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March 9, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
54:41
Episode 443 Scott Adams: Checking Your Gullibility Scorecard
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Hey Darrell, April, come on in here.
I hope that you got up early and made a big pot of coffee.
That's how some people say it, coffee.
I say a coffee.
But it's just as delicious either way.
And if you're ready, I hope you are, grab your cup, your mug, Yes, we'll do the simultaneous toke one of these days.
That's on my to-do list.
But today, let's talk about a few things.
I was thinking about border security and about how Both sides tend to talk past each other.
For example, one side says the percentage of crime from illegal immigrants is lower.
And other people say, but the number of crimes is higher.
So they're not even really talking the same language.
So that allows them to talk past each other without addressing the point of the other.
And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be more...
More accurate. If the concern is a humanitarian concern, and we have some sense of how much crime is happening, not just crime in the United States, but crime in terms of how many people are being victimized in the process of illegally immigrating,
if we have those numbers, Couldn't we put our border security objectives in terms of how much crime you're willing to accept?
So, for example, could you go to the Democrats and say, I don't know what the number is, but let's say the number is 100,000 rapes in X years, whatever that is.
So you go to the Democrats and say, our current rate with our current border security is Is that 100,000 women get raped every X years or every year or whatever it is?
What is your goal?
And if you say, well, I think I'd be okay with 95,000 rapes because that's sort of what they're settling for, which is an incremental improvement on the border.
So if it was 100,000, And they're only willing to, you know, reduce the rate of illegal flow by a little bit, then they're okay with 95,000.
So, could we, instead of talking about price, which is all we've been talking about so far, well, it's not all we've been talking about, but we tend to focus on, right, is it 1 billion or is it 5 billion?
Is it 3 billion or is it 3.5 billion?
We end up starting to think that price is the primary variable just because we talk about it the most.
But the one thing that both sides agree is that one to five billion dollars isn't much money in terms of the whole budget.
So, since we are both sides concerned about the humanitarian crisis, could we not say, well, the Republican goal Is to get the amount of crime as close to zero as possible.
So we're going to spend to pursue our goal of getting zero.
Now you can't get to zero, but you can certainly have that as a stretch goal.
And then you can say, what would be the competing goal?
How many crimes are you trying to get down to?
We're shooting for zero.
Would you be okay with 100,000?
So let's compare the two aspirations.
The Republican aspiration is for zero crime.
We don't think we can get there, but that's what we're shooting for.
The Democratic aspiration is for 100,000 rapes per year, because that's what they would be willing to fund.
As long as both sides agree that you're not running out of money, why don't you put the Put the topic in terms of the thing you care about, the humanitarian interest.
Just a thought. Here's another thought.
I have not talked about this yet.
So here's the first time I've talked on this topic.
Transgenders competing.
And I want to be careful, since I rarely talk about this topic, I want to make sure I'm using the right language.
Because unlike many of you, I actually think it matters.
To refer to people in the way they're comfortable being referred to.
And I don't mind at all when any group says, hey, stop using those words.
We prefer it when you use these words because those other words are offensive in some way.
And so I'm always okay with that.
If the Elbonians want me to call them some word, I'm okay with that.
I would do the same in person.
So I would certainly do it, you know, on a national scale.
If somebody wanted me to call them by a certain name in person, I would certainly do that.
So I just extend that same thinking.
So the issue in the news is that someone born male, but now I guess could be described as trans, you know, help me with the language, because if I use the wrong language, it's unintentional. So it's a transgender person who born male but is competing in a female sport and winning.
So some people are saying that's no fair because you have whatever genetic advantages of being born as a male with maybe greater muscle strength, etc.
So that's not fair.
Some people say it's not fair competing with women because you're just winning everything.
You're just basically winning everything.
Here's my opinion on that.
Totally okay with it.
Totally okay with the trans community competing in the area that is their current identity.
Here's why.
You want to hear my argument?
Here's why.
Do you ever watch LeBron James compete against somebody who is not LeBron James.
Have you ever seen LeBron James running down the court in basketball and there's a 6'2 guard who's the only person left to defend the basket?
Do you know what happens to that 6'2 guard who's trying to stop LeBron James one-on-one at a basket?
It doesn't go well for the six-foot-two guard.
LeBron James treats him like a rag doll.
And here's the thing.
Why is it fair that LeBron James can play basketball?
Why is that fair?
Because you look at the court and there's nobody else on the court who can compete with him physically.
He is physically superior to To pretty much everybody else on the court.
Now the other team might have a big guy, and maybe that's a little bit closer in competition.
But sports is something that's completely predetermined that we enjoy by imagining it's not.
So since I don't believe in free will, and I think the world is largely predetermined...
The game is sort of decided before you play, because things are only going to go the way they're going to go.
If the Golden State Warriors are playing the worst team in the league, do you have to wonder who's going to win?
You don't. If the Golden State Warriors are perfectly healthy, there's not really much competition.
But we still play the game.
If they're playing, let's say, the worst team in the league, there's not really much competition.
So my point is that every competition is an unfair competition.
When Tiger Woods goes out on the golf course, does he have the same genetic composition as I do?
If I practiced really hard, could I play as well as Tiger Woods?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think he probably has better eyesight, maybe hand-eye coordination.
His brain is probably wired in a way that mine isn't argued.
There really is no such thing as a fair athletic event.
There are only athletic events where you don't know how they're going to turn out.
And most of the time, you do know how it's going to turn out.
Most of the time, you can look at two teams and say, oh, this is the number one team, this is the, you know, toward the bottom team.
We kind of know how this is going to end.
But you'll watch anyway.
So, given that sports are a random collection of very unequal people, and it should not entertain us, but it does, I would say that the trans variable is just one more variable.
It's somewhat of a random choice to say that men and women should be in different leagues.
I get why we do that, to make the competition seem like it's a little more fair.
But the fact is, sports in general are this super unfair situation where people who are bigger, taller, faster, you know, smarter, have amazing advantages.
So if you just throw in somebody else who has an amazing advantage, it's just more of the same to me.
Alright, I know you don't like that, but I thought I'd throw that in there for controversy.
I was amused that Elizabeth Warren, Somebody says, that's moronic.
You left out the reason.
You left out the reason.
Here's the thing. You either accept that sports is something where some individuals have extraordinary advantages over other people on the field, or you don't.
If you're okay with, some players can have extraordinary advantages.
Some people can be LeBron, and some people aren't.
If that's okay... I don't see why it makes any difference if you allow trans to compete where they're most comfortable.
Elizabeth Warren said she wants to bust up the big tech companies, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
What's the funniest thing about Elizabeth Warren running for president saying she wants to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook?
The funniest thing about that is the only companies that can make her the President of the United States are Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
Elizabeth Warren might have the worst political instincts of anybody I've ever seen in my life.
Somehow she hasn't noticed that you can't become President unless Google, Facebook, and Amazon are kind of pushing for you.
Now, Trump did.
But he didn't rail against those companies.
They were against him.
But it's a little different when you're trying to break them up and destroy their business model.
I would not expect fair treatment from Google or Facebook if I were Elizabeth Warren.
So on a strategic level, it's literally the worst thing you could say to try to get elected.
I can't imagine A worse strategy for becoming president than to go against the very companies that can decide whether you get to become president or not.
Trump obviously is a different animal.
If Elizabeth Warren had Trump's game, it would be more of a fair fight, but that's not the case.
I'm seeing a lot of speculation On the question of who is the brain or brains, who are the brains behind AOC? Have you seen that a lot on mostly social media?
So people are asking me all the time, who's the brains behind her?
Who is it who's advising her?
Because she keeps being successful in the sense of getting all the attention and managing everything.
She's kind of managing our thoughts about the Democrats right now.
So who's behind her?
A number of people have pointed me to clips, video clips of her chief of staff.
I don't remember his name.
It doesn't really matter.
And people said, he's the genius.
Look at this guy.
And I've watched some clips of him.
And I would say that I don't think he's...
The genius behind her persuasion.
That doesn't come across.
He might be very good at what he does, and some of that is the data or the strategy part.
So he could be very good at that.
I don't know. But I don't see any signs that he's the persuasion expert.
My guess is she's the persuasion expert.
So those of you who asked the question, Who are the brains behind AOC? I hate to tell you.
It might be her. That's my best guess.
My best guess is that she is the brains behind herself.
I see no reason to rule that out because all evidence suggests she has a lot of game.
Now, if I haven't made you mad enough yet, here's the fun part.
One of the things I recommend...
For understanding reality and understanding your place in it is to keep a mental scorecard of how many hoaxes you fall for.
Because if you find that you keep falling for hoaxes, you should modify your confidence about the next story.
If you're always right and you always see through hoaxes, well maybe you could raise your confidence about the next story.
And so I'm going to talk about some hoaxes, and I want you to score your own success.
Now, I will warn you in advance, some of these hoaxes you still believe are true.
So you're going to get a little worked up here in a minute.
So I'm going to call some things that many of you think are true, I'm going to call them hoaxes, But try to keep with the concept.
The concept is that one should keep a running scorecard of how many hoaxes they fall for.
So I'll show you in my case.
So here's some of my lists.
Did you fall for the fine people hoax?
In other words, did you fall for the idea that the Trump called racist in Charlottesville fine people?
He didn't, but it was reported as if he did.
I did not. So I give myself an A, because I did not fall for that one.
Did you believe that Q was a real insider who had secrets about President Trump's administration?
I did not.
If you did fall for Q, that's a mark on your record.
How about Pizzagate?
I never fell for Pizzagate.
From the first second, I said, no, no.
So I never fell for Pizzagate.
Did you? If you did...
Now, by the way, I'm not going to say that the Podesta's artwork is totally legit.
So I'm not going to go so far as to say that there's no such thing as people who have bad instincts and bad practices.
But the Pizzagate part of it, specifically, that there was a pizza parlor, that part I never believed.
Russia collusion? I never believed it.
Kavanaugh accusers? I did think that Christine, whatever, the first one, I thought her presentation was credible at first, but it fell apart quickly, and I certainly never believed the subsequent accusers that were kind of ridiculous.
So I don't believe the accusers were telling the truth at this point.
The Vegas shooter, when people said it was ISIS, I said it is not.
When ISIS took, they actually took credit for it, and I still said in public that it's not ISIS. Even though it's very rare for them to take credit for something they didn't do, I said, yeah, this time they did it.
And I went against the grain, and I was right.
Jesse Smollett, I never believed that.
I stayed out of the conversation just because I didn't want to...
I don't like to muck things up early on in a story like that.
So sometimes I wait on the personal violence, personal crime ones.
I kind of wait a little bit. But I never believed that one.
That was fishy from the start.
The Covington situation, I got taken on that.
I don't think... I don't think that's the worst problem in the world because I was looking at it with my own eyes.
Usually, if you're falling for a hoax, you're not looking at it in what you think is real time and seeing it on video.
So it's kind of rare to be taken like that.
But I was taken.
I quickly corrected when more information came out.
Some people believe there was a secret sonic weapon.
Maybe the Russians were behind it.
I said, no, there is no secret sonic weapon at the embassies, and sure enough, none has been discovered.
How many of you thought Michael Jackson was innocent of accusations of serial child molestation?
I did not think he was innocent.
And I just watched the second part of the Leaving Neverland situation.
And I know some of you may still disagree.
And I'll tell you, I had this weird situation where...
So I watched the Leaving Neverland special.
in which there are two people who give great details of years-long abuse at the hands of Michael Jackson, allegedly.
In my opinion, it's completely credible.
And I would say, if you put a gun to my head and said, you have to bet your life, did he do it or did he not do it?
I'd say, I'm not even worried.
He totally did it.
Click.
But somebody else who watched it about the same time and went into it believing that he was not guilty...
So somebody who started out thinking he was not guilty watched the same special I did at the same time and decided, well, he's probably still not guilty.
Now, you can still argue about it, but the concept here is that you should keep track of what you believed.
So should you find a confirmation one way or another...
Then you can adjust your scorecard.
In my opinion, this is already confirmed.
So you can disagree with it at this point, but in the concept of keeping your scorecard, it's good enough for me that I've decided he is guilty of the crimes he's committed.
Birtherism. Did you ever believe that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen?
I never believed that.
Live abortions.
I don't know if you can see that.
Many of you still believe that there was ever any intention for a live, healthy baby to be born and then the doctor and the mother could say, ah, no, we don't want this baby, let's just let it die.
Many of you still believe that that was proposed.
I believe that was never proposed and is still a hoax.
So, I get it.
You don't think that's confirmed.
In my opinion, it's confirmed.
In the sense that it would be easy to show this is true and it's never happened.
It would be easy to show the language and then have somebody who supports the bill say, yeah, that is actually what it means.
It does mean a healthy baby is born.
And that we can let it die.
That's exactly what the law is intended, and that's what somebody wants.
If you don't hear that, it's just not true.
The context for this law, as I understand it, I understand that lots of you are saying I'm wrong.
I see you. Don't worry.
The context, as I understand it, Is that they're only talking about babies who are in a hospice situation.
In other words, they were aborted up to the last day of pregnancy.
They were aborted and they survived.
But they do not look like they would survive.
In other words, they're not going to last long.
It's a hospice situation.
So I think that was the context.
Those of you who think it was not a hospice context, I believe you have fallen for a hoax.
People are saying, yes, the Virginia governor explained it.
There are two misleading videos.
One of the Virginia governor, who if you asked him to follow up, would clarify.
And then there was the woman who was pushing it, who also said something completely out of context.
Those of you who believe this hoax, let me say as clearly as possible.
To change my mind...
You would just need to show me an interview with somebody who explains it the way you believe is true.
Not an interview, not a clip.
Not a clip of those two people.
So find somebody that is not the governor in that one clip and not the one clip of that woman who is doing a bad job of answering the question.
So without those, find any evidence that somebody intended...
To let a live baby that otherwise would survive, that they would let that die.
Just make your case.
Alright, did you believe that tax cuts would bring in more tax revenue than it would subtract?
Did you ever believe that the President's tax cuts would lower the national debt?
I didn't believe that.
And sure enough, it hasn't.
It hasn't worked before, so I didn't believe it this time.
Did you believe that Uranium One was a big...
You don't have to tell me about Gosnell.
Gosnell is not part of this law that was being suggested.
So that's not relevant to the question.
Did you believe that Uranium One was a big problem?
There you go. Sorry. Did you believe that Uranium One was a big problem?
I did not. Do you know what was always missing from the Uranium One story?
What was always missing is that we can just buy Uranium on the open market anytime we want.
We can go to Australia or Canada and say, hey, do you want to sell us some Uranium?
And they'd say, yeah, we've got plenty.
There was never anything to it.
Except, I think, a Fox News story.
Climate change, let's call that an open question, whether or not that's a hoax in either direction.
So it's either a hoax that it's not true, or it's a hoax that it's true.
But somebody's getting hoaxed here.
My preliminary opinion on climate change is this.
This is preliminary because I'm still doing an extended...
Preliminary, I would say that I could say the following for sure.
If you imagine that science in general, published papers, etc., are wrong about half of the time, which apparently is true.
So about half of all published scientific papers turn out not to be reproducible, turn out not to be solid.
Then on top of that, climate change adds what I call a marketing piece.
So where they say stuff such as 97% agree, you don't have to be a scientist to know that that's a BS number and it's the way they count it that matters.
It's not a good representation of the truth.
Because, in fact, even the skeptics agree with the question the way it's asked.
The CO2 does increase warming.
Even skeptics say that.
They just don't think it's the problem that the other side says.
So, if you take the best-case scenario for climate change, is that probably half of the studies are fake, just like every other scientific situation, because about half of all studies turned out to be BS. So if half of the science is BS in a normal way,
just not everything is right on the first try, and then there's a big chunk that's also marketing BS, I would say that the climate change issue, it's very possible that 75% of everything you hear about climate change is wrong.
And still, Could be exactly what the climate scientists say is true.
So these two things would not be in conflict.
You could have half of the science wrong about climate change, And then on top of that, you could have a whole bunch of BS that's essentially marketing.
Let's say the projection models, the statements about the hurricanes getting worse and the super storms and the bad predictions and all that.
So you could have 75% of climate science be complete bullshit and still be completely true.
That wouldn't even be unusual.
In fact, that's my current opinion.
Is that it's at least 75% bullshit, which in no way changes the possibility it's entirely true.
True meaning that there's a big risk and that humans are warming the planet.
I haven't ruled that out.
But, on the skeptical side, It's at least half bullshit, for sure.
Because, you know, I'm no expert, but even I can look at a lot of the skeptical arguments.
So a lot of the skeptical arguments are things such as, I think the climate scientists forgot to include the sun.
Well, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the top scientists in the world, whether they're climate or not, Didn't forget the sun.
So there are a lot of things that the skeptics say that are just so obviously bullshit that doesn't tell you that the other things that other skeptics say are also wrong.
So it's entirely possible that...
Let's just pick a number for a conversation.
It would be possible for 95% of everything that the skeptics say...
To be complete bullshit and still be right.
They could be wrong about 95% of their criticisms, but if there's just one thing they're right about, that the temperature isn't going up.
If that's the only thing they're right about, well, they win.
Even if 95% of the stuff they say is complete bullshit.
Anyway, Seth Rich, I know some of you think that's an open question.
I would just say that I don't have an opinion on that, but...
In terms of, let's say, when I say I don't have an opinion, I would say I don't believe Seth Rich was murdered by Clinton people.
So I don't believe it's true, but I also don't believe it's ruled out in the sense that I suppose anything's possible.
Chemtrails are bullshit.
I'm not even going to talk about those.
Those are too ridiculous. And then, did you believe that Trump was crazy, that the 25th Amendment should kick in and take him out?
I did not. I did not believe that, and the evidence suggests that he is not crazy.
Alright, do you have other conspiracies that you want to put on the list?
So those of you who are angry, that's the...
Oh, the Omar scandal is a hoax.
In what sense?
All right. Yeah, I did not believe that O.J. was innocent.
So I got that one going.
Yeah, I thought O.J. was guilty.
Now ask yourself, how many of you got...
Well, 9-11, I'm pretty sure 9-11 was really an Al-Qaeda operation.
But the question of Building 7, I would say there's some question about that, but that doesn't need...
But in terms of why something happened there, it's hard to explain.
We don't know the why.
We just know there's something about Building 7 that doesn't fit the official story.
I just don't know why.
So, Syria gas attack, I said, was fake.
And we now know that at least...
Some part of the Syria gas stories were faked.
I think we know that, right?
What we don't know is if there were real attacks, but to make those real attacks look worse because they didn't film them, did they do a little faking to draw attention to it?
So we don't know if the faking was really just marketing something that really happened, but they didn't get any pictures.
That part, I think, is still open to debate.
Somebody thinks Michael Jackson is not guilty.
If you've seen the Leaving Neverland special, you're allowed to have that opinion.
The Glenn Greenwald article on Omar, I don't know what he wrote about Omar.
Would we flood if ice caps keep melting?
I don't know. I'm not sure that that falls into the hoax.
Area 51, I don't believe anything about captured aliens.
I do not believe captured aliens in Area 51.
Charlottesville plus Trump saying white supremacy were good people.
Well, that was the first one on the list.
The fine people hoax.
I never believed that he was talking about the racist as fine people.
And of course he wasn't.
Yeah, let's just talk about the current ones.
Benghazi. Benghazi is more of a mystery.
So there's something about Benghazi that doesn't make sense.
In other words, there's just information we don't have.
That's as far as I could go on Benghazi.
Catholic priests molesting young boys.
I always believed that that was happening massively and it is Bill Maher was rough on Michael Jackson Well, yeah, he ought to be. Iraq, weapons of mass destruction.
Okay, that's a good question.
Iraq, weapons of mass destruction.
I'm trying to go back in time and remember what I believed about that.
I think I believed that they had them.
I think I believed it with pretty much everybody else.
At least citizens. Vaccines causing autism.
It's unlikely to me that the anti-vaxxers are, well, I'm going to say, let me qualify this.
When people talk about vaccinating versus not vaccinating, there are a few different issues.
One is whether they're safe.
Some of the anti-vaxxers have an argument that I find intellectually valid, which is that when they test a vaccination, it is not tested in a package with all of the other vaccinations.
So if you If you test it individually and your body is fine with it, you haven't really tested what happens if you give somebody a package of vaccinations all at the same time.
Now I think it's true that that hasn't been tested.
Now that's different from saying, we therefore know it's dangerous.
I just think it hasn't been tested.
So that would be a valid concern without a conclusion.
In terms of the people who say, I watched my child Go from a good kid into some problem right after a vaccination.
I don't believe most of those are true.
I do believe, given that any kind of drug could have a bad effect for some people, I do believe it's entirely possible that in some rare cases the vaccination is what hurts the kid.
I'm sure that that could happen, just because wouldn't that be true of any mass use of any chemical?
There's going to be somebody who has a bad reaction to it.
But in terms of the number of parents who have reported anecdotally, I would say that probably most of those reports are confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, People looking to blame somebody that's not themselves.
Somebody looking for an explanation for something that's hard to explain.
So I would not believe...
I wouldn't believe, in general, parent reports.
Because they would not be credible by their nature.
And then there would also be coincidence.
Because kids get vaccinated...
And then there are also bad things that happen to kids.
People, you know, their minds may snap at some point.
They may have some other medical issue that you can't identify.
So it seems very normal that there should be, if you have a big population, so let's say you have a big population, some number of those kids are having health problems for different reasons all the time.
If you say now on Tuesday we're going to give everybody in this group a vaccination, What are the odds that somebody in this big group has a terrible health problem within a day of getting a vaccination?
That's 100%. Because it would have happened anyway.
They're getting health problems all the time in this population, and some of them are going to get a health problem right after they got the shot.
The parent is going to say, well, that's not a coincidence.
I got the vaccination.
The kid got a health problem.
It's obvious. It's obvious it couldn't have been anything else.
But it isn't obvious you would not be able to sort out coincidence from that.
Have you ever seen Tony Podesta's art?
I would say that Tony Podesta has a lot to explain with his art.
Now, having the art that Tony Podesta has, which shows children in various contexts, In a suspiciously non-artistic context, non-artistic meaning it's hard to imagine how anybody would look at it as standard art.
It looks more like a celebration of young boys, if you know what I mean.
But does your choice in art necessarily mean you're violating the law in some terrible way?
Not really. So I would not say that his artwork is confirmation.
I would say, if I had to bet, if you said, look at Tony Podesta's artwork, and now you have to bet.
You can't recuse yourself.
You have to bet. Is there something we should worry about there, or is this no big deal?
If I had to bet, I'd say there's something to worry about.
I would say the odds of somebody having that artwork...
And also having a totally, let's say, legal and innocent approach to life is low.
It's low. But it's not guaranteed.
So I would not want to live in a world where people could be accused of crimes because of their choice of art.
So I would only talk about Tony Podesta because he's already in the news.
But otherwise, I think it's an inappropriate question.
It's an inappropriate line of conversation.
I didn't invent this topic, so it's already out there.
But I wouldn't talk about it on my own just because I thought, oh, somebody with this kind of artwork must be a criminal.
That's not a connection you want to make or a world you want to live in.
Somebody says, if it quacks like a duck, that's probably one of the worst rules of thumb you could ever have.
Somebody said, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Maybe there was a time that used to be true.
Maybe there was a time when you could just look at something and say, alright, this is just so obvious.
What the hell else could it be?
Maybe there was a time.
But we don't live in that time now.
Now, if you see a video of the Covington kids, you say to yourself, well, I'm looking right at it.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, whoops, it's fake news.
So, these days, you should not trust that rule.
I think it used to be a reasonably good rule of thumb, but it's no longer a good rule.
Tim Pool on Joe Rogan talking about Twitter and YouTube.
I don't know which part would be the hoaxy part.
Occam's razor, of course, is an illusion.
It's a good concept that the simplest explanation for something is probably the right one.
I like it as a concept.
In practice, we all think our explanations are the simple ones.
Here's an example. Creationist.
How did the world get created?
Simple. God did it.
Simple. Then you talk to the evolutionary biologist.
Hey, evolutionary biologist, how did the world get created?
How did all these species get created?
And the evolutionist just says, evolution.
Simple. What's simpler than that?
Things change over time.
We already know that's true.
Simple. So everybody thinks their explanation of reality is the simple one, which tells you that that rule is useless if we all think we see the simple explanation.
And well, how about that? Coincidentally, it matches my opinion.
Is God a hoax?
I'm going to answer that with famous atheist Richard Dawkins quote, Which is that as an atheist, he only believes in one less God than you do.
Because if you think about it, there are a lot of religions.
A lot of religions, a lot of different versions of God.
The difference between somebody who has chosen one of those gods and of all the different religions and different versions of gods, if you've only chosen one of them to believe, you're only one different from an atheist.
They just believe one fewer God.
Now, sort of a clever, funny way to say it, but the answer is that if you believe that out of all those religions, you picked the right one, well, you could be right.
You might be.
You might be right.
Maybe you picked the right one.
It's possible.
But if you're confident about that, Well, that's more of a lifestyle choice.
Somebody says, the difference between believing in one and zero is immensely more than one.
And the percentage of people who can't get a joke?
Just about 30% of the population.
Yes, I know it's not technically similar that believing in one God is very close to believing in no gods.
It's a joke. It's a joke.
How about intelligent design?
Let me give you some context.
Back in the 90s, I wrote a book called The Dilbert Future, and I made the following provocative prediction that has haunted me and become quite a problem in my career.
But I'm also right.
So I took a chance that I could get beat up for 20 years in return for being right.
Because if you're right about something that you've been beat up for 20 years, it's a nice payoff.
So I was right about President Trump winning the election.
I got beat up for a year and a half.
But I was right.
So here it is. In the 90s, I made the following prediction.
I said that the theory of evolution, and let me remind you that in scientific terms, theory means true.
In conversation, when you say something is a theory, you mean it might be true, it might not be, it's just a theory.
But when scientists talk about the word theory, they mean we know it's true.
That's what it means in science terms.
The theory is true. So the theory of evolution means that the scientific community As a consensus, not everyone, of course, but as a solid consensus, says that evolution is true.
I predicted in the 90s that in scientific terms, not religious terms, but in scientific terms, that science would debunk evolution specifically because we gained a new understanding of reality itself.
So I did not predict The evolution would be debunked in favor of the Bible.
I did not predict that it would be debunked in favor of a religious interpretation.
Nor did I say that it would be debunked in terms of intelligent design.
Now, for 20 years, when I do anything in public or write anything, somebody will appear in the comments and say, this frickin' idiot...
He said that evolution is not true and that he must be a creationist, etc.
So they make some assumptions which are not evidence.
Well, time goes by.
And now we have simulation theory.
Simulation theory is supported by actual scientists.
There are people who work in the scientific community Nick Bostrom being the primary one, but other people have joined the band.
And the idea is that if a society such as ours could create a simulation in which the creatures in the simulation believed they were real, then it probably has already happened, and it may have happened thousands or millions or trillions of times already.
Therefore, the odds of us being an original species When there would be so many copies and simulations for each species that reaches our level of sophistication, the odds that we're in original, it's possible, but it's very,
very low. So, in my opinion, that interpretation is very close to being proven out, meaning that evolution doesn't make sense if we're a simulation.
If we're a simulation, Wait for it.
Here's the key. If we're a simulation, then we're writing the past as we go.
In other words, the past didn't exist.
It's something we discover in the present, and it gets rewritten the way a video game would put in scenery, but only when your character enters that new place.
So if a video game adds scenery to a situation, that your character has not yet visited it's as if it added history it's as if it added the past because those those brains in the simulation in the video game are a story of the past you know they started as a seed they grew so a video game creates history in the present and there's evidence that we do the same because if if you look at there's something called the double slit experiment in physics And you can prove,
and this is a very repeatable experiment, that you can change the past.
I won't try to explain that, because the double slit experiment is very confusing, so just, you know, go Google it if you want to read up and it'll break your brain.
But basically, if somebody can see something, or if there is a measuring device, you can change what happened in the past, and that's understood science.
Now, if it's true that you can change the past, and it seems that we've proven that, that would tell you that whatever you used to think about time was wrong.
We don't know if it's wrong in a big way or a small way, but you were certainly wrong if you thought that the past causes the present, and that's the end of the story.
It could be that the past causes the present, the present sometimes causes the past.
It could be complicated, but at the very least, it's not a straight arrow of time, the way evolution requires.
All right. Somebody says, what makes you angry?
I usually get angry at products that are poorly made.
There's nothing that makes me more angry than using a product that was designed to be used in the dark quite often and it has a black interface on a black product so you can't see the buttons.
Now, here's an example of a good product.
This is made a color that's easy to find.
You don't even need to see any buttons.
It doesn't even have any buttons. These are the earbuds from Apple.
This is like a fantastic product.
Whoops! I just kicked myself offline by doing that, I think.
So it's a white color, so it's easy to see in low light.
There are no buttons to find.
This is a product that got tested.
Compare that To the jack on the bottom of your iPhone, how many times have you tried to get that jack, you know, to get the cable in there, and you're like, or worse yet, the micro USB that's got a right side up and a wrong side up?
How many times have you put in a micro USB, and it's upside down, and you're like, try the other way, and then it doesn't work the other way either?
You realize that really the first way was the way and you just didn't have it lined up so you turn it back to the first way and then it doesn't go in again.
You realize really that it was the second way that was the right way and you already tried it but you didn't have it lined up so you go back to the second way.
Who tested that?
These are so poorly designed.
Do you know how easy it would be to fix this problem of finding the hole?
It would be really easy.
It would be really easy.
All you'd have to do is make the plastic approach to the hole funneled so that if you got anywhere near it in the funnel and you kept going down, the funnel would take you into the jack.
All you'd have to do is make that opening a little wider and funneled and it just goes right in.
The simplest thing in the world.
All right. Apple certainly fixed one thing, which was by making the cable work upside down and right side up.
That was, of course, great.
But they need to fix the tapered entry.
Until you get the tapered entry, you got nothing.
Wireless charging.
Wireless chargings. Okay.
All right. I think I've said enough.
That's enough for now. I've got to go do some work, and I'll talk to you later, but not until I say that you should try Interface by WinHub.
We now have added a donation button, so anybody who got deplatformed or just wants to have another place, if you're a creator and you want to raise funds, You can get donations on the interface by WenHub app.
And if you're an expert of anything, or you just want to be somebody who gets paid for your time online, you could go on there and you could help the world.
Especially looking for people who are addiction counselors and addiction folks.
They would be highly useful on the app.
Alright, that's enough for now.
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