Episode 835 Scott Adams: #HOAX8, Travel Restrictions, Large Gatherings, Peace in Afghanistan, How to Cure Terrorism
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
Coronavirus impact on stock market, kids in school, immigration
Coronavirus in Mexico
Chris Matthews blind spot and Laura Bassett
Political "tribes" filter, the likely Democrat candidate
Bill Kristol is promoting HOAX #8
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Yes, it's time for another edition of Coffee with Scott Adams, and we're going to feature the simultaneous sip in a moment.
As people are screaming in, oh, I think it's already time.
DJ Dr. Fung Juice, good to see you again.
And for the rest of you, I know what you want.
Grab your materials.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
I mean everything. Everything except the coronavirus.
And we haven't really tested it on that.
It might cure it. Worth a try.
Go. I'm so happy I can hardly contain myself today.
As you know, I've been in screaming pain for about two weeks, at least a few hours a day every day.
But I just got on some prednisone and some other antibiotics and I woke up feeling good for the first time in weeks.
Do you know how good it feels to feel good?
I'll bet you do. Have you ever been sick and then there's that first day when you're not sick anymore?
Oh my goodness, it feels so good!
It feels so good!
So if I seem extra happy today, that's why.
Well, speaking of happiness, let's talk about the opposite.
Now normally, I don't like to spend a lot of time in these periscopes talking about stuff that isn't fun.
But you can't really ignore the coronavirus.
The coronavirus has its own agenda, apparently.
And so here are some stats from the news.
85,000 people are confirmed.
What does that mean if 85,000 people are confirmed to have it and it's highly viral?
How many people have it?
What do you think is the multiplier on that of known to unknown cases?
Does anybody know? I don't think anybody knows, right?
Because we're finding these cases now that don't seem connected to anybody else who hasn't.
Now, of course, they must be, but we can't figure out how.
So there's that. I'm going to get to some good news.
So if you're waiting for some optimism, it's coming.
I'm just giving you some stats.
So the death toll stands at over 2,900.
The risk of global spread is, quote, very high, according to WHO. We're seeing cases in Mexico.
Well, that's going to get interesting.
We'll talk about that. U.S. citizens are urged not to travel to Italy unless it's essential.
South Korea has 3,000 cases.
Italy is around 50,000 in quarantine.
Schools across Japan are closing, and I think in France they just announced that no gatherings more than 5,000 people will be allowed.
And you can see that the stock market is basically pricing in a zombie apocalypse.
So there are two things which have become separated at this point.
One is the effects of the coronavirus psychologically and economically, because those are the same.
The economy is really a psychology machine, and right now it's broken.
So the machine of the economy is broken, because the psychology that drives it is currently degraded, because people are worried.
Rightfully worried, but maybe a little too much.
So I'm going to give you my predictions.
You ready? It goes like this.
I think the stock market is most likely to suffer for about a year.
Could be two, could be three, could be six months.
But I'm going to pick a midpoint.
I think about a year. And by that I mean all of the other fundamentals are pretty good.
Pretty good. So when things come back, they'll probably come back pretty quickly.
But I think we have about a year of worry.
Certainly, it's more than worry because supply chains are being disrupted, etc.
So if you're an investor, I would say that selling your stocks now might be the very worst thing you could do.
Now, I don't give financial advice on here, so do not take any investment advice from cartoonists.
But the stock market is a weird kind of investment because it has one quality that a lot of other investments don't have, which is if your money ever went to zero in the stock market, let's say you've got a diversified portfolio, you didn't do something stupid and buy individual companies, But you bought a diversified portfolio, which you should do.
If you've done that, the odds of that ever going to zero, well, very low.
But if it did, money wouldn't be worth anything.
So it wouldn't matter where else you had your money.
If the stock market ever went to zero, nobody would have money.
That would be the end of the economy, the end of civilization.
Now, that's not true of other investments.
You could buy a house...
Which most people consider a good investment, right?
But your house could burn down and you forgot to put insurance on it.
You could lose your job and the bank takes it, etc.
So if you're looking at one individual thing, you could lose it all.
But you don't really have that same kind of risk with the stock market.
Because if you were to lose it all in the stock market, it means that no matter where else your money was, it's gone.
There won't be any banks.
If the stock market went to zero, there would be no banks.
And your cash would be worthless, the government would be defunct and all that.
So getting out of a long-term risky investment sometimes makes sense.
Getting out of an investment whose risk is identical to the risk of civilization itself...
Doesn't make sense. So if you're a long-term holder, this would be a good time to remind yourself why you're a long-term holder of stocks.
I will tell you my personal strategy.
My personal strategy is that I'm actually worried that the stock market will recover too much on Monday because I want to buy.
So I'm a buyer at this price.
If the stock market goes up 5% tomorrow, maybe yes, maybe no.
I mean, on Monday if it goes up 5%.
If it goes down 10%, maybe I'll wait.
Maybe I'll wait, see if it finds a little temporary bottom.
But I'm going to wait for the downward pressure to sort of plateau a little bit.
If it looks like the downward pressure is slowing on Monday, I'll probably put every penny I have excess into the market.
I can't imagine there would be a better time to buy.
Now, that's not stock advice.
You really, really should not take advice from individuals unless they're telling you to diversify.
Everything else is just BS. But the stock market is generally considered wise to buy and hold for long term.
All right. Here's what I predict for the coronavirus itself, and this is related to my stock market prediction.
And I think this is compatible with what Dr.
Drew tweeted yesterday, I believe.
Somebody says, stop giving advice.
You're listening to the part where I said, I'm not giving advice.
You get blocked for not hearing me say, I'm not giving advice.
On stocks. So, Dr.
Drew tweeted, basically, a lot of people are going to get the coronavirus, and it will, for the most part, be mild.
Most people who get it will have something like a cold, and then when it's over...
Probably can't get it again.
We're seeing some reports of people being reinfected, but I think those are unreliable.
It seems to me unlikely that you could be reinfected.
Like, why would this be the one kind of virus-cold situation where you could get it more than once?
So I'm not buying.
I'm not going to buy the idea that you could get reinfected yet.
I'm watching for that. I mean, if that's the case, I'd be 10 times more worried, but I suspect it's not the case.
We'll see. So the Dr.
Drew approach is that it's coming.
A lot of you are going to get it.
Maybe all of us. Maybe every single one of us will get it.
It won't be that big a deal.
Now, when I say it won't be that big a deal, if you're one of the 2% of the people who die from it, it's a pretty big deal.
But for most of you, you probably won't notice.
So keep that in mind.
And the other thing that you have to get accustomed to is what I call the...
This is my mother's theory, that you can get used to anything if you do it long enough, including hanging.
So she used to point out that even if things were bothering you, you'd probably get used to it.
And the coronavirus, because it's new and different and most of us alive have not gone through a pandemic, it feels not normal.
It feels like a big scary thing.
But check back in six months.
In six months, I'm not even sure it'll be a headline, but it will probably be ten times bigger because there'll be just tons of people who have it.
Now, I think we're going to get a lot smarter and we're going to get A lot smarter fairly quick.
Not only about testing for it, but maybe in a year or so we'll have a vaccine, etc.
So we're going to get smart quick.
One of the things that Naval tweeted, maybe yesterday, maybe today, it's new.
So Naval Ravikant said, We're saying that we should get better data on who's getting it and who's not.
Actually, Balaji Srinivasan was talking about getting better data on the genetics of the people who are having a tough time with the virus versus those who are not.
Because if there's some correlation, and Balaji notes that the odds of finding that exact genetic correlation between who dies and who doesn't It's not a high chance.
It's not like 75% chance you're going to find what makes it different in different people.
But there's a good chance.
And given that the stakes are so high, certainly we should know if there's something about individuals that make them more susceptible, other than the obvious, you know, the obvious being that older people and compromised people have more trouble.
One of the things that Naval suggests is that we look at heat.
In other words, what's the temperature and humidity in the places, and does that have some impact on the spread?
Because you might, for example, say that as soon as the warmer weather gets here, we'll get a lot of relief, and maybe that gives us enough relief until the vaccines come online, or even the testing kits come online.
So I'll give you my complete prediction.
Now remember, nobody can predict the future.
So don't look at anything I said about politics and say, well, he got that right, so therefore he'll predict right about a coronavirus.
That skill doesn't transfer it over.
I'll just tell you my opinion.
My opinion is this virus will be so widespread that your decision about traveling or even going to large events will become fatalistic.
And what I mean by that is there's going to be a point where you say to yourself, you know, I'm just going to get this thing.
Let's just get it over with.
My friend's got it.
It's in my office. If I go to the doctor's office, probably the receptionist has it.
It's just all over.
I'm going to get it. Now, if you're 80 and you've got some immunity problems or some health problems in general, You might want to just quarantine yourself until this passes.
But if you're 35, in perfect health, and maybe if we knew a little bit more, as Balaji suggests, Srinivasan, he suggests that we know more about who's really suffering and who's not, if you decide that you're one of those people who probably isn't going to die, Maybe you just say, well, I don't know.
I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it.
Somebody says, what about children?
Good point. As long as schools are open, there's nothing you can do.
If you've got kids and those kids go to school, you're going to get the coronavirus.
Let me just say that as clearly as I can say it.
If you have children and they go to school, you're getting the coronavirus.
But it'll probably be like a cold.
You have a few days off of work, you will feel no guilt about going to work.
If you ever notice you have a minor cold or a headache or something, you feel like you've got to tough up and go to work, it's like, I'm not going to miss work just from a sniffle.
So you'll always have that balance of, should I go to work, should I not?
But if you get the coronavirus, it's vacation time.
Let's hope it's not too bad for you, but you're not going to feel bad about staying home.
Because believe me, your co-workers will be happy about it, even though you're going to get it all anyway.
So, here's the attitude I would suggest taking into this.
You are probably going to get a cold or a flu sometime in the next year or so anyway.
Most of us, most of us, don't go a full year Without getting something.
If you're watching me, I've got like three things going on right now.
So it's normal to get something.
You're probably going to get this.
Probably. I'd say 75% chance.
So instead of obsessing over whether you will get it or not, I recommend, as long as you're not immunocompromised, I recommend thinking, sooner or later I'm going to get this.
Sooner or later I'm going to get this.
I'll feel bad for a week and then I'll be better.
And then I can't get it again.
In all likelihood, that's the way it's going to look.
So, I think when this starts to normalize, even if the death rate is 2%, which is 20 times higher than the.1 that we would normally see with the regular flu, somebody had this provocative observation on social media.
I want to test this with you.
In the comments, it'll be about a 30-second delay before they show up.
In the comments, do you know anybody personally, and it could be a co-worker, it doesn't have to be a best friend or anything, do you know anybody personally who has ever died from standard flus?
Because we know that a regular flu, just your everyday flu that hits us every year, kills millions.
And I thought about it, and I thought, you know, I know people who have died of AIDS, alcoholism, accidents.
I know somebody who died in a parachuting accident.
I mean, personally. These are people I personally know.
But I don't know anybody who died of a flu, or complications from the flu from being old.
And look at the comments coming in.
Look at all the no's. I'm trying to reconcile...
The fact that the regular flu kills so many people routinely, but look at all the no's coming in.
In fact, there's no yes.
There's not a single yes in that whole line of no's.
None of us know anybody who died from the flu?
The old regular flu?
Somebody said they had a friend who died from the flu vaccine.
Maybe. I'm not sure if you can tell what kills somebody every time.
Somebody says, yes, elderly in wheelchairs often do.
But do you know one?
So everybody knows the data.
The data says that it kills people.
But why don't we know anybody?
Right? So what if...
So look at all the no's go by.
And this is the big reveal I was getting to.
Oh, somebody knows one.
A 40-year-old woman this year.
Somebody says they know four people in their 50s who died because of flu.
Not so sure about that.
Alright, so now I'm getting a trickle of yeses, but mostly noes.
So here's a question for you.
If the number of people dying from the flu were to increase by 20...
I don't think that's going to happen.
But suppose it increased by 20.
Would you know somebody?
Because, yeah, and somebody's saying, I know of people, but you don't know any personally.
Somebody says, someone in my town means you've heard of it.
Somebody says four co-workers died from the flu.
I'm sorry, I don't believe that.
I don't believe there's anybody who has four co-workers who died from the flu.
That looks like a troll answer to me.
I don't believe that. Somebody says, I knew someone.
Somebody says, it's always heart failure that kills people.
Well, I suppose you could argue that.
All right, so I'm not sure I trust all of the people saying yes on here, but here's my point.
I think there's a really high likelihood that the rate of death from this virus could be much higher, and you wouldn't even notice.
Because the people dying would be people in...
I'm oversimplifying here, but in general, the people who would be dying from it...
Might be dying from other stuff around the same time.
Meaning that just because this is the bullet that killed them doesn't mean there were a hail of bullets heading their way.
I mean, if you're 85 and you've got some health problems already, one of the bullets is going to get you.
And sometimes it might be the virus.
So my guess is you can see a lot of it you may be surprised that The only people dying are the people who are going to die pretty soon anyway, from one thing or another.
It's alright. Let's see.
I've got a few other things to talk about that.
How many of you have cancelled your travel plans?
I have cancelled all of my travel plans.
So, in the comments, tell me how many of you, just on your personal, individual decisions about, let's say, summer vacations or whatever, how many of you have cancelled all of your travel plans?
So, I have. I've cancelled everything.
I may change my mind in a few months, but I'm waiting.
Somebody says they know two people who died from fentanyl, as do I, obviously.
Okay.
So that's the question we'll see in the comments.
uh...
So, let me get back to coronavirus.
I want to talk about some other things just because too much coronavirus all at once is too much, but I'm going to get back to that.
So, apparently the reduction in violence in Afghanistan worked.
I didn't see that coming. Now they called it a reduction in violence versus a ceasefire because they knew they couldn't stop it completely.
But apparently the Taliban held off at least a little bit in their violence for a week to get serious about signing an historic agreement.
So I guess there's going to be some kind of an attempt for a peace agreement in Afghanistan.
Now, my take on this is that none of it's real.
I assume that the people, the Taliban, just would cite anything to have less of us, meaning the United States.
So I don't think the Taliban means it, but at least if it gets some of our troops out of there, then it just becomes their problem.
So there's certainly a question about whether it would cause some kind of mass internal civil war slaughter that we could have prevented by staying.
But I think we've just decided it's not our business anymore.
So I think that's good news for the United States and potentially devastating news for Afghanistan.
You can decide how you feel about that.
All right. Chris Matthews is in the news, not for a good reason.
So he's being accused by journalist Laura Bassett, who had appeared on his show and I guess When they were sitting in the makeup chairs, he was saying some things that made her uncomfortable.
I will paraphrase them, but basically, upon first meeting her, if you've never seen the makeup rooms for these TV shows, they're very small.
So imagine something that's a very small room and often I don't think I've seen more than two chairs.
There must be some that have more.
So usually you're pretty close to the other person.
It's usually one makeup artist on each person who's going to go on air.
And so, allegedly, Chris Matthews said something about falling in love with her because of her appearance.
And that he made other kind of what she considered creepy references to her makeup and her appearance.
Now, there's no accusation that he metooed her beyond the way he was talking that made her uncomfortable.
He wasn't hitting on her in some explicit way.
He was being a 74-year-old guy who used to talk that way and doesn't know that he can't do it anymore.
I mean, that's basically the whole story.
But the interesting part about this really doesn't have anything to do with Chris Matthews.
And I hope he comes out fine.
I have no ill will for Chris Matthews.
I think he's a product of his time and his upbringing.
That's not an excuse. I'm not excusing him.
I'm just explaining.
Context matters. And he's got a blind spot, I would say.
Because he doesn't give me the impression, based on watching him for years and years and years, I don't get the impression that if he knew he were making somebody unhappy, he'd keep doing it.
So you have to assume that there's sort of a blind spot situation going on here.
So it's hard for me to get too hateful or, I don't know, get on my high horse about somebody who's just got a blind spot that got fixed, I'm sure.
My guess is that whatever way Chris Matthews used to behave, probably it's not happening anymore because I think he's now informed, very informed, Of how it might be received by other people.
There's that.
But he's 74 years old and there's something about this story that borders on elder abuse.
Kinda. Because it's hard to separate what he's saying and the way he was alleged to have acted from his age.
It's hard to separate those things.
Because If you were 35, I just don't know if it would be happening.
And frankly, here's a thought experiment.
If Chris Matthews had been a younger, more attractive man, and he said exactly the same stuff, would the response have been this?
I know I'm going to get in trouble for this.
Probably get in trouble for this.
It's just a thought experiment.
I'm not recommending anything.
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm certainly not softening or apologizing for Chris Matthews in any way.
That's just for him to do.
I'm not interested. Here's the blind spot I'm talking about.
If you're Chris Matthews and you've been famous for a long time, He's probably used to people reacting to him in a certain way for a long time, and he's not that guy anymore.
So I think that's part of the blind spot.
Anyway, the big question in politics is what if Biden wins in South Carolina, which apparently he's going to, is that going to reinvigorate his campaign?
Will it? Will it invigorate his campaign?
Well, I think it will.
In the sense that the news media tells us what to think about all this stuff.
And I think the news media, of course, likes a horse race.
Everybody says that. They want some action.
They want a good matchup.
They want a good fight. So I think the media will be promoting Biden as more of a potential winner of the nomination than maybe he should be.
So, yes, I think it will change the race.
It might only last a few days until Super Tuesday, and then everything will change again.
But yeah, at least the way it's reported will be that it makes a difference.
Now here's the interesting thing about Biden.
If you imagine that the real powers that be are, let's say, tribal, and let's say that there's a Hillary Clinton tribe, A group of people who support Hillary Clinton and have some, maybe in some cases, financial or psychological interest there, and that they would like to have as much control over the government as possible.
Right? Now, you can imagine, if you want to take your conspiracy theories, or maybe they aren't, to another level, you say, well, there's also an intelligence services tribe.
People who loosely are on the same team and act in a coordinated way, even if they don't coordinate explicitly, to get sort of an outcome that they want.
Maybe the Russia collusion story was about that.
So you start seeing the world as tribes.
There might be a tribe that's very pro-Israel.
There might be a tribe that wants this or that.
But if you see the world as tribes, and then you see the political system as sort of the theater that the public sees, but the real power is these tribal influences over the politics, then, and by the way, this is pretty close to how I see the world.
It's not the only thing happening, but it's one of those filters I find useful.
And to extend that, who would the Hillary Clinton tribe, let's say a lot of deep state people working in the government, ex-Obalo people, etc., who would they most like to see as president?
Well, they'd like to see somebody who's on their team, per se.
They'd like to see somebody who has policies that they like.
Well, I don't think that's the real driving force.
If you imagine that there are tribes, that there's a Clinton tribe, I think they want power.
Power in all the ways that it matters.
Money, influence, connections, all that sort of thing.
And if you believe that's true, who would be their favorite candidate?
Because the thing is, they wouldn't want a candidate...
Who was strong on his or her own?
Well, let me be specific.
Would the Clinton tribe, if such a thing exists, would they favor a Bloomberg presidency?
Because they might be quite compatible with his policies.
So Bloomberg has policies that the Clinton lovers would like.
Would they support him?
I say no.
And here's why. Because you can't buy him.
Well, China probably can buy Bloomberg.
But if you're the Clinton tribe, you can't really buy him.
He's not controllable.
There's just nothing you can do.
So even though he agrees with pretty much policy-wise almost all the things they'd want to do, I don't think he's going to get their first choice.
I mean, if he becomes a nominee, they might support him.
But in the primaries, I think they prefer Biden.
And I think the reason they prefer him is that they know they can control him, partly because of age, partly because he's an Obama acolyte, and Obama probably could control him, and that gives the Clinton tribe some control.
But because of his age, you know where I'm going with this.
His vice presidential pick will be the big variable.
And I've predicted it's Kamala Harris.
And Kamala Harris is essentially connected to the Clinton tribe, meaning that she has the second most endorsements from, let's say, important Democrats.
The first most endorsements is Biden.
So if you put Biden and Kamala Harris together, first of all, they're a pretty strong package.
I would say that would be a good A good candidacy to run against the president.
I think everybody would lose against Trump, but it would be a stronger package.
Bloomberg plus anybody would be a strong package too.
So here's my prediction.
Apparently the superdelegates have said by a very high majority that they do not plan to honor the highest vote-getter if it's not a majority.
So it looks like Bernie is going to come into the convention, the Democratic convention, with the most votes but not over 50%, which allows them by their rules to, after the first vote, the superdelegates can get involved And they've already said that they're not going to automatically elect Bernie.
And I think they all know that it would be a death sentence for Democrats, because it kind of would be.
So what is the most likely thing that these people have already said they're going to ignore the highest vote total if it's not a majority?
What's the most likely outcome?
A brokered convention and one that's compatible with the Hillary Clinton tribe.
I think that's your best choice.
Now, would Bloomberg contribute his money to getting Biden elected if it's not Bloomberg who gets the nomination?
Maybe. Maybe.
Because that's a big variable. If Bloomberg goes all in and says, yeah, I'm going to fund all the congressional races, I'm going to fund Biden, I'm going to do all this, well, then Biden looks a lot stronger.
So if you give him a young Female, senator, person of color, vice president, and he's controlled by the Clinton machine.
That feels like where it's heading.
Now, of course, you all know my hidden secret interest, which is my original prediction, is that Kamala Harris would be the candidate...
For the Democrats. She obviously has suspended her campaign and therefore most people would say, well, Scott, you're very wrong about that.
She didn't even make it into the final eight or whatever it is.
But we're not done yet.
We're not done yet.
And if I were to put money today on the most likely outcome, it's this.
The most likely outcome is Biden getting the nomination in a brokered convention, having already named or about to name, because we could suspect it's going to happen before it happens, Kamala Harris, or somebody as good.
It doesn't have to be Kamala Harris, but it could be somebody who has a lot of the same qualities.
So that's my prediction.
But it's probably no more than 20% likely, and the other likelihoods are small too.
I saw Tom Cotton tweeted, Senator Tom Cotton, that he was bragging, if you will, and legitimately.
By the way, when I say people are bragging, that's not an insult.
I am pro-bragging.
If you did something right, you can tell me about it.
You can be as unhumble as you like, as long as it's honest.
As long as you're willing to tell me that when you do something bad, that it was also bad.
So when I say somebody's bragging, not an insult.
As long as it's true.
And I think it's true in this case.
Tom Cotton said that he called for a travel ban on January 28th.
He goes on in his tweet and says, the quote, experts said it would backfire.
Now those same experts admit it saved lives.
The president did the right thing by acting decisively.
So January 28th is when Tom Cotton called for a travel ban.
And so I asked myself, I wonder when I called for the travel ban?
And the answer is four days earlier, January 24th.
Now I saw at least one person on social media, and I can't remember who it was.
Was it Mike Cernovich?
I can't remember.
But somebody else was calling for a travel ban early.
And I'm just curious, because those of you, if you're just joining, you're going to be a little confused by this conversation, so I have to give you this context.
I've talked often about tracing the path of influence.
And there are some ways that you can sometimes, you can identify choices of words or specific kind of weird language, and if you use that in your persuasion, and then you see other people using your weird, unique language, you can infer, but you don't know for sure, that probably you persuaded.
Because you can see the linguistic, you know, fingerprints go all the way through.
Now in this case, All that's happening is travel ban or not a travel ban, so there's no linguistic fingerprints whatsoever.
And I'm asking the question, because I don't know, were there other people publicly and vigorously asking for an end to a travel ban before I did?
So that's the question for you in the comments.
Send me a DM or tweet at me if you know.
So let me know if somebody called for it before January 24th when I did.
All right. Bill Kristol is pushing a new hoax.
It's Hoax 8. And it looks like it's going to be a big one.
And it looks like Hoax 8...
is going to spread faster than the coronavirus.
Well, it already has, because it's gone to millions in this country already.
And here's the hoax.
The hoax is that allegedly President Trump said that the coronavirus is a hoax.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that the President of the United States said that the coronavirus Is a hoax?
I mean, do you even have to look at the details?
Do you really need to even look at the context?
On its surface, without doing any research whatsoever, don't you know that's a hoax?
I mean, really? Isn't that obviously a hoax?
Now, what this comes from is that the president did say that the way the Democrats are politicizing his reaction to the coronavirus, all the steps the government has taken, He's saying their reaction to it is the hoax.
In other words, the hoax is saying that the president hasn't done anything or enough about it, when in fact he has, in his opinion.
So the bad people, the Bill Crystals of the world, and by the way, you know, I always rail against Imagining you know what people are thinking.
Because we're so terrible at it.
But I can't watch Bill Kristol do anything without thinking his intentions are actually just evil.
I mean, actually evil.
Now, are there people who actually have evil intentions?
Like an actual sociopath or a psychopath?
Because Bill Kristol looks exactly like a sociopath.
Like, there's something deeply wrong with him.
And his...
I mean, I think when I see him in public, it seems like he's trying to harm the country for whatever personal benefit, etc.
And I don't say that about a lot of people.
And I never say that about a president, by the way.
When Obama was president, it was popular on the right...
To say that President Obama hated America and he was trying to destroy it.
Now, that's ridiculous.
One of the things I believe to be true is that no matter what kind of a evil, bad person you were, by the time you become President of the United States, the most normal psychological transformation would be, well, the United States is great.
If the United States picked you, As its leader?
What would you think of the United States?
Would you say, well, they picked me as the leader, but man, they're broken.
That United States is a piece of garbage.
But they picked me as the leader of the garbage?
No. No.
Not a single person in the world would be able to have that thought.
And if they were that crazy, I think we would have detected it.
By the time you are selected by your country to protect them and to be their leader...
There's no way in the world that you could have a bad feeling about the people who put you in that position.
I mean, you could have bad feelings about things, but you're not going to have a bad feeling about America once America has made you its brand leader.
I just don't think that your brain can even do that, unless you're actually damaged in some way.
No normal brain can dislike the United States once you're the leader.
So, anyway, I won't assume that I know what Bill Crystal is thinking, but I will say that the overall impression by all of his actions are that there's something deeply wrong with him.
I mean, actually, sociopath, kind of wrong.
I'm not diagnosing.
I'm saying that that would be the impression he leaves by his actions.
We can't know what he's actually thinking.
All right. So, they're all...
So the way Bill Kristol spread the hoax is he said this.
He said that the president called the concern about the coronavirus a hoax.
Didn't happen. The president never said anything like the concern for the virus is a hoax.
He has said he hopes everything will be well, but there's a good chance it could spread and become bigger.
That's just a fact.
It's a good chance it will spread and get bigger.
He hopes that that won't happen.
Nothing wrong with that.
So that's the hoax.
So I'm playing an experiment today.
So you may have seen me tweet that this new hoax, hoax 8, that the president called the coronavirus a hoax, which didn't happen, that hoax I'm trying to see if I can kill it early, because the earlier you get it, the more chance you have of snuffing it out.
And what I've done is I've put the provocative idea on Twitter that the hoax itself is a virus that will only infect artists.
Because if you look at it, it's all the people who are writers who seem to have fallen for it.
Now watch and see the paucity, the lack of, Engineers, lawyers, scientists, and economists Who buy into this hoax?
Just watch for it.
Every time you see the hoax, you're going to see it a bunch of times.
You're going to see it on TV. You're going to see it on Twitter a lot.
But click on the profile and find out if the person is a journalist, writer, pundit, musician, Michael Moore, MSNBC host, etc.
And so the funny part...
Sorry, my cat's visiting...
The funny part will be seeing if we can shame them off it.
I've never tried this, but see if we can shame them off it by demonstrating that only artists are susceptible to the hoax virus.
We'll see. It's just a test.
Speaking of reprogramming people, I've made the connection between an idea virus and an actual virus.
I've often said that terrorism, Islamic terrorism, and probably any other terrorism, so let's just call it terrorism, is like an idea virus.
It has all the qualities of these physical viruses.
By that I mean it is transmitted by contact.
You can't easily tell who has it and who doesn't have it, the thought of terrorism to actually do it.
It spreads quickly.
There's no cure. It affects individuals differently.
And once it gets inside your borders, people are going to die.
Now, here's why I think this story has more impact in a persuasion, indirect way than we may be noticing.
It will become increasingly clear to people that an idea virus, in other words, somebody who has bad intentions in their head, And an actual virus need to be treated almost the same way.
Which means, you know, quarantine, closing borders, vetting people as much as you can.
And I think that those two ideas have always been treated as completely separately.
But because of, especially now that there are a couple people in Mexico that have the coronavirus, That immediately makes you think about border security because do you want infected immigrants who are lovely people?
You know, I'm never one who will speak ill of immigrants.
I love my immigrants. Lovely people, but it looks like there are going to be more of them who are infected in the future.
As soon as that happens, people are going to start equating in their mind border security and this physical virus, the coronavirus, And it's a very small leap from that to seeing internal thoughts and idea viruses as the same thing.
You have to treat them the same.
And here's my question. Why have we never used, or maybe we have and I don't know about it, but is there a persuasion lab where we're trying to cure terrorists?
Is that happening?
Because you'd imagine that somewhere in the government, somebody ought to be working on that.
And let me tell you how to do it.
So you take a bunch of terrorists, and let's say you work on the hardest cases.
Let's say Guantanamo Bay.
Got a bunch of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay.
Why are we not trying to deprogram them?
Is it because the military doesn't do that?
Is it because we don't know how?
Is it because that's not the purpose of Guantanamo Bay?
Maybe that's just not his purpose, so nobody even thinks to try that.
But here's how you do it.
Now, I'm going to ask you that if you're a believer and you have a religious belief, doesn't matter if it's Christian, Muslim, doesn't matter what it is, I would ask you to turn off the live stream now.
Because what I'm going to say in a moment could actually deprogram your religion.
And I'm pro-religion, so I don't want to do that.
I'm pro-religion, but not a believer.
And by that I mean that it's just so obvious to me that the religion filter on life is very, very positive for massive amounts of people.
And I'm in favor of anything that works.
If this religion works for you, makes you a better person, gives you a framework for your life, keeps you out of trouble, that's all good stuff.
I mean, some of the finest people I've ever met are deeply religious, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
So I'm very pro-religion, but I'm going to say some things in a moment that could actually destroy your religious belief.
So I would ask you, and I'm serious about this.
I'm completely serious. If you don't want to take that risk, because religion is good in your life, you should turn this off and not listen.
Alright, here's what I would do if I were trying to deprogram Religious terrorists.
Let's say an Islamic terrorist.
The only way you can do it is to deprogram their religion.
You have to do that.
You can't really deprogram just probably.
Again, this all would have to be tested.
But my sense of it is you probably would not succeed keeping their religion intact and just trying to get rid of that bad part.
I think that's too fine a...
I don't think the surgery could be that fine.
So I think instead you would have to get rid of their religion.
And that's why I've asked you to turn off this broadcast if you don't want to have anything about your religious belief form a question in your mind.
And it goes like this.
I've never known anybody who has studied the history of religion and all of the different religions and how they formed and who believes what across the world who, in my opinion, Believes that it's true.
Or believes any one of their religions is true.
Now, I don't think any of you agree with that, right?
Probably 100% of you just said, well, that's not true.
There must be tons of people who study the history of religion that are still religious.
In fact, probably most of you are going to say, I think most people who study it keep their religion.
Well, I'm going to make a distinction.
Two kinds of beliefs.
There's one kind of belief where you really believe it.
I mean, you really, really believe it.
It is literally your truth.
But there's another kind of belief, and I'll call it a lifestyle belief.
I wrote about this in God's Debris.
It goes like this.
If you're going to cross a street, and there's a truck coming your direction, and you know that walking in front of it would put you in front of the oncoming truck, Do you say, I don't believe there's a truck there, and walk out in front of it?
No. Your belief in the truck is the real kind.
Belief that if you walk in front of a truck, it will kill you is the real, true kind of belief.
The other kind is, I'm going to be this religious kind of person.
I'm going to buy into the lifestyle.
I'm going to pray. I'm going to tell myself it's true.
I'm going to act like it's true.
But it's different. That's a lifestyle belief.
And I think there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm certainly not insulting in any way.
I believe that if you show somebody all the different religions, it becomes immensely obvious that they're all invented by people.
Sorry. If you didn't know that, that's why I asked you to turn off the stream.
Most people don't know that.
I would say 80% of the world, 80% of believers would not be aware that if you looked at the history of religion and how they grew and what they have in common, etc., it's really obvious that they're just invented by people.
Once you see that, I think, and this is the hypothesis subject to testing, it would move some number of people, not all of them, from that real kind of belief, the kind where you walk in front of a truck, it's really going to kill you, to the other kind of belief, where it's a lifestyle.
Because you can't really ask a devout Muslim who's brought up in the life to get rid of that.
They might want to keep the lifestyle.
Just get rid of the literal belief that And move it into more of a preference belief, if you will.
Now, would that work?
Don't know. Maybe it works for some.
Maybe it doesn't work for others.
Would it work in conjunction with other things?
I don't know. Might.
But the point is that you could create a lab where you had actual terrorists.
And then you could test.
You could hook them up to brain monitors, sensors.
And you could say, okay...
Let's test you with a variety of images based on your old belief, your current belief that you're a terrorist, and they probably get happy when they saw a terrorist act, for example.
Then you work your tests, and then you test them again.
You put the brain sensors on, you show them the same images, and you see if anything's different.
So if it worked, you could move somebody from being excited that there was a terrorist act, like actually that part of the brain going, yeah, a bunch of people got killed, to putting the sensors on, and now they think, oh, God, that looks like a big mistake.
And I think you can measure that directly in the brain.
So, are we doing that anywhere?
If I had to guess...
Probably. Probably somewhere in the government, or maybe it's another country.
Somebody's testing this.
And if they're not, I'm pretty disappointed in the governments of the world.
All right. So there's that.
I think I had only one other thing I wanted to talk about.
Transgender sports.
This is for those of you who haven't already tuned out.
So I want to leave you with just this one thought experiment.
The way sports are currently organized, throwing some transgender athletes into the mix, seems terribly dangerous in some cases and unfair, people would say, to women in other cases.
But that's as sports are currently organized.
What if we simply said, how about everybody plays on the league that they're capable?
That's it. Just everybody plays wherever they're capable.
If you're a woman and you can play in the NBA, okay.
Why not? Now, the reason that people say, no, no, no, this is not fair, is that women would never be the best in the sport, for most sports, I guess.
So people say it's terribly unfair.
Women would not ever be the best.
Now, I've gotten rid of the problem that the transgender athlete would be too good, because if you just rate everybody by ability, and you can play in a co-ed team if that's where you fall out, then there's no worry about transgenders dominating the sport.
They're just put in the mix with everybody else.
But it does have this one problem that would seem terribly unfair to women, Because they couldn't play on a team with just women if they cared about that.
And they couldn't have any stars.
And I would like to put this thought into the mix.
Technology has fixed that.
If you gave me a choice of watching Serena Williams play a 110-pound female that she's going to absolutely obliterate and you already know it before you turn on the TV, or Serena Williams plays the number 200th ranked man.
Which am I going to watch?
I'm watching Serena play the man every time.
I think you would have a similar reaction, or at least enough people would, that eventually you would have some kind of fairness.
Now somebody said, Title IX, goodbye.
I think you could still be fair to women by letting them play in as many teams as they want, funding them equally, making sure they have the same resources, etc.
But the teams are just sometimes co-ed.
Or all the time co-ed, but you don't always have a situation where there would be a woman on the most elite teams, one would assume.
So here's the thing.
Would Serena Williams make as much money, let's say in endorsements and championship victories and stuff like that, would she make as much money if she played on a semi-co-ed situation?
And the answer is not the way it's organized now, but how hard would it be to change it?
All you have to do is say, you know, more people are going to watch Serena play the 200th ranked man That are going to watch two twelfth-ranked men play each other.
I think that's true.
So, the only thing I'm adding to this conversation, so you don't think it's the same conversation over and over, I see somebody in the comments saying that, is that the use of technology allows you to watch the match you want, and if ever there was interest in watching women play sports, and obviously there is, it shouldn't be a problem.
You can watch anything you want.
Alright, I'm just going to put that in the mix because it's a fun topic.
Somebody says Serena would get crushed, Scott.
That is the dumbest fucking thing I've seen today.
Somebody said Serena would get crushed by the 200-ranked tennis player who is a male.
That is a dumb, dumb statement.
I'm sorry. That's just so fucking stupid.
Not because you're wrong.
It might actually be true that the 200th man would be Serena.
But you're arguing about the 200 part.
If you have to go to 300, it's the same fucking point.
So you need to up your game a little bit.
You need to improve your argument game a little bit better.
If you're arguing that the 200 was the wrong number, You're just on the wrong argument.
