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June 18, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
54:37
Episode 570 Scott Adams: YouTube Demonetization, Russia Hacking, Iran, Harvard, DNA, Deportations
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Hello everybody!
It's time for your dopamine hit of the day.
The best part of the day that makes all the rest of the day amazing.
But you want to get it right.
So you better hurry on in here.
Grab a seat up front.
I see you.
Hello, my dude, as somebody else says.
All right. I think it's time for you to do what you came here to do.
You know what that is?
It's a little thing I call the simultaneous sip.
It's where your dopamine starts to Go crazy!
And now you're so well trained that you can almost feel a tingle on your arm when it gets close.
Not all of you. Some of you.
Some of you are ahead. The rest of you, you don't have the tingle yet.
You'll feel it in the back of your neck, a little bit on your arms as the simultaneous sip draws near.
And to enjoy it, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass.
A stein, a chalice, or a tankard would work.
Perhaps a thermos.
A flask, if you like.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous sip.
Ah, extra good, extra good stuff. - Okay.
Well, people are telling me where they are.
Somebody's driving to the doctor.
Somebody else says they're on the toilet right now.
I'm sure some of you are working out, some of you are commuting, and some of you are just sitting around drinking coffee.
But it's awesome either way.
All right, let's talk about one more take on Kyle Keshav and Harvard.
You know the story? Parkland shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv was accepted at Harvard, but then some text messages from when he was 16 were released, in which he said some offensive things, mostly involving the N-word, but I guess there were some other offensive things.
And Harvard rescinded their approval of his application.
So, I thought about this for a day after my initial reaction, and I have modified my reaction.
I've decided that Harvard made the right decision.
Probably don't want to hear that, right?
Now, what I mean by that is that Harvard's obligation...
is to Harvard. They're an entity that is formed to take care of itself, which includes taking care of its alumni and taking care of its students.
It seems to me that Harvard did what they are obligated to do.
They protected themselves at the expense of someone else.
Now, every time they reject somebody from Harvard, they are also protecting themselves and their students and alumni at the expense of other people, at the expense of somebody who didn't get in.
So I would say that Harvard, I'm going to modify my anger and say it would have been nice to It would have been nice if they did something that was not so good for Harvard, but maybe it was a statement about free speech and how people can change and private communication and stuff like that.
It would have been nice if Harvard had taken a principled stand.
But they're not obligated to take a principled stand.
They're not obligated to do that.
They are obligated to take care of themselves.
And they're obligated to do what's good for them, even if it's bad for other people.
And I think that's the choice they made.
And I can't begrudge that, because that's what a corporation does, it's what any entity does, and things work better if they do that.
But that doesn't make me less angry at this situation.
My anger is now 100% focused On the people who outed Kyle and sent his private messages from when he was 16 to Harvard and ruined his life.
Well, probably didn't ruin his life.
That's an exaggeration. Changed his life.
We'll see if it got ruined.
And here's my rule.
I've come up with a new rule.
And I think we should take this new rule seriously.
And the rule goes like this.
That if somebody takes a piece of communication, in this case it was old text messages, if somebody takes a communication that existed in one context, which is, say, private, and they move it to a new context, which is public, or showing it to Harvard, which is the same thing, whoever moves the context of the communication becomes the author of it.
That should be the rule. So that's my rule for an ethical, moral way to treat with us.
And here's why. Communication is not about the words.
The specific choice of words is only part of communication.
What makes a message a message is, first of all, understanding who said it, And what the context was.
If you don't understand who said it, which is really part of the context, if you don't understand the context, then the message is garbled or it could be just wrong or different from what was intended by the speaker.
So anytime somebody takes a message that was crafted for one context, in this case a private context, in which, and I don't believe this is disputed, I believe people accept that this is true, the context was 16-year-old kids who thought they were having a private conversation with a small group and were attempting to be as offensive as possible for their own entertainment.
Now, if you take that communication...
Which was completely or probably almost completely acceptable to the people involved, meaning that they understood, and this is very important, they understood that the things they were saying would be offensive in a different context.
That's why they thought it was funny.
In other words, they understood it was wrong.
If you don't get this fact, you're missing the most important point.
Everyone involved in saying these words or even listening to them, everybody who is part of this thing about trying to be offensive, the whole point of it is that they do understand it's wrong.
That's the point. It wouldn't be funny if they didn't all understand that.
It was the wrongness that made it funny.
But they were careful to keep that wrongness in a bubble so that nobody else would get hurt.
Would you agree that they were trying to keep other people from being hurt by keeping it private and just having a private laugh?
Now, somebody decided to take that communication which was safely walled off in a private group.
Maybe it offended one of the members of the group, which would be bad.
And, you know, that should be addressed separately.
But whoever took that private communication and changed its context...
To a public context is the author of it, in my opinion.
Because that's not the message that Kyle had.
Kyle did not have a message for the public.
He did not make a message for the public.
It's a different message.
As soon as it's changed context, it's a new author and a new message.
Now it's blamed on Kyle because he created the actual words.
But when they're taken out of context, it's not that message anymore.
It's not a message of, we know these are bad words, essentially.
The original message would say, we know these are terrible words.
We know that we would never want to say these in front of people who would be offended.
So we're saying this in a private little group because we're having a laugh, imagining how bad it would be if somebody actually heard these words who would be offended.
Now, So, whoever spread this message should definitely not get to go to college, in my opinion, because they are authors of horrible...
Horrible words that they released to the public.
Not only did the releasing it to the public offend a lot of people, because it should.
They were offensive words.
They were designed to be offensive.
But it was bad for the speaker, Keshav.
So I reserve all of my anger for whoever did that.
They are terrible, terrible people, and they have to live with that now.
Imagine living with that.
Imagine being the people who have to live with what they just did by releasing that message and becoming the authors of it.
They are the authors of it.
All right. Here's another problem I have.
We seem to too easily conflate being offensive with being racist.
And if we can't sort those two things out, we've got a real problem.
Because those are really different things.
Oh, they have some connection.
Sure. But they're different things.
You can be super offensive accidentally.
You can be super offensive because you said something privately, but somebody took it out of context.
Being offensive is unfortunately a normal perpetual state of being for humans.
We're all offended by something.
I could tell you I was probably offended by several things yesterday.
Racism is a very specific thing, and just because I offend you and you're some different group, some different race, some could be a different gender, offending you is not misogyny.
It's not racism. It is simply being offensive.
We're offensive to other humans all the time.
We can't conflate those things, and I think it's a big mistake.
We do that. All right, let's talk about Iran.
Did you see the new photos of the Iranian boat that was taking the limpet mine off of the...
The tanker. It turns out we have really good pictures of those guys.
I think we probably didn't want to release the photos because they're so clear.
And maybe we didn't want people to know how well we know things.
But they have been released.
So when this first came out, I told you that given that our intelligence services are not reliable, And let me say that clearly again.
Our intelligence services are not reliable.
They are sometimes right and sometimes lying to us like crazy or mistaken.
We can't tell the difference.
But they're not reliable.
And I want to say that as clearly as possible.
Doesn't mean they're wrong all the time.
I'm not saying that, but they're not reliable.
And so when it first came out, I said it's a coin toss, 50-50 that this is even true, the way it's reported.
I upgraded that to 75% when I saw the videos, and now I'm upgrading it to 100%.
And that's based on the fact that we have these clear pictures, so obviously we have better information than we first knew.
But more importantly, Iran has not denied that that's their boat.
So if Iran doesn't at least try to lie about why the boat was there, if they don't come up with some story, some cover story about what the boat was doing, if they don't even try, Well, that's all you need to know, right? Because if it really didn't happen, Iran would be screaming, that's not our boat.
Or they'd be saying, yes, that was our boat, but we were protecting that tanker by taking that mine off of there.
They risked their lives.
They wouldn't say something. Something.
So it's obvious now that it was an Iranian mine.
I say that's confirmed at this point.
It's obvious that they did not mean to release oil into the Gulf.
It's obvious that they put the mines above the water level and that their intention was to cause trouble, not to destroy the entire shipping situation right away.
I'm not sure if that person is swearing at me.
I saw some troll stuff there.
So, we're moving some forces in, and then Iran is talking about, Scott is so gullible, we'll get rid of you.
By the way, I'm okay with people saying they disagree with me, but when you say, Scott is so gullible, that's not about disagreeing with me.
That's just about me.
And my new rule is that there's zero tolerance for any troll-like behavior.
So you don't even have to be a troll.
You just have to remind me of a troll.
And I'm going to block you.
Because I can. Right?
I don't have to put up with any kind of unpleasantness.
It's optional. So I just made that troll go away.
Now, when somebody said, I'm being gullible, there's a good chance that they're on my side on most things, and maybe a Trump supporter, and maybe even a fan.
Possibly somebody who bought my books.
But I don't need to listen to you tell me I'm gullible.
You can give me reasons.
You can tell me what's true, what's not.
You can tell me I got a fact wrong.
Anything you want. But if it's personal, you're blocked.
All right. So the question is, where do we go with Iran?
Where do you go with that?
Because it looks like this permanent stalemate situation.
And I still think where we need to go with this is probably President Trump is going to shake the box again.
So the variables that we have do not give us a path for solution.
Probably we're going to shake the box and create a new set of variables that are unpredictable, but at least might give us a better chance.
So I would expect the president to shake the box again.
But here's what I think needs to happen.
I think that Iran needs an escape hatch.
Because they can't just back down.
That doesn't feel like an option.
It would be damaging for them to do that.
And they can't win because we won't let them.
So what happens if you can't win and you can't lose?
Well, then you have the situation we have now where maybe somebody gets nuked someday.
Pretty bad. So you have to create an escape path the same way President Trump created an escape path for Kim Jong-un.
By talking to him, by embracing him, by creating a path to victory where we say, okay, Kim, you can stay in power and we'll even help your economy.
You just have to be friendly.
So that was a good escape path because it gave him a way to win.
Iran does not have a way to win, at least with its current leadership.
So I think the argument should be changed to, Iran, why are you so afraid of ideas?
Why do you have no confidence in your own God?
Because that's what's happening, isn't it?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Is this an incorrect statement?
If Iran thinks it needs to use physical weapons to spread their beliefs, in the age of the internet, isn't that really saying that their God is weak?
Because it feels to me that if they had confidence in their own God, it should be enough to have the Internet simply engage in a battle of ideas.
Because God's on your side, right?
That's the whole idea.
If God isn't on your side, then the Internet won't work.
But if God isn't on your side, neither will weapons.
Weapons aren't going to work if God isn't on your side, right?
At least if you're in Iran, you would think that.
So let's take the battle off the battlefield and put it on the internet where it belongs and invite them to take their best shot at describing their truth.
Maybe their God will help them.
My favorite fake news story today was about Jon Stewart and the 9-11 Fund.
You all saw the story about how Jon Stewart Tearfully and emotionally got angry at Congress for not doing their job to fully fund the, I guess the, what would you call them, the first responders, health problems. So Mitch McConnell finally responded to that, and you know what Mitch McConnell's response was?
We were always going to fund it.
Do you know what his response was to why there were not many people in the room and not many people showed up for Jon Stewart?
Because that's normal.
They're busy. They don't all show up for everything.
And by the way, they didn't need to show up for that in particular because they were all pretty sure it was going to get taken care of at the last minute.
But McConnell points out a lot of stuff gets done at the last minute.
In order for it not to be done at the last minute, you'd have to have somebody opposed to it.
And there doesn't seem to be anybody opposed to it.
If the Republicans and the Democrats both want it, It just hasn't happened yet, but apparently it's going to happen.
So that whole, we love Jon Stewart, he's come out of retirement, he's fighting for the little people, he's embarrassing Congress, none of that was real.
It was all fake news.
It was complete theater.
Jon Stewart was emotionally lobbying for something that was going to happen, whether or not Jon Stewart was involved at all.
Completely fake news.
All right. Here's a little shocking thing that happened to me.
Some months ago, I guess last year, I did the 23andMe DNA test.
If you haven't done this, it's worth doing.
It's a lot of fun.
I don't know how good the science is.
I don't know how good it is.
But... It's fun.
It's sort of like horoscopes, even if it's not true, it's kind of fun.
So one of the things that 23andMe does, which is brilliant, is after they give you your original, your initial results, they continue with emails.
About new things they've discovered that they can now say about you based on your DNA that they couldn't say when you first took the test.
So I keep getting these updates.
Oh, did you know that you have a high chance or a low chance of being, I don't know, colorblind or whatever the new test is?
And they sent me a new one.
Sent me a new one.
And apparently they can test now.
For whether or not you are likely to have a fear of public speaking.
That's pretty specific, isn't it?
Can you believe that?
Can you believe that 23andMe can tell you your odds, your genetic odds, that you're afraid of public speaking?
Now, if you know much about me, you know that I've done a lot of public speaking.
In fact, in a sense, I'm doing it right now.
I have, so here's the point in my story.
I have always taken great pride that I could overcome the fear that other people had trouble overcoming.
So I always hear about people are so afraid of public speaking that it's very much like, you know, it's like death.
But I always told myself, man, Scott, Scott, you are pretty, pretty awesome.
Because you, when other people can't do this, you, Scott, have found a way to overcome your fear.
You can overcome the fear of public speaking like other people can't.
Because, Scott, you've got good character.
That's what I thought about myself until this week, when I read the 23andMe result that said that people who have my genetic makeup are very unlikely to be afraid of public speaking.
So here I had this whole illusion about myself in which I imagined I had some kind of strong character attribute which allowed me to see past my fear.
I could see past fear like other people couldn't.
I was a brave person.
Damn it! I'm brave!
But it turns out nothing like that.
It turns out that I have genes that make me not afraid in the first place, which is exactly how I feel.
There has never been a time in my life when I was especially afraid of public speaking.
In fact, never. I can think of no time, and I've done a lot of it both in my corporate days and then later for Dilbert's stuff, I did a lot of corporate speaking, etc.
I can't think of one time I was ever afraid of speaking.
To tell you how unafraid I am of speaking...
I once gave a speech when I didn't know if I could actually physically speak.
Some of you know the story. I lost my ability to speak for a few years.
And just when it was coming on, I'd agreed to a speaking event, and I told the organizers, I don't even know if I get on stage.
I don't know if I can form actual words, like literally my vocal cords.
I didn't know if I could do that anymore, because I had this speaking problem that eventually I overcame.
So I actually had the experience of having a huge crowd waiting for me, just for me.
They were there just for me.
And I was off stage, and I hear the introduction, and I didn't know if I walked on stage if I could form words.
I didn't know.
And when I got out there, I managed to get through it, and I formed enough words that they paid me anyway.
It wasn't good, because this was the beginning of losing my voice to the point where I couldn't do that.
But yeah, so somebody in the comments is saying, my gosh, that's courageous, how brave you are.
No. No.
That's what I used to think.
A week ago, I would have said, man, I'm a pretty brave dude, because even in the worst possible public speaking situation, I still braved my way through that.
Turns out, nothing like that happened.
My worldview, completely wrong.
What happened was, I have a certain genetic makeup, That doesn't excite my amygdala, whatever it is, the part of your brain that makes you go into fight or flight.
So my brain is simply not wired to make my fight or flight go crazy when I do public speaking.
I'm not brave.
I'm just a genetic freak.
Amygdala. Yes, thank you.
My amygdala. So, having learned this rather disturbing fact about myself, it's disturbing in the sense that I thought it was a character advantage, and it's nothing.
It's just a randomness of my genetic makeup, and that's it.
So I just got lucky.
In that one area, I got lucky.
I wish I had been taller, I wish I had better hair, could have been better looking, wouldn't it be nice if I had good eyesight?
Everybody's got something. I got all this bad stuff.
That I just mentioned, you know, and other stuff.
But this one thing, I got lucky.
Just genetic luck.
So, here's the bottom line.
I've lost all self-respect.
And I mean that in a good way.
I've lost all self-respect.
Because I used to think that everything good I'd ever done was something about my character, my soul, my personal self, my ego, the thing that made me somehow I had thought past my problems.
Somehow I figured out good solutions where other people haven't.
And, you know, instead, as I wrote in my book, had failed almost everything and still went big, we are just moist robots.
We are just programmed.
And I've got a program that gives me a certain set of skills and a program that doesn't give me skills in other areas.
That's it. That's it.
That brings me to some advice.
Well, I'm going to expand on this for a minute.
I hadn't planned on doing this, but this is valuable to you.
I've said this before, but I can't say this enough.
Your ego is not your friend.
Most people go through life thinking that their ego, their sense of self, the part they have to protect, the part that makes them think that they are important, they think that that's who they are.
That part of you that says you're important and keeps trying to protect you and make you better and make you better than other people and stuff like that.
In truth, your ego is your biggest enemy.
Because your ego is the source of all your unhappiness.
Unless you have a mental problem.
But if you're a normal person, your ego all day long is saying, Hey, how do you compare to that person?
How do you compare to this person?
Shouldn't you do something different or better to improve your ego?
All day long, your ego is punching you in the head.
Your ego is not your friend.
When you can release your ego and be just as comfortable being humiliated in public as you can winning a contest, then you're free.
The Buddhists, I think, yeah, somebody mentioned Buddhism.
There are various disciplines in which you try to get your ego out of it.
But think about that.
Just think about that one framing.
Your ego is your biggest enemy.
If you can become free of its control, things don't hurt.
I'm going to tell you something that you won't believe.
If you can control your ego, you won't even experience physical pain the same way.
You'll still know it's pain, so you're not going to put your hand on the stove and leave it there.
I'm not talking about that. You'll understand the feeling, and you'll know that it's pain and that you should take your hand away.
None of that will change.
But the moment you can get to the point Where your ego is not who you are, it's rather your enemy, and you can push it to the side, your body won't even feel pain the same way.
Because the pain is the thing that's telling you to protect yourself.
The pain is saying you're special.
Every time you feel pain, it's your ego telling you, along with your body, that you're special and you must protect yourself.
If you move your ego out of it, you still have the physical sensation without the panic, because you know you're not that special.
It's a pain, and if you understand the pain is something that will run its course, if it's going to run its course, you're not going to worry about it, and it's not going to feel like pain anymore.
All right. I know you don't believe that, But I want you to understand this is something I've experimented with, I've researched.
It's true. Your ego is your source of pain.
It's not who you are and you should not protect it.
You should look to destroy it.
And the best way to destroy your ego is to subject yourself to embarrassment until you get used to it and you see that it doesn't hurt you.
Once you can do that, once you can handle a deep humiliation and embarrassment in public...
Do you see this?
I'm actually wiping my nose in public.
Does that bother me?
I know some of you are bothered by it, right?
You didn't want to see it. Does it bother me?
No. How many of you could wipe your nose in public, in a public forum?
Not many. Some of you could.
But get there.
But you want to get there.
It's the best thing I could ever teach you.
Get to the point where you can embarrass yourself Just as easily as you can do something great.
Should be the same.
Should feel exactly the same.
I'm close. You know, you never get there all the way, but I'm close to that.
All right. The Rock, you know The Rock, Dwayne Johnson?
He has some advice that the news is breathlessly reporting.
So this is The Rock's advice for you.
He said, you should be your authentic self.
That's how you will succeed the best, is by being your authentic self.
That is just about the worst advice you're ever going to see.
So my advice is do not take your advice from Dwayne Johnson, The Rock.
In fact, I mock that advice in at least three books.
I mock the advice, be your authentic self.
The better advice...
Be a better you.
Do not be authentic.
If you were authentic, you would not shave, you would not bathe, you would not wear clothing, you would not be nice to other people, you would not go get a job, you would not go help the public.
You would not do anything.
Being authentic is the worst frickin' advice anybody will ever give you in your life.
Never, ever be yourself.
Be the better version.
Because if you look at who you were when you were born, are you the same person?
No! You're the better version.
Do you want to be the baby that's, you know, messing his diaper and sucking on a bottle?
No! No, don't be yourself.
That baby grew up.
That baby got a little more maturity, got a little smarter, got a little kinder, got a little nicer.
Never be yourself. Work on being a slightly better version of yourself, and then when you accomplish that, work on being a little bit better than that.
Always be working on the better version of yourself, and if you can't get there right away, fake it.
Be a big frickin' phony and pretend you're a nice person because we do program ourselves by our actions.
If you simply pretend to be nice for a year, even if you know you're just pretending, at the end of the year you're going to be a nice person.
You can program yourself by what you do.
So you are not your ego.
So when The Rock says, be yourself, do you know what that advice means?
Respect your ego, because your ego is telling you you're great just the way you are.
All right. Forget the rock.
The president is reportedly going to start deporting millions of people.
But we don't know the details.
Something about the people who have violated, I don't know, violated the order to return, I guess, to court.
So I think the people that they're targeting are the people who had been detained at the border and then said they would return for their court date but never returned.
I don't know about that, so that's not...
I would say there's still some ambiguity on this story, so wait for that story to form.
All right, I want to give you a...
An update on something I said about the Mueller report and its reference to the stolen emails by Russia.
I had said on a Periscope that the Mueller report surprisingly does not say that the Russians hacked the DNC. That instead, this is what I said, and I'm going to modify this in a minute, but what I said was that they used the word in the report, the Mueller report, Use the word that it appears.
That it appears that they did that.
Which I said, wait a minute.
If you knew they did it, you'd say they did it.
If you weren't sure they did it, you'd say, well, it appears they did it.
So I said to myself, huh, it seems like we're being lied to.
But then today I read the actual sentence.
So this is my mistake.
So let me accept responsibility again.
For talking about a word in a sentence without seeing the whole sentence.
There's no way I can justify that.
That was just dumb. I should have seen the whole sentence and I should have seen the whole context before I talked about one word in the sentence.
When I see the full sentence, I no longer interpret it the same way.
Okay? Somebody says, how embarrassing.
But do you note that I don't look embarrassed?
I did something that, by any objective measure, should be embarrassing.
And I should feel embarrassed right now that I did that.
But I don't. Because embarrassment is not useful.
And it's something that your ego does to you.
And I'm not friends with my ego, so I don't care what it does.
Alright, but here's the whole sentence, and you judge, and I'll tell you why.
I'm modifying my view.
The whole sentence said that Unit 26165, which you would have to know in context, means the Russian intelligence agency that does cyber stuff.
So, Unit blah blah blah is talking about Russia, basically.
So the Russian officers, and here's the rest of the sentence, appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
Here's what I got wrong.
It's a complicated compound sentence.
The sentence does not say, it appears Russia hacked us.
That's what I thought it said.
And if I thought it appears Russia hacked us, that would sound like we're not sure.
But here's the full sentence again, and you can see why I was wrong.
It says that Russian officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
Here's the problem. There are three claims in that sentence.
Claim number one, Russia hacked.
The DNC. That's claim number one.
Claim number two in the same sentence is that it involved stealing thousands of emails and attachments.
That's the second claim. One is that they hacked.
Two is that they stole thousands of documents.
And then the third part, which were later released by WikiLeaks.
Those are three claims.
So, when the sentence says, what follows appears to have happened, In order for them to be sure that it happened, instead of saying appears, they would have to be sure of three claims.
Russia tried to hack.
Russia got thousands of documents.
Russia gave them to WikiLeaks, and WikiLeaks released them.
It's entirely possible that we're 100% sure that Russia hacked the DNC. But we are less sure how many documents they got, and perhaps, again, less sure again that they gave them to WikiLeaks.
Maybe they gave them to somebody who gave them to WikiLeaks.
In other words, there could be some unknowns about the second part of the sentence, about the WikiLeaks part, but they could be 100% sure about the Russia hacking part.
Now, I'm not going to change my opinion to say that Russia did hack it, because I don't find our intelligence services reliable.
So just based on general lack of reliability, I would say you still can't know for sure.
but I rescind my comment which I had said before in which the fact that Mueller uses the word appears I said that meant that maybe we're not sure but when you see the full sentence it means that the entire breadth of the the trail is something we can't be a hundred percent sure of but if we know for sure that the hacking happened and we know for sure that WikiLeaks released the same documents they're saying
well it appears that way all right I made the mistake of looking at MSNBC in which they have a headline that Trump quote flips out over a New York report on the U.S. cyber attacks on Russia so MSNBC says that Trump flips out I'm pretty sure I read that story on other sources and didn't seem like they were he was
It seemed like Trump was being the Trump he's always been since the first day we ever saw him.
He speaks forcefully about a lot of things.
He likes some things.
He doesn't like some other things.
Is he really flipping out?
Flipping out isn't news.
Flipping out is not even opinion.
It's not even backed up by evidence.
It is simply propaganda.
All right, now, what's funny about this is apparently the president pushed back on the idea that the U.S. is using its cyber forces more aggressively against Russia.
Now, why would the president say that?
So the New York Times says we're getting aggressive with our cyber stuff against Russia, and the president says, no, no, no, that's not happening.
Well, that's good presidenting, because the president should say in public, no, we're not attacking Russia.
He should say that.
It's not clandestine intelligence operations if you admit you're doing it.
Now, remember I said, oh, somebody, yeah, I think the president also said the New York Times was treasonous for reporting it, and I agree with that characterization.
Because you should not be outing what your intelligence services are doing.
That's kind of treasonous.
Now, I don't want to get, you know, hung up on the definition of the word treason, but in essence, in essence, it's disloyal to the country to out what our intelligence services are doing if the intelligence services Are acting in what seems to be the best interest of the country.
Now you may remember, some of you, that I said long ago, why is it that people are saying the president is doing nothing about Russia's hacking?
And I said, how in the world would you and I know that we were doing nothing about Russia's hacking?
Because whatever it is we should be doing about that, half of it might be public, you know, like sanctions, and half of it, or more, should be stuff we're doing under the hood.
And I said that once we confirmed, assuming we did within the intelligence community, that Russia tried to hack us, Didn't you think that the response would be our cyber guys and women would go after Russia?
Didn't you think that we would do a tit-for-tat?
So every time I heard we're not doing anything about the Russia cyber attacks, I thought to myself, no, the only thing we know for sure is we don't know what we're doing.
The only thing.
That's it. That's 100% of what we can conclude.
Is that we don't know what secret things our own government is doing on our behalf.
It seemed to me highly unlikely that we would experience a major cyber attack, as had been reported in terms of the election and meddling.
It seemed highly unlikely that we would not be responding in kind.
Now maybe not to damage them directly, but at least to tap them on the shoulder and say, by the way, We know all of your, you know, we can get into all of your systems.
Surprise! So maybe the next time you get into any of our systems, the lights are going to go off.
I'm not saying they will.
I'm not saying how we got into your system, but do you notice our bots in your system?
We're in there. So to me, it made perfect sense that what the president was doing was in public denying that we're doing this stuff because that's what you do.
You deny it in public.
That's his job.
He's supposed to deny it in public.
But then you do it hard under the hood.
It seems to be what's going on there.
All right. I was reading up or learning a little bit about thorium molten salt reactors.
A lot of people have been telling me to read up on that.
I've been avoiding it because I figured I wouldn't understand it anyway.
But here's what I've learned about thorium molten salt reactors.
So these are not the kind that we typically are using in the United States.
But they are being tested.
And I guess we built one decades ago and tested that the basic concept works.
So thorium is basically something you can get from dirt.
So you don't have to look too hard and you don't have to worry about running out of plutonium.
So you can basically just take a bunch of dirt that's left over from regular mining operations and say, hey, you were mining for other things, but while you were mining for other things, you created a lot of dirt that you dug out of these holes.
Can we use your dirt?
Because it turns out ordinary dirt has enough thorium in it.
That you've got all the energy you would need to power the world, as far as we can tell.
So, thorium is a little bit harder to turn into nuclear weapons.
That's good. And then when you combine the thorium with a, I guess, a liquid salt, is that the right term?
So instead of putting it in pressurized water to cool it, you use salt fluoride or fluoride salt, something like that, which has better properties for cooling without the risk.
And the design, as I understand it, is that if something goes wrong, you've got two containers in I'm oversimplifying.
You've got the reactor and then separately you've got a container where all the fuel will drain into it harmlessly if something goes wrong with the reactor.
And that's built into the design.
So apparently there are several of these being tested in other countries because they have more lax standards for this sort of thing.
In the United States apparently Our regulations just don't allow it.
It's just too hard to do.
Too expensive, too hard to get it approved.
But we should see this coming out of China soon, maybe India.
And the weird and depressing part about this whole story is that we might have to wait for China to develop nuclear technology that somehow we can copy or steal or buy so that we can do it.
We've actually abdicated our leadership in the most important technology for the future, which is energy.
Now, I see more and more people coming around to the framework, and some were there before me, so I'm not going to claim that I changed people's minds on this.
The idea that energy, the kind that's produced by oil and gas and coal and nuclear power and solar and all that, that energy is the only thing that matters.
If you get energy right, everything else works.
And right now we're not trying hard enough to get it right.
So we should be trying harder than that.
Energy can be turned into money, and then money is sort of a temporary storage of energy, and then you spend the money and it releases energy in a different place.
So think about money, and especially cryptocurrencies, which take a lot of...
Look at Bitcoin, for example.
Bitcoin, the biggest cost of creating a new Bitcoin is energy, electricity.
So Bitcoin is a direct storage unit of energy.
You use energy to create a Bitcoin, you take the Bitcoin somewhere, you give it to somebody, and it makes them, you know, creates energy for them to do something, sell you something, whatever they're doing.
So when you think about that, and you think of energy as the primary, let's say, material of the universe, it is also good for your personal life.
I write about this in Had It Failed Almost Everything and Still Went Back.
If you were trying to figure out what to do in your life, should I do this or should I do that?
Should I take this job or that?
Should I marry this person or that?
Should I have a family or not?
I find it very reliable to ask yourself what it would do to your energy.
And when you take on tasks that elevate your energy, because you're really interested in them for whatever reason, you're almost always on the right track.
And when you do things that lower your energy, you're probably on the wrong track.
So thinking of energy as the only thing that matters can be hugely valuable to your personal decisions.
For example, we're all making decisions about work versus exercise versus home life.
If you make the decision to do the thing that will give you the most energy, or at least not drain the most energy, you're probably going to be making good decisions.
So follow your energy and you will get to a good place.
That's a good general rule.
All right. Let me make sure that I have covered all of my topics.
I believe I have. That's a metaphysical principle.
Well, I don't know if it is.
I don't know that it's a metaphysical principle that following your energy gets you to the right place.
I would say...
I was listening to Jordan Peterson the other day.
He was talking about how to find meaning in life.
And he's quite brilliant at this.
And one of the things he says is that taking on responsibility is what gives you meaning.
So if you're not doing something that's going to help, you know, you, your family, the community, if you're not taking on a responsibility, you'll never feel this thing called meaning.
It's the responsibility that gives you meaning.
It's not your games and your fun and stuff that have their own use.
But meaning comes from stepping up.
Stepping up and pitching in and doing something for somebody.
I would argue that that's also what gives you energy.
So for those people who can go out and, let's say, work with the disadvantaged people, whoever they are, those people get energy from doing that because they're feeling meaning, they're feeling connection, they're feeling that they're doing something of value.
So energy is a real Good indicator that you're doing something that is biologically compatible with your being.
So let me tie that together.
Somebody said it was a metaphysical idea to follow your energy.
I'm not talking about some weird ya-ya, new age kind of energy concept.
I'm talking about how you feel.
How does your body feel? That's a real thing.
Do you have energy right now?
And the point is that when you do things which are compatible with your biological imperatives, and that could include reproducing, it could include going to school, earning money, helping people, it's a whole broad array of things, but you feel them as your energy, as an energy plus.
And when you think of things that are maybe temporarily good for your energy, such as doing a drug...
So let's take an example.
If you were to get drunk, it's quite common for drunks to have a lot of energy while they're drunk.
But what happens to you the next day?
Well, the next day you have way less energy.
So I would think that all of us would agree That getting drunk or doing a drug or something, if it temporarily increased your energy at the expense of having less energy the next day, I think we'd all agree that that was a negative energy situation.
Net. Net negative.
So this rule works pretty well.
If you follow, if you pursue energy, you're almost always compatible with your biological being, as long as you're looking at the big picture of energy, not the energy at this five-minute period.
All right. That's all I got to say.
I believe I've said it all.
I will talk about the fact that yesterday YouTube demonetized me.
Yeah, somebody's reminding me to talk about that.
So I did a special YouTube yesterday because I got demonetized and I wanted to test whether I would be demonetized again by mentioning one topic.
So I did mention that topic.
And I got demonetized.
So, yesterday afternoon, I did a completely G-rated, non-offensive, not even a little bit offensive.
I made sure that I did nothing that would even be slightly offensive, and I was immediately demonetized.
Now, I, of course, challenged it because YouTube gives you an option to have a human review it.
They reviewed it, and they reversed it, as well as they've also reversed several other demonetized ones from the backlist.
They haven't done them all.
I think at least one of them they decided they weren't going to.
But here's the question that remains.
I used some keywords that probably got picked up and automatically banned me.
One of the keywords that I'm not going to say live today, because this will be my little test, I'm going to spell backwards, because this way it won't get picked up in the automatic speech-to-text.
The word that I think might have gotten me demonetized, I'm going to spell backwards.
I-Z-A-N as in neighbor.
I believe that because I mentioned them in a negative light, That probably the speech-to-text doesn't have as much concept of context in it.
It probably just picked it up and probably said, oh, anybody who's using that word is a red flag.
Our advertisers don't want any part of that.
It might be that. I was worried that it was something else, and I'm going to test it right now.
Fine people hoax.
Fine people hoax.
So now I've got a better test.
If this one gets demonetized, and I don't think that YouTube can see your comments, so it doesn't matter what you say in the comments.
The comments don't translate over to YouTube, so they don't even see them.
So because I've said the fine people hoax is a hoax, It's a hoax that the president called some individuals in that town that starts with the letter C, called them fine people.
So now we'll find out if fine people hoax gets automatically flagged.
I think you'd agree that I've said nothing else in this episode that should be banned, right?
Certainly I've said nothing controversial, and I didn't say anything controversial in the other ones.
So this is our test. If this one does not get demonetized automatically, it means that they're not looking at the words, find people hoax, but rather they're looking at that word I spelled backwards.
So let's test that out.
And we'll see.
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