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Dec. 30, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:02:15
Episode 772 Scott Adams: Easy Systems for Solving Big Problems While Sipping Delicious Coffee
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Time Text
Oh, it's early in the morning.
There's my view. Hey, everybody.
Come on over here. You know what time it is.
I think you do. It's time for a coffee with Scott Adams.
Yep, it's the best part of the day.
Best part every single time, except for the other parts that are pretty good, too.
So get in here, scramble to find your vessel.
To fill it with your favorite liquid.
Because you know how this goes.
If you're here for the simultaneous sip, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go. Oh yeah.
Rawr! Get that motor running.
Vroom, vroom.
All right. Yes, I have my lights down low, intentionally.
Intentionally because I was adjusting them and ran out of time.
Does that count as intentionally?
Well, are you all getting ready for your New Year's resolutions?
Let me give you some New Year's resolution advice.
I, of course, am somewhat notorious for saying that systems are better than goals.
And yet, here we are at the end of the year and the beginning of a new year and thinking to ourselves, what will our goals be for the coming year?
Well, I would give you the following advice.
Goals are good if there's only one specific thing you want.
In other words, if you want to, let's say, get married to a specific person, Well, then you want a specific goal.
But there are many cases where, let's say, you don't even have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
Maybe what you want is love, not so much a specific person.
Maybe you want to be more successful in your career, but not a specific job or a specific way.
So maybe you want to keep that open and allow for your systems to do the rest.
I've been thinking about my own goals for the year, and it's okay to express them as goals as long as you also have a system.
And you're not limiting yourself by your goal.
So one of my goals, if you will, is to do better and more online.
So I'll probably be setting up, well definitely, I'll be setting up a little separate room where I can do some longer form interviews.
I find that I like to do the morning Periscope Just us.
You know, you would think it would be easier for me to interview somebody because I just ask the questions and then they get to jabber a little bit and I can rest and come up with a question.
So you think that interviewing people would be just the easiest, most fun thing to do.
But I have to tell you, I think of them as separate.
I think of our conversation here as actually personal.
And I think of an interview where you learn something from somebody I talk to.
It's sort of a separate product.
So I'd like to keep that a separate product.
I'll still have a guess on this Periscope as, let's say, as events unfold, if there's something that's really timely and it works in this form, I'll probably still do it.
But I like the long form to be separate, so you'll see some of those.
It's also a way for me to test Whether YouTube is throttling me for purely economic reasons, which is that the content isn't high enough quality, because that's one of the filters, or if they're doing it for political reasons.
So I'll have some content that's clearly high quality production And also innocent.
You know, nothing provocative. And then I'll be able to see if that gets throttled.
The same as everything else. So some of it is an ongoing task.
Enough about me. Enough about me.
Let's talk about the world. So you have all seen the video by now of the Texas church shooting.
A shooter came into a church in Texas.
Pulled down a gun and I believe there were six or seven armed volunteers and parishioners who were packing.
It took six seconds for the volunteers to take him down and have several guns pointed at him while he's down.
And you're probably having exactly the same reaction that I had.
And the reaction is, It's difficult to talk about this in public, as I am now, because you can't hide the fact that it's a tragedy, two people died, top priority.
So as human beings, let's agree that the story is two people got killed.
That's the story.
So let's not lose that.
Focus on that. First priority.
But you're also humans, and you probably had the same experience I did, which was, it was really kind of inspiring.
And I'm trying to balance the fact that two people lost their lives, my God, their families.
I mean, just the worst thing that could ever happen in church.
I mean, literally, you know, suppose if you're a person of faith, having your family member gunned down in church, you know, God's house, I don't know how you ever go on to life after that.
So the tragedy is extreme.
But there was still something about the human resilience, the human determination, the human instinct to protect each other.
There was something about masculinity, frankly.
There's something in the story about masculinity.
I think one of the people who drew a weapon was a woman, but by and large, the situation was handled by men, armed men who did not hesitate to act.
Think about the fact that you're just, you're trained to be one of these volunteer bodyguards at this church.
So, you know, even though your mind has been set on the fact that you might have to shoe somebody in the right situation, think about the fact that there were several people who pulled a weapon and a few of them fired immediately.
The others didn't have a clean shot.
You know, there were too many people in the way.
But, oh my God!
You know, the...
I don't know.
There's just something in this situation that talks to every part of being a person.
You know, everything from the tragedy to the heroism to everything in between.
it's like the entire human experience captured in six seconds.
So I don't want to go on about the artistic impact of it, if you will, because of the tragedy, but it was quite a thing.
If you get a chance to see the video, if you haven't, you ought to see it.
Now, there's a lot of stories and news about anti-Semitic attacks in New York City, and I'm having trouble Forming a stable opinion on the situation.
Because the first thing is, it could be coincidence.
Right? Now, you never want to dismiss anti-Semitism as coincidence, because that's how you get yourself a Holocaust.
You know, it's like the very worst thing you could do is to minimize it and say, ah, it's just a bunch of coincidences.
But it could be.
It could be just a bunch of coincidences.
You just don't really know.
But you certainly wouldn't want to dismiss it, so let's keep an eye on that, see if there's anything real.
It does seem that the perpetrators have different purposes.
They're all over the map.
Maybe there's something different about the way it's being reported.
I haven't heard that, but maybe.
So I would say we should be all on high, high alert for something like a resurgence of anti-Semitism.
I tell you, I don't know where it comes from, do you?
Have you ever really understood anti-Semitism?
I suppose if you're Jewish, maybe you do, on some different way or different level.
But if you're not Jewish, what in the world would make me want to target one group?
I don't even understand the motivation behind it, exactly.
You know, sometimes I think it's jealousy.
But what is it? I'm completely baffled, and I'm being honest.
You know, unless you were, you know, I could see if you came from the Middle East and your country had some historic problems with Israel, sure.
That makes sense. You'd have something like a reason.
But why? Why pick this one group out of all the groups?
It's not even a large group.
It feels like a waste of hate.
If you get a hate, pick some large group that's got like a billion people in it.
You don't pick the group that's got a few million.
Antisemitism is completely baffling to me.
I don't understand... Where in the world it could come from?
All right. Now, I understand if you're actually in the KKK or something, you've got a whole belief system around it.
But for average people, you know, the people who are accused of these recent crimes, what the heck got into them?
Where'd that come from? I mean, I don't even know where they would see it in the media.
You know, are they reading something?
I don't read. Seeing something?
I don't see. Somebody says Satan.
Okay, maybe Satan.
Other people are blaming Bill de Blasio.
Some blaming Satan. Some people say it's the same.
All right. Apparently the U.S. has attacked quite aggressively some militia group in Iraq that's backed by Iran and bloodied them up quite a bit because apparently they've been doing some stuff to make it dangerous for American troops.
And I asked myself, what?
Why is there an Iranian-backed military group in Iraq?
Isn't Iraq allegedly its own country?
What? There's certainly something I don't understand also about Iraq.
So I guess Iraq is not actually a country?
Because if you're a country...
And within your country, there's an armed military that's not your armed military.
You're not really a country, are you?
That's sort of a dividing line between your country or your not.
Oh yeah, there's an armed military group.
It's not us.
They just sort of stay here.
So we bloody them up.
And without even knowing the details, it seems like a good idea, because shouldn't we be driving out every armed military group in Iraq?
I mean, I suppose you could imagine that the armed military group is opposing both the United States and terrorists, so that they have some functional reason to be there that's good for Iraq.
But I just don't know how Iraq can survive with somebody else's military in their country full-time.
Oh well. One of the most interesting stories...
In the news, was from CBS News' Major Garrett.
Now, if you don't know who I'm talking about, Major is his first name.
He's not actually a major.
So Major Garrett is the name of a news professional personality host.
And on CBS, on Face the Nation, he said with complete sincerity, and here's the part that's amazing...
At least in the clip I saw, he did not soften the following statement.
In other words, he said it as just, this is a fact, with no qualifications whatsoever.
Here's what he said was a fact, that President Trump has a policy legacy of helping minority communities that, quote, any president would want to claim.
And he went through the examples.
He talked about the funding for historically black colleges.
He talked about the First Step Act.
He talked about, what do you call it, Opportunity Zones.
And there was something else on his list.
And so, kudos to Major Garrett.
My God. How hard was it for him to be on a network that's not exactly pro-Trump?
And part of a network collection of, you know, a constellation of companies that have been calling President Trump a racist for four years.
And suddenly, Major Garrett, with no qualifications, it's the qualifications missing that make this story so interesting to me.
Because imagine how easy it would have been for him to say, oh, President Trump did these things, and yeah, we all agree these are good, but what about these other things?
And then they would go into the hoaxes, right?
What you would expect is, yeah, yeah, he funded historically black colleges, he got forced into it, but what about the fine people hoax, right?
That's the way you'd expect to see this.
But Major Garrett, again, this is just a compliment to Major Garrett and being brave, frankly, I think.
I think this shows some guts.
That he would say something so immensely unpopular right in the middle of his own, you know, his own industry, his own people, and in front of the world.
So, thank you to Major Garrett for pointing out, without those BS qualifiers, that the President has worked steadily and clearly In ways that are primarily beneficial to the minority communities.
And that that's just an objective fact now, that any president, says Major Garrett, would be happy with those accomplishments.
That was just sort of an unexpected positive thing.
You know, you don't expect these little gifts, but you know, it's that holiday season, end of the year.
It's nice. There's news and rumors and speculation that Mike Cernovich might run for Congress.
What do you think of that?
Mike Cernovich running for Congress.
Here's my opinion. I don't know if being in Congress is a good job.
In other words, the lifestyle.
I mean, is it fun to be in Congress?
Do you make good money?
Do you like going to the meetings?
So, on a personal level, I would say Mike, of course, will consider the personal element of that.
I'm not sure I could recommend the job.
It wouldn't matter if it were Mike or anybody else.
That said, I can't imagine anything I would like more.
What would be more fun for all of us?
And productive, too.
It's not just for the fun.
What would be more productive for the country and fun than Mike Cernovich and Congress?
So I have split opinions on this.
For my benefit, Oh yeah, I want him to run.
I totally want him to run, for my benefit, and your benefit too, because you would get an excellent politician, he would never be boring, and he would shake things up.
But for his own purposes, he's got to think, What's this do to my life?
You know, two young kids, got a lifestyle he probably likes.
That's a lot. So if he does run, I think you're going to have to give it up because that would look like, to me, it would look like a pretty big sacrifice on his part.
So that's fun.
We'll watch that. I've been continuing to notice this pattern and I want to see how many of you have noticed it.
Have you noticed the pattern online?
And we've talked about this before, so I'm just updating to see if you're still noticing the pattern.
That the least rational debaters on Twitter are almost always artists.
They could be writers or photographers or graphic artists.
Any kind of artist could be music.
But are you still seeing that?
Because from the moment I first pointed it out, Did you start clicking on profiles after that?
I hear from people who are doing that.
I'm just waiting for the comments to catch up to it.
And I've almost gotten to the point, yeah, I'm looking at your comments, artists, artists, 100%, absolutely, least rational, or journalists.
Journalists are artists.
Journalists are writers.
Yeah, you're seeing in the comments an almost universal agreement that the pattern is strong.
Now, I don't know what causes the pattern.
The speculation is that their writers and artists think differently, and they believe that all the evidence is meaningful.
Whereas somebody who's an engineer, a scientist, a lawyer, believes that a lot of the evidence, no matter what the situation is, just in general, a lot of the evidence doesn't mean anything.
So if I could summarize the difference, artists believe that every note in the song is where it belongs, and every clue in the story is there for a reason.
And every brushstroke on a painting was put there on purpose.
So in the world of art, there's no such thing as accident or coincidence.
Everything is designed to make all the parts meaningful and fit.
In the real world, where scientists and engineers and lawyers, for example, economists, are working, you've got a world where most of the evidence is fake.
Most of it is not meaningless.
Most of it, as a majority, is probably coincidence.
It's fake patterns.
It's misleading. It's psychological tricks.
That's the real world.
So if you put artists in the same conversation with the scientists, they're coming at it with completely different mindsets.
One says every clue means something, and the other says every clue is probably a trick.
Some of them might mean something.
And if we work really, really hard, we can look at all these clues and maybe, not every time, but maybe be able to pick out the ones that actually are real.
So that's what a rational person looks like.
And the artist says, I saw one clue.
I don't need two clues, right?
Why would I need two pieces of information if I have one?
Because one piece of information tells you everything you need to know.
You know, orange man, orange man bad.
Alright? If I have one data point that says orange man bad, orange man bad.
I'm done. There's nothing else to talk about.
Scientist says, well, maybe one variable does not describe a world.
Maybe your one variable is misleading.
Maybe your one variable is wrong.
Completely different mindset.
And I've actually reached a point where I was considering this morning...
A new policy.
I don't think I'm going to do it, but the policy would go like this.
That on Twitter, I would not engage in any kind of a back and forth with anybody who has an artist profile.
And maybe I'll just say it.
Say, I don't debate artists.
And I'm thinking about just that exact sentence.
I don't debate artists.
Think about it. Let's say you are one of these artists, you're a writer or journalist, whatever, and you come in looking for blood, and you're in an exchange with me, and you think I'm going to get interested and tweet back.
But instead I tweet back, no disrespect, but I don't debate artists.
Because the point is, not that they're broken, because they're not.
They're not broken. They're just different.
An artist has a different filter on life.
It turns out it's not as useful, in my opinion.
It just isn't as useful.
But they might be awesome in many other ways.
They create things people want to see.
They have lots of great qualities.
There's nothing wrong with them. But what would be the point in getting in a debate with an artist?
What would be the point? Because there's no path where the two of you can...
Chase the facts, fix each other's thinking, and reach some common conclusion.
There is no path.
It's one of those you can't get there from here.
Because if you take the economist and say, okay, here's the best, wisest, most rational economist, or scientist, whatever, and you say, let's work with this artist now, and I want you to use your rational, factual skills to change the artist's mind.
Would that work? No.
Because the artist doesn't even have the same framework.
It's like a cat having an argument with a dog.
A cat and a dog can argue all day long, but neither of them is going to change their mind.
Because a cat and a dog can't even talk.
They don't even have a common language.
And then I will reiterate again, because many of you watching would also be artists.
There's nothing wrong with being an artist.
It's useful as part of a package of a comprehensive way of looking at the world.
If you've studied art and you know art and you get art, but you've also learned, let's say, business and economics and science or whatever, then you probably have a well-rounded view.
And in your case, I would not call you an artist.
I would call you a Renaissance person.
You've heard the phrase a renaissance person, somebody who's sort of good in a whole bunch of different things.
You know, there's no one field that's your thing.
A little bit of math, a little bit of writing, a little bit of art.
So if you're a renaissance person or working that direction or you're building your talent stack, that's exactly where you want to be.
So if art is part of your talent stack, You're probably working with an advantage.
If art is your main talent sack, like mostly what you can do is in the field of art, and you've neglected the other areas of thinking, you probably have a blind spot, and it's going to show up on Twitter.
All right. I feel like I'm talking too much this morning.
I feel like I've missed you all, because the news has been so slow that it's been weird lately, and so I'm a little talkative this morning, I guess.
Let's see what else we got going on.
Putin has reiterated his invitation to the President of the United States to visit Russia.
And of course, what could be more provocative than Putin being friendly to Trump?
Because of course that gets everybody yakking.
And here's what Putin said in his message.
And look how clever this is.
And compare it to something I've been saying about, well, here's the context.
I've been saying for a while that the United States and Russia are natural allies, meaning that all things being equal, we're not really competing for resources.
But we do have a common interest in the rest of the country, or the rest of the world, I mean, common interest in the rest of the world being stable and improving, so that it does not become a risk to us, it becomes markets to us, etc.
So certainly we're competitive with every other country, including Russia, but we are not natural enemies.
We are natural allies.
All we have to do is let nature take its course, and we would probably just drift into becoming allies.
I think there's history, there's inertia, there's fake news, there's things come up, and certainly Russia has to explain incursions into other countries, Ukraine, etc.
These are real things. But I think the natural arc...
And the natural historical gravity, if you will, is for the US and Russia to become allies, more so than we are today, if we even are.
I guess we wouldn't call ourselves allies.
And so here's Putin's wording for what I just said.
He said that Russia and US were historically responsible for ensuring global security and stability and that Moscow speaks in favor of normalizing bilateral relations and establishing an equal dialogue based on the mutual respect of interests.
Now, the mutual respect of interest part sort of suggests that Putin wants us to stay out of his business if he conquers a neighboring country.
So that part's not good.
Maybe we should be interested in what your interests are, if they're the military kind.
But the first part, I thought, was really good staging.
The way he sets it up, Is he talks to the US and Russia as being historically responsible for ensuring global security and stability.
Think about that framing.
If you were going to frame an invitation, you'd have a hard time framing it better than this.
Because what he's done is he's appealed to our common history and said something that's true.
Wouldn't you say it's true that US and Russia, largely because of our militaries, Our stabilizing forces, even though the Russian universe and the US universe are different countries to some extent, it is sort of stabilizing.
I mean, it feels that way to me.
So he starts with saying something that's true.
It's something that's true that we both succeeded at, I think you'd say.
And it's something we should do more of.
It's a really good framing of like, you know, the world depends on the U.S. and Russia.
That's the short way of saying it.
The short way is the entire world depends on the U.S. and Russia being stabilizing forces and not something else.
So let's do that. Let's be those stabilizing forces.
That's really good. Putin's good at this stuff.
I'm not a fool, so I don't assume that Russia would never take advantage of us if they had a chance.
I believe that all the big countries would take advantage of each other if they had the opportunity.
That's how it works. So I'm not blind to the risk of Putin, but I can't get past the fact that it's so obvious And I believe it would be obvious to Putin as well that getting along with the United States would be great for Russia.
Not getting along with the United States will continue to not be great.
Is this basic point not blindingly obvious to all of you?
I mean, I think it's obvious to you, but why is it not obvious to literally everybody?
And the obvious thing being, They're getting along with Russia and they getting along with us and just not doing all this provocative stuff that is completely optional.
I mean, you know, everything that's happening with NATO and the border and Ukraine and Crimea and all that, I just feel like none of that should derail the long-term, let's say, coordination of the U.S. and Russia in a productive way.
And I also wonder what Russia thinks of China.
Don't you think Russia is at least a little bit worried about China?
And don't you think Russia would feel a little bit more comfortable in the US sphere of things if it has to have China on its border?
I think so. All right.
Mark Schneider tweeted around an article that had been a thread on President Trump being the one person in the world who's done the most to combat climate change.
And then he backs it up.
So think about how provocative this claim is.
So the claim is that President Trump has done more than anybody on earth.
Anybody on earth.
The whole world. To battle climate change while simultaneously, you know, he's called it a Chinese hoax.
And so you say to yourself, uh, that doesn't sound right.
And the answer is, somebody says, no, he hasn't.
It's BS. Well, I haven't made my argument yet, Bella.
Bella, listen to the argument, okay?
Okay. So even Democrats, let's say Cory Booker, Yang, even Biden, have agreed that nuclear power is essential to dealing with climate change.
It's not the answer.
It's part of a portfolio that includes other green energies, etc.
But everybody smart, meaning everybody who's actually looked into it, and that would include Cory Booker, includes Yang, includes a lot of Republicans.
Everybody who's looked into it and is up to date, and that's the hard part, because a lot of people are out of date on their nuclear knowledge.
They have a knowledge of older technology and its dangers, and they'd be right.
The older technologies...
We're dangerous. The newer technologies, the stuff that they're working on, the so-called generation four, actually reduces the risk of even the existing technology because it could eat the nuclear waste from the old plants.
It eats it as its fuel.
So it actually reduces the need to store waste.
And it is also safe from meltdown.
So it's a design that wouldn't melt down.
So you've got that stuff going on.
All right, so here's... I'll summarize Mark's argument.
So there are, I don't know, 10 or 15 things that the administration has done that almost none of you have heard about because they're things that happen at the industry level.
So in other words, they're creating test facilities in a few different ways.
The government, the Department of Energy, primarily through PERI, Has funded and or approved and or created facilities for rapid testing of new nuclear technology.
Now, here's what's the important part.
It's the system that gets you there.
If you have a good system, Then probably things are working the way you want them to.
You don't know where it'll end up, how fast it'll end up.
But if you have a good system, you're going to be moving in the right direction.
I would say that the governments, especially the Department of Energy, their system seems pretty solid.
And the system is this.
The industry comes to the government and they say, we want to be able to test this design.
Let's say Bill Gates' company, he funds TerraPower.
They want to build a Generation 4.
But they can't get the place to do it.
They can't get the licenses.
They might need funding.
They might need other kinds of resources that only the government could provide.
So they come to the government, to presumably the Department of Energy, and they say, We need all this stuff in order to make nuclear successful.
We've got to be able to test it.
We've got to build a prototype, etc.
And the Department of Energy has been, apparently, really, really good.
In fact, to me it would be a tie.
If I were going to give an awards at the end of the year for the best cabinet department, I'd have to go with two.
I'd go with Department of Energy, who as far as I can tell, all right, I'm no expert, but just from the outside looking in, it looks like Perry just totally killed it.
Like one of the most successful cabinet appointments of all time, I think.
Now, I'm open to a counter-argument on that, but just what I'm watching from the outside looks like Best cabinet head of all time, maybe.
But there's somebody who's almost as good.
And I'm terrible at memory.
Is it Health and Human Services?
Azir? What's the name of the cabinet head of Health and Human Services?
So it's whoever's working on the generics and healthcare costs and bringing more competition to healthcare, etc.
No, not Ben Carson.
Azar. Yeah, I'm talking about Azar.
Ben Carson is HUD, right?
So it seems to me that Alex Azar, every time you see him in the news, it's something really good.
Something really good. And so it seems to me that cabinet officials never get much acclaim.
But man, every time I saw something come out of the Department of Energy or a czar's group, it was right on.
It was the right thing, right time, right system, right approach.
And I will say that both those departments are working on a systems mindset.
The stuff you see coming out of Health and Human Services is system changes, such as we changed our system for approving generics.
So we'll get to more generics quicker, that lowers the cost almost immediately.
So you see Azar being a systems fixing guy, and then you look at the Department of Energy, and you see all the things that they've done, a lot of them fit into that system category.
So, those two guys, they need to get some kind of, like, big award at the end of the year from the president, because they're just really making him look good, and they're just killing it.
Let me give you some other...
Alright, so I think I made my case that the President, because he's done the most through the Department of Energy, he's done the most for promoting the future of nuclear.
Now, there's still a lot of research and testing to be done, but we're doing all the right stuff.
So, odds are that we'll be in pretty good shape.
Now, I throw out the following idea for you.
Here's my idea for a system improvement.
Now, it might be we don't need this because we already have the testing facilities we need through the Department of Energy.
But if we don't, I would recommend the following.
Now, the improvement on what I'm going to suggest in the nuclear field and in the climate change field is the psychology of it.
So what I'm going to suggest is primarily fixing the psychology of of the system.
And the psychology is people are afraid of nuclear energy.
They don't want it in their backyard.
So that's the psychology.
And if you don't put it in people's backyard, it's too far away.
It wouldn't be hard to find a remote place to put a nuclear reactor, but you don't need it there, because there's nothing to power.
So, here's my suggestion.
I would love to see a nuclear test facility in a very remote place where even if the nuclear power plant works, it's not really close to anything.
But here's the second part.
You ready? It's a double test facility.
Two things are being tested.
Initially, it would be nuclear test plants.
So they build small modular nuclear plants and maybe multiple of them all in the same general area.
But away from people. And here's the second part.
Once you have at least one of them working and up and creating electricity, you turn it into, secondarily, a carbon scrubbing test site with free electricity.
So in other words, if you get one of the nuclear modular plants, let's say it's a small nuclear plant that's a test plant, once you get it working, and you say, well, we built it and it's working, but there are no cities around here, there's nothing to test.
So instead, we're going to make this also a test facility for those carbon scrubbing machines.
There are a bunch of technologies that do it.
They literally draw the carbon out of the air, And in many cases, they can turn it into a product.
One of those products is jet fuel.
So you can actually take the jet fuel out of the air, reconstitute it as jet fuel, because you're taking the carbon out and turning it into jet fuel.
And jet fuel is the one thing that you can't do with electricity.
You can't replace a jet with electricity, at least not in the near future.
So imagine, if you will, Imagine, if you will, that you've built a test site for cleaning CO2 out of the air.
And it happens to be next to a test site for a nuclear plant that's giving you free electricity, because the biggest expense for cleaning CO2 out of the air is the energy.
If you can make the energy cheap, You can suck the CO2 out of the air, no problem.
So, that's my suggestion.
You fix the psychology of it by taking it into the remotest area and making it a CO2 scrubbing area, because air is air.
You should be able to scrub the CO2 no matter where it is, I think.
Does it matter where your CO2 scrubber is located?
Maybe it does. Maybe you have to be closer to coal plants or something to optimize.
I'll just throw that out there.
Alright, here's another systems approach to homelessness.
Whenever I talk about homelessness, I will try to bore you by saying that drug addiction and mental health are driving much, if not most, of homelessness.
And you can't solve those two things by giving somebody a home, because that wasn't the problem in the first place.
It was drugs and mental health.
But, that said, there are still lots and lots of people who could really benefit from a super cheap place to live.
And I just heard about the smartest one I've ever seen.
And I'm going to say this with complete confidence.
What I'm going to describe next is the smartest solution I've ever seen to homelessness.
Are you ready? It did not involve the government.
That's pretty smart already, right?
So everything I'm going to describe, no government funding.
There might have been some involvement in the government to permit it to happen, but that's not talked about in the article I read, so I don't know.
And here's the system.
So a group called Good Samaritans, there's some sort of religious charitable group, in Austin, Texas, they built a village For those in need with no public funding.
So they started with, I think, 51 acres.
So they had some cheap land that wasn't being used for anything.
And then they put on it tiny homes.
And the tiny homes, apparently, you could build, you know, any kind of tiny home that a volunteer wanted to build.
And they would have central bathrooms.
So the homes did not necessarily need a kitchen.
The homes do not need a bathroom because you just walk outside and there's a central bathroom somewhere.
They also converted old campers.
So if you had an old camper that was no longer road-worthy, well, it's a place for somebody to sleep inside.
So you'd put that on your 51 acres.
You'd make sure it was close enough to other facilities, because I guess they could walk to food and showers and whatever.
Then the residents themselves get breaks on the rent for working there.
So the people who live there are also the workers.
So somebody would be, it's their job to clean up, clean the bathrooms, that sort of thing.
And apparently they've been operating for years successfully.
Did you hear that?
They've been operating for years successfully.
It's actually so good that these, let's call them super low-income people.
So the people who live there really didn't have a lot of options.
I'll call them super low-income.
And when they talk to them, those people are like, I could just live here forever.
I mean, basically, you've met all of my needs.
I don't see how I can get much better.
Somebody says, so it's a trailer park.
They actually describe it as sort of a souped-up trailer park.
In other words, some of them are trailers, some of them are different structures that are small houses, tiny homes, probably just enough to sleep in.
But yeah. Imagine a mobile home, but built in sort of a campsite way, where there's, I think they have a central, I believe they're built in a ring around a central area where there are central services.
So, oh, I forgot the most important part.
I described this whole thing and I left out actually the important part.
So everything you've heard so far is just context.
Here's the important part.
They built it with a design from person first.
Sounds like nothing, right?
They designed this place from the person out.
That's a different system than what you see.
What is the normal way to build a home?
The normal way is construction first.
You say to yourself, well, if I need to build an inexpensive home, what's the cheapest way to do that?
And then you end up with an apartment building.
Then you put all the people in the apartment building.
It costs too much.
They can't take care of it, and here's the part that's important.
You stick people in an apartment, they don't meet their neighbors, for the most part.
They become like a little isolated unit that just happens to be in a building that has lots of other isolated units.
By building the homeless thing the way they did, they started with human beings as social creatures.
So they said, we're building a place for a human being.
We're not doing a construction project.
We're solving a problem for humans.
What do humans need first?
Well, shelter. So anything that gives them a roof and some warmth will satisfy that.
So that's not a big design thing.
So the next thing is, if they have shelter, what's the next thing they need besides food and health care?
And the answer is social, community, right?
So the design breakthrough, if you will, the thing that makes this different from everything else, is that they started with the person, and they say, what's a person need?
What's a human need?
And it's a community. And the idea is that with these small communities in which you're forced to interact, because all the services are central, you know, if you want food or whatever, and you're working at the facility, so if you have a job, you're probably in the facility.
You're interacting with all the other people.
They're in similar circumstances.
You would not feel any restriction to talk to anybody else who's there, because you're all there under sort of the same circumstances.
So apparently the community variable is what makes this magic.
So it starts with no government interference.
So I'm going to describe it as a system now.
So the first thing that's good is it starts with no government.
Because that gets you out of all the government problems.
All the politics go away.
So that's good. Now, you also have to get the cost way down.
Because if the government's not involved, who's paying for this stuff?
It's got to be inexpensive.
So that's where the land that wasn't being used for anything might have even been donated.
I don't know. So you get your free land.
You go to some place where the weather is not going to kill people.
Now, in this case, it's Austin.
And I don't know what they knew about air conditioning.
I didn't read that. But...
Clearly, there are places in the world in which the weather is more conducive, Southern California, for example.
So you've got no government.
You're going super cheap with free land.
We could definitely get free land all over the country.
There are tons of free land.
In fact, the whole blight projects that Bill Pulte works on, those are big swaths of cleared land.
Now, if they're in winter zones, they might not be so useful.
But maybe St. Louis. Take St.
Louis for an example. Would St.
Louis be temperate enough that if you had a bunch of free land and you could put tiny homes on them and organize communities, would that work in St.
Louis? I don't know. So then the other part of the system is that they design it around community and give them jobs and stuff.
So everything about this I love.
Instead of focusing on the construction, they focused on the human beings, and they got a good result, and it's reproducible.
They've been doing it for years, and the people like it.
Totally works. All right.
So if it seems to you that I talk too much about systems over goals, I think you can see in these examples the power of it.
When we had good systems in the energy department, we've had more gains for getting closer to nuclear power breakthroughs than under any administration.
That's because the system was good.
Likewise, Azar over there in Health and Human Services, he's killing it.
Because he's saying, how do I fix the system?
How do I make it more competitive?
How do I make prices more transparent?
How do I make it more of a market sort of thing?
Perfect. And then you look at these private solutions for the homeless.
Again, not the addicted, not the mentally ill.
They have different separate problems which cause them to be homeless and they have to be dealt with separately.
So system-wise, you got it.
Now, let's talk about the system for the rest of them, the addicted and the mentally ill.
This system has one gigantic broken part That you're seeing a lot of action toward fixing.
So California has some advocates.
You'll see Dr. Drew.
You'll hear Michael Schellenberger talking about this specifically.
And here's where the system is broken.
You can't force anybody to do anything.
So even if somebody is dangerous to themselves, well, there's probably some limit to danger to yourself.
But if you're just addicted or you have a serious mental illness and you don't want help, Our current system doesn't allow it to happen.
And so those people just are left to their own resources.
So the part of the system that needs to be fixed is just that one choke point.
There needs to be a series of objective, I guess it has to be a little bit subjective, but as close as you can get to an objective set of variables that police or health services can say, all right, for this person, I know they don't want to go, but this time we just have to make it happen.
Because sometimes you just gotta take care of people.
Now, some of you may say, no, we don't need to do that.
We can just force them off the streets, and if they die, they die.
It's not my problem. Now, probably a lot of people have that opinion.
But, if you want to help, There's no getting around the fact that it has to be involuntary.
Nobody has come up with the second way to do this.
If there were two ways to do it, I'd be telling you.
I'd be saying, well, we got this way, and we got this way.
Maybe let's do a test, see which one of those two ways work.
But we don't. We have the way we're doing, which absolutely doesn't work, and everybody would agree.
And then we have one proposition for fixing it.
Just one! There's exactly one idea on the table for fixing anything.
And it starts with involuntary help, basically, for some people under some circumstances.
So when you see the power of systems for fixing things, you can't unsee it.
All right. Joseph says, I'm a good interviewer.
Glad you'll be doing an interview show in 2020.
Well, thank you.
I don't know that I'm a good interviewer, but I aim to be one.
Somebody says, but your system is cheating.
Is it? The weird thing about San Francisco is that the facilities at Center for Homeless are based in the center.
Yeah, you know, I think that's one of the other big advantages of this homeless, tiny home thing they did in Austin, is that it gets out of the city.
Will you have chairs and table?
Oh, in terms of the interviews?
I don't know. The interviews might be call-ins.
So I'm thinking that my interview shows will be nothing but people calling in.
Speaking of systems, Christina and I have been building out the other studio.
She's been doing most of the work on that.
And by the way, Christina has the same...
Weird personality trait that I do.
She's an autodidact.
So if you say to Christina, hey, do you know how to do whatever?
Anything that's technical or complicated?
Christina will say, well, I don't know how to do that, but I'll figure it out in five minutes.
And then five minutes later, she knows how to do it.
So she's one of the most capable people I've ever met.
So she's been helping build out the technology on the...
On the studio.
So we did a little test video yesterday.
I didn't leave it up long because we were just testing the technology.
But successful.
So we...
Somebody says he's in love.
I am. Somebody's saying, after the homeless prison camps, do you think they'll put deplorables in there too?
I don't think so.
Yes. So, Christine is an autodidact, as am I. We like to teach ourselves things fairly rapidly.
So, part of what we're doing with the whole studio thing is that it's a whole skill set that I didn't have.
So, in the process of setting it up, I'm learning a lot about lighting, learning a lot about audio and all the different ways you can do it.
We're using the mixer, learning a lot about video and video formats and uploading to YouTube and all that stuff.
So this is a perfect example of a perfect example of systems over goals.
If I never produce A piece of content with this new studio.
I'm still going to be a guy who knows how to build a studio.
With Christina's help, of course.
So I've learned an entire constellation of skills that all are in this area.
And we've even made it our habit that the editing tools we're going to learn together.
So we'll be learning Adobe Premiere Pro together.
I also have this philosophy That when you're learning things, you're almost always happy.
Now, of course, that's an overgeneralization, but watch how often this is true.
Watch how often, if you're in the process of learning something, whether it's on the job or any other way, but you're actively using some part of your day to learn something new, you're happier.
Watch how often that's true.
I don't know if it's cause and effect or that you can only learn things when everything else is under control, but it feels like learning is somehow a basic need.
Have you ever felt that?
That learning is not just something you do or something you need to do for your job, but it feels like a basic need.
You might not want to learn some topics because they're so boring, but I doubt you ever want to not be learning because the experience of that growing is very addictive.
A lot of yeses in the comments to learning being a basic need.
So I've told you this before, but when I was a supervisor back in my banking days and I had a small group of people, I had one requirement Other than showing up.
I had a requirement that he had to come to work.
But my other requirement that there were no exceptions to is that everybody who worked for me had to be learning something else.
So they all knew how to do the job that I was supervising them to do, so they didn't need to learn that.
But I could not be a supervisor of people who woke up in the morning Came to work, did the same damn thing, drove home, did the same damn thing at home, and went to bed and then read.
I just couldn't be a boss of that.
And so my requirement was that it didn't matter what they were learning.
It could be another language, skill, training class or something else.
They could be reading some books on their own.
But every day I drilled into them, you know.
Tell me what you're learning.
And if you're not learning anything, let me help you carve out some time.
If time's a problem, you can do it during work hours.
If you don't know what to do, I'll work with you until you find something you want to learn.
But it has to be for your benefit.
Yeah, every day. Every day they should be learning something, even a little bit.
I'll give you an example in my own life.
So, you know, some of you know I've been practicing the drums, trying to learn to play the drums.
I've never played an instrument.
I don't have any natural talents in this area.
But Christina suggested that I also learn music theory at the same time, because it would help my drumming.
So I got an app that has little flashcards and stuff, and I started to learn, just in my down time when I'm bored, music theory.
I have to tell you, I look forward to it because I only take it in teeny little bites.
I'll just learn maybe a couple of vocabulary words that I'm good for that day because it compounds over time.
You don't really have to do a lot every day to be somewhere at the end of the year.
So I'll just take out my app when I'm bored.
I'll go to the next flashcard and I'm like, oh, double bar line.
That means the end of a measure.
Okay, I'll remember that.
And that's all I know. That's my entire day's work on that project.
And the next day, I'll learn what the grand staff is and the treble clef and all that stuff.
And I feel myself getting better, smarter.
I'm learning a new thing.
Now, the other reason I'm learning, I'm trying to get more into music.
Part of it is it's fun to do something with Christina because that's her Area of expertise and it's just nice to be able to spend time together talking about that stuff.
But I'm also really interested in music as persuasion.
It feels to me like I needed to add music to my talent stack of persuasion to fill in a blank.
Because I talk about how music is basically an audio drug.
If you play the right kind of music, or even the wrong kind, it changes how you think.
The way you think changes the chemistry that's released into your body, and it changes how you feel, and all of that collectively can change how you act.
And in fact, you program yourself with your music.
If you played nothing but sad music, because you like the way it sounds, it's like, you know, I just like sad music.
It would make you sad, no doubt about it.
Over time, it would program you to be a sad person.
If you listen to only happy music, even if you didn't like it, it would actually program you to be kind of happier over time.
So music as persuasion is very important.
And I noticed that people use music medicinally.
I use music medicinally, and by that I mean there are some situations where, let's say, putting on the headphones and listening to a certain kind of music could put me to sleep.
So I just use it instead of a sleeping pill.
In some cases, it can put me to sleep.
In other cases, let's say I want to exercise or clean the house or do something active, there are certain types of music that are very conducive to that.
Others conducive to relaxation, etc.
So if you're matching your music very rigorously to the outcome you want, how you want to program your mind, well that's a medicinal use.
I think Mike Cervich has an article about binaural beats or various sound effect types of things that you can listen to through your headphones that have some scientific, let's say there's some evidence that it does program your brain in predictable ways.
So I'm totally interested in music as persuasion.
Used correctly. I'm very big against randomly listening to music.
So if, for example, I think one of the most harmful things you could do, this has never been tested, pure speculation on what comes next.
So what I say next should not be taken as probably true, it's just my speculation.
The people who routinely listen to randomized music Meaning you just turn on the radio in your car and just leave it on.
I think that they're doing a great disservice to their brain, because it's like pumping in random drugs.
It's like, well, here's an aspirin you didn't need, and here's another pill you didn't need, and here's another pill you didn't need.
So take that for what it's worth.
I think that randomly listening to music and not listening to it medicinally and with a purpose is probably one of the worst things you could do to your brain, honestly.
But I don't know. It's just speculation.
All right. Clearly I'm at the point in this periscope where I'm talking for my own benefit because I don't want to go do something else.
I just would rather talk to you.
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