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Nov. 3, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
34:37
Episode 713 Scott Adams: Boos That Sound Like Cheers, Laundry List Persuasion, Reverse Cover-Ups
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Oh, hi!
I didn't see you there. I was just reading my brand new book that's just out.
Well, technically it delivers on the 5th, but you can buy it today and it would be at your doorstep right on time.
Hey, are you here for the simultaneous sip?
Have you all set your clocks correctly?
It looks like it because you're here on time.
But you know, the simultaneous sip is not something you do alone.
No, that would make it non-simultaneous.
And all you need to connect with your fellow and lady citizens is you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip with...
Any one of these things.
Could be a cup or a mug or a glass, snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, flask, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the don't mean hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's going to be a great day.
The simultaneous sip.
Go.
Ah.
I feel us all as one now.
So...
I'm sure you can feel it.
It's very visceral.
I'm looking at the number of people who are on live right now.
I think a lot of people didn't set their clocks, if you know what I mean.
Alright, let's talk about a few things in the news.
So, three years ago or so, I coined the phrase, two movies on one screen, and every time you see it, It sort of reconfirms that model of the world.
And I guess last night, President Trump and Melania went to see a UFC match at Madison Square Garden.
And depending on who was reporting it, he either got booed or he got cheered.
So I thought to myself, well, how hard could it be To distinguish between boos and cheers.
So I play the video and I listen to it and I think, I can't tell.
It's one of those, you know, obviously there were boos and there were cheers.
And people decided to see whichever movie they wanted to see.
So one more example of two movies playing simultaneously on one screen.
Here's a provocative question I asked on Twitter yesterday.
And I want to tell you, before I give you the question, that sometimes questions are meant to be answered.
And sometimes questions are meant to simply take your mind to a different framework.
And that's what this one is.
This one doesn't need an answer.
It just requires you to take your mind to a different place just to deal with it.
And here's the question. If there is an impeachment vote in the Senate, let's say it gets to the Senate and they have to vote on impeachment, should all of the senators who are running for president Actively running for president.
So who would that be?
That would be Warren, Harris, Cory Booker, Klobuchar.
Did I remember them all? Should they recuse themselves from the vote for a conflict of interest?
Would you feel that the system was fair if four of the people voting were actually running for the job Of the person they're trying to get rid of.
And they've been trying to get him impeached before any of the alleged offenses even happened.
Sanders. Yes, Sanders as well.
Thank you for that.
Now, probably what you say to yourself is, Scott, Scott, Scott.
There's no such thing as recusal.
The Constitution describes what impeachment is, and I guess the House and the Congress have a lot of flexibility about the specific rules, but there's no rule that says you have to recuse yourself.
But... For all the same reasons that people are arguing about the process so far.
Should you have a hidden process where the Republicans don't get the same rights as the majority?
So these are all fair questions.
Now, I ask the question not because I think there's much chance that the senators would consider recusal, would take recusal.
I don't think there's any chance of it happening.
But put your head in that frame for a minute.
If people are saying that the president should not have made that Ukraine phone call for what they consider naked political reasons, should a senator be able to vote for impeachment for what looks to the public?
Again, the public doesn't have to be right, but it looks to the public like naked political interests.
Aren't they similar? So the whole point of the question is to ask yourself, how much can a politician do in the quest to get re-elected?
Can they do their normal job?
Now, if the senators just go in and vote on senator business, whether it's an impeachment or anything else, are the senators not just doing their job?
Yeah, they're just doing their job.
But... That vote would also be very important for their personal quest for election and power.
So can you let somebody do something that's their job, taking a vote in the Senate, if at the same time it's clearly and unambiguously good for them on a naked ambition level?
Is that okay? Because if it's okay for the senators, certainly it should be okay for a president Who, of course, is tasked with looking into foreign interference in elections.
And Biden, again, is still at the top of the polls, not only polling ahead of other Democrats, but polling ahead of the president in a general election poll.
Are they not the same?
I think you have to pick a side.
If you pick the side that the president should not have made that phone call, Or at least the way he did it, because it was too much of a personal gain and not enough of doing his job, even though it was both.
If you think that the balance falls on the personal gain side, then you think maybe it was wrong.
But you've got to take that logic to the Senate and say, all these people running for president...
Do you think they're voting on the facts?
I don't think even the Democrats would believe that.
Do you think the Democrats would really believe that those five politicians running for president would be basing their vote on impeachment on the facts?
I mean, seriously.
Nobody would believe that.
So pick a side. Either you can do your job or you can't do your job if it helps you.
If you can't do your job because it helps you, Somebody says try Flonase.
I have Flonase in me.
If you're wondering about my continuous nasal problems, there's a sinus infection I'm trying to work through.
I'm on my third or fourth antibiotic.
But anyway, I apologize for that.
SNL is mocking Elizabeth Warren and her healthcare plan and doing a really good job.
So Kate McKinnon does an incredible Elizabeth Warren impression.
Very funny. If you haven't seen the replay of it, it's pretty good.
I've got to say, she's really talented.
But here's the interesting thing.
SNL is sort of a window into, let's say, liberal thinking.
Would they mock Warren's health care plan?
They're mocking the expense part and the fact that, you know, it's impractically expensive.
Would they mock her for that if she was their candidate?
Probably not. So it feels like even the left has kind of a problem with Warren.
And I don't know that SNL has picked a favorite.
Do you? Wouldn't you think that by now you could identify who SNL, as a group, wanted to be president?
And I'm going to give them a compliment.
I can't tell.
I would say that at this point, the SNL, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say this season on SNL, this season, not any past season, but this season, is the most fair they've ever been I'm hitting both sides with, you know, with good humor.
First of all, I think it's a very strong season.
It's a pretty great political season for them, so they've got good material.
But I feel like they're being completely unbiased, at least in the way it's presented to the public.
Now, if you looked at last season, it was anti-Trump, anti-Trump, anti-Trump.
But this season looks kind of balanced, actually.
Doesn't it feel to you like a lot of the impeachment writing that you see?
I hate to use this phrase, but it feels like impeachment porn, doesn't it?
Does it not seem that the people who hate the president, they want to live in the imaginary world where impeachment is not only likely, but for obvious reasons?
And I think that when they live in that world of, oh, it's just a matter of time.
Can't wait for that impeachment vote.
All things would be good.
Don't you think that if you...
Well, actually, I'm going to propose this experiment.
So let me propose a scientific experiment.
We have various monitors and sensors you can hook up to someone's body and you can find out if they're experiencing something like happiness or something like stress.
So you put the sensors on them and then you take some anti-Trumpers and you present them some headlines from what I would call the impeachment porn kind of literary field and then see if their body...
Registers pleasure. Because I think it would.
I mean, common sense says it would, right?
But I wonder how much.
Would it be off the chart?
Would it be the best thing they felt all day?
I don't know. Because I feel like They never seem to get tired of reading the story where he's doomed tomorrow to only wake up and find out that he's still president and then read some more stories that really he's doomed tomorrow tomorrow and then you wake up again and he's still president but it doesn't make The impeachment porn any less enjoyable, apparently, because there's a gigantic market for it and it doesn't seem to be diminishing.
So it's hard for me to even look at a lot of the stuff that the anti-Trumper say as being even political because it doesn't feel political anymore, does it?
It feels as though People are participating in the political process, meaning on Twitter, social media, arguing and stuff, because of how it feels and what they're chasing is the good feelings.
So the anti-Trumpers are being fed this continuous stream of dopamine hits.
It's like, ooh, headline, yeah, we got them now.
They get their little dopamine hit, and they feel connected to all the other anti-Trumpers at the same time.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's like an oxytocin hit too.
Is it serotonin?
Is it dopamine?
Is it oxytocin? But there seems to be a genuine addiction.
And when I say that, I'm not speaking in a non-literal term.
I mean actual literal addiction.
In the same way, you know, you can train chickens to peck on something to get a reward, and they'll just be addicted, especially if the rewards are inconsistent.
That's where you get the best addiction.
Consistent rewards will just bore you.
But inconsistent rewards, the chicken will just keep trying to get that next reward.
And all the impeachment stuff feels like that.
It feels like inconsistent rewards of like, ah, this one's going to work.
Okay, that one didn't work. But let's keep pecking.
Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.
Chickens pecking. There's an image for you.
Imagine, if you will...
Every anti-Trumper that you know is that chicken that's pecking on something and trying to get a reward and can't understand why the reward doesn't come out every single time.
But every now and then, bloop, there'll be an article that they'll say, ho ho ho, there's a pellet.
Let me eat this pellet.
Is he still president?
No. What?
I just ate a pellet.
Are you kidding me?
And he's still president.
Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.
So that's what it's looking like to me.
In my book, have I mentioned?
My book, Loser Think, I talk about laundry list persuasion, and I also teach people to take a photograph of the book, any page of the book, Just take your camera, poop, and use that page as your argument on Twitter or social media.
I modeled this, and you can see it in my, I think it's my pinned tweet today, because Alyssa Milano, I was going to call her Actress Alyssa Milano, but I actually have a lot of respect for her, and I don't want to do to her what people do to me all the time.
I'm writing books about politics.
I'm going on TV about politics.
I'm talking about persuasion.
But when people want to diminish me, they say, the Dilbert cartoonist said, to make it seem as if you do one thing, you can't possibly do a second thing.
That's not allowed.
And I almost did the same thing to her.
So I almost said, actress, Alyssa Milano.
Now, obviously... She has a career as an actress, but she spends so much time, and I compliment her for the energy and the effectiveness she puts into politics.
I don't think it's fair to say that.
I don't think it's fair to say actress Alyssa Milano anymore when you're talking about politics.
So I'm going to say political activist?
Political activist. How about that?
Political advocate?
Um... So I like anybody who works hard, is well-meaning, has the country's interests in mind.
I don't think she's got some personal benefit that comes out of this.
In fact, it probably costs her roles.
I would imagine it's probably bad for her career.
But anyway, so I don't agree with her on most of the Trump-related stuff, but I have complete respect for her for changing fields, which is another topic in...
So one of the topics in there is about the most loser-ish advice anybody could ever give you is stay in your lane.
Keep your day job.
It's literally the worst advice anybody could ever give you.
Can you imagine what civilization would look like if people just stuck to what they were good at?
You wouldn't have anything.
You wouldn't have any Apple computers, airplanes.
You wouldn't have any...
You wouldn't have any automobiles.
You wouldn't have anything. If people stayed in their lane and never tried to do the new thing, well, there would be no Dilbert.
Dilbert wouldn't exist.
This book wouldn't exist.
My last 11 books wouldn't exist.
And this Periscope wouldn't exist.
Almost everything good It comes from somebody leaving their lane.
You can't have worse advice than that.
And when I hear anybody say that, I just say to myself, well, there's somebody who is locked in, eh?
What are they locked in?
A bubble. That's one of the ways you get locked in a bubble.
If you believe that what you're good at is all you should do, you're trapped.
Because if you believe about others, certainly you believe it about yourself.
So that's one of the bubble walls.
All right, but anyway, back to Melissa Milano.
She listed nine reasons that the president should be impeached.
Now, so I took a photograph of a page from my book on laundry list persuasion, it's called, and what to do about it.
Now, when people have one good reason to make their point, Do they give you ten?
They don't. If somebody has one or two good reasons, let's say three at a most, they'll give you those reasons.
But if they don't have any good reasons, they'll give you ten reasons.
And the reason is that they don't have any compelling reasons.
So you have to try to compensate with volume.
So if you see ten reasons for something...
Not 100% of the time, but very reliably, you can assume that this is not a credible point of view.
It's probably a confirmation bias point of view.
So here are Alyssa Milano's nine things that the president should be impeached for.
Obstructing justice, violation of the emoluments clause, collusion, advocating political violence, abuse of power, predicting political...
Predicting political opponents.
Predicting? There must have been a typo in that.
Attacking the free press, violating due process for immigrants, and quid pro quo with Ukraine.
Now, these are all impeachable offenses.
Now, if you believe that these are all impeachable offenses, and there are nine of them, Are you confused why there are zero Republicans who are willing to believe any of them?
Nine reasons and lots of Republicans.
You can't get one Republican, not one.
You can't get a single Republican to say that there's anything on the list, any of the nine things, that is impeachable.
Doesn't that make you wonder?
Now, if you were Alyssa or anybody on the same team, do you wake up and say, man, those Republicans are really unified?
In what world?
In what world are Republicans unified?
Well, there's like 95% who like the president, the job he's doing, etc., But we have people peeling off for pretty much almost everything.
It's pretty hard to get even all the Republicans on the same side.
But there's nine serious charges of impeachment, and you can't get one Republican, not one, who is actually in office.
That should make you wonder about the strength of your things.
Anyway, the technique I advise in the book and here on Periscope is that you ask them to give you the best, the strongest point on the list, and you get an agreement in advance that once you've debunked the strongest point, can we both agree that everything else is less important than the one that wasn't even real.
So you don't do them all.
That's a trap. Because you'll just be playing whack-a-mole until you debunk all nine of them, and then the first one will pop up like you'd ever debunked it.
So don't even bother that.
Just go after the strongest one.
I don't even know what would be the strongest one.
Here's an interesting conspiracy theory.
I am not presenting this as true.
I'm just saying it fits the observation so well that I had to scratch my head and wonder.
It comes from an article on zerohedge.com where there's some speculation without evidence, right?
So there's no concrete evidence of this.
This is just speculation.
That the real reason that the California electrical grid was being shut down was not really because of fire risk, but rather because we get our energy from windmills.
And one of the qualities of windmills is that they only work within a band of wind power.
If the wind is too strong, which was the problem that we're told about with turning off the power, the story was that the wind was so strong it would knock down power lines and that they would spark fires.
So it was better just to turn them off while the wind is blowing.
But there's speculation that was a fake reason.
And that the real reason is that so much of our energy is now produced by windmills.
Wait for it.
So much of our energy in California is produced by windmills that we can't have energy When the wind is blowing too hard, because the windmills don't work when the wind goes above a certain miles per hour.
So the thought was, it would be too embarrassing to say, you know, we don't have any electricity because our windmills don't work when it's really windy.
Now, even though there's a solid engineering reason why they don't work when it's really windy, that's not a good look.
And so you have to ask yourself, is the state that has made such a brand moving to green energy, did they find themselves in a pit, in a pinch, that would have debunked one of their most important California priorities, which is to go green?
Would it have exposed that going green gave us too much exposure to undependable energy sources?
In this case. Now, again, there is no direct evidence that that was part of any part of the calculation.
But you have to wonder, because we use a lot of wind power here.
Um... I asked yesterday if there's anybody switching topics here.
So Kamala Harris was reducing expenses and reducing her footprint for her campaign, at least in New Hampshire.
And I asked is there anybody who's ever decreased their campaign spending during the primaries?
And then went on to win, at least win the primary.
And the answer is yes. Historians are telling me that both Carey and McCain did some paring back during the process and then went on to win the nomination before losing in the general.
So apparently just the fact that you've pared back your operation is not enough to take you out.
So Kamala is still alive Barely.
Just for fun, I'm going to keep my original prediction.
Then she'll get the nomination.
I think all of you would agree the odds of that happening are really small now, like vanishingly small.
But for fun, I'm just going to keep the prediction until we actually know, until she drops out.
I would say her odds are very, very, very, very, very low.
But if you would ask me what are the...
But here's the question.
If you were to ask me, what are the odds that one of the other candidates, even one of the high-ranked ones, gets the nomination, I'd say low.
Isn't it a whole bunch of people who have very little chance of getting nominated?
Because I think Biden will fall apart, Warren is unelectable in the general, Bernie is unelectable in the general.
Somebody's going to have to get the nomination, but Mayor Pete doesn't do well in a poll of the entire country.
All right. Here's a sign that the other team is running out of material.
So in The Atlantic, which is well known as probably the most virulent, aggressive anti-Trump publication, David Graham writes...
Or at least the headline.
I don't know if he wrote the headline.
It might have been an editor who wrote the headline.
But the headline is, Trump's reverse cover-up.
Trump is being blamed for what they call a reverse cover-up by telling us what the transcript of the Ukrainian call was before anybody really asked for it too much.
I mean, I'm sure people are asking for it.
But he gave it up easily.
And they're saying, wait a minute, what kind of trickery is this when you're not covering stuff up?
I'm not making this up.
The Atlantic just wrote an article saying that he's trying to hide his crime by showing us all the evidence.
It's called a reverse cover-up.
And the thinking is that the public won't understand the details.
So the very fact that he's made it public and he's offering to do a fireside chat, to read it out loud for anybody who hasn't heard it, and this is what I talked about yesterday, I said, it gives the impression that there's nothing there to worry about because he's being so transparent about it and says, I'll do a fireside chat.
I'll read the damn thing to every one of you in the country.
That's how not a problem it is.
And then...
David Graham in The Atlantic says, quote, the partial transcript is deeply incriminating, capturing the president pressuring Zelensky to investigate a political rival and to intervene in America's election as part of a quid pro quo.
What does deeply incriminating mean?
Deeply incriminating.
Does that mean a law was violated?
No. It doesn't mean that.
Because I don't believe there's an allegation of a law being broken.
So, deeply incriminating of what?
Because it's not incriminating.
He showed you the transcript.
There's no incrimination.
There's just what happened, and we all know what happened.
So, I don't know if incriminating is even...
The word doesn't feel like it fits here, because even the accused is completely transparent about what happened on the phone call.
It's a weird situation where we're all looking at it, and again, it's two movies on one screen.
You see what you want to see.
LeBron James was...
Playing somewhere yesterday, I didn't really care.
But there were some spectators in the front row, where you can't miss them, you know, the ones who were just sitting right with their feet on the court, who had free Hong Kong t-shirts on.
Imagine being LeBron James, and of course you see the people whose feet are right on the court.
They often interact with them and stuff.
And you look over and there's somebody there with a free Hong Kong shirt on, and several of them, I guess.
Does that get in your head?
I would think so.
I would think so.
So, I'm not a big sports fan, but I thought it was interesting that Steve Kerr has been, you know, the head of the Warriors, and very anti-Trump, had been lauded as one of the best coaches in the NBA. So Steve Kerr, one of the best coaches, and he kept winning all these championships, etc.
But this year, he doesn't have good players.
He has weaker players than he did when he was the best coach ever.
And now, I watched two of their games and they scored something like half of what the other team scored.
They didn't even look like an NBA team.
And so, you have to ask yourself.
Somebody's pointing out that Steve Kerr coincidentally coaches Stephen Curry.
So there's two Steve Kerrs in there, which is weird.
All right. So how good a coach is Steve Kerr?
Because as soon as he doesn't have the best players who have ever lived on the planet on the same team, he doesn't win games.
Just an open question.
I just don't know how good he is.
Because we've never seen him with bad players, have we?
He's not doing so well with bad players.
Not bad players, but he doesn't have the championship quality he had before.
How are we doing here? So Biden is leading in all the polls, and there's a recent poll that confirms that, for leading in the polls, not just in the primaries, but in a hypothetical general election.
And here's one of the findings of the polls.
People are not terribly concerned if their preferred candidate has the right policies.
Well, let me say that again, because you probably think I misspoke.
Democrats are not terribly concerned if the candidate they prefer has the right policies.
Is that all you need to know?
That's all you need to know, right there.
Now, I don't know, it wasn't not a majority down there, but there was some big chunk of minority who were just like, well, I like the candidate, even if the policies are wrong.
That's the world you live in.
I guess some combat veterans were asked about the idea of giving Conan the hero dog, the one that caused al-Baghdadi to blow himself up.
They asked him about giving the dog the Purple Heart.
What do you think the combat veterans who got Purple Hearts thought about the idea of a dog Getting a medal that's reserved for human heroes.
What do you think they thought of that?
Great idea. Yeah, the only people who think that's a bad idea are people who are not in the military, or have not served in combat, who are justifiably concerned that it would show a lack of respect.
But I think it's telling and interesting that the people who have actually done those jobs, people who have been in combat, people who have been wounded, people who got the, you know, Congressional Medal of Honor or whatever, that the people who have actually been in war with dogs, so far everyone that I've seen interviewed, it seems to be 100%, the people who have been in combat, especially if they've had dogs in combat with them, are saying, hell yeah.
Give the dog a purple heart, no question about it.
Now, I think there's a law about who can get a purple heart, so they might have to change the law.
Or to give them a special, maybe a dog purple heart that's got a little paw on it.
I think you've seen that.
Great idea. At least the second dog to receive it.
I don't know about that. Somebody says that some other dog has received it.
But I don't have information on that.
I've got to get ready to fly.
Heading off to New York on book tour.
You might get sick of me in the next couple of weeks.
But please, buy my book.
Because if you do, it will push it above the anti-Trump books, which are ahead of it on a couple of the bestseller lists.
Now, I was feeling pretty cocky this morning because the category on Amazon of, what is it, business, business humor books, the top three items in that category right now are my book, the Kindle version of my book, and the Dilbert calendar. So talk about owning a category.
I own that category.
Fly like an eagle, Scott.
All right. Have a great trip.
Thank you. I will. I don't know if I'll be able to do my periscopes every day at the same time on the road.
I'll be in a different time zone and busy during the day, but I'll try to do one a day.
If it's not at the appointed time, it'll be sometime.
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