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Oct. 12, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:44
Episode 691 Scott Adams: Talking About Winners and Losers From This Week
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Oh, what a day.
What a great day this is.
This is one of the best days all day.
I don't think I've had a better day since I woke up.
And that's because we're all here together for the simultaneous hip.
I know that's why you came.
Grab your...
well, let's be specific.
Let's not leave it to chance.
If you'd like to participate in the simultaneous sip, all you need is a cup of mug, glasses, dine, a chalice, a tanker, a thermos, a flask, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Go!
Sublime.
Well, today we're going to talk about the winners and the losers on the podcast.
I will be grading people winners and losers today.
I'd like to start with the Pirelli Tire Company.
Losers. Losers.
I say that because I was trying to inflate my tires the other day.
And so I was looking for the inflation number on my tire.
Now Pirelli decided to put that in a very, very micro tiny lettering, colored black on a black background, surrounded by a tire that had other tiny lettering all around the perimeter, so you couldn't even narrow it down what zone the tiny writing was in.
I broke two flashlights because I smashed them on the ground out of anger, trying to find the tiny writing on the black-on-black tire.
The third lighting solution, in which I used a painter's light to light up the whole room, also didn't work.
It wasn't enough. I had to put a mat on the ground so I could get loaded the tire.
Two flashlights broken.
Painter light. Still can't see it.
It's too small. I've checked all the tire.
So I took a piece of paper and a pencil and I thought I'm just gonna like use the pencil while holding it against the tire and maybe I can surface the PSI count By the little piece of paper.
I got mostly around the tire when Christina came out and noticed that I wasn't happy.
Apparently she picked up on my lack of happiness and said, Hey, can I help you out?
With her younger eyes.
And she got down there and she looked and she looked.
And while she was cursing, in order to make my point of how abusive this tire company is, I pointed to her car, which also has black tires and also has the tire inflation written in black on a black tire.
Except that the Continental Tire Company made it big.
I could see it right away.
It was like that big.
Easy to see, even black on black.
We did eventually find the Pirelli number, and it was written smaller than, well, smaller than a little, about half the size, I think, of this little writing here on this pencil I'm showing you, that if you're listening to it, you can't see it all.
So, Pirelli tire?
Losers. Continental tire?
Winner. Winner.
More winners than losers.
Did you see the Jacob Wall prank about Kamala Harris?
Okay, this might be the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.
Now, let me start by saying I'm not defending or disavowing Jacob Wall.
Because I don't know anything about him, really, except that he seems to be associated with the right and has a lot of critics, but I don't know the details of it.
So forget about that for a moment.
Let's say he's a controversial character, but I don't know the details, so I don't have an opinion on any of the controversy.
I'm only going to tell you the recent story.
Apparently, he's somewhat famous for, shall we say, generating fake news.
And he tried to generate some fake news out of a story that apparently he just made up about somebody accusing Kamala Harris of having an affair with him.
Now, that's not the fun part.
The fun part is how he pulled off the prank.
And I'm calling it a prank, but you could call it some other word if you like.
So what he does is he runs an ad in Craigslist for an actor, an actual actor.
And he tells the actor that he's going to be playing a part in which he's going to be playing the part of somebody who's confessing that he's the lover for somebody named Kamala Harris.
Who, and this is the fun part, the actor who answered the ad had never heard of the name Kamala Harris.
And so believed, we found out later, that it was just a name of a fictional person in a script.
Oh, it gets better. If you think that wasn't good, it gets better.
So Jacob Wall announces that there's going to be a press conference, and he actually gets cameras and a crowd.
So a crowd forms with the press and cameras and everything.
Apparently they tell the actor, who still doesn't know, he still doesn't know that it's a prank, they tell the actor that all the people with the cameras and the crowd Are also actors.
So the actor comes out and he does his performance in front of the cameras, thinking that all the other people he's talking to are also actors.
Now, that's not the funniest part yet.
The funniest part is I was trying to...
Have you ever seen professional actors talk about how they performed in some play or in a movie and there was some famous award-winning actor or actress that they were acting with?
And they always say the same thing.
They always say, you know, I think acting with so-and-so famous actor made me better.
I felt I needed to raise my game.
And I was thinking about that, how actors can raise the game of the other actor simply by doing a really good job.
The other one, you know, rises to the level.
And I thought, this poor actor who answers to Craig Zostad, he walks out and he sees all these people he thinks are actors, and he must have thought to himself, damn, these guys are freaking nailing it.
They look exactly like actual reporters.
And the people in the crowd?
They don't even look like they're acting.
They look like they're totally nailing person in crowd.
And I had this funny thought in my mind that he went out there and he's delivering his lines pretending that he was a lover of Kamala Harris.
And he's probably looking at the crowd at the same time like any actor would to get a response because you're sort of connected to the people you're acting with, if I understand acting.
And he's probably thinking, they're killing it!
I've got to raise my level.
So here's the funniest part of the story.
Jacob Wall might have gotten the best performance from an actor of any director of all time.
Just because the poor guy was trying to raise his level of acting to the level of the people who were actually real people, but he thought were acting.
Alright, and then it gets better.
Apparently the guy was promised $500 for his acting performance and he never got paid.
He never got paid.
And he didn't find out.
He didn't find out.
He didn't find out none of it was real until he saw it in the news.
He never found out until he saw it in the news.
I'm sorry.
So I'll say once again, I'm neither supporting nor condemning Jacob Wall in general.
I don't know what he's done. He's accused of stuff.
And I just, I haven't been paying attention.
So I don't have an opinion on any of that.
but damn that was funny so I think it's the prank of the year uh Honestly. It's by far the funniest thing of the year.
So, Jacob Wall gets the win.
He gets the win on this one.
Oh, my God.
All right.
Remember you saw the story of the Iranian oil tanker?
Remember you saw the story of the Iranian oil tanker that apparently was hit by a missile? - Cool.
And did you say to yourself the same thing I did?
You saw the story and you were like, huh, somebody sent two missiles at an Iranian oil tanker?
And did you have the same reaction I did, which was, who did that?
Who in the world, in the entire planet, wanted to send two missiles at an Iranian oil tanker, I think it was in the Gulf?
And I said to myself, I can think of only one country that would want two missiles to hit an Iranian oil tanker.
Name the country.
Who is the only country Who would want an Iranian oil tanker to be hit with two missiles?
Go ahead. Who's the only country who would want that to happen?
Iran. Iran!
Yeah, of course. Because nobody else would do it.
And then, you know, you wait a couple days.
It turns out that story might not be quite the story you thought it was.
So apparently that was fake news.
So sometimes fake news looks exactly like you think it looks.
Huh. Name all the countries in the entire world who would want to send two missiles into an Iranian tanker in the Gulf.
Only one country I can think of.
The only one I can think of is Iran, you know, to cause trouble and make it look like it was somebody else.
There's nobody else in their right mind who would do that under any conditions.
So, Iran? Loser.
If you're keeping score.
Pirelli tires? Losers.
Jacob Wald? He wins this round.
Iranian oil tanker?
Losers. Alright, let's go on.
Biggest winner?
There's a marathoner who just broke the two-hour mark.
Oh my God!
He ran a marathon in under two hours.
What? Are you kidding me?
He ran a marathon in under two hours?
Now, you have to watch the video.
If you want to have a feel-good moment, it's everywhere on the internet.
Just check the news. His name is Eliud Kipchoge.
Kipchoge. And watching him get cheered on by the crowd who understood he was going to break the record.
I guess everybody knew he was on the verge of breaking one of the hardest records you could ever break.
Or maybe the hardest.
I don't know. Maybe it's the hardest record you could ever break.
And the crowd knew it, and to watch him running that final mile with the crowd cheering him on was really inspiring.
Really inspiring. So, Eliud Kipchoge, winner.
I grade you a winner.
Seemed like a nice guy, also, in his interviews, so I'm happy for him.
Bill Maher, his show last night always produces some interesting clips of highlights.
One of them is he was talking about the homeless in L.A. in particular, I guess, and he was talking about how the housing costs go up because of all the scammers and, I don't know, he was blaming bad behavior for the housing costing too much, and even when they try to build inexpensive housing, it becomes too expensive.
To which I say, Bill Maher, What news are you following?
Because you would have to be in quite the news bubble to say that the homeless problem in Los Angeles is a housing cost problem.
That's something you could only believe if you were in a bubble.
What kind of bubble are you saying?
Oh, this kind of bubble...
A loser think bubble.
Now, loser think doesn't mean that the person is a loser.
I'll say that as many times as I need to.
I'm talking about the technique of thinking about your world.
If your technique is wrong, you'll get a wrong solution.
What does Bill Maher do wrong, technique-wise, which left him in a bubble, in which he couldn't see reality, Clearly.
Because the reality is, if you follow the news sources on the right, let's say Fox News as one example, you would know that it's not so much a cost of housing problem, that's always a variable, but it's more a mental health and a drug problem.
Meaning that even if you took those people who are on the streets and said to them, hey, here's a free house, they would say, no thank you.
And they would choose to live in their tent on the street and do drugs, or maybe they have mental problems.
The housing wouldn't make any difference, because that's not what they feel is their problem.
It's not what they're trying to solve.
So, Bill Maher apparently watches the news silo, That is more associated with his point of view, I would imagine.
And that makes him blind to what people who are watching the other silo consider common knowledge.
I mean, if you've seen Dr.
Drew talk about it, if you've seen Michael Schellenberger write about it or talk about it, if you've watched Tucker Carlson, if you've watched the Gregg Goffeld show, there are a lot of shows on the right That if you watched them, you know it's a mental health problem, a drug abuse problem.
So that's a perfect example of loser think is limiting your exposure to one side or the other.
Doesn't matter which side you're limiting to.
If you're not watching both, you're definitely in a bubble.
That's something I can say with complete certainty.
If you're not sampling the news from both sides, You don't have really any chance of knowing what's going on in your world.
There's not even any hope at all.
All right. So, Bill Maher, for getting one of the most important problems in the country wrong, which is the homeless problem and what is its primary cause, you get loser.
Loser for the week.
Don Jr. tweeted...
A short clip of Kamala Harris laughing about her own jokes a little bit too hard.
Now, you know I've been making that case for a while, that she laughs at her own jokes too hard.
But there was an interesting little exchange because...
So Don Jr.'s quote that accompanied the video of Kamala laughing too hard at her own jokes, he said,"'Why is Kamala Harris the only person that laughs at her jokes?' Always way too long and way too hard.
The most disingenuous person in politics after Hillary.
All right. So here's the setup.
Don Jr. tweets around a clip of Kamala Harris laughing too hard at her own jokes.
And if you look at the clip, it's just not a good look.
Because it's just her going, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and sort of that unattractive, and I don't mean in the male-female way unattractive, but just as a human being unattractive, laugh.
So what does Kamala Harris do to respond?
There's a response.
All right? So now we have a good chance for a winner and a loser here because we've got some back and forth.
So Kamala retweets Don Jr.'s entire tweet.
Including the video of her laughing too hard unattractively.
And then Kamala says this, which is actually pretty good.
She says to Don Jr., you wouldn't know a joke if one raised you.
Pretty good, right? You wouldn't know a joke if one raised you.
And I thought to myself, not bad.
Pretty good joke.
But, here's the thing.
When Don Jr., Who is smart and understands how the world works.
When he tweeted around Kamala Harris' video of her cackling at her own joke, he knew that that would be a bad look for Kamala.
And the people who saw that would have A non-critical reaction to it.
They would have a visceral reaction to it.
It would make her a little less interested in her as a leader because it looks unleaderly the way she's laughing at her own joke.
Just, again, in an irrational sense, that's how we process it.
I'm not saying there's any rational reason that laughing at your own jokes makes you less of a leader.
It just feels that way.
And so the way people respond to you as a leader matters.
And so Don Jr.
knows that. And so he tweets that, and it's very effective, in my opinion.
So persuasion-wise, Don Jr.
has the advantage. He tweets out a visual.
Visuals are always, and it comes with an audio.
And if you send something that has a visual and audio element, that's strong, strong persuasion.
So far, Don Jr.
has the strong advantage in this original tweet.
But then Kamala comes back with a good response.
Pretty funny. I would say, you know, certainly she probably had a little help with it, maybe, because it seems a little funnier than what she normally produces.
But it's solid, so it wouldn't matter if an advisor came up with it or she came up with it.
She's the one who tweeted it, and it's solid.
You wouldn't know a joke if one raised you, and I'm sure her base thought that was pretty funny.
But here's what Kamala did wrong.
Her retweet exposed her own followers, not just Don Jr.'s followers on Twitter, but all of her own followers to the video of her cackling too hard and looking unpresidential.
So Don Jr. gets the most solid win you've ever seen, ever, because what he obviously wanted to do was to have more people see this video of Kamala Harris cackling in a non-leaderly way.
Kamala Harris's worst response ever was a clever, witty joke.
That part was good. I'll give her A-plus for the clever witticism.
But to deliver it, she had to retweet her own insulting video that couldn't possibly work in her favor.
Winner? Don Jr.
in a knockout. That one was not even close.
Kamala doesn't seem to understand how anything works.
She doesn't understand that retweeting her own cackling video, no matter how cleverly she responded, is not a winning strategy.
That's a losing strategy every time.
Don Jr., for the win.
All right. Here's a weird one.
AOC hired somebody who has had some involvement with legalizing drugs, you know, as an issue.
And she tweets, hashtag legalize it and demand justice for communities ravaged by the war on drugs.
Now, when AOC says legalize it, I don't know if she's talking about just marijuana or maybe something beyond that.
But that's less important than what happened.
So Congressperson Matt Gaetz sees AOC's tweet in which she's calling for legalizing drugs, and he responds, you had me at hello.
This is interesting.
Now, in terms of tweeting...
Is there a winner and a loser?
AOC's tweet, calling for legalizing at least marijuana.
I think that's probably the context.
I would say, winner.
AOC, winner.
Because that's a topic that the public likes, and it's exactly where she should be.
So, smart tweet.
Right place, right policy, AOC, winner.
Matt Gaetz comes in and she says, you had me at hello.
Very clever tweet.
Very clever. Because they're both, you know, young, good-looking people.
And so you automatically, you know, your mind goes to a place, right?
Because if it were a movie...
These two would end up getting together, right, if this were a movie.
And so using this movie reference, You Had Me at Hello, is hilariously, provocatively flirty without going too far.
In other words, it's not unprofessional.
It's like, boom, he hit the crease, right?
Like, it's just provocative enough, but it's definitely not over any kind of a line.
He's still in the cleverly professional zone, which is very thin.
It's very hard to hit cleverly professional.
You can be professional by being boring.
You can be unprofessional by being provocative.
But there's just this thin little zone where you're provocative and still professional, and Gates hit it.
So, Matt Gates, winner.
This one wasn't a competition.
It was specifically two people agreeing with each other.
So, somebody most associated with Trump and the right, and AOC most associated with anti-Trump and the left, Agreeing on this topic.
And it's a topic that the American people both agree with him.
Double winner. American people as well as both politicians on the same side.
CNN is reporting that Trump lost, had a terrible week.
A terrible week, I say.
There was some court ruling about he had to show his tax returns, but that will be appealed.
There's something about funding, using military funding for immigration uses, specifically building the wall.
That apparently got stopped by the courts, but that will probably be appealed.
Something about public assistance being required to get a visa or something like that, that will be appealed or something.
So yeah, three court situations that could be appealed.
CNN calls those a bad week for the president, and maybe so.
So I'm going to say that at least in the courts...
The president had a bad week.
Losing. But is the game over?
I'll say no.
He's losing so far.
He's behind on the scoreboard.
But these are all subject to appeals, so who knows?
May still come ahead on all these.
Shepard Smith quit.
Did you all see that? It was big news.
So Shepard Smith quit Fox News.
There will be plenty of speculation, some of it probably cracked, in which people say he just couldn't stand it anymore because he was trying to do the real news and the opinion people were on the other team and blah, blah, blah.
But you've got to be pretty angry to walk away from a reported $15 million per year salary.
You've got to be pretty unhappy with your situation to do that.
I will say, and I had said this before, that Shepard Smith was the best breaking news guy I've ever seen.
So if there was a new thing, there's no script, it's breaking news, and you want one person in the world To be up there talking about it intelligently, keeping the viewers engaged, keeping them moving along, giving lots of context and stuff.
Nobody was better. He's the best I've ever seen.
And specifically, I'd called this out months ago, when there was a helicopter that fell in the bay, or fell in the water in New York City, and Shepard Smith was on covering the breaking news.
That was the best Performance of a news person on breaking news I've ever seen.
I mean, it was just breathtakingly competent.
Like, it would just be hard to match.
But it was also the Fox News production team, everything from the graphics to the producers.
It was just, that should have won an Emmy.
I don't know how that works.
Is there some kind of award for news business?
But he should have won an award for just that coverage alone.
So, but I don't think he fit...
At Fox News. I don't think he was quite the fit that he should have been.
So maybe he'll find a better deal.
I wish him well. All right.
Let's talk about...
So is Shepard Smith a winner or a loser?
Well, I don't know.
It was his idea to leave.
So I'd say that game is incomplete.
If he ends up somewhere that he wants to be and it's better, well, he's a winner.
I think Fox News might be a loser in that, because he was a strong talent, even if you didn't like his politics.
Let's talk about the Kurds.
Once again, there is a complete lack of information about what's really going on over there.
But you're watching the news start to change your opinion of the Kurds, aren't you?
Was it maybe two weeks ago, if I had asked you, hey, you watch the news, you're one of these people who is well-informed, tell me what you think of the Kurds.
You probably would have said something very positive about them being strong fighters and allies and the only people we could rely on over there and all that.
Now President Trump says, well, we're going to get out of the way and Turkey's going to have its way with That border area that the Kurds are in, and the Kurds are in a lot of trouble, and the bombing has already started.
Now what are you hearing about the Kurds this week?
It's changing, isn't it?
Now you're getting a more, shall we say, nuanced view of the Kurds.
Now what the Kurds wanted, more than anything, was their own homeland.
Let me ask you this.
For the people who say it was a mistake for us to pull our troops out because it gave Turkey a free pass, what was the alternative?
Because the only thing that the Kurds wanted was a homeland.
You know, in pursuit of it later.
They wanted their own land.
Now let me ask you this.
How well would that have worked out?
Let's say the Kurds had declared, this is our land, this will be our homeland.
How would they defend it?
Could the Kurds defend a homeland?
Not as long as they had terrorists in their midst, who Turkey found threatening.
So, there wasn't really any chance that the United States was going to make a permanent, let's say, Israel-type commitment to a Kurdish homeland.
Because it's very expensive, and it lasts forever.
You know, once you've decided you're going to form a hostile homeland surrounded by people who wish you hadn't, it's going to be an expensive situation.
So I think that the zeitgeist on this, you know, the public opinion, is going to start to evolve, really already has, from Kurds are our allies to, I think we were just helping the Kurds get rid of ISIS. Weren't we just helping them?
Were the Kurds helping us?
I mean, we were fighting the same enemy, so in a sense...
You know, enemy of your enemy is your friend sort of thing.
Kurds were never our enemy.
I shouldn't say that. Bad analogy.
So back that out and delete it.
But we have a much more nuanced opinion, and apparently some of the Kurds we consider, meaning the United States, considers terrorists.
They do seem to be associated with the ones that are not considered terrorists.
What kind of association is too much?
It's all getting a little bit grey now.
It seemed like it was black and white a week ago, but now it's getting really grey.
And So there's your situation.
Now we're also hearing that the Kurds might be releasing, or not necessarily intentionally, but some ISIS folks are getting out during the bombing, so people who are in prison.
Let me ask you this.
If the Kurds decided to slaughter all of the prisoners who are ISIS prisoners, Who are ISIS, and that may be including the families or maybe not, I don't know, because there are family members there too.
If the Kurds decided to just go all genocide and simply slaughter the prisoners because they wouldn't be able to keep them in prison and letting them out would be too dangerous, what would be public opinion on that?
I'm not suggesting it, and I'm also not disavowing it.
Because think about it.
Think about it. You're the Kurds.
You just fought this war.
Lost a lot of people.
The Kurds took massive losses.
But you won. And part of what winning meant is that your mortal enemy, the ones who raped and killed your brothers and sisters, you finally put them in prison.
And now they might get out because the Turks are attacking you.
And if you stay and try to keep them in prison, you might die.
What do you do? You kind of know what they do, right?
Now, if the Kurds are unusually moral people, maybe they do let them out.
Because, you know, they...
I don't know. Maybe they just think life is more important.
It's possible. I don't know that much about the Kurds.
Apparently, they're somewhat sectarian.
They're not... They're not running their deal on religion alone.
So I don't know.
But doesn't it seem to you that the most likely outcome is that all of the ISIS prisoners will be killed in prison?
Doesn't that seem the most likely outcome?
I don't see the outcome where either the Turks...
Or the Kurds allow them to get out of prison and go free.
I don't see that. It could happen accidentally.
If the bomb falls in the wrong place, people can get free.
But I don't see the Kurds letting the ISIS prisoners go.
I just think that they're going to slaughter them.
Let me put it this way.
Well, let me tell you a story I heard once, to put this in perspective.
I heard this story from a gentleman who has passed away So I wouldn't tell the story except that he's dead.
He would be in his 90s probably now if he'd lived.
And he told me about his World War II experience, in which he was leading a group of American soldiers who were the first ones to free a prisoner of war camp.
It was a German-held prisoner of war camp.
And they were the first ones there, and the war was basically winding down, and the Germans knew that they were going to lose.
So the German soldiers who were guarding the prison camp sort of surrendered as soon as the Americans got there in force, because there was no point.
They were outnumbered. So the Americans go in, and they take control of the prison camp, and all the German soldiers all surrendered.
And they said, okay, where are the prisoners?
Because they couldn't find the prisoners.
They had just liberated a prison camp in Germany, but they couldn't find any prisoners.
And one of the guards points in that direction to a train car.
It was a train that had bullet holes in it.
They had loaded all the prisoners into a train in order to move them when I thought, I guess they thought that they could move them to another place to keep them prisoner.
And when they realized that they couldn't move them in time to get away from the advancing American forces, they machine gunned them.
So this is the person I talked to in person.
He tells me the story in person.
They opened the train cars, and all of their dead American soldiers fell out.
They were all dead.
All of the prisoners were killed as the Americans approached.
And the reason that he was telling the story is I'd asked him, in World War II, tell me the truth.
Did you take prisoners?
Because my assumption was that in World War II, things were more barbaric.
And there wasn't as much press, and they probably just killed prisoners.
You know, everybody. I'm not saying any particular army did it.
It just seems to me there was probably more killing of prisoners than taking of prisoners whenever it was hard to keep them as prisoners.
You know, if it was easy, let's say a whole army surrendered or something, maybe there were cases where it was easy to keep them, and then they just kept them.
But I said, in general, Did you take prisoners?
So here's what he said. Remember, he was very young.
I think he was actually 19, but he was commanding his unit because all the other officers had been killed.
So he ended up in command just by default.
And he said, yeah, we took prisoners all the time.
Yeah, we absolutely took prisoners.
And then he said, except once.
Except once. And that's when he told me the story about the prison camp that he liberated.
They liberated the prison camp.
The German guards all surrendered.
But it was revealed that they had just killed all the American prisoners.
And then this very elderly gentleman who served in the war, he turned to me and he looked at me and he said, he looked me in the eye and he said, that day we didn't take any prisoners.
That's war. That day, we didn't take prisoners.
Think about it. I looked in his eyes when he told me that.
He wasn't joking.
And it's a story he had never told.
He told me he had never told the story.
I was the first person who ever heard it.
Did you read about it in the news?
Nope. You didn't.
You didn't read about that story in the news, and you never will.
So, let me ask you this.
If you're the Kurds, and you see an army approaching, and your worst enemies, ISIS, are in your prison, what's going to happen?
What happens if the Turks find them alive?
Let's say the Turkish army gets there first and ISIS prisoners are still alive.
Does Turkey want them to live?
I don't know. Maybe.
Depends who's watching, right?
So I think...
Here's my prediction.
My prediction is that we will never hear definitively what happened to the ISIS prisoners.
We just won't hear.
That's all you need to know.
All right. Gavin Newsom signed 15 new gun laws in California.
But here's an interesting stat.
Between 1993 and 2017, which I guess is the latest available information, there was a 62% decline in the gun murder rate in California.
Which is nearly twice the national average of decline.
So gun violence declined everywhere but California has been aggressive with gun control bills and the claim is That that collective action must be some collection of different smaller gun control bills, including the 15 that are...
Well, the 15 are brand new ones, so we don't know how they'll do yet.
But the claim is that it reduced gun violence by 62%.
Now, what's wrong with that statistic?
I know you're way ahead of me on this, right?
Somebody says, let me see the stats, right?
That's exactly right.
I'd like to see those stats.
So the first thing you should say to yourself is, you don't believe any stat you hear from a politician, right?
So that's the first thing you should say is, well, let me see those stats.
So that's the first thing.
Here's the second thing.
Where's the stat for how many extra people got killed because they didn't have a defensive weapon?
That's why you want to ask me, right?
Where's the stat for the people who did get killed but would not have been killed if the victim had been armed?
Don't have that. But is that baked in?
And I don't know the answer to this question, so that's a real question.
Is it baked in? Because you're comparing it to the other states in the rest of the country that had only half as much of an improvement.
Those other states have the same effect, right?
That their number also does not include anybody who died who didn't need to because they didn't have a defensive weapon.
So I think this might actually be a valid comparison.
But I don't know.
I don't trust it on its surface.
But here's my general statement.
I've said that the states should be laboratories.
And... Even if I might not like living in a state that has a certain set of laws, I do appreciate the fact that California is becoming a little laboratory.
So I'm going to surprise you here.
No matter what you think of gun control, I kind of like the fact that some states can try some stuff, just see what happens, compared to the other states.
So as a system, I'm highly supportive.
Without having an opinion on the specifics of these new gun laws.
You could have good arguments against them, but if you're testing them in one state, and you can look at your stats compared to other states, and you can find a meaningful way to compare, isn't it worth knowing?
I'd at least like to know what the outcome is.
So one of the changes was you couldn't get an AR-15 until you're 21.
So you can't get an AR at 18, between 18 and 21.
Do you have a problem with that? Do you have a problem with somebody waiting until they're 21 to get a weapon?
I wait till 21 to buy alcohol.
That seems... It seems at least based on biology.
Like that seems a factual thing because we know that human brains are not quite evolved.
So the longer you can make somebody wait, the less chance they'll do something with a semi-evolved brain.
So that's good. Now is that, you know, of course you've got your Second Amendment problems and I'm not giving you an opinion that that's good or bad.
But I'm just saying that it would be based on a biological truth that between 18 and 21 you're not as developed as after that.
So it's not crazy.
A reasonable person could disagree with that law, but I don't think it's crazy.
It's based on solid thinking, I think.
And then there's some more about red flag laws, etc.
I don't know too much about that, so I won't talk about it.
Here's a question for you.
If you're running for president and your adult son has to hide...
Is that a good sign? So Joe Biden's son, Hunter, he literally can't be found, at least by the press.
You know, I don't think he's a missing person, he just, he's hiding.
Does that say anything good about your campaign?
Because if your son has to hide and it's the only way you could get elected, That's a little red flag right there.
I haven't seen anybody ask that question specifically, but I'm pretty sure when President Trump ran for office, none of his children had to hide.
None of the Trump children had to hide.
Just say, compare.
So President Trump announced yesterday that they have some kind of a preliminary, at least verbal, trade deal with China for what he calls Phase 1.
So I don't know all that's in it, but it includes some kind of agreement by China that if an American company opens up shop in China, they will not be forced to have a Chinese partner.
Because it's the Chinese partnership that gets all the IP stolen.
That's one of the big ways it happens.
Now, China agreed to that.
Why do you think China agreed to that?
Why would China give that away?
You know, why would China say, okay, we'll drop one of our key requirements that our Chinese company is a partner with you?
If they wanted to steal intellectual privacy, or intellectual property...
Do they need to have a Chinese company involved?
Yeah, somebody says they steal it anyway.
It makes me wonder if they don't know that once a company is physically in China, then it's easy to monitor their electronic communication.
Right? Now, I know you can do VPNs and stuff, but wouldn't you assume that the Chinese government has the capability to steal all of the intellectual property from any company that moves into their territory?
Do they need to partner with them and have somebody as an insider steal it?
I think China may have agreed to this clause because they can steal it other ways.
They may have given up nothing.
We don't know, but maybe.
They may have given up nothing.
Or how about this other one?
China has agreed to buy, you know, I don't know, $40 or $50 billion more of foreign products.
Now, why would China give up something that big?
Answer? They didn't give up anything.
If my interpretation is correct, all they did is say, all right, we'll buy less stuff from, I don't know, Vietnam, and we'll buy more stuff from America.
So what does it cost China To buy our stuff instead of somebody else's stuff?
Probably nothing. Probably all they did is change who they bought it from.
They just bought it from us instead of buying it from somewhere else.
So is China giving up anything by saying they'll buy more from us?
Probably not. They're probably just getting the same price and the same product, but they're buying it from us instead.
So it looks like China has given up two things But as far as I can tell, China has given up nothing.
Now, we might want these two things, but it looks like China found a way to give us something without giving up anything, which is kind of clever.
So what they gave up was business with another country, which hurts the other country, doesn't hurt China.
And they gave up partnering with American companies, which they probably don't need to steal our IP. They can just do it the old-fashioned way, monitor all the digital communications.
But I was wondering also why this, what seems like it should have been a major announcement, and in fact seems to have moved the markets, the stock market quite a bit.
Why is it that it's almost invisible on the news?
The news is treating it, even the left and the right, almost like nothing's happening.
The stock market is zooming, you know, went up one or two percent or whatever yesterday.
Pretty big move for one day.
And the news is treating it like nothing happened.
Why is that? Well, it could be because nothing's happening.
Because one theory is there's no deal that's going to happen.
There's just, you know, talk.
And maybe they'll agree with some minor things like these two things that were announced.
But you didn't hear anything about fentanyl, right?
So if you don't hear anything about fentanyl, I don't suppose I'm very confident that there's going to be a deal after all.
So I would say China, loser.
All right. I may have at least one more thing to talk about.
No, I don't.
I'll just remind you that my book, Loser Think, is available wherever you buy books.
And if you pre-order it, it's available in a few weeks.
If you pre-order it, it's good for me.
So if you're thinking of buying it at all, please pre-order, because that's good for me.
It gets it closer to the bestseller list.
Which is the important thing.
So thank you for those of you who pre-ordered.
Yes, we A-B tested different colors, and this was the, if you can see it well, this is the color that everybody seemed to like.
Not everybody, but most people seemed to like.
So that's what we went for.
All right. Oh, yeah, an update on TerraPower.
Still looking to make contact personally.
I've had some digital communications.
But we'll talk with some more people at TerraPower.
And maybe, if I have any luck, I'll get somebody on the Periscope.
But we're trying to figure out what is stopping TerraPower.
Terror power from getting a site developed in the United States.
And if there is something that's stopping them and has anything to do with the government or regulations or any of that, or even persuasion, I've offered to help.
And I'm going to deputize all of you.
If we find a specific target of our persuasion, maybe we can help.
Save the world. Save the world.
Or at least make it less expensive to live in the world.
I see people asking me to talk about Steve Kerr.
I have mixed feelings about Steve Kerr, and they go like this.
If your job is to be the leader of a team of mostly African-American athletes, you have to act like that leader.
You're not the leader of the country.
You're not the leader of China.
You're not the Secretary of State.
Steve Kerr is a leader among, mostly, African American athletes.
He acts like a leader of African-American athletes in the sense that he is adopting a political view which would be very compatible with theirs, which is they're concerned about racism in this country.
They're concerned about President Trump in some cases, but not all.
And he represents that view and his team very well.
Now, if he were not a coach of a team, I would say, hey, Steve Kerr, maybe we should talk you into being a little more unbiased.
Maybe we should talk about your point of view.
But I'm having trouble faulting him.
I know that's not what you want to hear because you want to dump on Steve Kerr, right?
I'm having trouble faulting him because his job is the coach and leader of a specific group of people with, probably on average, a fairly compatible point of view with what he says in public.
He's doing his job.
When somebody's doing their job, I don't regard them the same as if they're giving their unfiltered personal opinion.
It might be his personal opinion.
It could be exactly his personal opinion.
But he's also doing his job.
Secondly, I don't fault companies who already have a large presence and working relationship with China.
I do judge differently people who would make this decision today.
If you're just starting to make a decision about working in China, you know, maybe you should rethink that.
But if you're already there, like the NBA, lots of money on the line, you're allowed to act like a company.
You might want to do the best you can to stay out of politics, but you are allowed to pursue profits, and you are allowed to do what's good for stockholders whenever stockholders are involved.
So I don't judge harshly people who are doing their job the way the job should be done, and I think Steve Kerr is kind of nailing it.
Even if you completely disagree with what he says politically, as a leader of that group of people, a person who needs to have their respect in all ways, I think he's nailing it.
I hate to say that.
Now, do I agree with what he says about the president?
No. Not even close.
But, I'm not a coach of an NBA team.
If you made me the coach of an NBA team, And I care about politics, but I also care about being a proper leader to the people I'm leading.
I'm going to express a point of view that's compatible with my team before I express a point of view that's compatible with you.
That's the priority that I would take.
He's taking that priority.
I'm not going to criticize that.
Even at the same time, I have deep disagreements with what he says about some things in politics.
He's doing his job. I respect that, and I don't think you're going to talk me into that.
All right, that's all I got for now.
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