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March 17, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
36:47
Episode 454 Scott Adams: Public Demonstration of False Memory, Charlottesville “Fine People” HOAX
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Well, I'm here a little bit early today because I wanted to do something special.
I want to do a demonstration of false memory, public false memory.
This might be kind of freaky to some of you.
Good morning, good morning. But before I get into that, we'll need some volunteers.
So I'm going to tweet this in a moment while you're waiting.
So this periscope should be appearing on my Twitter feed right now.
And I want to make sure I get some people here.
So let me tweet it.
Retweet it with a comment.
Come test your false memory about the fine people hoax.
Just bear with me.
maybe this will be worth it foreign people hoax with a trained hypnotist alright so alright so I've tweeted that So I should be able to get some volunteers.
So what I'm looking for is people who believe that President Trump called the racists in Charlottesville fine people.
But before we get to that, so if you believe that you saw or heard the news that President Trump called the neo-Nazis and the racists fine people, if you have a memory of that, then I want to talk to you.
So sign up to be a guest on this Periscope.
Just select the choice to be a guest and then I will choose you and we will talk about your false memories.
Now, before we do that, don't you want to have the simultaneous sip?
Yes, you do.
Raise your glass, your mug, your cup, your chalice, your stein, your thermos.
It's time for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, I think we've got a hit.
Somebody named Trump is racist as hell.
This should be good.
I don't know if this is a real account, but let's see what happens.
We're going to add a guest.
And guest.
Can you hear me, guest?
You do remember it clear as day, but did you see the whole quote or did you see only a partial quote?
Thank you.
Oh, did you run away?
- Don't go to my channel.
- Oh, so you don't believe that I show this film? - Yeah. so you don't believe that I show this film? - Hold on, hold on, hold on.
They're telling me they can't hear you, so I'm gonna have to click.
All right, can you hear me?
Hmm. So the guest is gone.
Let's try another guest if we can get one.
So that guest was not a real guest.
He was pretending to be an anti-Trumper who just made a fake account just to do that.
We should try one more guest to see if anybody is a taker.
So here's the challenge.
I only want you to come on if you believe that the president called racist fine people in Charlottesville.
So I'm going to ask Cameron on, but Cameron, if that's not what you're here for, it's going to be a quick call, but we'll also see if we can hear you.
Cameron went away.
Okay. So we've got over a thousand people.
Is there no one here?
Oh, Cameron is back.
Let's try you again. Cameron?
Cameron, are you there?
And I don't know yet.
I don't know yet if the audience can hear you.
We had some audience problem before.
Looks like they can hear you, but nothing.
Say something, Cameron.
Good morning, Scott. And audience, can you hear me?
So, audience, can you hear the guests?
There's nothing I can do to fix this if you can't hear it.
Because there's just one button either on or off.
All right. All right.
It would be... Can't hear.
Now, this is very...
I can hear you on previous periscopes and hear the guests fine, so it's a little odd.
They can't hear me on this one.
Some people say they can't hear you.
All right, so some of it might be pranksters.
So, Cameron, do you have a memory of the president?
We all saw it.
I mean, I saw CNN. They played the clip.
Yes, I do. And I also have a memory of that press conference he did with Elaine Chao with him in Trump Tower.
And I thought his repudiation of it was a little weak at the time.
You know, people asked him, do you denounce this?
And he said, yes, I condemn.
And that was kind of it. So, did you hear this part of the quote?
So, at the same time that he said, the quote that you do remember, damn it, he said, excuse me, excuse me, he was talking about the statues and stuff.
He said, you had people in that group, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
That's what you heard, right? They were very fine people on both sides?
That's right. The same time he said that, he also said, right after that, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.
Did you hear him say that?
It was said at the same time.
It was basically a few sentences later.
Yeah, I did.
And by the way, he was unprompted.
He was unprompted for that.
So he was, without being asked, he clarified just to make sure that nobody would believe that he said that the Nazis were fine people.
Is that the way you remembered it?
That he said, I'm excluding them specifically?
I did remember.
I want to give a quick shout-out to my friend Adam Schmutter, who's watching, by the way.
But... But do you have a false memory of that event?
I actually did.
And I'll tell you, Mr.
Adams, that really you were the first person, one of the first pundits I ever heard that really clarified that he was talking about the statues.
Before I had heard you, I think it was on Fox and Friends, talk about that, I had really thought that, oh my gosh, it took him too long to condemn it.
He must really believe this, that he's okay with the white supremacists because they're his base.
I really thought that was the case until you clarified the statute debate.
Now, once you hear that one of the biggest stories of the past two years, once you hear that that never happened, and that it's easy to show it never happened, because you just have to show what he said, and what he said was on video, It was reported.
But it's easy to compare that they cut off the part where he made sure that there was no question he wasn't talking about the Nazis.
Right. And Scott, I'm a big fan of yours.
And I worked for President Obama and, you know, usually in the straight ticket Democrat when it comes to these things.
And I'll tell you, even though your argument logically made so much sense, And I still had my doubts about it until I saw people posting the actual quote on Twitter.
And then finally, when I read the quote on Twitter, I think some of my cognitive dissonance was going away.
But, you know, it's still a challenge.
It still comes back from time to time.
Doesn't that make you feel that you can't believe anything else you saw?
Yes, absolutely.
Including video and photographs.
I can't believe it. Right, including video.
That's exactly right. All right, thank you, Cameron.
Thank you very much, Scott. An honor to speak with you.
All right, thank you. All right, we'll see if anybody else wants to come.
We've got, well, no, we've got the same joker from before.
Don't want to take the joker.
So if anybody else would like to come on and talk about your false memories, By the way, the false memory of a national event is fairly common.
I don't know if you know that it's a well-documented phenomenon.
You could find lots of cases where people have very clear memories of historical events that happened in their lifetime that never happened.
It's really, really common.
And if you don't understand how common that is, you don't really understand the world you live in.
Until you realize that you can have memories, very clear memories, of things that didn't happen, and you can even share those memories with other people.
There could be multiple other people who think they have a memory of a historical event in their own lifetime, something they believe they saw, something they believe they were part of.
So we've got a taker.
Let's see if we can add this guest.
Guest, are you there?
Hi. Sorry.
I understand how we always forget how we always have this cognitive dissonance when it comes to reality.
We always see how we want to see the current.
Guest, did you believe that the president said The racists were fine people in Charlottesville?
What I think he said was just that there were fine people on both sides.
And I think that specifically was a false equivalency.
Fine people on both sides.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
But do you also know that at the same time he said that, a few sentences later, and without any prompting, he said the following, and I'm reading his quote, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.
Now, is that sentence very clear to you that he was not making any equivalence about Nazis and fine people?
But the question is, who were the people at Charlottesville?
Who were the people that he spoke of?
So according to the New York Times, there were people there who were just there to protest the statue removal who were sort of free speech, historical, preserver type people that were not in any way associated with the racists and condemned them.
Now there's also a video of some of those people talking about the event immediately after.
There's a black person in the group And they're saying, we came here just to protest the free speech element.
We have nothing to do with these Nazis.
So would you agree that the New York Times and the video of people who were actually at the event were real people?
I will agree that the people who came there legitimately to protest the monument were in the minority, and that the objective of the Especially when something so akin to what I felt was like Kristallnacht,
you know, with all the torches, albeit tiki torches, that to say that the intent of Charlottesville was to protest the monument was not it.
It was to terrorize.
Hold on, hold on.
You're making a claim about some conceptual person.
We're only talking about President Trump.
President Trump's exact words were, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.
Now, you do have a question about who he was talking about, but it's very obvious that he wasn't talking about the racists, right?
Because he said it in direct language.
Wouldn't you agree? I... not entirely.
Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Are you saying...
No, no, I agree that...
Don't go on further until we clarify this.
I agree that... I'm reading...
Hold on, can you let me talk?
Yeah, sorry. Alright, do you think this sentence is unclear?
I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.
Is that unclear? I do not feel that is unclear outside of context.
All right, and in, well, so in context, he said there were fine people on both sides, but then to clarify, he said, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists.
It's all part of the same statement.
How is that unfair? It seems like the two statements that contradict each other.
Fine people on both sides and the neo-Nazis.
No, it's contradicting your own lack of understanding.
It's not contradicting what was happening.
My lack of understanding of Trump?
No, what was happening was there were some people who were not racists who were there about the statue issue.
Do you agree that that's true?
Because the New York Times reported it and you can see a video of those actual people.
I'll stipulate to that. What's that?
I'll stipulate to that.
I didn't read that personally.
So now that you know that there were people there who were not Antifa and they were not part of the racists, Would you say it's now completely clear to you that this was always fake news because the president said, I'm not talking about the Nazis and the white nationals?
At the same time, he talked about fine people.
In other words, one statement among so many statements that he has said, especially during that impromptu, what's it called, Trump Tower meeting.
All right, but hold on.
If you're saying that he made other statements, That are unclear.
That would be a separate issue.
But if we could just stick to this, you would agree now that the widespread reporting that we saw, I think we saw reported maybe 10 times on CNN just this week alone, would you agree that that is fake news?
Because his statement is very clear.
I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists.
That was to clarify his fine people statement.
Is that completely clear to you that at least on that point it was fake news?
I will agree to that if that is true, because I don't actually get cable either.
Oh. If you would like to check it, obviously you have Twitter, right?
Yeah. Okay.
So go to my Twitter account, and you can see some Breitbart articles that point to the actual language, the actual video.
So if you want to test this, just go to my Twitter account.
You can see a bunch of tweets there.
But thank you. Thank you for playing.
Thank you very much. I'll be back.
Bye. That was interesting, wasn't it?
Let's see if we got another one.
Let's add Dave. And by the way, with the last guest, did you hear the long silence?
The long silence is, that's a tell for cognitive dissonance.
There was a moment there where his brain was actually frozen.
All right. Caller Dave.
Dave, can you hear me? Yes.
Hey, Scott, how are you? I'm good, how are you?
Good, thank you. Did you believe that the president said there were fine people among the actual racists in Charlottesville?
Did you have a memory of that, a false memory?
No, I didn't hear him say that.
Well, of course I heard him say that, but I know what he was talking about.
He was simply talking about The statue people.
The statue people, yeah.
It was crystal clear to me.
There was nothing...
So Dave, I'm only trying to talk to the people who had a false memory of the event.
But if you have a quick question, let's do that because I'm waiting for other people to come on.
Okay, so you just want to...
Okay. One thing I didn't remember is the quote that you are referencing.
That he said afterwards.
I don't remember hearing that from him.
Yeah, the reason you don't remember the clarifying quote is because it's generally left off on the news.
So there was a reporter question in between.
So the president said his fine people quote with some other stuff.
And then the reporter said, George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same because the president made We're going to start taking down George Washington's statue.
But it was immediately after the reporter said that, that Trump went into a longer paragraph and he clarified without being asked.
And this is the important part.
The reporters didn't ask him to clarify.
He just clarified because he wanted to make sure that nobody could misconstrue that he was calling the races fine people.
So he said it in the clearest possible way.
All right. Yeah, see, that's deception right there.
That's ridiculous.
It's unbelievable. See, that's something that should have been clear to everybody.
All right, so Dave, we're gonna click you off here.
Thanks for playing. And I'm gonna see if I can get somebody on here who had an actual false memory.
So, again, if you had a false memory, That the President called the racist at Charlottesville, fine people.
I want to see if I can deprogram you in real time here, as I deprogrammed the prior caller.
Not this one, but the one before.
And it's really amazing, isn't it?
So, if you try to deprogram somebody from their false memory that Trump called racist, fine people, You're usually going to get some version of what you witnessed.
So if you watched me talking to the caller before this last one, you notice that he started going all over the board talking about another event.
So the moment he got a little trapped on his false memory, the very first thing he did was change the subject.
And you saw that I very aggressively changed him back To the point.
And then once changed back to the point, he acted like it was almost like he couldn't hear it or he was sort of cognitively blind to what I was saying.
But once he couldn't escape, did you hear the long pause where I said, now that you've heard it, now that you've seen it, now that you know it was fake news, you know, do you believe it's fake news?
You saw that it was just a long pause.
You recognize it.
The long pause is not a normal situation of somebody just waiting to collect their thoughts.
They're actually rebooting their whole brain.
That's the reboot.
And once you learn to see it, you can recognize it in the wild.
I produce this a lot.
So because I'm a hypnotist, because I tend to have a, if I may say, a greater mastery of the facts than most of the people I talk to, because most people are not well informed on most things, right?
Since I pay attention and I'm doing this sort of As part of my career now, I tend to be more informed than the people I'm talking to on the topics that I talk to them about.
But when you see that look where the brain reboots, it changes your whole feeling about reality because the person is rewriting their history in their brain in real time while you're looking at them.
And for a moment, they can't process the outside world.
So the brain actually goes into a reboot shutdown mode where for a moment they can't interact with the outside world.
And I have produced that in other people countless times, but I wanted to do it in public so you could see it in real time.
I want to see if I can get somebody else on here for the same thing.
Let's see. So I'm only taking people who believe they heard The President say that the racists were fine people.
All right, guess, Millennium Mom.
Now, I'm only taking people who believe they have that fake, that false memory.
Can you hear me?
Millennium Mom, hi.
I can hear you.
Okay, great. Did you believe that the President called the racists fine people in Charlottesville?
Okay, the reason why I believe that, and I'm actually a Trump supporter, I actually believed that he said it because of the repetition that I was getting from the media.
And here's something that I just wanted to add to that.
Wait, hold on, but you do not believe it now?
I don't believe it now.
No, no, no, no. Not after seeing that transcript that you posted.
Are you saying that...
That I was the first person to tell you that was fake news?
No, no, no. You said it in the scopes, but I couldn't find the actual transcript when I went to look for it.
I tried to find the audio of the, you know, after one of your...
Oh, I'm sorry.
One of the things...
We've lost your audio, so I had to ding you because the audio went away.
All right, let's say we've got the Passport Gang.
I don't know who that is, but let's see if you have a false memory about the Charlottesville incident.
Guess, can you hear me?
Hey, Scott, how you doing?
I can hear you. Oh, good.
Did you have a false memory that the president said the racists would find people in Charlottesville?
Well, you know what I was going to say is the same thing as the previous guest.
I was only watching mainstream media at the time, and I never heard that part about him saying that the white supremacists were not included.
I think it was the way that CNN and MSNBC were editing the footage that made it seem like he was equating Antifa and the white supremacists.
Right. And now that you've seen the actual language, I assume you have, does it change your view of how illegitimate the news is?
Well, yeah, I've been thinking that for a while.
Back in 2016, I voted against Trump.
I was against him, and I was just watching Rachel Maddow every night, and I was like, this guy is going to get arrested any minute now.
But it just kept going on every night, and then I started seeking out alternative news sources.
And it wasn't until you that I actually saw him say he's not talking about the white supremacists.
They are not included. So I haven't heard that before on the mainstream media or – I mean I don't watch a lot of Fox News either, but I do watch it sometimes.
But I haven't really heard anybody refute that and quote him in that manner.
So it really spins your brain, doesn't it?
What political affiliation do you claim?
Are you independent? Well, yeah, I would say I'm independent.
I used to – I used to – I was – I'm a supporter of Barack Obama.
That was like the first time that I voted.
I'm mixed-raced African American, so that was the first time I was really inspired to do anything.
And then I was thinking, well, Hillary is going to be the safe bet.
Trump is crazy. And I was just getting everything from the mainstream media.
So I thought he was kind of racist.
I thought he was kind of crazy.
I thought he might get us into some wars, things like that.
And now that seems kind of crazy, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah. And especially after I watch Hoaxed.
You know, I'm trying to show it to everybody in my family.
Yeah. Yeah, well, thank you for seeking truth.
I've got another caller or two.
Thanks, Scott. I thank you very much.
All right. We've got a guest whose name is Stop Trump Now.
Hi. Did you think that the president called the racists in Charlottesville fine people?
Do you have a false memory of that?
Let's see if we can get to the bottom of this one.
Did you know that in the same time that he made the quote about fine people on both sides, that he also said a part of the same thing without any prompting at the same time the same day in the same he said this sentence i'm not talking about the neo-nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally so do you believe now having heard the rest of the quote do you believe that it was true that he called the nazis fine people When at the same time he said,
I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationals.
Do you now understand that that never happened?
That he never...
You're a fake.
All right, so he was just a prankster.
Just a prankster.
All right. The prankster was not a real...
Yeah, he was just a troll. So do we have anybody on here who believes that Trump...
In other words, is there anybody on here who has a false memory that President Trump called the racist fine people in Charlottesville?
Yeah, it was the same person.
Um... So that caller was the same guy as before.
He was just a troll. So, let's see.
Moby Richard.
Well, chances are he's a better look at this guy.
Two followers.
All right.
So it looks like I'm only getting trolls at this point.
All right.
Alright, so...
This experiment is very interesting, isn't it?
Look at all the people who are wandering in here, including all the people who saw my tweet, because I tweeted that I'm doing this right now.
And you notice we can only get one person who would say that they actually believed the thing that's considered the main news.
Alright. So, same guy's back again.
Let's... How do I block that guy?
Alright. So I need anybody else who wants to say that they have a false memory of Charlottesville.
Scott, is Yang a racist?
Well, yes. I would say that Yang, who's running for president, Has presented his argument in racial terms and said that it might not be long before white people were shooting up Chinese places of worship,
I guess, because China was going to be the big boogeyman of the future, so that might make it dangerous to be a Chinese American if China, the country, is being demonized.
And he did call out white people as the potential threat.
So, I would say that that's racist by definition, yes.
Alright, it looks like all the people who want to come on here are just trolls.
So, here's the interesting thing.
We have now watched both Breitbart through Joel Pollack, and you've watched me on Twitter and Periscope saying loudly and often that the fine people hoax is a hoax.
And the reason I keep hammering on this, I know some of you are saying, please go to another topic.
You keep talking about the same thing.
It might be the most important thing in the world.
Think about that.
It might be the most important thing in the world, what I'm doing right now.
And here's the argument.
A huge part of the animosity in this country is built around the fact that Trump and therefore Trump supporters have a certain set of views.
And if that's not true, and if they don't have the set of views as an average, you know, we're not talking about the outliers, the actual racists, but the general Trump supporters, if they don't have the views that the other half of the country believes they have, then most of the if they don't have the views that the other half of the country believes they have, Let me give you an example.
What is the craziest thing about the border security battle?
You know, the whole wall versus no wall.
Here's the craziest thing about it.
It was a fight where both sides agreed.
Both sides want border security in general.
Yeah, there are a few outliers on both sides that have the crazy views.
But both Democrats and Republicans want better border security.
They've paid for it in the past.
And the way they want it is according to whatever the experts say makes most sense.
So this was an unusual situation in which we couldn't do what needed to be done, and everybody largely agreed.
Some of the details they didn't agree on, but that was for political purposes.
Now, why is it that the Democrats would resist so hard something that even they wanted It's because they think that the president is motivated by racism.
Why do they think he's motivated by racism?
Well, probably the basis of that, the strongest pillar of that belief, is the fake news that he once called racist fine people, which never happened.
It's a false memory that the country is experiencing.
If you remove that false memory, And you convince people that it was a false memory, and that it was important, and that they believed it, it will change their entire view about other things they hear about this president.
In other words, it will allow them to have a critical facility that they lacked before.
Now this is true of both sides, right?
I'm not saying that one side of the political spectrum has all the fake news.
You know, it gets spread around.
But it is the most important thing to get our minds right in this country so that we can do simple things like improve border security.
False memory or just a lie?
I will tell you that from my own interactions and I can't give you more detail than this so please don't ask but I'll tell you that from my own interactions I can tell that CNN actually believes they have a memory of the president calling the racist fine people.
They have an actual false memory.
Now, I say that not with 100% certainty, but all of the signs, and again, I can't give you the details of why I think I know what I know.
But it seems to me that they actually believe it, and it seems to me that it's based on a false memory, which they may have generated on their own and then had it reinforced by other fake reporting on the same topic.
Because remember, the people who work at CNN are people, right?
They're human beings.
And human beings are very easily fooled by false memories.
It's a universal quality of people.
So those of you who are saying that CNN is knowingly lying, I would say that's not demonstrated.
It is demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that at least some members of CNN believe they have that actual memory of it happening, and it just didn't happen.
So I guess there's nobody else who wants to be deprogrammed.
Is there anybody else who would like to be deprogrammed?
From the false memory that President Trump once called the racist fine people.
No other takers?
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