunification path.
That they should just say, look, this is just going to take 100 years.
If we can get it done sooner, we'll do it.
All right. But anyway, keep track of your illusions.
Keep track of how many times you got taken by the fake news.
Now, this brings us to Glenn Greenwald's tweets.
And other people too, but he makes the case best.
What do you do if you're an anti-Trumper and Michael Cohen just demolished several of your hallucinations in one day?
What do you do?
If you were an anti-Trumper because you thought there was Russian collusion and you believed that Cohen went to Prague, you thought the Steele dossier was real, I almost can't remember.
Oh, you thought that the president told Cohen to lie.
Maybe you thought that it was a big deal, these other financial things like the buying his own artwork, or maybe you thought it was a big deal that there's a campaign thing that probably is not even illegal.
We're talking about the payment to the porn star.
Probably not even illegal.
What would you do if you were that wrong about so many things?
Have you noticed that the news just got really quiet?
I've been watching the replay of Chris Matthews breathlessly reporting the McClatchy report at the time That Michael Cohen is known to have visited Prague to talk with the Russians.
And he reported it at the time like it was true, like it was the news.
What's he saying now?
Now is he playing that video of himself and saying, look how wrong I was.
Look how bad my judgment was that I believe that.
Is he doing that?
Or are they just literally ignoring the last two years?
This is Glenn Greenwald's observation, which I think most of you agree with.
What the heck is happening right now?
There is the weirdest thing happening.
The weirdest thing happening is that people are acting as though the last two years didn't exist.
They just changed the argument from he's a Russian puppet and we must replace him immediately.
They're talking about now his SAT scores.
They're talking about getting the president's school grades.
They're talking about looking at the details of his tax returns.
Think about it. They've gone from the highest level of alarm to, well, maybe there's something on his taxes?
Somebody says, Felix Sater and Ellen Waiselberg soon.
Did you forget about them, Scott?
No, I didn't forget about them.
I just think that Michael Cohen would know whatever they know, don't you?
Do you think that Michael Cohen, the fixer, the close confidant, the person who was working on the Russia stuff, do you think he didn't know about any bad stuff going on?
Do you think he wouldn't give up Trump at this point?
It's pretty clear that Michael Cohen is not protecting the president.
So you saw the good example of what's happening.
It's like, yeah, our entire theory for the last two years has been dismantled, but there must be another witness coming.
There's another one.
Yeah, it's gonna happen.
It's gonna come in now.
All right. Somebody says, Scott doesn't fully understand what this country is facing.
Well, I'll put you out of your misery.
You're blocked. A reminder to those of you who are not that person who just got blocked, I always welcome disagreements on logic or facts or opinion.
Those are always welcome.
But if your comment is about me personally, you just get blocked.
It doesn't even matter what it is, right?
Even if all you're saying is, Scott is confused, or Scott hasn't done his homework, Or maybe Scott should do his own research.
Anything like that, you just get blocked.
It would be helpful for you to say what I don't know, maybe recommend a book, any of that's fine.
You know, telling me what I should learn to increase my knowledge, totally fine.
But just comments about something wrong with me.
Blocked. By the way, the professional trolls on Twitter seem to have left me alone for a while.
For whatever reason, the pros are not coming after me anymore.
The paid trolls. I don't know what's up with that.
Alright. Here's another...
This is another case of loserthink.
Do you know Joe Walsh on Twitter?
Ex-Congress person, conservative.
So he tweeted today that if you heard what President Trump said about Otto Warmbier and you did not object to it, you're an apologist.
Now, here's what's wrong with that.
This is another case of loserthink.
The world doesn't have one variable.
The Otto Warmbier complaint, the complaint that the president seemed as though he was believing Kim Jong-un, that he didn't know...
I just saw a comment.
I'm going to have to comment on it.
Anyway, when the president said he takes Kim Jong-un at his word...
People who know how to understand language know that that does not mean he believes Kim Jong-un's story.
When you say, I'll take you at your word, it says, I will act as though it's true, but my internal thoughts about whether it's true are not in discussion.
I will treat it as though it's true.
So first of all, Joe Walsh may not know how language works if he didn't see that distinction.
That the president wasn't saying he believed it.
He was saying he was taking it as word, which is very different.
So that's the first thing.
Secondly, do we not understand that Otto Warmbier is...
I'm just going to say it.
Because I don't have advertisers.
And I have FU money, so I'm just going to say it.
Otto Warmbier is not as important to me as you are.
Otto Warmbier is not as important to me as you are.
Because you're alive.
You guys are all alive.
You guys and gals.
You're all alive.
I value you way more than Otto Warmbier.
Sadly, and it's a tragedy, nobody can be happy about it, he is no longer with us.
If we allow a dead person, no matter how tragic, no matter the circumstances, to guide what happens to the living, it's loser think.
It's a complete abdication of responsibility to each other, to keep each other alive.
It's a complete strategic failure because it fails to prioritize things, you know, nuclear, Holocaust, versus honoring someone who's not with us.
Now, I would never want to disrespect his family, and I would certainly not want to disrespect his memory, but it's just the fact he's not with us anymore.
You are. You're all alive.
You're way more important to me than everybody in the world who ever died before.
In fact, there are billions of people who have died in the past.
I would say that every one of you who is alive is more important to me individually.
Even just one of you is more important to me than all billion people who have died since the history of the world.
I don't know how many people have ever died.
Maybe two billion? Whatever that number is.
So let's keep our priorities straight, Joe Walsh.
I mean, you're just not good for the country.
That kind of thinking could get us all frickin' killed.
It's the worst unproductive thinking that you'll ever see.
Keep it in perspective.
The President is protecting all of us.
The President has prioritized you living Americans over people who can't be helped anymore.
They cannot be helped once they have passed.
We can't reanimate Otto Warmbier.
We just have to figure out how to keep the rest of us alive.
Alright. I would like to suggest A way, a filter, to determine what is true from what is fake news.
Are you ready for this? This is a filter that I've been sort of watching on my own to see if it's good enough.
And I would suggest the following filter to know what is true from what is fake news.
And it goes like this. Something that is true, as in true news, We'll be on the following four news outlets.
It will be reported on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Breitbart.
Now, they're not the only outlets that this filter would work with, but they're a good selection, right?
So if it's true on all four of those outlets, then it's real news.
So, for example, if there's a hurricane and you look on CNN and it says, hey, there's a hurricane, and then the same news is on Fox and Breitbart and MSNBC, you could say to yourself, there is a hurricane.
It's an actual real hurricane.
But, if you see that the President said that white supremacists were fine people on CNN, and you see it on MSNBC, and maybe they talk about it on Fox News, but then you go to Breitbart and it's described as a hoax, and it's obviously a hoax, and they say why?
It's not real news. It failed the filter.
If it's not true on all four outlets, then I would say it's not true.
If it is on all four, probably true.
And by the way, this works for the things you believe as well as the things you don't believe.
So let's take Uranium One.
The Uranium One deal is true on Fox News.
False on CNN. I'm not sure of what Breitbart says about it.
And MSNBC would say it's not true.
Or at least there's nothing there.
So I would say this filter suggests that Uranium One is sort of a big nothing.
So try...
Try...
I can't tell if your comments are behind me.
But try that standard and just try it on for a while.
And if you were to say to yourself, it's only true if it's on those four networks, that's a pretty good standard.
What about the reverse? If Fox News promotes a Trump success, is it not true if it's not covered on CNN? Well CNN tends to cover his successes, they just don't spend a lot of time talking about it.
So even on CNN, I believe there are people saying that it was wise for Trump to walk away from the deal in Vietnam.
So I would say that's true news because there are experts on basically every outlet who are saying, yeah, that was a good decision.
Let me talk about one of the big differences between Conservatives and, let's say, the left and the right.
You've seen science that says that conservatives think differently.
I think some of the differences are that conservatives are more grossed out by stuff.
Just stuff in general.
They're more grossed out more easily.
I don't know if that's true.
But there is a difference that I notice that I want to present to you.
I've said it before, but I want to put a little more meat on it.
And this is my book, How to Failed Almost Everything and Still Win Big, where I talk about the systems being better than goals.
Here you see the difference between goals and systems.
A goal would be to have some kind of universal health care, single payer, maybe the government is in charge of it.
Another goal might be to have zero CO2 added to the air.
Another one might be free college.
So those would be goals. Things that you want.
And these would be associated with the left.
But on the right, you see that they have similar, let's say, aspirations.
Or at least overlapping aspirations.
But they tend to talk to them in terms of the system.
Capitalism, for example, is a system that makes everybody richer, that allows people to buy healthcare, etc.
So the systems for getting to healthcare would be cutting regulations, spurring innovation, increasing competition.
And by the way, if you haven't seen what the government is doing in terms of health care, they actually are doing things to spur competition.
They are doing things about cutting regulations.
So there are actually some pretty important things happening in the Trump administration.
And I'm looking at your comments.
Some people are just still struggling with the filter thing.
But just live with it for a while and then get back to me.
Because I don't want you to make a decision on the app.
I want you to just use that filter for a while and live with it.
And then tell me how it worked for a while.
But don't give me your opinion right now.
All right. Likewise, in reducing the CO2, you see the people on the right talking about, well, shouldn't we be developing Gen 4 reactors?
Now, here's one of the biggest pieces of news that you probably didn't hear.
And I want to call out...
I want to get the correct name of the Twitter account that I follow, and you should follow, too, because if you're not, you're missing all the good stuff.
Bear with me. This is worth it, by the way.
It's worth waiting.
So you should be following HeadSnipe01.
HeadSnipe01.
Oops...
Snipe...
So you should follow that Twitter account because what he does is I think he might have been a marine sniper before this.
I think that's why he has that name.
Anyway, what he does is he monitors official government releases.
So when the administration releases an official statement that they're doing something, they have a new program, they've made some decision, etc., some law is being considered, he picks out the good ones and reports on it.
So there's no spin on it.
Except whatever the government itself puts on it.
But you get to see the news that the news doesn't cover and should.
So here's the biggest news that happened this week.
No coverage, but it has an iPad, so you should be following him.
So here's the biggest news.
Do you remember when I talked to some, most of you saw this, when I had a conversation with Naval Ravikant, and we were talking about climate and nuclear energy, etc., And Naval made this comment.
He said the problem with nuclear, in terms of developing nuclear power to be safer, is that you can't easily iterate the way you can with every other product.
If you look at the first iPhone, it was terrible, but each one after that got better and better and better until you had smartphones that are amazing.
And every other technology follows...
Somebody's asking...
It's 01.
Is there a 011?
Somebody asked a question if I got the...
Oh, shoot. You're right.
It is 1-1.
So, head snipe, you make a bad mistake with your header because your header says only 1.
But there's two 1s.
So there's two 1s on the end of this.
Thank you for catching that.
Anyway, so what Naval said is that nuclear you can't iterate and improve as you go.
You can't evolve the technology because it takes too long to build one.
The approvals are so hard.
It's so expensive. It's hard to get approval to do it anywhere, etc.
The government under Rick Perry, Department of Defense, just announced that they have approved a, let's say, a test facility where the nuclear startups can go and iterate without the burdens of approvals and all that.
So the biggest problem in the world If you think it was climate change, or even if you think it was energy costs, or even if you think it was the economy.
Possibly the biggest problem in the world is well on its way to being solved.
Because if you couldn't iterate nuclear, you could never solve climate change.
If you couldn't iterate nuclear, you could never get to the point where the Middle East is unimportant to us, at least in terms of oil.
If you can't iterate nuclear you can never get to the point where you've got a robot economy.
If you can't iterate nuclear you can't get to the point where you have enough energy at such a low cost that you can desalinate and create water.
If you can't iterate nuclear you probably can't get to the point where you can deal with whatever problems climate change is going to cause anyway.
The biggest news in the world is that the main thing that was keeping us from having a robust development of Generation 4 nuclear power, which, if you don't know this, is safe from meltdowns.
So in other words, they're designed in a way that if anything goes wrong, or even if everything goes wrong, it doesn't melt down.
Most people don't know that's even a thing.
And there are several generations or several models within Generation 4 that do that.
Now, somebody says that's not possible.
Well, the experts say it's already done.
Now, the other thing people say is where are you going to put all that nuclear waste?
Well, here's the fun part.
There are designs within the category of Gen 4 that are both safe from meltdown and they use as fuel nuclear waste.
They use nuclear waste as fuel.
And I think they can burn 95% of that.
So you still have a little bit left.
But basically, you can use the nuclear waste from the other reactors, the old ones, and use it for your fuel.
The only thing keeping this from happening was the ability to iterate, as Naval pointed out.
Rick Perry just solved that.
Now, I don't know if the thing he's doing is a complete solution, but it correctly identified the biggest problem in the system.
This is conservative thinking.
What's the system?
The system is we can't iterate nuclear.
And if you can't iterate, you can never get better.
He solved the iteration problem.
It's the most boring news, but the biggest news.
All right. Bill Gates released recently his top 10 predictions for transformative technologies.
So this is Bill frickin' Gates.
Who studies things more than Bill Gates?
Nobody. All right, Bill Gates studies things more than anybody.
Is Bill Gates a conservative or a liberal?
Don't know. Don't know.
Do you know? I have no idea.
My guess is he's socially liberal.
But I don't know if that makes him...
I don't even know who he votes for.
Who knows? Which is important to the story, because he doesn't seem to be making any decisions based on politics.
His decisions seem to be based on science.
What does Bill Gates say is one of the top ten...
Think of all the technologies there are.
In Bill Gates' top ten for this year is Generation 4 nuclear.
If he's saying it, pay attention.
Pay attention when Bill Gates tells you that Generation 4 nuclear is the way to go.
And I think, I hope I'm characterizing his opinion right, I think he believes it's the only path.
So maybe fact check me on that.
But I believe he thinks Generation 4 nuclear development is the only path forward for climate change remediation.
And even if you don't believe in climate change, still a good deal.
Somebody says, I'll pay attention when Elon Musk talks about it.
That's a fair statement.
I'll bet you if you asked Elon Musk, he would have something interesting to say about that.
All right. Now, and then the other thing that conservatives like to do is on the topic of free college, you know, they probably like to promote online education because it's going to be cheaper, charter schools because it adds choice.
So in all these cases, you see that the Democrats seem to be goal-oriented, but they don't have a way to get there.
Because when you ask them, they'll say, well, I'll raise your taxes.
Right? I'll raise your taxes.
But that doesn't work because there isn't enough money in the world.
So they have goals without a system.
The conservatives tend to be systems oriented.
Well, you're going to need some freedom.
You're going to need some constitutional rights.
Give me some capitalism.
Let's do some iterating.
Let's spur innovation.
Let's cut some regulations.
Let's increase competition.
Let's So, I submit to you that a basic difference between the left and the right is that the right speaks and thinks in terms of systems, and the left thinks and speaks in terms of goals.
And so, if you wanted to persuade the other side, it doesn't matter which side you're on, if you want to persuade the other side, you have to talk their language, not yours.
So, if you are a liberal If you are a lefty and you want to persuade conservatives to do whatever it is, save the planet, be nicer to people, reduce income inequality, whatever it is, you have to talk to them in their language.
You have to talk about a system Which has worked before, which is kind of important.
Capitalism has worked before.
Iteration of technology has worked before.
Improving the market effects of things has worked before.
So if you want to talk to conservatives and persuade them, Put it in a systems language.
What is the system that will get us there?
And use a system that has worked before.
Yeah, somebody's prompting me here in the comments.
I did see a news story that there's a company that can now turn CO2 taken from the air into coal.
And I thought to myself, wait a minute.
I'm impressed that you can turn CO2 taken from the air into actual coal, but wouldn't that be literally the worst thing you could turn it into?
If you can turn CO2 into something else, shouldn't you turn it into anything but coal?
It feels like it's a brilliant idea, except for turning it into coal.
Turn it into anything else.
Now, some people say, can you then burn the coal?
Well, I suppose you could.
And you could turn it back into that CO2. So, I don't know what they're gaining.
But there's a bigger story here, which is there are a number of startups that are all working on that.
They're all working on how to turn CO2 into something else.
Fuels, etc. Now, I have a question for you that you'll only get here.
One of the advantages...
of watching me on Periscope is that I can embarrass myself in ways that other people just wouldn't even get near.
So I'm about to embarrass myself in maybe the biggest way I ever have because I'm going to ask you some questions and I'm going to reveal my ignorance On something.
And I don't know what's wrong with my thinking, but I'm just gonna display it in public, and you're gonna look at it, and I want you to tell me what's wrong with it.
Because I know there's something wrong with it, right?
So I'm gonna depend on you to tell me what's wrong with what I'm gonna talk about next.
Now, people on the left have said, let's have universal health care, and I believe there are 28 million people who don't have health care insurance, which is around 9% of the country.
So here's the first fact to check.
Is it true that roughly 9% of the country...
Does not have healthcare insurance.
Somebody's already saying false.
I did do a Google search on this, so can somebody confirm or deny that that's the number?
It's about 9%.
Let's say it is.
I'll keep watching to see if anybody debunks that.
Somebody's saying yes here.
So it's around 9%. Now the right, the conservatives, have said it's going to cost you $32 trillion.
And it would cost more than the GDP of the whole United States to give everybody health care insurance, if you included the ones who don't have it.
Now, does that sound true?
Does it sound to you like it would be that expensive?
Like on the surface, maybe so.
But here's the question I ask you.
If it's only 9% who don't have health care insurance, Work with the math with me here.
Now, I'm not going to be precise.
I'm going to be talking in a very gross conceptual way here.
So don't get too locked up on the specific details.
Just look at the concept.
If around 9% of the people in the country don't have health care, could you raise the cost of everybody's existing health care by 9% And pay for everybody else.
In other words, if everybody who has healthcare insurance, and hold on, I'm not suggesting this, just talk about it conceptually.
If everybody who had healthcare paid an extra 10%, let's say 9%, would it be enough to cover all the people who don't have healthcare?
Now, we don't all pay our own healthcare.
The government pays some.
Businesses pay some.
People pay some. So I'm getting all no's.
What? Hold on.
Are you saying no to the math?
Or are you saying no to the concept?
Because the concept is not being suggested.
So no one is suggesting That people get a 10% tax to pay for other people's health care.
I'm asking you if the numbers would work.
If you put a 9% tax on people's existing health care, and let's say the government added 9% to what it already pays.
So everybody, companies, individuals, governments, everybody gets a little 9% extra.
Would that be enough?
Given that only 9% of the people don't have health care.
All right. So I've got comments right next to each other.
The math doesn't work.
And then the one right below it, the math works.
I see somebody say the math is good, the math works.
No to concept. Don't judge the concept.
Because it's not suggested.
Now, If you think it's true, and here's where having no sense of personal embarrassment comes in handy.
This is an idea that I would never suggest in public if I had any sense of embarrassment whatsoever.
I expect that what I'm going to say next is really wrong, but I don't know why.
And that's what you're going to help me with, okay?
Here are two things that I think I know I think I know this to be true.
9% of people don't have healthcare.
And here's another thing I learned in corporate America.
I used to do budgets for a big bank.
I was in charge of their budgets for their technology area.
And I used to do budget planning for the phone company, also in their technology area.
And here's something that It's just a general truth.
I would put together this budget and I'd take it to the bosses and I'd say to the bosses, here's the budget and it's based on a bottom-up plan in which I asked every person, every department, how much budget they need next year and then I added it up and here's the number for the whole department.
And what would the boss always say?
Those of you who have worked in corporate America, Tell me how this story ends.
I added up all the budget needs of all the departments into a bigger number, took it to the big boss, and what did the big boss say about the big number?
If you've worked in corporate America, you already know the answer.
The answer is, cut it by 10%.
And so I go back to all of the individual department heads and I say, the big boss said cut your budget by 10%.
And every budget head says what?
I can't do that.
There is no way I can run this department if I cut the budget 10% next year.
It cannot be done.
So I go back to the big boss and I say, every one of the departments says the same thing.
If they cut by 10%, they can't do their job.
It just can't be done. And then the big boss says, what?
What does the big boss say?
Tell them it's cut 10%.
And then I go back to all the departments and I say, I know you say it's impossible.
I know you say you can't do your job.
But that's the decision.
It's cut by 10%.
Now check back in a year.
Did all of the departments successfully cut their budget by 10%?
Yup. Yup.
Every one of them. Every one of the budgets Successfully cut their budget by 10%.
How many of them could identify a big impact from that, meaning that they couldn't get their job done, etc.?
None of them. As a general rule, if you have done budgets for a living, if you've been in a big organization and you've had any contact with budgets, you know that if you have a big budget on any topic, You can cut it by 10%.
So here are two things I think I know, but I can't understand them together.
So I think I know that 9% don't have insurance, and I think I know that the cost of most things can be cut by 9%.
In other words, it would be free.
Let's say... Let's say the government, again, I'm not recommending this.
Let's say the government said, everybody who's already paying health care insurance has to pay 9% extra.
And that covers everybody.
So now the extra 30 million or so people who don't have health insurance have health insurance.
Now everybody has it.
All the people who sell medical services suddenly have lots more customers.
That's good, right? There are more customers buying everything in healthcare.
And then the government says, and I'm not suggesting this, cut your costs by 10%.
Let's say the government says to all the healthcare insurance providers, I'll give you 30 million more people in a pool that's spread across all of you, but in return, everybody has to cut their costs by 10%.
Could they do it?
Almost certainly yes.
Now, there's nothing about this plan that's practical.
So, those of you who are hung up on, that will never work, or, you know, I don't like the government getting in, don't worry about it.
I'm not suggesting we do it.
I'm wondering about the math.
So if it's true that it would cost $32 trillion extra for healthcare, to have universal healthcare, how could it also be true that the amount that all of us would have to pay extra, say 10%, is so small that the health insurance and medical and health industry could almost certainly cut all of the costs by 10% and nobody would even notice.
Because you can cut any budget by 10% and people largely don't notice.
So here's what I don't understand.
How could it simultaneously be so expensive that the country would be bankrupted at the same time, as far as I can tell, it would be 10% more than people who have insurance already pay and you could probably lower the whole cost structure 10% until nobody even noticed.
Is it $32 trillion or is it zero?
And I saw this conversation on...
I forget which show it was.
It might have been... Well, I'm not going to guess.
But I saw a debate in which there were pro-universal healthcare and anti-universal healthcare and the ones who were against it said it's going to cost $32 trillion over 10 years and there's no way that can be afforded.
The person who was for it said it would save money.
Okay, that's the difference between saving money, less than zero money cost, and $32 trillion.
How can you be that far apart?
Now, part of it is that $32 trillion is not the extra.
The $32 trillion has got to be the total cost of health care, I would guess, that goes to the government and comes out of the pockets of individuals.
In other words, the government would be taking on the burden that individuals are paying and the companies are paying now, so that's why it's $32 trillion.
But our decision-making is so poor That we can't tell the difference between something that would cost $32 trillion versus something that would save money.
Think about that.
Could those worlds be further apart?
Now, if somebody said, well, one says it's going to cost a trillion, and the other says it's only going to cost $200 billion, I would say those are two people who are legitimate entrepreneurs Players in a real issue.
But if you tell me that one says it's better than free and the other says it costs $32 trillion, we have departed anything like a conversation on the topic.
The topic no longer even matters to the decision.
It's like you don't even need to know what the topic is because you're not going to get agreement.
If you're that far apart.
So explain to me why only, you know, 9% of the country doesn't have healthcare insurance, and yet it is unaffordable, when we could certainly cut the cost of healthcare by 10%, and therefore have the same costs we have now, and everybody covered.
Now, I assume that what I'm saying is so embarrassingly ignorant that I'll find this out in the next 24 hours, maybe in the next hour.
Somebody's going to say, Scott, Scott, Scott, you've forgotten the effect of XYZ, you idiot.
And maybe we learned something.
But let me ask you, how many people just had their minds blown By this simple math, which might be wrong, might be stupid, might be ignorant, might be all those things.
But how many of you just had your mind blown by these numbers?
I'm interested.
Or does it have no effect on you?
There's a little delay in your comments.
So I'm actually...
Uh...
Alright, so I'm just looking at the comments coming in now.
So people are saying, yes, me, nobody, yup, me, I'm not sold, yes.
I think you may be assuming the uninsured percentage will stay constant.
No, I'm not assuming that.
I'm not assuming that what I described is a workable plan.
So if you missed that part, you really missed the most important point.
I'm not suggesting this happens.
I use it as an example to explain why the math doesn't make sense to me.
So I'm seeing other people saying that their mind is blown.
You can feel yourself peeking out of your own little bubble, can't you?
If you believed that this cost $32 trillion and was completely unaffordable, and yet you watched Bernie say, we could totally afford this, or you watched AOC say, we could totally afford this, I don't know who's right.
I actually don't know who's right.
Will it cost $32 billion or trillion or save money?
I don't know. What you should be taking from this is that you don't know anything about healthcare.
That's what I take from it.
So what I take from this exercise is that I am completely unqualified to have an intelligent conversation about healthcare.
Because I don't know the difference between free and 32 trillion dollars.
Can't tell the difference?
Alright. Somebody says 10% price cut would eliminate all profit margin.
In the healthcare field, margins are pretty high.
And there would be some entities that couldn't take that cut.
But there would be others that could take more of a cut.
So my experience is that if you tell people they have to cut 10%, They would also go back to their own cost structure and their own suppliers and say, look, you're my supplier.
I have to cut 10%.
If you don't cut 10% to me, I can't cut 10% to them, and then we're both out of business.
And then suddenly your supplier cuts their expenses.
How do they do it? They go to their suppliers.
So it's sort of the...
The Walmart theory.
You know, Walmart forces its vendors to cut costs until they go out of business.
You know, I'm exaggerating a little, but not much.
Because Walmart will make your costs...
Just to be in Walmart until you have no margin whatsoever.
And those sorts of things can happen in healthcare as well.
It just isn't happening. And by the way, I would expect to see the combination of Amazon and JPMorgan Chase, whatever they're called now.
And who's the third entity who's working on that healthcare situation?
I'm blanking out now.
But I would expect them to start pushing suppliers and lowering costs quite a bit.
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