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Sept. 6, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:02
Episode 654 Scott Adams: The Most Eclectic and Interesting Content of All Time
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
Divine Girl and John and Dale.
Of course, Dale.
Good morning, Dale.
Michael, Martin, it's good to see you.
Come on in. There's plenty of seating, but it's filling up fast, so make sure you get in here fast.
So, this will be the weirdest, most eclectic periscope I've ever done.
Hey, Mark. We'll be talking about nuclear in a little bit.
So, let me start with an idea, a system.
That I heard from Mark Andreessen.
Mark Andreessen, you know him as the rich tech investor who was creator of Netscape, etc.
And I heard him talking about a system that I'd never used before, had not heard of.
I'm not sure if he invented it or he's popularizing it.
But he talked about, instead of having a to-do list, which can be overwhelming, you know, the size of your to-do list can just keep growing, he recommended having a done list, a list of things you've completed.
And I heard that, and I have to admit, my first reaction was, what?
Why would that work?
What would make that a good system?
And I didn't quite feel it.
But it never left my mind, because number one, Marc Andreessen said it, because he tends to be sort of ahead of the curve on just figuring out life, apparently.
And he's a real smart guy, and I thought, well, one of my systems is to continually experiment with systems.
So my big system is that if I hear of somebody else's system, and it's practical to do so, I'll try to duplicate it and see if it works for me.
And if it doesn't, then I'll move on to another system.
So I tried it out.
And I'm quite, quite happy with it.
And here's the part I was missing.
So here's my done list.
So my new system for getting things done At least around the house, errands and home repair, is that I'll write each thing on a card and then when it's done I'll put a check next to it.
So in this case I had to repair some door handles.
I had to fix a power washer.
I had to replace a GFI. I had to relocate some files.
I had to fix a remote control, and it was one of the TVs that wasn't working.
So, one by one, I would write a little pile of things that I had to do, each of them on their own card.
And then, if there was any interim progress, I would write on the back of the card something like, I called a repair person, or I'm waiting for a part, or something like that, so I'd remind myself.
So then I started knocking off tasks.
And here's the fun part and why this system is way better than I had imagined.
When I'm looking at a list of things to do, it makes me unhappy and demotivated because it's so big.
And I end up spending all my time just rearranging the list.
It's like, ugh, I added another thing to the list.
And then I've added so many things to the list, it's literally overwhelming, and I just say, ugh.
Does it matter if I even do one thing on that list?
The list is so long.
There's no point in doing one of 35 things.
You know, tomorrow I'm still getting out of 34 things on the list.
I'll probably add one.
It's just completely demotivating because the list is so freaking long.
In my case, I could easily make a list of 35 chores that just really need to get done.
So instead, I make a smaller list as I think of it.
I write them on a card, and I'm getting to the good part.
And each time I complete something, I check it.
But here's what I found.
As my list of done projects started increasing, and I started impressing myself at how I'd gotten things done, like, there are things on this list that are over a year that needed to be done.
Like, one of my TVs didn't work for a year.
A remote control for another TV didn't work for a year.
But what I found is that when I enjoyed looking through the list of what I've done, I had easily forgotten my accomplishments.
And each one of them is like a little hit of dopamine.
I don't know if it's dopamine.
It might be some other chemical.
But it makes me happy.
And so I think somebody used the word in the comments here.
I managed to gamify my to-do list so that instead of a big imposing list that I don't even want to look at, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone through this process, make a to-do list, and then I will never look at that list again because it makes me sad.
And I'm not kidding.
I make my list probably, I would guess...
Hundreds of times over my entire life, I've made to-do lists and then I can't look at them.
I literally, I can't move my head to look at my list.
I could grab myself by the head and say, look at the list, Scott.
Look at the to-do list.
But I can't because it makes me incredibly sad and anxious.
So now I look at my done list.
And when I look at my done list, I say to myself, I'd like to add one to that list.
So I look at my to-do list and I find what I can add.
And then I say, oh, this is going to be fun.
I'm going to add another thing to the done list.
And then I add it, and it feels good.
And at the end of the process, I've turned this horrible experience of things to do into this gamified, hey, look at this.
And then I'm saving the list so when I see Christine next, she's doing a little traveling.
But when I see her next, I'll say, look at all the things I got done.
You know, that thing you wanted fixed?
I got that fixed. Here's the next item.
So the bottom line of that is it worked way better than I thought because of what it did to me psychologically.
And so Mark Andreessen was right.
Way better system and never would have...
It's completely non-obvious until you actually try it.
So try it. So here's my next insight, my futurist insight.
You ready for this? I love thinking about futurist things where some small innovation could just change everything.
And it starts with this.
Have you ever noticed, for those of you who have taken the time to study fitness and nutrition and those sorts of things, have you ever noticed that you have friends who have problems And they don't understand why they feel the way they do or why they're getting the results they're getting in their life.
And you look at their life and you say to yourself, if I ate the food you ate, I'd be getting the results you're getting.
Have you ever had that experience?
Where somebody doesn't know what their problem is and they can't figure out why they're either not losing weight, they're not getting romantic partners, they're not being as popular as they want, they don't feel good, they don't have the energy, they're not getting things done.
And then you look at what they're eating.
And you say to yourself, if I did what you did, just exactly what you do, I would have the exact same outcomes.
I would be overweight, I would be low energy, I would be unhappy.
I would have all those feelings.
So one of the frustrating things, if you're trying to help people, and I often try to give people useful information, if not advice, people don't really understand That their lifestyle choices change what they think and how they feel.
Amazingly. It just seems like such an obvious thing.
Do you know if you get enough sleep?
You eat the right foods and you exercise regularly.
You realize that something like 80% of your problems will go away, right?
So I'll get to the simultaneous sip in a minute.
I know you're waiting. So here's my insight and then we'll get to the sip because you're going to want to drink to this.
You know how a lot of medical devices are shrinking to the point where they can work with your phone.
So now we have very small medical devices that can check your blood sugar, small devices that can check your oxygen level, can check your...
Your heart rate, and a whole bunch of other things you're probably your...
I think we can check whether you're hydrated.
So there are a whole bunch of things that you can check on your physical being.
But when we get to the point, and I think this is going to happen, I will need somebody smarter to tell me how practical this is.
What's going to happen...
Wait for it. What's going to happen when we can immediately measure our happiness chemistry?
And by that I mean your serotonin levels, your dopamine, your oxytocin, you know, the big three.
The ones that you need to have in good order in order to feel good.
The moment you have a small device in which you can measure your three happiness chemicals...
In real time, you're gonna know that what you do changes those levels.
Wait for that.
As soon as you can tell that eating this dessert lowered your three happiness chemicals, you're done with dessert forever.
Let me say that again.
You got a problem with your diet?
Is your diet hard?
Is it hard to avoid dessert?
Well, it won't be hard the moment you can measure your happiness chemistry before and after you eat it.
Now here I'm making an assumption that there would be a quick enough change in those things that you could notice them.
But you'll certainly notice Whether you exercised recently or not, you will notice if you went out in nature for a while, which also boosts your happiness chemistry, you're going to notice it.
You can measure your chemistry before you walk in the woods and after.
And once you've measured your chemistry, your happiness chemistry, before walking in the woods and then after, you're going to walk in the woods a lot.
So that ability to measure, and who said this?
I think it was Andrew Yang who said this, and he's completely right.
I think it was him.
And it was one of those brilliant things to say that politicians don't say enough.
He said that we manage only what we measure.
We manage only the things we can measure.
So if you want to manage something, let's say your happiness, what's the problem?
You can't measure it. You know, you can sort of tell if you're happy or not happy, but if you could measure your chemistry in real time, you'd actually be able to measure, did this activity make me happy?
Did that hug boost my oxytocin?
You would be hugging like crazy if you could actually measure what it did to you in real time.
Let's drink to that. Do you have your beverage?
It doesn't take much to participate in the Simultaneous Sip.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, stainless gels, tank or thermos, glass, canteen, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the Simultaneous Sip, because you know this is going to boost your dopamine.
You know it. Here it comes.
Oh, that's good simultaneous sipping.
So here's my prediction.
My prediction is that we will have small devices that can measure your dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin someday.
And when that happens, our lifestyle choices will fundamentally change immediately.
The moment you can measure your real-time happiness chemistry, all of your lifestyle changes will change immediately.
It'll be that day, and society will be completely transformed.
I'm noting that poor Bill Pulte is getting lots of critics online for trying to give away money in a way that draws attention to internet philanthropy so that other people can join in and give more money.
Can you imagine something more...
More good than literally trying to increase the number of people giving money to people who need it.
That's it. And making it fun and entertaining at the same point.
And he's got all these critics who are making the wildest Mind-reading assumptions about, oh, he's data mining.
What's he really up to?
He's turning it into a money-making venture.
I think it's a trick.
He's taking advantage of people who need the money and making them compete for it.
He's just trying to buy followers on his list.
Now... The messed up thing about it is that it's the most transparent process in the world.
He's saying in the clearest possible language, he's saying that he's boosting his Twitter followers and he's trying to get the message larger and get more people involved in philanthropy.
He's not hiding the fact he's trying to grow his Twitter following.
He says that directly all the time.
It's not a trick.
Secondly, I don't know why he'd need a list.
He's totally non-political.
He's not giving money just to Republicans or just to Democrats.
In fact, you'd find it's pretty mixed.
And it's very sad to see the number of people who will take anything good and try to find something terribly, deeply wrong with it.
And it bothers me a lot.
Now, a number of people are saying to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, it's just bad form to have people in need compete for these donations or the giveaways.
To which I say, the people who got a car or had their dental work paid for, all of those people are pretty happy.
The people who didn't get something for free didn't have to participate.
They knew the odds. I mean, people play the lottery and they know the odds.
And maybe it gave them hope.
Maybe it allowed somebody else to find them because it's not just things that Bill does.
If other people are surfaced as having a problem, other people can notice we're part of the process.
So, you know, I kind of get intellectually the point, you know, you don't want to make it a rich people making poor people dance for money sort of thing.
But I don't think anything like that's happened.
It's all respectful.
Bill's empathy for the people is 100% real.
His joy of giving away the money is completely real.
So let's take the good and get rid of the bad thoughts on that.
Here's something that bothers me a lot in the mind reading, so this is sort of related.
I like to call out The mental foibles on both sides so I can retain credibility.
If all I ever did was tell you how crazy the Democrats are, if all I ever did was say how crazy the people on the left are, you would not, or you should not, give me any credibility.
If you see somebody who's only talking about how one side is defective, they are advocates.
They're not trying to teach you anything.
You're not going to learn anything from them.
And they're not credible.
So I make a point of making sure that I've got some jabs for both sides and that everybody sees it so that you can have more trust that I'm looking at both sides.
So here's one of those. The craziest thing I hear on the right is that socialists, meaning Democrats who are the leftiest of the left, those Democrats, That what they really intend, and here I'm going to read from an actual tweet today, to achieve their ultimate goal is to control the population through taxes and regulations.
So it seems to be a popular talking point on the right that the people who...
I'm going to block you.
Somebody said they blocked Polte.
I'm just gonna block you.
Because if you can't find something good about giving money away to people who need it, I don't want you in my life.
So I blocked you for blocking him.
Alright. So anyway, people say that the ultimate goal of socialism is to control the people.
It's control. What evidence do you have of that claim?
The most common claim on the right is that the socialist real secret plan is control.
There's no evidence of that.
There's no evidence of that.
I blocked the wrong account.
Well, I had my finger on it, so I doubt that's true.
So here's my thing.
If you're listening to, there are maybe three shows in particular that are very popular on Fox News.
The opinion shows, not the news shows, but three of the more important opinion shows, maybe more than three, will tell you every night that the socialist real plan, the real plan, is to control you.
Let me say as clearly as I can, nobody has that plan.
There is no such thing as a socialist in this country, there are plenty of socialists, but there's no such thing as a socialist who in their private thoughts is saying, ha ha ha, what I really want is to control people.
I want to control them.
Nobody has that thought.
And it's, I mean actually nobody.
You probably would not find even one person Who in their private, honest moment would say, you know, it's not really even about the Green New Deal.
It's just about, I want to control people.
Nobody has that opinion.
Not one effing person.
None. Now, most things you see in the news are at least a little bit true.
It's at least a little bit true.
This is one of those rare ones where there's just no truth to it, and it's the most dominant belief on the right, and it's completely untrue.
Now, I could be disproved by finding one socialist in the whole world, well, in the United States.
You only have to find me one socialist who is sane and is saying something like, you know, the real goal is control.
Somebody says you bumped your head, Scott.
Block. So the rule here is that you can disagree all you like, but put your disagreement in a summary form in your comment.
If you just say I'm stupid in whatever clever words you use to say that, you just get blocked, because I don't want your negativity.
So, how many of you are just fighting mad right now?
Because you believe it's obvious, and you've heard it a million times from people you trust, that the real goal of socialism is to control people.
How many of you just said, uh, I believe that.
You can admit it.
Somebody says, not only is it true, it's almost universally true.
Well, that's a statement of fact.
So whoever made that statement of fact, that it's true and universally true, that the inner true goal, the secret goal of socialists, is to control people.
You just have to find me one person who says that's what they want.
Now, is your belief that there are, I don't know, 50 million people who have this thought and none of them are talking?
Really? Do you think that's likely?
That there are, I don't know, 10 million, 50 million people who all have this secret plan to control people and none of them have leaked it?
Seriously? So question that assumption.
Or find at least one person in the world who will admit that they have that intention.
Let me tell you what intentions are far more likely.
Without being a mind reader, if somebody says, I would like to address climate change, what is the most likely reason that they want to do that?
The most likely reason is that they believe it's a real problem.
Now, if you're talking about the politicians, The politicians, of course, want to get in power.
But that's true of every politician.
That's not true of just socialists.
You know, the people on the right also want power.
They believe that the way to get there is the same way everybody agrees to get there.
Everybody. Everybody knows the way to get to power is to come up with plans that the public likes by a majority.
So everybody is playing the same game, which is they may be trying to get power for themselves, By doing things that the public wants or they can convince the public they want.
That's everybody. But as far as just the normal socialist, the last thing on their mind is controlling other people.
They might want to pay off their student loan.
They might want to have better health care.
But there's no way in the world They just want to control other people.
That's not a goal. Nobody has that goal.
It's complete magical thinking, and you should question that assumption.
All right. Let's talk about something else.
Number one, all policies are racist.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that all major political policies are racist?
Because they are. We don't talk about them all being racist because it depends on the context.
Sometimes we notice, sometimes we don't.
What is the context in which you would notice something looked racist?
And it's just a policy. Well, the context is if a Republican is in favor of it.
So if a Republican wants to change your taxes, a Democrat will say, well, isn't that a coincidence that that's going to be bad for brown people?
That's racist. If the President wants to build a wall between us and another country that happens to be on the South, the Democrats will say, oh, well, Republicans want to build a wall.
That's racist. So, if a Republican says it, there's always a way to turn it into racist.
But here's what Bernie Sanders said the other day.
Most of you know this.
He was asked in the town hall about climate change, whether the United States should help support other countries who want to have abortions and birth control.
And Bernie said he was very in favor, very in favor, of helping struggling countries With population control.
I don't think he used population control.
But he talked about birth control and abortion.
And making sure that other countries can have that.
Now what other countries is he talking about?
He's not talking about rich countries.
Because rich countries don't need our help with birth control.
He's talking about poor countries.
Bernie Sanders stood in front of the world and said that he wanted policies that produced fewer brown people.
Right? He wanted a policy that produced the least number of brown people.
Now, he didn't say it that way.
And because he's a Democrat, we're not calling it racist.
But if a Republican ever came up with a plan that unambiguously reduced the population of brown people compared to white people, that would be the end of him.
But here's the larger point.
So this is not about Bernie.
So my point is not about Bernie.
My point is that every large policy is racist all the time.
Because nobody's ever invented a policy that affected people equally.
I don't think it could be done.
We don't live in a world where people respond to or have the same situation.
So any big policy that affects everyone will always be racist.
I'll give this guy what he wants so likewise let's take climate change Is climate change racist?
Well, the way the Republicans want to do climate change, they want to make sure that employment at the low end is maximized and that everybody can afford their energy is very friendly for minorities.
So the Republicans have a climate change, I would say, lack of plan, meaning that they're not going to address it aggressively.
And they're pursuing nuclear, which would lower energy costs.
So the Republican view of climate and energy is very pro-Brown people.
If I can generalize.
Let's say people of color. People of color so we don't limit it to any particular shade of the rainbow.
Now, the Democrats would like to fight climate change.
Fighting climate change will be a big economic disruption which will very disproportionately affect people of color because of where people are on the economic strata.
So why are we not complaining that the Democrats' climate change policies are racist?
Because they are. They're totally, they're 100% racist.
But not because Republicans are racist.
It's because every single policy is racist.
All the big policies affect people differently.
Bernie's actually promoting eugenics.
In different words, as somebody said in the comments.
All right, so just keep that in mind.
There's no such thing as a policy that's not racist if it affects a big population.
I was kind of amazed at the attention given to Sharpie Gate.
You know Sharpie Gate?
The idea that President Trump may have drawn a little extra line on his weather map to prove that Alabama really was threatened.
So I had been aggressively trying to not pay attention to that story until it became the only story anybody wanted to talk about.
It seemed like CNN was obsessed with Sharpiegate.
So I thought, oh God, I guess I'm going to need to look at whatever this is all about.
Because I didn't need to look into the details to know it was stupid.
I didn't need to look at the details to know it didn't matter.
I knew that, but now I thought, I'll find out.
So the story is, That the president said that Alabama might be affected by the hurricane.
And then the officials said, no, no, Alabama was never really threatened.
And then the president said, yes, it was.
And then somehow a chart with a Sharpie line added to it was produced that may or may not have been drawn by the president himself.
We don't know. It doesn't matter.
First of all, if Trump drew that with a sharpie to cover up for the fact that he said it and it was not backed up by his official weather people, if that's exactly what happened, And he just took out a sharpie and said, well, I'll fix this.
And he said, I'll fix this.
I'll just draw this line on here.
Look at it. Well, here it is.
Look. Can't you tell?
Look at my line. Now, if that's what happened...
I can't get mad at that because it's just hilarious.
Like, it's just...
I kind of hope that's exactly what happened.
Now, if I had to guess...
My guess is that the President himself did not draw that line.
I could be wrong. You know, I wouldn't bet my life on it.
It's totally possible that he drew it.
I would guess he didn't, but, you know, maybe.
But the funniest explanation would be if he did, because you would love to be in that meeting with him.
It's like, hey, President Trump, they're telling you that you got it wrong about Alabama.
What do you mean I got it wrong about Alabama?
Bring me that map and bring me a Sharpie.
Watch me fix that.
If that's what he did, it was one of the funniest things that the president's ever done, no matter what he was thinking.
I mean, I'm not going to go into his mind, but in outcome, it was hilarious.
Now, but how true was it?
Should you worry that he said something that wasn't true?
So I looked at the map, so CNN was reporting the timeline of the story, who said what, to show that he was lying or whatever.
And they show the original map, and the circle that was the official circle sort of just touches the corner of Alabama.
So it really doesn't show that it's going to touch Alabama.
It just like grazes the corner in the outer likelihood it grazes the corner.
Now here's the thing.
If the official weather map said that this giant hurricane, the official story was that it was going to, in the worst case, graze the edge of Alabama Would it be inaccurate to say that it looks like this storm could affect Alabama, which is what the President said?
Now, you might say to yourself, yes, that's inaccurate, because look at the picture.
The picture says these outer bands are sort of the worst case, and Alabama's not in there.
It's right next to it, but it's not in there.
It's just touching it on the outside.
So he's wrong, right?
Well, that would make sense if we didn't just watch the forecast be off by 100%.
The actual path of the hurricane bore no reality to the forecast in those early days.
Now, how good is hurricane predicting?
Better than it's been, but it's not very good.
If the president looked at a map that was touching Alabama and he knew that the potential for these forecasts is...
Let me do this visually.
Here was the forecast.
The likely possibility of how wrong it could be is this.
And that's what happened.
They said it's going to be here, where it actually was, was way over here and way over there.
If you're listening to this, instead of watching it, it's way less interesting.
So the president looks at a forecast that's grazing the edge of Alabama, and he knows, as we all do, that these forecasts are wildly non-predictive.
Wildly non-predictive.
That where it ended up was not really even that close to where it was predicted, except that Florida got touched.
So was the president wildly wrong when he said it might affect Alabama?
Well, maybe a little hyperbole, etc.
But he wasn't wrong.
At that point, the Weather Service and all the officials were making official predictions, but the official predictions were just complete bullshit.
The actual hurricane went a completely different direction.
So, do I care whether the President took a Sharpie and fixed it so he didn't have to apologize or explain himself?
No, I do not.
I do not care about that.
It was funny... And, you know, probably didn't turn out the way you wanted.
But, and somebody says, yes, Trump lied, Art.
Can we stop saying that Trump lied?
Because the first 11,000 times you said it, you being collectively you, the first 11,000 times you said Trump lied, maybe it had an effect.
But is lie number 11,972, is that the one that's going to take him down?
All right. So, can we just dispense with the idea that politicians tell the truth?
The only thing that Trump has brought to the process is the understanding that it didn't matter how much he lied.
It just didn't make any difference.
As long as you were directionally, here's the key, as long as you were directionally accurate.
Was he directionally accurate in saying that Alabama was threatened by the hurricane?
Absolutely yes.
He was directionally, you know, ironically, directionally accurate that Alabama was within the risk Zone, because we're not that good at predicting hurricanes.
All right. Now, the other thing that we don't know if this had any effect on Alabama is that Marianne Williams, who's also running for president, suggested that people pray to keep the storm away.
Now, Alabama's a very religious state.
So, you have to figure Alabama was praying a little extra hard, and sure enough, the hurricane missed them.
So, proof of God right there.
All right. I told you this was going to be eclectic.
I did not lie.
Here's another thing. I told you in a different periscope how there are some skeptics of evolution, Who say that the odds of proteins lining up just right to produce life are so small that we couldn't have gotten here without some kind of designer, whether it was a simulation or God or something else.
And they do the math and they say it's so wildly unlikely that this planet could have had just the right conditions that it had to be designed.
Now, whether or not you buy their argument about evolution, that's not the part I'm going to talk about.
What I'm going to talk about is the math, and applying it to the question of whether there is other life in this universe.
And I think, accidentally, they demonstrated that there's not.
Now, most people would say, hey, there's so many different planets in the universe, That the sheer magnitude of the universe guarantees that there's more life, just because of the size.
But... The evolution skeptics, by the way, some of those evolution skeptics were not promoting creationism.
They were not promoting intelligent design.
They were simply saying, the existing explanation doesn't work because of the math.
They were not saying, therefore, God.
One of them was, two of them were, the show I was watching.
They were just doing the math. And I think you can apply that math to the question of whether there is likely intelligent life anywhere else in the universe.
My feeling, and this wasn't based on math, is that there is not And here's why.
If we are a simulation, it's likely that it's limited to a planet.
It would be weird for the simulator to create life on planets that we'll never interact with.
If you built a video game with a simulated world, you would not also build another simulated world that your simulated world could interact with but doesn't.
It sort of wouldn't make sense as a programmer.
And so I've always thought that it's unlikely there's other life on Earth.
But if you take the math of the evolution people and say the odds of it happening even once in any universe is so low that it's basically impossible.
So what are the odds that it happened twice in one universe?
Well, the odds of it happening twice go so low It's absurd.
So I'm not sure if all the math works.
Somebody smarter than me would have to get into that, but I just put that thought out there, that if it was so unlikely that our proteins lined up to support life, or actually that our DNA... Let's put it this way.
If the... The mutations in our DNA had to be so specific and were so unlikely to create life and to create all this life we see.
The odds of it happening twice in one universe are infinitely small.
So, I don't know if any of that made sense.
I'll just put that out there. Alright, now we're all watching the Bahamas and watching the Bahamas, some of the islands completely eliminated by the storms.
Will we see...
More storms eliminating entire towns and cities.
Yes. No matter what we do, and whether or not climate change is the problem that many think it is, whether or not that is true, we will certainly see more hurricanes wiping out more islands and more coastal places.
So we're guaranteed that that's going to happen.
Here's what I would like to throw into the mix.
We really need to get good At quickly rebuilding entire towns.
But rebuilding them better than they were.
And I think we could get there If we made that an objective.
So there are a lot of people working on, you know, quick building constructions, you know, building kits and 3D printed buildings and all that.
So there's a lot happening, but I think it could go get a lot.
It could move a lot further into building like perfect planned cities from scratch.
Now, it's probably harder to rebuild where there once was a city because people own the different lands and you've got to coordinate everything.
And the roads are already where the roads are, so it's hard to change once you get going.
But I would like to introduce the idea of building nuclear cities.
Are you ready for this?
One of the big objections with nuclear, nobody wants to live near it.
And where do you put the waste?
Right? Those are the big problems.
Nobody wants to live near a nuclear plant.
And where do you put the waste?
So I would like to suggest building entirely new cities.
And let me go to the whiteboard here.
In which, I'll just throw out an idea.
So again, this is sort of the bad idea.
So the bad idea is that you...
Let's see if I can do this with my finger.
Oh, it works. You put a nuclear plant, a brand new nuclear plant, where there's nothing around it.
And then you say, this is going to be the beginning of a city.
And the first zone around it, you know, this zone is free electricity.
So that zone would be, let's say, the people who live within five miles of it.
If you live within five miles of it, your property is free, literally free.
And so you can build on it, and your electricity will be free forever, which is very affordable because nuclear is so economical that they can do that.
Then let's say the people who are in the next ring out, let's say here, so they're in the next outer ring, they don't get free anything, but everything is 50% off.
So their land is 50% cheaper than it would be, and their electricity forever is 50% off.
And then you say to people, you don't have to live here.
But if you did, it'd be great.
Now, would that be another situation where the poor people who are accepting the free electricity and the free land and the inexpensive housing, would this be another case where poor people are taking it in the shorts?
Well, it would be optional.
And you would want to make this zone really built from scratch to be escapable If you had a problem.
So let's say there was any kind of nuclear event.
You would want to make sure that the people near either had, I don't know, either a safe place to go to or an underground lead escape vault or at least very large roads to get out of town very quickly.
So, for example, if you were building a nuclear city, a nuclear plant in which you were building around it homes and businesses, you would have one road that's like a 15-road highway for 10 miles.
So if anything goes wrong, everybody says, oh, crap, they head to the one 15-lane highway and you're out in minutes.
So you build it so you can escape as quickly as possible, no matter how badly things go wrong.
Because with these nuclear meltdowns, you still have plenty of time.
I mean, you've got hours and hours to get out of town, but you don't want to get locked up in traffic.
So you just build the city so that you can't get locked up in traffic.
What about the resale value?
The resale value is irrelevant because it's going to be as good or better than when you got it.
Because remember, you're going into a place that never had anything.
It didn't have any homes, didn't have any nuclear, didn't have anything.
It's just a blank field.
So the value of the property in the beginning is low, and then it could increase over time.
Now, what about storage?
And where do you build a plant?
Well, the best place to put a plant is where you already have one.
So you could co-locate one where there is one for those places that don't have them.
And I would imagine, I'd have to talk to an expert, but I don't know why they don't store the nuclear waste in the same area as the nuclear plant.
Because it feels like that would be the obvious place to do it, right?
So you put all your nuclear risk in one place where all the nuclear experts are.
There may be a good reason to separate them.
But I'm pretty sure we can handle the nuclear waste part.
Now, as many of you know, the Generation 4 nuclear generators actually could use the nuclear waste from the Generation 3-type reactors.
They actually can use their waste as fuel.
So if you co-locate a Generation 4 right next to a Generation 3, the people who live around it would still say, Would still say, well, it's just more nuclear, and I'm glad you put a generation four plant there, because that will reduce our risk from the waste, because it just gets eaten up as fuel.
Now, what are the other things that you would want to put around a nuclear plant?
Well, if you're building a city from scratch, What about putting your most roboticized plants nearest the nuclear plant?
Because robots need a lot of electricity.
And here's the great thing.
You can create a great deal of commerce with very few people in the blast zone.
I shouldn't use that term.
But if you're worried about being near the nuclear plant, put all your robots there and have them working on building, I don't know, the robots could be making solar panels.
The robots could be building, manufacturing stuff.
So you could have more robots there, and that would increase your safety if you were worried about it.
You could put desalinization plants nearby, because they mostly need free energy.
And my out-of-the-box idea is addiction.
Imagine you create a city that's far away from everything, and it's optional to go there.
Nobody has to go to the city.
But if you do go to the city, You don't get to leave and come back without being a full body search, maybe a drug test.
So in other words, it would be for addicts, a place to go where drugs can't easily get in and they can't easily leave it to go anywhere.
But while they're there, it's a proper city.
It's got proper jobs.
It's got highways and places to live and they can have families if they want.
It's just that drugs can't get in and can't get out.
This was sort of an addiction recovery city, if you will, that some people might just need to live in forever.
So those are the sorts of things you could do if you plan your city from scratch.
So here's my prediction for the future.
You will see new cities developed, which solve a lot of problems that we've had up till now, and they will probably be built around nuclear plants.
And people will get financial incentives to be near the nuclear plant, and those incentives will decrease in a radius around it.
Now, suppose you said...
Well, that's enough of that.
Yes, it's ironic that the nucleus of the city would literally be nuclear.
Ooh, you mean you can just keep the drugs out?
Why didn't you say so?
Well, you can keep them out of...
You can keep them out better.
So I'm talking about a city that you literally can't get in or out without being fully searched.
So you wouldn't want to leave often.
If you go to that city and you're an addict, don't take a job where you have to fly someplace.
Make sure that you're settling down within the city.
Yeah, you'd probably need a wall.
Not probably. You would definitely need walls around the city or some kind of security.
They would be drug-free like prisons.
Yeah, no, obviously there's no situation where you can't get drugs in.
But you could certainly limit it to the point where it becomes a minor problem instead of a major one.
Prisons find a way around it, but you could...
Remember, the people who would come to live in this place would be doing it voluntarily.
So you're only getting the people who really want to stay off drugs.
And they know that being physically away from them is part of the benefit of recovery.
It's part of what helps them recover.
No, you wouldn't have marijuana in an addiction recovery city.
That would be a bad idea.
Yeah, so all these ideas are testable.
It's all testable.
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