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Aug. 31, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:02:29
Episode 647 Scott Adams: #FentanylChina Doing too Little, Outrage Theatre, Biden’s Brain
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Time Text
Hey everybody!
It's just about time, well actually it is time, for coffee with Scott Adams.
As luck would have it, you're here on time.
You're the smart ones, you're the fast ones.
And if I might say, many of you are surprisingly good looking, sexy even.
So, I know why you're here.
You came for the simultaneous sip.
And it doesn't take much to participate.
We just wait for a thousand people to come in here, and then you just grab your cup or your mug or your glass, your stein, your chalice, your tanker, your thermos, your flask, your canteen, your vessel of any kind, filling with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Simultaneous sip.
Now, go.
Ah, divine.
Amen.
Thank you.
So I tried to call Sears Home Warranty the other day to complain about something, and I got what I call the full menu of bad customer service.
Have you ever had this experience?
You're calling somebody to get some help on some problem.
The first thing you get is the automated answer.
And the second thing is, you wait for the choice that's yours, and there isn't one.
So that's the first thing.
You get an automated electronic answer that says, you know, press one for this, press two for this, and then none of the choices, none of them, are anything that That helps you.
So you pick one, or you do zero, or you pick the wrong one, and you try to work yourself to the right place.
Then you always get the person who's ready to help, and they start asking you questions.
Your name, your address, your account number, some details about why you're calling, and you think, finally, I've got to somebody.
I gave them all my details.
Here we go. I'm going to get some help.
And then what does that person always say?
Okay, thank you.
Let me transfer you to the people who can help.
At which point I say, well, who the hell were you?
I just gave you all my information and told you the whole story, and all you're going to do is transfer me to somebody who can help?
And when they transfer you to someone who can help, what do you do?
You give them all the same information, which I did.
But of course, there's another trick, too.
It's the garble.
They transfer you to another line, but the other line answers and they go...
And you go, huh?
I can't hear you.
Can you speak louder? And it's a garbled thing.
And I'm telling them to move their headset around.
And finally I'm like, okay, I can get just enough of what you're saying that I think we can do this.
And you go through the whole steps again, giving all your information, your address and everything.
And when this guy was done, what do you think he did?
He had all my information.
He said, oh, you're talking to the warranty department.
What you want is the warranty department customer service department.
So he says, please hold, I'll transfer you.
What happens then?
The next thing that happens is you get disconnected, right?
So I was waiting to get disconnected, but instead, it was a third person with yet another garbled line.
Now, what are the odds that you get transferred to somebody whose line is also garbled?
Sounds like their head is in a fishbowl.
I'm not even talking about accent.
So none of this has to do with accent.
I'm just talking about the actual phone connection.
And then I give them my phone number, and they go, well, we don't have you in our database.
So the next thing is you find out that their database of customers is so bad that they think you're not in it, even though the first person you talked to looked it up.
And then what's the last thing they do?
They put you on hold.
How long do they put you on hold, and does it disconnect before they're done?
Well, let me tell you. I did finally get through and canceled my service, but it was every chick in the book.
All right. There's a report that U.S. and Chinese officials held a, quote, working-level meeting in which the Chinese claim that they're making progress In battling the fentanyl shipments to the United States.
And of course they want the sanctions taken off.
Now, do you believe that the Chinese have done something that you would call progress in terms of stopping fentanyl shipments to this country?
Not if the one guy who's doing it is still alive.
How in the world can China claim that they're making progress on fentanyl when we know the name and I think the address of the person who's responsible?
There's like one guy who's basically responsible.
We know his name and we know where he lives.
And China says we're making progress.
Show me a picture of his dead body.
Show me a photograph of that guy dead.
I'll call that progress.
Don't tell me you're making progress if that guy's walking around free and alive.
That's not progress. That's not even trying.
So let's be clear, China.
You're not trying.
Don't pretend to tell us you're trying.
There's nothing happening.
You're not getting a trade deal.
There's no trade deal coming.
We should completely disengage.
This is a murderous A country that cannot be trusted, their government cannot be trusted to make trade deals.
They're not going to keep them and we can tell that just from the fentanyl situation and the Hong Kong situation.
If you look at Hong Kong and you look at the fentanyl situation, we can say conclusively this is not a country that you can do business with.
They're going to steal your IP. They're going to send you fentanyl, and they're not going to keep their side of the deal.
So pull out.
It's going to hurt. It's going to be a lot of trouble, but let's just get out of China.
That's what I say. The latest Joe Biden gaffe is, in some event, he actually said this sentence.
He was talking about immigrants who come to this country.
And he said of the immigrants...
That they, quote, become Americans before a lot of Americans become Americans.
Okay. All right.
So it's time to talk about Elizabeth Warren, I think, because Biden, I just, I'm kind of fascinated on what it will take for Biden's friends and family to talk him into the race.
Okay. I think what it's going to take is that...
I think Biden has to put in a certain amount of work and get to a certain point so that he can say he tried.
Because I don't think Biden wants to look as though he went away meekly.
He's got to do something that looked like he tried.
And if the public keeps voting for him, or not voting, but if they keep saying that they're going to vote for him in polls...
It's going to be hard for him to leave the race when he's at the top.
So the public, meaning the Democrats who get polled on this question, really need to step it up.
They need to step it up a little bit and help him make a graceful exit that he can go with dignity.
I think we owe him that.
Some of you say we don't owe him anything.
I know. So I was telling you yesterday my explanation of why Kamala Harris is the only one who has a chance of making a good run at President Trump because she doesn't have any fatal flaws.
The three above her seem to have fatal flaws that will limit their popularity, whereas Harris probably could fix her minor flaws.
So her minor flaws is that she doesn't campaign that well.
She's not that interesting. But those are the sorts of things you can figure out and you can improve.
But you can't improve whatever Biden's got going on.
That's not something that gets better.
And Bernie seems to have a cap on his popularity.
Otherwise, he would have Biden's votes.
Except for whatever is keeping Bernie at his level of popularity seems to be like a hard ceiling.
And then Elizabeth Warren has 1% African-American support.
So that's not a good sign of somebody who could win the general.
But here's the interesting part.
Fox News is reporting that somebody important in the Trump campaign said the following, quote, the one who scares me the most in the general is Kamala Harris.
The official said, described by the Washington Times as, quote, a key player in Trump's campaign.
Oh, so it's the Washington Times reporting it, but I think I saw it on Fox News.
So some unnamed person in the campaign, Trump campaigns, who was a key player, said that Harris was the least flawed.
So... There's at least somebody in the campaign who sees this exactly the same way I do, but I don't think I'd seen it reported this way until this story, right?
Had you seen any reporting that was this similar to what I'd been saying until now?
Probably not. Do you know Eric McCormick?
He's the TV star of Will and Grace, the original, as well as the The one that came back.
I don't know if that's still on the air or not.
But he called for a boycott of anybody in Hollywood who was going to attend a California fundraiser for President Trump.
So in public, he called for the names of everyone in Hollywood who would go to a Trump fundraiser so that they could not work with that person again.
So literally...
Literally, Hollywood is suggesting a trade war against ourselves in which the United States has boycotts and trade wars within its own borders against each other.
Can you think of anything that would be more racist and more divisive, whatever that word is?
It's unbelievably damaging, unbelievably stupid.
Now, there's some things you can say, well, that's just a priority.
Somebody has a different priority than I do.
That's why they have different preferences, different opinions.
But in this case, this is not a question of a different priority.
If you're actually suggesting in public that Americans boycott other Americans because of their political opinions and who they vote for, you're not part of the smart crowd.
Because that's not a process that could ever lead to anything good.
The worst thing that could happen to this country is that people would take Eric McCormick's advice.
What would you do if Eric McCormick successfully got people to name names of everybody who went to a Trump fundraiser in Hollywood and then all the Hollywood people said, all right, these are the people we're not going to work with again.
What's the first thing you'd say would happen?
The first thing you would say would happen is that 40% of the country would never watch Eric McCormick's content again.
So anything that Eric McCormick is in is going to get crushed at the box office because something like 40% of the country is going to say, okay, how about we never watch anything you're ever in again?
Then how about all the people who work with Eric McCormick?
It's not their fault what he said.
They're just trying to mind their own business, do their job.
But suddenly, the project that Eric McCormick's on, nobody can sell it anymore because there aren't enough people who want to watch it because of him.
Well, what happens to all the people he works with?
They end up getting drawn into this, and they just wanted to go to work and get a paycheck.
And suddenly, Eric McCormick has ruined the entire project he's on, plus anything else he touches.
The level of stupidity it takes to call for a boycott among your own country is just breathtaking.
It's breathtaking.
Now, one can imagine that there's something so bad that you would have to act, you know, if you had an actual Hitler who was in charge, etc.
But Eric, it's been now three years-ish, three years of Trump, How many things were you right about?
Think about all the things you thought were going to happen and then compare it to the things that happened.
And then compare that to what I said was going to happen and what actually happened.
Did you see 14 million people get rounded up and sent home?
No. No.
Did you see concentration camps for gay people?
No. No, you didn't.
You saw the opposite of all that.
You saw prison reform.
You saw employment go up.
You saw international relations look pretty calm at the moment.
You saw the president negotiating hard against China, and now you learned why.
I mean, when Trump was first saying, we've got to push on China hard, I have to admit, I wasn't too informed on the topic, and I said to myself, maybe we don't need to push China that hard.
I remember thinking to myself, do we?
Maybe that's just a campaign thing you say.
Maybe we don't need to push them.
And sure enough, once the full story comes to light and there's actually some reporting about China, we do have to push them.
Right out the door is where we need to push them.
So... There's that.
So there's a story about President Trump's assistant getting fired, Westerhout.
So that was his personal assistant, and apparently she got drunk, said some things to some reporters about the president's family, and it got back to him, and she got fired.
Here's the real story.
The real story is alcohol.
If it's not being reported as the problem is alcohol...
Sort of missing the point of the story.
Am I mistaken, or did I see that she had two drunk driving arrests?
Can somebody fact check that?
I don't want to say that sort of thing in public, unless it's true.
But I thought I saw that she had a couple of...
Oh wait, no, it wasn't her.
I've got the wrong person, don't I? Yeah, cancel that.
I'm thinking back to somebody else.
Yes, you're correct.
That was the press secretary. So Westerhout did not have drunk driving arrests, so make sure that everybody's clear on that.
Or at least, as far as I know, there was no drunk driving arrests.
But I don't think you can ever underplay how important alcohol and drugs are to the things you see.
How many things do you see where people do things that are dumb in public and there was some kind of drug involved?
It's so common that it's almost like that's how the reporting should be.
The reporting should be what some dumbass did and then what drug they were on.
So it should be this person shot up a public place and they were on the following drugs.
This person gave up some secrets And they had been drinking.
I think that just needs to be part of the story.
Because I've often said that when a person takes a drug or a person drinks, they become a new person.
So the person without a drug is a certain person.
But a person who then puts alcohol or some drug in them becomes chemically just a different person.
And I want to know who that person was that made the mistake.
Was it you plus alcohol?
Alright, here's the outrage theater of the day.
Are you ready? We all like to be outraged because outrage feels good.
And remember the rules. The rules of being outraged are that we're always outraged on behalf of hypothetical people who are less awesome than ourselves.
So outrage only works if you can imagine the you You and I, we're sort of above it.
You and I, oh my god, you and I are not bothered by little stuff.
But I'll tell you what's true.
Other people, people who are not nearly as awesome as we are, they should be enraged by the things they see.
Let me give you an example.
Let me invite Dale over to tell us about the latest outrage.
It turns out that...
Oh, damn it.
Did I not write down her name and then just forgot it?
This story won't be nearly as good if I can't remember her name.
Who is the name of the...
The attractive actress on Modern Family from Columbia, at least in the show she's from Columbia.
Somebody help me out.
Her name is...
Damn it.
I made notes and I didn't write down her name.
Well, let's just say that there's...
Sofia Vergara.
There you go. Thank you.
Thanks for the assist.
Sofia Vergara is getting some outrage from people because she took some photos in the context of Hurricane Dorian was coming.
They posed in a beachy in their bathing suits basically and the caption was waiting for Dorian.
So Sofia Vergara and some friend of hers, they posed with bathing suits and the caption was, waiting for Dorian.
But then before Dorian got there, they got on their private jet, took some more photos and went home.
And people were saying, my God, you're tone deaf because you're sort of making fun of the hurricane.
But allow me to do this for you.
This is an outrage. It's an outrage, I say.
That Sofia Vergara could make light of a coming hurricane?
No, it's not because it bothers you.
Because you're awesome.
Why would you be bothered by something stupid?
You're not stupid.
Come on. Why would I be bothered by it?
Well, you and I are awesome.
We're not bothered by these outrages.
But let's agree.
There are dumb people all over.
I don't know who they are. I've never met one, but I believe there are dumb people all over who are really worked up about this.
This is going to affect them in some negative way that I can't define.
And it looks like this.
What? Sophia Vergara took a picture when a hurricane was coming?
How tone-deaf. She's so very tone-deaf.
Ah! Ah!
Ah! It's an outrage!
Ah! On behalf of other people, it's an outrage.
So... That's outrage theater for today.
Famous baseball player died of a fentanyl and other drug overdose.
Every time some famous person dies from a fentanyl-related overdose, we get a little more serious about that problem.
So I just mention it to stay serious.
Okay. Have you noticed that the racism thing seems to be settling down a little bit?
Does it feel to you that the anti-Trumpers are kind of trying to find something that they can just grab onto?
Something that they can really run with?
And once the New York Times got busted for creating what is obviously a fake framework for which they will tell all their news stories, which is everything's about racism, since they got busted on that, wouldn't it make every story about racism between now and Election Day look fake?
I mean, not fake in terms of the details are necessarily going to be wrong, although that might happen too.
But fake in terms of it just looks like somebody's trying to make a narrative because the New York Times admitted that's exactly what they're doing.
It feels to be like there's some kind of pullback from that approach.
Now, maybe it's too early and maybe it's just a little pullback that has more to do with the fact that it's August.
Maybe we'll see more of it.
I would assume we would.
But here's the thing you can't underestimate.
You can't underestimate the influence of Dave Chappelle.
And if you recall, when I watched it, I immediately got on here and said, drop what you're doing.
You have to watch it. It's a masterpiece.
And that's what I think.
If you can call stand-up comedy...
I guess you could.
I mean, it is.
It's art. Then within the genre of stand-up comedy, there are going to be some that are just masterpieces.
I would say that Chappelle's latest performance almost transcends the form to the point of masterpiece.
And part of what makes it a masterpiece is how angry it made some people.
Some people got really angry about it.
Now, if you look at just the small details of what he said, if you look at not the context or the larger message, if you ignore all the larger beauty of what he was doing, and you just look at the small jokes, it's easy for you to say, oh, He's being insensitive.
He's being, I don't know, misogynistic.
He's being racist.
He's being something. It would be easy to say that if you just looked at the individual jokes.
But what made it a masterpiece is that it wasn't a collection of individual jokes.
Now, I don't know how often stand-up comedians put together something that's larger than the sum of their jokes.
Usually, it just looks like a bunch of jokes in a series, and you say, well, I'm glad I spent an hour listening to them, because each of those jokes was pretty good.
That's typical. What Chappelle did was he took a run at society itself.
Chappelle just walked up to the structure of reality and said, I'm going to tell you some jokes, but watch this.
I'm going to mess with your reality.
I'm not just going to make you laugh.
I'm going to change you.
I'm going to turn you into something different.
And I'm going to change the entire society while I'm doing it.
That's what it felt like.
It felt to me like he was grabbing reality and saying, no, this isn't about the jokes.
Oh yeah, there'll be jokes.
There will be jokes.
But watch this. Rip!
And then he just ripped it in half.
Right in front of us. It felt like...
Now, you've probably seen a number of people who you would not expect come forward and say, stop this, you've watched this special.
I think Ben Shapiro said that on Twitter the other day, and a bunch of other people saying the same thing.
They're saying, no, this is special.
This isn't just funny.
This is something else.
And... I've been wrestling with it since I watched it.
I'm thinking of actually re-watching it for this purpose.
But I felt like something bigger was happening there.
And I think people sense that when they watch it.
Now, one interpretation people are making is that because he was so, let's say, intentionally offensive, meaning he looked at the audience and he said, I'm going to offend you, In essence.
And then he went and offended them.
But you were laughing while you were being offended, which changed completely how you received this offense.
And my favorite part about it was he did, Chappelle did a piece, I don't want to ruin it, but he does a piece where any objective observer would say, oh my God, Okay, no matter what you think of Dave Chappelle, that thing, that specific joke, that's racist.
That's what I said to myself.
I said, okay, he was right on the line.
He was pushing the envelope, but on that one joke, that's not on the line anymore.
That's just flat-out racist.
And it was racist against Chinese people.
And he did a Chinese imitation that there's no other way to interpret it, but okay, that's just flat-out racist.
That's one of the jokes you shouldn't do.
And then, after he makes you live with that for a while, and you think, oh, God, I like Chappelle, but that's too far, right?
That's not the world I want to live in.
I don't want to live in the world Where even Dave Chappelle can tell a flat-out racist joke mocking Chinese people.
I don't want to see that. And then Chappelle tells me he's married to a Chinese woman.
And you just go, damn it, Chappelle.
Damn it, Chappelle.
You got me.
Because it wasn't racist.
Because he was actually talking about a joke that he does at home.
It's something he literally does with his wife.
Who's Chinese? And he does it, the essence of the joke was it's a black person with a Chinese person inside them or something.
And at the same time, he's making you question how you're feeling about transgender and LGBTQ and everything, and all of it is terribly uncomfortable.
You're uncomfortable and you're laughing at the same time, which is pretty amazing.
Anyway, in the end, this was my take.
He made me go through all of the emotions of, oh my god, I'm outraged, that's too far, and all that.
And then at the end, it was so obvious at the end that he doesn't hold any of those opinions, meaning that he's actually surprisingly, not surprisingly, but amazingly open-minded.
It's very clear he does not have personal bad feelings about any of the people he made fun of.
That much comes through pretty clearly.
But because he took you on that journey, you experienced being outraged, and then he showed you it wasn't real.
I guess that was the magic trick.
It was making you feel outraged and feel offended and then immediately show you it was an illusion, that you just had not seen enough context to know that you were being bamboozled.
I think that took it to another level of art, in my opinion.
All right, that's all. I'm going to say about that.
I don't have much else to say.
I'm going to keep this short. I put on the headphones in case anybody wants to ask a question.
And it looks like at least one person is.
Jacob, we're going to see if you're paying attention.
Let me take some questions.
Jacob, are you there?
Jacob! Hey!
Do you have a question you would like to ask?
Yes, I'm about to start my final year of school in a few days, and I was wondering if you had any tips or advice on actually remembering my studies, because it's a lot of reading, it's programming, so it's a ton of just looking at mind-numbing info.
I'm having a lot of trouble Recalling it.
Okay, I'll give you some memory tips.
So here's some studying memory tips that would work for your job or anything else.
You want to find as many of your five senses, get them involved as you can.
So what I like to do is if I'm just, let's say, reading a book and I'm trying to remember it, I might highlight portions because that gets my arm involved and my eyes involved.
It adds a color. Now it isn't so much that you're just highlighting things so you can go back and look at them later, although that's good.
But rather, you're putting more of your body into the process.
So the more things that get involved, if you can see it, hear it, say it out loud.
So I might read it.
Then I might say it out loud.
I might repeat it a few times out loud.
I might write it down on a separate note.
I might highlight it.
But I want to get as many of my bodily senses involved.
And then I want to say, what does it remind me of?
So I might say, okay, this is a lot like X, or it's a lot like Y, or it's like this if you took away this element.
So I try to combine it with something that I've seen before, put it with all the things that remind me of this, so that there's a bigger category that it fits in, and that might be easier to remember.
So... That's what I do.
And then you might make a separate page of just the things that you keep trying to remember but you don't remember.
And then narrow down the list of things you can't remember until it gets down to zero.
So that's what I would do. Good question.
But get all your senses involved.
All right. Take care.
Take care. It looks like we have other people asking questions here.
I like to pick people whose...
Whose profile looks like it might actually be a real person.
So we're going to try super badass here.
Are you there, caller? Do you have a question for me?
Yes, sir. Music.
Is there music that you think that is the best recommendation for hacking your brain into a A calm state of peace.
I follow, I read your books.
You have changed my life completely.
I used to have TDS, and I cannot even believe that I'm talking to you.
So I'm having a little trouble hearing the question.
It was, do I recommend a certain type of music for some functional purpose?
What was the function?
Yesterday, you were talking about all these tips to hack into your brain, to get into programming behavior.
Is there a specific programming music that you suggest not to listen to or to listen to?
Yes.
So you may not have heard my occasional rants against music.
I consider music a form of pollution, meaning that it's something that gets into your head that may not be influencing your mind the way you want it to.
I don't listen to music recreationally because I don't want to have part of my mental process repeating a song in my head that isn't helping me.
I can enjoy music as much as the next person, but I treat it like a drug.
This is what I mean.
If I go to the gym, I might want to listen to a certain subset of music that is compatible with working out.
And there are times when you just need to take your mind off something that you can use it for that.
But I would not randomly listen to music just because I'm bored.
Because music, good music, the music that becomes a hit, the ones that you're likely to hear, are powerful.
And they're powerful because they jack your emotions.
And it might be jacking your emotions in ways that are not compatible with what you want to do that day.
So, for example, if you started out in a good mood and you were playing your playlist and it included a bunch of unhappy singers who had lost their loves...
Then I would say that's programming your mind in a way you didn't want it programmed because you were in a good mood before it started.
Likewise, anything that just adds noise and distraction, eats up brain cells, etc.
Thank you very much, sir. Alright, I'm getting rid of the person who says wrong.
For those of you new, you get blocked for using the single word wrong.
All right. Thank you for your question.
Thank you. Let's take another question.
Those are pretty good questions, actually.
If I do say so, let's pick April.
Is that working?
April has canceled.
April ran away.
Let's help out Tom.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
Tom, are you there? Good.
Do you have a question for me?
Well, I have two questions, but let's try one first.
Okay. You talk about hypnosis.
Like 20% of people are very susceptible to hypnosis.
Right. If you're a performer, like a hypnotist, are there cues when you're interviewing people that tell you this is a good subject?
Yes. So stage hypnotists are looking for the people in the crowd who are the most easily hypnotizable.
And they usually do tests of the crowd to figure it out.
And one of the classic tests are they tell everybody in the crowd, okay, put your hands together like this and hold your hands together.
And then the hypnotist will give the suggestion that your hands are stuck together.
And then after he works on the suggestion a little bit, he'll tell the crowd, okay, now open your hands.
Now, 80% of the people in the crowd will think, I wonder if this is going to work.
And then they'll go. And nothing happened.
Just absolutely nothing.
They'll just go. 20% of the crowd will go like this.
There'll just be that little bit of hesitation.
And the hypnotist is looking for that.
And they'll say, okay, you, you, you, you, you, you.
It'll bring, let's say, 12 people up on stage.
Of the 12, some of those were false negatives.
In other words, it's hard to detect a little hesitation.
So the hypnotist is going to get a few of them wrong.
So the hypnotist will give them further suggestions, you know, whatever is the next suggestion, and then he'll see the reaction again, and then he'll usually weed out a few more.
So the typical process is you're looking for the smallest little indications of hypnotizability in your physicality.
It's something about your body.
Maybe he tells you that you're itchy or that you're going to sneeze or something, and he just looks for any indication that shows people are being influenced by the suggestion.
So that's how it's done. Thank you for the question.
All right. Let's go to...
Greg.
Greg. You're live in a moment, Greg.
Greg, Greg, Greg. Greg, can you hear me?
Do you have a question for me, Greg?
Kind of a funny one. You drink coffee every day, but your teeth are so bright white.
So are you really coffee?
Or what do you do to keep the white?
I really am drinking coffee.
And the trick to white teeth is being rich, basically.
That's the trick. So if you have enough money, you can go to your dentist and you can get something called veneers, which are what I have.
So my front teeth, but not all of them.
What's the material?
It might be porcelain, but it's a veneer over top of the regular teeth.
They're semi-permanent, meaning that every 15 years or so you might have to get some replaced.
But even the veneers can't be totally white because they're influenced by the actual natural color of your teeth that are beneath them.
Some of that color gets through.
So when you get to veneers, you get to choose You get to choose what kind of whiteness you want.
If you choose too white, everybody looks at you and says, well, those are some fake teeth you got there.
If you choose just white enough, then people will say, hey, you've got some naturally white teeth there.
So that's where I tried to hit that zone where people like you would say, huh, those look like natural teeth.
Why are they so white? Now, here's another trick I did because I'm a hypnotist.
I'm going to show you an imperfection in my smile.
See this? See this bottom tooth is higher than the ones?
That's intentional.
I had a choice of making that look perfect.
I chose imperfect.
Because most of my smile is cosmetically fixed to be near perfect.
But I left a little bit of imperfection along the bottom so that if you saw it, you would be fooled into thinking they were natural teeth, completely natural, because nobody would leave an imperfection.
Sort of like hypnotizing people to...
That is dental hypnosis.
That was a good question.
Thanks for asking. By the way, the cost...
The cost is, I don't know, depending on how many teeth and whether you have to have posts installed or not, it could be $30,000.
It's pretty expensive, so just so you know.
Thanks for asking. All right.
Let's go to Paul.
Paul was my father's name.
Not that that's important, but Paul, can you hear me?
Paul? Paul?
Paul is not with us.
Let's try someone else.
Let's try Alex.
Alex. Alex, Alex.
It takes for a second for the system to connect.
Alex, are you there? Again.
Do you have a question for me?
It's actually a perfect time to get some advice.
I'm in some turmoil for heroin, my girlfriend.
I've got a little bit of feedback on the audio there, so give me the question quick and then I'll answer.
Is it abandoning her to push her away for a continued heroin problem?
Yes. If you have an addict in your life, just get him out of your life and save yourself.
That's what I say. Now, you might need to turn off the – if you could turn down the audio because my audio is coming back.
So could you mute me?
Thank you. So I'm assuming you can still hear me.
Yeah, that's better. Thank you.
I've had a lot of experience with addicts.
So I've had loved ones who were alcoholics years ago, etc.
And so I ended up learning a lot about how do you handle those situations.
The thing that doesn't work is giving them support.
Because if you give them some support, they will just stay addicts because they have support and they can make that work.
My... My view is that if you have somebody who's on heroin, for example, and you're pretty sure that they're addicted, it's not something they did once on a weekend or something, but you should just get them out of your life.
I hate to say it because it's the harshest advice you'll ever hear.
Now, your loved one might die, and they might die because you left them to die, but one of you is going to go down And the only option you have is whether you go with them.
So if you want to die trying to save somebody who doesn't want to be saved, in other words, they're not trying hard enough to get clean, you can do that.
And unfortunately, most people take that choice.
But I'm going to give you permission.
And watch how important this is.
This is very important to you.
Part of the reason that you would not feel comfortable letting a loved one go if they have an addiction is because you would suffer tremendous guilt and you would never be sure if you made the right decision.
So what I'm doing for you is a gift.
It's the right decision.
You should never feel guilty about it and you should expect that they might die.
Those are the tough choices because you're an adult.
You're an adult in a world where people live and die sometimes because of our decisions.
You can save yourself.
If you can save yourself, do it.
But you need to be tough.
You need to tell that person that you'll help them get into treatment because that's always fair.
I mean, if you can help them get into some kind of a treatment and they're serious about it, then by all means, be supportive.
If you've got somebody who says, no, I'm not going into treatment...
Or I'll only go in to make you happy for a week, but it's not real.
You should let them go.
Assuming they're over 18 and they're adults.
If they're under 18 and you're in charge of them, you've got a different situation.
But I say let them go.
It's a world full of addicts, and those addicts will tear you apart.
If you have not learned this yet...
Part of the addictive personality is the destruction of loved ones.
It's not an accident.
If it looks like your life is being targeted by somebody and you're thinking to yourself, surely they don't mean to be doing this to me.
Surely it's just bad luck that it's so bad for me because I'm not the addict.
I'm just in the blast zone.
The thing you need to know is that every addict is doing that to every loved one.
There's no exceptions.
If you're an addict, you're ruining the lives of the people around you, period, every time.
It's 100%. They're all ruining the lives of the people close to them.
You can put up with that, but you can't win that way.
There's no winning path where you're supportive of somebody who's an addict and they're not trying to get better.
If they are trying to get better, I say, by all means, do what you can.
But if they haven't made the decision, cut and run.
You will never regret it.
If you feel guilt, remember this conversation.
And by the way, do some research.
You don't have to take my word for it.
If you talk to the experts in this field, they will all tell you what I just told you.
Get away. Just get away.
This person might die.
There's nothing you can do about it.
And it won't be your fault.
It's not your fault.
That's my gift to you.
By the way, look at the comments.
You will see in the comments 100% agreement with what I'm saying.
100%. Every person who's been through this agrees with me.
Right? Look at the comments.
Every person who's been through it.
Yeah, go ahead. I've actually given that advice to others.
And it seems so much more different than all the women.
I'm the one who has made that decision.
And I think I made that decision, so it helps a lot to hear it come from someone else that I should make.
It does help. Right.
Yeah, that was my gift to you.
I sensed that what you needed was to hear from somebody else.
And now you've heard it from me, but you can see in the comments.
And it's worth playing back. If you weren't looking at the comments, you should lay them back.
Because the comments are unified.
You just protect yourself and it does sound like you already made the right decision.
That's all for now.
I will thank you for that question.
And let's take another question.
Since we're on a roll, why not?
Miss Rhetorical.
This should be interesting.
Can you hear me yet, Miss Rhetorical?
Hello, hello. She has canceled.
All right. Let's go to...
Some people just can't take the pressure, I guess.
Let's add Laureen.
I'm trying to get some gender diversity here.
Laureen, are you there?
I can. Do you have a question for me?
I don't actually have a question, but the Biden gaffs, you know, the recent one where he said they become more American than Americans?
Yeah. That actually makes sense to me.
Because, you know, I'm not saying that all his others, so I feel extra bad for him that he has something that makes sense, and I feel like I'm the only one that understood it, which might also be weird.
But basically, they're just demonstrating traditional American values.
Is that not, is that, am I crazy for hearing that?
Well, I would agree that that's probably something like what he intended.
But there's more than the issue of what he meant.
There's the issue of how he communicated it.
So that's the problem there is how he put the words together.
The fact that so many people heard it and went, I mean, that alone tells you there was something wrong with it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't disagree that in his mind that's probably what his intention was.
I can't read his mind, but that feels like a perfectly reasonable thing to say, yes.
And when is your interview, when is your get with Christina?
Are you still doing that? I haven't seen any tweets lately.
Yeah, so Christina and I spent, mostly Christina, spent last night putting together the equipment in a studio in a room down the hall.
And we have one more piece of equipment we need to mix the sound, etc.
So we'll get that. So it's going to be sort of a process where we're putting it together and testing it before you see anything.
But maybe in the next, I'd say, three weeks from now, we'll have our first one.
Okay. Good to hear it's happening.
All right. Thank you.
Bye. Bye. All right.
Let's see if Peter has a question for me.
Peter, Peter? Peter, can you hear me?
Hey, good morning.
Do you have a question for me? It relates to that topic about addiction, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the concept of forgiveness.
Specifically, when someone's injured you, do you ever forgive them?
And if you don't forgive them, at what point do you seek revenge?
Well, I'm not a believer.
So I don't have a religious framework that I try to attach things to.
So the idea of forgiveness doesn't make complete sense in my model of the world.
So I guess I would leave that to someone who has a religious tradition similar to yours to give you the answer that's more compatible maybe.
But in my case, let me answer it more generically then.
It's actually the non-believer's opinion that I'm interested in because I recognize that it's not a logical concept.
So, in my opinion, my forgiveness is usually irrelevant.
I'm not sure I believe that my forgiveness changes anything.
Now, if somebody needs it and asks for it and has earned it, I'm happy to say the words, but I don't put a lot of A lot of weight on the concept of forgiveness just because I don't have a religious background.
So I just say that you make your decisions based on what you expect is going to happen next.
So if somebody has done something bad in the past but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen again and they feel bad about it and they've apologized or whatever, I'm usually pretty willing to let it go.
So long as there's a good reason to expect it's not going to repeat.
So my take is that we live in a faulty world.
We're flawed people, surrounded by flawed people.
And if we can't let the small stuff go, it's just too hard to live with other people.
So as a strong rule, I'd like to let the small stuff go because I'd like other people to treat me that way.
The whole golden rule thing is not just about what is morally appropriate.
It's about what works.
You'd rather live in a society where people have the same attitude of, okay, you shouldn't have done that.
You said you're sorry.
I got other things to think about.
Tomorrow it'll be me who makes a mistake.
I'll ask you for forgiveness.
I hope you get over it as quickly as I did.
So it's just a good system.
I don't know if I answered your question, though.
Did I? Well, that's great for the, say, trivial offenses where really there may not even be something to forgive or you don't feel terribly offended about it.
But then, at what point do you seek revenge or escalate?
I'll tell you, the only time that I would seek something that I would call revenge is if I were sure it was in the context of karma and making the world a better place.
There are many times I find myself in a situation where I could easily not push back because it's just not worth my time, and I say to myself, okay, somebody did something pretty bad to me, and my instinct is to push back and get revenge, but I think I'd rather just go on with my life.
Sometimes I'll do that if I think the offense was some kind of one-off weird situation.
But if I think there's a person who needs to be brought back in line with, let's say, society's favored standards, then I consider myself an agent of karma.
In other words, I feel like, oh, now it's my job to put the hurt on somebody, in some small way usually, to put the hurt on somebody To show them that their actions were not appropriate within the social context.
And since something happened to me personally, damn it, it's my job to push back.
But I never take pleasure in it.
I can't think of any time I've enjoyed anything like revenge.
Like thinking, oh, something bad happened to somebody that I don't like.
I don't really get that feeling.
But I do feel like...
The world gets out of balance sometimes, and there are people who just need to be corrected.
I hate to say that because it puts me in the judge and jury kind of a God position.
But I think you all recognize the situation, right?
If somebody steals or punches somebody, we would all recognize that that needs to be corrected for the good of society.
So short of feeling a karmic responsibility to society, and really it's more of a social responsibility, you can take the magic part out of it.
You can get rid of the karma and it's all the same.
Short of feeling my responsibility as a citizen who is part of keeping people in the good zone, I'll do things in that state of mind, but not for other reasons.
So, to answer your question, the place for revenge is no place.
There is no place for revenge in this world.
That's my observation.
There are places Where you can make the world a little better by making sure people don't think they can get away with whatever they got away with.
And you might be the only one who can make that change.
Maybe it's not the law.
Maybe it's not other people because of the situation.
So ask yourself if it's worth it to you to take the risk of whatever that revenge action looks like.
And if it doesn't help society, it's probably not worth doing.
Alright, that's my best answer I can give you.
Thanks for the question. Thank you.
Let's do another. Let's do Alex.
Alex? Alex, can you hear me?
Oh, good. Do you have a question for me?
Yes, I wanted to ask you, by the way, thank you for all the wonderful things you do for the world.
I wanted to ask you about how can you help yourself or someone else get out of economic trouble?
Like someone who is spending over their means and does not seem to stop doing that.
Yeah, you know, that's a question I've asked myself Often.
Because when people overspend, I can't figure out what's going on in their heads because I've never been an overspender.
I've never spent more than I've made any time in my life.
And so when people do, I think, what's going on there?
And they don't understand it.
So I guess there are no two situations alike.
If it's your child who's overspending or your spouse who's overspending, you have to treat it differently.
If it's your coworker or family member, it all has to be treated differently.
But I would certainly try to encourage such a person to create an actual budget and try to lead them towards systems that could work.
I would not have a goal of not spending as much because a goal without a way to get there is worthless.
But you might say, hey, I notice you keep overspending.
How about this?
Why don't we make a list of your expenses?
And then you'd have a better idea of what your flexible amount of your expenses are.
Now you'll get some pushback on that.
So you might say, hey, how about this?
Halfway Between your paychecks, let's take a look at your checking account and make a plan for getting to the next paycheck.
And people who spend too much will probably resist that too.
Because the personality that overspends is the same person who will resist making a budget.
If there's one thing I've discovered my whole life, you cannot make somebody write down on a piece of paper Their budget, even if it's five items, like rent, phone, just five items.
If you say to somebody who is an overspender, hey, look, Bob, here's a piece of paper.
Here's the pencil.
Here's the piece of paper. Sit down right now and write the five items and the amount you spend per month, and then we've got a good purchase on getting you back in line with your budget.
That person will not do it.
You cannot hand a pencil and a piece of paper to somebody who's an overspender and say, write down your budget on this piece of paper.
It'll only take you 30 seconds.
They just won't do it.
They'll get busy. They'll get angry.
They'll do something. So overspenders somehow know they're doing it.
And they prefer it.
And that's your problem. The problem is it's not accidental.
This is my observation.
I can't prove this. There's no science behind this.
But my observation is it's not accidental.
That they know they're doing it every time and they get in trouble and then they work it out.
So I would say if it's somebody who's spending your combined money, that's good enough reason to get a new relationship.
No, no, it's not like that.
But it seems to be a little hope because they actually sat down and made a budget.
But the thing is that they always kick Kicking the can down the road because of credit.
Or if I get this now, I don't have to pay now.
I can click, click, click on the internet and then they're back a few thousands again.
Now, there are people who get an actual charge, you know, dopamine hit from shopping.
Are you talking about a male or a female?
Well, it's a couple, so both.
It's a couple. Okay, and both of them are...
Yes, both.
And then they claim each other for their fault, but not themselves.
Yeah. Well, that's a pretty dysfunctional couple you have right there.
So it sounds like there's more going on than just a budget problem.
Yeah, there's probably a shopping addiction, and those people, if they want to help themselves, and maybe that's the problem, is that it sounds like you might have more interest in helping them No, no, they want to be helped, but they just don't know how to.
They have asked.
I'm not asking all on my own.
Okay, so I would suggest this as advice you can give them.
They should have a system, not a goal, meaning there should be something that they do differently every day.
One of those systems might be that they can't order anything online unless the other agrees.
So you might say, you can't order anything online by yourself.
That's our system.
And try that.
Now, maybe that won't work.
So what you do is you try another little rule and see if that works.
But they should be experimenting with different little rules and systems and then every week say, well, did that work or did that not work until they find a system that works for them.
But go at it as things they should do differently and if they're not trying different things, they're not trying.
That's what I'd say. And don't use credit cards basically, which is obvious.
Alright, that's about the only value I could add to that, which is not much value.
I hope it was a little bit helpful.
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