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Sept. 7, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
29:13
Episode 655 Scott Adams: #Decoupling, Rehab, Food and Healthcare, More Fun Than it Sounds
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Hello everybody!
Good morning. Happy weekend.
What a terrific day.
It's a terrific day to be alive and to be joining me for a coffee with Scott Adams and the amazing, amazing simultaneous sip.
It's the best thing ever.
It's the way to start your day and get your dopamine running.
Are you ready? All you need is a cup, a mug, a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tanker, a thermos, a flask, a canteen, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. Get ready for the dopamine hit.
Here it comes. Go!
Ah. Hey, let me tell you my best idea.
That I haven't tested yet.
I have an idea for dealing with snoring.
Now, it's for people who don't have, let's say, some physical issue.
And it combines technology with hypnosis.
Are you ready? I don't know if this will work, but it's based on...
So you've seen the ear...
What are they called?
Air buds from Apple.
And they're a great little product.
So my idea uses a product like an earbud.
It can actually be the earbuds, but let's say it's optimized for sleeping.
So this one's not too good for sleeping because if you put your head on it, it can fall out and might not feel comfortable.
So imagine something like an earbud that's built to fit your ear comfortably and you can sleep on a pillow and it'll be fine.
And all the earbud will do is listen for the sound of your snoring And when it detects it, here's the cool part.
Your earbud will whisper into your ear a pre-recorded voice that is your own, telling you what to do.
So it might say, turn on your side.
Just very softly, turn on your side.
And it would be you talking to yourself while you're half asleep, or mostly asleep.
Now, what would happen in the long run?
Now, the first few times it happens, it would probably wake you up, because you'd hear, roll on your side, you'd be like, what?
It would wake you up, and you'd be like, oh, okay, and you'd roll on your side.
What happens after the hundredth time that your own voice whispers in your ear, Scott, roll on your side?
After the hundredth time, this is my hypothesis.
After the hundredth time your own voice in your own head whispers to you to turn on your side, it won't wake you up anymore.
But you'll still turn on your side.
Now, it's a hypothesis.
And it could require some different sentences.
So maybe it's something like, stop snoring.
Maybe it's something like breathe.
Maybe it's something like breathe through your nose.
But whatever the messages are, and you might have to experiment with the one, the theory is that you would effectively hypnotize yourself that the trigger you heard, which is your own voice, the most compatible thing you'll ever hear, is yourself talking to yourself.
And you'll find that it's very persuasive.
One of the ways I discovered this is by listening to my periscopes on playback.
I gotta tell you, that listening to the sound of your own voice, if you're talking about something that's interesting, is more fun than it should be.
Because we love ourselves.
When we listen to ourselves talk, we're saying things that sound brilliant to us.
And it's very compatible with us.
Now, this is based on the concept of pacing and leading in hypnosis and in persuasion.
If you want to persuade somebody, first you match them.
You might match their breathing.
You might match their body language.
You might match the types of words they use.
You might match the style that they speak.
So you look for as many things as you could match, especially their opinion.
You match their opinion. And then once you've done enough matching, called pacing, you can start saying things that they don't already feel or believe, and they're more likely to go with you because you've matched them so far.
So this is taking that concept to yourself.
Just putting the message in your ear, a pre-recorded message from yourself, what to do, and I think it would translate into staying asleep and still reacting.
So that's the test. I give that away to the world for free if somebody wants to make that.
And you could probably make it out of an earbud and an app on the phone, and you don't even need a new piece of hardware if you're willing to sleep with an earbud in.
All right. Next topic.
I'm going to give you my opinion of the three most credible voices in the world on politics.
Alright? So here are the three most credible people in the world, in my opinion, on politics.
Number one, Joe Rogan.
Number two, Dave Chappelle.
Number three, Whoopi Goldberg.
Why do I say that?
I say that because the three of them clearly are willing to listen to data and information, and they're clearly willing to go against their own team when it's obviously a good idea.
So I'm not saying that you should believe what any of those three say.
So I'm not suggesting that you should match their opinions.
I'm saying that They're credible, meaning that even if you don't like their opinion, they have the ability to go against their own team.
It's very rare. And when they go against their own team, that comes off as authentic and it comes off as credible.
And in the case of Joe Rogan, I don't even know if you could say he has a team.
I mean, he's so intellectually, I would say, High-grounded.
I don't know. I don't even know what word for it.
So he sort of occupies the high ground pretty much all the time, which makes it impossible to identify him with a specific politics, because there's always a high ground, and that's a little bit above both of those.
He just lives there. So does Dave Chappelle.
Dave Chappelle just lives in the high ground.
He's willing to call out his side.
He'll call out your side.
He doesn't care. And he seems about equally willing to go either way.
And then Whoopi Goldberg sort of caught my attention by going against Deborah Messing, and calling that out is just a horrible idea.
So I'd just like to give them a little respect for being the three most credible voices in the world.
I saw somebody mention Tim Poole, and he would be up at the top of the list too.
Have you all heard the hashtag decoupling?
It's not a Hollywood term for a divorce, although it sort of is.
But decoupling refers to discontinuing trade with China.
And so I think you're going to see that hashtag decoupling more.
At the moment, the three people that I know who talk about it the most Or Gordon Chang, who's an expert on China.
Lance Bass, who's really, I think he's China's biggest enemy right now.
I guess he's a hedge fund guy.
And me. There are probably other famous-ish voices speaking out against China.
But the three of us I know are actively saying, let's cut the cord.
But I'm going to add something to that.
Because you know China has their famous social credit system and that seems like a horror.
Well, if that's a good idea, how about this, China?
How about if we take your idea of a social credit score and say, well, if that's good, how about the world creates a trade credit score?
In other words, how about a score to measure the trade worthiness of other countries?
Why not? Does it already exist?
Because it might already exist, right?
Maybe it needs a little attention if it already exists.
But decoupling, if you're coming in late, refers to just discontinuing trade with China.
Because China is an enemy and not a trading partner.
We know this because the fentanyl they're shipping here killing 50,000 people a year in this country.
We know it from stealing our IP. We know it from the bad trade deals.
We know it from their cyber attacks and their military, you know, emphasis at the moment.
So So that's what decoupling is.
So here's my suggestion.
Let's take China's idea.
And if somebody's already doing it, maybe we just give them some attention.
But the idea is to give our trading partner countries a score for their trading worthiness.
And we would measure such things as, are you at war with our country?
That would be a checkbox.
Now, they're sending enough fentanyl our way from China through Mexico to the United States that I would say, yes, China is at war with the United States because they could stop it.
They choose not to. We don't need to know why.
They could stop it.
They choose not to. That's the end of the story.
You don't need to know the details.
They choose to send weapons of mass destruction in the form of fentanyl to our country.
They could stop it. They just choose not to.
That would be a failing grade.
So no matter what else you were doing right, that would be a failure.
So I would imagine our checklist for trade worthiness, the trade credit score, would have a number of things like, do you steal IP? Do you have intellectual property protections?
Do you have a court system that can adjudicate things in the business context?
Do you have a tariff system which is fair?
Are you doing dumping on our shores?
So it would be that sort of questions.
My guess is that China would be deemed unworthy if we just did an objective trade.
And I think that that would be so devastating to them in terms of intellectual, not intellectual, international commerce, That I say, let's do it.
Let's put a little pressure on them.
Let's rank our countries.
You know, who do you want to do business with?
Japan? A plus.
Right? Who do you want to do business with?
Great Britain? A plus.
France? A plus.
You know, Amsterdam?
You know, Holland? Netherlands?
A plus. Norway?
A plus. Sweden? A plus.
China? F. All right.
Let's talk about Sharpiegate.
Sharpiegate has to be the dumbest of all scandals?
Controversies? I don't even know what it is.
It's so dumb. Here's the thing.
So the president has tweeted out a CNN clip where their weather person calls out Alabama as being at risk.
CNN... On the air, said Alabama was at risk from the Dorian storm.
That's what Trump said.
Right? Now, I guess NOAA at first said no, but now they've come out with a new statement today, or yesterday, that says, well, we should not have said that Alabama is not in danger.
We should have stated it as more of a statistical risk, which would allow that there is some risk that's bigger than what we're saying will happen.
That's what I said. So what did I say when I looked at the controversy without even digging into it?
I said that if your forecasting can't tell the difference between the storm is going this way or the storm is going that way, then it's certainly fair to say that Alabama is at risk.
Because you don't know where the storm is going, and it's certainly somewhere within that larger risk statement.
So the president was 100%, in my opinion, 100% directionally accurate when saying that the risk extended to maybe Alabama at one point.
And now NOAA has confirmed that.
So it doesn't matter who drew on it with a sharpie.
It's the least important thing we'll talk about.
I can't think of anything less important than that.
But I guess that's good. Bill Maher made a big point about how the Democrats keep talking about health care, but they don't talk about the American diet and doing something to reduce the number of people who are eating themselves to death.
I gotta go with Bill Maher on this.
Now, at the same time that I'm willing to say, you know, we don't live in a country where the government tells you what to eat, But we do sort of live in a country where the government tells you what to eat.
They kind of do.
It's just not a law. The government gives you the nutritional pyramid, which may or may not.
It's no longer a pyramid.
I think it's something else now.
But they do have nutritional guidelines that people largely ignore.
And they do require food labels, which people largely ignore.
So I don't know what else the government could be doing, except education, perhaps.
You know, if the government said we were going to start educating, let's say, preteens on how to eat properly, and we're going to make that part of the school curriculum, I would say, pretty good idea.
Pretty good idea.
But if it goes beyond education, that'd be a problem.
All right. Let's talk about...
Rehab. So I tweeted an article that suggests that rehab doesn't work that well, meaning that the success rate of rehab is pretty low, and there are different ideas for why that is.
But I'm going to add an idea to the mix.
So here's the question.
Can you determine from DNA Whether somebody has addictive possibilities.
In other words, if I were to test everybody's DNA on this periscope, could I tell with a fair level of certainty from the DNA which of you have the potential to become drug addicts and which of you are unlikely to become drug addicts?
I believe the answer is yes.
I believe the answer is that we can tell.
Now, let me suggest this.
If you're a drug dealer, And you were to sell one of these illegal drugs to someone who had tested their DNA and had communicated to you in some fashion.
I don't know if it's...
Just imagine this as a thought experiment.
And somehow you knew.
It could be because they wore a pin on their chest that said, you know, my DNA makes me an addict.
Could be because they've told all their friends and you happen to know.
So let's say the situation is the drug addict knows that they're selling a drug to somebody who has addictive personality based on their DNA. Should that not be the death sentence for the dealer?
Because if you're a dealer and you sell a drug to somebody whose DNA mix is somewhat optional, whether they become a drug addict, and that person goes ahead and takes too much of your drug and dies, I would say, well, that was a drug dealer and a drug user who were using something like free will and choice, and they did something that was a bad choice and somebody died.
Well, I think the drug dealer still needs to answer to the law in that case just for dealing drugs that are illegal.
But I don't think that's a death penalty.
It seems to me that if they unknowingly sold the drug to somebody who had that DNA structure, well, it was a bad risk, but everybody knew what they were doing.
It's still illegal. But if you're a drug dealer and you knowingly sell your drug to someone who has addictive DNA, Is that the same?
Because that's a lot like killing somebody.
I think that should be treated as attempted murder and should be charged that way.
Because if you give a drug to somebody who has addictive personality and you know it, it's sort of attempted murder.
All right. So I'm going to throw that out there.
I think we need a lot more...
A lot more knowledge about why rehab works with some people and why not.
I'll tell you what my hypnosis professor taught me, which is probably the most useful lesson you will learn anywhere at any time, and I'm going to share it with you.
Are you ready for one of the most useful lessons about human beings you'll ever hear?
My hypnosis instructor was overweight.
And people asked him about using hypnosis to quit smoking and to lose weight.
And the instructor said, here's the deal.
I'm paraphrasing. Hypnosis does work for losing weight, and it does work for quitting cigarettes.
And it works in exactly the same ratio as every other method.
In other words, and this is how he further explained it, if somebody has decided to quit smoking, or they've decided to quit weight, and the key word is decided, not wants to, not desires to, not has a goal of, but is decided.
Once a person has decided, there are a lot of methods that work.
Hypnosis is just one of the methods.
You could use your Chantix and your weight loss, your Weight Watchers.
If you've made the decision, you're going to poke around until you find a method that works, and you'll probably get some good results.
If you have not decided, but rather you think that the technique you are going to select We'll change your mind for you.
Somehow the process of chewing the nicotine gum or the process of going to rehab or the process of joining Weight Watchers, if you think the process of doing those things is going to put your mind in decision mode, it's not.
It's going to remove the decision from you, because you're going to say, well, I'll just go through these steps, and I guess something good will happen.
I haven't really decided, but I've just decided to go through these processes.
So that's probably the single biggest thing.
Somebody has to decide that getting off the drugs is better than being on the drugs, and that's a tough sale.
Let me tell you from my stepson's example.
My ex and I tried to get him into rehab and did get him into rehab a few times.
So rehab, of course, didn't work for him.
And he went along with it because he was a minor at the time and he sort of had to do what he was told.
But he made it clear from the moment he went in that he wasn't planning on stopping.
You know, he would say some words like, oh yeah, I want to stop doing the hard stuff, but I'm certainly not going to stop drinking, I'm certainly not going to stop smoking marijuana, because I don't want to be alive and not be able to party.
And he said that directly and often.
He said, I prefer death.
To a life where I can't hang out with my friends, have some beers, smoke some pot.
He said it often, and he said it credibly.
And he never got off of that.
And every time that we took him someplace where he could get clean for a while, he would tell us directly, when I come back, of course I'm going to be drinking, and of course I'm going to probably smoke cigarettes, and of course I'm going to smoke marijuana, because those things are so bad.
And everybody does that, and that's just being a normal young person.
And, of course, everybody tried to convince him that that's addict talk, that if he doesn't understand that doing those other things guarantee he will do the harder stuff, if he doesn't understand that, no rehab can help you, you know, you're basically on your way to death.
So his death came as, unfortunately, no surprise.
Because he told us a system and a strategy that didn't guarantee he would have an overdose, but it made it very likely.
And that's the path he went.
So somehow we have to get past the...
Deciding to do it.
And I don't know how to do that.
Okay, here's the fun and controversial thing that's happening at the moment.
Some of you are watching that Bill Pulte, who's been doing the internet philanthropy, as well as the Blight Authority stuff, doing good work for the public.
He's made his money.
He's trying to give back.
He's trying to promote this idea of Giving on the internet by creating an example, building up his Twitter followers, and trying to make it more of a robust national thing.
And I've been helping along the way, and apparently a bunch of Q followers I've started digging up just crazy conspiracy theories.
It seems to be mostly the Q people.
And they're imagining that he's being funded by Soros.
Crazy. Because I guess Soros may have some investments in Pulte Homes, which Bill is not even directly involved with at the moment.
But everybody can invest in a public company, right?
Investing in a public company is just business as usual.
So I'm going to give away $1,000 of Bill's money.
So he's agreed to let me give away $1,000.
And the way I'm going to do it is in the spirit of experimentation.
So I'm going to experiment, and I haven't quite figured out what angle I'm going to take how to do this.
It's just an experiment. Now, one of the things that people complained about, and I get what they're saying, is they found it unpleasant to see people competing to get the money.
And so I'll look for some suggestions.
So before I make this public, before I tweet about it, if anybody has a suggestion of what would be a way to give away $1,000, again, just an experiment, see what happens, what kind of reaction you get.
Oh yeah, the other crazy Q conspiracy thing is that it's all a big data mining operation.
And all he's doing is trying to collect names to sell or something.
Nothing like that's happening.
I know Bill personally, we've talked a million times before and during the internet philanthropy.
It has nothing to do with George Soros.
It has nothing to do with data mining.
These are pretty crazy things.
So, I thought I would add my voice to it, in case anybody's wondering.
I've looked into it probably more than most of you have, and so I can assure you that, as far as I can tell, it's exactly what it looks like on the surface.
A rich guy who wants to figure out the best way to give back, and he's experimenting.
If you don't like the way it's gone, That's what experimenting means.
You know, there's no point in A-B testing things if you think it's going to work on the first try or that it won't have any problems on the first try.
Everything's got a risk. Everything's got a problem.
So we're experimenting.
We'll see what happens. So what would be a good alternative for giving away $1,000 to somebody who could be helped without causing other people to feel like they're competing for it in some way that you feel is inappropriate?
So I will take your suggestions and then we'll experiment, see what we can do.
All right. His giving is inefficient.
Well, it depends what you think is the goal.
If you think that the goal is for Bill to efficiently give away his own money, then I would agree that the Twitter stuff is inefficient.
But that's not the entire goal.
The giving away his own money, I think he's said a million dollars he'll give away.
The giving away of his own money is part of the larger exposure to the idea, trying out the model of internet giving, trying to see if it can become more viral, and just see if it becomes a more robust system.
So the point of it is growing his Twitter followers so that he has more of a footprint, more noticeability to make the philanthropy more noticeable.
So that's what I'm helping with.
And that's all. I don't get the problem.
It's like any scholarship.
Not everyone who wants one gets it, right?
You know, this is more of the...
It's one of the things that makes me sad about human beings.
Because the people who are complaining about this...
And I understand that you don't want people who are struggling to have to be, you know, like, you know, monkeys in a cage, you know, dancing for a peanut or something...
And again, remember, I use monkeys in a generic sense.
It does not refer to any particular group.
Anybody can be monkeys in my world.
All right. So I'm sensitive to that, but if anybody has a better idea, I'd like to hear it.
All right. I'm going to tease something that's coming up.
I will be involved in another charitable giving, and I'll tell you more about that because your head will explode when you hear who I'm doing it with, and I hope that's part of the fun.
All right, I'm just looking at your comments here.
Yeah, you know, the ideal way to give money and the way I've typically done it be in my own past, because, you know, if you have money, a lot of people ask you for it.
And there are some situations where it makes sense.
But I prefer to give money in a situation where somebody has a temporary problem and they have a plan.
So if they have a temporary problem and they have a plan to get to their job or, you know, they could go to a job interview if they get this solved.
So if they've got a plan, then I'm far more likely to give it to them.
I'm less likely to give money to someone who just can't pay their bills all the time because it's not going to make a difference except for, you know, today and tomorrow.
All right. Medical bill fund?
Yeah, we'll just find something that's good leverage.
So maybe the way I'll do it is that I want to look for the thing that has the greatest leverage.
Not the greatest need, but the greatest leverage.
It's the small amount that can make the biggest difference.
So tweet at me if you've got an idea, and I'll think about this today, and I'll tweet something later.
And that's all for now.
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