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Nov. 12, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
38:19
Episode 723 Scott Adams: A Simultaneous Sip, Better Late Than Never
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Time Text
Hey, everybody.
If you're wondering why my sound quality is so bad, there's a reason for that.
I can't find my microphone.
But, will that stop me from the simultaneous step?
I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
I've got a Wi-Fi problem in my hotel.
I'm on the road. And hotel Wi-Fi...
It doesn't work.
So I am hot spotting it today.
So this is your hot spot simultaneous sip.
The best there could ever be.
And when it's late, it's better than ever.
Because it made you wait. Alright.
Grab your cup or mug or stein or chalice.
Your beverage holder of any kind.
It could be a canteen, shot glass, thermos.
It doesn't matter. 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 and gets better every time you do it, the simultaneous sip.
Go. So, I'm on the road again, promoting my book, which I know by now every one of you have acquired.
Most of you have read. Some of you have acquired several versions of it, from Kindles to hard copies to audiobook.
Yes, I'm going on Dave Rubin today.
I'm not sure exactly when his show airs.
I'll find out. Then I'll tweet it at you.
But what is better than being in Southern California and getting to talk to Dave Rubin?
Nothing. Nothing.
It's the best thing ever.
I'll let you know when the episode shows.
So we'll be there in a few hours.
So I've been trying to figure out, I swear, I've been trying really hard to understand this whole Ukrainian phone call situation.
And I've been debating with people on Twitter to try to get a better sense of where my blank spots are.
Where do I have a gap in my understanding that needs to be filled in?
You may be having the same experience.
I'm trying to understand it, but it's really hard.
So here's where I am at the moment.
This is my current take.
The question of whether there was a quid pro quo or not is irrelevant.
You got it? The question of whether there was a quid pro quo is a complete distraction.
And irrelevant. Because if the president were asking for something totally appropriate, then he's allowed to push.
We would want him to do that.
So if he's asking for something appropriate, he's allowed to push.
But let's say he was asking for something that was inappropriate.
Is he still allowed to push?
Doesn't matter. Because if you're having a conversation With a man who controls the biggest military in the world and has the fate of your country and your administration on the line, and you've got to make him happy, how could he turn off the quid pro quo?
Is there a way to turn it off?
So the question is not whether or not there's a quid pro quo, because you couldn't turn it off if you wanted to.
If Trump walks in the room, it's quid pro quo all around.
Everybody watching? Everybody who's an assistant, everybody has a quid and a quo, or they wouldn't even be there.
So arguing about whether the quid pro quo exists in a specific instance is just loser think, because it can't matter either way.
It doesn't matter if he said, or else, or if he didn't say, or else.
The implied relationship is always at stake.
In every conversation, there's an implied quid pro quo.
So the arguments about that may have some legal significance, but because, as far as I know, there's no claim of a law being broken.
So what if quid pro quo did have meaning in a legal context?
Would it matter? Well, not in this case, because there's no allegation of a crime.
The president is not accused of an actual crime, at least by people who know what they're talking about.
So, I think the whole quid pro quo thing is a complete waste of time.
The only question we should be asking is, did the president do something that was appropriate or inappropriate?
And here it gets interesting, because I've been debating with some people who are smarter than the normal people online to try to see their point of view.
I'm actually really trying to understand, because I'm having some trouble Just really grasping the other point of view.
And so I argued with somebody who seemed pretty smart yesterday, and we went all the way down the rabbit hole.
And in the end, this is where it came out.
He said the president violated a norm.
A norm. That it wasn't a question of whether this particular request was good or bad, but rather the problem was That this type of request is bad.
So the best my opponent could come up with to argue that the president should be impeached, and it sounds like I'm making this up, the most he could come up with is that this sort of thing, not this specific thing, but this sort of thing would be violating a norm, and therefore he should be impeached.
And I thought to myself, do you know what else violates a norm?
Everything. How about everything violates the norm?
If it's this president, there's no norm he hasn't violated.
So the question should be, you know, keep going down the rabbit hole.
Quid pro quo is irrelevant because it's just there all the time.
Then there's, is it appropriate?
Well, is it legal?
That's the next question, and apparently it is.
The next question you should ask yourself is, was he trying to hide it?
Well, he did it in front of a lot of people, and here's the key.
Not only did he do it in front of a lot of people, he asked Ukraine to announce it in public, or Rudy did, or somebody did.
Now, do you think the president, if he were trying to keep it a secret, would have asked Ukraine to announce it?
Because obviously that would be tracked back to the president asking for it.
And there were plenty of witnesses.
So could you really say that the president was trying to keep this a secret?
It looks like the opposite.
It looks like he was trying to make it as public as possible.
He made the phone call in front of people.
Now there's a question about the transcript being on the server, and I think that was probably just a cover your ass sort of thing, where they didn't want to, you know, maybe they didn't want people to look at the language and pick it apart, because you could always find something.
So I think that should be looked at as just normal, bureaucratic, ah, cover our ass, put this on the secret server kind of thing.
But in general, and I don't think that was Trump's decision to put it on that server.
That doesn't sound like something he gets involved with.
But in general, the president wasn't trying to hide anything.
If you ask for it to be publicly announced and it's obvious who was behind it, you're kind of asking for it to be right out there.
Alright, so quid pro quo doesn't matter, because it's always there, no matter what.
You can't take it away.
If the godfather asks you for a favor, he doesn't need to say, or else.
If your boss asks you to do a project, the boss doesn't say, or else.
It's just always there. Right?
It's not illegal.
Nobody's claiming that.
It's not hidden.
Because he clearly didn't do the things you would do if you were trying to hide it.
And then you go down the rabbit hole, and then it becomes you don't want it to be a norm.
And what they mean by that is you would not want it to be a norm, in their words, for the sitting president to use his power to dig up dirt, this would be their words, on an opponent.
Now, is that a norm you would want to avoid?
Or is that a norm you would want to normalize?
Let me ask you this.
If Don Jr.
had been taking money from, let's say, Russia, would the Democrats want to look into that?
Yes. If Don Jr.
were taking money from Russia, let's say an oligarch connected to Putin, and had some kind of sweetheart deal, Now, this one's harder to imagine because Don Jr.
is already rich, so you probably wouldn't be involved in something like that.
You wouldn't need to. It wouldn't make any sense.
But just imagine. Would you want to know, you mostly Trump supporters on this Periscope, wouldn't you want to know what was up with that?
If Don Jr. was taking a bunch of money from a Russian oligarch, he's not.
As far as I know, he's not.
But if he were, That's not Democrat or Republican, is it?
So the next thing is you have to be consistent.
If this very specific situation were reversed, I would want it to be a norm.
In other words, if President Obama, while still in office, had learned that candidate Trump, who was, let's say, the nominee by that time, if President Obama had learned that somebody in the immediate Trump family was taking a lot of money, From Russia, what do you want the public to know?
What do you want that investigation to tell us what we need to know?
Probably. To me that would seem like an entirely legitimate thing for a president to want to know.
So, when somebody argues we don't want to make this a precedent or we don't want to make it a norm, that's loser think.
Because this specific case is something you would want to be a norm.
You would want your government to look into anything that is so clearly and publicly known to be potential conflict.
So I would apply that both sides.
I think it would be entirely appropriate.
Now, some might take this to, well, what about looking at Trump's taxes?
And I think that's a special case as well.
You can't take every case and say, well, that's just like his taxes.
If the IRS doesn't see a problem with its taxes and nobody else is complaining about something specific, then I'd say sort of up to the candidate.
But if New York State or somebody else found something that was evidence of an actual potential problem, then I would want my government to look into it.
I wouldn't want to be saying supportive things of a candidate who had some big problem With an entanglement somewhere in a foreign country.
So, first of all, you've got to be consistent.
You've got to say that whatever your stand is about Joe Biden and the President asking for whatever he asks for, you've got to say, would you do the same if the rules were reversed?
And I think you would.
Why wouldn't you? Why would you not want to know if your leader is owned by another country?
How could we possibly not want to know that?
So here's my summary of all that.
And I've said this a number of times.
I saw today that apparently the GOP has four talking point defenses about what the president did or did not do.
And one of the defenses is that there's technically no quid pro quo.
And I guess they can make a good case for that, because the president is on record as saying directly it's not quid pro quo.
He used the word favor, and apparently some of the Ukrainians, according to pro-Trump GOP types, apparently the Ukraine didn't know anything was being held up.
So there was no...
And then they got the money anyway without doing the thing.
So they're arguing that the quid pro quo doesn't exist.
And I think...
I think that might be a losing argument, because although it may not technically exist, there's no way any normal voter is going to say, he was talking to the President of the United States, the only one who had the power to save his country militarily, in case Moscow got out of control.
I think it's a losing argument to argue quid pro quo doesn't exist.
Because although maybe it doesn't exist, it's a losing argument because it's just always there.
It's in the atmosphere.
You can't say it's not sitting on the table.
It doesn't matter if it's sitting on the table where you can see it.
It's in the atmosphere. You can't remove it.
It's there with every conversation.
So I would go to the next argument, which is, was it illegal?
And was he trying very hard to hide it?
And it wasn't illegal, and he wasn't trying very hard to hide it.
So then the next question is, was it appropriate?
And appropriate comes down to, is it good for the country?
And can you imagine any situation in which you as a voter, be you Republican, or be you independent, or be you a Democrat?
Can you imagine not wanting to know what's going on there?
Wouldn't you want to know as a voter?
Biden is leading in all the polls.
He's leading in a head-to-head, at least in the polls, he's leading head-to-head against Trump.
He could be our next president.
Don't you want to know as much about that guy as possible?
That's how it works. When you're running for president and you're the number one guy, people can ask a lot of questions and the public wants to know.
So the only thing I would want to know in this whole thing True or false, it is in the public's interest, the voters' interest, that we have more information about whatever was going on there with Biden.
That's the only thing I would argue.
Everything else is sort of not understanding the question.
Because if you're arguing quid pro quo, it's like you don't know how anything works.
Because you couldn't take it out.
Even if the President had no intentions of quid pro quo, you can't erase it from the situation.
It is the situation.
You know, it's not the situation that you can take this part out.
It's the situation.
Two leaders talking.
And especially in this specific situation where Ukraine needs the United States and will need us probably for a lot of things and for a lot of years.
Alright, so that's my That's my take on this.
How's my audio quality, by the way?
I'm surprised this live stream is working because I'm just hot spotting it off of my...
Quid pro quo threats are violations of labor negotiations.
Irrelevant. Oh, so one of the arguments is it wasn't actually the president's job.
So what law does that violate?
So it wasn't the president's job.
Is that a law? No.
It's not a law. What is it?
When you say it wasn't the president's job, what is it?
It's a norm. It's a standard practice that the president doesn't get involved in investigations and then doesn't get involved, especially, with investigation of an opponent.
But if that investigation of the opponent isn't happening, What should the president do?
Let's say Bill Barr or whoever goes over there and talks to the Ukrainians and isn't getting the kind of response he needs.
What do you do? Does Bill Barr just go back to the president and say, I tried, but they're not answering my questions?
Would Bill Barr do that?
And if he did, what would the president do?
Would the president say, gosh, I can't get involved in this because that would be against the norm.
Or would the president say, oh, well, we do have a legitimate right to know what's going on over there, and if you can't get it done through your more official sources, you know, justice to justice, so to speak, what do you do?
You always kick it up to the boss.
Do you think that the president would have made this call if Bill Barr could have just gone over there and done it himself?
The only people who think that Bill Barr...
Can do it without the president's help are people who have very little experience in the real world.
In the real world, if you work for a big company and you even want marketing to talk to sales, sometimes the bosses have to talk first.
In fact, normally, in order for people to get anything done.
Have you ever tried to get another organization to work with you without the agreement of the boss?
It's hard. Because the people in the organization work for their boss.
They don't work for you. They just report to their boss.
And if the boss isn't saying to do it, why would they waste their time?
Just because you want it. You only do things because your boss tells you to do it, or you know your boss wants it.
So until the bosses have talked, the underlings are a little bit toothless.
And obviously. And let me ask you this.
If you think that Bill Barr could have gotten it done...
On his own. Do you think Trump would have gotten involved?
No. Obviously, it wasn't happening.
For whatever reason, it wasn't happening.
So he violated a norm, and he got involved.
Now, again, if this were reversed, and Trump and Don Jr., The analogy bus, because he hasn't done anything.
He's done nothing except produce a book people like, apparently.
But if you imagine it the other way, I'd feel the same.
You'd want to know what's going on, and you'd be happy that the president got involved if there wasn't any other way to make it happen.
It's not perfect.
It's not perfect. But we don't live in a world where everything can be buttoned up and perfect.
All right. That's way too much on that, isn't it?
But it seems like that's the only news today.
Will you be able to visit with James Woods while in L.A.? Well, it wasn't on my itinerary.
I have to admit that was not on my top hundred list of things to do in L.A., although James Woods is kind of awesome in his way.
So do impeachment hearings help Trump?
Probably. You know, we'll have to see how they go.
The Nikki Haley thing, so Nikki Haley said that Tillerson and John Kelly were trying to undermine the president.
And I think Tillerson at least has said that didn't happen.
So once again, it's she said, she said, and I'm not sure any of it matters.
I'm not buying the theory that Nikki Haley is playing this game where she's trying to replace Mike Pence and then hang around until Trump gets impeached and take over the presidency.
Maybe. Seems unlikely.
Somebody said,''How often do I change or update my glasses?'' Way too infrequently.
I should do it more often. And Christina was the one who picked these out.
So you would have to give her credit if you like them.
My old ones, I think, made me look older.
These at least make me look more current, if not younger.
Am I buying DJT's book, Triggered?
I'm many books behind, but I'm sure that would be a good one.
We're losing you, somebody said.
Are you having problems with the connection?
Yeah, I haven't seen the Climate Change Greta Thornburg mural in SF, but I did see the Babylon Bee version where they altered it, so it looks like lasers are coming out of our eyes to shoot SUVs.
I'll tell you, the Babylon Bee is just killing it lately.
If you're not following the Babylon Bee, you're missing some of the best humor that you'll see.
So it's sort of like The Onion, except they have a conservative bent, which makes them, you know, they're usually in the political realm, and it's pretty hilarious.
I did a podcast for them coming up, which I'll tell you about when it's out.
Connection is fine.
It's good to know. Alright, is anything else going on?
Most of you saw me on the Greg Gottfeld show, I hope.
And, you know, it was interesting.
If you heard me on the Greg Gottfeld show, when I played it back, I noticed that everybody has a better voice than I do.
They have a more commanding, powerful voice.
You know, Greg... Greg has a really, you know, powerful voice that kind of takes over a room, as does Kat.
You know, she has a different kind of voice, but really it cuts through the noise and really gets your attention.
Tyrus, of course. And then Dave Smith, comedian, was there.
He has a great voice. And I would listen to my voice.
It was for the end of my day.
You hear me in the morning when I'm on this periscope, and it probably sounds a lot better.
But by the end of the day, I've been talking all day.
You know, I could do 25 interviews a day on a book tour.
And I don't have much left in the tank by 6 p.m.
You know, because my day starts at 3 or 4 in the morning.
Will I watch the hearings only if I'm around?
Dad was up again, you say?
Somebody says, be more natural.
Be more natural on The Greg Godfeld Show.
I don't know what natural would mean in that case.
It's important to match the energy of the show.
So anybody, in fact, in my book, in my book, loser think, one of the things I teach is that some of the worst advice you'll ever get is to be yourself or to be natural because that never works.
You should be whatever the situation calls for.
And who you are is what you do.
So if you're the person who comes into a room and simply acts happy, you're that guy.
It doesn't matter what your internal thought is.
That's who you are. That's who you become.
So for whoever said I should have acted more naturally, maybe act natural is not be natural.
I couldn't be more natural, but I suppose I could act natural.
In other words, I could put on a different kind of performance and That look to you more natural.
But that's the best you can do. Acting natural would be the worst advice.
Because I would just sit there, low energy, mumbling like I usually do.
If you're on a TV show, you're not supposed to act natural.
You're supposed to crank it up to unnatural and entertaining.
So I tried to do that.
But the others who are with me are more experienced at that sort of thing.
You can tell. You seem kind of nervous.
You know what's funny?
I wasn't nervous at all.
I don't get nervous for most things.
I mean, I visited the President of the United States in the Oval Office, and I don't even think my pulse was elevated.
So I've sort of reached that point in my life where things like this don't embarrass me.
I don't treat them as a risk.
And when something isn't a risk, then you're not really too worried about it.
I mean, you probably detected that I was concentrating to try to remember what I thought I was going to say in case I got the questions I was hoping to get, that sort of thing.
But my pulse was probably baseline.
Do I like Kat Timph's humor?
Yes, very much. I think Kat is incredible.
Would like to hear you and Rush Limbaugh talk.
Well, I sent my book to Stirli, and we don't know if Rush will want to talk to me, but if he ever does, I would love to do that.
All you got to do is act naturally, yeah.
You seemed a little nervous, but I wasn't.
You may have seen me looking unnatural.
Which is different from being nervous.
Because I didn't have any nervous at all, actually.
You look taller on Periscope.
That's true. I noticed the same thing.
When you see me on a couch with normal-sized people, I look smaller.
Especially if Tyrus is the one on the end.
You like my Epoch Times interview?
Thank you. Ba-ba-ba-boom.
Do I always operate at maximum persuasion?
No. It's hard to turn it off because it just becomes the way you act.
You know, some people ask me, are you trying to be persuasive in any particular context?
And I always say the same thing, which is persuasion is something that you know, and it's something you become.
Because all communication is an attempt to be persuasive.
Sometimes you're persuading people to just have a good time.
So you're trying to entertain them.
Sometimes you're persuading them to change their mind.
Sometimes you just want them to like you.
But all communication is persuasion.
And once you know the right way to communicate, you're also just automatically persuasive.
So you can't turn it off.
It's just who you become. What would you do differently next time on Getfeld?
I would smile less.
I would smile less.
I was actually really happy.
And when you're there in person, it's even funnier than it is on TV. Because...
There's also stuff that happens during the commercial breaks, which is just as funny as the stuff that you see on screen.
Sometimes the good stuff happens in the breaks.
And so the entire time you're there, from the moment I reached the green room ahead of time, it's all fun people.
By now I knew most of them.
And the energy's high.
Everybody's joking around.
Everybody's in a good mood. So it's just a really good time.
It's by far the most fun show to do.
Did anything get edited out?
Yes, but only for time.
So we went a little bit long and edited a few minutes.
I'm not sure you would notice it.
Is there online training you recommend for learning hypnosis?
There is not. I'm not aware of any way to learn it.
From a book or from a website.
I've never heard of that.
I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but there's something about the in-person experience because it's a physical process where you have to do things and somebody has to watch you and all that.
And you need practice.
Yeah, Don Jr. got heckled by Trump supporters for not taking questions.
Eh, not much of a story.
Your book, Kindle vs.
Audible. Well, that's a personal choice.
What about Brexit? You know, I just can't get interested in Brexit.
I want to be, but I'm not.
All right, I'm just looking at your comments.
I'm going to have to get ready to do my first thing today.
And I will need to run.
And I didn't want to miss the simultaneous sip.
Is hypnosis okay for teens to quit vaping?
Hypnosis would not work on your teen to quit vaping.
Here's a little tip about hypnosis.
Hypnosis does not work better than any other well-known method for quitting cigarettes or vapes or losing weight.
The secret is, and you learn this as a hypnotist, that the person has to decide to quit.
Once a person has decided to quit, every method works.
And maybe one out of three people actually have decided.
The other two out of three want to quit, or maybe somebody else wants them to quit.
There's no method that will make them quit.
Hypnosis cannot make somebody change their mind to want something different, at least in this context.
In other contexts, yes.
But no, hypnosis would have no value in stopping somebody from vaping because the reason they vape is that they want to vape.
Now, if your teen came to you and said, damn, I really super want to quit.
I'm not kidding. I just can't quit.
Can you find me some help?
Now, under that condition, Hypnosis would work the same way everything else would work.
It wouldn't matter what method you picked.
Once the decision is made, the rest just happens.
So we often confuse wanting to quit with deciding to quit.
And those are completely different.
Wanting to quit means you're not going to quit.
Deciding to quit means you're going to quit.
And sometimes you can tell the difference.
There have probably been times in your life Where something happened, you know, this is the last straw, and you said to yourself, okay, all the other times I wanted to stop doing whatever it is, but I just decided.
And you feel that moment.
If you don't feel the moment, today's the day I decided, don't bother.
There's no method that will help you.
You're not going to quit something you want to do.
Yeah. Yeah. That's why Alan Carr stresses in his book, How to Give Up Smoking.
He should. I see a bunch of you who are having a realization on that.
The first time you hear that, it's quite a mindful...
I'm not going to use that word.
It might blow your mind.
Because we go through life thinking that our wishes and our decisions are somehow the same thing, and they're not.
Likewise, when...
And this is stolen from somebody rich who once said this.
I wish I could credit the right person, but I can't.
Somebody said that the way to be successful is to figure out what the price is and then pay it.
Now, the first time you hear that, you say to yourself, well, that's sort of saying nothing.
Figure out the price of success and pay it.
Yeah, great, Scott. Put that on your bumper sticker.
Put it on the bumper sticker.
It means nothing to me. But it's the most powerful thing you'll ever hear in your life.
When I first got an offer to be a cartoonist, I knew that I would have to work pretty much every day, every morning, every weekend, and every night for years to make it likely I would succeed.
And I actually made that decision on day one.
The day that I was offered a contract to be a syndicated cartoonist, and by the way, most people who get that contract fail.
The overwhelming number, 90%, maybe 95%, fail even after they get a contract to be syndicated in newspapers, because you still have to perform.
And I made a promise to myself, an actual promise, in real words, a specific moment, and I said, Scott, I make a promise to myself.
I won't fail because I didn't try hard enough.
There will never be a time in my life when I look back and say, you know, that cartooning thing could have worked out for me if I'd worked a little harder.
And I said to myself, I can't control everything, but I'm going to make sure there will never be a day in my future when I say to myself, If I'd only done that a little bit more.
And so I redlined my effort for years.
And if you're wondering why so few cartoonists ever make it to the big time, so to speak, it's because they don't or can't or won't do what I did, which is I put everything into it.
I left nothing on the table.
I didn't have A scrap of energy left at the end of every day, and I would fall asleep for four hours, wake up, and I would run, actually run, during the day to get everything done.
And this is not a joke.
Back in the days of fax machines and that, if I'd hear my fax machine going off in my other room in my little condo, I would run to get it.
Pick it up. And if I had to throw something away, I would run to the garbage pail.
And then if I got a phone call, I would run to the phone.
I would run to everything while I was inside my own home.
And the reason was that by running, I could buy myself an extra 3%.
I left nothing.
I left nothing to chance that I would ever ask myself, why didn't I work harder?
I redlined for 10 years.
So, I tell you that story.
Some of you said, that's inspirational.
I'll do something like that.
I have also my objective.
I'm going to leave it all out there.
I don't want to ever say I didn't work hard enough.
But others of you just said, I don't want any of that.
I don't want any of that.
And that's a good choice.
For some of you, this level of sacrifice is just not something that will ever work for you.
Don't do it. But go back to my advice.
If you want to be successful, find out the price and then pay it.
Somebody says, were you single?
Yes. I was in a relationship, but I was not married.
How did you mitigate the stress that came with that persistent effort?
I exercised almost every day, and keeping busy, turns out, is good for me.
So good things were happening, and I enjoyed it, and it was mentally stimulating, and I kind of like pressure.
I've always performed well under pressure.
Somebody says, I did the same as a hairstylist.
Good for you. You figured out what it would cost, and then once you knew the price, you didn't ask yourself, could I afford it?
You just went down and did the damn thing.
Sometimes you just have to decide.
It's not what you want, it's what you decide.
The exact way I was able to retire at 43, says Brad.
There you go. Drugs back then?
Not in those days. There are periods of my life when I was more or less prone to smoking massive amounts of marijuana.
But during the time that Dilbert was starting, it was not one of those times.
But yeah, it was off and on during that period.
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
I'm going to have to go get ready.
I would like to talk to you all day, but I've got to run.
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