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Nov. 25, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
33:23
Episode 737 Scott Adams: Talking About Bloomberg, The Next HOAX, The Trump “Cult”
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Hey everybody, come on in.
It's a sleepy Thanksgiving week here in America.
And, well thank you.
Good day to all of you.
I think you would like to enjoy a little thing called the simultaneous set.
And if you would like to play along, I know you do.
All you need.
It's all you need.
Here's a cup of munger, glasses, snifter, stein, chalice, tankard, thermos, 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, the thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go! So first I would like to clarify, update, that that excellent meme we saw, the president tweet, where it looked like Chris Cuomo's bomb was with Trump.
That was a Carpe Duncombe meme, so Carpe Duncombe has another home run there.
I would like to update you on my predictions.
Remember I told you that your filter on life is probably subjective like everybody else's, but you can tell if you have a good filter by whether it predicts well.
So I like to make predictions in public and then see if they're right or wrong, which I talk about in my book, Loser Think.
One of the ways you can tell if you're in a bubble It's by making predictions and then putting those predictions out in the real world to see how they do.
And if your predictions are always wrong, well, maybe you should rethink your worldview.
But if your predictions are often right, maybe you're onto something.
So track your predictions.
Let me update you on mine.
So on PredictIt, the online betting market, I have one, two, three, four.
I have five bets.
So I'm going to tell you what the bets are.
Now all of these, except one that I updated recently by adding to it, are all ones that I've had for months and months.
So you have my word that nothing on this list was recently bet.
So these are all older bets with the exception of one that I added to.
So one of the bets I have, and I've had for many months, is who will be the 2020 Democratic nominee?
A year ago, I thought it would be Kamala Harris, and I had a bet on that.
That bet is not looking good, but it's the bet that I doubled down on, because the price of shares is so low, and I had some extra cash in the account that wasn't used, so I thought, eh, let's throw some more money in there.
Now, the thing is, when you say to yourself, there's no way that she can get elected, Remember that you're also saying that about all the other candidates.
If there were one candidate that I thought were likely to be elected, I would say, well, that's a dumb bet, because why would I bet on somebody who's unlikely when there's somebody in the race who's likely?
And the answer is, there's nobody likely.
There's just nobody in the race who you could say, yeah, this is the one.
So I'm going to keep my bet, all right?
So we don't know if that's right or wrong.
It looks like it'll be wrong.
But all of the reasons that I made the original bet are the same.
Because she's still the one who could bring together this so-called Obama coalition, maybe as well as anybody else can.
So we'll leave that bet and we'll see how that does.
Here are some other bets I had.
I actually bet on whether or not Trump will still be the president at the end of this year, which is, you know, a month or so.
So it looks like I'm going to win that bet.
I couldn't believe when I made this bet, I couldn't believe it was even available as a bet.
I had trouble believing that there was an actual market For the question of whether Trump would still be in office, and I think I did this bet in the beginning of 2019, somewhere around there.
So, of course, that bet's doing well.
It looks like he'll be president at the end of 2019.
Then I also bet, will Trump be the 2020 GOP nominee?
He's got like 95% approval level in the GOP. Again, I couldn't believe that that was available.
You know, the odds for this one and the last one were not very high, but I just looked at it and I thought, I think that's free money.
I think all I have to do is put some money down and they'll give me more money back.
So I've got a bet on that.
That's looking good. Now, this was interesting.
I had a bet, again, this was many months ago, that the 2020 Democratic nominee will be a woman.
So you could bet whether it would be male or female.
I bet female.
So I will win if it's Warren or Harris or Klobuchar or Tulsi Gabbard.
Now, obviously, I have more of a chance of winning, I suppose, Warren than the others, but I'm keeping that bet.
Then, I had a bet.
You can use your own judgment about why I made this bet.
But there was a bet as to whether NASA would record that 2019 was the hottest year on record.
And I bet yes.
Now, I don't know if it'll be the hottest year on record, but doesn't it seem like they're going to say so?
It just seemed to me that whether or not it's the hottest year on record, I feel like NASA's gonna say so.
I feel like they're gonna say it is.
So at the moment that bet is down.
It's way down actually. So apparently the temperatures have not been cooperating.
So those are my bets so you can see how they're doing.
Apparently, there are two polls out that say that Trump has 34% black support.
What? So the Rasmussen and Emerson polls, I think those are the two, separate polls about the same time, and they both came to the same conclusion, that Trump has 34% black support now.
Do you believe that?
Now, I don't know how that translates.
Does that translate into anything like votes?
Because it might not translate into votes, but if anything like that's true, then nothing else matters.
Do you remember, you probably remember that I was saying Way back when Trump first got elected, that if he could move the black vote, all the other variables don't matter, because that's sort of the big one.
If the Democrats can't really, really win the black vote completely, overwhelmingly, decisively, they can't win.
So I just don't know if this is true.
Does it feel true?
Maybe. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's in the category of things I want to believe is true, so therefore I'm totally subject to confirmation bias because I want it to be true.
I say keep a little skepticism on that one, but it's fun to watch.
So the Secretary of the Navy got himself fired for, apparently, I'm not sure if we know the details, but he either quit or he was fired for disobeying an order or disagreeing with the President.
Something about the pardon.
And so far, everybody I've seen has had the same comment, which is good.
I feel good about the country because of this.
It's weird that little things like this make you feel good, but the fact that the Secretary of the Navy didn't want to obey an order, and it wasn't really a terribly important order.
It had to do with one person.
It wasn't about a war or a battle or something.
But the Secretary of the Navy decided he didn't want to obey that order for the Commander-in-Chief, and so the Commander-in-Chief immediately fired him.
He fired him for that.
Now, it's hard to think of any other job where you would get fired for what is a relatively small thing.
But everybody I saw who commented on this was happy about it.
And I was happy too.
Now, I don't know if it's a good Secretary of State, whether he was doing a good job in general.
I have no opinion. But I feel safer In a world where the civilian elected commander-in-chief can fire a top military commander at the drop of a hat.
And for disobeying orders.
Even though it was, in the larger scheme of things, it was a small order, because it was about one person.
It was a small order.
But I just love the fact that even disobeying a small order You're fired.
Nothing else matters.
Don't you like that?
There's something terribly encouraging about that.
That, I don't know, we know that there's an elected person who has complete control over these military people who are not elected.
So I like that.
Mike Bloomberg is in the race.
As you know, I predicted he would not be.
So there's another prediction that didn't go my way.
But I still think there's more we need to know about this.
I'm wondering if someday we won't hear that Mike Bloomberg didn't expect to win and that he got him for some kind of strategic reason.
Do you think that's possible?
Am I trying too hard to find something where there's nothing there?
Because the simplest explanation is Mike Bloomberg thinks he could win and thinks it's worth getting in and it's at least worth a try.
So the simplest explanation is it's exactly what it looks like.
He just thinks he can win.
Doesn't think the others can win.
Thinks it's good for the country.
Could be that. It might just be that.
But I feel as if...
Yeah, somebody's saying, yes, you're trying too hard.
And I can certainly...
I can respect that opinion.
But let's just speculate.
Is it possible there's a more clever play here?
Because I think one of the things that we'll do is take Biden out of the race, right?
Because Bloomberg is sort of that middle ground, reasonable person, and so Biden should be hurt the most.
Now, what would happen if Biden is taken down?
Would someone else emerge?
I don't know. Buttigieg probably has a cap on his total support.
He doesn't have much black support.
So that's a losing proposition.
I feel as if...
It's almost as if Bloomberg is coming in as some kind of a spoiler to make it possible for someone yet maybe we haven't even heard of.
To run? I mean, it just doesn't make much sense to me.
I can't quite figure it out.
It could be that he's 77 and he's not making good decisions anymore.
I mean, it could be as easy as that.
You know, I caution you in my incredible book, the best book you've ever seen in the world.
Everybody's talking about it.
Loser think. I caution you about...
I forgot what I was going to say.
But I'm sure it was really good.
It was really good.
See, if he was mayor of New York City, why wouldn't he want to be a politician again?
Well, he's 77. That's why.
Anybody who decides at age 77 to run for president?
I don't know. I mean, that alone is an indication of bad judgment, isn't it?
Do we want a president who has a high likelihood of not surviving the entire term?
I don't know. So let's keep an eye on that.
That'll be fun. I'm trying to figure out what hoax will be next.
Because it looks like the impeachment thing completely failed.
It looks like the polls are moving opposite Schiff's direction.
In other words, the President is picking up support.
He's got a record economy and all-time high Republican support.
I mean, he's really in good shape.
The president is really in good shape for the re-election.
So the Democrats are going to have to come up with another hoax, because the hoaxes that they've tried so far have now worked.
Amazingly enough. So let's try to predict what is next.
And I'm starting to see some test balloons go up.
And I thought to myself, if you're a Republican, how can you explain your world...
Based on what you've seen.
So my worldview is completely consistent.
So my worldview says President Trump did not do anything impeachable and therefore will not be removed from office.
Now, if he's not removed from office, my worldview will be consistent.
But what if your worldview is not only that the president did something that's impeachable, but several impeachable things, and their worldview is it's all obvious.
There's no question about the facts.
It's just all obvious.
What would you think about the president not being removed from office?
How would your world make sense?
In my world, he doesn't get removed from his office because he didn't do anything that would warrant that.
But if you think he did plenty of things that warrant it, how do you explain it a year from now when he's still in office?
Well, we're seeing the answer to that.
You already know the answer, right?
The answer is that the Republicans are a cult.
That seems to be the answer they're looking for to make their world make sense.
Because if Republicans are a cult and not looking at reason, Then that makes sense, because the Republican majority in the Senate will never vote to support impeachment, but not because there's not evidence.
According to the Democratic view of the world, it's because it's a cult.
And I think that most of us, when we hear that, our first reaction is to laugh, right?
It's just laugh. Because it's, on first blush, it's just sort of humorously ridiculous.
But CNN actually had a cult expert on to describe how Trump supporters actually fit the definition of a cult expert.
Now, it's a cult leader who actually interviewed me recently, a few months ago.
And I think I'm in the book that was mentioned, or at least he interviewed me as part of that.
I don't know if I made it into a book or it was just for his website.
I'm not sure. But I did talk to him.
So part of his evidence, this cult expert, part of his evidence that the GOP is a cult, is that they have an all-powerful leader.
A leader who's got complete power.
That's one of the definitions of a cult.
To which I humorously tweeted, I belong to a cult whose leader is so powerful that he almost got fired for making a phone call.
That's how powerful Trump is.
He almost got fired for making a phone call.
That's not exactly the most powerful leader in the world.
Do you know what Putin never almost gets fired for?
Making a phone call.
Do you know what President Xi of China never gets almost fired for?
Making a phone call.
Do you know what I almost never get fired for?
Making a phone call.
Trump's the only person in the world who could lose his job for making a phone call.
Now, of course, I'm using a little hyperbole, but the point is, in what world does Trump look like he has all this power?
He can't control the border on his own.
He can't get a bill passed on his own.
He can't get a trade deal done.
He can't get the USMCA signed.
He can't do anything on his own, it seems.
So the thought that the GOP is a cult is laughably, laughably predictable and funny.
All right. Because it's a slow news week, I'm going to challenge you.
I guess this is a challenge.
You know, I often say that, well, let me come at this from a different angle.
I've been watching a lot of nerdy shows on YouTube lately and looking at different clips of new studies about physics and all these weird things in physics.
So here are some of the mysteries of the universe, if you will.
And I'll just list them and then I'll make a point about them.
One of them is, do we have free will?
Now, without getting into the details, does free will make sense if we live in a universe where there's physics?
Because the rules of physics should apply inside our skull as well as outside.
So how does it make sense that we have free will and yet we think we do?
So that's just one of those mysteries of the universe.
Why is there no boundary to our universe that we can get to?
Have you noticed you can't get to the edge of the universe?
Interesting. We can't get there.
What would it look like if we could?
Have you noticed that at the smallest level, if you looked at the subatomic level, that there's nothing there?
There's nothing there.
Only probability. What are the odds that if you drill down into the smallest components of the building blocks of our reality, that you would find nothing there?
That's what scientists have found.
There's nothing there. There's only probability.
And here's the other part.
Reality apparently is subjective.
There have been some studies to show that.
And subjective, what I mean by that is that your observation of things collapses the wave or whatever they call it.
But reality doesn't exist until it's observed.
That's actually a known thing.
At the small quantum level, until somebody observes it, it's only a probability.
How does that make sense? I'll give you some more.
Dark matter, 85% of the universe is made of stuff that seems invisible and we can't identify.
85% is just sort of dark matter.
Whatever that is.
Why is it we can't see intelligent life on other planets?
Because we would certainly expect we would.
Is it a coincidence that we haven't run into them?
It's a mystery. Did you know that scientists have shown some studies recently that you can change the past?
Now, it's on some small level, like the level of photons or something, but there have been some studies in which they showed that they could alter the past under special conditions.
In what normal universe can you alter the past?
Apparently there can also be multiple histories that can both be true.
And then there's Bell's theorem, where you have entangled particles, and if you make an observation on one, it collapses the other one no matter where it is, and it does it instantly, as in faster than the speed of light.
So you can change something in one part of the universe that makes an instant change To the, you know, entangled particle on the other side of the universe with no time transpired.
It happens instantly on the other side of the universe.
How is that possible?
Right? It's a mystery. How about magnetism?
I talk about this one all the time.
Magnetic, if you were to put a, let's say, some kind of barrier between two magnets, a magnet on each side and a barrier, you could not put any kind of a barrier between them That would reduce the magnetic attraction.
There's nothing you can put between two magnets.
Nothing. That even reduces it even in a theoretical way.
There's nothing you can do to stop a magnetic force.
How is that possible? It doesn't seem possible, does it?
So, now let me ask you this.
Is there any way to explain all of these, I don't know, paradoxes and mysteries with one theory?
Yes, there is.
Simulation theory actually answers all of these.
Every one of these mysteries is solved or could be explained by simulation theory, that we're actually a software world.
Somebody asked about Mu Metal.
Somebody is a good engineer.
Mu Metal, M-U, metal, is a magnetic shield.
But it's not a shield in the normal sense.
It's a diverter.
It diverts the force.
It doesn't reduce it.
So you can divert a force, but you can't reduce it.
Are you impressed that I knew that?
I know my movementals.
All right. Electric field disrupts the magnetism.
Yeah, you can disrupt or add things to the magnetic field that change the whole situation, but there's no material you can put in the middle that reduces the attractiveness.
Oh, and the movemental thing...
Let me answer it better.
The mu metal is attracted to the magnet.
So it's actually just part of the magnetic situation.
There's nothing that's non-magnetic that you can put between two magnets that has any effect on their attraction.
So, there you go.
Every mystery in the universe can be explained by us being a software simulation.
All of them. Somebody says mu metal can conduct, divert, or shield.
Yes, all those words are correct, but it's also magnetically attracted to the magnet.
So I should have said there's nothing that's not magnetic itself that affects the magnetic field.
All right. Does the simulation explain Epstein's death?
Well, you heard Bill Barr.
Now, what did all of you think when you saw that Bill Barr believes that Epstein's death was definitely a suicide?
What did you think of that?
Remember, I told you it was a suicide.
So I'm the one person in the world besides Bill Barr, I guess.
You know, there are a handful of us who think it was suicide.
What did you think when Bill Barr said he looked at the video and there was nobody else who got in there?
I mean, I certainly like the details of where that video was, and is it really true nobody else could have gotten in there without going through where that video camera was?
I don't know.
So when you saw Bill Barr say it was a suicide, did it change your mind?
Barr has conflict of interest.
Yes.
I don't know what that would be.
Why do I have so many people here?
Is it because you're on vacation today?
Oh, the Mu Metal is called Mu Metal.
I'm very impressed at how many people on here have heard of Mu Metal, a magnetic shielding material.
That's very impressive.
Now that he's said it, I'm good.
Oh, so there's somebody here who's actually convinced by Bobar.
So most of you do think it was a suicide, right?
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Oh no!
Somebody just pointed out an obvious pun.
So you've heard of Epstein-Barrer Syndrome?
We actually have in the news an Epstein-Barrer Story.
What are the odds of that?
And why did it take me so long to realize that Epstein Barr was the story in the news?
Oh my goodness. So let's talk about the Cybertruck.
Apparently there are 200,000 orders for that thing.
And I told you the last couple of days that I started with, that thing is ugly.
And a day later I was starting to think, well...
Maybe. I wouldn't mind having one of those cyber trucks.
And then the third day in, I really want one.
I totally want one.
So whatever magic Elon Musk uses to make us want his products, he's doing it again.
You know, I always was amazed at the old PayPal mafia that it was called.
So Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and other folks were part of the PayPal startup years ago.
That's where they made their first money.
And the thing I always wondered about PayPal was, yeah, that's great that you can make technology to send money to people.
The technology is great, but how do you get people to use it?
How do you get people to trust the first financial app Hey, I'm sending money through my little app.
Well, I guess it wasn't on the phone, it was on the computer.
How did they ever get anybody to trust it?
Wasn't that the magic?
The magic was getting people to trust it.
It wasn't the technology.
They probably had to talk big banks into working with them and stuff.
There's some kind of magic that all of those PayPal mafia people have.
That they can recreate.
They can make you want stuff.
And that is really interesting.
People are agreeing that the truck is growing on him.
You know, I don't think the truck is ugly.
I think the truck is just different than what you expected.
And I think that's what hit us all.
It's like, oh, I didn't expect that.
And then apparently there's a reason why it's so angular, you know, sort of straight lines.
Musk tweeted something about the super hard metal that they're using is hard to bend and stamp.
So there aren't that many shapes you can actually make if you want your metal to be that strong.
Now, here's a question for you.
What happens when that truck runs into a regular automobile?
If you have a high-speed collision and you're in the Cybertruck and the person that you have the high-speed collision with is not, do you end up like your truck is unhurt and you have to use the wipers to wipe off the other person's body parts from your windshield and you just keep driving?
It's a serious question.
What happens if you have an accident with a Cybertruck?
Does the car that hits the Cybertruck get completely destroyed because there's no give on the other side?
It's just a solid object that never dents?
I don't know. Could be an issue.
All right. I'm buying the truck, somebody says.
For $100 refundable, you can say you ordered one, it looks like.
Explain novelty.
I don't know what that question means.
So, I guess PayPal was in the eBay thing at first.
Okay. Alright, I don't have anything else to talk about, but I have 2.7 thousand people here.
Does anybody have any questions? Any questions on my book?
By the way, I'll be on Tucker Carlson's show tonight.
So look for me tonight on Tucker Carlson.
Refer to the law of physics.
Oh yeah, how do you get rescued?
Yeah, suppose there's a Jaws of Life situation and you're in a crumpled cyber truck.
Can anything get you out?
Maybe it never crumples.
I don't know. I'm fascinated by all of your comments.
That truck gets a lot of comments.
Look how many people are interested in it.
Can you imagine any other product that I would mention that everybody still wants to talk about?
It's kind of weird. All right.
I'm going to bore you all to death because I got nothing else.
It's such a slow news week.
Can I talk about Geminis?
Well, I am a Gemini.
And as you know, there are many powerful leaders who are Geminis.
Kanye West, President Trump.
John Kennedy. But there are powerful leaders of all astrological signs, so it doesn't mean much.
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