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Jan. 11, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:06:18
Episode 784 Scott Adams: #Loserthink From Artists, Iranian Attitudes, North Korea, Lots More
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Alright. Did you miss me?
It's okay, I was just over by the printer.
Don't panic. Alright, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about today.
Today's star of the day is Representative Doug Collins, who yesterday I and Preet Bharara and lots of people mocked for saying that Democrats are in love with terrorists.
And today, actually yesterday, Representative Collins tweeted, let me be clear, I do not believe Democrats are in love with terrorists, and I apologize for what I said earlier.
48-hour rule for apologies has been accepted.
As I've told you before, you will come to love the following standard for judging your fellow humans.
The old way you used to do it is judging them by their mistakes.
Bad way to judge people, because we all make mistakes.
Good way to judge people is by how they respond to their mistakes.
Representative Collins made a mistake, responded to it quickly, clearly, apologized.
Bam! That's how you do it.
Star of the week, Doug Collins.
Not because of the mistake.
Because of the way he handled it.
Perfectly. Done.
Nice play. Alright.
There's something maybe interesting happening that people can smell before they see it involving the Iranian situation.
And that has to do with the way they're dealing with the news, which no doubt they did not want to admit, which is apparently they are, not apparently, they are responsible for firing the missile that took down the Ukraine airlines, killing many of their own citizens and some others as well.
So Iran has now taken full responsibility.
And people are wondering, If that suggests that they're more flexible, meaning that it seems like the sort of response you might give if you're thinking, you know, we need to rejoin the international community, anybody else in this situation would admit responsibility and just handle it.
And Iran did that.
Now, I think they also had no real choice because the evidence was, I mean, it was just obvious to people even before the investigation, right?
Is there anyone who really thought that anything else was going on other than Iran shot it down accidentally?
I think we all knew that.
So admitting something that everybody knows is maybe not the biggest step in joining the international community, but it's not nothing.
At least it's a step in the right direction.
But there's something very interesting about the way it happened.
So it turns out that the head of the, I guess it's the Iranian guard, who is it?
The Iranian, what do they call themselves?
The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, so he said that he had requested all commercial flights in Iran be grounded until tensions with the US cooled off.
Now, who used to be the boss of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard?
Well, my understanding is that it was Soleimani, right?
He was the boss of all the military and...
So this commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard talked to another branch of the armed forces who were authorized to ground planes.
So I guess the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard did not have the authority to ground the planes, but they asked for the planes to be grounded by another force in the military, and the other force in the military didn't do it.
We don't know why, but they didn't do it.
Let me ask you this.
If Soleimani had been alive, who was the boss of both groups, he was the boss of the military, he was the boss of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, if Soleimani had been still alive, do you think those flights would have been in the air?
I don't think so.
And by the way, I think I'll be the first person to tell you this, but by later today you might hear it on the news.
But if you know that two members of the military who used to both report to the same guy can't get their messages straight, and one of them is asking for something completely reasonable and the other one's not doing it, that suggests...
That missing Solomon A might be a bigger problem than we thought.
It might be a bigger problem internally.
You know, we always imagine that unintended consequences only happen to our own side.
Well, there's a pretty big unintended consequence that might be happening internally, which is jockeying for power.
And finger pointing and probably a lot of scrambling to figure out who's in charge and who's really in charge.
You know, there's who's in charge on paper and then there's who's really in charge.
So I got a feeling there's some internal confusion within Iran that may not be getting better anytime soon.
So we got that.
It has been a few days now, and we have not seen so far, correct me if I'm wrong, any of Iran's proxies attacking any of our assets.
Now, the reporting is that Iran actually told its proxies to step down, you know, to stand down.
And I think maybe that's true.
We'll have to, you know, time will tell.
But I would like to offer this new thought.
There's something about tragedy...
That focuses you like other things don't.
In our country, we saw it with 9-11, right?
9-11, for good or for bad, focused this country like few things can focus.
Pearl Harbor focused this country like few things can focus.
So there's something about tragedy that does...
Cause a country to come together and focus.
And I would argue that Iran's frame just changed.
And what I mean by frame is the way we look at a situation.
The framing we put on the situation changed.
And here's the change. I think the change went from Iran versus the United States.
That was the old frame.
We're fighting you.
You're fighting us. We're...
We're at each other. But this tragedy accidentally changed the frame.
And I would describe it this way.
Iran is only hurting itself.
If you're in Iran, doesn't it feel like whatever your government has been doing in terms of what's happening with the United States, etc., doesn't it feel like you're only hurting yourself now?
Because the U.S. lost exactly zero people.
Iran shot down a flight full that had a lot of its own people on it and a lot of people from Canada and other countries.
And it feels like what happened was the Iranian, let's say, psychology changed from we're having a competition with you, you being the United States, to I think everything we do just hurts us.
Everything we do hurts our economy.
Everything we do hurts our reputation.
Everything we do costs us lives, but they're Iranian lives.
Why is it that everything we do is just bad for us?
So that's one of those subtle changes that you don't see in the news, but it might make a big difference over time.
Apparently the news is coming out that the U.S. unsuccessfully targeted another Iranian military official who had something to do with funding, which is probably a strong person to target, because if you take out the person who's in charge of all the financing for the bad activities, that could be quite a blow.
But apparently that operation did not work.
We did not take him out.
But what message does that send?
It's really a different message if you tried to go after two, or maybe there were more.
Maybe we'll find out later there were more than two.
But your decapitation strike looks a little different if it's two people than if it does one, even if one of them didn't work.
Sorry, my cat is ruining my video here.
Cat, you are not allowed to be on camera.
All right. I'll try to control her.
So it does have this different message if there were two targets, because that makes it feel like nobody's safe.
If you target one person, you could imagine in your mind, oh, okay, there was something very special about that one person.
So they're done once they've got that one person.
But as soon as you hear it was two people, you say to yourself, uh, apparently it's not limited.
And that's a really different psychological message, which is, no, it's not really about that one person.
And by the way, he's still alive.
So, you know, don't go to the airport.
Here's...
All right.
What else we got here?
Sorry, my cat just really needs some attention right now.
I've got a poll up on Twitter that got a very interesting outcome.
Sorry. You're seeing her tail.
If you're wondering what that furry thing is that keeps surrounding my neck, that's my cat's tail.
So I put a survey up, and I asked this question, a hypothetical question, on Twitter in a poll.
And I said, if a wizard offered to double your income...
All right, you can all play along.
If a wizard offered to double your income, and the only catch...
Is that it would quadruple the income of the super rich?
Would you accept?
I'll put that question to you, and you can answer it in the comments before I tell you the actual answer.
This cat is just going crazy on me.
I have to tell you that last night she got out of the house.
She's an indoor cat, but she got out last night, so she was missing in action on a cold night.
And when she finally returned, hours later, she was very glad to be in a warm house.
So, alright, so what do you say?
I'm watching your answers.
Yes, yes, yes, no.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Of course, yes.
All right, let me jump ahead to the answer.
The answer is, yes.
Yes! If somebody offers to double your income, even if they've quadrupled the income of strangers who are the super rich.
Remember, I call them the, I refer to them as the super rich.
Now, super rich, let's call that billionaires.
Now, there are people who thought, wait a minute, this is a trick.
Yeah, here we see it in the comments.
Somebody says, what about inflation?
What about inflation?
Now, what is it I've told you when I talk about my book that's over here, Loser Think?
I told you that it really helps understand the world if you know at least a little bit about economics.
So I'm going to teach you a little bit about economics to help you understand your world.
If all of the billionaires in the world quadrupled their income, what would happen?
It's only the billionaires.
What would happen to the rest of us if the billionaires all quadrupled their income?
Well, you don't have to wonder, because it happens all the time.
Almost all of the billionaires have quadrupled their income during your lifetime.
What's different? Let me bring this down to Down to the weeds for a moment.
If you're worried about inflation, consider this.
How many potatoes does a billionaire eat for dinner?
How many? Well, on average, a billionaire might eat one potato for dinner, because that's all he needs.
You know, he's not so hungry he needs two potatoes.
So once you've quadrupled the income of the billionaire, how many additional potatoes does he buy?
No additional potatoes.
He was already eating one potato a night and that's all he needed.
He didn't need any extra potatoes.
So when you go to the store, did your potato cost go up?
It did not.
Potato costs are the same because the demand is exactly the same.
One billionaire eats one potato.
Let's say you go to the car dealership and you buy your Toyota Prius.
Did the cost of your Prius go up because the billionaires quadrupled their income?
No, because zero billionaires bought a Prius.
Maybe some billionaire buys...
Well, actually, a billionaire is going to buy the same amount of Priuses, if that's the right plural for Prius.
It might be a Prii.
They buy many Prii.
But they would buy exactly the same number of Prius Of low-end cars as they bought before, which is zero.
So when you go to shop for your low-end car, I say low-end as opposed to, let's say, a luxury automobile.
Low-end being, you know, cars that you and I drive.
What about my X5? That's more of a high-end car.
How many extra high-end X5s are purchased because the billionaires quadrupled their income?
None. Not one extra car, even at the expensive level, were purchased because they already had a car.
Every billionaire had exactly the cars they wanted.
No more, no less.
They had all the cars they needed.
So, those of you worrying about inflation, you had not thought this through.
If the only people who have more money are the super rich, they might not buy anything extra, because they already had all the money they needed for everything.
There's no point in being super rich if you can't buy yourself a yacht.
So, yes, the cost of luxury yachts might go up.
In fact, there's a good chance of that.
The cost of homes that cost more than $25 million might go up.
Will that affect you?
Will you feel that in your inflation?
Does your milk cost more because a billionaire bought a $50 million house instead of a $25 million house?
Nope. So that's a little example.
And by the way, 10% of the people who were asked the question, would they accept a doubling of their income in return for the super rich getting a quadrupling?
10% said no.
Now, If 10% of the world will say no to doubling their income, it's got to be because either you suspected a trick or maybe you're not good at the economic analysis.
It's possible. Do you have a minute?
I'd like to end racism and sexism.
If you have a minute. I was thinking the other day, Scott, how can I end racism in this country, as well as sexism and any kind of LGBTQ discrimination?
Scott, how can I do this?
And I would like to offer you the following solution.
I call it the theory of infinite variety of humans.
I just named it. I didn't really call it anything until just this moment.
So here's the theory.
It's a different frame for understanding our reality.
Our current frame says, you got your men, you got your women, you got your gays, you got your transgenders, you got your blacks, you got your whites, you got your Asians, you got your Hispanics.
That's the current model, is that there are categories.
And you're in one or more of the categories.
What happens when you imagine a world in which there are categories, and you also imagine that you can sort people into the categories?
You're a woman.
You're also Hispanic.
Okay, you go into the Hispanic woman category.
That's who you are. What happens when you see the world that way?
Well, what happens is you revert to teams, because as soon as you know what team you're on, you go, oh wait, I'm on the older white guy team in America?
Okay, that must be my team.
What is the automatic biological reaction to being on a team?
You can't turn this off.
It makes you think that the other team needs to be defeated, needs to be controlled, but you want your team to win, Because it's your team.
There's no thinking involved.
It's just like, well, I'm on a team.
I wanted to win. So here's the new framework, the infinite variety of humans framework.
This, by the way, has been my own mental model forever, which is one of the reasons that sort of classic discrimination, racism, prejudice, etc., confuses me.
Here's what confuses me.
Have you ever seen, let's say, white supremacists or racists say that white people are awesome because white people invented a lot and built a lot?
This is a common thing, right?
Hey, white people did a bunch of good stuff.
We invented a lot of inventions and accomplished some stuff.
Do you know what's wrong with that?
The racists didn't do shit.
The racists are different people.
You can't take credit for strangers just because they have something in common with your DNA. That's not a thing, but yet we all do it.
I would say one of the most positive-sounding but actually negative things is to say you have pride in your group.
Are you proud to be whatever?
Fill in the blank. You're proud to be an Elbonian.
You're proud to be black.
You're proud to be a woman.
You're proud to be Asian American, whatever you are.
That is the worst thing you could ever say.
If you want to make the world a better place, do not take pride in the accomplishment of strangers.
Strangers don't know you.
When Edison invented the light bulb, I don't get credit because I'm white.
It doesn't work that way.
We are all infinitely different people with different capabilities.
The fact that some people did some impressive things who are not me, if they're not me, how do I take credit for that?
Just because I sort of look like some of them somehow?
It doesn't work that way.
Here's the better frame. Everybody is infinitely different.
What do I care about your sex life?
You're just like me, and you're just like everybody here.
Yours is completely different than everybody else's.
The amount you want it, the things you think about, the things that turn you on, the things you care about, it's probably changed over time.
We are all infinitely different.
I am so different from people who are also male, And also, let's say, white male, because in my case, that's my category I've been forced to be in.
I'm not like you.
Let's be honest. Would you be listening to this Periscope if the things I said were the same things you were already thinking?
No! The entire reason that any white male is watching me talk is because the things that I say will not be the things you're already thinking.
That's the whole point. Once you leave the frame of people being, you know, in their little categories as society is assigned for us, and you say, what about we're all infinitely different?
You have to reject how similar you are to your own category to get to the next level.
If you imagine this is like a video game, you're trying to get to the next level, you have to reject pride in your group.
Pride in your group is just stupid.
Pride in your group is counterproductive because it forces you to be in your group and then you're taking credit for strangers, right?
Do all black people get credit because Obama was president?
No! Do all white people get credit because, you know, George Washington was a great general?
No! I don't get any credit for that.
I'm not George Washington. He's a stranger.
Stop taking credit for strangers.
And stop thinking that anybody has to be in your box.
So one of the reasons that my regular listeners know that I've been quite defensive of everything LGBTQ, it's not because I think that gay people should have equal rights, but of course I do.
It's not because I think anybody who's transgender, etc., should have equal opportunities and rights, but I do.
The reason that I'm supportive is because I like the frame that we're just all different.
If you took any of the letters in LGBTQ, just say, oh, I'll take the L. Let's look at all the people who are lesbians.
They're all different. I mean, some of them coincidentally will have things in common, but they're not the important things.
They're just infinitely different.
So that frame is more powerful than you think it is.
It'll sink in a little bit.
Alright, let's read between the lines what Chairman Kim, North Korea, how he responded, or at least how the country responded, North Korea responded, to, I guess, President Trump sent Chairman Kim a nice birthday card.
Apparently, Chairman Kim has acknowledged that he has a good feeling about President Trump, but he's quite angry about the lack of progress, so he thinks that he's wasted 18 months.
There's always a translation problem, but look at the wording that Kim used and see if we can read between the lines.
Kim said his country will, quote, never denuclearize if.
They'll never do something if.
Read between the lines.
They're willing to do that thing.
So denuclearize.
You never say, I'll never do it unless you do this, unless you're open to the possibility.
So Kim is actually signaled by his choice of language that he's open to the possibility.
Did you know that? Because I don't know if anybody's ever said that before, that he's open to the possibility.
I think all the smart people have said, well, there's no way he's going to get rid of his nukes.
But why would he word it this way?
He said his country will never denuclearize if the U.S. does not retreat.
Okay, so is what's coming something impossible?
What follows the if?
If what follows the if is something impossible...
Then, okay, that's not real.
He's just putting an if there, followed by something impossible, because he really just wants to keep his nukes.
So let's see what's the second part of the sentence.
He'll never denuclearize if the U.S. does what?
Quote, retreat from its, quote, hostile policy toward Pyongyang.
Retreat from its hostile policy.
That's almost... That feels like the easiest thing we could ever do.
So instead of saying there's an impossible thing we have to accomplish in order for anything to get done, Kim said exactly the opposite of that.
It was the smallest problem that we have to solve.
Do you know what the smallest problem to solve for the United States is?
To not have a war-like position against somebody we don't want to have a war with and they don't want to have a war with us.
There's not much easier than not attacking somebody you don't want to attack and doesn't want to attack you and doesn't want to be attacked.
Kim has reduced this to the simplest possible formula that we have to show that our intentions are different.
Here's what he didn't say.
We will not talk to you until you remove your military forces from South Korea.
I mean, he could have said that.
I think he said something in that range before about the military assets in South Korea.
But he didn't say that.
He didn't even say remove your military assets.
He said change your policy.
What happens... If President Trump said, you know, we're stalled on this.
North Korea, we're stalled.
So I think the first step will be to have a congressional act in which the Congress gets involved to say that the war is over.
I think that's got to be the next step.
Now, it could be that we're waiting for something in return.
But we probably need to do the magic trick.
Remember the magic trick?
The magic trick is when there's an impossible situation.
North Korea's a good example.
You know, they won't denuclearize until we do something, but we won't do that until they denuclearize.
So we've got this nobody-wants-to-go-first problem.
So if we gave them nothing, Which would be a declaration that it's the end of the Korean War from our perspective and we have no intentions of hostile intent.
That would basically be nothing.
Because we could just change our mind tomorrow, right?
So it wouldn't have any real-world practical effect.
But it would look like something.
It might look like something pretty big.
In return, we would want them to give us something that might sound good, but maybe isn't that much.
And I'm sure that they could come up with something in that category.
So I think we have to get off the dime by offering something that looks like we could argue it has value in return for them saying they got something of value, but just start to change the psychology of it.
Because when Kim says he wants us to change our hostile policy, I feel like that's exactly what he wants.
And remember I told you that I learned in hypnosis class that people say exactly what they want if you analyze the actual choice of words.
And what he wants is a policy change.
He's asking for a policy change.
That feels doable, right?
If he said, you know, get rid of all of your nuclear weapons and we'll get rid of ours, well, we're not going to do that.
But we can certainly talk differently.
Sounds like that's what he's asking for, for the next step.
All right, here's a fun thing for you to do.
Let me give this a little setup.
There are two people that I would describe as artists, meaning that they're professional writers.
One is Fareed Sicaria, and one is Virginia Heffernan, who's writing in the LA Times, at least the article I saw.
Now, I'm a huge fan of Fareed Zakaria.
I've been watching him for years, his show on CNN. And I always tune it in, like if I'm going through the channels, I stop immediately when I see him.
Because my experience has been, over years and years of watching him, that he has the most reasoned, complete, smartest take on a lot of stuff, especially international stuff.
But... He seems to be, and I'll just say seems to be because I'm not a doctor, suffering from one of the worst cases of Trump derangement syndrome you'll ever see.
And one of the things he says is that Trump does not have a policy.
He has a series of impulses.
And he asks, what is our strategy in Iran and other things?
But what's our strategy?
He's got to stop using these impulses.
And he even said that Trump supporters have a North Korean style of enthusiasm.
In other words, it's looking kind of culty.
And that Trump has broken our relationships with our allies in Europe.
Now, here's what I want to add to the conversation.
Find me someone who's a business expert, let's say a CEO of a major company, who also says that Trump has no strategy, And he operates on impulse.
Because I Googled this to see how many people are saying Trump is impulsive.
If you just Google that, Trump impulsive, you get tons of hits because it's the Democrat talking point.
But what I was looking for is to see how many people with business experience say that.
Now, I'm going to subtract the people who are sort of professional critics of the president.
So I think Mark Cuban's more, he sort of crosses the line into, I think he's on a team.
So the team players...
Are not going to be quite as useful for this.
But let's just say somebody who's on CNBC and they're just a CEO or a business expert.
My take on this is that people who have experience in business do not say things such as somebody is operating on impulse and they don't have a strategy.
Because it's not a thing.
Business people know it's not a thing.
This is an artist's take.
The artist's take is that you can read minds of strangers.
And you can see that there's no thinking in there.
It's just a bunch of impulses.
How in the world does Fareed Zakaria, in my opinion, one of the smartest people in the entire game, and I mean that, he's a seriously smart guy and also knowledgeable.
So he's smart and knowledgeable.
That's pretty good. And he's still saying stuff like he can read a stranger's mind and he doesn't see any thinking in there.
It's just jumping from one thing to another.
Let me ask you this, Farid.
What would you say is the strategy of Apple Computer?
Anybody? Anybody?
If strategies are good things, you'd expect our biggest corporations to have one.
What is the strategy of Apple Computer?
Now, I know you can all answer the question, right?
You say stuff like, well...
Apple Computer is a company that makes computers.
They make desktop and laptop computers.
And, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
That was the old strategy.
Remember? It used to be their strategy to be good at making computers.
And then Steve Jobs said, let's make a music device.
What was the strategy?
What's the strategy from going from a computer company to a portable music company?
What's that strategy?
Explain that to me. If I ask you what's Apple's strategy right now, now that they've become more of a multi-product company, you'd say, oh, well, their strategy is to build high-end, expensive, high-margin equipment that falls into these categories.
But don't you think that if Apple found a new category, such as self-driving cars or whatever it is, wouldn't they also do that?
Of course they would. Apple does what they can do better than other people, which is apparently they can attract the best engineers, they have such good engineering that they are capable of building the best high-end product, and they've got kind of a monopoly because if you start using any of their products, it's just easier to have all of them because they work together seamlessly.
So what is their strategy?
Well, their strategy, obviously, is that when some new opportunity comes up or events change, they change.
They introduce a product, they try it out, it doesn't work, they get rid of it.
Sounds impulsive, doesn't it?
Because they introduce a product, they try it for a while, the public doesn't like it, and then they get rid of it.
Where's their strategy?
Shouldn't their strategy be that they keep selling the product nobody wants?
Well, that would be a good strategy, right?
No! There's no company that has this magical thing called a strategy.
Every CEO wakes up every day and says, based on my variables today, what do I do today?
Did anything change?
Now, in the world of Trump, things are changing all the time.
He's finding out new information.
Allies are unpredictable.
They might respond one way.
He's looking at social media.
You don't know how social media is going to respond until you see it.
You don't know how the pundits are going to frame things until they frame it.
Trump is in a world where everything is changing all the time.
It wouldn't even make sense to have a strategy because you would have to change it every 10 minutes because the variables change.
You don't have one strategy no matter what the variables are.
That's not even a thing.
It wouldn't make sense to have one strategy no matter what happens in the world.
As soon as something happens, you've got to reassess your strategy.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
If it doesn't, you change it. So here's my larger point.
Only the people who do not have experience running, you know, as, let's say, managers in a traditional setting.
I think Fareed has been an editor before, but it's sort of still in the writing world, journalism world.
I think people who have run big businesses don't say things like, where's the strategy?
Because it doesn't make sense.
It's a nonsense statement.
It doesn't mean anything in a world where everything's changing all the time.
Trump's approach of waking up today and saying, what do I do today, based on today's variables, including any changes in the way he's thinking about things.
And then he makes the decision based on today's variables.
Would you want that to change?
Would you want that to be different?
Beyond that, there are certainly some things about...
And the examples that Farid gives is that Trump will say, I want to get out of the Middle East, but then he'll be sending troops in.
So how does that make sense?
He wants to get out, but he's increasing engagement.
To which I say, Farid, it makes sense because the variables changed.
It might make sense.
You want to get out, and then something happens.
You say, oh, damn it.
I still want to get out, but I've got to get back in to do this thing to make sure that we don't have a specific danger because the variable's changed.
It's just nonsense talk from one of the smartest guys in the game, and that is what caused me to write LoserThink.
When you see somebody as smart as...
Fareed Zakario say something that doesn't track at all with what anybody with business experience would be saying.
It's because of a lack of exposure to the field.
You know, it kind of shows that there's just sort of a gap in his experience because he thinks saying things like you don't have a strategy actually makes any sense.
It doesn't make any sense for experienced people.
All right. Virginia Heffernan, writing in the LA Times, she was talking about the question of whether Trump supporters are in a cult.
And here are some parts from what Virginia writes.
She said, as 2019 drew to a close, my doubts about Trumpism as a cult dissolved, and I'm not alone.
Oh, other people are thinking this.
So now she's going to list some other people Who give her some confidence that her opinion that Trump people are in a cult.
So here are the credible people which she names as being on the same side and therefore supporting her opinion that Trump followers are in a cult.
She goes on to say, Republican lawyer George Conway...
What?
Is she really going to use George Conway...
As an example of somebody with clear thinking?
Let me continue. Republican lawyer George Conway reportedly described his wife...
Okay.
Trump's presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway as a member of a cult.
Virginia Heffernan, have you been watching George Conway at all?
Have you seen him tweet, for example?
Because he tweets.
You might want to check out some of his tweets.
Because if you're finding intellectual cover because you're on the same side as George Conway, maybe you need to get a little stronger people on your team.
But she goes on. Former GOP strategist John Weaver...
I don't know who he is, but I guess there's at least one guy in the GOP who's a never-Trumper.
So it's George Conway, the least credible person in the world, followed by a guy I never heard of, but also Anthony Scaramucci.
Now there is an objective person, Anthony Scaramucci.
He has no axe to grind with the guy who fired him.
And then there's somebody named Trump's one-time political scientist, Norman Ornstein.
Never heard of him. There's a science journalist called Steve Silberman.
Never heard of him. There's a pastor, John Pevelitz.
Never heard of him. And academic journalist.
Never heard of him or whatever.
And then she goes on.
She says, what the cult diagnosis may lack in scholarly rigor, So she confesses that the occult designation, it lacks some scholarly rigor.
How much scholarly rigor does it lack?
Oh, 100%.
Yeah, the scholarly rigor is sadly a little inadequate.
But anyway, she says it makes up for an explanatory power.
Now that's good, unless it doesn't predict the future.
Do you know what? When somebody says that their theory has explanatory power, what does that mean?
It means it explains the past and the current.
Do you know what other hypotheses can explain the past?
Almost all of them.
What do I teach you more often than you want to hear?
You can come up with lots of theories that explain the past.
Have you seen climate science?
Climate science has a hundred different, or lots of them, at least a hundred, different climate models which start at the point of already explaining the past.
A hundred completely different models, they all explain the past and they're all different variables.
How hard is it to explain the past?
Too easy. It's real easy.
Just ask Hillary Clinton to explain why she lost.
It's easy. It's Russia.
It's sexism.
She didn't go to the...
Everybody's got a theory for explaining the past.
You want to impress me?
Predict the future.
Predict the future.
If you want to impress me with your worldview, tell me what's going to happen next.
Because if it can't do that, You don't have a worldview.
You have cognitive dissonance, and you have confirmation bias.
That's what it means when you can explain the past.
Everybody can do that.
All right. And I love the...
This is also talking about Trump supporters.
So it's saying that they've basically changed their personalities from a commitment to libertarianism Family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship.
So they've given up their personal opinions in favor of Trump worship.
That explains exactly zero people.
You probably spend time with Republicans.
Have you ever met a Republican who gave up their family values?
Because of whatever the President did?
Have you ever met a Republican?
I'll bet there isn't one Republican on the planet Earth who ever gave up their family values because the president had sex with a porn star.
What, did some of you leave your families because Trump, his personal life was different than yours?
How many of you renounced your religion so that you could be more like Trump and sleep with porn stars and stuff?
Nobody! Nobody!
There are simply people who said, well, we don't like that part, but it's not affecting me.
We do like this other part.
We like the judges. We like the economy.
We like the national defense.
We just don't like this other part.
Exactly zero Republicans in the whole world have changed their personal feelings about anything and They've just said, well, I'm looking at the costs and the benefits.
He's got some costs, no doubt about it.
You know, he's a pricey president.
But we think the benefits are greater.
It's a bigger investment.
It's a riskier investment.
But we do it for these great benefits.
For the people who can't see that, they believe that Trump isn't a cult, to which I say, I challenge you to name anything that the Democrats are doing that is less cult-like than whatever Republicans are doing.
And the answer is, you could make a story that either party is a cult.
I have personally made the case in my excellent book called Loser Think, available everywhere, That both parties are drifting into something like a cult.
But when I say it, I'm talking about something specific.
When I say both Democrats and Republicans are drifting into something like a cult, what I'm talking about is the silos of information.
So if you start preventing yourself from contact with the other side, that's a sign of a cult.
If I said to you, We're talking about Democrats and Republicans, and you have to guess which group I'm talking about.
One of those groups is actively and aggressively decreasing contact with the other and making sure that other members of its group also avoid contact with the other group.
Who am I talking about? Is that Republicans?
Are Republicans asking other Republicans to spend less time with Democrats?
Never heard of it. Never heard of that.
Not even once. Are Democrats telling other Democrats to interact less and shun Republicans and therefore cut themselves off from whatever those words are?
Yeah. It's mostly what they're doing.
It's one of the main things that's happening in the country.
So if you were to say, all right, what are the requirements of being in a cult?
Well, it starts with believing crazy things, but that applies to both sides.
There's no one side that has the monopoly on believing crazy stuff.
But there is one side that definitely has a big difference in restricting its own members from having contact with the outside world.
I think that's fair to say.
And I think even Democrats would agree with that generalization.
Obviously, these generalizations don't apply to every person by definition.
All right. Let's talk about predictions.
How many of you predicted, probably most of you, that the Iranian military shot down the Ukraine airline?
Probably most of you, right?
And I like to say you should make predictions and then see how you did.
My prediction was based on incompetence.
So if you make a prediction based on incompetence, watch your track record.
If other people are saying, well, I think it was a clever plan to do X, but there's another explanation that also fits the facts, Which is that it's incompetence.
You should always go with incompetence.
Now, you've seen me do it with the Epstein thing, and I've said, okay, you can have that much incompetence.
And it's actually not even unusual.
So the incompetence theory, so far, so far, is bearing out.
I predicted that the airline would...
that we would find out that the Iranians shot it down because the incompetence...
Hypothesis is just always the likely one.
It's just always the likely one.
So I just stay with it.
No matter how tempting it is to go with the confirmation bias, just stick with incompetence.
You'll be surprised how often you write.
Iran started out calling it a big lie, and now they've completely admitted that they did it, and they feel terrible, etc.
Here's the question I have to ask you.
How much research did the Iranians need to do to learn that they had fired a missile?
Now, if you're another country, you might have to look at the wreckage and see if the blast looks like it was coming from inside out, what's on the black box.
If you're somebody else, if you're not Iran, you've got to do the forensics on the plane to find out what happened.
But Iran didn't have to do that.
All Iran had to do was say, anybody missing a missile?
How in the world did the military not know they had fired a missile?
Was the head of the military that was in charge of that area that fired the missile, are you telling me the general didn't know he fired a missile?
Seriously? The general in charge of that area didn't know in the first 60 seconds?
Of course he knew!
Of course he knew!
Somebody says it's automated.
There might be some automation, but I imagine there's a human element of the final decision.
But the point is, Iran knew from the first moment, and they decided to try to lie about it Until the forensics were just so obvious and there was an actual video of the missile hitting the plane.
So then they admitted it.
But seriously, did Iran have to wait for the forensics?
I mean, that's a good question.
Trump is trying to make things even more interesting in a provocative way.
So the White House is apparently putting together a plan to increase the list of banned countries, the countries that can't come to the United States no matter what.
And of course this has a bad history because it started out being called a Muslim ban because most of the countries originally were Muslim-majority countries.
People are worried that the upcoming additions to the list Which no doubt will be challenged in court again.
But the additions people are assuming are mostly or all, probably mostly, Muslim-majority countries.
So, Representative Rashida Tlaib has said that that's straight-up racism.
To which I say, Representative Tlaib Do you know anything about Islam?
Because Islam isn't a race.
One of the strongest points about Islamic belief is that it doesn't matter what race you are.
That's actually one of the strongest points of the religion, is that they don't care what race you are.
And that's really important.
So, if the United States bans Muslims Isn't that a variety of races, by definition?
That's the strongest part, in my opinion, it's one of the strongest parts, is that they do have that ethic that it doesn't matter what race you are, you just have to have this type of thought and belief.
And I ask you, can there ever be racists who ban people based on their common belief system?
For example, and I don't want to make...
This is not a comparison.
So the next thing I'm going to say is I'm not comparing it to Islam.
I'm just taking you down a mental experiment.
So nothing I say now has anything to do with Islam.
Suppose there was an Elbonian country...
And Elbonia, as you know, is over there in...
That's where it lives.
But suppose the people there had a belief that they were superior people and that they should kill all people in the United States.
Now, let's say that was a common belief in Elbonia.
It has nothing to do with the race.
It has nothing to do with the religion.
It's not even a religion. It's just a common preference that they should kill all people who are Americans.
Should we have a policy that lets them in, because doing otherwise would be discriminatory?
Right? Now, somebody's saying the same as Islam.
That's not true. It's not the same as Islam.
Because Islam is a big tent with some people who have extreme thoughts, just like Christianity.
More in the past for Christianity.
But the vast majority don't have any thoughts like that.
But imagine if they did.
So here's the basic question.
Is it ever appropriate to ban people by their common way of thinking and their common preferences for the future?
Is that ever allowable?
And I would argue that if you had a thriving Nazi party in Europe, And somebody applied to come to the...
Well, let me ask you this. Oh, here's a perfect example.
I need a little fact-checking on this, okay?
Fact-check me, please.
If a German citizen who had, let's say, an affiliation...
Let's say a German citizen who belonged to...
No, you couldn't be a German citizen and belonged to a Nazi party.
Probably have to be some other country.
So let's say there's some other European country where they have an actual Nazi party.
Modern Nazi Party.
And there's a member of the Modern Nazi Party who says, I'd like to immigrate to the United States.
Would we let him in?
Under our current rules, would we allow an active member of a Nazi Party to immigrate to the US? I don't know the answer to that.
And again, let me say it as clearly as I can.
I'm not saying that there's any comparison to that example.
To Islam. All I'm saying is that they both are about a way of thinking and a belief system.
So forget about the ethnicities of anybody.
There are two belief systems.
If you believe that the belief system likely had people in it that were dangerous, would our current constitution allow us to ban them based on belief independent of any race?
Let me ask you this.
If someone who is a devout Muslim, who was also born in Great Britain, was a citizen of Great Britain, and they wanted to immigrate to the United States, would the United States treat them, let's say, unfairly because of their religion?
No. Right?
And it doesn't matter what ethnicity they are, if they're a British citizen, especially born in Britain, would any of our immigration rules disadvantage them?
And the answer is no. So that's pretty clear that it has to do with the system that they're coming out of and whether or not they can vet their own citizens.
So this is one of those fake arguments in which the critics will try to make it about racism.
I don't think there's, you know, it's a tough argument to make, but there'll be more of that.
It's also been called xenophobic.
So Representative Jayapal said that the idea of banning some countries was xenophobic.
I had to look it up.
So I thought I sort of knew what it meant, like xenophobic, not liking people from other places or whatever.
But the actual definition is fear of strangers, fear of people from other countries and cultures and stuff.
And I thought to myself, well, that's actually just what it is.
That's exactly what it is.
You wouldn't be contemplating banning some group Unless you had a fear of them.
So that's exactly what it is.
I don't know why that's...
Why would she consider that an attack?
Because if we weren't afraid, we wouldn't do it.
That's the whole point. So that seems like just a description of what it is.
President Trump is saying, on a different topic, that we don't want to pull out of Iraq unless Iraq pays us back.
For all the investments we've put there.
Now, the first time I heard this, I said to myself, well, that doesn't even sound like it's slightly possible to happen.
And then I looked at it in context, which is he's saying the same thing with South Korea.
You should pay us. He's saying the same thing to the Saudis.
You should pay us.
And I'm kind of liking the larger picture.
The larger picture is that the enormous military that the US has does keep all of our allies safe.
There's no two ways about it.
The United States spends an enormous amount, which keeps us safe, but has the dual effect of making other countries not have to have a big military.
Wouldn't it be great to be an ally of the United States?
You're welcome, Canada.
Is Canada safe from attack?
Canada is about as safe as you can get from attack because United States.
Now, of course, they have their own military, very capable, I'm sure, but nothing in comparison to what the United States says.
So the president is, I think, wisely and cleverly trying to monetize the protection services that That we offer to other countries.
And I think he's right about that.
It's a change of frame.
So the old frame was, it's just about, I don't know, goodness or defeating evil or whatever the old frame was.
But now the frame is that it's a good and a service.
That military protection is a product.
He's basically productized the stuff we were doing anyway.
Now, if we weren't doing it in the first place, I might have some complaints about trying to commoditize or turn into a product our military, because that sounds like the worst idea in the world.
But what he's doing is saying, we're doing this anyway.
We're not going to stop doing it, and we're doing something that is monumentally beneficial to other people.
I think that's exactly the right place to go, and I also don't think any other president would have done this.
It's the sort of radical departure from the way we used to think.
He's the only one who could have done this.
And I think by the end of his second term, the idea that other militaries or other countries should be directly paying for the service that we provide in terms of protection, I think that's going to become standard.
Because there's nothing wrong with it.
In other words, it's hard to argue against it.
It's just that nobody brought it up before.
So, yeah, you certainly don't want to become a mercenary army, but if we're doing it anyway, let's see if we can get paid.
I like his instinct on that.
I like it a lot. I like it a lot.
All right. Let's see what else we got going on here.
Oh, so here's...
I think I didn't summarize this as well.
The next time you see somebody calling the president impulsive, Google them or check their profile.
And what you'll find is that they tend to be journalists and artists.
Find me someone who's not already a pundit.
Mark Cuban's a special case because he's a successful business person, but he's also in the game.
So somebody who's not in the game, somebody who's just a business person, and they're not about who's going to win or lose.
They're just running their business, trying to stay out of trouble.
Find me somebody like that Who says that the President's decision-making is impulsive and that he has no strategy?
I don't think you'll find it.
And if you do, it will be a special case.
All right. My cat is just going crazy on me today.
Somebody says Elon Musk.
I'd have to Google that, but I doubt...
Well, let me...
Let me Google it right now.
I doubt that Elon Musk calls the president impulsive.
He may have all kinds of other problems.
Elon Musk, Trump, impulsive.
So my belief is that Elon Musk is way too smart and way too experienced.
He definitely didn't say the president doesn't have a strategy.
Nobody's saying that, right?
I'm sure he didn't say that.
Let's see. Impulsive tweets by Musk.
Oh, Musk is being accused of being impulsive.
I had it backwards.
So it's that Musk himself is being accused of being impulsive.
Maybe the way he tweets, that's about it.
I'll bet you could not find a less impulsive person than Elon Musk.
If you're talking about the business end of it, I'll bet you could not, you could probably search forever and you'd never find anybody less impulsive than an engineer.
Engineers are, you know, they're not that impulsive.
All right, that's all for now.
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