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March 13, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:09:27
Episode 449 Scott Adams: College Admissions Scandal, “Fine People” Hoax, Baby Killing Hoax, More
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Hey everybody!
What a day!
What a day! The news is interesting!
Very interesting today.
So you got lots of things to talk about?
There are hoaxes everywhere.
It's a world full of hoaxes.
We'll talk about all those.
But you don't want to talk about hoaxes until you're prepared.
And an important part of your preparation is a thing I call coffee.
Or coffee. And it comes in a mug, a cup, sometimes a thermos, a stein, a chalice, if you like.
You might have a different liquid that you like better, but in any case, I'll tell you what you like.
What you like is a simultaneous sip, and it's coming up right now.
All right, so the most fun story in the news is the college admissions scandal.
I hope you've all caught up with this because it's just wonderfully delicious news.
And the concept is that a bunch of rich people were gaming the system to get their kids into high-end schools, Ivy League schools and USC, etc.
And the way they were doing it was there were a combination of techniques.
They were bribing coaches to say that they were recruiting their kid.
They were getting people to take the kids' SATs.
They were photoshopping their kid's head onto another athlete's body to make it look like they were on a team.
Clever and innovative ways.
And I'm reading this news and I'm seeing that Felicity Huffman, actress Felicity Huffman, and also actress Lori Loughlin, were two of the moms who got scooped up in this thing, I guess were 50 or whatever people, and they were trying to get their kids into better schools.
And I don't know about you, but my first reaction to this was when I found out what these mothers were doing and the great lengths they were taking to get their kids in and they were breaking laws.
They were breaking laws to get their kids into better college.
And the first reaction I had was, I think my mother could have worked a little harder.
It feels like my mom and dad maybe didn't put in the full effort.
I mean, I thought they loved me, but it's obvious that there was another speed they could have gone to.
And... I don't know.
Maybe it's just me.
And while I certainly think that the law must be applied to everyone equally, so nobody should get away with breaking the law, still, Felicity Huffman, mother of the year, Mother of the year.
Because if you're her kid, you know she put in the effort.
She put in the miles.
She did the work. She took the risk.
And did she do all those things for herself?
Well, some people are going to say yes.
You know, it's really for the parents because they don't want to be embarrassed by the kids or whatever.
But I don't really think so.
I got a feeling that they did it for their kids.
You know, primarily. And so that's not the only funny thing about this.
So now that we know that there are rich people who are getting their unqualified kids into Ivy League schools, there's something that's sort of a secondary effect that I realized yesterday, and it goes like this.
You might know that I disagree with people Quite often, because I do a lot of tweeting and periscoping and I say a lot of things on a lot of different topics.
So, more than most people, I'm in a situation where I'm in a disagreement with somebody over some topic.
Usually a friendly disagreement, but we're debating some topic.
Sort of the main texture of my life is arguing with people about some topic.
And my old way of thinking, and by old I mean before this admissions scandal, is if I got into a debate with someone who had, let's say, lower academic credentials than I have, I would think to myself, well, probably the problem here is the other person.
I don't want to brag, but if a dumb person disagrees with me, My first instinct, it's not always true, but my first instinct is, well, I know the cause of the problem of our disagreement.
It's the person who's not so smart.
But when I would run into a Harvard And they would disagree with me, as they often did.
My first reaction would be that if I'm disagreeing with somebody who has a Harvard, Princeton, Yale degree, my first instinct was, what am I missing?
I'm missing something here.
Because if this Ivy League person is disagreeing with me, I really got to check my thinking.
Did I miss an assumption?
Is there something I should have looked into better?
Do I have a logic gap?
But now, because of this admissions thing, I think the benefit of a doubt is gone.
It feels to me that the accidental outcome of this is that a Harvard degree just became a lot less valuable.
Because if I encounter somebody that I disagree with, whether it's in a work situation or just arguing on the internet, and I know that they're a Harvard-trained person, for example, And they disagree with me, and I don't know exactly yet what the cause of the disagreement is.
You know, we're just starting. My first instinct may no longer be, what's wrong with me?
I think now the benefit of a doubt has moved to, how did you get into Harvard?
That might be my first thought.
Now, I'm not saying that will always be predictive, but in terms of the reputation of the Ivy Leagues, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't it just go down 40%?
You know, in terms of just how you thought about the Ivy League schools.
I always thought that their primary thing that they did well is that they would certify that the people who went there were extra smart.
That's sort of the biggest value, isn't it?
Because I'm not sure that you get...
A markedly better education from the Ivy League versus the next level down, you know?
Is your Harvard education that much better than your USC, your UCLA, your Cal Berkeley?
Is it that much better?
I don't think so.
But it was a better credential because it said, well, you're definitely, definitely extra smart if you're in one of these schools.
But now? Well, apparently that's not the case.
The extra smart stuff, you can't assume anymore.
So the brand of those schools just went down 40%, just to pick a number.
All right. So I hear that on Friday there will be thousands of kids all over the country who are skipping school on Friday to protest a lack of progress on climate change.
That's right. Children...
Are getting political.
Your first reaction to that is, what the hell do children know?
Why are we letting children manage or even influence our politics?
Do you know who is dumb?
Children. Do you know what happens when they grow up?
They get smarter.
So should we listen to the dumbest people in society to decide what to do?
Well, they also have an interest.
So it's not so much that they're smart or they have a better idea, but they do have an interest in survival, so I'll give them that.
But it's always a little bit ridiculous when children enter the political realm, and you can't overlook that.
So yesterday, if you haven't seen it yet, I gave a drumming lesson.
Beginning drummer's lesson on Periscope.
So you can see that in my Twitter feed.
And I think it went well.
And I was experimenting with this.
I was trying to see if you can give a very quick, tight lesson on something so that in 20 minutes you could teach somebody 80% of what they wanted to learn on a topic.
Now, I tried to teach people 80% of what they need to know to get going if they wanted to start being a drummer.
And I think I came pretty close to hitting that mark.
In fact, in about 10 minutes, I'd hit all the highlights.
But I was testing the hypothesis That online school is currently not as good as regular school.
There are a number of benefits of going in person.
And the online experience isn't as good.
It doesn't teach you as well.
Now the problem is that the online experience today is just essentially turning on a camera as somebody who wanted to do it.
So the main requirement of being an online instructor is, well, I'm an instructor.
And I want to do it.
And somebody pointed a camera at me.
Well, now I'm an online instructor.
But what I was trying to demonstrate is that there would be an extraordinary difference between an average instructor on video and somebody who was really, really good at it.
And with all due humility, there are a few things that I have a world-class talent at.
Now, it's a world-class talent primarily because of practice.
It's something I do for my job, and I've done it for 30 years.
And that skill is simplifying and communicating.
So finding what's important, putting it in its simplest form, and communicating it in its most effective form.
Now, In theory, I could do that on any topic, because it's a general skill, so long as I had enough information about the topic that I could speak with some accuracy.
So I tried that with drumming.
I am myself a beginning drummer.
But I hypothesized that that would make no difference because I knew enough that I could transmit, you know, just the beginning stuff that I know to someone else who was also before that.
They're not even a beginner yet, but they're considering it.
And that I could do that more effectively than an average instructor because...
I have an extra talent at it.
It's what I do for my job.
I simplify. And so that was the test.
And I'd love to hear back from anybody who watched it to see if it succeeded on just that level.
And the level is, could you see that if you had the right instructor, online training would be way better than in person?
I hope I demonstrated that, but you can tell me.
Now, it's also true that my startup, the Interface by WenHub app, has online instructors for drums.
So you could go onto that app and you could take an online course.
That's the way I'm learning drums.
I'm learning it from an online teacher.
And I just do it whenever I want to, and I pay his fee, and it's great.
All right. And I remind you that the Interface by WinHub app has a donation button now, so somebody can sign up to accept donations for whatever art or creation they're doing.
Same as Patreon, so it's an alternative to Patreon, in case anybody's interested in that.
Let's talk about...
I saved the good parts for last.
Alright, so if you didn't see this, Joel Pollack has an article today in Breitbart, which is the thing I've been waiting for, which is apparently CNN, which as you know has been misreporting the story about...
About the Charlottesville fine people hoax.
So CNN has been reporting for two and a half years that when the president referred to fine people regarding the Charlottesville incident, the reporting is that he was talking about the Nazis being, the neo-Nazis being fine people.
That is fake news.
It never happened. He was very clearly, and he clarified it when people asked, talking about the people on both sides of the statue question, not the Nazis.
He specifically excluded them from the fine people category.
But it turns out that CNN had previously reported That he was referring to the statue issue with the fine people and not the racists.
So in other words, CNN has on their own news site reported opposites.
One, that he was clearly...
They have one article that says he was clearly talking about people on both sides of the statue controversy.
And then there's every on-air host who says exactly a different story, that he was talking about the neo-Nazis.
Now, Now it's confirmed that they know they're doing it.
So it's no longer in question whether it's accidental.
Likewise, both Joel Pollack at Breitbart and I have been making enough noise about this, and other people have tweeted it.
It's got all kinds of attention.
And we're asking CNN, directly and indirectly, to comment.
How do they explain the fact that they've reported it accurately and then they also report it inaccurately?
They have to kind of pick one.
Which one is the accurate story?
Or what is the reason they're reporting it inaccurately?
Or at least issue a correction or an apology or whatever.
But what kind of response do you think we've gotten so far?
If you guessed zero, you'd be right.
Do you see CNN just having a masturbatory ecstasy over the whole Tucker Carlson situation?
Do you think CNN is shy about punching back at their critics?
They are not shy about that at all.
In fact, it's one of their favorite things to do is point out when their critics are wrong or overreached or ridiculous or the critics did something 10 years ago that they think is inappropriate today.
They love punching back.
It's a pretty important part of the business model, right?
You have to punch back.
You can't let other people define you.
But I'm defining the hell out of them.
So is Joel.
And we're making a clear case, and they're just ignoring it.
Now, what did I tell you would happen?
So those of you who watch my Periscopes know that before I started this process, and before Joel was hitting him hard on this, before we even did this, I told you to expect no response, and that it would be unusual in its lacking.
In other words, it would be a situation where you couldn't even imagine they could ignore it, but I told you they would.
It's because they have to.
They don't have a...
They don't have a choice.
So the fine people hoax has now been debunked by CNN's own reporting on a story that they ran.
At the same time, they continue doing it.
That's now confirmed.
So we don't have to wonder what the facts of the story are in that sense.
We have a confirmation that there is an intentional, apparently, decision To continue misreporting this and making themselves the enemy of the people.
Now, when you see this particular story, how they're driving the Charlottesville fine people hoax and presenting it as news, I think we all agree that that is the single most divisive issue that President Trump has dealt with.
He's had a lot of controversies, but nothing quite in that class.
And it's just not true.
It literally didn't happen.
And so if you look at it in that context, the country is at the, you know, people think it's at the brink of a civil war, a race war or something.
Why? It's not because of what Trump said.
It's because of how CNN intentionally, now we know it's intentional, misreports it.
Um... So think about that.
If that doesn't make you the enemy of the people, what does?
They actually are attacking the citizens of the United States.
It's a full-out attack on the citizens of the United States.
How in the world can you interpret that any other way?
I don't know any other way.
Yeah, and the Russia collusion hoax was another one.
Probably the second most divisive issue in the country was the idea that Trump was working with the Russians.
Today, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, if Nancy Pelosi really believes that Trump colluded with the Russians, and she also says, which she said yesterday, that she is not in favor of impeachment, shouldn't Nancy Pelosi be impeached?
Because by her own description, She is allowing Russia to run the United States.
That would be her description of events, because she has said Trump is colluding with Russia.
If she doesn't act to at least get the impeachment going, which would be her job, she is allowing, in her own words, and this is Glenn Greenwald's realization, and it's a terrific one, she is, in her own words, a traitor.
Or a liar. So there are only two possibilities.
Either she's, well, I guess, or incorrect.
She's either lying or incorrect about Trump and collusion and Russia, or she's not doing her job to stop it by impeaching him, and therefore she should be impeached.
Or I think there's a different process for removing from office, but you get the idea.
All right. Here's a prediction check for you.
There are many predictions that I've made, and I've told you many times that you should only listen to people who can predict accurately.
If you can't predict, you don't know anything.
Predicting the past doesn't count.
You have to be able to say, in public, here's my specific prediction, and then keep track And if you can do a good job, in other words, you don't get them all right, but you get better than most people, then you should give that person more credibility.
Here's another prediction I made.
You're not going to like it.
I apologize in advance for how this is going to make you feel.
Because I know you're not going to like it.
But I do it because you need to track my prediction record.
Do you remember when we first heard from the emails of Lisa Page and McCabe?
Do you remember when we first heard the term insurance policy?
And just about everybody, at least on the right side of the political world, said, there it is, the smoking gun.
The phrase insurance policy could only mean one thing.
It can only mean That they need another way to take him out of office.
That if he gets elected, they will use this insurance policy to take him out.
What I said is there's no way it means that.
So my prediction was that 100% of the people on the right had misinterpreted the email.
And what I said was...
That the reason it's misinterpreted is because they're interpreting, the interpretation that the insurance policy was a direct statement about the deep state having a plan to get rid of Trump, I said that's ridiculous in part because FBI agents, wait for it, wait for it, FBI agents know that their text messages are not private.
There's nobody who knows that more than an FBI agent.
An FBI agent knows their text messages are not private.
And so to me, the odds that they would actually be talking about a coup by text automatically made that the least likely explanation.
So now Lisa Page has given her explanation of what the insurance policy meant.
And here's her explanation.
And I want you to put this through the BS filter.
The BS filter says that if there are two explanations that both fit the facts that you can observe, one of them is this extraordinary, incredible, hard-to-believe thing, and the other is completely ordinary, you should believe the one that's completely ordinary.
Here are the two interpretations.
One is that FBI agents somehow didn't care or forgot that all text messages are discoverable.
And they plotted to overthrow the government to the United States with trickery by pretending the president had done something bad.
That would be an extraordinary situation.
Right? Here's her explanation.
Her explanation is that the investigation was ongoing.
They had not found any direct evidence of Trump and collusion, but they had enough concern to keep it open.
They didn't know they would never find anything, so they had enough concern that it was still open.
They did not believe that Trump had really any chance of getting elected.
Here's the key. There was no chance, they thought, the FBI thought, and I think that's fair to say, they thought there was almost no chance that Trump would actually get elected.
And therefore, it really wouldn't matter much whether he was colluding with Russia or not, because he was about to become irrelevant.
He was not going to become president.
However, however, in the unlikely chance that he actually got elected, They better keep that investigation open.
Because then it mattered.
That was the insurance policy.
The insurance policy is you don't close the investigation because he might get elected.
And if there's something to it that we haven't yet found, and it's unlikely that we'll ever find something, and it's unlikely that it will ever make a difference, and it's unlikely he'll get elected that it would ever matter anyway.
But if all of those things happened, That was their insurance policy.
And it was an insurance policy for the benefit of the country.
For the benefit of the country.
Wouldn't you want to know if a president was colluding with Russia?
Of course you would. If it were true, you would absolutely want to know that.
Right? So she was saying that in the unlikely chance that Trump got elected, And if there was anything to the collusion and they had not found anything yet, it was a good insurance policy just in case there was something there.
Completely ordinary business as usual.
So, my prediction was that whatever, that we would someday learn that that insurance policy quote was something ordinary.
And there it was.
Now, some and maybe most of you are going to say, well, that's convenient.
Sure, she has an alibi.
She has a story that sounds good.
But I still believe the extraordinary version of that.
Now, probably the truth is somewhere in the middle, meaning that they were all biased against the president.
They all wished there were something.
Maybe they imagined there was something there.
Maybe they wanted it to be there.
But that's a little bit different than running a coup and talking about it by text.
I mean, that's the part that should make you scratch your head.
They're FBI agents.
Would they be planning a coup by text message?
I mean, at the very least, they'd be using a corrupted, you know, the signal app, or they'd only talk about it in person, etc.
So I'm going to claim That my prediction was accurate, and I'm the only person on the right, you know, I'm not sure I identify on the right except in a team sense, because I prefer the right.
Let me say this, I've never said this before, so I'm going to say this, you'll hear this for the first time from me.
I've told you many times that I identify politically left of Bernie.
Meaning, for example, I would like to have free college and free healthcare for everybody, but unlike Bernie and unlike the Green New Deal, I don't know how to do it.
I hope we can do it through innovation and capitalism.
That seems like the best play, but I don't even know if that's enough.
So emotionally and philosophically, I'm left to Bernie.
I just don't know how to get there, which makes me different from a lot of people on the left.
But my preference for who I spend time with is people on the right.
In other words, the people on the right, which is most of you on this periscope, I'm guessing, are just nicer people.
That's my experience, that the people on the right Are nicer people.
And that the people on the right, even knowing how often I disagree with you politically, still treat me better than the people on the left.
And I've always wondered why that is.
You know, why do I get better treatment from the people who disagree with me?
And some of it is that there are parts we do agree on.
If you like President Trump's performance, then we're on the same page on that.
But here's what it comes down to.
I think the defining characteristic of people on the right is that they are rules-based people, meaning that if you follow the law, And you follow the Constitution, which I do.
I like the law.
I like the Constitution.
I like capitalism.
And I'm fine with whatever your religion is.
It doesn't happen to be mine, but I'm fine with it.
I think there are definite benefits to people who have a religion and they use it the right way.
So, because, and this is my hypothesis, because you know me as a rule follower, That I'm 100% okay with you.
Is that right? Maybe you can confirm or deny that.
So my assumption is that people on the right embrace me while disagreeing with me on all kinds of stuff because I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to be playing by the same rules, same constitution, same laws, and that we should do things that make sense.
You know, you need a system that works.
Capitalism, it's got all kinds of problems, but it works.
So that's my hypothesis.
Anyway, I don't know where I was going with all that, but let's talk about a couple more things.
All right, so we talked about the Charlottesville fine people hoax has now essentially been solved.
We don't have to wonder about it.
There was... Let's talk about...
Oh, you're not going to like this.
So I got into a conversation on Twitter.
I saved the controversial part.
Oh, no. Let me do one more thing before I... I was going to talk about late-term abortions.
I'm going to do that in a minute. But I want to get back to a point about transgender athletes.
I've been arguing... That there would be nothing bad with the world if transgender athletes, people born biologically male, are allowed to compete in female sports.
And when I've been talking to people on Twitter, I notice that they either don't understand my point Or they change the topic a little, and I wanted to just kind of nail that down a little bit.
So the biggest argument against it, and what I mean against, is the idea of having a transgender athlete on a woman's team is that it would be an unfair advantage.
To which I say, I'm not sure you thought it out.
So let's work this through.
So let's say you have a basketball team with five starters, just to keep it simple.
You've got two different teams.
If one of these players is really, really good, is that fair?
And the answer is yes.
Because that would be normal.
Whatever basketball team Michael Jordan was on in high school was a really, really good team because he was on it.
And his genetic makeup is completely unlike the other people on the team in all likelihood because, you know, he could jump 48 inches in the air.
He obviously had good hand-eye coordination.
He was a certain height.
He had all the tools.
Nobody could really compete with Michael Jordan.
Was that fair? Most people would say yes, that is fair.
But, suppose this was a transgender athlete.
Way better than the other people.
Again, different situation.
It's not Michael Jordan. It's a transgender athlete.
Way better than the other people.
Is that fair?
I say yes, because it's exactly like the normal situation.
The normal situation is almost every team has one or two players that are way better than the other players.
That's the most normal situation in every sport.
So nothing different.
Suppose you've got your two female sports teams and everything is good and then a transgender person comes in and takes a spot.
And because they took a spot, a woman who normally would be on the team gets bumped off the team.
Is that fair?
Is that fair?
That a transgender athlete comes in onto a woman's team and is so good that it bumps some other woman off?
Is that fair? Well...
I say yes. And here's why.
In my school, when I went to high school, there was a new kid who came into town.
It was a very small school.
So the new kid comes into town.
His name was Brian.
And he was extraordinarily good at sports.
So the new kid came in and he kicked one of the boys off every sports team because he was a new body and he made every team and he was such a good athlete That people like me got dropped off.
Was that fair? Was that fair that this kid could come from another town and he was such a good athlete that just him attending the school caused one person to be dropped from every male sports team?
Was that fair?
Well, it's exactly like having the transgender command.
It is the most normal situation in the world that people who have genetic gifts Have an unfair advantage.
The transgender athlete, in most cases, we would assume would have some.
We'll get to your special cases like boxing and MMA in a minute.
So I would argue that...
And now let's take this further.
Let's say this team has a transgender athlete and it causes this team to beat this team every time.
Is that fair? Well, no matter what happens, no matter which team wins, 50% of these players are going to be on the losing team.
Every time. No matter what happens, if these two teams play, 50% of the competitors are going to be on the losing team.
Now you add a transgender, and what changes?
50% of the people are on the losing team.
Same. So, I would suggest that if you're talking about basketball, soccer, etc., Don't argue with me that the transgender athlete on the woman's team has a huge advantage.
That's the part we all agree on.
That person has a huge advantage.
But it's also normal.
There's always an athlete who has a big advantage.
Now somebody said, what about boxing?
What about MMA? Where there's a risk of somebody actually being injured because of the differences.
Have you ever seen Ronda Rousey?
Who for a long time dominated MMA in the women's division.
I don't know much about this sport, so maybe I get some facts wrong here.
But she was such a powerful person that she just beat the crap out of her opponents for a long time until somebody was strong enough to take her down.
It is normal for the winning MMA fighter to just, you know, hurt, physically injure their opponent.
Now, if you had a choice of fighting against the stronger athlete, whether it's Ronda Rousey or a transgender athlete, you can choose not to.
You could just say, okay, I'm out.
You know, this competition wouldn't be fair.
I would just get injured. There's no chance of winning.
So I'm out. Now, that would make the MMA have to probably change some rules, maybe adjust, maybe have some special matches, whatever.
But it's not the biggest problem in the world.
It's such a tiny, tiny little problem that do you want to prohibit an entire class of people, the transgenders, from enjoying the normal benefits of society because of these tiny little problems?
That is almost the definition of bigotry.
And then I also made the point that in tennis, for example, I used to play on a tennis ladder.
Now, a tennis ladder is everybody ranks themselves in terms of how good they are, and there might be a hundred people on the ladder.
In my hypothetical example, they could be male or female.
So the men would be mostly ranked higher, the women would be mostly ranked lower, mostly.
There would be some overlap, but mostly there would be a difference in the men would be toward the top.
But everybody can only challenge the person who's one or two levels above them.
So those are the rules of the ladder.
So it wouldn't matter if it's a man or a woman, you could challenge them if they were one or two levels above you.
I have personally played tennis against a number of women, and several of them have beaten me badly and consistently.
So there are two women that I used to play in particular who could beat me almost every time.
Because they had been college-level players, etc.
Did I enjoy playing tennis with women who could beat me?
Yeah, it was great.
They were really fun matches.
I enjoyed every bit of it as much as I would enjoy playing against a man.
No difference. So there are sports like tennis.
In which you could easily adjust things if you wanted to or you could just put the woman on the men's team.
Somebody said, what would tennis look like if you had a transgender athlete?
Well, we don't have to wonder because there has been a famous transgender tennis player.
Renee Richards. Many of you are not old enough to remember, but Renee Richards was transgender and started as a male tennis player, played on the woman's side.
And you might not be surprised that Renee Richards won a lot of matches.
But here's the fun part.
Did not become a number one player.
So Rene Richards was a man who played on women's tennis and did not become the number one player.
It was very good and people were angry when they lost to Rene Richards but never got to the top.
Now let's take Serena Williams.
Have you ever seen a picture of Serena Williams' muscles?
Have you seen like a slow-mo where she's powering through a shot and you can see the muscle structure in her shoulders and her arms?
It's extraordinary.
Now, some critics would say, I'm not sure those are entirely natural muscles.
I don't know. But I will say that if you're playing against Serena Williams and you weigh 105 pounds and you're a typical woman's player with a typical female body, is that fair?
Does it seem fair to you that someone with a typical non-muscular female body would be in a competition against Serena Williams who's just ripped?
Is that fair? So here's my point.
Those of you who are saying...
Someone who's saying that this is a torturous...
I'm seeing the word. It's tortured.
It's tortured. But what you'll discover is that you can't give me a reason to disagree.
If I were to ask any of you individually...
Actually, let me test this.
I'll take...
I will take a...
I'll take a call.
I'm plugging my microphone so I can hear you.
I'm going to take a call from someone who disagrees with what I said about transgender athletes.
And I want you to watch what happens.
See if the person can get off of it's not fair.
Because all of sports is not fair.
They're designed mostly around unfairness.
There's always a team that loses.
If there's one team that's at the top, all of the other teams are below.
It's really cruel. Sports are kind of a cruel environment.
So let's see. Let's take somebody who wants to argue with me.
I have to guess who would be arguing with this point.
Let's see. I'll take whoever came on last because that means you probably want to talk about this very thing.
So... All right.
Guest, are you there? Good.
Do you have a comment on the transgender athlete?
Yeah, I mean, you're persuading me, but I have one question.
I understand about the unfairness that there's people like Michael Jordan, but the sports, you know, they decide where the unfairness is.
Well, hold on. Just for fun, I'm going to collect your thoughts.
I'm going to give you a full shot to give you your point.
But I wanted to show the people at home That even before you give your point, that, well, I'll let you give your point.
Go ahead.
All right, fair enough. Why shouldn't a non-transgender man be allowed to compete in women's sports?
I mean, if it's just about unfairness, of course it's going to be unfair for a 7-foot, 280-pound man to compete with women in certain sports.
But if he's not transitioned, why shouldn't he be allowed to play?
Or do you think that he should be?
Who is promoting that idea?
Are you leading an organization that wants men to play with women?
I don't see how that matters.
I mean, maybe somebody will in the future.
Maybe somebody is now.
Would there not be men that would like to do that just so they could win?
Hold on. Literally nobody wants that, as far as I know.
If you can find anybody who wants to do that, then it's worth talking about.
But to the best of my knowledge, there's nobody who wants to combine male and female sports completely.
So that hypothetical, I judge to be irrelevant, because nobody wants it.
Okay, fair enough. I mean, I can't think of an argument against that.
Maybe there is, and I'm sure there are men that would like to do that.
But you're right, I don't hear about it in public, so I just wanted your thoughts.
All right, thank you. Thank you for that comment.
Appreciate it. Let's take another caller.
So you saw my, I think you're starting to see my point, right?
That, let's take another caller.
I'm hoping it's on the same topic.
If it's not, I might have to take a caller after that.
All right, caller, can you hear me?
Do you have a comment on the trends?
Can you hear me? Question.
Scott? Daniel, Daniel. Daniel did not come through.
Did not come through.
Let's try. Let's try David.
David. David, David.
The reason I unplugged the microphone is because I can't hear when the microphone's in that thing, and when I wear this, people complain.
Can you hear me? Volumes are at different levels.
Yes, I can. Do you have a comment on the transgender athlete question?
Yeah, I got a couple of them.
Talking about a biological standpoint, women's tendons versus men's tendons in their arms, muscular mass versus back mass.
Oh, stop. Stop. Can we both agree that a transgender athlete has very large advantages?
We're both on the same point, right?
Wait a minute. Say that again.
Do we both agree that transgender athletes have physical advantages in general?
Physical advantages?
No. No, I don't.
So you're saying that transgender athletes and People were born women.
Serena Williams' argument, a 105-pound tennis player playing at the top level of his game could take on Serena Williams no matter what she weighs and beat her.
That's my point. Just because the way his muscle, bones, and tendons are attached biologically, period.
There's no question that he could hit.
If he's physically fit, an athlete in his top-of-the-game tennis...
He could beat her, no problem.
Okay, and what's your point?
My point is, you also brought up the Michael Jackson, or not Michael Jackson, sorry, Michael Jordan thing.
Sorry, just watched that Jackson thing on TV. That was interesting.
Anyway, Michael Jordan theory that if a transgendered woman was playing back in the day like Michael Jordan was playing with an all-boys team and he ended up being the best.
So, two-team theory where one team has a transgender and one team doesn't, does that make it fair or unfair?
I consider it to be unfair to the transgender.
I'm going to delete you for that comment.
So the caller called in to say it would be unfair.
That is the one thing we all agree on.
So that was what I wanted to demonstrate to you.
I wanted to demonstrate that whenever I argue about this, I start with the statement, it's definitely an unfair advantage.
And then people will argue and say, Scott, you're wrong, because it's an unfair advantage.
And then I say, that's the part we agree on.
We all agree it's an unfair advantage.
And then people will say, but what you're forgetting is that it's an unfair advantage.
So I wanted to demonstrate that, and the scholar did it perfectly, because if you don't understand we're all on the same point that it's an unfair advantage, the only thing you have to argue is that sports were fair to begin with or that that's some kind of ambition of sports.
There is a level of fairness that they built into the rules but nobody is trying to make Michael Jordan unable to play because he's too good.
Alright, so having players that are way too good is the normal situation.
Transgender is just more of that.
Alright, if I don't have you worked up yet, let's take it to the topic that's going to make you crazy.
I almost wasn't going to do this, but part of the reason you watch these periscopes is to watch me get in trouble, right?
So, here it goes.
I'm going to get in trouble maybe like I've never done before because of the topic.
As you know, I recuse myself from the question of abortion.
I recuse myself because I don't feel that I have enough knowledge, insight, or anything to add.
As a man, I just am sort of a distraction.
I would rather support whatever women collectively want in terms of laws.
Because I think that women Have a little more insight, more skin in the game.
There's nothing I can add to the situation.
Now, if you'd like to give your opinion to the situation, I'm not going to stop you.
I'm just saying that...
Thank you. I'll plug back my microphone.
All right. Back to better sound.
So, my point was...
If you'd like to have an opinion on abortion, if you're a man, that's fine.
I'm not going to stop you or talk you out of it.
I'm just saying that I personally recuse myself because I don't think I add.
But I waded into the conversation when I saw a question by Alyssa Milano.
And She was responding to somebody on Twitter.
Now before we start, let us all agree, Alyssa Milano is a very vocal anti-Trumper.
I do understand that most of you have a negative feeling about her, because most of you are pro-Trumpers if you're watching this Periscope.
But I make it a very serious rule I'm not going to disagree with people just because they feel like they're on the other team in some way.
So I'm never going to do that.
If somebody has a good point, I'm going to agree with it, even if they're on the other team.
So somebody said to Alyssa Milano on Twitter, you fight for the right to kill babies after birth.
You are a vile, revolting hypocrite.
So somebody's accusing Alyssa Milano of fighting for the right to kill babies after birth.
Now, most of you think that's true, right?
Most of you think that's exactly what she's doing and exactly what a lot of Democrats are doing.
Fighting for the actual legal right...
For a woman to have, you know, to deliver a baby or have an abortion, you know, a day before it was going to be a natural birth, and then just kill a healthy baby.
And there's a belief on the right that people are fighting for that right on the left.
So, Alyssa Milano replies with this tweet, and she says, serious question.
And by the way, I think this is an actual serious question.
She says, please only answer seriously.
And if there are doctors out there reading this, please make your points in the replies of this tweet.
So I would say that she is sincerely trying to understand this.
So she's being accused of something and she's confused how anybody could think that she's fighting for the right to kill babies after birth.
And she's asking doctors to weigh in.
So I would say that so far she is displaying what looks like sincerity and actually trying to understand what the hell's going on.
Why are people accusing me of wanting to have the right to kill babies after birth?
That's crazy. And she goes on and she says, who truly believes Democrats are actually fighting for the right to murder babies after birth?
So Alyssa Milano says...
Basically, that is crazy to imagine the Democrats even want that right.
To kill a baby? After birth?
Now, here come the comments.
So your comments are going to be, oh, Alyssa Milano, oh, Scott, you're so dumb, because I tweeted to amplify her question, because I have the same question.
So you're going to say, have you seen the North Room video, Scott, you idiot?
Look at the North Room video.
And if you watched it once, watch it again.
It says as clearly as possible, That the baby will be born alive and that the mother will have a choice of keeping it alive or killing it.
Scott is right in front of you.
Look at it with your own eyes.
Hear it with your own ears.
There's no doubt left.
He said it in those words as clearly as possible.
And not only that, That, what was her name, Tran?
Said the same thing.
Said it in public.
Said it clearly. You heard it with your own ears.
You saw it with your own eyes.
Could there be any doubt?
To which I say, yeah, there's doubt.
Because the obvious context was hospice.
Hospice meaning the decisions you make when somebody is definitely going to die.
So if the baby is born alive and it's definitely going to die, you say to yourself, well, do we try to keep it alive when we know it's not going to make it?
Because, who knows, it might be the one time we're wrong.
Or, just let it die, because there's no way it's going to live.
So, I assumed that both Northram and Tran assumed that context, but didn't state it, because it's sort of obvious.
So when I say it's obvious, I mean a reasonable, objective person watching both Northam and Tran, if they knew the context of the discussion, would say to themselves, well, obviously they're not talking about healthy babies.
This should be obvious on the surface That it was hospice, even if they never mentioned hospice.
And neither of them did.
Now, it didn't confuse me when I first heard it, because to me, well, it's obviously hospice they're talking about.
It would never make sense that they were talking in public about killing a healthy baby after birth.
So here's one of my rules.
For telling BS from reality.
If you have two explanations for a thing, you heard this once before, right?
If you have two explanations for a thing, one is fantastical, like really hard to believe, like mind-blowingly hard to believe, and you have another explanation that also fits the facts, but the other explanation is completely ordinary.
It's the ordinary one.
Almost every time.
And the ordinary one is, they were both talking about a hospice situation, and of course no one wants to kill a live baby.
That would be murder.
So you have two explanations that fit the observed facts.
One of them is just batshit crazy that people were talking in public about killing live babies.
Batshit crazy. You shouldn't have had to even dig into it to know that that was crazy.
And one completely ordinary, exactly what you would expect them to be talking about, which is if the babies can't possibly make it, it's not viable, you know, what do you do?
Do you comfort it?
Do you try anyway?
What do you do? It's up to the mother and the doctor.
So then I ended up getting into a conversation with Nick Searcy.
Many of you know Nick Searcy, actor?
He's a director, producer, I guess.
He's got a lot of skills. I will say that Nick Searcy is great at what he does.
I'm a big fan of his acting, and he's one of my favorites.
I love to see him in roles.
So, he got into it, and he said I should see his movie Gosnell.
And I don't think that quite addresses the point, because that was about a particular doctor, and that's not really the question.
I want to know, do the laws that have been proposed recently say that it's okay to kill a live baby?
Because that's what people on the right believe.
And specifically, people said, well, the law in New York, that was proposed, would have allowed people to kill a live baby.
So I said, can somebody point me to that law that makes it legal to kill a live human being, whether it's a baby or any other?
And people attacked me and said, my God, Scott, look at the North Rim thing, look at the Tran thing.
And I said, okay, I get it.
But understand that I interpreted that differently, and we can settle this by looking at the language of the laws.
If the language of the law says, yes, you can kill a live baby, then I'll agree.
I just want to see the law.
So, finally...
I'm getting to the fun part here.
There's a fun part of this, believe me.
So somebody on Twitter pointed me to a fact-check org in which they were talking with somebody who actually is familiar with the law in New York.
And let me read it to you.
Asked about the rationale for removing the section from the law.
So the section that was removed was that there was a proposed law that a second doctor would be there during the abortion in case the baby was born alive, and then the second doctor would be able to care for the baby in the case it was born alive.
That was removed from the law.
So you say to yourself, what the hell?
Why would you remove a safety precaution For a baby that might be saved, right?
Isn't that your thought? Like, why would you remove that precaution?
That's pretty fishy, unless you wanted to kill a baby.
So here's his explanation.
This is Justin Flagg, a spokesman for New York State Senator Liz Krueger, who sponsored the new law.
So this is the spokesman for the person who sponsored the law.
So knowledgeable person.
He said that, quote, the requirement that a second physician be present did not reflect medical realities of abortion later in pregnancy, nor modern standards of medical care, and was legally redundant and unnecessary.
Now, what does he mean by does not reflect medical realities?
Here's what he means, because he goes on.
He says, modern abortion techniques do not result in live birth, In other words, it doesn't happen.
Now, some of you might say, but what about all those stories in Gosnell and all those times it's happened in the past?
It may have happened in the past.
But he's making the claim that modern abortion techniques do not result in live births.
However, however, in the great unlikelihood that a baby was born alive, The medical provider and team of medical support staff would provide all necessary medical care as they would in the case of any live birth, he wrote in an email. And then he said the RHA does not change standard medical practices.
To reiterate, any baby born alive So it wouldn't matter if it was the result of an abortion or anything else.
Any baby born alive, and he says to reiterate, to make sure this is perfectly clear, in New York State would be treated like any other live birth.
In other words, if you killed it, it's murder.
And given appropriate medical care.
This was the case before the RHA, the proposed law, and it remains the case now.
So in other words, With modern medical techniques, presumably they can check the heartbeat of the baby slash fetus, and they don't take it out until they know it's dead, basically.
I know that's horrible. I hate to even talk about this topic.
But it sounds like the odds of ever having a live baby from an abortion is very, very low.
Those of you who are pissed off, check what you're pissed off about.
I'm not supporting the practice.
I guess I should say that clearly.
I'm not supporting a side.
I've recused myself.
I'm simply trying to understand What is the law and what is the false belief?
And so it seems that the New York law very clearly and intentionally says, no, there's no situation where you can kill a live baby and it doesn't matter what the mother thinks.
It doesn't matter what shape the baby's in.
If it can survive, it gets the same care of any human being.
It's a citizen. The moment it's born, no matter how it's born, cesarean, abortion, any other way, it's a citizen.
That first heartbeat outside the mother, that is a citizen's heartbeat.
And you can't murder a citizen.
There is no law ever proposed that somebody could murder a citizen.
Nobody's ever proposed it.
Nobody's ever wanted it.
And so, and I see people say, wrong!
It's incorrect! And so I go to the people.
So I copy this and I send it to the people who think that I don't understand the issue.
And I say, there it is.
It could not be more clear than this.
They absolutely do not want the right, at least in a legal sense, nobody wants the right to kill a live baby.
And... And what did people say when I showed them in the clearest possible terms that they were wrong, that anybody who was a Democrat was trying to acquire that right?
What did they say?
They say, go look at that North Room video, which is out of context.
And they say, go look at that Tran video, which is out of context, instead of looking at the actual law.
And what did Nick Searcy say when presented with the facts that the law clearly and unambiguously says the opposite of what he believes it says?
He said that you're sheeple if you don't read between the lines.
In other words, that the law very clearly says you can never kill a live human baby.
Never. And that's been the law, and any proposed law would keep it the law.
But, as Nick Searcy and some of the other people said, you have to read between the lines.
And other people who I challenged on this said, well, sure, there may be no Democrat who says it, but that's because they're politicians.
And then I say, what about the people who are not politicians?
Or I'll even make it easier.
Find me any human being, Doesn't matter if they're a politician, a Democrat, a doctor, a Republican.
Find me any human being, a mother, a doctor, anybody, any human being anywhere in the world who will argue that it should be legal to kill a live baby that could live and survive.
And what did people say?
They said, okay, nobody will say it, but they're thinking it.
That they're really thinking it.
So when you are in a debate, and the people you're debating with retreat to, you have to read between the lines, and sure, it's not in the law, and nobody's saying it, and nobody will ever say it, and indeed they say exactly the opposite.
As Alyssa Milano just said, she said exactly the opposite.
Who really thinks we want to kill live babies?
That's the opposite. And people still say, sure, you're just saying that because your true motive is to have the right to kill live babies.
And you're thinking it.
That is what I call the mind-reading illusion.
The mind-reading illusion is that you can see people's inner thoughts.
And so, the belief that there is such a thing as Democrats who want the right to kill babies that have been born alive, that is a hoax.
That's a hoax. And the hoax is derived from the North Room video that's out of context, so you can't tell that it's obviously hospice, the Tran video that's out of context, again, the context was hospice, and people not understanding the law, maybe they've never seen it, and People who think that they can read minds based on people's activities.
So they say, yeah, but you have to look at what they're doing to try to change the law, etc.
Gosnell is a movie about a particular person.
It does not relate to what we're talking about here.
If somebody would like to summarize in a sentence why they think Gosnell, which was one person in one situation, why you think that's relative to this conversation, I will listen to that.
But at the moment, I don't know why I'm going to watch a whole movie about an anecdote, because anecdotes are useful usually.
All right. Reiterating Reiterating, there is no condition upon which I would support even opening the possibility that anybody would ever have the right to kill a living baby.
So if you think I'm arguing this because I'm part of this secret society who have the secret thoughts of making it legal to kill babies, you're batshit crazy.
Now, if the argument is that there's some law in some other state where there's some ambiguity, I would say maybe.
Maybe there's some ambiguity in some law and we should fix that.
But there is no Democrat who supports killing live babies.
I would say that hoax has been debunked.
All right. That was all I need to talk about today.
Somebody says, what if it's a vampire baby?
Okay, if you have a vampire baby, you can drive a stake through it.
But that's the only time.
If it's not a vampire, gotta let it live.
Alright. Gosnell, he's the biggest serial killer in U.S. history.
Hardly an anecdote. Did you see your own comment?
Somebody just said, Gosnell was the biggest serial killer in...
In the world, that's hardly an anecdote.
Your own comment disproved your point.
He was a serial killer.
Serial killers are breaking the law.
Nobody is in favor of serial killers.
The fact that he was just shows he was a serial killer.
So maybe there's some other point you could make, but that wasn't a good one.
All right. That's all for now.
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