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Sept. 12, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
54:00
Episode 660 Scott Adams: The Most Excellent Coffee With Scott Adams Since Yesterday. Join Me!
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Hey everybody, come on in.
I'm just making a note here. Take a seat.
And we'll get going in a moment.
I want to make sure I don't forget this fake news that I want to mention.
There's a lot of fake news today.
Most of it's fake news.
There's more fake news than real news today.
I'm not sure that's different, but here we are.
Well, I know why you're here.
Yes, I do. I'm on time.
That's correct. Finally, punctual.
So I spent three days in the recording studio laying down the audio for my book Loser Think that comes out November 5th.
Those are three very long days because my voice kind of fails toward the end of the recording and I've got to take lots of breaks and there's a lot of burping and that's just a long day.
But, let's start this day off right.
Let's get the dopamine pumping.
Are you ready? All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stainless, a tanker, a thermos, a flask, a canteen, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the simultaneous sip, the dopamine hit that gets your day going.
the best part of your day until the rest of it.
Go.
Ah.
Well, there's a whole bunch of interesting things today.
So let me just run through them.
Is it my imagination, or is, somebody's asking about the burping, when you're doing an audio book, And you're doing a lot of reading out loud.
You end up swallowing a lot of air.
So it's actually literally part of the process that every, I don't know, half hour or so you have to step away from the mic and just like burp like crazy.
Apparently it happens to everybody.
So that's a little thing you didn't need to know.
Is it my imagination or is Elizabeth Warren, could she not have won the presidency By simply being a 10% better Hillary.
Because if you look at her, she's sort of like a slightly improved Hillary.
A little thinner, a little more fit.
Warren looks like she's really healthy, which is a real good thing.
She doesn't have the baggage.
She doesn't have the Clinton Foundation.
She was never married to Bill Clinton.
She was a senator.
It seems to me that Warren had a pretty good path to the White House.
Simply by being 10% better than Hillary was, because Hillary came that close.
But she screwed the pooch with her policies.
So by going so extreme in her policies, I don't know that she can recover, because there's not enough room to go back to the middle.
So I feel as though she had You know, the best chance anybody would have ever had of beating Trump by just being the slightly improved Hillary.
And she took a Bernie Sanders path and tried to be a slightly worse Bernie.
You know, was there any point she was deciding on her strategy and said, look, I can be a better Hillary who won the popular vote and came this close to winning, or I could be A worse birdie.
So I think she took the wrong strategy there.
All right. Alyssa Milano had an interesting tweet today.
You know she met with Ted Cruz to talk about guns.
You know that she's in favor of gun control, but here's what you didn't know.
They own two guns.
So Alyssa Milano and her husband, I guess, they have two guns in the house, legal, and they're pro-Second Amendment.
Did you see that coming? So, once again, I'm going to give props to Alyssa Milano.
I know you don't agree with her.
She offends you in her other opinions and stuff.
But every now and then you have to just stop.
And appreciate things that are good, you know, just effective, that they work, they're sincere, they're well-meaning.
Even if it's not exactly what you would have done, even if you have a different preference, sometimes it's worth stopping.
So here's what I'm going to give her props for.
She has inserted herself into the conversation about guns in a very effective way.
As evidenced by her meeting with Ted Cruz, as evidenced by her social media, as evidenced by the fact that I'm talking about her.
So that's number one.
Number one step of persuasion and effectiveness, get people's attention.
A plus. Man, she got people's attention, right?
So on that dimension, A plus.
You can't beat that. That's AOC level.
That's Trump level.
That's good stuff.
Can't take that away from her.
Next, I believe she is sincere.
I believe she has no profit motive.
I mean, that would be ridiculous.
I believe that she wants to help the country.
A plus, right?
You can't agree with your fellow citizen on everything, but you can certainly hope that they have the best interests of the country in mind.
That seems to be the case.
Her opinion of how to get to the best place might differ from yours.
But is there any question That she has your best interest in mind.
Your best interest. Like actually your best interest.
In addition to her own and in addition to the country.
I think so. Now of course everybody's got a different risk profile and preference about guns.
So some people would not get what they wanted if she did get what she wanted.
But that's how the whole world works.
You can't hold that against her.
And then thirdly, She's doing this pacing and leading, as was pointed out on Twitter.
By stating that she's pro-Second Amendment, and that she has two guns, the first thing is, it's a really, it's an interesting surprise.
And surprises are very powerful for persuasion.
In other words, you had this impression of her, and then she throws this in there, we have two guns and we're pro-Second Amendment, and you're like, what?
I didn't see that coming.
And it's called pacing in the world of persuasion.
She's matching at least as much as she can.
It's not a full match.
But she's matching the people she's trying to persuade.
So yeah, I'm basically on your side.
And she adds in her tweet that 90% of the country is in favor of some Whatever they would call common sense gun restrictions.
So she's saying, basically, I'm exactly where you are.
And she's not too far off.
I mean, she would differ on the ARs and stuff.
But it's a good play.
And then she's got the respect of Ted Cruz and gaining people's respect and creating a conversation, becoming well-known for the thing, having passion, having...
It's great. I could not be happier about Alyssa Milano and Ted Cruz.
So everything I just said about Alyssa Milano, just say, well, also Ted Cruz.
But here's the thing.
Ted Cruz is a frickin' senator.
It's a little bit easier for him to get attention and have his impact be felt.
Alyssa Milano is coming into a game that she doesn't play, politics.
And she's hitting home runs in a sport she doesn't even play.
So give it up for her.
We'll see what happens. Let's talk about China.
So Twitter user Jumbo Shrimp tweeted this interesting question.
And until you hear this question, you're going to say, why aren't we talking about it like this?
Why is this the first time somebody asked this question?
And here's the question. China we know to target Republican areas of the country with their tariffs so that it would put more pressure on President Trump because he needs to win re-election and it would be bad if the parts of the country that were the swing states were mad at him because of Chinese tariffs.
And Jumbo Shrimp asks, quite reasonably, why isn't that election interference?
Right? Wouldn't you say that China targeting specific areas of the country, industries really, but those industries are concentrated in different places, if they're doing it to affect the election, it's election interference.
And that's war.
Am I wrong?
That's war.
If you interfere, let me say it as clearly as possible, if another country interferes with their election in a meaningful way, That's war.
Now, that doesn't mean we shoot bombs at them and, you know, shoot missiles at them, but it is an act of war.
Now, I don't know if we're doing anything similar to China, so maybe it's a, you know, in some ways it might be a tit for tat, but why are we not at least talking about it in those terms?
Somebody says, yes, you're wrong.
USA interferes all over the place.
I accept that we do.
But we don't say to Russia, oh, Russia, it's okay that you interfered in our elections, because we do it too.
I mean, everybody does it.
Now, I do agree that we do it too, and I do agree everybody does it, even to allies, etc.
But that doesn't give you a free pass.
If you catch someone else do it, you still have to deal with it, right?
I guess the Pentagon is assembling a list of army-linked businesses that China has links to to make sure that their technology and our technology doesn't, you know, doesn't get connected because they can steal secrets, I guess. Now, I don't know the whole details, but it's meaningful that we're putting pressure on the technology part of China, the technology transfer and stealing part.
And it made me wonder Are we going to get to the point where all the major powers just have to create their own technology?
Will we get to the point where it will be too dangerous even to have communication links between American technology and let's say Chinese technology?
Same for other countries, but let's just use China as the example.
Could we be safe all the time knowing that their technology even had a communication link to our technology?
How much danger would that be?
I'm wondering if we're heading to a point where China can't use American chips and we can't use anything that comes out of China because we wouldn't always know if we could secure it.
We might be heading toward that.
Here's a suggestion. You've noticed that there are countries in the world who have free and open internet and they can look at anything.
And then there are some totalitarian type countries that are limiting what their people can see in their country on the internet.
So you've got Iran, North Korea, China, I don't know how many others, Russia.
I think Russia is trying to build their own internal internet too.
And here's what I would say about those.
I think they need a name.
I think they need a label.
Because labeling is powerful.
When you label something that before you labeled it was simply a concept, you don't get much persuasion power from sort of a concept.
You need to put a label on it, and then people think of it based on the label, and then the label gives it power.
Watch me do this right now.
So the concept is that some countries are limiting their internet and others are not.
And here's the label.
I'll label the countries that are limiting access to their internal internets or limiting their citizens on the internet.
I would call them failing digital states.
Failing digital states.
And the thinking behind that is that any country that is trying to limit their own citizens from the internet will fail 100% of the time.
Because that means that their system...
Think about this.
If you're limiting the internet, it means that your system of government can't handle information.
The information alone would bring it down.
If your country is so dependent on lies to stay in power, and you're so dependent you actually have to control information coming into your country, I think you'd have to be called a failing digital state.
And I mean that literally, because if you try to control your digital information, the citizens are going to find out.
And they're going to find out.
It's impossible that they wouldn't find out.
So the citizens will find out what's going on.
And it's not going to be pretty eventually.
So I would say the failing digital states should be labeled as such and let them fail.
Rather than trying to, you know, browbeat, you know, Iran into opening up their internet, let's just say it's a failing digital state.
It's up to them what to do about it, but we're just labeling it.
We're not telling you you need to change.
It's not our business. It's not our country.
But you're a failing digital state, and there's no way that you're going to survive in the long run.
Here's something interesting. The Supreme Court, I guess, held up Trump administration rule.
Or is it a policy or a rule or law?
I don't know exactly what it is.
But the Supreme Court agreed that asylum seekers from countries that are not on our border can be...
It can be banned from entry or banned from getting asylum because they went through another country first.
So the idea is that they have to apply for asylum in the first country they can get to because otherwise it's not asylum.
Asylum is the only thing I need is to get out of my country.
So if you get into Mexico and you get out of your country, you're done.
If you want to also get into the United States, well, that's more of an economic decision.
That's no longer asylum.
So that was, I guess, essentially what the administration was arguing, and I guess the Supreme Court upheld it.
I think there might be some more fighting on that in lower courts or whatever.
But here's my main point.
There are several sort of slow motion improvements happening with border security.
Have you noticed? So the first slow motion change is that you don't see any more caravans.
Now, I don't know if that has to do with weather.
Do you? It might be a weather thing, just too warm.
So we don't see the caravans, so that looks like momentum has slowed, even if it's just because of summer.
We also know that Mexico's National Guard is getting aggressive in guarding their southern border, which is cutting off the flow, and maybe that's why there are no caravans.
But that's a major effect, and the number of people getting apprehended is way down, because fewer people are getting through.
And then you've got this asylum seeker thing.
But then there's a fourth thing.
Which is, why are we not hearing more stories about families being ripped apart?
So I don't know the answer to the question.
It could be that we just got bored with a story.
Maybe. But it seems to me far more likely that the Trump administration knew it had this bad stain on its reputation, the separating kids from parents and stuff, and that they've sort of continuously pushed resources in that direction while everybody's complaining.
But things don't happen quickly.
So we may be reaching the point where the administration is finally being effective in creating better conditions, partly because fewer people are coming over, maybe partly because more judges are processing things, maybe partly because we're getting just more product in there and more places to say.
But the fact that we're not hearing about it suggests to me that every trend on the border is positive.
I need a fact check on that.
So it's really sort of the dog not barking.
I'm not sure that I can be confident what I'm saying is accurate, but it feels to me That the Trump administration has finally wrestled this thing, you know, one component at a time, just sort of pushing the whole time, to the point where it sort of fell below.
Yeah, also the wall is being built.
Right. I forgot to mention that.
So the, you know, construction on the wall is likely to be built.
There'll be more legal battles about the blah, blah, blah, taking the money from the military.
But it looks like I don't know.
Am I being too much of a team player?
Am I being too pro-Trump to say that, as far as I can tell, every single part of the border security issue is going his way right now?
Is that not true?
He's getting his wall.
Looks like he's probably taking care of the family separation thing.
He's got the Salem thing going on.
And he's got Mexico guarding its own border.
And the numbers are way down.
And plus he's pushing China on fentanyl, which is really also a Mexico problem.
It feels to me like the Trump administration is winning on every dimension on immigration.
And he's got another year of winning or so before the election.
So that looks good. That's the sort of story you won't see in the news because it's sort of a laundry list of things that aren't too exciting on their own.
You have to see them all together to say, oh, all together, there's sort of story here.
It looks like he's winning on everything.
Just none of it is as fast as you wanted it to be.
Apparently the administration is going to ban flavored e-cigarettes and they're going to make the tobacco-flavored ones go through the FDA. But in the meantime, I think the tobacco ones can stay on the market while the FDA is looking at it.
And as far as I can tell, this is pretty popular because it gets kids off them and they're in the news.
I'm 100% in favor of this.
100%. I think flavored e-cigarettes should be banned.
At the same time, you know, I generally don't want any more laws that we need.
I just think we should be free to do what we want, etc.
But these really are targeted at kids.
Let's not kid ourselves.
These are products for children, and they should be banned.
So, good job. Is it my imagination, or is Azar...
What is Azar's?
Is he Health and Human Services?
Which cabinet position is Azar?
I want to give him a call-down, too.
Every time you see something with Azar's name on it, Secretary Azar, it's something good, and it's something smart, and it's a policy you hadn't seen before in some cases, and you go, well, that's smart.
So he's doing all kinds of stuff like speeding up access to generics, approvals of generics.
So Azar is sort of turning into a superstar in the administration.
So he's sort of a sleeper because he's doing the unfun stuff, you know, the bureaucratic improvements that are not sexy.
But it looks like he's killing it.
Health and Human Services, yeah.
So, shout out to Secretary Azar for killing it.
Good job there. Have you noticed that the people who are opposed to Trump's strategy, if you could call it that, on Iran and North Korea...
And fact check me on this.
I'm not sure that this next thing is true, but it feels like it's true.
Is there anybody who has a different strategy that they're putting forward who is also criticizing Trump's strategy with either Iran or North Korea?
Are you aware of any?
Because you do hear people say, blah, blah, the president will be impulsive, or blah, blah, the president will make a bad deal, or Blah, blah.
The nukes have not gone away.
In North Korea, blah, blah.
Iran may be starting up its, you know, pushing toward going nuclear again.
Blah, blah. But in all of those complaints, those are mostly factual complaints, right?
It's a fact that North Korea is testing some missiles.
It's a fact that they haven't given up their nukes, etc., But I don't know anybody who's saying, okay, President Trump, instead of what you're doing, you should do this other thing.
Is there any alternative?
I mean, I haven't seen one.
Have you? Because nobody's saying we should start ignoring those countries or attacking them.
What the hell is the other thing you're supposed to do?
I think everybody wants economic pressure on them.
Everybody wants us to talk to them.
Everybody wants their nukes to go away.
I feel as though on some of the biggest issues in the world, Iran and North Korea, that Trump doesn't have opposition.
Am I wrong about that?
And how about the economy?
The socialist candidates for president, the ones who are more about the universal health care and paying for college and stuff, they have different economic ideas than President Trump.
But does anybody think those economic ideas will be good for the economy in general?
I don't even think that Warren and Sanders are saying that the economic policies they favor would make the GDP go up, right?
Is there anybody on the Democrat side who is making an argument that they would improve the GDP? I don't think so.
Right? Because it looks like Trump is doing that better than maybe anybody could do it.
Now you could argue you don't like the way he's doing it.
You could say he's relaxed the regulations too much.
I don't know if that's true.
There's no good reporting on that.
I would guess that he's relaxed regulations that were marginal or obviously bad ideas.
Maybe there are a lot of those.
I don't know. I'm worried about it just like you are.
I do not feel safe That a bureaucracy, any bureaucracy, it doesn't matter, Republican, Democrat, I do not feel safe that my government is good at making regulations about the environment, and I'm not sure they're good at removing them either.
So I'm not comfortable with that situation, but it has to do with a lack of reporting that I would trust, I guess.
So it seems to be on national defense and the economy...
There isn't really even another plan out there that looks like it would boost GDP and make us safer from Iran and North Korea.
He's running unopposed on the biggest issues.
Well, here's another big issue.
Nuclear. So, nuclear power, I've told you that I'm trying to be helpful in one minor way on the question of climate change and nuclear energy, which is to help people understand the nuclear energy potential.
And I came up with a new visual for that.
Here it is. Here's a graph that shows the risk of nuclear energy versus climate risk.
Now, this assumes that climate risk is real.
So if you don't think climate risk is real, You can talk among yourselves.
It doesn't actually matter if it's real from the point I'm going to make.
The point is that if you look at risks over time, the risk of climate being a catastrophe, according to scientists, you don't have to agree.
I'm just graphing what the scientists would say.
That the climate risk is rising, and it could be rising quite quickly.
At the same time, this is the part people don't understand, that because of newer technologies and smarter people, etc., the risk of a nuclear power plant, if you were to build a new one today...
So we're not talking about the risk of existing plants.
We're talking about if you were to build one today, Generation 3 or newer technology...
Your nuclear risk is just dropping to vanishingly small because we know how to do this stuff now and we're getting better at it.
So I would argue that we've reached the point where the climate risk has exceeded the nuclear power risk.
So if you believe scientists on both of those, and remember, I'm not going to try to convince you That climate change is a big risk or a small risk.
Because I don't, how would I know?
I mean, literally, how would I know?
I'm not a scientist, and I don't even believe the scientists know it.
Because I think all the scientists work in their little areas, and they don't really have visibility over the entire field.
So I have trouble even trusting the scientists.
But I don't discount That there could be a gigantic climate risk and that humans are, you know, a big pusher of it.
I don't discount it. I just don't know.
However, since nuclear power would be the solution, whether or not climate risk is a big problem, because you'd want to do it for pollution reasons, you'd want to do it for cost reasons.
Here's another framing.
Let me toss out another nuclear energy framing.
Nuclear power is for the poor.
Think about it. Nuclear power is for the benefit of the poor.
That's literally true, because if you put nuclear energy where they only had other sources, you're very likely going to lower the cost of energy so substantially The poor people would effectively get a major raise, because they wouldn't be paying as much for their power.
Rich people would also get a benefit, but it's not going to feel the same.
If my power, speaking as a member of the wealthier class, if my energy costs went down at my house, well, I'd notice it, and it'd be a pretty big number, but it wouldn't change my life in any possible way.
But if I were a low-income person and a nuclear power plant came into my state and my energy cost dropped by half or whatever it is, that would be real money.
I mean, that's the difference between, you know, being able to sign up for a class, have daycare.
I mean, it could be a big, big, big number.
So that's enough on that point.
So let's talk about all the fake news.
Do you remember yesterday, those of you who were here, I told you that you would be hearing it from me first, and let's see how I did.
So I said I'll be the first one to tell you that I think that Bolton's departure from the White House is related to wanting to make a deal with North Korea.
And I said it makes sense for him to leave now instead of when we get closer to actually negotiating the next round with North Korea, which they're planning, because Because North Korea clearly is not going to agree to any kind of security guarantee from the United States while Bolton is a major member of the administration.
Those are impossible.
I wouldn't even ask North Korea to sign a deal saying we're going to guarantee their security while John Bolton still has a job in the administration.
Even I wouldn't recommend they sign that deal because that would just be a stupid deal.
You know, they should at least negotiate better than that, right?
Even my enemies, I want to negotiate better than that, because you want a deal that's credible.
There's no point in going through all the work to sign a deal that both sides don't think is solid.
So, in my opinion, I think Bolton was, I think he was an asset.
In the sense that he represented a point of view that's always good to hear.
And he was very experienced and connected and stuff.
So I think he probably was an asset while he lasted.
But because the situation changed and the president maybe thinks he can reach a deal now, he had to go.
And I told you that it would be related to North Korea.
You've already seen maybe some...
By now you've seen some other reporting that says the same thing.
So there are some insider reports.
And I think actually the president said it directly.
Yeah, the president said it directly that Kim Jong-un was no fan of Bolton.
So I'm going to call first pundit...
To make that connection correctly.
So there's a story in the news that President Trump reportedly and allegedly was considering, allegedly reportedly considering, possibly noodling, at least flirting with the idea of extending a $15 billion credit to Iran in return for some kind of good negotiated deal.
Now, what are the frickin' odds that that's real news?
The odds of that being real news are frickin' zero.
Come on.
The fake news just stopped trying.
Please, fake news.
Try harder to fool us.
Now, when I saw the article, and it was from some so-called reputable organization, I didn't have to read the article.
Did you? If you saw the headline, you probably did.
You know, Trump considering giving $15 billion line of credit to Iran.
Did you even need to read the article?
That is the fakest of fake news I've ever seen.
But we're not done with the fake news.
You know that story about the alleged American spy in the Kremlin who had to be Exfiltrated.
You know, had to be removed because they were worried that the president would blow his cover.
What about that story?
Does that sound true to you?
That doesn't even sound slightly true.
Not even a little bit.
And what happened to that story?
Did that story just sort of die out?
Because remember Pompeo said it is factually inaccurate.
Didn't happen. And then how could you get...
You know, how could the reporters even find out more about such a top-secret thing?
Yeah, just sort of, somebody says, petered out.
That's exactly what it did.
It petered out.
Because I don't think it was a true story.
Here's another one. Headline today, Israel reportedly put a spy device behind the White House.
I don't know how far behind the White House.
I'm not sure how close you can get your spy device to the White House.
But it would pick up cell phone calls within the White House, I guess.
Now, the first thing I ask myself is, Why is anybody making public cell phone calls from the White House on official business?
We've got to do a better job of protecting cell phone calls from spies.
Maybe it's hard. Is there no such thing as encrypted cell phones?
I don't know. Is that a thing?
Well, here's my take on that.
So, of course, Israel has, as they would, of course, they've denied that they would ever spy in the United States or the White House.
You and I know that allies do spy on each other.
We know that no matter how close your relationship is with your allies, we're probably spying on them.
They're probably spying on us.
But it's not necessarily malicious spying.
In other words, it's probably the strategic kind.
Like, you need a heads-up.
You know, they're your buddies, we're allies, but it'd be nice to have a heads-up where your heads are.
So, I tried to assign an odds to Israel actually being the ones who planted that device.
And I'm going to give it a 50-50.
The 50% odds that they did is simply because, well, it's what allies do to each other.
And then when they get caught, they deny it.
So it wouldn't be surprising in any fundamental way if any of our allies, whether it's Great Britain or, yeah, it just doesn't matter who it is, Israel, Great Britain, Japan.
If we found a bug somewhere in a government office, somebody says, don't trust Scott Adams.
He's a wolf in sheep's clothing and gross.
well, you won't have to worry about me because you're blocked.
So it wouldn't be surprising if it were Israel, but here's the argument against it being Israel.
Wouldn't it be a better play for one of Israel's opponents to put that device there and get caught?
So here's the first question.
Do you think Israel would put a spying device anywhere near the White House that had much of a chance of getting caught?
I feel like they're better than that.
Don't you? I mean, humans make mistakes and even super spies make mistakes and maybe we have cool technology they don't know about where we can detect their device.
Maybe it was just a random coincidence where somebody opened a door and found something that wasn't supposed to be there.
Maybe. But I feel as though Israel either would have known they could get away with it or they wouldn't have put that damn thing there in the first place.
Hypothetically, if it were them.
But imagine if you were an enemy of Israel.
Imagine you were Iran or anybody else who's anti-Israel.
Do you think you could frame them by finding whatever technology Israel is known to use for this sort of thing and just put Israel tech near the White House and make sure somebody finds it?
I don't know. But I'll give that one a 50-50.
It could go either way. I don't think it's important either way.
The debates are tonight.
The Democrats will be debating.
I may or may not be live tweeting.
Don't know. I might if it's interesting.
So I think this is the beginning of the process where we're going to find out, first of all, who the top three are.
And I think there's a pretty good chance that you're going to see at least one of the top three decompose tonight.
There's probably one of them who's not going to do well.
I'd guess Biden. So what happens if Biden takes a dump?
Where do Biden's votes go to?
Well, if they go to somebody they think is the next best chance of winning, who is also not hardcore socialist like Sanders and Warren, I think it goes to Harris because she's fourth in line.
She has some chance of winning.
She's at least not quite as crazy as the full socialist.
You know, she looks like she could be a little flexible in there.
So I wouldn't be surprised if you see...
Harris' numbers go up and Biden's go down after this.
All Harris has to do is show up and be capable.
She just has to show up and not make a big gaffe.
I don't think she necessarily has to kill it.
I think she has to be credible and presidential and she'll take from Biden.
Because Biden's going to be under attack and he's going to gaffe and he's going to stroke out.
I mean, not literally.
Well, maybe literally. You never know.
I had one other topic, and it's this.
Throughout human history, there have been allies and enemies among countries.
I feel as though we're entering an age where the only rational thing to do is get as many allies as you can on your side.
Because the age of wars working is kind of over.
You know, at least wars among the major powers.
The smaller countries are still going to have their civil wars and, you know, the smaller border issues.
But wars among major powers, and here I would say major would be, you know, Iran, North Korea, US, you know, at least somebody who's got a serious military.
I think those days are largely over.
And the Iraq and Afghanistan situation are a big part of that.
Because it's obvious that you just can't win a war anymore.
Wars are no longer winnable.
Because there's always somebody who's going to arm the rebels, and they're going to arm them with such good weapons that you just can't hold the country.
The rebels will be able to blow up your pipelines, your railroads, they'll be able to put IEDs in your streets.
So I think the days of conquering a country that doesn't want to get conquered...
It may be over. And so we should be smarter than that.
It feels like somebody says, wrong, look at history.
I am looking at history.
That's the point. Well, so somebody's saying, we didn't learn from Vietnam, so therefore maybe we won't learn from Afghanistan, and therefore we won't learn from Iraq, and then we didn't learn anything from Syria, I guess? Well, That's the slippery slope argument.
Well, not really. That's more like we'll never learn argument.
And I don't think that's the case.
I think the better way to see it is that eventually you do learn.
If you try something and you get slapped on the wrist the first time, you might say to yourself, well, I'll try that one more time.
But if you get slapped enough, you do change your tactics.
And I think what's different is we understand now that we can't win.
When we fought in Vietnam, we didn't know we couldn't win.
When we fought in Iraq, we didn't know we couldn't win.
When we fought in Afghanistan, we didn't know we couldn't win, at least in terms of getting everything we want and pacifying the country, etc.
We certainly won militarily against the worst people.
Somebody is saying winning is not the point.
Yeah, in those cases there may be other objectives because of WMD or something, but it's obvious.
That it's bad for the attacking country.
And that's different.
So I think that here's where I'm going with this.
I think the countries that are enemies now, Iran, North Korea, you know, you could argue Russia.
China's a special case.
I feel as though we should be trying to turn them into allies as opposed to simply turning them into not enemies.
I think it's shooting low to say, hey, let's just not be at war with Iran.
That feels like not even close to where we could get and where we should be aiming.
You know, we should be aiming for full allied situations.
Now, you might say to yourself, Scott, there's no way to be a full ally with the, you know, the Iranian regime.
They want to conquer the world, etc.
Well, then you put a timeline on it.
You say, okay, it looks impossible today, but let's say in 20 years we would like to figure out a way to be full allies with an Iranian regime that wants to be full allies with us, say with North Korea.
We don't have to say we'll do it tomorrow, but I think it helps.
I feel like it helps to say, no, we're not just trying to be not at war with you.
That just feels like loser think.
Because that's not what you want, right?
What you want is to be allies.
What you want is to make money.
What you want is to open their markets.
What you want is everybody does better so nobody's thinking about nuking anybody.
That's what you want. So why shoot low and just say, we don't want to be at war?
Go right at it. Say, look, I'm going to spend more and more time explaining to you What it looks like when we're at peace and we're friends.
You're gonna start liking it.
And that's where we're trying to get.
If you fight us, we're gonna fight you.
If you attack us, we're gonna attack you.
You're not gonna like it. But where we'd like to get is a good place.
I'm not being unrealistic in the sense of imagining that any of that would be easy or even more than 1% likely to get where we need.
I'm talking about a mental mindset of how to approach it.
You should be asking for far more than you think you can get.
Somebody says, history repeats.
I've got a chapter in my book mocking the idea that history repeats.
History can't repeat.
Do you know why?
History can't repeat, because you never have the same starting point.
You have things that might remind you of other things, but that's a different thing.
It's a different set of variables, and the current variables have learned a lot from the old variables.
So there are things that remind you of other things, but history can't repeat.
It's not a thing.
People can be similar over time.
People's preferences can be similar over time.
People's weaknesses can be similar over time.
But these are patterns which are false patterns.
Here's why you think history repeats.
You ready for it? You think history repeats because you don't see all the history that doesn't repeat.
If you could see all the things that look like they should have repeated, And didn't.
You would say to yourself, oh, if you look at everything that's happening, history basically almost never repeats.
And when it does, it's just a coincidence and it's a pattern that you say, oh, I thought I saw that pattern before.
It is an illusion and bad thinking.
It is literally a chapter called LoserThink in my book.
Well, it's within the LoserThink label because it is a poor analysis.
History always starts from the current set of variables.
It's not influenced by some kind of magic from the history of the past.
Kanye West tore down those little experimental low-income homes he built.
If you heard that story, so Kanye has one of his projects as he's trying to design, working with a design firm, I guess, to design low-income homes that are also very cool.
Because why should poor people have, let's say, poorly designed places?
Poor people need places that don't cost a lot of money, but they don't need poor design.
Design is free, kind of.
I mean, because you amortize your design costs over the entire project, so they're inexpensive.
But you had to tear it down.
So the neighbors complained and I guess the local city got involved and they said your construction is too noisy and there's too much traffic and your buildings that you built do not meet code.
So he tore them all down.
Now, did Kanye West succeed or did he fail?
That's the question. Tell me.
Did Kanye West succeed or fail?
He built a bunch of low-income homes, experimental.
City complained and he just tore them all down.
Did he succeed or fail?
He succeeded.
He succeeded.
Yeah, if you don't see that, you don't understand Kanye, and you don't understand how creation works, and you haven't read my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything Before Winning Big.
Kanye knows now, What he can do and what he can't do.
He knows where he can't build a place.
He knows what problems he'll run into if he builds it somewhere else.
He knows because they built those structures.
He knows about working with a design firm.
He knows what they can and cannot do.
He knows what people's reactions to them were because the pictures ran in the press.
He knows what it was like to walk around inside these things.
Kanye just went from not knowing a whole lot about building low-income homes to being one of the experts in the country on building low-income homes.
That's a success. Now, if he never did anything again in this realm, you'd say, oh, okay, well, I guess that didn't work out.
But I don't expect that.
I expect him to say, well, that didn't work.
Watch this. Try another one.
Maybe try a little harder to get permits or some kind of permission.
I would love to see the government, I don't know if this is a federal thing or how this would work, so somebody smarter will have to inform me, I would love to see the government, state or local, or whoever needs to do it, say that they will designate some construction projects as experimental, assuming that they're for the benefit of low-income people, and then I would add this.
There might be a requirement that, let's say, an engineer It has to be involved.
So it's not enough that you've got an architect and a builder.
You have to also have an engineer.
But the engineer will not be bound by maybe every rule.
The engineer will be bound by common sense and engineering.
So the engineer will make sure that the roof doesn't collapse, you know, so you'll be safe enough.
But it might not hit every point, you know, that this city requires because it's experimental.
If you did that, suddenly, all kinds of entities can say, whoa, I can get an exemption.
I can build anything I want and test it out.
That would be amazing.
That would be amazing. I can tell you from having worked in this realm for a while, the realm of low-cost housing and polite authority, etc., there's plenty of money and plenty of creativity and plenty of interest in experimenting in low-cost shelters that are high-design but low-cost.
All we need is to get some regulations out of the way.
I just don't know who does that.
All right, those are the things I think I wanted to mention today.
And how about that?
Looks like we're keeping...
Oh, there's one big thing.
I'm sorry, there's one big thing that I forgot to mention, and I should have.
It's a real lesson on confirmation bias.
Are you ready? Most of you know the story that I've been trying to debunk the fine people hoax, and I put links whenever people mention the fine people hoax, I put a link to my blog page debunking it so that the whole internet will have links that anytime somebody reads the hoax from anybody important, they will also see in the comments a link to debunking it so you know it's not true.
And my link to the Find People hoax broke this week, which meant that every link I've ever put out for maybe 18 months all broke.
So my entire strategy of blanketing the internet with that link all disappeared in the same day.
And of course, somebody says my prednisone is making me talk faster.
I think that's true. But also I was doing voice recording all day yesterday, so my talking rate is probably up a little.
Now, lots of technical people here were quick to help out and they said my security certificates had expired.
But of course we looked into it and that didn't seem to be the case.
So here's what we got wrong and here's what confirmation bias can do to you.
So the situation was that my blog had been a separate site connected with Dilbert.com And then we moved the blog to yet a third site and cut the link.
But all of the links to the old blog were redirected.
The redirection didn't work because I think it was the...
I may have this a little bit wrong.
But I think the intermediate site, the one that used to host the blog but now just doesn't exist, I think that certificate was expired.
Somebody says that's what I said.
Some of you were onto this.
So when we checked Dilbert.com, that was fine.
When I checked the blog directly, that was fine.
And I kept saying, well, how can they both be fine if you go there directly, but the link doesn't work?
How is that possible? And it's because that intermediary site needed a correction.
That has been corrected.
So all of those links are now live.
Here's the lesson. Here's the lesson.
I could not imagine...
Any other explanation other than bad actors.
I could not imagine any explanation other than some kind of shadow banning, you know, discriminatory actions against my accounts.
But that was not the case.
I mean, as far as I can tell, it was not the case.
It was a simple technical bug.
So keep that in mind.
Because I think when we look at the conservatives being shadow banned, etc., I am convinced there's something real to that.
But there's also a whole bunch of it that's not.
And it's hard to sort out what might be real from what not.
But I can confirm, and this is a perfect example, that a lot of it what you think just has to be.
It just has to be.
Somebody upped it no good.
It just has to be a hack.
Then you find out it's just a bug.
All right. Oh, yeah.
I still need to schedule with Jack Dorsey if he's still willing to come on here.
I think I'll send him a message as soon as we get off and see if I can schedule that, and that would be fun.
And I will talk to you all tomorrow.
Have a great day. Best day ever.
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