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Dec. 24, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:11:04
Episode 766 Scott Adams: Enjoying the Simultaneous Sip While Laughing About #Shampeachment
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Time Text
Hey everybody!
How are you? Come on in here.
You're a little bit slow because a lot of you are on vacation.
Sleeping in, aren't you?
Yep, you are.
Well, If you are alert, you may have noticed that in my Twitter feed this morning, I sent out the actual full text of the simultaneous SIP, so that you could join in.
Now, I need to warn you before we go further, that somewhere in my house, there's an alarm going off.
And it's starting to make me crazy, because I can hear it, but you can't.
So I might have to take you in a trip through the house to find the alarm.
But before we do that, We're going to enjoy the new and upgraded simultaneous SIP. The reason I tweeted it out is that you can read long and join in on the chorus.
It's newly revised.
As somebody pointed out on Twitter, I got rid of the word thermos, and as my Twitter wag said, I impeached it.
So the thermos has been impeached and removed from the list of the simultaneous sip text.
And it goes like this.
Grab your vessel. Be ready.
The simultaneous sip.
I know why you're here.
You're here for the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. You can fill in your own beverage there.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Go. And add that part.
Got to add the ah. All right.
As promised, we're going to have to go on a road trip because there's an alarm.
It's going off right now.
And so come with me.
I'll let you see where I'm going.
Sounds like it's downstairs.
Hmm.
Sounds like I'm the only one who's up.
Hmm.
Bear with me. We'll find this.
We will stop it. There's my Semi-sleepy dog.
We'll find it.
Stay with me.
Stay with me. Hold.
Hold. Here, you can look at that while I turn this off.
There it is. Phew.
Solved.
Snickers.
That's my loyal dog, Snickers.
Here's the tree. Christina's piano.
Alright, we'll go back upstairs.
Everybody else is still asleep.
Here's my cat, Boo.
Meow! Boo, come upstairs.
We've got to talk to the people.
Follow me. Follow me, Boo.
Come with me. Alright, Boo.
She's following us.
Bear with me.
All right, back in my office.
All right.
Sorry about that little detour.
I just set my drums up over here.
That's my new drum location.
Here's my neighbors.
It's a foggy day in California.
All right.
That's quite enough of that.
Yeah.
Well, I wasn't planning on that.
All right. Can we go to the medicine cabinet, somebody says.
So, let's talk about the impeachment.
I did a little survey on Twitter to see which term people liked the most for the impeachment.
Do you like calling it the sham-peachment, the incompletement, the half-peachment, or the impeachment light?
I know Trump has used impeachment light But I read a poll, and the winner, the big winner, was she impeachment.
I think I had over 60% of the vote.
Second place was incompletement, but I think it's rising fast.
I think she impeachment you were just used to, but incompletement is funnier.
And as I continued to say the word, impeachment has started to lose all meaning.
It was only a week ago that impeachment was a terrible thing.
And today, it's just a punchline.
In fact, the Democrats are actually considering a second impeachment if they find out something from Don McGahn, the White House attorney, that they think is extra impeachable.
So Trump might be the first person who's ever extra double impeached.
And I thought to myself, you know, if Trump had a choice, I think he would like to not be impeached, wouldn't you say?
If it were up to him, and he got to choose and revise history, I believe he would choose to never be voted to be impeached.
But, if you do get voted to be impeached, but it's not complete in our current situation, let me ask you this.
Wouldn't it be even better to be double non-impeached?
I mean, actually. Because it makes the whole thing look ridiculous.
It looks ridiculous already, but if they do it twice, at that point, you can't do anything but laugh.
I mean, it would become a self-perpetuating joke if they try to impeach him twice.
So I kind of want it to happen, and I'm not kidding, because it would just be the last vestige of crumb of credibility left with impeachment.
And we might as well go ahead and Rip that mandate off because impeachment doesn't mean what it used to, apparently.
So here's the...
This is what I call anti-Trump math.
So the things we've learned from anti-Trumpers about math is that if your leader has one imaginary problem, something that you just imagined he did or imagined he's thinking or imagined he will do, well, that's no problem, right?
Because it's imaginary.
There's no problem if your leader has a problem that's only imaginary, you're okay.
But in anti-Trump math, if you have a laundry list of imaginary problems, well, that's impeachable.
One imaginary problem, it's imaginary.
It literally doesn't exist.
You can ignore it. But if you've got ten imaginary problems, You're going to need to impeach.
And the second part is that if you have one half-peachment where you get a vote in the House but the Senate doesn't confirm it, well, that's not fully, totally impeached and removed from office.
It's closer to a half-peachment.
But what if you have two of them?
Two half-peachments, add them together, you see where I'm going?
That's a full impeachment.
So I think the Democrats are trying to string together two half-peachments to call it a full impeachment.
Or something. If you can figure out their strategy, please let the news business know because they don't know their strategy and neither do we.
I think the funniest thing that's coming out of all this is that it appears, at least it's drifting in that direction, That Trump is going to claim that there was no impeachment.
He's already said that there was no crime, which apparently is true because the articles of impeachment don't even allege a crime.
They're not even saying he committed a crime.
So there's no crime. He's right about that.
And he's arguing that there's no impeachment because they haven't completed the process of sending it to the Senate.
And I'm thinking to myself, Sure.
We're completely at a point where you can define anything to mean anything.
We're just changing words on the same observations and coming to different conclusions.
So can Trump credibly claim that there's no crime and in fact no impeachment happened?
Kind of. He kind of can.
Now I think historians will see it differently, but who cares?
We're not dealing with historians.
We're dealing with current reality.
And I think Trump is just going to say it didn't happen, which is the funniest thing ever.
How much is it going to drive Democrats crazy if people say, haha, we impeached you, and Trump just says, no, you didn't.
It didn't happen. You imagined you did.
You tried. But you didn't.
Now, of course, what you call it, impeachment, non-impeachment, sham impeachment, half-impeachment, has no impact on what it is.
But because our brains are wired for what I call word thinking, we think that if we can agree on what the word is for the thing, then we've agreed on the thing.
But they're different. You can agree on the thing, And disagree about the label, which is all we're doing.
But because people think that the label and the thing have to be the same, disagreeing about what you call it feels as though you're disagreeing about the content of it.
And we all watch exactly the same content.
We watch the House vote to impeach.
We watch Nancy not give it to the Senate.
We're all looking at exactly the same stuff.
So what words you put on it are up to you.
All right, there's not a lot going on here, so I thought I would...
Looks like maybe there's something wrong here.
I was going to open this up to guests, but it doesn't look like I have that option.
Oh, yes, I do. So I'm going to take some questions here in a minute.
So if you have any questions, we'll get to that.
President Trump... Said that he respects Tulsi Gabbard for her vote on the impeachment vote.
Isn't that interesting?
Who is the only other person in the world who said that Tulsi deserved respect for her vote of present instead of guilty or innocent?
Just me. So right now it's me and President Trump who have both said the same thing about Tulsi, which is, huh, that's actually...
Smart play. I think, you know, I joke about Trump always picking up the free money.
Somebody says Jimmy Dore says the same thing.
That may be true. When Trump sees free money on the table, he picks it up.
And so I was saying the same thing about Tulsi Gabbard.
There was free money on the table.
She could be the one who voted present, get all the attention, get her point of view done.
elevated above everybody else's and also be completely correct on the morality and the concept and the thinking behind it.
So I think that Trump just recognized that she had a table full of free money and everybody else walked past it.
And Tulsi reached out and said, free money?
Anybody? Anybody? All right.
I guess it's my free money.
And she gathered it up.
How would Trump not respect that?
It's exactly what he would have done.
I mean, in the sense that he sees free money and he picks it up.
I'm going to give you the most valuable financial advice you'll ever get in your life.
It comes from Steve Edwards.
Who describes himself as a hiring manager.
I don't know for what company.
This is just on Twitter. And here's his advice, which I will amplify.
So hiring manager Steve Edwards says, here's a tip from a hiring manager.
I will never revoke your offer because you asked for a higher base salary, more stock, a signing bonus, relocation assistance.
I might not be able to offer any of that, And then I'll have to say no.
But it's probably safe to ask.
That's the most valuable financial advice you'll ever get.
Because when people get an offer that they've been wanting, such as a job offer or a contract or some kind of business offer, in my case, it's usually offers to do books or contracts or speeches or whatever.
And Once somebody's made an offer, they're mentally committed.
They want you. If you don't do a good job of negotiating for what you need, you're not going to gain respect.
You might lose a little bit.
If somebody accepts the first offer you make for employment, I just think, well, they're not going to negotiate for me.
If I hire somebody who can't negotiate for the job, How could I possibly expect them to negotiate on my behalf when they're working for me?
You wouldn't expect that.
So the hiring manager is quite accurate in saying, you should ask.
I'll tell you the first time that I learned this.
I've told this story before, but it's a good story, so it's worth repeating.
When Dilbert first started taking off, and I started getting a little bit famous, I was still working my day job, but I was becoming known for Doing the comic on weekends and nights.
And it was running in newspapers, and one of the newspapers was in Canada.
And a Canadian event organizer contacted me.
And I was in my cubicle at my day job.
And she said, we wanted to pay you to come up and give a speech to a group of petroleum engineers.
And I said, I don't do that kind of work.
And she said, well, but you could, right?
I mean, we'll pay you.
So you could do that kind of work, couldn't you?
And I said, but, you know, I don't really do that.
I don't give speeches.
So she said, but if you did, now what would you charge?
And so, of course, I have a degree in economics, so I never say yes or no to things.
I only say what my price is.
Because if she had said, we'll give you a billion dollars, I would have said yes on the spot.
If she said, we'll give you $10, I would have said no on the spot.
So it wasn't really a question of whether I would do the speech or not do a speech.
It was always a question of price.
That's my worldview.
And so the organizer said, well, why don't you get back to me and tell me what price you would do it for?
Now, remember, I've never done a speech, and it was a small group of people.
I think there were maybe 25 people total.
What do you think I should charge for it?
I had no idea. So I went to somebody who worked at my publication, syndication company at the time, somebody who was more experienced, and I said, somebody asked me to do a speech basically just to talk about myself and make some jokes.
What should I charge?
And he said, well, why don't you, you know, when I told him I didn't want to do it, he said, well, charge $10,000.
Because one of two things will happen.
Either they'll say yes, and you get $10,000, which you'd be happy with, or they say no, and you say, okay, well, that was my price.
So just put a price on it.
Go high and put a price on it.
Now, when he said $10,000, I laughed.
I said, I can't charge $10,000 just to talk to 25 people for half an hour.
That's a little bit ridiculous.
And my more experienced mentor said, just ask for it.
See what happens. Just go ahead.
You'll be surprised. So I actually had to practice in the mirror to say $10,000 without laughing.
And that's actually true.
I actually practiced out loud to myself saying the number without acting like I didn't mean it or I was laughing.
So I call her back.
She says, did you think about it?
I said, yes. What would you be willing to do it for?
And I said, I'd be willing to do it for $10,000.
And there's this pause on the other side, and I'm waiting for the response because I'm thinking there's no way she's going to say yes to $10,000.
And she goes, we'd also pay for your first class travel, of course.
And that's when my life changed.
Because it was one of those moments when I realized that I had no idea what my economic value was.
No idea. And so I said yes.
I did that speech. It was terrible.
In fact, they even told me it wasn't good.
Imagine giving a speech and having your organizer say, well, you know, sort of okay.
Not really that good.
Because it was the first time I'd ever done it.
And I would agree it wasn't that good.
But I got better at it.
And demand kept increasing, and so I would increase my price so I didn't have to do so much of it that I couldn't do my other work.
So I increased it to $15,000 to give a speech, and people were offering it.
Amazingly, people were offering me $15,000 to just show up and give a speech, and they'd pay for travel as well.
And that worked out, so I raised it to $20,000, $25,000, $30,000, $35,000, $45,000, $50,000.
The most I've ever been paid for a speech was $100,000.
I won't tell you who, but it was a big company.
And they paid me $100,000 to talk for an hour and take some pictures.
And they paid for travel as well.
Now, that's the most I ever got paid.
But I was in that $50,000 to $100,000 range for a while.
Now, I don't do speeches anymore.
It's a little bit dangerous and it wasn't the lifestyle I enjoyed traveling around.
But take that lesson with you.
The person who has the least understanding of their own economic value is you.
You probably don't know what you're worth.
So ask for a little bit more than you think you're worth.
You'll probably get it.
And if you don't, you'll probably still get the job or at least the option to get the job.
So the best advice you'll ever get is don't undervalue yourself.
Ask for too much.
See what happens. All right.
That is my advice.
I'm going to see if we've got any guests who want to ask me some questions.
I'm going to take them in no particular order.
Will, are you coming on?
Will? Will?
I'm good. Will, how are you?
You got a question for me? I do.
I was the guy who sent you the tweet earlier regarding the laundry list persuasion versus focusing on a single variable.
And your answer, I thought, explained your point well, but isn't a reason just another word for variable?
No, I would say, so your question was, I've said that if somebody has lots of reasons for their opinion, instead of just a few good reasons, that long list of reasons probably shows that they don't have one good reason.
Whereas there are situations that have lots of variables, and you don't want to concentrate on one variable as the only one that's determinant.
And my point was that a variable is very different than a reason.
There could be lots of variables within a reason, But they're just different things.
So you shouldn't make any judgment about what I say about reasons in terms of what I say about variables because variables and reasons are not the same concept.
Okay, yeah. I hope you have a great Christmas.
All right, you too. Take care.
All right, let's see who else wants to ask me a question.
Have you noticed that the news just basically stopped?
Bill?
Bill, are you there?
yeah Hey, Bill. Bill Pulte is joining us.
What can I do for you today, Bill?
And happy holidays.
Merry Christmas. You can do nothing for me.
You can continue to teach people how to make money.
That's great. That's a good start.
You could be teaching them how to make money, too.
Well, you gave them great advice.
That was awesome. Because often an employer doesn't want to get into a situation and have an issue with the employee.
So I agree. Most people accept it.
Yeah, and Bill, you've hired a great many people in your life.
Hundreds. You can see this from both sides.
Hundreds, hundreds. But anyway, it's a great Christmas season.
Thanks for all your help. We're helping people like crazy.
And it's been a very big help because of you.
So thank you. Bill, for those who don't know about your internet philanthropy, you've been giving away money, literally just giving away your own money to people who have good reasons, good cause.
Tell us about one of your recent ones.
Well, yesterday I gave away $1,000 to somebody who posted that they needed a student loan or had a student loan and needed some help.
So we did that. Then we raised, I think, enough money for a 17-year-old who had cerebral palsy to get Christmas presents.
And then we raised money, I think, before that for a family who had lost their 19-year-old son.
And we raised money so they could have Christmas presents.
We raised presents, Scott, Christmas presents for 81 families this year.
Wow. 81 families all through Twitter.
That's amazing. And your influence keeps growing.
How many Twitter followers do you have there?
I think about 1.7 million and we got a few million on Instagram and rocking and rolling.
And a year ago it was what?
Maybe 20,000 to 30,000 followers.
That's amazing. You're really setting the internet on fire here.
Well, thanks for everything, Scott.
Thanks for promoting it. We wouldn't be able to help as many people as we are without you, so thank you.
It was great talking to you, Bill.
Take care, Scott. Bye-bye.
Have a great holiday. You too.
That was fun. Let's see who else we got here.
It's funny. I look at all your faces and names on your logos before I select the guest, and I act as though I'm going to be able to tell something by looking at that.
Hello, guest. Guest, can you hear me?
Sure, but I don't have any questions for you.
Just have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Thanks for saying that. Thank you.
All right. That was easy.
All right, let's bring in somebody who looks like they're going to cause trouble.
I think hit or miss looks like a toll maker.
Maybe in a good way. We'll find out.
Caller, hit or miss, can you hear me?
Hello? Hello.
Merry Christmas. Did you have a question?
Yeah, I've been a huge fan of yours for a very long time.
I was curious about... Yes, I can hear you.
Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. I was curious about your thoughts on free will.
Oh, yes, my thoughts on free will.
Well, of course, Sam Harris is the ultimate, sort of the more scientific...
I'm an academic person to talk about free will.
But my basic idea is that if physics exists, which it does, and there are rules of the universe and cause and effect, then you would not expect cause and effect to stop at your skull and to not apply to the things that are happening inside your skull.
So your brain is a machine that's hard for you to predict what will happen.
But your inability to know what you will decide or the inability for anybody else to predict it is unrelated to the fact that it's just cause and effect.
So one cause is always going to have one effect.
So what you're going to do tomorrow is 100% determined by the conditions today.
But it will feel as though you made choices.
And certainly in the ordinary sense, people make choices.
People do pick A or B. They can go left or right.
They can pick one or two.
But those decisions feel like choices when they make them, but they are not.
They are just your conscious mind realizing what's going to happen.
And then you interpret it after the fact as some kind of free will choice.
But that's the basics of it.
Did that make sense? Yeah, I guess you being in self-help, it's interesting that you're still having an effect on people even though you can't help it.
Well, you know, that's not entirely true because if people have no free will and they're just subject to their environment, I'm a variable that changes their environment.
So to your point, it's not really self-help if the reason that somebody improved is that I did something.
You could argue that it's not self-help.
It just feels that way because you accepted the help.
But the help came from someone else and you just incorporated it because it was a new set of variables.
So the way I look at it is that while it could be labeled self-help, what I see is that I'm a variable that is doing whatever it needs to do because it was going to do what it's going to do.
I feel like every day I wake up and do the thing I was going to do.
I just find out what it is as it happens.
And Then I become a variable in your life, and that can change you.
So there's no conflict there at all, I think.
All right, I think caller is off, so let me add another one.
Let's add Peter. Peter, talk to me.
Are you there, Peter? Merry Christmas.
Do you have a question? Yeah, The Expanse, season four.
Have you had a chance to check it out?
I have watched, I think, are there only ten episodes?
I can't tell if there are any more coming.
Yeah, that's right. But I have been watching the newest season of The Expanse.
Probably my favorite sci-fi that's currently running.
I would say yes, of the ones that are currently running.
Yeah, huge fan.
So I recommend anybody check it out.
But listen to it with headphones.
All these sci-fi properties, if you don't listen on headphones, you really miss the whole bringing you into their world effect.
So that's my recommendation there.
I wish Ennis had more lines.
They have some amazing characters in there.
Sometimes I just like to hear the belters talking.
The Belters, they talk like this.
I don't even know what kind of accent they have, but the Belters...
They sound to me like South African or something.
But it's a great accent they have.
The show is called The Expanse, and you should watch it.
Thanks, Peter. Bye-bye.
All right. Who else we got here?
Rick looks like he's got something to say.
Rick, come at me.
Come at me, Rick. Hi, Rick.
You have a question? I do.
So first of all, I want to thank you for being so generous with your time and life lessons, both in your books and your periscopes.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Following up on the previous question about free will, my question is about what you refer to as the simulation, which I find fascinating and would love for you to expound more on.
My question is, have you ever considered that we are in a simulation, but that your interpretation of the simulation is an attempt by a finite being to understand an infinite God's creation?
Well, are you familiar with my book, God's Debris?
I'm familiar with the fact that you've written it, but I have not read it.
Well, based on your question, you would enjoy that book.
So I won't give you any spoilers, but let me just say that's right in your alley right there.
If we are a simulation, which means that we were created by some other species that came before and could make other species out of software, It's likely that there are lots of us, copies that is, and there will be far more copies than there are originals because that's how it works.
The original makes lots of copies.
So chances are we're a copy because there are more of them and all the copies will think they are real just like the original does.
That's how they're programmed to think.
But I have thought, what's the point of it all?
And one of the things that you could speculate, and I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just having fun with this, If you were to build a simulated software world today, let's say whatever you think is your current human existence, if you were a programmer and you made your own simulation, wouldn't you inhabit one of the characters?
Wouldn't you want to be one of the avatars who is interacting with the people who are not real, or in some cases they're players, in some cases they're not?
You probably would. You wouldn't want to just be an observer all the time.
Sometimes you would. Sometimes you might want to build a little world just to experiment, just to watch it.
It's like an ant farm, maybe.
But you might also want to interact with it.
So it could be that some advanced civilization has run out of challenges, has run out of experiences, has done everything that they could do in their own plane, and have developed an artificial world that they can be a character within.
Which means that I, or you, could actually be an alien who's inhabiting an avatar for the purpose of re-experiencing a life as if it were an actual life.
In other words, you wouldn't have the knowledge that you were the Avatar.
You would just wake up every day and say, hey, I see lots of other people dying, but I'm not dying.
Tons of terrible things are happening to other people, but it's not happening to me.
It's like I wrote this game for my experience or something.
I'm not saying any of that's true.
That's just for fun. Read God's Debris, and I think that'll blow your mind.
Yeah, well, isn't that what Christmas is all about, is that the Creator is becoming part of the creation?
Well, can the Creator and the creation ever be separate?
Correct. That's exactly what I'm saying.
As a Christian, I have no problem believing that we're in a simulation of sorts.
It's actually called creation, right?
There's even a scripture that says, in Him we live and move and have our being.
And this simulation, what we call creation, is actually the context in which our God created us so that we could get to know Him better.
It's the only way. Yeah, there's lots of ways to make those ideas all compatible.
So thanks for that.
Great holiday message. Thank you.
Great. Merry Christmas, Scott.
Merry Christmas. Let's take another.
How about...
Cassandra?
Cassandra? Cassandra, can you hear me?
Good morning. Merry Christmas.
Do you have a question? Thank you so much.
I love you and thank you for every morning that you spend with us.
Well, thank you.
I love you all too.
And I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't enjoy it probably more than any of you do.
You know, it's really hard to explain.
People often ask me, you know, how do you spontaneously talk for an hour every day?
And when I think about it, and I say to myself, okay, Scott, suppose somebody told you it's your job to talk spontaneously for an hour every morning about whatever.
You have to figure it out. Five minutes before you go on, you have to figure it out.
How would you like that?
My first reaction would be, oh, I wouldn't like that.
I wouldn't like that at all.
How am I going to talk for an hour spontaneously in some way that anybody wants to watch this thing?
But when it happens, it's so easy.
Because it's just enjoyable.
This experience that I'm having literally right now will be one of the highlights of my day.
It will be one of the best parts of my day.
I think that most of you can pick up on that.
If you knew I was just working, you would know that, right?
But you can tell that I do this for my own purposes as well as yours.
I would say we've evolved together.
And we continue to evolve.
As you've seen, the simultaneous sips that I started out with started out as nothing but some words I jumbled together.
People responded to it.
People said what they liked or didn't like.
I would watch the comments.
And then it evolved into a proper toast.
And I think it actually has some legs.
I think people will actually use it over the holidays.
So thank you for Thank you for your kind words, Cassandra.
And supporting Bill, because that's wonderful.
All right.
Thank you, and have a great Christmas.
You too. Bye.
All right. Who else we got here?
Looking for faces of people who look dangerous.
Alex looks dangerous.
Come at me, Alex.
Alex, Alex.
Alex, can you hear me?
Merry Christmas, Alex.
Do you have a question for me? Not so much a question.
It's more your book, your new book that I loser think.
It's funny, I bought the hardcover, which by the way I absolutely loved, but then I also ordered five copies to give to people.
They came in the paperback.
Are those like fake ones?
I just wasn't sure. They're kind of cut a little weird around the corners and stuff, too, so I wasn't really sure.
Do you have one where you could reach it?
No, I don't. You know what, though?
I did put them up. Actually, if you remember, there was a video made of me unboxing my Loser Think book to that Lion King song.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was me.
Okay. So that was the hardcover, and then I have softcovers as well that I posted on Twitter.
So here's the answer to your question.
The softcover does not exist for the United States, but there's some kind of bug on Amazon.
I think we tried to close that hole but it was just a bug that allowed people to order from overseas something they would not normally be able to get overseas by Amazon.
So I think you got probably the Indian subcontinent copy because I did an experiment where I tried to buy the softcover myself Knowing, of course, as the author that it doesn't exist.
And to my surprise, Amazon accepted my offer for the product that doesn't exist and mailed it to me.
And I got it too.
And I was like, how did they send me a product that I made that doesn't exist?
Meaning a version that doesn't exist.
And I turned it over and it said, you know, for sale only in the, was it Indian subcontinent or whatever it is.
There are different words for that.
That's right. So I just found it weird because the way it was cut around the edges, it almost looked like something was off about it and I was going to actually send it back because the whole point of it was wanting to support you.
I don't want it to go to some company out in who knows where if you don't get credit.
So I'll probably send it back and just get hardcovers.
So I'll give you the complete answer to that is that it helps me most if Americans buy the American hardcover book in the beginning.
Because that's what counts toward bestseller lists and all that stuff.
But any foreign country that also bought the rights indirectly, you know, once we paid through the advance and stuff, that could also be profit but less.
So I'm far more helped by getting the hardcover if you'd like to be supportive, which I appreciate very much.
But I can't help it if Amazon will sell you the other one.
All right. Sounds good.
I will not... We'll not be buying those.
So I just wanted to make one last quick note here.
This is the fourth time actually that I've had a chance to speak to you and this makes me further believe that this is really just a simulation that we're in and that I'm creating this somehow because it doesn't make any sense.
It's just mind-blowing to me.
Yeah, it's funny.
I've had that experience myself recently where I've interacted with a couple of presidential candidates just by direct message and Of course, you get a direct message on Twitter.
It looks like every other direct message, except it's coming from somebody you just watched on television, who literally might be in control of the largest military that the universe has ever put together.
And I think to myself, this doesn't even feel like it's real.
There are seven billion people in the world.
I shouldn't be talking to the ones I just saw on TV. This is how I feel right now, exactly.
Well, enjoy your experience and have a great holiday tomorrow.
All right. Merry Christmas.
Take care. I saw somebody ask, did LoserThink make it to the New York Times bestseller list?
The answer is yes, on its first week because we do a lot of publicity.
Then, as I expected, it pulled off the list once you're not doing your press tour.
But there's a lot of Christmas buying, and it seems to be selling briskly, so we'll see.
You should get back on the list, I think.
All right, let's see.
Who else we got here?
Buckeye Girl. Let's see if Buckeye Girl is really a girl, or even a Buckeye.
Buckeye Girl, can you hear me?
You are a girl. You are a woman.
Yes, I am. Merry Christmas from the Buckeye State, Scott.
Do you have a question for me?
I do. Go ahead.
Did I lose your sound?
I am one brainer. I have an 18-year-old nephew who's trying to find his way in the world.
He has his GED and is just wondering what's next, where to go.
Well, I have the answer.
The answer is this.
Read my book, How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big.
Just Google my name on Amazon and look for the one that says How to Fail.
And that is written for somebody exactly his age and exactly his situation.
And it's a strategy for how to know how to get a foothold in the real world.
And the key thoughts there are building a talent stack, which means you start with whatever talents you've developed or have naturally.
And then you figure out what you can add to that that would make you special.
So that turns out to be the secret to success.
Because he may not have any world-class extraordinary talents, but most of us don't.
But you could add together some ordinary talents until you've got something special.
So figure out what he likes to do and then have him figure out what talents needed to be added to that, either by work experience or taking a class at night or study at home on his own, whatever it takes.
And go from there.
So if he continues to build his talent stack, let's say he adds public speaking, let's say he adds how to code, maybe he adds something about psychology, hypnosis, selling, marketing, any one of those things.
There are lots of things he could add depending on his interests and where he lives and all that.
But that's the book you should look at.
And then look at systems versus goals.
That's also in the book. Talking about something that you can do every day that will make you more valuable without having a specific objective yet.
If you make yourself more valuable, you make yourself available to a lot of people, opportunities will appear.
Now the good thing is that the job market is so tight That the odds of, you know, getting a good position and working your way up are really good, no matter where you're starting from right now.
So that's my basic advice.
Was that helpful? Yes, thanks so much.
I really appreciate it.
All right, you're welcome. Have a great holiday.
You too. All right, let's see who else we got here.
I'm going to go to...
I swear, I act as though I know what I'm going to get based on these profile pictures, but they don't really tell you anything.
Hello, guest. Can you hear me?
Merry Christmas. Do you have a question?
Oh, yes, I do. Well, first of all, thank you very much for sharing yourself every morning For all of us, I feel like we're all a family together every morning.
I work out every day during that hour.
Thank you. I love the interview that you did with Althusser, James Althusser.
That was the best interview with you I have ever, ever heard.
And I have listened to all your interviews.
I missed the part of that.
Which interview did you like the most?
James Altucher.
Yes. You know, I've said that often.
You would think that being an interviewer is easy.
You're just the one asking the questions.
And you think that the hard part is the person who's being interviewed.
But James Altusher is one of those people who reverses that.
When you see somebody who's really good at it, like really, really good at interviewing people, has genuine curiosity.
He had marked up my book completely.
He had notes everywhere.
He was referring my books back to points I'd made in previous books he'd read, two different books.
I mean, it was an amazing...
If you could give an award, I guess, for being the interviewer...
That was like an Academy Award.
And I told him at the time, you know, as soon as he was done, I was sort of blown away.
It was the best interviewer performance maybe I've ever seen.
It was one of the best. Partly because he was interested, partly because he was so prepared, and partly because he's James Altusher and he's just good at this stuff.
But thank you. Thank you for saying that.
I started believing in God again this year because I read your book, God's Debris, Jordan Peterson, and Kanye West.
Those three things made me believe in God again this year.
But my question, before I get run out of time, do you like Rick and Morty, the TV show Rick and Morty?
Rick and Morty, yeah.
I have to be honest that the only reason I don't watch every episode of Rick and Morty is I can't stand the one character who's always drooling.
The drool that's always coming out of his mouth bothers me so much that I can't watch it.
But if you change just that one tiny little thing, it's a tremendous show.
You know, The Expanse used to be my favorite sci-fi show ever, and I have watched Star Trek and everything, and now Rick and Morty is my favorite sci-fi.
So that's why I was interested to know what you thought about it.
But thank you very much, Mr.
Adams. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you, too. Alright, let's go to Paramveer.
Paramveer, can you hear me?
Again, did I pronounce your name even close correctly?
You are getting better every time.
Just like Alex, this is my second time on.
Thank you very much.
And just like everyone else, I wanted to thank you for being a pillar that's literally holding this country together right now over the last two years.
So thank you so much.
Well, you know, on that point, if you don't mind, I was going to talk about this today, that Twitter and social media in general, but I think mostly Twitter, is really strange in the way it creates almost tribes or warlords.
It's almost like they're intellectual warlords.
I would say – I love to use Mike Cernovich as my example for lots of things because he fits into a lot of categories to make a good example.
But he's basically – I've never used this term before, so I haven't thought it through.
But he's like an intellectual warlord, meaning that if somebody has a message that's important, he has the ability and the platform to amplify it.
And so ideas really are what turn into action.
So if you're the person who controls people's ideas and their thinking...
Well, indirectly, you control their actions as well.
And so in a non-military sense, there are these groups or tribes with big followings, usually the Blue Czech people, who also have interconnecting connections.
So there are tribes that connect to other tribes.
I would say my tribe connects to Mike Cernovich's.
There's lots of overlap, etc.
And I could list a dozen other people.
But it does feel as though The impact of those tribes, and it's not just the leader of the tribe, but rather the people within it are shaping the tribe at the same time.
It does seem like the power of that is tremendous and growing and not fully recognized.
And so when you mentioned it, I thought it was worth calling out.
But did you have a specific question?
Yes, I did. This is about your startup product interface.
And the question I have is, we're all on our phones.
Every week, Apple tells me I use my phone like 10 hours a day.
So I've always questioned or thought about why the interface app does not allow people to opt in to receive an alert if they're not on the app, they're not online, but somebody would like to speak to them and it just comes through.
And if I see it in time, I can just respond and get connected.
We do have that. I think the app has to be active in the background.
But yeah, you would get an alert if somebody's trying to reach you.
Got it. Okay, sorry. I'll check it out.
I thought I did not see it, but it must be there.
And I think it's there because it should be there.
But there's also a scheduling feature that we've added more recently.
So somebody could actually schedule you and you'd get a notification to say yes or no.
And they can schedule you for, you know, an hour from now.
And you'd get the notification.
So we have that for sure.
Great. Okay. I think I need to re-look at the app.
I've not been there for a few months.
We keep upgrading it.
So I hope you like it.
Thanks a lot. All right.
Thank you. Take care.
All right. Let's go to Debra.
Debra? Debra, can you hear me?
I can. Good morning and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas and ho ho ho.
So for those of us that are not from California, could you give us your perspective on Adam Schiff and you said there was a person challenging him that you thought you would support and what are the odds that somebody could actually beat him?
Well, so California is a big place, and I'm not in one of the areas that Adam Schiff is.
He's a Southern California guy.
I'm Northern California. So even most of the problems that you hear about in California, you know, my neighborhood hasn't caught on fire.
We don't have syringes on the sidewalks or homeless.
But where Schiff lives, apparently there's a lot.
And Jennifer Barrosa is running against him as an independent.
So I've mentioned her. And can an independent win?
It's hard to know. Apparently there are more independents than there are either Democrats by themselves or Republicans by themselves in some places.
I think this might be one.
So if you ask me, I would say Schiff seems vulnerable, even though it's a deeply democratic area that he's in.
He's been there for a long time.
But I would think after this year that whoever is the competitor would attract a lot of funding, a lot of support.
There probably would be more effort to get him out now than at any time.
And I've offered to help.
And you might see there's at least a possibility of another strong candidate coming in there.
But I can't talk about that yet.
Thank you.
So maybe. It would be a tough ask to replace Adam Schiff in a Democratic place, but I think he's the most vulnerable he's ever been.
That would be my guess. Well, I saw the video of his town hall or meeting he had in his district where it just totally broke out into chaos.
I don't know if it was people that were his constituents or somebody that just came to voice their opinion, but it was interesting anyway.
Well, we're in the political election season, so you should expect that every group has a troll or two in it.
So I wouldn't make too much out of chaos at events because everybody's sending their trolls to the other events.
So you'll see a lot of that everywhere, I would think.
But thanks for the question.
Thank you.
All right, bye.
Let's take another.
Sure.
I think we'll add Kim.
Kim, can you hear me?
Hi. Merry Christmas.
Amazing. Do you have a question for me?
Yes. First of all, I have one statement, then a question.
I would love to see you on the five substituting for Greg Gutfeld sometime.
Why that in particular?
Well, I'd like to see how you kind of go face to face with Juan Williams.
And Dana Perino seems a little skeptical of the simultaneous sip.
So I'd like to see that.
I think that it would be very interesting to watch.
Well, it's funny you say that because I've noticed that the exact mix of people on the show really makes a big difference.
If they have the right people there, it just sings and it's the best show on TV. In my opinion, it's actually only one of the few shows that I actually record.
But if they have fill-ins, the fill-ins can be tremendous individual talents and certainly deserve to be on the show.
But if you don't have the right chemistry of the five people, it just doesn't work the same.
And if you notice that when all the regulars are there, the regulars plus they rotate the one chair now.
But if the four regulars are there, I mean, it's just always good.
It's just always good.
So I would be hesitant to be any kind of a stand-in on that show because it would change the chemistry.
And even if I thought I were amazing, I don't.
But even if I thought I was doing a great job, it's all about the chemistry.
So that's the thing that they get right, and I would credit primarily Greg Goffeld for being, I would say, the catalyst that makes the chemical reaction work, if you've noticed that.
But anyway, thanks for the question.
And the question that I have is, could you explain to me what went on with Bette Midler a couple days ago on Twitter?
Well, I don't know exactly.
I remember she did some all caps screaming tweets that other people were joking she must have been on Ambien because she didn't look sane.
Is that what you're talking about? Well, yeah, and she said, don't believe anything that's going to be put in articles, you know, because it's all, like, Russian deception.
I don't know what the heck.
But it was in all caps, and it looked like, I mean, she, I don't know what the heck.
Yeah. You know, you don't want to diagnose people's mental health from a distance, but certainly you have to, if you just make an assumption about normal people's lifestyles and who they are and how they spend their week, you have to figure that some percentage of all tweets are done under the influence of some drug.
Wouldn't you say? Probably something like 20%.
Because people are probably doing more tweeting at night.
Which is when they're drinking and smoking and whatever else they're doing.
And I would not be surprised if 20% of all the tweets you see coming from celebrity-type people are under the influence.
And sometimes you look at them and you say, well, I think there's one.
And then the next day they're back to their normal tweeting, but that one night it looked pretty brutal.
So there's definitely...
There should be a tag that you can...
There should be like an extra option when you tweet that says, I'm a little bit drunk right now.
Like an emoji.
Like an emoji that you could put at the end of your sentence.
Yeah. The little inebriated emoji so that later when people dig these up to embarrass you, you can say, well, look.
Look at the emoji. I was drunk.
Yeah, the martini glass.
It's right there. Yeah.
All right. Thanks. Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas. Alright, let's do another one.
I'm having more fun than you are, so bear with me.
Let's talk to Jennifer.
Jennifer, are you there?
Merry Christmas. Do you have a question?
I do. It ties in with what you were talking about a little bit earlier about, you know, valuing yourself.
I found an app.
It was really interesting, and it's called Cameo.
And authors, celebrities, actors can put themselves on there, and for a fee...
They will record a short video, like a birthday message to someone.
So I noticed that, you know, Caitlyn Jenner lists herself at $2,500.
And someone, you know, like a kind of a minor actor will do it for $50.
And I was just wondering if you had heard of that.
And if you were to sign up on there, what would you charge for?
I have heard of it.
I haven't. I don't believe I've downloaded it or played with it yet.
And it's funny you'd ask that question because I've asked myself the same question.
I would probably look at what other people are charging and then I would judge where I rank in the celebrity ranking and then I'd say, well, if I'm somewhere in this area, and then I would modify that by how much time I wanted to spend.
So if I didn't want to spend much time on it, I'd set it higher than the market looks like it could bear, so I'd only get a few who really cared about it.
So did you notice anybody who's, let's say, and you can be very general in this, anybody who was roughly at my level of notoriety, did you see what they charge?
I was trying to think.
Well, for example, maybe Sean Spicer.
It seemed like he was around $100, you know, something like that.
Oh, I'm way more than Sean Spicer.
Yeah, I was going to say.
But that's a pretty good reference.
Yeah, yeah, and it was such an interesting thing to stumble upon yesterday, and there were celebrities that were really popular kind of in the 70s that are sort of getting a new life because of it, and I don't know, it was just really kind of an interesting social statement about, you know, kind of what we value, you know, or what we're willing to pay for to have some celebrity say our name, you know.
Briefly, but it was just kind of interesting to go through that site.
And I think the people who thought of it are geniuses.
I'm looking at the comments going by.
Somebody thinks $200 to $500 should be my price.
Somebody says $1,000.
$100 to $400. I'm just looking at the...
Because it really depends on what the market would bear, right?
So what people are saying in the comments.
Somebody says, I'd pay $250 for 30 seconds.
Other people saying...
Well, there are people saying that I should charge $1,000, but people saying they'd pay $250.
So I think what people would pay would be closer to what it would be.
Anyway, I might try that out at some point.
But thank you. Thank you for the question.
Well, thanks for having me.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Merry Christmas. All right.
Let's see who else we got here.
It's time for Jordan.
Jordan, you're coming at me.
Coming in hot.
Jordan, how are you?
Wait, what just happened?
I think we had a technical crosstalk there.
Let's try it again.
Except I lost you, sorry.
Let's try James. James, are you there?
Hey, James, Merry Christmas.
Do you have a question for me? Merry Christmas.
Yeah, I just read, I finished Loser Think, and there was a couple things I disagreed with, and I wondered if you'd want to talk about that.
Sure, go ahead. All right, well, I guess the main thing was when you were talking about friction, and I agree with the overall point about friction, But what I find is that, like, for example, when they did Prohibition, right, they created friction by making alcohol legal, but it had an unintended consequence of making more organized crime.
So, like, friction, I feel like it works on the least motivated, but not on the ones that you really care about.
Like, it won't stop a mass shooter, because a mass shooter will get a gun.
They're very desperate and will get a gun.
To do the horrible act no matter what.
Let me make the counterclaim.
How many mass shooters have used fully automatic rifles as opposed to semi-automatic in the last several years?
Well, that's my point is that they'll find another way to do it.
No, but to my point, let me finish the point.
A fully automatic weapon, most people who know weapons would say, well, that would be a far better tool to use and you would kill more people if you could use that.
So the shooters don't have access to the best tool, so they go to the second best tool and they still kill way too many people.
But it probably is less than they would have done with a better tool.
Likewise, they can't buy a bazooka.
And the bazooka or the, you know, you can't get your own tank or drone or stuff.
So we know that the friction that the law puts on those bigger weapons keeps people from using them.
So there's no question that it reduces the number of people who would use more powerful weapons.
They just don't have access to them.
Would you disagree with that?
I do, but the problem is with a semi-automatic, because it's one bullet, one shot, you could be a lot more precise.
So there's actually been studies that said that semi-automatics can be more...
Because they don't run out of bullets as quickly, they're actually more deadly than...
Well, I'm no gun expert, but here's the...
Here's the calculus. If you walk into a place that is, let's say, a crowded square and people are sort of spread out a little bit, you probably, like you said, one shot at a time is probably fine.
In fact, a handgun would get you there if it's a small enough space.
But if you wanted to go into a nightclub, I don't want to be giving people ideas, and you just wanted to shoot in 360 degrees around you because there's plenty of targets, then you want the one that doesn't jam.
And the one that doesn't jam is going to be the fully automatic weapon.
So you're right. It depends on the situation.
I don't want to give people killing suggestions, but it does depend.
My point is that don't you imagine that there's at least somewhere in the country one potential mass shooter who didn't have a good way to get a fully automatic rifle.
Maybe it was a 16-year-old who didn't have one in the house.
Maybe it was a 19-year-old who could have purchased one but didn't have the money, didn't want to.
Maybe it was somebody who was mad one day But it would take a few weeks to get a gun, and by the time they got it, they're not mad anymore.
So you don't know what didn't happen.
It's impossible to know what you prevented, because those are the things that don't happen by definition.
You also don't know about the unintended consequences.
In the example, it created more organized crime.
There'll be more illegal selling of guns, more mobs, just like when they...
When there was prohibition, more resentment, I think, because the more laws you create to restrict people's rights, the more resentful they become.
So it could actually cause more, but you're only focusing on one variable, so you don't see that.
I would agree that we must look at that variable as well.
So we're in complete agreement that you can't look at just the friction.
You have to look at the whole picture, and part of the whole picture is unintended consequences.
So I think I'm fully on board with that point.
Okay, cool. I got other things, but I know you got other callers.
Thanks, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Oh, and your book, by the way, was it How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big?
It was a big help to me.
I was able to finish my album because of that.
I want to thank you for that. Wow.
Thanks. That's great to hear.
And congratulations. Thank you.
Take care. All right.
Let's do another one. Let's talk to Charlie.
Charlie. Come at me, Charlie.
Charlie, Merry Christmas.
So, um...
Good, good, good. So just wanted to tell you that the How to Fail book really helped me as well.
And I recommend it to everyone, especially college graduates, when I encounter them.
I always encourage them to go buy the book.
And even people that are entering the workforce, especially early in their career, I always recommend it.
So thank you so much.
It really helped me too.
Wow, thank you. One of the things that I was thinking about was Probably a lot of it has to do, like from listening to you, is when I heard the caller talking about the paperback book that they received for Loser Thing.
And I was thinking how, you know, the conspiracy can be that China is taking their revenge on you by counterfeiting your book.
And the reality is that there was a bug on Amazon.
And I just found it funny that I think that way, and part of that thinking comes from listening to you.
And then the last thing I wanted to ask you was, do you have any update on WenHub and the token?
And what are you guys planning to do?
Are there any future roadmap plans for WenHub and the token as well?
We're talking about that right now, so nothing to announce at the moment.
The token lives on independent of the entity, the company, because once the token is created, it just exists forever in the internet, if you will.
So they'll never go to zero unless nobody wants them.
So they'll still be tradable, etc.
But we're working on some things we don't want to announce at the moment.
But we're definitely looking at roadmaps and what do you do.
We're having trouble getting experts.
We got 50,000 experts to sign up on right away practically.
But we have more trouble getting people to connect with them.
We don't know exactly why that is, but we're trying to figure out our next move because of that.
So I will keep you all informed in the new year, but nothing to say on that right now.
But thank you for asking. Cool.
Thank you. And I actually used the app to reach out to you once, and I successfully got you.
And you really helped me out, actually.
We spent some time. You really were...
Super gracious with your time.
And you gave me some phenomenal advice.
And a lot of it had to do with helping me think differently.
And I took a lot of that.
I took away from that a lot of new ideas, as well as the ideas that we discussed.
And it really helped push my agenda and solve some of my problems.
So thank you. And I look forward to continuing to use the app and reaching out to other experts.
Wow, that's great to hear, and I really appreciate that.
And Merry Christmas.
To you, too. Happy Holidays.
All right, take care. All right, folks, I think we've done enough for today.
Happy Holidays. Have an amazing Christmas tomorrow.
I will join you in the morning.
Yes, I will. I'm not going to miss it just because it's Christmas.
Are you kidding me? Taking Christmas Day off?
That's not for winners.
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