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July 6, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
37:36
Episode 589 Scott Adams: The Truth About UFOs, Campaign Strategy, Biden Gaffes, Dignity, Character
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
It's the weekend, and it's time for the weekend edition of Coffee with Scott Adams.
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Oh, good, good, good stuff.
All right, I know you're here to find out the truth about UFOs.
People say, Scott, we don't know if we should believe in UFOs.
Should we? And I have a definitive answer for you.
No, you shouldn't.
And here's why.
So the president was recently asked on an interview by Tucker Carlson, If UFOs are real, essentially.
And President Trump said, and the first thing you need to know is that the President of the United States would presumably know all that could be known.
So everything that could be known, he knows about UFOs.
And he said, quote, I'm not a believer, but anything is possible.
Now about the details, he said, I don't want to get into it.
So that does open the possibility that there are things which are unexplained, which might be some other country's military, you know, might have to do with some things we can detect that we're not supposed to be able to.
But I think when the President says, I'm not a believer, but anything is possible, the way he phrases that guarantees that there's nothing to be seen.
Now, as Greg Gutfeld has pointed out on his show, The Five, with all of the cameras in the world, you know, everybody's got a phone in their hand, there are high-quality cameras everywhere, somebody would have gotten a picture, a nice, clear picture.
The one thing that seems to be, I would say, it seems to be the most convincing bit Okay, for all of you saying the volume is a problem, the volume is not a problem.
So you can stop saying it, please.
Whatever the problem is, it's on your end.
So you've seen the video of the ship that they lock onto, and then...
I'm not going to get closer to the mic.
I have exactly the same setup as always.
Okay, I'm going to start blocking all the people who are talking about the volume, okay?
So just know that.
If you're complaining about the volume, there's nothing wrong with it, and I'm just going to block you because you're holding up the show at this point.
So you've seen the video of the jet apparently locking on some kind of a thing that they think was moving at great speed, and it was moving this way, and then it moved this way, and it was still moving at the same speed?
Okay, that didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
If I had to guess what that is, the one where the jet seemed to be locking onto an object that was moving faster than it should move, I would guess that there was something stuck to the plane.
So here's my guess.
Just a guess. So if you imagine, let's say this box of Kleenex is the jet.
And the jet thought it was looking at some kind of a UFO that was flying at great speed below it.
Right? So that's what it thought it saw.
I've got a feeling that it wasn't something big, but rather it was something small that got stuck by some kind of a wire or a string or something.
It was literally just flapping back and forth onto the plane.
And I think it was just an illusion and it was a piece of fuzz or a piece of debris or just something stuck to the plane.
So I think that nothing was flying at all.
I think there was just something stuck to the plane and the camera was seeing something that was stuck to it and it made it look like it was somewhere else.
Or it was a practical joke or something.
But whatever it was, I don't think Trump would word it this way.
Can you imagine that Trump would ever say, I'm not a believer, if there was some actual information?
He would say something like, well, you know, I can't get into that, or, you know, it's fun to believe.
He would have done something more indirect.
But to put himself on record as saying, I'm not a believer, that's a weird way to say, that would be a weird way to deflect.
So just his choice of words tells me there's nothing there.
That's my final ruling.
UFOs are not visiting the Earth as far as we know.
All right. Michael Schellenberger, expert on all things nuclear energy, had an interesting tweet that feels like one of the types of tweets that the idea of it could change things.
And here's what he said exactly.
He said... Germany and California are held up as models for action on climate change, but had they invested $680 billion into new nuclear power plants instead of renewables, they would already be generating 100% of their electricity from carbon-free energy sources.
So given that we roughly know how much it costs to build a nuclear reactor, And given that we know how much has been spent on renewables, we don't have to guess anymore.
We don't have to guess.
We can just say, well, if you've gone nuclear in the first place, just look at the numbers.
You'd already be done. So that's a pretty powerful argument.
Now, if I were to push back against the argument, it would look like this.
The whole argument about renewables is that in the early days renewables are way too expensive.
But if you spend a lot of money on renewables, the last unit of renewables will be a fraction of what the first units cost.
So when Michael Schellenberg says 680 billion, that's 680 billion that was really front-loaded, meaning that the cost of solar, etc., was much higher when they started doing it, and those costs are built in there.
If they started today, I would ask the question, I don't know the answer to it, but I would ask the question, given that renewables started real expensive, and they got cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, if you were to start today, the first dollar would be that cheap dollar.
So you'd be buying solar real inexpensively, and the ones after that might even be less expensive.
So I don't know that this, you know, back of the envelope comparison of if you'd spent this, you would have had this result, Is as, let's say, logically unassailable as it sounds on first blush.
But it might be true, like completely true, that if they'd spent $680 billion on nuclear, they would be done, because we know what nuclear costs.
It is not necessarily true, given that the costs of those renewables have presumably come down a lot.
We're going to start blocking all of the people who complain about the sound still.
So it might be that if you started today, you still wouldn't know what the comparison would look like.
So if you started today, you'd be starting with cheap solar, for example, and you don't know what nuclear would look like in the future.
But it's probably true that if they'd done...
Nuclear in the first place, they'd be done, and they'd have everything they wanted.
I saw a news article that said something like two-thirds of all of the CO2 that humans are putting into the air could be remediated by planting trees in all of the places that had been deforested.
So think about that.
Think about the fact that we could get rid of two-thirds of human CO2 by planting trees.
Now, I saw separately, I saw another article not too long ago, that apparently there's one type of tree That is a really fast-growing tree.
And somebody's saying kratom trees.
I don't know if that's a joke or not.
But there's some kind of special tree that is extra thirsty for CO2. And if you plant a lot of them, you would get there even sooner.
And here's the question I'd ask myself.
You got 7 billion people who have this shared problem of, you know, there might be a climate change disaster coming.
What if every person got a few seeds?
What if every person received in the mail a little packet of acorns or whatever is the seed for these trees that grow quickly?
So everybody just gets a package of seeds in the mail.
And they can go plant a tree in their backyard.
They can go plant a tree in the park, as long as it's a place where a tree belongs.
Or you could just say, hey, we've got a forest over here that's been deforested, so I guess it's not a forest.
Anybody who's got a package of seeds, drop on by, drop a seed.
Plant a tree with us.
Yeah, like an Arbor Day situation.
It makes me wonder. It would be one of those very few things that you could get everybody to do, because everybody likes to plant a tree, right?
There's probably nobody...
Who is against the idea of planting a tree?
Just nobody. Nobody hates a tree.
So that would be an interesting thing to see happen, to see some mass movement for planting the right kind of trees in the right places.
All right.
So let's look at...
So Trump explained his problem with the teleprompter, and he referred to this Revolutionary War, and he referred to the airports.
And people said, wait a minute, there were no airports during the Revolutionary War?
And Trump explained that the teleprompter was going in and out.
But what I'm going to call out is not whether or not that's a realistic-sounding explanation.
I would say it does seem likely that the problem was the teleprompter because he was reading it.
So if he's reading something and he reads something wrong, it probably was either he couldn't see the teleprompter or something.
But here's what I'm going to call out.
The president's explanation of what happened is just hilarious.
And it's hilarious because it's effective.
It's hilarious in the way that only the president...
Handles things. If you had done what he did, let's say if you had been giving this speech, and you had said, airports, when you're talking about the Revolutionary War, and everybody said, ha, ha, ha, there were no airports, how would you handle that?
Well, some of you would have said, okay, you got me.
I misspoke. I'm so dumb.
Ha, ha, ha. That's not good because it makes you look dumb.
Some might, you know, lie and say, I didn't say airports.
You heard me wrong.
And then that would just look dumb.
There's almost nothing you could do that makes it better.
Except maybe what Trump did.
Here's what Trump did.
And I swear, you could take a thousand people and put them in the same situation he was with this airport thing.
And only one of them would have handled it as well as he did.
Now, there will be some argument about whether this is the way to handle it, but I'm telling you it is, all right?
And here's why. Here's what he said.
First of all, he said that the rain, he said, that's not a good feeling when you're standing in front of millions and millions of people, he said.
This is the president.
I guess the rain knocked out the teleprompter.
So the first thing he does is he puts you in the scene.
So he goes, that's not a good feeling when you're standing in front of millions and millions of people and the rain knocks out the teleprompter.
He puts you in the movie.
So that's the first thing.
He tells you how it feels to be standing up there.
That's really good.
Really, really good.
Because when he says that, it just puts you right in the scene.
Now, how do you feel when it's you?
He put you in the scene.
Now you're the one standing in front of millions of people, the whole world is watching, and your teleprompter goes off.
Right? That's like the scariest thing in the world for most people.
So the first thing he's done is, without saying so, he's told you how brave he is compared to you.
But he didn't have to say it.
He simply said, it's not a good feeling when you're standing in front of millions and millions of people.
I guess the rain knocked out the teleprompter.
He wasn't bragging.
He said it was a bad feeling.
But by putting you in the scene, for most of you, it scared the pants off of you, because you imagined what that would be like.
People are afraid of public speaking, and this would be the worst thing that could happen in public speaking.
By the way, this has happened to me when I've been doing public speaking.
I've had problems with the AV, etc.
And it's not a good feeling.
He's right. So that's the first thing he does right.
But then it gets better. Like, that's just the beginning.
Second thing he says, but he said that his memory of the speech otherwise served him well.
So this is the part where he brags without bragging.
Well, it is sort of bragging.
He goes, I knew the speech very well, so I was able to do it without a teleprompter, he said.
And it was actually hard to look at anyway because of the rain.
So he makes the claim that the teleprompter was going in and out the whole time.
So the first thing you think is, okay, this isn't a person who is reading a teleprompter and then got a word wrong.
This is somebody who is so talented and he knew this speech so well that he was doing it without the teleprompter and he only noticed it once.
That's right. The whole time he was basically doing it without the, you know, the consistent help of the teleprompter, but he only noticed it once.
You have to admit, that is the best answer anybody ever gave.
So he's introducing a new thought that maybe he had memorized the speech.
Or that he knew it so well he was doing it off the top of his head.
I was doing it off the top of my head.
I just got that one thing wrong.
Okay, you have to admit, am I wrong?
If a thousand people answered this question, out of a thousand people, he's the only one who would have this good of an answer.
Because it's patently ridiculous, but it's ridiculous in a fun way.
Like, it's just ridiculous in a way that...
I don't know how you can not laugh at that.
I swear, everything that Trump does...
It's at least a little bit funny.
Even when he's negotiating with North Korea, he found a way to make it funny.
I'm not wrong about that, right?
How about Putin?
So Russia interferes with our elections, and it's a big, serious problem.
But somehow, Trump finds a way to make that funny.
It's like he just turns to Putin.
He goes, stop interfering with our elections.
You have to admit...
He's turned the most serious things in the world into things that are still serious, but they're also a little bit funny.
There's no way this isn't an improvement in society.
Alright, so the Taliban is heading off to Qatar or someplace for some peace talks.
Now, I don't know what are the odds that there will be peace with the Taliban, but they seem pretty serious about it.
So that golden age might be coming up.
Now, one of the things that I think historians will like about this president is apparently he's given more control to the generals in the field.
And although we don't have a big presence in Afghanistan, something tells me that the presence we do have in Afghanistan is so effective, for whatever reason, so effective that the Taliban is willing to say, alright, let's just talk.
You've got to be pretty effective with your military to make the Taliban say, you know, maybe we won't fight now.
Maybe we'll talk about...
You know, it could be a trick.
Maybe the Taliban are just trying to, you know, reduce our presence there.
But we'll see.
It looks like a good sign at the moment.
So... Brett Hume tweeted...
About Joe Biden's gaffe.
If you didn't see it, Joe Biden was being interviewed, I forget who, Chris Cuomo, I guess.
And Biden actually said this.
It's amazing. Biden said, Russian election interference wouldn't have happened on my watch and Barack's watch.
Biden actually said that Russian election interference wouldn't have happened on his watch and Barack's watch.
Has he watched television for the last three years?
Every single news show was about Russian interference during his administration.
All of it. It was the main show, the primary political story for the last three years is that it did happen on his watch.
That's the whole story.
And, but, so the fact that he said something that's untrue is, you know, a little bit interesting, but it's the political season, so everybody's saying things that are untrue.
So the fact that it's untrue is not the interesting part.
Here's the interesting part.
What Brit Hume put on his tweet when he retweeted it.
So Brit's only comment was, quote, the poor guy can't help himself.
Now, if you want to see a period on the end of a sentence, in this case, it's the period on the end of the sentence that says, Joe Biden tried to run for the nomination, for the Democrat nomination.
This is the period at the end of the sentence that says, he didn't make it.
He didn't get there.
When your competitors, and Brahim is not a political competitor, but he would be associated with Fox News and Republicans and conservatives on the right, so without over-labeling Brahim, he would be associated with folks in that universe more than the people on the left.
When you find that even the people on the other side are saying, the poor guy can't help himself, That's actually a genuine expression of amused sympathy.
If what you are evoking from voters is amused sympathy, you don't have a chance.
Because think about what people were saying about Trump.
He's dangerous.
He's going to be too powerful.
If somebody is complaining about the candidate you like by saying that they're too powerful, They're a bully.
He just takes what he wants.
And that sort of thing?
Well, that's a competitor, you know, that's a politician you have to worry about.
That's somebody who's going to make a dent in the universe.
And sure enough, President Trump made a pretty big dent in the universe.
But if what people are saying about you is, poor guy can't help himself, that's actually pity.
That's actually just feeling sorry for him.
And I have to admit that when I first heard him make that gaffe, I felt a little bit of that.
Normally when you see a candidate you don't want to get elected, make a mistake.
Don't you normally feel a little schadenfreude, a little bit of joy in seeing the other side make a mistake?
I mean, it's just human nature, right?
We like to see the other team have an error.
But I had the same feeling that I think Brett did, which was a little bit of feeling sorry for him, and it's, I hate to say it, but it's age-related.
It feels like an age issue.
That doesn't mean it is, but that's the way it comes across.
So I did feel sorry for him.
So he doesn't have a chance.
All right. One of the things...
That amuses me about how the election is shaping up the 2020 presidential election is that the Democrats seem to have abandoned most of their arguments.
And when I say abandoned their arguments, it means their old arguments about Trump were that he would do something bad.
We expect him to do something bad.
I'm sure that if you elect him, he'll do something bad.
But unfortunately, their argument fell apart because of the lack of something bad, because he's actually been president, and the things didn't materialize.
Now, the exception to that is the kids in cages and the detention centers.
Now, you might say to yourself, yes, but those were Obama detention centers.
But it doesn't matter.
Nobody really cares about that.
Nobody cares about the facts.
Nobody cares that Kamala Harris' opinions on busing look hypocritical when she criticizes Biden.
Because those are facts, and nobody cares about the facts.
Nobody cares about the facts.
I've watched the Democrats go from predicting that something bad would happen with Trump to having to react to the fact that most of the bad things, like the economy and starting nuclear war and stuff like that, didn't happen.
And then, of course, Trump keeps doing things which are so unambiguously good for the black community, for example, in terms of everything from prison reform to low unemployment to continually saying the right things, at least lately.
More lately, I guess.
So what have the Democrats done as a sort of a response?
They've turned to words.
They've given up on arguments entirely.
And they've actually turned to just words and...
And Frank Luntz was pointing this out on Laura Ingram's show.
And there are two phrases that they're lighting on.
One is dignity.
So dignity is sort of the stand-in for a reason, meaning that you have to give people socialism in various ways to protect their human dignity, and then also human right.
So the other phrase is, health care is a human right, and that there's a number of parts of socialism that get to people's dignity.
But then they also use words for why you shouldn't support President Trump.
And you hear Biden especially call him a bully.
A bully. So, they're reduced to words.
And I've said this a million times, but Republicans seem to be more interested in systems.
You know, how can we build a system that gets us the best...
Outcome we can. We don't know how good that outcome will be, but if we have a good system, it will give us the best outcome that's possible.
We just don't know exactly what it will be.
Whereas the Democrats go right to the end state without knowing how to get there.
So they'd like dignity, but how do you get there?
What's your process for getting there?
They'd like... Everybody to have the human rights, but what's the process?
What's the system? How do you get there?
That's always the missing part.
Now, the exception would be healthcare, because the Democrats do have a number of specific plans.
You might say are impractical, and maybe they are.
But at least with healthcare, they do have some systems.
But otherwise, the Republicans tend to own all the systems.
But here's the other thing that's impressive about what the Democrats have done.
That doesn't seem to be available for Republicans.
Democrats seem to be able to consistently demonize words and images.
So the other team can't use them.
Here are just some of the things.
So Democrats have made the MAGA hat a racist symbol, according to them.
Now, when I say according to them and a racist symbol, that only means in their minds.
And here's the important part.
It weaponizes the craziest among them so that they feel good attacking people in public.
So they've demonized the MAGA hat and the slogan to the point where the craziest among them will actually attack people in public.
Do Republicans have anything like that?
They've demonized the OK signal, hand signal, by saying that that's racist.
They've demonized Confederate statues.
I'm against Confederate statues, but just putting it on the list to show how effective they are.
They've demonized any image with the founders on it, because they were slave owners.
And you can't use the wrong language for transgender, for gay, for people of color, etc., And so we've got this massive list of things you can't say and can't do and can't wear and can't be near.
But the Republicans don't have that, do they?
I mean, we've got your, you know, don't burn the flag, but even that, a lot of Republicans are saying, well, that's freedom of speech.
So... The summary of all this is that the Democrats have completely built their message around words, just words, without the structure that would make something happen in the real world.
Because they say, for example, that Trump is a bully.
Well that's a word.
What would be the bad thing that happened because Trump was a bully?
What would be the logical outcome?
Since you say he's a bully and you're saying that's bad, what did he do specifically?
Did it make the economy worse?
Did it make ISIS win?
What did it do?
It's not obvious to me.
And how about the dignity?
You could argue that dignity is the freedom to take care of yourself, etc.
But you can't really argue against dignity.
But it's just sort of a word and a concept.
And generally speaking, somebody was mentioning Che Guevara shirts.
The Democrats could even wear a Che Guevara shirt.
And even that won't get them beat up in public.
Imagine, you know, anything like that the other direction.
So, I hate myself for saying that because I don't like to talk about hypocrisy.
When you talk about hypocrisy, you're operating at the lowest level of political analysis.
You know, your side did it too.
That's the lowest level of political analysis.
All right. So the question would be, what does the president need to do in order to counter the human rights and dignity arguments?
Well, I don't think you want to counter them because you can't argue against dignity and you can't argue against human rights, but you can say, we embrace all of those goals, but we have a better system to get there.
That's sort of the kill shot.
I don't expect President Trump to say anything like I just said.
But if I were running for president and my competitors were saying, you know, we need dignity and human rights and all those things, and, you know, we need more income, equality, whatever they're saying, I would say, you know, I want all of those things.
I embrace every one of your goals.
But... The only way to get there is with free markets.
The only way to get there is by cutting some regulation if you think that's what is necessary.
So I think the very best thing you can do is accept the strongest argument from the other side.
Let me give you an example of that.
Do you remember when Bob Dole was running against Clinton for his second term?
You know, Clinton was running for reelection against Bob Dole.
And Bob Dole was saying...
Things like, well, I'm going to, you know, bring back the awesomeness of the greatest generation.
I'm going to bring back, you know, respect and, you know, duty and all those great qualities of the older generation.
And at first, that seemed like a really strong approach.
And you notice how similar that is.
To dignity and human rights.
Very similar to the Bob Dole approach, because he was running against Clinton, who was accused of having low moral character, for a variety of reasons.
So, what did Clinton do?
Did Clinton say, no, that's not fair, or you're bad too?
No, he didn't.
What Bill Clinton did was he embraced Dole's message.
And he actually said out loud that Bob Dole's a great guy, a great citizen, and those are, you know, what he's promoting are awesome ideas.
But, and here was the kill shot, Clinton said, Dole is planning for the past.
We're planning for the future.
Think about that. That pretty much ended the election right there.
As soon as Clinton said that he respects Dole and everything that he stands for, but it's a message about the past and we're about the future, that's the end of it.
So sometimes the best thing you can do with your opponent's message If it's in the terms of character and, you know, dignity and duty and, you know, being a good person, if that's their best argument, the best thing you can do is embrace it and say, those are great things.
We've got some plans to get us closer to those things.
Our opponent doesn't have any plans, but they have lots of hopes.
They have lots of hopes.
But country doesn't run on hope.
Country doesn't run on words.
We're not a country of words.
We're a country of systems.
That's why we have a constitution.
That's why we have capitalism.
That's why we have, you know, a republic.
So systems are what matters.
And I'm going to give you some systems that will get you a good result.
The Democrats are going to give you some really good-sounding words, and I agree with all of them.
I'd love to have some dignity.
I'd love to have as much health care as possible at a low cost.
I embrace every one of your objectives.
And unlike you, I have a way to get there.
That would be a powerful message.
So sometimes, this is the basic idea, is that sometimes the best thing you can do is embrace everything about your competitor's message because that makes them look weak.
If you oppose your competitor's message, that makes their message look strong.
It's something that must be opposed.
If you embrace it and say, I accept every part of that.
Now let me show you how I'm going to do something good, but they're going to be kind of silent over there.
They don't have any way to get there.
That's a strong message.
All right. Somebody says, I reject the notion that poor people are inherently undignified.
That would be a good message, yeah.
I assume you're saying that as something that the President should say.
I'm going to repeat that for those of you who didn't see the comment.
Somebody was saying that, I assume this is what you meant in the comments, is that if the President was accused of not doing things that would give people dignity, That a good response to that would be, I refuse to see the world as poor people lacking dignity.
You know, I don't see people that way.
I think they're completely dignified.
They're just in a bad situation, and here's how I'm going to make it better.
That would be devastating.
That would be really devastating.
Especially if you heard that in the context of a debate, it would be the thing they quoted the next day.
Alright. There is very little news happening at the moment because of the holidays, and so I'm not going to Go longer than I need to.
Alright, I think we've got enough for today, and why don't you go have a great day, because that's what I'm going to do.
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