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March 11, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:10:35
Episode 445 Scott Adams: Cognitive Dissonance in the News Everywhere
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Same kind of family.
Cousins to your dogs.
Hey everybody. Hey Mary.
Hey Lyle. Hey Gino.
Virus Joe. Good to see you.
Come on in here.
Because you know what time it is.
You know, it's time for coffee with Scott Adams on the simultaneous sip.
Grab your cup, your mug, your chalice, your stein, your...
your...
whatever else I always say, and raise it, will you?
I hope it's filled with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Now, it's been a big day of cognitive dissonance.
I have intentionally created a great deal of it.
Some of it's happening naturally, but others is happening just on its own.
And I'm going to walk you through a a few stories today and you'll see that it's sort of everywhere lately.
First of all, I did take the time yesterday to watch the entire interview with Candace Owens.
Candace has her own show now on PragerU with Hogg Newsom.
I think he's the chairman now of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter.
And I gotta say, this was good entertainment.
So I don't want to give away too much of the conversation.
I'm just gonna say, man, it was good.
So the first thing I'll say is search for Candace Owens, Hog Newsome, PragerU.
It'll pop right up. It's a YouTube.
I think it's, I don't know, two hours or something.
It's kind of long. And I thought to myself, well, this is going to be way too long.
But it wasn't. It really goes quickly.
And let me tell you what I loved about it, without giving away too much.
As you know, Candace has more of a Republican-y, conservative point of view.
Hawk Newsome is whatever's seemingly the opposite.
And watching them talk was like being in a room that you never get to be in.
Because they kind of cover the entire tapestry.
Well, I'm sure there are lots of places left out, but it was sort of a wide scope on a world where you don't get to sit in that room.
You just would never hear these two personalities having a polite conversation across a different number of topics.
And I've got to say, Welcome to my show!
There's some kind of media matters story today about Tucker Carlson.
Apparently, it looks like the knives are out for Tucker.
Whenever you see there's somebody, say, on Fox News Universe or somebody on the right who starts being very effective, you know, you see all the enemies come out.
So you've seen Antifa go to Tucker's house.
And now Media Matters, which is, you know, sort of a hit piece organization, is after Tucker.
And so I'm not even sure I want to...
I'm not even going to talk about the topic that he's in trouble for, because it's illegitimate.
In other words, if you look at the headline, I'm just going to make this up.
So I'm going to make up a headline, because I don't even want to talk about the actual topic.
But it's very much like this.
It would be as if the headline said, Tucker Carlson comes out in favor of cannibalism.
And you think, my God, Tucker Carlson came out in favor of cannibalism?
I've got to read this article.
And then you read the article, and it says, from Tucker Carlson, I'm very much against cannibalism.
What? Well, the headline says you're in favor of it.
The headline says you're defending cannibalism.
How come the actual text of the article says literally the opposite of that?
So that was a Media Matters hit piece where he says the opposite of the headline, but people don't go much further than the headline.
People are going to walk away with that thinking, he's in favor of cannibalism?
So it's not about cannibalism.
I just made that up because the real story is not worthy of mention.
But I will tell you that the story seems to be...
Yeah, the story is completely illegitimate.
It's just a hit piece.
All right. People keep sending to me a clip of some gentleman who's doing a behind-the-scenes look at AOC and believes that he has found the brains behind AOC. People keep saying to me, is this it? Does he have it?
Is this the brains, the real brains behind AOC? To which I say, no.
No. It's just she has a chief of staff and the chief of staff has a set of duties which are a little bit like being the brains of the boss, at least on some level the chief of staff is part of your extended brain if you're the boss.
So it's sort of true in a definitional sense.
But I think people are really asking me, is this the person who teaches her how to be so effective in terms of getting attention and controlling the democratic message and stuff?
And I looked at some clips of the gentleman whose name I can't remember, who's her chief of staff, and I don't see anything there.
I see absolutely nothing coming through to suggest he's anything but a chief of staff who's good on the technical side and the data side, apparently.
And I'm sure he's very good at that.
I have no reason to think he isn't.
He comes from the Bernie world, I guess, so he knows what he's doing.
So I'm sure he's very capable.
But no, I don't think it's even close to say that he's the brains behind the operation.
I think that would be completely misleading.
All right. Somebody says, you're experiencing confirmation bias.
You love AOC for some reason.
Let me say as clearly as possible.
AOC, in my opinion, is a racist piece of shit.
Is that clear enough?
Is racist piece of shit...
Is that ambiguous?
Am I leaving any doubt out there when I think of her?
She's a racist piece of shit with a set of ideas that are completely impractical and would destroy the country.
We would be eating each other if we followed her plans.
She has impractical ideas and she's a racist piece of shit and she clearly doesn't understand a lot about how the world works.
That said... Her persuasion game is A triple plus.
So, am I not allowed to say that she's good at one skill?
Can you not follow me?
If you can't handle more than one variable, you're on the wrong periscope.
For those of you who can't handle the fact that she could be good at one skill while being bad at a different skill.
Is that clear enough?
Anybody need a little extra clarification there?
All right. That complaint is part of a larger class of complaints that make me a little crazy.
So people will hear me say one thing on a topic, and they'll say, oh, why do you only say good things about this topic?
Well, I only said one thing so far.
I said one thing.
If it happened to be positive, that doesn't mean I think everything on this topic is positive.
I'm not those people on TV who only take a side and then ride it forever.
If you need that, don't watch this, because I'm the guy who's going to make you feel bad at least once a week by telling you that you're wrong about something.
So if you want to hear that you're wrong about stuff, stay with me.
If you want to just hear some bullshit, take a side, be a pundit stuff, You know where to go for that.
All right. I... I created a little trouble by supporting trans sports.
I don't even know how to... What are the right words to say this?
So I was supporting the idea that somebody biologically born male who transitions to a woman can play on women's sports.
I made a set of points about that.
And if you watch the internet, you'll see people arguing an entirely different set of points as if I said them.
So people say things like, but Scott, don't you understand that that person who was born biologically male and transitioned to female would have an unfair advantage playing against women?
Why can't you understand that, Scott?
To which I say, that's the assumption.
That's not something we're arguing about.
Who the hell is arguing that such hypothetical person would not have some advantage?
Stop telling me I'm wrong for the thing we all agree on.
We all agree.
This hypothetical person has an advantage.
Now the question is, is it unfair?
If you take any team, any basketball team, Typically, there are one or two players on that team who are just way better than the other teams, or the other players on the team.
Is it fair that on my high school basketball team there was one player who was just way better than everybody else?
Was that fair? Sports are not about fairness.
Sports are primarily for the 5% of people who are really good at them to humiliate the 95% who are not.
That's the primary function of sports, is to make the 5% feel extra, extra good and get an extra advantage because they've crushed people, they've built up their testosterone if it's male, they've learned to win, they've learned to compete, they've got team experiences.
It's all great for the 5% who are good at it.
What about the kid who goes through the whole process just to sit on the frickin' bench like an idiot?
It's not good for that kid.
What about the kids who couldn't make the team?
And they're not part of the hidden crowd, because all the athletes are kind of cool and they hang out with each other.
It's not good for the rest of them.
Anyway, my point is, I welcome disagreement on points I actually have talked about.
But you'll see that most of the disagreement on this issue will be a manufactured disagreement where somebody imagines that I've said That it would be a fair competition.
I've never claimed that fairness is an aspect of sports that exists or should exist in the future.
Sports are about mismatches.
If every sports team was evenly matched and baseball games were one by one and every basketball game was the last basket that determines It would seem fun for a while, but I would suggest that it's the mismatches and the unfairness that makes you come back.
You want to see Tiger Woods crush the field of lesser golfers back in his peak.
You want to see Michael Jordan in his peak destroy the other team.
That's the fun part.
It's not where somebody tried to shoot a basket and somebody kind of half-blocked them because they were about even.
Those two players were about equal.
Now, you want to watch Roger Federer dismantle another player like you can't even believe was possible.
Sports are on the surface, we say, hey, let's be fair, let's be good sports, let's have good rules, we try to make these teams even, we'll have leagues, so you're in the same league and everything.
Not really. That's not the fun part.
The fun part is the gross mismatches.
The Shaquille O'Neals.
That's why you watch.
You have to have this fiction about fairness because we're a society that likes to imagine fairness exists.
All right. So, and then I did a comic that came out on Sunday, which I knew would get me in trouble, which is partly why I do it.
And the subject of the comic was Dilbert talking to his boss.
Dilbert's boss says to him that they want a contract to measure the temperature of the ocean.
And they have to figure out some devices and ways to measure the temperature of the ocean.
And Dilbert says, it's too big.
And the boss says that they'll basically sample it.
Now, this is pretty much the way climate scientists measure the ocean, because the ocean's a big place.
So you can't measure it everywhere.
You can't measure every part of the ocean so that they have representative places in which they can sample it.
And then over time, they can check their samples against other samples and say, did it go up or down?
Now, here's my question.
I'm told by climate scientists that the ocean is like a big memory device in the sense that there are parts of the ocean which still have the temperature memory of maybe thousands of years ago or at least the past.
Because if something gets to the bottom of the ocean, it's going to take a while for anything that happens above the ocean to To change its temperature.
So you've got, you know, the water is moving.
You've got maybe some underground volcanoes.
You've got, you know, if it's true that the, let's say, the Gulf Stream has changed a little bit.
So you've got all these things going on.
So if you were to drop your measurements in certain places, would you get a representative sample?
My guess is no.
Now, I'm not sure if there are scientists who could convince me otherwise.
Maybe they could. I wouldn't rule that out.
But it seems to me, logically, that you could do a sample of something that has some sameness to it.
So somebody tried to use the example of, oh, if you took the blood, if you tested somebody's blood under their arm...
You know, would that be good enough or would you have to test the blood you took out of every part of their body to know what the composition of the blood is?
To which I say, don't we kind of know that blood is the same all over in your body?
But if you talk about the ocean of the entire planet, don't we know that that's changing all the time?
So it might be that you can measure the temperature of the ocean to such precision that you can tell if the temperature of the ocean, the whole ocean, was 0.1 warmer than last year.
Maybe. Maybe.
I don't like to talk in absolutes because that's how dumb people talk.
So maybe that's possible.
But let me ask you, does it feel possible to you?
I mean, I could imagine if they could get it within a few degrees, but if you're talking about climate change, you really need to get it down to, I don't know, a tenth of a degree or something like that?
Somebody says, seriously, where you take the blood matters.
Well, it doesn't matter if it's your arm or your leg, I don't think.
The Electric Universe Theory.
I have not heard of that, no.
Saves the krill.
You must be watching Star Trek Discovery.
By the way, I'm watching the new-ish Star Trek series that's on CBS. They have a paid feature, CBS does.
I don't know what it's called. But you can buy the new Star Trek.
I like it a lot.
I gotta say.
The new Star Trek...
Quite good. The Orville.
So I do watch The Orville.
Christine and I enjoy watching that together.
And I had the hardest time trying to figure out if The Orville was a comedy or what it was the first time I watched it.
And I'm still not sure.
It's really very much its own thing.
But it doesn't seem to fit...
You know, the pattern of other sci-fi, it's very much its own thing.
But for whatever reason, it's very watchable without me ever walking away saying it was good.
I don't know how to explain that, so let me say that again.
The Orville is one of those shows that it's appointment TV. I make sure that I know when it airs, and I know when I watch it, and I make a special point to watch it.
And there are only a few shows like that, two or three.
But every time I watch it, I walk away thinking, well, that wasn't very good.
And then I look forward to it again.
Now, what's that? What makes that happen?
Why is it that I could watch it every time and say, ah, that's not very good, and then still look forward to watching it again?
I don't feel that way about other things.
So there is something about it I like.
Maybe it's because they create a world and you can go live in that world a little while.
I don't know. Maybe it's because they don't really have bad news.
If you watch The Orville, maybe this is it.
I'll tell you, I think maybe I know what it is.
Most shows, they ramp up the tension So that you actually feel bad about what's happening to a character.
And you're thinking, ah, I'd hate to be in that situation.
That looks bad. It feels bad.
But the Orville, even when people are in terrible situations, they never ramp up the stress.
So you're just watching. It's like, it looks like somebody got closed up in a cocoon there.
I guess they'll be out in a few minutes.
Eh, they're out in a few minutes.
Everything's sort of easy on the Orville.
So I think I like it because they never have really bad news on the Orville.
It's like everything is just sort of floating along and everybody survives.
On another topic, I tweeted around this morning a GoFundMe for Michael Caputo for his legal defense.
He is a Republican consultant who got dragged into the Mueller investigations or the congressional investigations.
Anyway, he's been dragged in.
He's run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills for nothing.
For nothing. He just happened to go to work, do his job as a political consultant, and all of a sudden he's being hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal bills and Just for being in the general orbit of President Trump.
And there are 81 people and entities who are being subpoenaed.
Is that the right? I don't know what the right term is.
But old NADS, Jerry Nadler, Gerald.
Gerald Nadler, who I call old NADS, has decided to basically weaponize congressional oversight.
So I think that's the way to think of it.
So old Nads is taking an important and valuable governmental check and balance process, and he's weaponized it against the citizens of the country.
Now, it would be one thing if he was going after elected officials.
You know, I might have a problem with it if it were an overreach, but going after elected officials...
Seems more like congressional oversight-y kind of thing to do.
But once you start dragging in anybody they've talked to or anyone they might have sought advice from, once you start bringing them in and burdening them with, you know, it could be half a million dollars of legal bills by the time somebody's done with this whole cycle, does that seem like a country you want to live in?
I say no. Now, unfortunately for Michael Caputo to push back against this, and he has decided to push back and not participate in it, he's probably in some fairly serious legal jeopardy.
Unless some substantial other part of the 81 people push back as well.
So I would recommend what would make me happiest as a citizen, as a member of the team, I would be happiest if all 81 people refused to cooperate.
Now if they all do it, maybe they have a chance of defending against it.
If Caputo is the only one who does it, he's probably got some serious trouble.
And it's not his fault.
He could be in serious trouble for doing the right thing in public.
If you do the right thing in public and you have committed no crime, you're making a statement about how far you're willing to go to, let's say, add credibility to what is weaponizing the oversight function of the Congress, to go along with that Would be to make the world a worse place.
So Caputo is saying, I'm not going to make the world a worse place, and I'm going to take a chance that I can avoid making my own situation worse by bankrupting me even further than he's already been, basically he's been wiped out by this process.
So you're watching, every time you see this This monster, old Nads, when I watch him, I don't know if it's just me, but you could not have cast in a movie someone who looks more like a troll who lives under the bridge.
I'm just going to say it.
Old Nads... Looks more like a creature than a human.
Now, I usually don't like to make fun of people's looks, but in this case, he's got it coming.
They picked the one person in the world who looks the most like an actual monster, like a troll.
You know, if you were going to cast him, you wouldn't even put makeup on him.
You'd just say, all right, Nads, you're playing the part of a troll who lives under the bridge and just wants to do bad things to people.
And he'll be like, all right, I'll go into the makeup truck.
I'll be out in a few hours.
And they go, oh, no, no, no makeup needed.
We're just going to change your shirt.
We'll just put you in a different shirt.
Everybody will know you're a troll.
They'll just look at you. But, now, I think I'm being influenced by his actions.
In other words, if you just saw him in a business suit, in a business meeting, and he didn't know who he was, you wouldn't have any of these troll-like monster thoughts.
He would just be another guy in a suit.
But because of what he's doing is so wrong, Like, so deeply wrong.
He's actually ruining the country for political means right in front of the country.
He's actually attacking citizens of the country.
For whatever troll-like benefit he thinks he'll get.
It's one of the worst things you'll ever see in your life.
And the fact that we as citizens are allowing this to happen as if it's okay, because it just sort of crept up on us.
You know, you see, oh, somebody, Manafort got pulled in.
Well, that makes sense. He did some bad things.
You see, you know, members of the administration pulled in and you say, well, that makes sense.
They're members of the administration.
Congress has oversight.
Yeah, of course they need to talk to him now and then.
But you see somebody who's not even working for the administration, who's just being bankrupted by the process and has already said he has nothing to say, because he's been talked to a few times already, has presented all the documents that he has access to.
To destroy that guy, It's just pure evil.
Pure evil.
And so when I look at old nads, I see a troll, I see a monster.
And, I don't know, maybe you do too.
So, I would like to open it up for comments.
But the only people I want to talk to this morning are people who still believe in the Charlottesville hoax.
Now, let me give you an update here.
I've been chatting on Twitter with David Pakman, who is one of the people who believes the Charlottesville fine people hoax, believed that the President was talking about the neo-Nazis when he said fine people.
That's the way it's reported.
Of course, that's ridiculous and never happened.
But he believed it. Now I went through my usual defense, and I talked about this yesterday, where he seems to have gotten off of the idea.
I don't want to read too much into his mind, but in terms of our Twitter exchange, it seems like once he was presented with the argument, he backed off the thought that the president was explicitly saying that the neo-Nazis were fine people.
So I think...
We saw a public example where someone believed that hoax and then was talked out of it in public.
I think it's a first.
I don't know anybody else who's gone through that process in public.
But in the end, he didn't back off criticism in general.
So his last position, based on the last tweet, was that the president didn't handle it right.
In the sense that there might have been a little too much hesitation, for example.
So that's a whole different...
Criticism. That's a very different criticism, and it's one that's, you know, harder to argue against.
Because you know what's the hardest thing to argue against?
You should have done it sooner.
Have you ever been in a relationship with someone?
And, you know, you do the right thing, whatever the right thing is.
You tell somebody something that you needed to tell them, you fix something, you apologize for something.
So let's say you do the right thing.
You're in a relationship. Have you ever heard this?
Why didn't you do it sooner?
So that's a chapter in my upcoming book, Loser Think.
If you ever find yourself asking, why didn't you do it sooner?
You are penalizing good behavior.
Penalizing good behavior.
Do you ever give flowers?
To your romantic partner, only to have your romantic partner jokingly say, oh, what do you feel guilty about?
I did. It was the last time she ever got flowers.
Let me say that again.
In a couple of relationships ago, I think two relationships ago, I had a woman in my life who liked to get flowers.
And so one day, there was no occasion, I just got a bunch of flowers and gave her flowers because she liked flowers.
And what did she say?
She said, oh, what do you feel so guilty about?
Flowers out of nowhere. It's not even Valentine's Day.
This, by the way, is exactly what she asked me to do.
She asked me to make romantic gestures when it wasn't, you know, a Valentine's Day.
And so, don't penalize people who do the right thing, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, you can't get past, you should have done it sooner.
Look at all the men saying they had the same experience.
Did you jump to a conclusion about the kid on the video?
How many times do I have to keep talking about that same Covington thing?
Who hurt you, Scott?
Why didn't I tell you this sooner?
All right. So I think I was done with what I was saying.
If there's anybody here who still believes that the President of the United States called neo-Nazis fine people, I would like to talk you out of it in this live format.
So if there's anybody who still thinks, let's see who...
He's waiting. Only virus, Joe, but I don't think I have to talk you out of it.
All right. So if there's anybody here who wants to argue with me that the president went in front of the public and said that neo-Nazis are fine people, that that actually happened, anybody who believes that actually happened, I would like to invite you now to be talked out of it in public.
Because I've figured out now the exact process for doing it.
The best process for talking people out of it is first you show them that the quote was about people on both sides of the statue.
You show that the president clarified and said, no, no, I'm disavowing those neo-Nazis completely.
So you show that he said it very completely.
And then you ask this question.
Do you believe that the President of the United States went on live TV and intentionally thought that praising neo-Nazis who were chanting anti-Semitic slogans thought that that would work out well?
Because that's what you're saying.
You're saying you think the President believed that praising neo-Nazis in public, clearly and on television, would work out well.
So most people will stop right there and they're like, okay, that's crazy.
And then you say, here's the killer.
And then you say, somebody's saying, are you anti-Semitic?
I'm just going to block you.
Even for asking me if I'm anti-Semitic, that gets you a block.
Because the question is an accusation, so you get blocked for that.
So then the second thing you do is you say, and you think that Israel didn't notice.
So why is it that Israel, who is the best detector of anti-Semitism, did not criticize the president for being an anti-Semite and in fact love him and put up his pictures and he moved the embassy to Jerusalem and Israel loves him.
Why do you think that is?
Why is it that you think you're good at spotting anti-Semitism when, first of all, it's obvious he didn't say that because nobody would say that?
And secondly, if he did, how amazing would that be in terms of, you know, unlikely?
And yet, Israel's okay with it?
Israel? Is it because Israel is shy?
Then here's the other point.
How many times does this president, President Trump, change his mind about an opinion?
If he had said it once, would he say it again?
Obviously. Obviously.
If this president said something once, he would say it again.
When asked, is that what you meant?
He said, absolutely not.
He said, I disavow the neo-Nazis.
I'm not talking about them.
Has that ever happened before?
Have you ever seen this president just change his opinion because it was unpopular?
No. What is the main thing that people are complaining about the border security?
That the president keeps talking about crime, the crime coming across the border.
If he keeps talking about crime coming across the border and everybody keeps saying, the way you say that sounds racist, don't you think if the only thing he cared about was sounding not racist, he would change how he talks about the border?
But he doesn't.
Because he doesn't give a rat's ass what you think about it.
If he has an opinion, he just keeps it.
So if he had ever meant, and obviously he didn't mean it, but if he had ever meant that neo-Nazis are fine people, the one thing I guarantee you is he would have said it again, and when asked, he would have said, yeah, that's exactly what I mean.
But he didn't say it, and that's why he wouldn't repeat it.
Didn't happen once, didn't happen twice.
Um... Somebody says, you're very wrong, Scott.
He cares deeply what people think about him.
That is a ridiculous statement.
So I hear this a lot from the critics, that he's thin-skinned and he cares more than other people, is the implication.
He extra cares about what people think of him.
Number one, everybody cares what people think about them.
And if you don't, there's something wrong with you.
Okay? So everyone cares because it matters to your performance.
It matters to your career.
It matters to your political effectiveness.
So what people think of him is really, really important.
And it would be really, really important for every person.
Now, beyond that, does he do things which he knows will be effective, but will make a lot of people angry at him all the time?
He, more than anybody else, doesn't care how angry you are at him as long as it doesn't matter to the outcome.
So what you miss is that when it matters to the income, it matters to the outcome, maybe the income too, but if it matters to his performance, he cares what you think.
If it doesn't matter, he doesn't care what you think.
So that's very different than being sensitive and caring what you think.
He cares when it matters.
Otherwise, obviously, it doesn't seem to make much difference.
What about Ann Coulter?
So the Ann Coulter thing, I think you have to understand who both the players are.
And the way I see the Ann Coulter thing is...
I hate to give up the jig here, but it's a little bit bad cop, good cop.
You see that, right?
Ann Coulter represents the extreme bad cop for, you know, depending on your point of view, it would be bad cop for the border.
The president would like to go further in her direction, but politically it's hard.
So she comes out hard against him.
And it gives him something to push against.
So she's actually a very productive part of the conversation.
I know it doesn't look that way, but I would also be surprised if Trump sees her as completely a negative.
Because I think that as long as she's making the extreme case, everything else he does seems like he's being moderate.
So I think he enjoys pointing out the difference.
So she calls him an idiot, he calls her a wacky, but none of these are too personal, are they?
They're not really that personal.
It's almost as if they both know what they're doing.
So no matter what you want to say about Ann Coulter, there are some things which are just frankly, objectively true.
She's really, really smart.
So whatever else you want to say about her, whether you agree with her or disagree with her, don't like her opinions or character, whatever else you want to say about her, That would be your opinion.
But one thing that's true, she's really, really smart.
So if you factor that in here, I think it's more like two people who know that their current positioning is what helps them most.
Ian Coulter's current positioning helps her most.
It's consistent with all of her other positioning.
She's got a base. She's got a market.
She's got people who buy her books for exactly those opinions.
She's staying consistent.
The president, because he's in the political realm, doesn't have the luxury of having some pure ideological ideas.
He's got to compromise.
So having her over here as the uncompromised extreme for immigration gives him more space to operate.
So having her dislike him is a plus.
It's a plus.
Um... Alright, let's see if there's anybody here who wants to argue with me about Dante.
Let me take...
I'm adding a guest, I can't tell your name, so we could be surprised when my guest comes on.
Hello guest, can you hear me?
Guest? I think my guest went away.
Did not want to come on.
So let's try Dante.
Dante, are you there?
Hello, Dante?
Good morning. How are you?
Good morning. I'm good, man.
Loving the show. I had a quick question a little bit off the subject.
How do you feel about the government legalizing the compound philocybin and DMT to help us wake up spiritually in this spiritual awakening as far as getting away from politics?
How do you feel about that? Yeah, DMT, for those of you who don't know, would be a hallucinogen, sort of like a LSD sort of vibe.
And scientists have, my understanding is that science is pretty certain that DMT in particular has extraordinary medical value.
Extraordinary. Like really, really impressive medical value.
And the risks are quite manageable compared to other meds, I guess.
The risk is quite manageable.
So I would say it's a tough sell in terms of getting politicians to agree with it, but I'm absolutely on board.
Assuming that what I understand about the risks is reasonably accurate.
So I do think the government has some responsibility to make sure that they don't legalize something that's horrible.
But I think if they look into it, they're going to find out under certain situations, maybe only with doctor care, That the benefits are probably extraordinary and it borders on almost criminal negligence to make that stuff illegal given the benefits.
I think you'd agree Dante, wouldn't you?
I totally agree.
I think that a lot of us are coming into a conscious awakening due to the movement of celestial bodies and we're coming to the realization and we're breaking the mold.
And it's a beautiful thing. A lot of us young people are breaking the mold.
We're coming to the understanding and we're breaking through.
The political system and trying to get back to ourselves.
So that's a real hard thing to be able to try to balance who we are as divine beings and as well as balance us as far as in this system that we're caught in as far as the matrix.
My question was pertaining to that and getting back to ourselves and how do we break free of that political structure, even if it's possible.
Yeah, I think hallucinogens have a place, especially not just for people who have specific mental situations, and apparently it can help in those cases, if medically supervised.
I'm going to add medically supervised as a big criteria here.
But yeah, I think it also changes our understanding of what's possible.
So changing your understanding of what's possible is hugely beneficial.
And thank you, Dante. I'm going to take a call.
All right. Bye. All right.
Looking for somebody who wants to...
Let's try Harrison here.
Looking for somebody who wants to argue about the fine people.
I doubt I'll find anybody.
I don't think anybody's going to argue with me on that point, but let's see.
All right. Caller, can you hear me?
Caller? Hey, Scott.
Sure can. Good to talk to you. Hey, hi.
Do you have a question? Hey, I do.
And it's not about anything to do.
So it's about the transports.
So specifically about the arbitrary nature of rules.
So if we're talking sports, at what point are we going to draw a line?
And to me, I think the difference between men and women would be a pretty good line to draw.
Well, that's fine.
You can draw that line, but when somebody has From biological male to female, they're female.
So as long as we're in control of how we define stuff, we can define it any way we want.
So the argument would be not what should the rule be.
You have to go deeper and say why?
What is the purpose of sports?
What are you trying to accomplish?
You're trying to show people the best of whatever set of rules that you're operating under.
So if you're operating under the male-female definition of the rule, you're now looking at something that's comparable across genders.
You're able to compare the best women, as defined by biology, against the best women.
Yeah, but why? Why do you care about that?
Because I enjoy watching the highest quality performance across both men and women.
So I'll take volleyball, for example.
Hold on, hold on.
Let me ask the question, right? Sure.
But why is that important?
You're defending a random standard, and the standard is biologically born men versus biologically born women.
And I understand you might enjoy watching that show, but there's no natural law, there's no constitutional, there's no reason that one of them cannot be, you know, if one person on the field was born male and transitioned to female, It doesn't ruin anything.
Nothing's ruined. Well, but it changes the nature of the sport, though, right?
So if we're creating two sets of separate rules already, right?
We're talking about a male sport and a female sport.
So that's a set of rules.
Wait, hold on, hold on. I'm going to stop you, because it sounds like you're going back down the same path of just saying something like, rules are rules, and rules should be rules, and how about those rules?
Give me a reason.
Give me a reason that does not have to do with a rule.
Well, so the argument, I guess, is under the fact that rules in sport are arbitrary, right?
So there's no value to sport.
You can't do it.
I'm asking you to answer the question without talking about rules.
No, they're not, because if we're talking safety, if we're talking that, that's an argument that we agree on.
Wait, are you saying if it's a bad men match, would it be a safety issue?
No, I'm saying that that would not be a safety issue.
And I'm not trying to put an argument that you agree with in your mouth, right?
So we're not talking safety.
We're talking about the enjoyment for people watching the sport.
Is that the purpose of sports?
Right. Absolutely. It's the purpose of sports.
Now, would you say that's the purpose of high school sports or just professional sports?
Well, so high school sports are a liaison to professional sports for a small, minute percentage of the population.
Right, so we can forget about the small, minute.
Are high school and college sports for the benefit of the spectators?
Well, it depends on what you define as...
Yeah, absolutely. So parents gain...
We're not talking monetary benefit.
Why else would it exist? That's part of it.
That's part of it. But that's not the purpose of high school sports.
The purpose of high school sports is the benefit of the kids.
Okay. Alright, so without talking about rules, what's wrong with having...
Remember, it would be a rare thing.
You might have one transgender on one team somewhere on a woman's team.
So pick any example and tell me what's wrong with it.
Pick a specific sport and tell me why there's something wrong with it.
It's better if you pick a specific sport.
Okay, so I'll use wrestling for example.
Wrestling in high school, men and women at this point, or young adults, right?
Their testosterone is kicked in and there's a difference between a male wrestler and a female wrestler.
Correct. Okay, now, I watched my stepson wrestle in high school.
And although they wrestle in, I guess, weight class or age or something like that, but because of his muscle development being very low, it was like an adult with a rag doll.
Every time he got in there, he was just pushed around like a rag doll.
And it wasn't even close to being a fair competition.
Now, so would you agree that it's typical for competitions, and wrestling is a perfect example, where the better wrestler is just way outclasses the lower level wrestlers?
It's not even close. Would you say that would be common?
Yeah, absolutely. So what would be the difference if one of them happened to be born biologically male?
Well, so again, we're back to the same argument about a rule, right?
So we're trying to maximize benefit in this situation for the kids involved.
Now, as soon as you talk about a rule...
Because there's no reasons.
The rule is what you get to after you have a reason.
So give me the reason, and then we'll make a rule around it.
What are you trying to accomplish?
So at this point, I'm trying to maximize the benefit for all the children involved in the sport of wrestling in high school.
So we're only talking about children in this case?
Well, yeah. So if we're talking professional, we can create an argument for the benefit there.
But if we're only talking about children in high school...
So, high school children, and there's one person who was born biologically male who's competing against the women.
Now, if you're one of the women, born biological women, and it's your turn to wrestle with this person who was born biologically male but has transitioned, could you have the option of not wrestling?
So you can, but you default.
So? So now you're undermining the entire...
So my stepson once lost a wrestling match when he was 14.
Do you think that changed his life in any way?
No, of course not.
These sports are all meaningless things.
If somebody doesn't want to wrestle a person for any reason, they don't have to.
That's not true, though, because we are talking about potential for development in participation through sport.
What are we not talking about? We're not talking about monetary benefit.
There's the ability to manage your time differently, the ability to push yourself differently that sport does help children with.
So if you're now pushing a kid out who's going to receive some life benefits to it, even if they're not going to be professional in that, that could be pushing somebody out because they're like, well, I don't really want to be participating in a physical altercation with somebody of the opposite sex at 14 years old.
If you go to a wrestling match, high school wrestling match, You've got, you know, hundreds, I think, of matches that happen in that building.
In any given day, there might be exactly one transgender person who might have had three matches scheduled and of hundreds.
If those three people say, ah, let's say two out of three say, you know, I'm out.
I don't want to wrestle. This is not fair to me.
Let's say they just forfeit.
Big deal. Right, so why is that fair to the person who's forced to quit?
Why are we holding the individuals who are being forced out because of a true concern about wrestling with a male?
Why is it better to hold the transgender person and their interests above other people?
Because everything's unfair.
So why would it be fair that my stepson wrestled with people who were far better at it?
Basically, they were genetically better at it because they had, you know, different muscle structure, etc.
Right, absolutely. Yeah, and that's going to be the case when you're talking about human differences no matter what.
My argument is we need to draw a line somewhere, right?
Because we're creating something to interact with other people with, right?
In some capacity.
Correct? So you're back to rules.
But yet, if the reasons aren't good, you don't need to talk about the rules.
So the reason is it would be unfair.
Is that your reason?
Yes. I guess that's a fair way of...
Right. So it would be unfair makes it like every other sporting event all the time everywhere.
They're all unfair. They're all unfair because it's good players against less good players.
There's nothing fair about that.
That's the whole point of it is, you know, that there's a Shaquille O'Neal.
Is that fair that he's over seven feet tall?
So no, it's not fair, but there's also no instance where a woman could compete with a Shaquille O'Neal.
So I'd like to have the opportunity for women to...
What's that got to do with anything?
Because women will be overshadowed.
So if we're trying to maximize the benefit between men and women, we're kind of changing the argument now.
We're trying to maximize the potential benefit for either the high school students or the professional athletes.
So your strongest argument is that it wouldn't be fair, but you would admit that all of sports is unfair all the time by design.
Yeah, absolutely. But that's human nature in general.
Everything is unfair all the time.
So if your argument is fairness, And it's not fair anywhere, anytime.
It's not a standard. So you're saying that the standard that doesn't exist in sports should exist?
Well, but I don't know why you're limiting it to sport, because human nature, everything in the world is unfair in some capacity.
So we use rules to try to define that.
Now you agree with me. Okay.
I'm watching the comments come in, and...
I probably have never been more universally disagreed with on any point.
So people are all on your side, by the way.
I'm just watching. I understand.
But I guess part of my question, right, is if you are going to draw a rule somewhere in life, which we always do, right?
Anytime we interact, right, we create a set of rules, a set of hierarchies.
That's just the way the world works.
And why do we set rules?
To maximize utility.
Right. And so the utility, you would agree that the utility of high school would be different than the utility of professional sports, right?
Correct. Okay.
But I think there's a lot more overlap and a lot more benefit to creating a set of rules, right, or a hierarchy or maximizing utility through a set of standards.
Right. I think that set of standards is a fair standard to make.
What makes that a fair standard?
You've decided the answer, and then you work backwards.
You've decided it's unfair for these two individuals to compete, and then you've worked backwards to say, well, it would be unfair.
So I would say that the medical studies over the years that have shown a clear statistical difference between the body composition of men and the body composition of women So, you would also say that the guy who beat my stepson in wrestling should not be allowed to compete because he was really muscular.
No, because he is bound by one of two frameworks, male and female, and there's distributions within those.
Hold on. If I studied, if I did a DNA test, my late stepson, and I did a DNA test on the kid who kicked his ass in a wrestling competition, you would likely find that they have different genetic muscle composition.
There are some people who just have more strength per muscle.
They have the endurance versus the sprinting, etc.
Why should people with such different physicality be in the same group?
Isn't that unfair? Because there's no way he was going to beat that kid.
Right, so if you want to draw a line at trying to create fairness across everything in sport, then that's a conversation we can have, and then removing women's sports from this is an option, right?
I don't see a problem with that part of the conversation.
But don't you either have to accept that unfairness is an essential nature of sports and competition, or you have to get rid of it all?
So the issue I have with that statement is you're drawing a caveat around just sports.
I don't understand why that is the...
Is that what we're talking about?
Right, but I'm saying, why is that a problem in sports?
But it's not a problem in all of life, right?
So life is inherently unfair.
So we draw rules to create...
So we draw rules so humans can interact together in the best possible way.
And when you agree that we can adjust those rules whenever it makes sense.
Absolutely. For utility.
So we could...
Whether or not it's wise or we should, but we could adjust the rules so somebody born biologically male who transitions would be allowed to compete on some women's teams and maybe it depends on the team.
So there might be a difference between Football.
I don't know if there's much women's football.
So it doesn't exist.
I'll give you a little bit of background myself.
I'm actually personally an SEC, an ex-SEC athlete with a degree in data science.
So I have a very strong benefit that has come from me in the athletics field, but I've also seen the massive amounts of negatives of going through this path that you talked about.
But hold on for a second.
Every time you bring the argument back to, but you have to understand that these biologically born males have a great advantage, you're not really on the argument, because that's the part everybody agrees on.
And I found that people keep going back to that as if I somehow didn't agree with the most obviously true thing.
Right, and I'm not claiming that you disagree with that point.
So can we start from the understanding that it's a great advantage?
Absolutely. 110% more.
Now, then would it be true that other people who are, let's say, just men on a man's team, there would be men who have great advantage.
And if you're looking at women's sports, if you look at the women who often are winning these sports, you look at them and you say, well, no wonder they're winning.
They're bigger, they're stronger.
Obviously, we're born with some advantages.
Would you say that people having a pretty big advantage is the normal and accepted way of sports?
Absolutely. There's a biological requirement to be in the top percentile in athletics.
So, what you've described so far is lacking a reason.
You've completely given up on the reason.
The reason is that the tails don't overlap.
The tails of the female distribution does not overlap with the tails of the male distribution.
Alright, that's just word salad now.
I'm going to go to another caller because you've kind of lost the trailer.
Alright, let's try somebody else on a different topic.
By the way, once you get to the word salad, you have to back out.
Does anybody... I'm looking at your names and trying to see if anybody would argue me on something else.
Alright, I'm gonna ask Virus Joe to come in here just because you've been so patient.
Joe, are you there?
Virus Joe? Good.
How are you? Got a question?
Not too bad. I just wanted to say again, thank you.
You're awesome. You are my joy in the morning, especially when you're cursing, so please do more of that.
I love it. But I had a question more on the lines of, basically, you had mentioned in the past about drug dogs and their use with fentanyl, and if it was possible for them to, I think, To actually be able to, you know, sense that.
And then the possibility of parents as well, too.
Well, my mom and family and police, she's trained dogs for the FBI. All the agencies, basically, the local police, sheriff's department, everything like that as well.
And one of the things that, you know, obviously dogs can be hurt by fentanyl.
You know, they smell it or anything like that.
It gets in contact with them, just like a human.
And it'll hurt them very badly, of course.
But one of the biggest changes that I think could save lives has to do with law.
Here in North Carolina, If you wanted to bring a dog in, like for ourselves, if we had a drug-sniffing dog, because hers is trained on cadavers, drugs, everything, literally.
And if you brought in that dog, you are legally obligated to call the police once you find something or have a sense that something is there if the dog hits on something.
If you call the police instead, Again, they're legally obligated to arrest you, so it sort of creates a big blockade of people in that hard situation of, well, I want to stop my kids from doing drugs, whether it's fentanyl or any other type of drugs, but I don't want them to go to jail.
Like, is there a less sort of a sentence, and they're sort of stuck in a limbo area.
And I don't know what laws are in all other states, but I know that's created a huge problem.
Just by itself.
Because dogs, of course, you know, sense, smells.
They sense every individual smell.
They don't just smell fentanyl as like one object.
They smell like literally, say, if they were eating or smelling a salad, they would smell the tomatoes, the lettuce, the onions, everything like that as well.
Okay. Well, thank you for that comment.
Yeah, the laws probably do need to be adjusted.
I've understood that the...
A little bit of fentanyl, otherwise they die.
There's actually a big risk to the dogs if they become full-time.
Any other change or persuasion that could be used for that?
Yeah, I guess I don't know enough about this field, but you pointed out something that sounds like it's worth looking at.
So thank you for that.
Thank you. So I'm enjoying watching the comments.
So those of you who watched my conversation with the caller who was arguing against transgender sporting, give me your comments.
I want to see what the poll looks like.
So I'm seeing most of the people who say that the caller smoked me.
Here's what I heard. And people are saying it wasn't word salad.
I'm pretty sure I understand what word salad looks like.
And here's what it would not look like.
Here's what it would not look like.
What is your standard for sports?
Let's say the standard is entertainment.
Does a transgender add to or subtract from the entertainment in any real way?
Now, that would be an argument With a point.
You know, professional sports are about entertainment.
Transgender either does or does not affect the quality of the entertainment product.
You could have an argument on that.
Here's another one. There's a physical risk to the people playing against the biologically born male transgender.
They have a physical risk that they wouldn't have playing against other women.
That would be an argument.
I would listen to that argument, and I would also say, well, it depends on the sport.
Tennis, no problem.
Full contact football, MMA, maybe you choose not to fight against somebody like that who would physically hurt you.
But you saw him going in circles on, but, but, but, we have rules.
None of that is on point.
None of it about why we have rules It has anything to do with anything, because that's the answer.
You have to start with, what's the point of this competition?
If the point of the competition was to build character in kids, would you argue that having one transgender that you've ever even met, like one team, one place, has one transgender athlete?
Would that ruin it for everybody?
Probably not. Probably make them understand the world a little better.
Sure, there's one person who doesn't make the team, but that's the way all teams work.
There's always one person who didn't make the team who wishes they had.
So, I would say that if you see somebody arguing a tight argument, where they say, okay, the point of the competition is building character, let's say high school sports, and does the transgender add or subtract to that?
And once you've developed that, is there any other point that matters?
See, that would look like a good argument to me.
No matter how it came down, it would look like a rational argument.
If it's professional, you say, well, this is mostly about entertaining the public.
It's not really about building character for the athletes.
They already have character.
They wouldn't be there. So it's entertainment.
Does the transgender add to or subtract?
Now, that would be a good argument.
But you did not hear the caller take either of those arguments.
You saw him just chasing himself in circles and trying to say the word rule as many times as possible.
And stuff like fairness.
But fairness is not one of the standards.
Fairness is not what builds character.
In fact, sometimes it's the opposite of fairness that builds character.
Fairness is not necessarily what makes sports in general entertaining, because there's so much unfairness into it, you'd miss it if it weren't there.
If you didn't have Michael Jordan unfairly better than everybody you played against, it wouldn't be nearly as fun.
So, for those of you who believed that what he said wasn't word salad, compare to what a real argument looks like, and then think about it.
Because if you're talking concepts and rules and philosophy and stuff, you're not really on point.
Alright, that's enough for now.
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