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April 2, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:21:42

Episode 477 Scott Adams: China Trade Deal, GND, Apology Tours, String Theory, Boycotts, Healthcare

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Time	Text
	Hey everybody sing along with me.
	Come on in.
	There's still lots of space up front for those of you who want to be in the front row.
	Come on in. No talking among yourselves.
	Take a seat. Good to see you.
	Hey there, Tyler.
	Always good to see you, Tyler.
	And Pete, Beth, come on in.
	You know what time it is.
	I think you do. I think you do.
	It's time for coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip.
	Grab your cup, your mug, your glass, your stein, your tankard, your chalice, your thermos.
	Fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
	Ah, some of the best simultaneous sipping I've had all day.
	Good stuff. Well, once again, the news is full of fun stuff.
	Do you remember when they used to say, if it bleeds, it leads?
	And the idea was that the news would only report bad news and violence.
	And it was all violence and bad news.
	When did that stop?
	When did the news stop reporting on violence?
	Now, I know that, of course, they'll report on some big tragedy.
	So if there's a big tragedy, of course, that will be the headline.
	But is it my imagination, or have there been fewer big tragedies lately?
	Or is the news just not covering it anymore?
	Because I'm looking at all the headlines, and it's all just fun stuff.
	Well, it's not fun for everybody involved, right?
	In each of these stories, there's something like a victim, but it's not the big blood and death stories that we're used to.
	Let me give you a sample of some of the headlines.
	Now, this one is funny, but not funny.
	All right? So, for the purposes of the story, If you looked at the whole story, it's not funny at all.
	And you should find no humor in this.
	But half of the story is kind of funny.
	And I can't apologize for that.
	I don't make the rules.
	And it's the story that David Blaine, a famous magician, has been accused by two women of something like hypnotizing them and sexually abusing them.
	Now, I've read the accusations, and I can't say that they sound too credible.
	But I agree with the general ethic of the times, that women must be taken seriously, so their story must be heard.
	So we're probably all on the same page there.
	But... There's something about these stories that are different from other stories.
	Because if you claim that you've been hypnotized in one case, and in the other case, she doesn't have memory of the event, except some details after when she woke up in the morning.
	And here's the question that I ask you.
	So apparently the New York Police Department is investigating David Blaine.
	And I have to ask this question.
	What are the odds that a world-famous magician, and apparently you might know something about persuasion as well, what are the odds that a person with that skill set could be convicted of a crime like this?
	So, you know, I'm not suggesting that he's guilty of any crimes.
	Innocent until proven guilty.
	But what are the odds that he could be convicted?
	Now, if you had an eyewitness or a videotape, then I'd say, yeah, anybody can be convicted.
	If you have a video of the actual crime, it doesn't matter how much skill you have.
	But in a case where it's he said, she said, and one of the saids is a famous magician...
	What are the odds that that person could not get off even if he was guilty?
	Probably very low.
	My guess is that that skill set would translate very well into the legal realm.
	So when you hear that a famous magician is on trial, you don't need to listen to the details of the case because he's probably going to be not guilty.
	Anyway, that's the interesting part of that story.
	Many people have tweeted to me the news that China has announced that they're going to get tough on fentanyl coming out of China, which, as you know, almost all of the fentanyl that makes it to the United States through Mexico originates in China.
	And China had laws that did not make it illegal to produce, let's say, things that are like fentanyl but, you know, molecule different.
	So the criminals were using that legal loophole in China to say, well, it's not exactly fentanyl.
	I changed this molecule in some unimportant way.
	But China has committed that May 1st they will criminalize Fentanyl in all its forms, even the slight variations, and make it a capital offense, which means the death penalty.
	Now, I see a lot of people giving me credit for that.
	I don't know how you can measure anybody's influence.
	I don't know what would have happened anyway, because I was really, you know, I was persuading toward this outcome, and I was doing it...
	Quite noticeably and publicly and continuously.
	But it's also the smart outcome.
	So I'm not going to take credit for people that I don't even know doing smarter things.
	I'd love to say that I had something to do with it.
	But the fact is, you should never assume that if somebody you've never met Or, well, actually, in this case, I have met President Trump.
	But if it's somebody you're not dealing with on a regular basis, and they simply do something that makes sense and is smart, you can't say that it's because somebody recommended it, you know, if somebody's just acting smart.
	So I'm going to give Trump the win on this.
	But I will do it with this caveat, which is that I don't yet believe it.
	So I don't think China is a credible enough player that we should take this as real news yet.
	It could become real news.
	But so far I would say that until I see a picture of a fentanyl dealer and his mugshot the day before China executes him, I'm not going to believe it.
	So I'm happy That it looks like progress.
	But I'm only gonna say it looks like progress.
	So far, there is not progress.
	We have the appearance of something that could become progress.
	So it's all good, but I don't believe it yet.
	And some people are asking, does this mean that we're close to a trade deal with China?
	To which I say, I'm a little bit confused Why China would agree to do this when it's clearly a bargaining trip.
	So if they were trying to make this part of some larger trade deal, I would think that they would wait and make it part of a larger package if they had the ability to do that.
	But, you know, I had been...
	Saying publicly, and often on Twitter anyway, that we should not do any trade deal with China as long as they were letting the fentanyl trade go unchecked.
	So I didn't care what the other stuff was about.
	I didn't care how good a deal we had about that.
	I said, if you can't get this done, you're just not dealing with a credible player.
	You should not make any deal With somebody who can't do the simplest thing.
	So it's possible that Trump did some version of what I would have done.
	And what I would have done is said, we'll get serious about all this other stuff after you're done with this.
	You take care of this, and you're now part of the credible conversation.
	If you don't, you're our enemy.
	And we don't make deals with enemies.
	I mean, not trade deals.
	So it's possible that Trump played this exactly right, which is this one, China, has to be free.
	You can't put this with the rest of the trade deal.
	You've got to give us this, or we're not even going to talk to you.
	So it might have been a precondition.
	I have no reason to believe it was, but that's the way I would have played it.
	As you know, because I tweeted it many times.
	So, maybe something good is coming.
	Let's talk about something else.
	I'm looking at the persuasion from the Democrats and from Trump, primarily, and I'm comparing them.
	Which of these two slogans for 2020 sounds stronger to you?
	Slogan number one, this would be President Trump's, Make America Great Again.
	Pretty good, right? Sounds pretty good.
	Now let's compare that to the Democrats' slogan, you're all going to be dead in 12 years.
	That's not as good. You're all going to be dead in 12 years.
	Now, they don't actually say you're going to be dead in 12 years.
	That's the way it's reported by the right.
	So the press on the right is doing to AOC what the press on the left does to Trump all the time.
	They just change the meaning of her words until it sounds ridiculous.
	What she said...
	Was that if we don't get super serious about cutting it over the next 12 years, we're dead in the long run.
	In other words, it will be an uncontrollable problem.
	That could be true, and it could be untrue.
	But the way it's reported is just fake news that she's saying we're going to be dead in 12 years.
	What she's saying is that if we don't do something in 12 years, it's a potentially mortal risk of a large size.
	But it really does kind of come down to that.
	Make America Great Again, or you're all dead in 12 years.
	That's theirs. I've got a feeling that Make America Great Again is a little bit more, I don't know, motivating.
	We saw that the press in the United States, because of the business model that they've evolved to recently, in which the controversy and the two sides and, you know, how can I get you worked up and make you click on things, that being the new business model, almost destroyed the United States.
	Let me say this again, and there's no hesitation.
	There's no hedging on what I'm saying.
	The press, collectively, almost destroyed the United States with the Russia collusion thing and with driving the country apart on a number of things.
	They failed.
	So, in a way, you're seeing this gigantic, historical, like, meta battle.
	And it's being reported as it's like, you know, the Republicans against the Democrats.
	That's not what's happening.
	That's not the real story.
	The real story is not the Republicans versus the Democrats.
	The big battle that we're seeing, the larger battle, is the founders of the United States, the authors of the Constitution, Versus the modern version of the press.
	The press is trying, and I say not with intention, nobody in the press is trying to destroy the country.
	It is just the collective effect of having a business model built on driving people apart.
	So the press is fighting to destroy the The system that was developed by maybe some of the smartest people that the United States has ever had, which are the founders, and the brilliance of the Constitution.
	Who won?
	I'll tell you who won.
	I'll tell you who won.
	Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the other founders, the other people who authored the Constitution.
	The press fought the dead founders for two and a half years.
	And the dead founders won.
	Yeah, Hamilton, yes.
	For Guy Hamilton. The founders won, again.
	So the founders have this, what, 240 year winning streak?
	Yeah, Washington, sure.
	I'm not sure how much Washington had to do with the document itself, but we give him credit.
	So the press lost.
	But the press is taking another run at destroying the world with climate change.
	Let me say it again.
	The press is taking another run at destroying the whole world through the topic of climate change.
	Now, I'm not the one who's going to say, oh, they're all alarmists, and the way they're reporting it is all wrong, and therefore people will do all the wrong things because they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
	Those of you who've been watching me for a while know that my opinion on climate change risk is that I, as a citizen, can't determine it.
	I don't believe the scientists.
	I don't believe the press.
	And when I dig into it myself, as I have been doing for months, you hit a wall as a non-scientist and you just run into counter-claims that you can't judge.
	Skeptic says this, climate scientist says this, I can't tell.
	I'm not a scientist and I haven't looked into those topics.
	Can't tell. I'm not saying that the press is wrong.
	I'm saying that I have no idea if they're right or wrong.
	But here's why the press is trying to destroy the world, and I mean this literally, actually destroying the world.
	Not hyperbole, I mean literally just destroying the planet.
	And it's by ignoring Generation 4 nuclear power as the obvious solution To climate change.
	Now, whether climate change is real or whether it's not real, Generation 4 nuclear development is the answer for both of those situations.
	How much reporting are you seeing on that today?
	I see lots of articles about the Green New Deal.
	I see no mention of nuclear energy.
	That is the press destroying the planet.
	That is exactly what that is.
	Now again, they're not sitting in a room and saying, hey, let's destroy the planet.
	Nobody's doing this in any conscious way.
	It's the collective effect of the press.
	And here's why.
	And it's kind of obvious when you think about it.
	On the left... If the left media suddenly said, okay, we still think President Trump is a moron for not believing the scientists about climate change, we'll hold on to that thought, because we need that for our mental sanity.
	I don't think that's a good description of what's happening, but let's say the left needs that.
	Still, They have a solution that's the obvious solution and there's the know-how and the money and we can get this done.
	But they won't report on it.
	Because if they report that President Trump can solve the problem that they think is the biggest problem in the world and that, here's the best part, he is uniquely suited to solve it.
	That's the part that hurts.
	What is preventing The efficient development of safe nuclear power.
	For those of you who don't know, the Generation 4 designs, they're meltdown-proof, so you don't have the risk of meltdown because they're designed so they can't.
	And they also will eat nuclear waste from other older sites.
	So it reduces nuclear waste and eats it, and it can't blow up and meltdown.
	But they need to iterate through some designs to get the best design within that class of things.
	The rule breaker, or not rule breaker, he's a rule breaker too, but he cuts regulations.
	It is the regulations that prevent the country from doing these things.
	So now we've seen a few things going on.
	We've seen Alexander Lamar, a Republican, suggesting a green nuclear, a Manhattan deal.
	He should be calling it the Green Nuclear Deal.
	That would have been better branding, using Mark Schneider's hashtag.
	But he's going with Manhattan Project, which is okay, gets attention.
	So that's one thing that's happening on the Republican side.
	Do you see all the news about that today?
	You don't. What's the most important thing in the news?
	It's that. It's that nuclear energy is actually a legitimate, practical solution.
	And here's the important part.
	The only one.
	There's not a second choice.
	There is no second choice about how to deal with climate change.
	There's only ridiculous hope and prayers and stuff.
	Like, well, maybe we'll get this solar stuff going.
	Maybe if you stop using the airplane.
	I think that's an exaggeration.
	But it's sort of just good feelings and hope and...
	I don't know. But the nuclear power could actually solve this problem if it's a problem.
	And if it's not a problem, you still want to do it.
	Because it's so good for the economy.
	It frees us from dependence on other people.
	It's good for the environment.
	It's just good in a whole bunch of ways.
	So, the fact...
	And then there was also...
	Secretary Perry's project.
	They're funding the rapid development of new types of nuclear fuels, which gets to this Generation 4 thing.
	And there was one other nuclear project that the administration is doing that has the same quality.
	It's focusing the country on this option.
	Now, Given what we've seen about how depressed the Democrats were when Trump won, and it literally triggered people into mental health problems, and I mean that actually literally, and then we saw that the Russia collusion thing collapsed, which was the only mental solace that they were getting.
	It's like, well, at least we know It wasn't because he got elected fairly, but then it turns out the collusion thing fell apart.
	All they have now is climate change and health care.
	So they have two things, climate change and healthcare.
	But climate change is the bigger one, because that's the one that kills us all, according to, you know, the worst case scenario.
	Healthcare is a financial problem.
	You know, people are still going to get the healthcare, they just can't afford it, but they're going to get it.
	So I would say that the climate change is the last hope that for the people who keep retreating to little safe spaces for their mind they can still believe that they've been right all along because this evil orange president will not solve the biggest problem to the globe which is climate change in their opinion but what if he did?
	what if he did?
	what if Trump He was the savior of the planet in terms of climate change risk.
	I got bad news for the left.
	It looks like he might be.
	Now, he hasn't fully embraced this, and all it would take is the president to tweet something about Generation 4 nuclear as a solution to all kinds of things.
	Maybe he can't do it because it would be acknowledging that climate change is not a hoax.
	So maybe he has some, you know, and maybe he's not up to speed on the fact that, you know, Bill Gates and all the smart people are saying this is the way to go.
	And so here's my statement that kind of wraps this all up.
	If the press continues to ignore the obvious solution, which would get the Congress on board.
	Because if the press starts reporting about Generation 4 nuclear, the public is going to get on board.
	If the public gets on board, Congress will follow, because there's nobody on the other side of the issue.
	There is nobody who learns about Generation 4 nuclear power who doesn't approve of it.
	You won't meet that person.
	It's the one thing in the world in which everybody agrees.
	Now somebody says, why does Fox News not mention nuclear?
	Same problem. Well, it may be a different problem.
	In the case of Fox News, it's probably more lack of, could be lack of knowledge, could be they're not up to speed, and I'm talking about the hosts primarily.
	There may be some other factor that I'm not aware of, but let me lump Fox News into the same category.
	They are failing the country on this topic in a fatal way.
	They're failing the country in a potentially fatal way.
	This is one of the biggest risks we've ever had.
	And when I say it's fatal, I mean in two different ways.
	If climate change is the problem that we think it is, it's fatal, because Fox News, CNN, and everybody else is ignoring the obvious solution.
	That would be fatal, because if the press doesn't report it, the public doesn't know it, and they can't influence Congress to do the things that need to be done, and that are fairly straightforward.
	There's not a lot of mystery about what to do.
	And then let's go the other way.
	Let's say the Democrats take power.
	Let's say that they go hard at the Green New Deal, and it bankrupts the country.
	It's catastrophic.
	Hundreds of millions of people could die just by degrading the economy substantially, because that's what poverty does.
	It kills people. So, if you think about the risk, the biggest risk of the world, What would you say it is?
	You'd probably say to yourself, oh, the biggest risk to the world is, some people would say climate change, some people would say nuclear war, some people would say this or that.
	But it might be the business model of the press.
	The press no longer has, apparently, I mean, in this topic it's obvious that the press is not in the business of informing the public.
	Wouldn't you say? Wouldn't you say that that is a fair statement?
	That the press, both sides, left and right, don't have an interest in informing the public in the most productive ways.
	It's just not a thing anymore.
	It's nobody's job to do it.
	So, that is my problem.
	Now, I was listening to Tucker Carlson.
	Last night, he was talking about the Green New Deal.
	Tucker makes the following claim.
	He says that the Green New Deal, and I'm paraphrasing, is really just a power grab, and that that's what it's all about.
	And that the point of the Green New Deal is to centralize power, and that it's all about power.
	To which I say, what?
	What? I don't even understand that point.
	I'm not going to tell you it's wrong, but there's no connecting tissue.
	I'm saying all of you agree.
	My God, that's scary.
	My God. Holy shit.
	I can't believe I'm saying this many people agree.
	Oh my God.
	This is blowing me away.
	I'm actually having a full-body feeling.
	I've got chills right now.
	Oh my God.
	This is scary.
	You've all been hypnotized.
	And there's nothing I can do to talk you out of it right now.
	I'll work on this over time.
	But let me... Oh my God.
	I'm actually...
	My mind is boggled right now.
	You know, I've been talking to you for a long time about how people don't have independent opinions.
	Their opinions are assigned to them by the press.
	And, you know, I know that.
	I believe it.
	I observe it all the time.
	But to see it so starkly, like with your comments, you're all agreeing with a point which is very, very important and completely disconnected from any reality.
	It's completely an assigned opinion.
	There's nobody here who could explain why that's happening.
	In other words, who is it who's grabbing power and why they want that?
	None of you can explain that.
	There's no connecting tissue between the thought that the Green New Deal is really all about a power grab.
	Now, if you mean that it helps the Democrats get elected because they have a topic, Then yes, I mean, it's a political topic.
	But there is no question in my mind that the public believes this is a real thing and a real risk.
	The scientists who are working on climate change are not going to work every day and saying, if I get this done, I will successfully have given power from the people to a central source.
	Nobody has that thought.
	There is nobody in this planet who in their mind is saying, let's do this so we can consolidate power.
	Nobody. There's nobody who's ever made that claim.
	It doesn't make sense.
	And I just watched how many, a hundred of you just say, oh yeah, that's a fact.
	It's a fact because you heard it on TV. That's the only reason you think that.
	There's no logical connective tissue to that.
	It's completely just divorced from reality.
	And I'm just gobsmacked that so many of you bought it.
	You don't often see brainwashing that stark or that immediate.
	That is complete brainwashing.
	If any of you can make an argument That there's a real person who's thinking to themselves, this climate change is going to be great for me to get all the power.
	You're going to have to find me a person.
	And I've been having the same conversation on Twitter.
	And the people who believe that it's a power grab, they send me two memes.
	And both of them are a photo of some old person.
	And on the photo of the old person will be a quote that seems to say that they're really all about grabbing power.
	But if you look at the wording, you can tell that it's a critic.
	It's not somebody who says, yeah, we're going to grab power, which is sort of the way I think it's being interpreted.
	It's somebody accusing other people of the same thing that Tucker did, which is, hey, you other people are all about grabbing power.
	But there's no evidence.
	There's no person who's ever said that's what they intend to do.
	There's no logic to make any of that work.
	Now, if there's an argument for this, I'm open to it.
	But you'd think that a claim this important would always come with a little bit of explanation.
	Not details, but if you're going to make a claim as important as climate change is really about consolidating power, that's a huge claim.
	That's about as big a claim as you can make.
	If you can make that claim, you should at least have a few words to say why you think that.
	Could be, the person who's doing it has said so.
	Like, show me a quote from the person who's actually trying to consolidate power.
	Show me an undercover video of somebody saying it.
	Show me the people specifically who would benefit.
	There's none of that.
	It's a completely groundless, as far as I can tell, absurd claim.
	Climate change is a whole bunch of people acting independently.
	That's it. I just described everything about climate change.
	Everything you need to know about climate change is that it's a whole bunch of people pursuing their own self-interest and largely believing what they're doing.
	The scientists believe that they're trying to find out the facts.
	The politicians believe that they're trying to do what's good for the world, which they also believe is going to be good for them politically.
	So of course there's a political element to it, maybe a little exaggeration.
	But Wow!
	It is shocking to see how completely many of you have been hypnotized on that point.
	Now, in order to prove me wrong, and let me say this, I'll make this offer as good as I can.
	Well, let me do this. I'm just going to switch to guest mode.
	I'm going to switch my microphone now, and I'm going to take somebody to explain to me This power grab idea.
	And I want you to listen to the explanation and watch how it just turns into word salad.
	Okay? So this will be a real-time demonstration.
	Alright, so I'm taking out the microphone.
	Putting in a new one.
	Alright, I'm looking for a guest who will connect the dots for me.
	And make the case.
	And I only want to see somebody who wants to make that case.
	If you have another topic, I'm going to cut you off.
	So let's see.
	Somebody who can make that claim.
	I'll look for somebody who's coming on new.
	All right. How about Darth Cupcake?
	So I'm picking somebody who...
	Just signed on to be a guest because I think it's more likely that you were interested in that topic.
	Caller, can I hear you?
	Hey, can you hear me? I can hear you.
	Hey, how are you doing? Good.
	Are you here to make the case that climate change is all about grabbing power?
	Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, I think it's an unintended consequence or it's a required consequence of Just about any environmental policy.
	Oh, hold on. Hold on.
	I'm going to end the conversation there because you are not making the case.
	So you're making a case that it would be an unintended consequence.
	But that's not the claim.
	The claim is it's an intended scheme.
	So I'm going to click off that guest.
	And I want a guest who can actually make a case that it's an intentional plot to gain power.
	Let's add new guest.
	Again, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm, you know, I just, for the benefit of the audience here, we'll keep things quick.
	All right, can you hear me?
	I can hear you. How are you?
	Hey, I'm good.
	Can you, do you have an argument that the climate change argument is really about gaining power?
	So, I'm not going to pretend like I'm an expert.
	There's a man on YouTube you may want to talk to, James Corbett.
	But here's briefly the point I want to make.
	When Congress gave George Bush the ability to go to war with terrorists and their allies, that Barack Obama would start seven new wars.
	Right? That's not... All right.
	Hold on. Hold on. Hold on, caller.
	Are you going to make an argument for why there's an intentional power grab, or are you going to make an argument that it's an unintentional outcome?
	That it's...
	There was an intention when the...
	No, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but...
	People that believe it now, they believe it, and they're not trying to make a power grab.
	They really believe what they're doing.
	But if you look at... Okay, so you're...
	Hold on. So you're not making the argument.
	All right, I've got to find somebody...
	I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off and be rude, but I'm really looking for somebody who will make the argument.
	And what you're finding, what you're watching in real time is nobody's making the argument.
	That's going to be my point.
	So I'll take another caller...
	And watch how there were just hundreds of people who said, oh yeah, it's all about the power grab.
	And yet we can't find anybody to make the case.
	Alright, caller, can you hear me?
	Yeah, maybe because you're an ignorant piece of shit.
	Why don't you, like, get your head out of your fucking ass, you dumb baker?
	You are so, legit, so stupid.
	Like, you think it's a power grab?
	You think that our Earth dying is all some, like, stupid scheme to get power?
	Do you not realize what's happening in the world?
	Like, You're going to be dead by 2050, so you won't even understand how the fucking equator is going to be unlivable.
	Our country is going to be uninhabitable.
	The Green New Deal is probably the best thing going right now.
	It's the fucking conservatives that fucking keep fucking it up.
	I don't understand. You are spreading ignorance.
	Do you understand that?
	You're just some crusty old white man.
	We'll get rid of him. So that caller didn't even know what topic he was in.
	He was arguing about climate change, which was, in other words, he was arguing against the point I was asking people to argue for.
	So whoever that caller was, if you believe that I'm a crusty old white man who is opposing the climate change, you have not been paying attention.
	Because whatever I am, I'm the opposite of that.
	Except for the crusty old white guy.
	Stuff. Alright, so I wanted you to hear how crazy that was, but he was crazy in the wrong way.
	He was the other kind of crazy.
	Let me find somebody.
	Now, you're watching the experiment in real time.
	So I'm going to take Christine, and Christine, your job is to tell me the argument for why the climate change is all about grabbing power.
	Christine, are you there?
	Yes, I am. Can you hear me?
	I can. Can you tell me why the climate change topic is really all a secret way to grab power?
	I believe that it is a way to undermine the Constitution of the United States, cause anarchy, and take over a befuddled populace.
	Hold on, hold on.
	It causes fear. Alright, I got you that that would be the point of it.
	Now, connect it with some logic and facts.
	Who is it who has this plan, specifically?
	It has to be the anarchists in our country.
	And it started with people like Saul Alinsky and the Weather Underground and followed through by Obama and Solyndra and all of these things that go to undermine the economy.
	So I understand what the conspiracy theory is.
	So the conspiracy theory is exactly what you just described.
	So you described it well.
	Thank you for that. Now the next part is besides describing what it is, Give me some evidence that is real in the modern day.
	A 2019 argument that there's some real person, and who is that person, and are they trying to get power?
	Who exactly is getting power?
	People who no longer believe in the Constitution, the Electoral College, and the Founders.
	Well, anarchy is the opposite of power, right?
	So the people who would like to destroy the system and create anarchy are the opposite of the claim.
	The claim is that there's somebody who's trying to get power.
	Anarchy is getting rid of all the power.
	So is there a claim that there's some person or group who's trying to get the power?
	Isn't that power? Um...
	In the abstract, yes, because it's a power to destroy, but that's not the claim.
	All right, so let's get some...
	I'm going to go to another color.
	So that would be a different claim.
	If there's a claim that anarchy is the goal, that's a different claim.
	Let's go to lavender turkey.
	By the way, did you note that when the angry guest came on to insult me, that he wouldn't even listen?
	Like he wasn't even willing to listen to the other side.
	I think that that may be a consistent finding.
	All right. Lavender Turkey, are you there?
	Yes, I'm here, Scott. What's up?
	Hey, can you make the argument that climate change is really a scheme for grabbing power?
	Are you going to make that argument or are you...
	No, I'm here for that.
	There was an audio problem there, but make your argument that it's a power grab.
	Who's grabbing power?
	Okay. Exactly.
	Who is the beneficiary of this power grab?
	Well, the beneficiary would be the Democrat Party, obviously.
	And it gives them more power because it furthers their agenda.
	So it would get them elected.
	I think everybody agrees on that part.
	It's part of a campaign issue.
	So that part I think everybody agrees on.
	But take it to the next level where who are the specific people who are the people who are going to get all the power?
	Who's that going to be? Well, I don't think there's, like, one specific person rubbing their hands together going, you know, he doesn't want to have power.
	You know, I don't think that...
	All right, so you're not...
	I can look for somebody to make the argument.
	All right, so I could do this all day, but I think you see what's happening, right?
	So everybody, when I first said, do you think this is a power grab?
	You saw the comments.
	It was, yes, yes, yes, yes.
	This is definitely a power grab.
	And then I talked to, what, six people in a row?
	And nobody could make the argument or even try to make the argument?
	It was all just word salad.
	Did you notice that? Now, that's what I told you would happen.
	Before I did this live, I told you that there would be no argument, but we all believe that somebody else has one, or something like that.
	All right, I'm done with that topic.
	Let me talk about something else.
	I introduced the idea of the slaughter meter.
	The slaughter meter is my prediction of what the 2020 presidential race would be if no variables changed from what they are today.
	So if you just straight line the variables to the election day, I did have it pegged at 100%.
	So until today, the slaughter meter was at 100% because it said that the president would just slaughter whoever he ran against.
	It didn't even matter. I have lowered the slaughter meter to 50%.
	And here's why.
	All of the things that the president has done well are going to be baked into the cake by election 2020.
	In other words, people will stop worrying about ISIS, but they will also stop giving the president credit because it's going to be old news.
	People will get used to the economy being good, and they will stop thinking that Trump had anything to do with it.
	People will, you know, and on and on, right?
	So what the things he's accomplished are going to feel like you're taking them for granted.
	The big issue seems to be health care.
	And because health care will be the biggest issue, along with climate change, and the president has completely screwed the pooch on this topic, his odds of slaughter are reduced by 50%.
	Now again, Plenty of stuff could change between now and Election Day.
	So that could go back up to 100%, could go to zero, could be anything.
	But at the moment, I reduced the slaughter meter from 100% to 50%, meaning it's a toss-up right now.
	And so the president first said, the president first said, oh, we're working on a plan.
	CNN is reporting that they can't find any live human being who's working on that plan.
	Now, it might have been a plan to create a plan or something like that.
	But now he said that he's going to push it off to 2020.
	He may or may not have people talking about it.
	There are hundreds of different ideas floating around.
	And frankly, I would say that the president has completely failed on this topic.
	He's failed persuasion-wise.
	He's failed politically and he's failed the citizens.
	So for those of you who are pretty sure I never say anything bad about the president, I've been hammering him on health care for a long time and he's at probably his lowest level of competence on that topic.
	Now, putting it in context, I would say it's the hardest topic because nobody else has solved it either.
	So it's hard to say that this president is like a special failure on this topic when nobody else has ever solved it either.
	And nobody has a good plan that I've heard.
	So if there's no plan from anybody, it's hard to say that this one person doesn't have a plan, and so he's extra special bad.
	But you can say for sure that he's not solving it, and I don't even think he's moving it forward, frankly.
	The administration is doing a number of things that are good, such as making more competition for generics and things.
	And if it's true that Trump stopped prescription medication prices from going up, and he's made that claim, I haven't heard anybody fact check that.
	I'd love to see the fact check on that, because I don't know if that's true.
	But they're at least doing the right things that should stop the prices from going up as fast as they were.
	So I'll give him credit for the things he's done.
	But the healthcare thing is just botched.
	There's just no nice way to say it.
	It's just botched. And we can't just throw...
	You can't just give the president some kind of automatic credit because he's on your team.
	Sometimes you just got to call it the way it is.
	Healthcare has been botched.
	Now, again, to be fair, the Democrats have botched it.
	The Republicans in Congress have botched it, and the President is botching it.
	It's all botched.
	There's nobody to compliment here, except, here's an interesting thing.
	There's one freshman Democrat who is recommending a, let's see, I want to describe it right.
	Instead of Medicare for All, in which The country would have one Medicare or one healthcare system.
	He's proposing that people could buy into Medicare optionally.
	So you'd still have all of your private plans, but people could buy into the government plan to compete against the private plans, and then you'd have a good competition, and that that somehow would lower prices.
	I don't know if that's true.
	I don't know if that's true.
	I'd love to hear smart people debate that.
	But here's what I did like about it.
	It's simple. It's incremental.
	It's easy to test.
	You could test it, right?
	At a relatively modest price, you could test it.
	You could test it in one state, for example.
	Let's say one state.
	Pick a small state. Pick Vermont and say, let's just try this in Vermont.
	I'm just randomly picking a state.
	Test it in this one state for one year.
	See if prices go down in that state.
	I don't know if that works that way.
	Maybe prices are all the same nationally, so that doesn't work.
	But the point is, if you could test it, go ahead and do it.
	It would be the smallest change.
	It completely keeps intact the entire private competitive situation, but it gives people some place to go.
	If they need cheaper healthcare and maybe that would help.
	So I'd love to see that idea debated because here's the problem with the healthcare discussion.
	As soon as you start, you realize that the conversation is so complicated and so big that none of the people talking about it understand it.
	Let me say that again.
	There's nobody who talks about healthcare Who even understands it past the surface?
	It's just too big and complicated.
	I've dug into it just a little bit, just to find enough to know that there's no such thing as a member of Congress who's got a good handle on health care.
	Nobody's even close.
	So if you've got a big, complicated thing, That you can't do a magic bullet and get in there and say, oh, if we just go in there and change this variable, this all starts working again.
	There's nothing like that. It's this big, unwieldy, you know, you've got lobbyists in healthcare and you've got rules and regulations and you've got, you know, millions of people who have to be satisfied, you know, administratively.
	It's just impossible.
	So this one freshman Democrat, whose name I can't remember, I guess I should give him more credit, It comes up with the first simple idea.
	And it sounds simple, at least compared to all the other ideas.
	You know, everything's more complicated than you think.
	But, yeah, it's a confusopoly.
	Somebody says that's right. So the prices are high because the public and the government can't tell what's going on.
	As long as the public and the government can't tell what's going on, it's too confusing, then the prices will always stay too high.
	So this one plan of creating a government competition to the private industry feels like you should at least give it a try, you know, or at least I'd like to see that a public argument.
	You know, let's just talk about that thing.
	Maybe just see if that thing's enough.
	All right. So the president is completely failing us on health care, and I can't soften that.
	There's no way to soften that.
	That's a complete failure. Let's talk about something else.
	I tweeted around a clip of Don Lemon on his show complaining about the Democrats apologizing too much.
	If you haven't watched this video, go to my Twitter feed, and you'll see it.
	It's near the top. It's hilarious from front to end.
	And it's hilarious not intentionally.
	But watching Don Lemon make the argument that Democrats are apologizing too much and President Trump doesn't apologize and therefore Trump will probably win because the not apologizing is a stronger look Then apologizing all the time.
	He played a compilation clips of a number of the other candidates apologizing for things from Beto to Elizabeth Warren to, I don't know, who else was apologizing?
	Bernie was apologizing.
	Biden was apologizing.
	And to watch Don Lemon completely come over to the Trump supporter point of view It's astonishing and entertaining.
	Now, he would never say that's what he did.
	If he asked him, hey, did you come over to the Republican point of view?
	I don't think he'd agree with that the way that I'm characterizing it, but I'm still going to characterize it that way because that's how it looks to me.
	So if he's saying that apologizing makes you weak and he's also saying Trump doesn't do it and the way he's presenting it is that it's an advantage politically.
	I'm going to say he came over to the Republican point of view on this.
	Because Republicans have always been saying, let me put this in more context.
	So when the Democrats had their one candidate against Trump, or the Democrats had no candidates against Trump, it was just Democrats in general against Trump and against Republicans, they could insist forever on apologies.
	So it was a non-stop reaction.
	Apology insistence. Hey, you Republican, you said this.
	Apologize. Apologize.
	Apologize for this. Trump, you have to apologize.
	Apologize. And I guess they weren't getting their apologies.
	But the problem with that strategy is that it was always destined to come back and cannibalize their own party.
	And now you're watching 16 Democrats in a situation where they've created a brand that says they have to apologize for stuff.
	What is the press going to do?
	What is social media going to do when you've created a situation where you've agreed that you must apologize for even the smallest transgression?
	It becomes the only news.
	There won't be any other news.
	The entire news business will now coalesce around making people apologize.
	So you think the Democrats are done apologizing?
	Oh, they haven't even started.
	Because when the election starts and it starts getting more brutal, I mean it's sort of started, but when it gets going, it will be non-stop demanding of apologies.
	And it will just make them look like, I don't know, a bowl of stale milk.
	But speaking of apologies, there's an interesting story about The main actress for the movie Up, which I guess is doing great box office business as maybe the best horror movie first week of all time or something.
	It was a really big deal.
	So I understand the movie is great for horror movies.
	And the main actress whose name I hope I'm pronouncing right is Lupita Nyong'o.
	That's probably close.
	Lupita Nyong'o.
	And She got in trouble for saying that she came up with the voice that she used in the movie, the scary sounding voice, after listening to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I guess, who has, she says, spasmodic dysphonia.
	Now, then the people who have that actual condition, spasmodic dysphonia, it's a vocal cord problem, they complained that Because she was just using their condition as, you know, a way to make some entertainment in a movie.
	Now, the first part of it is it wasn't the only thing she looked at.
	It was sort of a composite and, you know, that sort of informed her choice.
	But she's apologized.
	So she apologized for using a medical condition and just sort of taking it and using it in an entertainment fashion.
	Now, what's weird about this story, those of you who have followed me for a while, is that I had that condition.
	Meaning that for three and a half years, I was unable to speak in a way that people could understand.
	I could make noise, but people didn't know what I was saying.
	Because I had that condition, spasmodic dysphonia.
	Now, I found a surgeon who found a technique for curing it.
	And so, as you can tell, I can speak now.
	So I was one of the first people in the world to get cured of that condition.
	A lot of people don't know that it has a medical cure, so they still have it, etc.
	But she apologized, and I retweeted her apology.
	And first of all, it was a good apology, because she explained why she gave some context.
	She apologized. There was no hedging, and it seemed sincere.
	From my perspective, this is one of the few times I've actually been in a group that was the offended group.
	I never get to be in the offended group.
	If you're not gay or black or some group that is more typically offended, you don't get to demand too many apologies because you're just not in that group.
	So here it was this rare situation where I was in the allegedly offended group.
	Now somebody says, were you offended?
	No. No, not even a little bit.
	I was not even, you know, a quarter of 1% offended.
	In fact, I wouldn't have even known.
	I wouldn't have even known to process it that way.
	If it had not been for other people being offended, I wouldn't have even known that was a thing to be offended about.
	Apparently I don't get offended too easily.
	But still... I accepted the apology in my tweet.
	Apology accepted.
	Because I first of all agree that you should accept apologies when they're sincere and even when they're not.
	So my view is that even an insincere apology, as long as it's a good effort, should be accepted.
	Because it's a good way to organize society.
	I'm not much about demanding apologies.
	There are situations where that makes sense.
	But that's not my thing. I'm not the guy demanding apologies, which is fair because I'm also not the guy who's offended by other things.
	So I think I'm consistent there.
	But when they're offered, I accept them.
	And what I like about this, somebody says they're offended for me.
	Yeah, that's usually the way it works.
	What I like about this is how she handled it.
	So I've always put this standard forward and I recommend it to all of you.
	If you're judging people by their mistakes, you're going to be living in a crappy world because we're all making mistakes all the time.
	So if we're judging people by their mistakes, you're just creating a world you don't want to live in.
	But, because we're all making mistakes all the time.
	But if you judge people by how they respond to their mistakes...
	Then you've got a much better system.
	That's a system you want to live in.
	So I'll say her name again because I'm paying her respect.
	Lupita Nyong Oh.
	She made a mistake.
	Very small one. It was a tiny little mistake.
	But she owned up to it.
	She gave a full explanation.
	She offered what I think is a sincere apology.
	I really think it was sincere.
	Done. She handled it perfectly.
	I like her more Let me say that again.
	If you handle your mistake well, I'm going to like you more than if you'd never made a mistake.
	There's something like that when it comes to customer service.
	There's well-known studies that if a customer has a problem and complains, and the business they complain to handles it well, That that person is more likely to be a repeat customer than someone who never had a problem.
	So that's an important thing to understand.
	If the company that did something to the customer fixes it, says, oh my god, I'm sorry, here's what we'll do to fix it, you guarantee you have a customer for life.
	Because people are very influenced by how you fix a problem.
	They are not so influenced by the fact that you had one, right?
	Important point. Let's talk about boycotts because it's in the same kind of general thing.
	So George Clooney recommended that because the Sultan of Brunei is implementing Sharia law, which will punish LGBTQ people in that country quite brutally with death, I think.
	So Cluny is saying we should boycott the hotels that this Sultan owns.
	I guess Bill Maher came out on the other side of this, saying that boycotts are lame.
	And of course Bill Maher has been on the receiving end of a boycott.
	I too have been on the receiving end of a boycott and I'm still there.
	So the The receiving end of the boycott is not fun.
	You know, my income went down 30 or 40% just from talking about politics.
	And so boycotts are no good.
	But here's the problem with boycotts and apologies.
	They're like viruses.
	As soon as that first boycott enters the conversation, there's going to be more boycotts.
	And you could find a reason to dislike just about everybody until you're boycotting a Democrat-owned business or a Republican-owned business.
	You know, I don't believe in slippery slopes per se because usually there's an obvious thing that will stop the slippery slope from continuing to slide.
	But in the absence of any counterforce, you should expect things to keep going in the same direction.
	And with the apologies, I don't see a counterforce.
	It just looks like the poor Democrats are going to have to apologize forever.
	There's no pushback to it.
	Likewise with boycotts, if you allow that a boycott is a good thing to do in any situation, then you're accepting that you're living in a world where everybody's going to get boycotted eventually.
	So if you want to live in the world where everybody gets boycotted, then boycott.
	If you don't want to live in that world, Don't boycott.
	All right. I am boycotting answering my phone.
	Speaking of that, I was complaining because, as you know, everybody's getting more robocalls and spam calls on their cell phones.
	I was getting pretty much all of my calls.
	You know, something like 95% of all my calls were just spam.
	So, people recommended some spam killer apps.
	I had not used any spam killer apps because, honestly, I didn't think they would work.
	I hadn't looked into it.
	I just didn't think it would work.
	It just felt like the sort of thing that wouldn't work.
	But I tried one, which I've loaded on my phone, and since I loaded that on my phone, I have zero phone calls.
	Blocking the number doesn't help because the new technologies the spammers are using, it comes from a different phone number and often it says it belongs to some company or person so that you can't really block phone numbers anymore.
	That used to work but it doesn't work.
	So I will just tell you this.
	There is at least one app that does work and I'm not going to give an advertisement for it because apparently there are a number of them.
	The phone companies themselves produce some apps to do that.
	Please use them, and maybe you can end this.
	So if everybody uses the spam killer apps, whichever one you find that works for you, then...
	I'll say it again.
	Blocking the callers doesn't work.
	You can't block them, because they always come in on a different number.
	There's no blocking that works anymore.
	All right. Let's talk about...
	A lot of people are talking about the Mueller report.
	So the sequel to Mueller report is coming out.
	Let's call it Mueller 2, the sequel.
	And this will be the detailed report or as much of it as we can see.
	And people are already salivating because they say, wait a minute, Mueller didn't say there was no evidence of Trump's misdeeds.
	He didn't say that.
	He said it wasn't enough evidence.
	To convict or to indict, I suppose.
	So when we see that report, it's just going to be full of stuff that's bad news for Trump.
	Well, I have two points on that.
	Number one, it is impossible to tell the difference between coincidence and confirmation bias and evidence of a crime.
	They look the same For example, if you saw, coincidentally, a number of Trump administration people forgot to report conversations with Russians, you should say to yourself, huh, that raises a flag.
	Let me look into this.
	So there are a lot of things that would raise a flag, and you would say, I'd better look into this.
	But that doesn't mean there's anything to it.
	Because presumably the Russians were trying to talk to anybody who might come into power.
	So you should expect that anybody who's close to power in the United States would get at least a few contacts or attempted contacts from some Russians.
	So even though it looks like, well, this looks like evidence.
	By itself it's not.
	But if I can find other things, then this would be meaningful.
	You're going to see a whole bunch of stuff That looks like confirmation bias.
	That the Democrats will spin as weird is.
	It's proof that something was bad.
	I don't know why Mueller didn't indict on all this proof.
	And the Republicans are going to say, either we already knew that.
	It's going to be stuff like the Trump Tower meeting.
	So we're going to say, well, we already knew that.
	Carter Page, we already knew that.
	Papadopoulos, we already knew that.
	So you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff we already knew.
	That individually didn't mean anything.
	There were coincidences, confirmation bias, etc.
	So my guess is that if there were even one new fact in what's going to come out of the Mueller report that was important, there will be new facts, but if it were somehow important, I think we would already know it.
	Don't you think? Yes.
	Do you think there's anything in the Mueller report that's important and that we don't know?
	I don't know. I'm skeptical.
	I do think that releasing the report will give the Democrats lots to use as fodder.
	I'm sure of that, just because there will be a lot there that they can take into context.
	Well, Did you see that Duke University has to pay $112.5 million to settle a case because they were falsifying data for their scientific grant requests?
	Let me say that again.
	Duke University had to pay over $100 million to settle claims that they had repeatedly falsified data in their scientific studies As part of getting money to do more studies.
	So I tweeted that around with...
	So I guess the science is settled.
	When you see the Duke University case, and you see how massively people were maybe not colluding in terms of talking to each other, but were individually all criminal.
	I think it's criminal, isn't it?
	Wouldn't it be criminal to fake data to get money?
	Feels like that would be a crime, right?
	That's why they were being prosecuted.
	So if you see that many people who are real scientists and probably have otherwise good intentions, they're real scientists.
	And they were criminals.
	They were actually criminals.
	A lot of them. It wasn't like they said, hey, you got that one guy.
	Hey, Duke. You know that one scientist?
	You got that one scientist who keeps falsifying stuff.
	It wasn't that.
	I don't know how many scientists were involved, but it was multiple.
	And there were multiple events.
	It wasn't even a one-time occurrence.
	So apparently there is an ethic or a standard in which falsifying data to get grant money is not that unusual.
	So if you're looking at climate science and saying to yourself, well, there's no way that all of these, you know, literally probably millions of scientists could all be in on it.
	It couldn't be a conspiracy where everybody's in on it.
	Doesn't need to be. Look at the Duke University case.
	My guess is that those scientists were not colluding with each other.
	They just all independently said to themselves, what is in my best interest?
	And then they acted on their own best interest.
	What would make the larger climate science conversation any different than that?
	It's the same situation, just larger.
	It's just more scientists getting more grant money on other topics.
	Why in the world would we expect that to be different from the Duke University case?
	Now, I always have to add this caveat.
	I think it's a guarantee.
	I think that given human nature and how humans will always grab money if it looks like they can get away with it, and it's a lot of money.
	Under those two conditions, we think we can get away with it, and there's a lot of money involved.
	You can depend on On anybody, doesn't matter who they are or how nice they were up until that point, you can kind of depend on human nature to grab the money.
	Now, I assume that that is happening in climate science at a massive level, that people are, in fact, falsifying data to get money.
	But here, I want to be very clear about this.
	That does not in any way mean that climate science isn't real.
	And it doesn't mean it's not a problem.
	Those are very different things.
	You could have 75% of all the climate scientists be literally criminals.
	Literally. They could actually just be criminals falsifying data to get grants, just like Duke.
	And it still wouldn't tell you if climate science is a hoax or if it's real.
	It just wouldn't. They're just different things.
	If 25% of the climate scientists are right, we've got a big problem.
	And I don't know who's right because I can't determine the rightness by looking into it.
	Anyway, the Duke University case should give you pause about what you believe from any large organization, even if they're scientists.
	All right. Let's talk about...
	Let's talk about gravity.
	We're into bonus time.
	All of the people who only wanted to follow the politics are already gone.
	So I'm going to do the crazy stuff at the end.
	Are you ready? We're going into the crazy stuff.
	Have you heard of string theory?
	String theory is this amazingly complicated set of ideas that you can describe everything in terms of physics and the way the universe works in terms of some equations if they can only solve these equations but they're too hard to solve.
	So string theory has been for, I don't know, a couple decades, the primary scientific area of inquiry to try to figure out Einstein's great failed effort to find the unifying thing that ties it all together.
	You may not be aware that it hasn't worked.
	I think it may have worked in some minor ways, but it has not worked And it doesn't look like it's close to working for figuring out the model of the universe, you know, the theory of everything.
	So I would like to suggest a competing theory.
	That's right. I am a cartoonist, and I'm going to suggest a competing theory for the theory of everything.
	And the string theory will look like it came up, you know, it was thought up by a chimpanzee when I'm done explaining it.
	All right. And it goes like this.
	So first of all, this is a hypothesis, and I'm going to offer a way to look into it.
	So I'm not saying this is true.
	This is just for fun, and it's a hypothesis.
	And it goes like this.
	If we are a simulation, then the rules, meaning that we're programmed by some larger power, it would have programmed all the rules of physics into our experience.
	Now, if you know about gravity, and by the way, somebody fact check me on this, because again, I'm not a physicist.
	So fact check this.
	The theory of gravity as we understand it is that everything has a gravitational effect on everything else in the universe.
	It's just very small.
	In fact, gravity is a very weak force.
	You need an entire planet before you can even feel it.
	But it's true. That this has a gravitational force to my cup.
	It's just very, very weak.
	But here's the weird part.
	The cup also has a gravitational force on the planet, like on the other side of the universe.
	If I do this, I'm moving my cup.
	If I move my cup, in theory, it's actually affecting a planet on the other end of the solar system, and in fact, the entire solar system.
	So right now, I'm affecting the gravity Everywhere in the universe, according to theory, because gravity is everywhere and it's all connected.
	Somebody needs to fact check me on that, but I think it's right.
	Now, if you were a programmer and you wanted to build a simulation, would you build a simulation in which every item has an effect on every other item in the universe?
	That would be very complicated.
	And probably, you know, would be beyond your processing power unless you were a super advanced, you know, alien race.
	Here's what you would do more likely.
	More likely, you would build your model so it's the same way that we build video games now.
	So the video game characters have gravity.
	But the gravity in their video game doesn't have any effect on other video games and other scenes.
	So if a guy is jumping up and down in your game, you don't need to include any code for how his gravity affects anybody else.
	You could treat all the items like they have their own gravity.
	Simpler, right? So let me suggest this.
	I'm going to give you a...
	I'm going to update a theory that I've been...
	Or a speculation, not a theory, not the wrong word.
	Let's call it a mental experiment, a thought experiment, that I introduced decades ago.
	It was this. Imagine that there are only two things in the universe.
	There's a gigantic ball that's the size of the Earth, and it's thick.
	A big, thick ball the size of the Earth.
	And the only other object in the universe, besides this giant ball, is you, and you're on it.
	Now, if you and the ball were both expanding in size, but in relationship to, you know, in a like fashion so that you couldn't tell.
	So let's say the ball is expanding and you are also expanding at the same time.
	Could you tell that anything was expanding?
	And the answer is you couldn't tell because you were expanding at the same size as everything else.
	It would all look the same all the time.
	But if you tried to jump off the ball The ball would expand until it caught up to you.
	Would it feel exactly like gravity?
	And would it look to an observer, who also couldn't tell that anything was growing, that somebody had simply jumped off the earth and then the gravity brought them back down?
	Would it look the same?
	Because it would be easy to program an artificial world to just say, all right, everything in the universe is expanding all the time, because then you've solved for the fact that my coffee cup is affecting the gravity on the other side of the universe because it would look like it was because when I moved it it was growing and it either got closer or further from things on the other side of the universe so in a tiny way it would be as if everything was connected by gravity but it would be easy to program you just say everything just gets bigger all the time now Some of you are going to say,
	wait, wait, wait, that doesn't work.
	It only works if you have two items in the universe.
	As soon as you throw in orbits and you throw in the fact that denser objects have more gravity, as soon as you throw in a few of these things, Scott, your whole theory falls apart.
	To which I say, what if you're the programmer?
	If you're the programmer, it is very typical in the programming world to build one general rule And then when there are a bunch of things that don't conform to the rule, you put in the special cases.
	Generally, everything's growing.
	But if you need to account for, let's say, some density, you throw in a little code that compensates for that.
	You need to throw in some orbit stuff, throw in a little code to compensate for that.
	And in a very simple way, you've created an artificial world where all the people in it believe that they have something called gravity.
	But in fact, there are just three or four coded rules that create everything we see that appears to be gravity.
	So, my alternative to string theory is coder theory.
	C-O-D-E-R. The idea that we are coded by a higher power, meaning a civilization of humans or aliens or something.
	It doesn't have to be God.
	And And so if you were to start with that assumption and say, okay, if we were going to write this computer simulation, how would we do it?
	We'd probably have a general rule and we'd have a few extra pieces of code to take care of the exceptions.
	That's how we'd do it.
	So instead of looking for the single string theory, multiple dimensions, impossible to solve way of understanding the world, Why not just say, if we were going to make this world, this is how we'd write it.
	And then you check to see if those assumptions about saving resources bear out.
	There's probably some way to check it.
	So I'm not clever enough to know that there's some way to check that hypothesis, but that's the hypothesis.
	All right. Not impossible to solve, impossible to test.
	Is it impossible to test that we are coded?
	It might be, but I don't accept that as true.
	I would accept only as true that it's not obvious how you would test it.
	But that would be true of everything in science to me.
	I mean, there are lots of things that I wouldn't know how to test.
	I mean, most of the things that physicists have figured out, I wouldn't have known to even know what to test.
	so the fact that we don't know how to test it doesn't really mean much somebody says it's impossible It would be impossible. Oh, let me say this.
	It would be impossible if you got a false test in which that we had been coded.
	That wouldn't tell you because the coder could have built in that code to prevent you from ever learning your true nature.
	But if you found a positive proof in which you proved it was true, Then you would know it was true.
	So getting a negative wouldn't tell you anything, but if you could get a positive result and prove it, that would tell you something.
	And I don't know if that's possible, but that's all I got for today.

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