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Aug. 21, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:39
Episode 635 Scott Adams: Systems versus Goals, Dual Loyalty Tropes
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Ah.
Now, there is a new website, which I want to look at while I'm talking about it.
So, Carpe Donctum, who I believe just signed on here, has announced a new website for memes called Meme World.
M-E-M-E World.com.
I'm looking at it right now, and it's essentially a site...
Where Carpe Donctum, the meme maker to the president and other people, he's put together a website where you can go and see all the latest memes.
Now, isn't the first thing that you think of when you hear that, you say to yourself, nobody did that yet?
And I'm pretty sure nobody did that yet.
So it turns out that It's exactly the right hole in the offerings, and I think that going into 2020 is going to be huge.
So if you're looking for a meme or you saw one and you don't know where you saw it, you don't want to look all over Twitter for it, you can just go to memeworld.com, and I believe there's a listing for other meme makers to contribute material.
So there are a number of meme makers already on there.
Check that out, memeworld.com.
You know, I don't think prior to 2016, I don't think people understood the power of the memes.
I don't know that memes change anybody's mind on the other side.
I don't know if they have that kind of power, but they definitely galvanize the team that they're on.
So in terms of team building and raising the energy and making it fun, they really do add a lot.
So I would say that consolidating support is a pretty valid function of what they do.
All right. Sleepy Joe had his latest GAF. Now, I've got a question.
I keep hearing people use the phrase human GAF machine.
Did anybody use that before I did?
Because it feels like exactly the sort of term that That either I could have heard somewhere and don't remember it, and then when I said it, I thought, whoa, I just came up with something.
But I hear it being used a lot in the news and by pundits, and I don't know if it's just sort of an obvious thing, or did somebody say it first?
You know, because the most likely explanation is several people said it, and we all think that we invented it.
It's often the case.
So I know a lot of people used it before, but I don't know who used it first.
And I don't know if there's any chain of influence.
Most likely, it's just a common enough phrase that a number of different people have used it.
So I'm not going to claim any credit for that, but I see it everywhere.
So I've turned the page on these...
If you didn't see the latest one, it's worth seeing.
So this is what Biden said yesterday, I guess.
So Biden said, just like in my generation, when I got out of school, when Bobby Kennedy and Dr.
King had been assassinated in the 70s, the late 70s, when I got engaged, Biden recalled, but unfortunately, King and Kennedy were murdered in 1968.
So he confused, by a decade, the murders.
Now, it's not just that he got the date wrong.
Because remember, I know a lot of you, looking at the comments, I know a lot of you want to talk about my tweet on guns.
And I'm going to talk about that in a moment.
But it's not going to go the way you wanted it to.
So stay tuned for that.
I'll make you wait for that. All right, so here's my take on Biden.
When we first started calling him the human gaffe machine, and he had all these compilation tapes of his little gaffes, I think most of you heard me say...
I think some of you heard me say...
That you shouldn't make too much of the gaffes because you could make a compilation tape of me or anybody else having lots of gaffes.
If you put them all together, it would look different than if you saw them in the wild and you say, oh, he misspoke.
It wouldn't mean much to you at all.
It doesn't look like that anymore.
Yeah, if you look at this last one, I'm no expert.
I'm not a doctor, but in this context, I don't need to be one.
Because the way I'm receiving his act, in other words, independent of what's actually happening with Biden, the way I see it, the way I feel it and experience him, is a mental decline.
And here's my thing.
If it was just good fun, mocking him for the missteps and stuff...
Would just be part of politics, part of the fun, it's part of the game.
Yeah, it's a little mean, but everybody knows what they're signing up for.
It's not any meaner than what they're doing on the other side.
You know, you can kind of explain it away.
We had a good time making fun of his gaffes.
But I gotta tell you, I turned the corner on this yesterday after seeing this latest one.
This isn't funny anymore.
This is not funny.
Number one, he can't possibly win.
He can't possibly win.
Just watching him try to keep up, it's just obvious he can't win.
Secondly, I'll bet there's not a single person at the top of the Democrat ticket who in an honest, private moment thinks Biden should be the candidate.
I'll bet there's nobody who's close to the situation and really understands politics who believe that he should be the candidate and that he could win.
I'll bet nobody.
And I don't think people want to say it out loud because it would be unkind.
I don't know if somebody on the Democrat side can just speak the truth to this, which is, hey, no joke anymore.
We're kind of concerned about this.
It's not funny because it's real at this point.
I think I've turned the corner from, gosh, that sort of humorously looks like he's losing his step.
It's not funny anymore.
It's not funny.
And here's my suggestion, which worked very well for Bill Clinton when he was running against Bob Dole.
Bob Dole was trying to run a campaign against incumbent Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
In which Bob Dole was going to be the guy who brought back the respect of the country, the proper way to behave, the greatest generation ethos and philosophy and stuff.
So Bob Dole was going to be the guy who returned You know, this sinning presidency into a respectable, old-timey, you know, kind of look.
And how did Clinton take him out?
Well, Clinton probably would have won under any conditions.
But what Clinton did with Dole was devastating.
He said he respected, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, Clinton started paying respect to Dole and saying that we really respect his contribution, his service, but he is planning for the past, and we're planning for the future.
So in other words, he treated Bob Dole not like a powerful competitor.
He treated him like a subject of sympathy and respect.
It might be time to start treating Biden that way, because I don't think he has a chance of winning, so we don't have to think of him in terms of the competitor who was a valid competitor.
And I don't think it's patronizing Once you're sure what's going on.
Now, if you weren't sure what's going on, you could say, well, it's a little unkind to make some medical assumptions, etc.
But once you turn the corner, as I did, and really until yesterday, I was telling myself, well, Biden's a certain age, but I don't quite see he's definitely losing a step that matters.
Maybe just a little bit to age, but maybe it doesn't matter.
Yesterday I turned the corner.
It looks like it matters. It looks like it's important.
It looks like there's a serious situation there, and I'll bet everybody who's close to him is completely aware of it.
So my own opinion is that I'm going to turn to respect for his service and some sympathy.
I think that Biden has been a good public servant for Biden.
A thousand years or whatever it's been.
Probably loves this country as much as anybody ever did.
Worked hard, probably did what he thought was best.
You don't hear a lot of charges of corruption or anything like that.
Yeah, he did not serve in the military, as far as I know.
But in terms of respect, he did serve his country in the political sense, not the military sense.
So that's my new take on Biden is I feel just sympathy for him.
And I think somehow the Democrats, I hope they find a way...
To do the right thing. You know what they have to do at this point.
They just need to do the right thing, and they need to find a way to do it without being unkind.
And it's probably going to be a tough needle to thread.
All right. I'd like to do a new segment that I'm introducing.
This new segment I call, I'm So Outraged.
And each day we'll take a headline, and I'll bring in Dale to be outraged about it.
Dale, did you hear that the President recently said, and I quote, I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.
What do you think about that, Dale?
Ah! I'm outraged!
I'm outraged! I'm totally outraged!
Dale, are you personally outraged?
Or are you outraged on behalf of other people?
I'm outraged! I'm outraged!
On behalf of other people.
It doesn't bother me personally, because I'm not the kind of person with a, you know, I don't have a thin skin.
But I'm outraged! I'm outraged!
I'm outraged! For other people.
Scene. So each day we'll do one outrage, because the news has turned into people being outraged.
But it's kind of outrage theater, wouldn't you say?
Does any of the outrage look real to you?
When was the last time you saw an outrage?
Because everybody's outraged, both sides.
You know, we're outraged that the other side is doing this.
The other side is outraged that we're doing this.
And all of the outrage is fake, isn't it?
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't genuine issues at the bottom of these things.
You know, the question of the dual, apparently the The accusation of dual loyalty when made of an American citizen who's got Jewish heritage.
Is that the right term?
Jewish heritage? I could accidentally be offending somebody and not even knowing it, but let's use that word for now.
So apparently that's a known anti-Jewish trope.
Trope meaning things that people say a lot.
I don't know.
Did all of you know that?
Were all of you aware that that's a known bad thing to say?
I think I would have sort of figured it out in context, but I can't say it was on the top of my mind.
But again, it's never been aimed at me, so why would it be?
Here's the thing. So now the president says something that can be interpreted in more than one way.
So his supporters say, well, you know, that's not what it means.
It means being loyal to people you, you know, you have an association or an identity with, etc.
The whole dual loyalty thing simplifies the world a little too much.
Because what would be wrong with a person who likes two things?
Why can't you be Jewish?
Who says you can't do this?
Why can't you be Jewish, love your country, let's say the United States, and also be very supportive of Israel?
You can't do that?
Who says you can't do that?
They are, after all, one of our closest allies, probably the country that would step up first if it came to a shooting war and America was involved.
I mean, Great Britain and Israel would be fighting with each other to see who was the first ally to help the United States, if the United States ever got in some kind of a shooting trouble that was worldwide.
So, why can't an American citizen say, I love my country, and I love that other country, too.
They're pretty awesome. We have to turn that into dual loyalty and then be outraged.
I'm outraged! I'm outraged!
I'm outraged! So, I think it's been years since I saw anybody who was actually outraged.
But we've all been outraged on behalf of other people.
So, on behalf of other people, I'm outraged!
All right. Let's talk about a tweet.
That's why you're here.
That should keep you here.
So, I tweeted something yesterday that Got people humming.
I'm looking for my actual tweet here.
And it says, here's what I tweeted.
Because I'm a troublemaker.
I tweeted the following.
Letting the NRA determine gun laws is as good a system as letting immigrants decide our immigration policy and Facebook deciding who becomes president.
We do all three.
How about our government does some effin' work for a change?
All right. Is your hair on fire yet?
Now, you could imagine that a great deal of hate and insults were directed my way.
How many of the people who directed hates and insults my way understood what they were criticizing?
Probably none. Probably none.
Every day of my life is me defending myself, both personally and on social media, against things people simply imagine that I'm thinking, that I don't think and never said.
So let's deal with all the complaints from the people who misinterpreted it and are complaining about the wrong thing, because I see some of you in the comments.
So, Let me tell you what I was saying, and then I'll read it again.
What I'm saying in this tweet is that we should always have the right system for who makes the decision.
I'm making a distinction between what the decision will be, which I'm not talking about.
Nothing in my tweet suggests I'm telling you which way a decision should go.
If you thought I was saying which way a decision should go, you don't understand the tweet, and what you're criticizing is your own imagination.
So this is a tweet about having systems in which you have the right people making decisions.
In this case, I'm saying that our government should make the decisions about gun policy, I'm saying that the citizens and the government, so the government and the citizens being a team, the government and the citizens should decide who gets elected president, not Facebook, not Twitter, not Google.
I'm saying that the government and the people should decide what our gun laws are, and of course the Constitution is part of that conversation, but we get to change the Constitution too.
If we want, if enough people want to change the Constitution, if we want to reinterpret it, if we want to play around with the margins, we have that power.
I'm not saying you should do it.
I'm not saying you should do anything in particular.
I'm saying that who makes the decision should be the government.
That's a representative government, a republic.
And the people working with their government, trying things, for example, maybe do some trial and see what works, inform the people, have a little feedback loop, make some decisions.
Likewise with immigration.
Do you know who's making the decisions on American immigration?
The immigrants themselves.
At the moment, because the numbers are overwhelming our system, the decision of who gets into the country is largely the people coming into the country.
Because the government does not control who comes into the country anymore.
We don't have that power. We've allowed it to evolve to the point where there are more people coming, and there are so many people here and staying, you couldn't possibly...
There's no practical way, even if you wanted to.
Even if you thought it was moral and humane, you couldn't do it.
There are just too many.
So, here's the general statement.
The general statement is you want systems...
Not goals. So my book, Had It Failed Almost Everything, and Still Win Big, is primarily about that, about developing a system to get the best result, not having a goal with no system.
Here's a goal. Here's a goal.
Nobody dies unnecessarily from gun violence.
That's a goal. Nobody gets shot accidentally or by a crime.
Good goal. Useless, completely useless.
Here's a system.
The government gets information, becomes educated, tries some things, and then the things that work, they make bigger.
That would be a system.
The people being informed, you know, maybe trying some things.
That's a system. I prefer a system where the government and the people working together are respecting the Constitution, Trying to see what we could do.
Maybe all of the efforts should be in mental health.
I'm not saying you shouldn't. Maybe there should be some tweaks like gun stocks and little things that even the gun advocates wouldn't care too much about and wouldn't, you know, deeply affect the Constitution anyway.
So that's the system.
Likewise with immigration.
I think our immigration system should be strong enough that the citizens and the government of the United States can decide to push the lever forward or back.
Let more in, let fewer in.
Who's deciding?
The government of the United States working with the people.
Right now, we don't have a system.
We have a goal.
Treat everybody nice.
Treat everybody well.
And that goal gets you...
An accidental system where the immigrants themselves are deciding who lives here.
If you want that, that's the system you got.
If you don't want that, maybe you want a better system.
Then likewise with our social media, as you know, if the government doesn't do something fairly aggressively to control the bias that's either intentional or accidental in the social media, then we don't have the same system of government we used to.
I would prefer that we fight and claw to keep what we've had, which is a useful system where people vote and the republic does its job and they make laws and such, instead of having social media have that much power.
Now, now that you understand, I did not say, take away your guns.
I'm very pro-gun.
I'm probably as pro-gun as the most pro-gun person here.
But I'm also pro-system.
And if the citizens of the United States, collectively, with their government, decided to make some gun laws that I personally, Scott, do not think are the greatest, I'd still be inclined to go along with it because the system produced that input.
And I would trust the system.
Now, when was the last time you read the Second Amendment?
A lot of people complained to me and said, Scott, the NRA is not determining gun laws.
The NRA is simply defending the Constitution and informing the government and creating gun safety and all of those things.
Do you really think that's true?
Now, I do understand that the NRA is not the government.
But do you believe that any Republican running for a major office could cross the NRA and still get elected?
Does anybody believe that?
Because if you can't cross the NRA and still get elected as a Republican, then the NRA determines what we do with guns.
It's as simple as that.
Because if you can't get enough Republicans on board to pass a law, then it can't get passed.
And that would be the NRA's influence.
Am I wrong on the facts?
Am I wrong on the facts that it would be difficult to impossible for a Republican to get elected after going directly at the NRA? I think I'm right about that, right?
That effectively makes our system of government being managed by an unelected group.
Now, some of you are saying My Constitution gives me my Second Amendment rights, and the NRA is helping me defend them.
So it's about the Constitution.
The NRA is just defending the Constitution.
That's great. You love the Constitution.
So do I. So do I. We can bond on our love of the Constitution.
But have you read the rest of it?
It's a big document.
There's this one little thing about guns, and it's right in there in the Constitution, and I'm with you.
Constitution... Says something about gun rights.
It's right there. Do you know what else is in the Constitution?
Well, there's something about a representative government and presidents and Congress and all that.
It gives the control of our decision-making to our elected representatives.
It doesn't give it to the NRA. So if you like the Constitution, you can certainly love the fact that the NRA is a tireless advocate for supporting the Constitution.
I love that. But if it crosses that line into taking the job that the Constitution gives to the government, Well, then it's no longer compatible with the Constitution, is it?
It's now a conflict with the bigger part of the Constitution.
The gun part's important, and I think, and I would agree with the people who say, citizens should stay armed to protect themselves from our own government.
I'm totally on board with that idea, by the way.
So, you don't have to talk me into that.
So, here's what the Constitution says.
I'll give you the exact language here, if I can find it.
Oh, damn it. How did I write that down without being...
Oh, here it is. So Second Amendment, and the exact words matter when you talk about this stuff.
So Second Amendment says, and I quote, a well-regulated militia...
Militia is capitalized.
Not sure how important that is.
A well-regulated militia, capital letter, being necessary to the security of a free state.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Now the first thing I would note is that it's already infringed.
It's super infringed.
There's probably no constitutional right more infringed already than the Second Amendment.
Why? Why? Because what does arms mean?
What does the word arms mean?
It doesn't just mean a handgun or a rifle.
It means arms.
Can you get a nuclear weapon?
Well, you'd have a lot of problems there, but no.
Can you own a tank, a flamethrower, a hand grenade launcher?
Can you get a bazooka?
Can you have, without any restrictions, can you have a fully automatic?
You can buy one.
It might cost you $30,000 and a lot of paperwork and you'd get on every list in the world, but you could buy one.
So, I would argue that there has never been a constitutional right more thoroughly, thoroughly infringed already than this one if you interpret arms to be any kind of weapon.
Hand grenades, mines, you name it.
So the first thing is, Are we at risk right now of our government, I don't know, overthrowing the country and becoming a dictatorship because the citizens do not have access to those high-end weapons, you know, like missile launchers and drones and tanks and stuff?
Probably not. Probably not.
Probably doesn't make any difference.
I don't go to bed thinking, oh, if only they had not infringed my right to have a flamethrower.
Yes, I know Elon Musk makes a toy flamethrower, but it's not a real weapon that would be very useful.
So I think most of you have completely, not completely, let's say 98% of your Second Amendment rights are already gone.
They're as gone as anything could ever be.
Nothing is more gone than your Second Amendment right.
You know, it's not completely gone because you can still own firearms in certain limited circumstances, but 98% of all the things you might ever want to do in the realm of arming yourself against your own government can't do, right? So that's the first thing.
98% of it's gone and you didn't even notice.
All right. Somebody says, nice straw man.
Is it a straw man? Do you think that the Second Amendment, when it says arms, was trying to limit it to just muskets?
I mean, that's all they could imagine at the time, but do you think that the Second Amendment intended to prevent somebody from having their own cannon?
I don't know the answer to that.
By the way, is there anybody who can tell the answer?
When the original Constitution was formed, were you allowed to have a canon?
If just a private canon?
Probably yes, right?
I'm just guessing. So, you know, I could get fact-checked on that pretty easily.
I don't know. So, people, I see all the guns rights people already bristling.
But so far, I haven't said anything you disagree with.
I've said that 98% of your rights are already gone, and you haven't noticed.
Now, I haven't made a point yet.
I've just said something you agree with, that you can't buy a flamethrower.
That's it. So, so far you agree with me, all right?
Secondly, as I read this sentence, I say to myself, huh, It seems like the key sentences here are militia, or key parts of militia, and necessary to the security of a free state.
Now, when I read that, I say to myself, oh, the obvious intention of that was that the United States had to protect itself from, let's say, Great Britain trying to take over, to protect itself from an external force.
So my reading of the Constitution is that it does not give you Gun rights for the purpose of protecting against your own government.
But I can see how it got interpreted that way.
So I can see how a Supreme Court would say, yeah, they probably didn't see this coming.
Probably when it was made, it was really about protecting against external forces.
But we're going to interpret this to mean that maybe you need to protect against your own government.
Or just that you have the right.
So here's my take.
My reading of it is that the Constitution did not give you the right to have guns to protect against your own government.
It did give you the right to own guns to protect against external forces, and that's somewhat useless at this point, because external forces are not really a major threat for taking over this country.
Our military is too strong.
Now, if for some reason our military rolled over and people did try to take over the country, it'd be hard to hold the country because we're pretty well armed.
So whether or not this right was...
Let's say that the militia part of the Second Amendment has been interpreted into our current understanding of gun rights.
Which, in my opinion, says that it's not in the Constitution.
The government essentially created this right by defining it in modern terms.
So it looks to me like a created right or a manufactured right, which I appreciate.
So in my opinion, again, we're all amateur lawyers.
Even the experts disagree about what the Constitution says.
said or meant or how it should be interpreted.
So remember, even the smartest people in the world are on different sides of what I'm talking about.
So if you're saying, Scott, you're an idiot, just remember that I am an idiot, but I'm also on the same team with a whole bunch of smart people who think that they agree with me.
Whichever side I'm on, I'm going to be on the side of the smart people.
So my take is that the government can do whatever it wants.
With guns. As long as it makes sense.
As long as the people are with it.
If 99% of the people in the United States said, hey, government, please take our guns away, would I complain that the Constitution had a vague statement about militia and that?
No, I would not. In the hypothetical situation where 98% of the public said, please take our guns, government, take them away.
We don't want these in the House.
They're just bad. You know, we'll trust our government not to do whatever.
Now, I don't think there would ever be a time when 99% of the public said, please take our guns away.
But if they did, would you worry?
Would you be concerned that there was a vague statement in the Constitution hundreds of years ago that really didn't even create our current situation without being interpreted fairly broadly?
Nobody would care. The fact is, we have a government, because in any situation, whether it's in the Constitution or not, we can change the Constitution, we can make laws, you know, restricting things, we can reinterpret the Constitution.
It's our government.
We can do what we want, as long as there's a system that we all respect.
So, when people say, it's in the Constitution, true.
Yes, it's true enough.
It's true enough.
But does it matter?
What you should be deciding in every case is what should we do for the future.
If you're making a decision based on the fact that somebody wrote on a document 200 years ago, that's no way to make a decision.
Does it matter to you that somebody wrote something on a document 200 years ago?
No. It should only matter to you that it still works.
It still makes sense to you in modern times.
Now, like I said, I'm pro-gun.
I don't think citizens should be disarmed.
I think it does create a threat of a totalitarian government.
Maybe not right away, but someday.
And I also think that people have different risk profiles.
So it's unambiguously true that guns make some people less safe, lots of people, less safe, while it is unambiguously true that some people are more safe.
I would be an example. So a person like me, public figure, I'm more safe owning a gun.
Because I would be smart enough to take gun training.
I would be smart enough to have a gun lock.
I would be smart enough to keep it somewhere safe.
I would be smart enough to be trained.
I'd be smart enough not to use it unless it was the right situation.
I don't have any mental health problems that would be relevant to gun ownership.
I don't think I actually have names in terms of mental health problems.
So, pro-gun, but I'm also pro-system.
I think the United States and the people should decide.
So, I say to all of my critics, many of you who are still on here, who said to me, Scott, we've got to keep our guns and blah, blah, blah, the NRA, blah, blah, blah, protection.
To all of you who thought you were disagreeing with me and were wrong, I say, your opinion I care about.
You are a voter.
You are a citizen of this country.
If you disagree with me on guns, I care about your opinion.
I might disagree, but I want to hear it.
I absolutely care and respect your opinion.
I don't respect or care about a private organization's opinion because I didn't elect the NRA. They don't work for me.
But you and I are on the same team.
If you disagree with me, I care.
And I'm going to listen to you, and I'm going to hear your argument.
So here's one. The topic of extending background searches came up.
And I say to myself, would this be unconstitutional?
Well, we already have background checks, so it doesn't seem to me that we would have a constitutional problem With extending them so they're more complete.
Now, apparently background checks, at least extending them or making them more comprehensive, has been taken off the table.
I know this because I read a story on CNN that said that after the president talked to the NRA, there are some rumors that that conversation was sort of putting the cap on it, and that That that changed the president's mind.
Now, we don't know that that's true.
I don't buy the...
Is it a trope?
I don't buy the idea that the president just listens to the last person he talked to.
He's not doing any independent thinking.
He's just listening to the NRA and making policies.
The world is never that simple.
That's just the cartoon version of what's happening.
But nonetheless, I do imagine that the NRA had a complete opinion that might be more complete than the people on the other side.
So one of the things that the NRA does well is advocacy.
And one of the things they do well is they're more informed about the topic than the people they're talking to.
So would you agree that the NRA, in general, is far more informed on every one of these topics, subtopics of guns, than the people they talk to, than the politicians, than the people?
Mostly, right? And that's good.
That's a resource. That's valuable.
We want more of that.
And we love any good work that the NRA does, teaching people to be responsible gun owners, etc.
But here's the thing where I'm heading for it.
I looked for CNN to learn more about what this topic is about.
Why do we need to extend background checks?
Where are they not extended to already?
And what is the problem with extending background checks?
And is there some situation that it works and some that it doesn't?
Find me on any...
So read any story about gun control This week on any major publication.
See if you can find any writer who's writing about the story who tells you the pros and cons of the biggest issue on the table.
There should be other issues, I suppose, but seemingly the big one is background checks.
Find somebody who will even tell you the pros and cons of background checks.
How many of you watching this You're citizens, you think you're part of the process, you think your votes count and all that.
Tell me how many of you think you understand the pros and cons of increasing background checks.
I sure don't, because I can't find any reporting on it.
Now, I'm pretty sure I could go research it on my own, but isn't that the job of the news?
If it's the headline news that we're talking about background checks and that the president might have changed his mind, Change his mind about what?
Can you even give me some hint what the topic is?
Right? How about a topic?
So, here's my take on that.
I'm pro-gun for all the right reasons.
I think the NRA and I would be, you know, completely compatible about what are the good side of having guns.
But I'm not seeing anything that looks like a debate.
Do you think that you, the public, had any influence on the question of background checks?
Because it looks to me like the NRA, who is not an elected organization, talked to the president, and then the president may have been influenced.
We don't know. It's probably more complicated than just one conversation.
But why are we the people completely in the dark on this?
What's going on? Is there something going on that we don't understand?
Well, I know one thing I don't understand.
Any topic on gun control.
I don't understand any of them.
Now, some of them are simple, like confiscation or gun buybacks.
Those are easy to understand.
But why is this background check so completely non-explained?
What's the hole?
Have we ever tested it?
Could we test it small?
If it has already been tested small, how did it do?
Where's any of that reporting?
There's no reporting so that we, the people, can influence our government to create laws that we're happy with.
Where's that process?
Didn't happen. Got shortcutted by the NRA. Now, Is the NRA right or are they wrong on the topic of background checks?
If you said yes or you said no, you're missing the point.
Because the NRA is not our elected government.
I love that they have information that they can inform, they can advise.
That's great! You could do more of it, not less, and I'd be happy.
But we're still missing the government part.
The part where the government tells us, well, we've got this on the table.
Let's tell you what we're talking about.
Let's have a vote. Let's do some polls, see how the public is thinking.
Let's create a small trial.
We'll try it in one state that volunteered to try it.
Where's all that? It's missing.
All we have is an unelected organization, great organization, do good work.
I don't have a particular thing I disagree with, because I don't understand the issues that much.
But they're not the government, and we've allowed them to take that position.
All right. So I think I've beaten that horse to death.
And then I kept beating it.
All right. So if you look at the comments...
On Twitter to my tweet, you'll see that pretty much 100% of the people who want me dead now just didn't understand the point.
They imagined, because everybody runs into the two sides imaginary frame, they imagined that if I said anything about limiting the NRA's, let's say, government influence, that therefore I'm anti-gunned.
Could it be the opposite?
Yeah. How about a pro-system?
I want a system that is representative of the people and responsive to the people.
And the NRA is not that system.
It's good in many ways.
It has many good qualities.
It's just not the system of government that any of us want.
All right. That's all I got to say about that.
I see that...
I see that my critics got a lot quieter once I explained the situation.
You know, probably the strongest concept I've ever introduced to the world, you know, I'm imagining that someday, after I'm long gone, there will be two things I'm remembered for, and neither of them will be Dilbert.
One will be the idea of systems being more important than goals, which people have sort of understood in different ways Forever.
But there's something about capturing a thought In a, let's say, a good linguistic package that makes it more powerful.
So just all the people who have learned to think more in terms of systems and less in terms of goals, I hear from them literally every day.
Every day somebody emails me and says, my life has completely changed because of understanding systems over goals.
Now I have systems to exercise and everything else.
And then the other concept is the...
There we go. We'll get rid of this person.
He just doesn't want to deal with some honesty here.
And the other thing is the talent stack.
The idea that if you stack the right group of talents, you can become special even if none of those individual talents are the best in the world.
Those two things, I think, are going to be the most lasting thing that I've added to the world, according to other people.
That's what I hear every day.
So I like that concept applied to everything, whether it's government or anything else.
So those of you who think you're on the other side from me on gun control, you're probably not.
I just like good systems, not bad systems.
Somebody says, you need to do a little research into the NRA. What do you think I would find that I don't know?
I'm not saying I shouldn't.
Just give me a hint.
What do you think I would learn about the NRA that I don't already know?
You can fit that in a comment, so let me know.
Oh, here we go. Here's somebody saying a comment I want to comment on.
Somebody says, you'll never solve the problem without getting to the root of the problem.
So one of the complaints I heard was, hey, Scott, You can't solve the gun problem until you get to the root of the problem.
Well, I've got a book for you.
It's called Loser Think.
And one of the chapters deals with that way of bad thinking.
And the bad thinking that I'm talking about is imagining that you need to find the root of the problem to solve it.
That is actually irrational thinking.
There are lots of situations where...
Where the solution is not related to the root of the problem.
And if you limit yourself to, well, I gotta get to the root of the problem or I can't do anything, then you're missing all of the other solutions that have nothing to do with the root of the problem, but they still work.
For example, what is the root of the problem of, let's say, crime?
Well, the root of the problem might be bad education system.
It might be the economy is bad.
Maybe there's mental illness.
Maybe there's drug addiction. So you could argue all day about what the root of the problem is for a crime.
But you're still going to lock your door at home.
Now, locking your door at home doesn't solve the root problem.
But it's still a good idea.
And so it is true for most things that your solution might be locking the door and that has nothing to do with the root of the problem.
You also want to find a root and deal with that as well, but still lock the door.
If you tell yourself you can't act until we all agree on the root of the problem, that's loser think.
That is a style of thinking That is unproductive.
Says Boo the cat.
By the way, I teach all my cats to relax when I pick them up like this.
Boo is actually a very jumpy cat.
So you can see she's being a little bit hypnotized now.
This gentle rocking.
I also learned that she can't take too long now.
I've also learned with Boo that if I put my hand on her upper chest, she gets all relaxed.
I don't know why. All right.
I'm just looking at your...
I don't know what half of your comments mean.
Okay, that's all I've got to say for now, and I will talk to you all later.
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