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March 17, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:02:56
Episode 855 Scott Adams: Simultaneously Sipping the Crisis Away. Relax for a Few With Me

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Hydroxychloroquine for treating coronavirus A relaxation exercise that clears the mind, calms the body Self-Hypnosis insights and suggestions --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Time Text
Oh, don't worry, I'm only a few minutes late.
Do not have the coronavirus.
I'm fresh and clean.
Fresh as the morning dew.
Yes, no coronavirus can find me.
I am in deep hiding.
You know what is the most famous saying in all of military?
I think you do.
Divide and conquer.
We're using the most historically efficient, effective way to beat a warring enemy.
And we are at war. Trust me, we are at war with this virus.
And we have taken the strategy, at least in this country, to divide and conquer.
Could that work?
Yeah. Yep.
That's why we're doing it. We're doing it because it works.
Divide and conquer, people.
You've got a strategy. But first, it's a good day.
Because you're here and you're about to enjoy the simultaneous sip.
And there's not many things better than that, really.
And all you need is a cup or a megara glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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, including the coronavirus.
Go. I feel my immune response up to the challenge.
Went for a really nice walk last night after dark.
So the weather around here is...
You know, we're in that season where it could be a good day or a bad day.
50-degree swings.
And last night it was pretty chilly, but I put on my big coat and scarf and hat and went for a long walk.
And it is a really interesting world out there because there are a lot of people taking long walks because there's not much else to do.
And I cannot recommend enough, honestly, If there's anybody listening to this who did not take a long walk yesterday, do yourself a favor.
Because your mental state, your body, all of your chemistry that makes you stressed does get suppressed.
It's not that hard.
You just take a nice walk.
But here's the interesting thing.
There are lots of other people taking walks.
And there are lots of situations where you would have to walk past them in the other direction on the sidewalk.
I'm in a suburban neighborhood, so normally it's not like there are a ton of people walking around.
It's mostly people going to their houses and drive around.
But last night, a lot of people were walking.
A lot of people were walking.
And you would come near them, and there would be this weird thing that you'd never seen before where people would cross the street a block before they saw you.
And then I saw somebody do that to me, and then I thought, why not?
So every time I saw somebody else coming the other way, I crossed the street.
And I don't know, you know, I don't think any of it makes much difference.
I mean, walking past somebody on the sidewalk versus crossing the street, does it make that much difference?
I don't know. You know, ask an expert.
I don't think it's impossible that somebody couldn't cough in your direction just as you walked by.
But I think it's pretty low risk.
However, I do like the fact that people are...
That people are taking us seriously.
And every time we do a wide circle, every time we say no to a handshake, every time we walk around somebody, it reminds them.
It reminds them that this is not a drill.
This is real. Now, most of us will be absolutely fine.
We'll be fine now, we'll be fine when it's over, and we'll be great when we're past it.
But, yeah, let's take it seriously at the same time.
Somebody said that Bill Mitchell has turned around and may be taking it seriously.
Could it be because he can't leave his house?
You know, there's part of me that wonders if...
No, I don't think this is the case, but part of me wonders if the nature of the restrictions are meant to get your attention.
As much as they're meant to separate you.
Now, of course, the important thing is to separate you.
That's the functional part of it.
But I have to think it has this second benefit that I'm sure people thought of.
Which is, people did not take this seriously until the government of the United States said, don't leave your house or the police are going to tap you on the shoulder from six feet away.
They'll have like a six foot pole and they'll say, hey, hey, get back in your house.
Not really. They don't really have a pole.
But you know what I mean.
And I think this has finally turned people around.
I saw some tweets by Elon Musk.
Now, some of you know that Elon said some things that sounded like he was minimizing it or comparing it to a regular flu or something, which a lot of people did early on and then talked themselves out of it as events proceeded.
But it looked like from the last...
A couple of tweets I saw from Elon.
He was talking about a particular drug.
We've talked about it.
What's it called? It's got that weird name that's hard to pronounce.
Chloroquine. Chloroquine.
A drug for malaria.
And apparently we're seeing multiple reports.
Not yet. Scientifically valid in humans.
But assumed to be valid, because it's been tried enough now already, then people are seeing pretty clear across the board's benefits.
Now this is for somebody who's already got it, and apparently it makes a big difference.
But here's more good news.
So this drug, chloroquine, and it's something Elon Musk tweeted around, does look promising.
It does look promising.
But there's another drug.
That seems to be, I don't know, I'm not enough of a chemist to know what's going on here, but it looks like a stronger version of it, or something in the same family, called hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine. And I think there's a 2020 peer-reviewed paper, and again, peer-reviewed paper doesn't mean it's true, doesn't mean it's right, It just means it passed, you know, one filter of which you would hope it would pass lots before you really believed it.
But in an emergency, people probably are going to take a different risk profile than they normally would and should.
That makes sense, an emergency.
And it looks like this version of the drug is maybe four times, was it four or five, I forget, but four or five times stronger, at least in vitro.
In other words, in a test tube, It was four to five times stronger.
And I believe that both of these drugs are well understood.
At least the chloroquine is well understood for sure.
Because it's something that people have been taking for a long time for malaria and I think rheumatoid arthritis.
So we understand the risks.
And I think the thinking was that this new drug that's four times more effective...
Is close enough in nature to the other one that we do know a lot about, though it's probably not the biggest risk in the world to make this available, especially to people who seem to be getting helped by it.
So we've got two things that look really promising.
So I said to myself, well, I assume we're just cranking out lots of that stuff, right?
I mean, just in case. Wouldn't you assume that just based on the early reports, our government would be Trying to stockpile that stuff as quickly as possible.
So I said to myself, well, who makes this chloroquine drug?
So I drilled down a little bit, and it's a French company.
So the drug that probably, at this point, is one of two drugs.
The other one is remdesivir or something.
A drug that used to be used for HIV, but I think they've got better ones now.
And that appears to be very...
Very effective as well.
So anyway, but this chloroquine is made by a French company called Sanofi Adventis, a merger of the two companies.
And then my trail went cold, because I was doing this just before I came on, that's why I was a few minutes late.
I was trying to see if I could figure out where the drug that, if I had to guess, I think it's going to be the key to this thing.
Because long before we get to a vaccine, although that might be mind-bogglingly fast, because I talked about this yesterday, any assumption you make about how long it takes to get a drug approved under a normal situation, I think you have to at least suspend your assumption that it will look like that and think that maybe this is a big enough issue that we'll take a bigger chance than we normally would.
I think that's fair to say.
So we'll probably have a vaccine faster than anybody except President Trump predicted.
Watch when that happens.
Watch what happens when we do get a vaccine and it's faster than anybody except Trump predicted.
What's that going to do?
What's that going to do to the world?
The collective brain of the world.
If I had to bet on it It's going to be somewhere between where Fauci is sort of, you know, quite reasonably, telling us that best practices would put it maybe a year or 18 months out and probably closer to 18 months.
And the president made happy sounds like, well, it could be just several months, which would be, you know, record-breaking, mind-boggling, impossible.
Nobody knows how you could do it.
I'm going to bet somewhere in the middle.
You know, maybe a year?
I mean, if we get a vaccine in nine months, which I think all the experts would say would be impossible under normal circumstances, but if we get it in nine months, I'm not going to be surprised.
Because the principle in play here is that all of human ingenuity is focused on it.
It's not like normal stuff.
Every opportunity to cut a corner will be used.
So you're not betting on Trump so much as you're betting on the collective talents of the most talented people our country has ever produced.
And they're on it.
But here's the thing.
Who makes this drug?
So it's a French company that is the corporate company.
But do you think that they manufacture this in France?
I'd like to know that.
If somebody can find that out, and I'm not clever enough to dig down to know how a particular company manufactures a particular drug in which factory, I don't know how to find that out.
But if there's anybody who can, can you give me an answer to that?
Because I'm afraid the answer is going to be China.
Right? Now here's a question for you.
Let's say there is a drug, we know it works, or we're hopeful that it works and the risk management You know, the threshold has been reached, meaning that we definitely want to go hard at this drug, even with a little bit of risk.
How would we do it?
Well, I'm looking at your comments.
Somebody said maybe India, maybe China.
But let's say it's China.
I think that's probably a good guess, right?
Now, there's a company that holds the patent, And then it's manufactured in China.
Would we produce that drug?
Could we? I know we could physically.
I believe we could. Could we clone it to its generic and then mass-produce it in this country without benefit of owning the patent or any copyright?
Whatever they've got there.
Whatever kind of protection. It would be a patent, I guess.
Could we make it?
In other words, could we break their patent because it's an emergency?
Yes. Yes, we could.
Are we going to not make that drug because it would be against the law?
No. No, that's not going to happen.
If there's a patent law that prevents us from making this drug, we are going to ignore the patent law and we're going to ignore it like it never even existed.
We will ignore it so hard it will never know it existed for the emergency.
Now, I hope there's nobody in the government who's saying we can't do this because we don't own the patent.
Please tell me there's nobody so stupid in our government who would hesitate in an emergency because of a patent.
I don't think so.
Somebody says it's not patented.
Maybe. Possible. But I don't know.
Somebody says it's already generic.
I was looking for that and couldn't find that just before I got on.
I was getting close to finding that out.
Somebody says, what patent law?
So I guess the question is, we're not going to have to worry, I don't think, about any legalities.
So it really comes down to a technical question and then a manufacturing question.
How fast could we spin up or convert an existing plant to just crank this, presumably the stronger version, the hydroxychloroquine, and just start cranking that stuff out just in case?
And do you think we already know enough to do that?
In other words, do we know enough about the possibilities of the drug that even if we're 60% sure, You pick your number, 80% sure that it makes a difference.
I'm talking about the scientists.
I'm not talking about me being sure, but the scientists.
If they're somewhere in that 60 to 80% certain that this could be a useful drug, where is my news reporting on where this is happening?
Because you know what would make me feel a lot better?
is to read in the Breitbart or New York Times or whoever does this story that here's the factory and they're already converting and by the end of the week they'll be cranking this out like crazy and we don't care about this French company.
It's like they don't exist.
We're just going to make this and we're going to give it out like crazy just in case.
And again, you might want to withhold it from the public.
Which wouldn't be a bad strategy.
It wouldn't be a bad strategy to make sure that a normal, healthy person can't get it.
So you want to limit it to the medical people who can prescribe it.
But anyway, this is pretty good.
And then there's also this remdesivir, I'm probably saying it wrong, that seems to make a difference as well.
So in terms of treatment, we've got some good stuff.
Somebody says Australia tested it successfully.
Now that was in vitro. It has been used in real patients.
And the reports are that they all got better.
But they're such small groups that you can't take that too seriously yet.
Alright. Here are some things in no particular order.
I just saw a tweet.
I think it's true.
You can't believe anything you see in a tweet these days.
But somebody was showing pictures of a Hong Kong wrist app A wrist thing that goes around your wrist, and if you've been, I think, either traveling or you have the coronavirus, if you're traveling, you're quarantining you.
And they put the thing on. It's basically like wearing the...
What do you call it when you're at home detention and you've got the ankle bracelet that is digitally monitored?
Well, in Hong Kong, it's basically an ankle bracelet It's a bracelet that can tell where you are, but it goes on your wrist and it works with an app on your phone.
And apparently Hong Kong is pretty serious about this stuff.
And first of all, where's my app?
Are you telling me Hong Kong can spin up an app faster than we can?
Come on. We should at least be working on this.
I guess it tells you, you know, you walk around the perimeter inside your house and then it can map your house and it knows exactly if you've even walked out the door.
And apparently that level of government monitoring has made a big difference in Hong Kong.
And I do think that this is an information problem.
You know, we treat it as a health problem because that's what happens if you don't have information.
So it's an information problem first.
Who has it and where are they?
That's the information. Who has it and where are they?
And then if you don't do that right, the information problem, then it's a health problem, which is what we're seeing.
But thinking of it as an information problem tells you where to put resources for prevention, which is in the technology.
Speaking of which, I guess some of the nation's doctors are calling out for a national database I think it's different than what Google was making.
Google was making a database for people to check their symptoms or something.
I think that's what that was going to be about.
Whereas the doctors are saying, we need a database where all the credentialed physicians who are working on this around the world can share their outcomes and what they tried that worked and what you might not know if you haven't seen it yet.
And I thought, that doesn't exist.
That doesn't exist already.
Now, since there's a national call for it to be built, I assume a whole bunch of people are just going to go off and try to build one on their own, and at some point, somebody official is going to say, we'll take the good one.
But I would imagine a whole bunch of people just sat down the minute they saw that and said, I can make that.
Because it's basically just an information-sharing website.
Probably just you could take components that already exist, go to your GitHub, Grab some code and slap it together because it just needs to be bare bones.
They just want the information.
They don't need it to be pretty.
So that's happening. And remember I was telling you that we're at the flat part of the curve of human intelligence.
In other words, we've got all the smart people working on it and then they're going to share information It's the point where they're all sharing information that gets you to the elbow, the part where the human capability goes from not very good to, okay, we got this. And it'll go almost straight up after that.
So we're sort of approaching, I think we're about halfway into the middle of the elbow.
And I didn't realize that we were lacking this very basic bit of intelligence gathering, which is the ability for the doctors to efficiently share what they know.
But that will be, if I had to guess, we'll probably have that by the end of the week, right?
I mean, how hard could it be to build that, really?
So by the end of the week, all of these individual spots of genius, and I'm just going to call it that.
You know, doctors are pretty smart.
Scientists are pretty smart.
We're not talking about you.
You know, it's not us.
I've said this before, but I don't think...
The average person, and I put myself in that category when I'm talking about these folks, I don't think the average person can even conceive of how smart the people are who are working on this problem.
And there are millions of them. Maybe hundreds of thousands that are the real smart ones.
But at the moment, apparently they can't share as effectively as they want to.
It's more, if you know somebody, you can share with them, but that's it.
So imagine Somebody finally said, give us a place to connect all the geniuses.
Think about that.
Give us one website, we'll connect all the best thinking of the geniuses in one place.
That's the middle of the elbow.
When you see that, just know that the collective intelligence of this entity that is humanity Because we have two kinds of intelligence.
We have individual intelligence, you know, what you and I individually can do.
But if we work together, we become a sort of a meta-intelligence, which is the good parts of both of us.
The good parts of all of these scientists, the geniuses around the world, have not yet been combined.
And it's not just additive.
I don't believe that this is a case of, you know, one plus one is two.
Once the geniuses are connected, you're going to get a sort of a logarithmic, exponential kind of an increase in what we know that's useful.
So I say this a lot, and I've said it a few times, and you've seen it to be true in some big cases.
We can't tell the difference between being close to everything going wrong...
And being right on the edge of everything starting to go right.
Now the moment that this turns, and it will turn, there's going to be a point where the news says one day, hey, it looks like it's stopped getting worse.
And that's going to be a good day.
That's coming. It's coming guaranteed.
I will guarantee you that that day is coming.
And once we get a handle on it, we are going to Beat this frickin' virus into the ground with an attitude.
With an attitude.
All right. I don't think any of us should come out of this without a new skill.
I'll just put that out there.
You know, I talk about skill stacking all the time.
But when in your life are you going to have another time where you're forced to stay home for weeks and you're a little bit bored?
Is that ever going to happen again?
Ever? Will there ever be a time when you could just say, you know, nothing I can do.
I'm just going to stay home for a number of weeks, whatever it is, and I'm going to be a little bit bored.
If you don't come out of this with a new skill, you're doing it wrong.
You're doing it wrong. You should come out of this stronger, not weaker.
You want to come out of this maybe with less income, It's going to happen to a lot of us.
It certainly will happen to me, but I'll be okay.
And no matter where you are, income-wise, if you take a hit, you can compensate for that in the long run by adding a skill.
Sign up for a class.
Learn something that's compatible with what you already do that makes you the obvious person to get promoted, the obvious person to get a better job somewhere else.
So you can somewhat compensate.
It's not a one-for-one.
But for many people, it's more than one for one.
For many people, they'll be able to add a skill, something they always wanted to do, and when things go back to normal, which they will, well, you came back more valuable.
So you can work on your net worth by improving your skills.
So, a lot of people are going to do that.
I certainly am. So, how about this?
Do any of you have a non-complier in your household?
Do you have anybody in your house who's too big to physically control, so it's an older kid or your uncle or your grandmother who lives there or anything?
Do any of you have somebody in your household who's saying that they're not going to shelter in place and they're just going to go about their business?
What do you do about that?
You can't really kick them out of the house, right?
So I'm wondering if that's a widespread problem or if everybody's got things under control in their homes.
Anyway, I'll just put that question out there and then I'll wait for the comments to come in.
Alright. So, let me teach you a relaxation technique.
Would you like that? This is an actual hypnosis slash, you know, technique.
So it's not exclusive to hypnosis.
I'm not going to hypnotize you.
Don't worry. I might do that later, but it'll be a separate periscope.
This is a way to relax yourself.
It works every time.
So what I'm going to tell you literally will work every time.
So you don't have to worry, well, I don't know if that would work for me.
No, this just works for everybody all the time.
It goes like this. You should turn off your screens for Multiple times during the day.
I like to not turn off my phone for more than an hour because I'm paying attention to developing news and we need to know what's happening in our community.
Did your school get closed?
Have the restrictions changed and all that?
So I don't like to be out of contact more than an hour, but I'm also a person who's sort of in the front lines of the Of the fight against the virus.
For the rest of you, make sure you tune out regularly during the day.
I mean, you might have to take an hour here, then another hour there, then another hour at night.
But here's the technique for relaxing.
Some of you have heard of this before.
You'll find a comfortable chair.
You could do this in bed before you go to sleep.
So you could do it as a meditation, just sitting in a chair.
And by the way, Meditating is mostly just sitting alone with your thoughts for a long period and not falling asleep.
That basically is meditation.
If you're trying to think of nothing, that's just the dumbest thing anybody ever said about how to practice for something, you can't think of nothing.
So if you hear the yogi has accomplished thinking of nothing, no he hasn't.
No he hasn't. He has not accomplished that.
Nobody can do that. So, if you could just sit alone and try to quiet your thoughts, and if they drift to, let's say, an unproductive place, just sort of pull them back.
But don't turn them off.
Just push them back to something harmless.
Think about laying on the beach.
Think about something that doesn't take any brain power, has no stress.
Just think about something pleasant.
Think about your pet. Think about something you like.
And just sit there for an hour.
You will be amazed.
Now, on day one, maybe you're not going to get any amazing outcomes from this.
But, if you keep at it, and you've got a lot of time to keep at it, a lot of people will be meditating experts in a month.
If you keep at it, and some would say it's important to inhale through your nose and take a deep breath and exhale through your mouth, but if you just sit quietly with your You know, in a comfortable position for an hour, and try to quiet your thoughts, you're going to have a big, big gain.
And it will intensify over time, because you'll get better at it, and it will become somewhat addictive.
There will be a feeling, a physical feeling, when you're done, similar to, let's say, taking a long walk and then being done.
You know, yesterday, after I took a walk, I just sat on the couch.
Man, did it feel good!
It just felt good to be done exercising.
You can feel your whole body just glowing in happiness that you're not walking anymore because you're ready to stop.
So, that's meditation.
That's one way to relax. But here's another way that's more active.
Your body is picking up tension.
And you're not always consciously aware of it.
It might be like, you know, some of us get it in certain places.
You might be aware of, oh, my back is all honked up because of the tension.
But you also hold it in the rest of your body and it isn't as noticeable.
And that's why this trick works.
And it goes like this.
You sit in a comfortable place or you could be laying in bed and you're trying to get to sleep.
Pick one muscle group, let's say your hand.
Squeeze it and hold it.
Squeeze it and hold it.
And you hold it until it's sort of tired.
It's exhausted and it doesn't want to hold it anymore.
So I'm over-squeezing my hand and now it's starting to be uncomfortable because I'm over-using my muscles.
It actually hurts a little bit.
Now release it. Release it completely.
Then do it with your other hand.
Same thing. Squeeze it.
Hold it. Until you don't want to do it anymore.
Because it's getting a little painful and it hurts.
Then release it. And then you go through the rest of your body for the muscles that you can tense.
If you can tense other muscles, your feet...
I like to do hands and feet first.
Those... Oh my God, don't touch your hand.
I like to do hands first.
But you can do it with your calf muscles.
You can do it with your thighs.
You can do it with your glutes.
You can do it with your chest muscles.
You can do it with your abs. Just move across your body, and one by one, squeeze it and release it.
By the time you do the cycle, you're going to feel great.
It works every time.
It works every time. So you don't have to wonder, you know, am I doing it right?
Will this work for me?
No, you do those things and you will be more relaxed.
And if you do it every day, it gets easier.
So these are real good techniques.
The other thing I suggest is watching comedy, and lots of it.
Go to YouTube, look for comedians you like.
I was just watching Bill Burr yesterday.
Once you find one you like, YouTube will suggest other ones.
I can listen to Bill Burr Talk all day long.
Almost everything he says sounds funny.
He had Norm MacDonald, great choice, one of the best stand-ups of all time.
And somebody says, you are using your hypnosis technique.
Let me make a distinction.
Hypnosis is generally when a person is in the room and you're working with them and you have a common vision of where you want to go.
You're working on a specific thing.
So hypnosis in the specific sense is just two people working together.
The hypnotist has to be able to see the response in real time.
So as you're doing the induction, you're watching the person's response and you're looking for micro changes.
So you're looking for changes in breathing, changes in muscle tone, changes in Even blushing, etc.
So you're looking for very small changes and then you're adapting your technique as you go because you're saying, oh that worked, I'll do more of that.
No, that didn't seem to work, I'll do less of that.
So you can't do that in a mass setting.
But, that said, all of the knowledge and technique of hypnosis does become just part of your communication stack.
So if you say, am I using my hypnosis technique when I'm talking to you?
The answer is always yes.
But not with the intention of putting you into a trance or anything.
It's only the intention of, I know what is likely to be persuasive, and I know what is likely not to be.
So I do things that are persuasive.
That's not exactly hypnosis.
That's just communicating effectively.
Do you use self-hypnosis?
I do. Yeah, you know, when I took hypnosis class, what was it, 40 years ago now?
One of the things that the hypnosis instructor did was he hypnotized all of us to be able to hypnotize ourselves so that we could do self-hypnosis and put ourselves into a deep relaxation.
So 40 years later, I can still do it.
And do it instantly, and it's just like the first day.
Now, why does it last 40 years?
It lasts 40 years because the hypnotist created a simple association.
And then I reinforced it.
Had I not reinforced it, it wouldn't have lasted.
And the simple association was this.
We would hear the hypnotist's voice, and he would just go through a relaxation routine, and we would feel relaxed.
So we associated his voice, which I can still hear just like it's in the room, we associated his voice with our relaxation.
Most of life is just that, associating two things until the qualities of one thing trigger or conflate with the other thing.
If you thought of persuasion and hypnosis as mostly that, you'd be pretty close.
If you're trying to change somebody's mind or change somebody's behavior, It's usually about matching one feeling to another and then chaining them together until you've created a sort of a thoughtless reflex in a person.
Because a lot of what we do is thoughtless reflex, and usually they're bad ones.
Well, by the time you seek help, it's a bad one.
There could be good ones.
So somebody says, I don't understand how anyone could be hypnotized.
The reason you don't understand it is that you don't understand what it is to be hypnotized.
So let me explain that.
Let's say in a setting with an actual hypnotist, you're paying money and you went to a hypnotist.
In that setting, hypnosis works on every person who wants it to work.
So the key is that you have to want it.
There's no getting around that.
If the subject is sitting in the chair saying, watch me resist this, I can't be controlled, I will defeat this hypnotist with my willpower, well, then they can.
Guess what? That's really easy.
Ignoring the hypnotist is about the easiest thing you could possibly do.
You just don't care, don't pay attention, don't play along.
There's no risk of being hypnotized.
It's the easiest thing in the world. Likewise, You could be in a deep hypnotic, they call it a trance, I'm not sure you can define what a trance is, but, you know, just somebody sitting quietly and they're sort of in sync with the hypnotist, so you could call that a trance, but it's hard to define what a trance is.
That person, at any point, can just say, oh, I'm late for something, and just get up and walk out.
They can. There's nothing that stops you.
So if you're saying, I don't know how I could be hypnotized, because I would never do something that I didn't want to do.
That's how most people think of hypnosis.
There's nothing like that.
There's no point at which a hypnosis session would involve you doing something you didn't want to do.
Nobody would do that.
You only do things you want to do.
And if you want to do it, you're going to be open to associating it with something else.
So, back to my example of self-hypnosis.
When I do self-hypnosis, I can count from 1 to 20, but I don't count it in my own voice.
Sorry. I count from 1 to 20, But in the voice of the hypnotist, who I assume has been dead for decades, but I can still hear it.
And the association triggers me into relaxation.
It's basically instant.
So if you want to use self-hypnosis, think of it this way.
Self-hypnosis is nothing but associating two different things.
So here would be self-hypnosis.
Somebody says, you sick, bro?
I just always have a congestion if I'm talking too much.
So I don't have sore throat.
I don't have any illness symptoms at all.
Actually, I'm feeling amazing because I'm doing all kinds of exercise and eating right and getting a lot of sleep.
Honestly, I've never felt better.
That's not a joke. In terms of my physical health and vitality, I've never felt better.
I'm in really good shape right now, and I hope the rest of you are taking this seriously as well.
My goal, quite simply, is I'm going to try to delay being exposed to it, but if it happens or when it happens, I want to make sure I'm not one of the people who needs a hospital bed.
So my willingness to stay as healthy as I can is partly for myself.
Well, it's a lot for myself, of course.
But there's a social element to this.
If I can stay healthy enough, And away from the virus so that I don't take up any medical resources, I'm going to feel pretty good about myself, honestly.
I'm going to feel like I went through the virus war and I did my part and, you know, it was hard, but I made it work for my little corner of the world, and I hope the rest of you are doing the same.
Alright, I know this hypnosis topic is fun, so I'm going to talk about it some more, because it just gets your mind off of stuff, right?
So back to my point.
Self-hypnosis, if you simply think about it as setting up associations, you can already do it.
It really is that easy. So, for example, let's say you set up a little area somewhere in your house where there was a place you could comfortably sit, and maybe it's not the place you sit for other things.
Very important. Remember, self-hypnosis is about associating two things.
If you pick a place in your house that you use for other stuff, Such as your bed.
Don't do it there. Because bed is other stuff.
Don't do it in that chair that you always read.
Because that's your reading chair.
Don't do it in your chair where you do work.
That's your work chair. Find a chair that hasn't been used for anything.
It's a place you just don't sit.
Get a new chair. Put a pillow on the floor.
Find a place that has no prior association.
You want to find a place with no prior association.
Do you know why it works so well when you go to a hypnotist's office and sit in the hypnotist's chair?
One of the reasons that works better than anything you could do in your own environment is that you've never been in that chair before.
And you're entering an environment that's fresh.
So whatever associations are formed once you enter the hypnotist's office are formed consciously by the hypnotist.
And it happens from the moment you walk in and shake hands back in the old days or in today's world.
Hi, I'm over here.
But from the moment you walk in, the hypnotist is starting the hypnosis.
And the hypnotist will tell you this.
An ethical hypnotist will tell you that the conversation from hello is part of the process.
Now the first part of the process where you're just talking and you think you're having a conversation and you're just talking about what's going to happen next, you think that's not the hypnosis, but it's part of the process.
And that process is building credibility and making you relax and making you understand what's happening and building an expectation that it's going to happen.
So the first part is entirely about building the expectation in your mind that this will work and it's going to happen in a minute.
If you don't believe it's going to work for you, you're not in the right frame of mind.
So the hypnotist will often dress well and maybe have a suit.
And we're actually taught this.
Put a degree on the wall.
So you're creating an environment where the person walks in and they're already primed because they've decided they want this before they walk in the door.
Once they walk in, this is not about the wanting anymore.
This is about the belief.
So it starts with wanting to be part of the process.
You can't avoid that. This is only for willing people.
Secondly, they walk into the hypnotist's office and now they're being primed.
You're just having a conversation.
The hypnotist is saying, you know, in a moment I'll ask you to relax.
This is what will happen.
This is what you'll feel. This is what to expect.
I do this all the time.
You're my millionth person.
Yeah, it'll totally work with you.
I'm an expert on this.
And your mind, by this point, remember, you wanted this.
You were so primed.
And the priming is a really big part of the process.
If you haven't primed people right, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work as well.
So that's the first thing.
Back to you.
You found a place in your house that isn't used for anything else.
Now you've recreated in a small way what the hypnotist's office does.
A fresh environment.
It has no associations.
So you've got your little fresh environment, your chair, your seat, your pillow, the place that you're only going to do this.
And then you say, this is my meditation place.
Oh, what did I do there?
Did I just conflate meditation with hypnosis and self-hypnosis?
Yes, I did. Because they're not that different.
The goal of just meditating is being able to quickly put yourself in a relaxed state.
The goal of self-hypnosis, usually, is to do the same.
And they look almost the same.
So all you gotta do is find your little place, do your little tricks of squeezing your muscles if you have to do it the first time.
Eventually, let me explain this so you can really see how this works.
This is just a perfect example.
On day one you sit in your fresh little environment with no prior associations and you can't relax.
You're tense. You're thinking about life.
Do the muscle thing. One muscle at a time, one muscle at a time.
Works every time. You don't have to wonder if it'll work.
It'll work. Then, do that every day for a week.
What happens on the eighth day?
You go to your little special place, you sit down, and suddenly, you don't have to do the muscle squeezing.
Because the association of you sitting on the pillow and being super relaxed now has formed a An association in your mind, if you do it enough.
And it doesn't take long.
A week would be fine.
And it gets stronger as you go.
So now you can disband the muscle squeezing, because as soon as you sit there, you just say, ah, I'm in my place.
Boom. Right into it.
And you've got an hour of serious pleasure.
Now, I hate to do this.
Well, maybe I won't.
I'm going to save that. I'm going to save that.
I might bring on a special guest in the future to give you a little more tips on meditation.
I've been reading and listening to people talk about meditation for forever, basically.
And they're all really bad at explaining things.
And what I mean is, when people say, you know, how do you meditate?
They say things like, well, clear your mind and use this mantra and whatever.
And I always say to myself, I don't really get that.
You know, can you explain it better?
Maybe it's the way you're explaining it.
Is there something I'm missing?
It feels like incomplete.
Somebody already guessed in the comments.
Yeah, so Naval Ravikant.
I was just talking to him the other day, and he explained to me meditation in a way that's at least a little bit close to the way I explained it, in a way I'd never heard before.
But he can do a better job of completing this picture, so maybe someday we'll ask him to do that.
And if he's done it independently, maybe I can find it.
Somebody says it's the disconnecting your body from your mind.
Yeah, but you know, the best way to disconnect your body from your mind, if you're not good at it already, is that muscle squeezing trick.
It will work every time.
Somebody said, I was listening the other day to Dr.
Drew, and I think it is your voice that is soothing.
Well, let me teach you something about voice.
Why not? You know, I'm going to make it my mission that at least the people who watch my periscopes are going to leave this crisis smarter, like a lot smarter, maybe healthier too.
Then why not?
We can. Might as well.
What was some... I forgot what I was going to talk about there.
It wasn't hypnosis.
Oh, voice. That's it.
So, if you watch...
There's a movie called Network.
Is that what it's called? An old movie about TV news people.
And one of the characters was giving a tip to somebody who was less good at being on air on the news.
And it's a tip I'd never heard before.
And when I heard it, I thought, well, that must be just, maybe that's just a movie thing.
That's not something that a real newscaster does, right?
I thought, well, that can't be a thing.
And here was what the character, I think it was William Hurt, He said in the movie.
He was explaining how to read the news.
He said, you should randomly emphasize words.
And I thought, well, that doesn't make sense, does it?
Does it make sense that if you're reading off the teleprompter, that you would just, on your own, you would just randomly emphasize a word?
Doesn't it make more sense that you would emphasize the important words?
Right? I mean, common sense.
And then you watch him do it, and he's clearly just emphasizing random words.
And you watch it and you go, why does that sound right?
Why does that sound right?
So what you're hearing in my vocal presentation is that technique.
It's a technique I learned from that movie, but didn't believe it.
It took me years before I figured out that's a real technique, that that's a thing.
And watch me do it right now.
So you're actually watching it happen in real time, so you know.
But watch the pace and the variation that you can tell I'm putting into it.
Now, the change in tone helps a little bit.
So sometimes I'm down here, sometimes I'm up here, and I make sure that I vary it.
So that the varying of the tone is both intentional and its technique.
But even more than that is the spacing of words.
Watch these two examples.
I'll just read something off my page randomly.
Oh, well, I'm going to read my own tweet.
I forgot I was going to talk about this.
And it's about the fact, do you remember Do you remember early on I told you when there was a story about the White House office, the pandemic office got closed, and so President Trump was getting heat because he closed the so-called pandemic office before the pandemic.
And everybody said, well, that sounds bad.
If you have a pandemic office and you close it before the pandemic and then you need it, well, that's pretty bad.
And the person who ran that office complained and said, yeah, he closed my department.
I sure wish that department was here.
What did I tell you on day one?
With no knowledge except experience.
I would guess that all of you who have a lot of corporate experience were onto this from the start.
Anytime you consolidate departments and get rid of the fat, what happens to the fat?
Does the fat, meaning the people that you got rid of because they weren't pulling their weight, do those people go off and say, well, good job there, boss.
You got rid of the fat.
Too bad I'm the fat.
But, you know, you did a good job because you got rid of me because I was the fat.
Has anybody in the entire world ever done that?
No. No.
The person who is the fat complains that it was all done wrong and it's a big mistake and they don't know how valuable you are and man are they going to pay for it when the pandemic comes.
That's what the fat says.
So I was waiting for the news to correct this and sure enough the Washington Post ran an article by the guy who made the decision.
Remember I told you you have to find out why they did it.
Because if you haven't heard the context of why it was closed, you don't really know anything.
And my assumption at the time was that they didn't close it and get rid of the function, but rather, based on experience in the corporate world, it probably was folded into some other group for a perfectly good reason.
And so finally the guy who made the decision, the actual one person who said, yeah, that was me, I did that.
I got rid of that office by combining it into the other.
And he explained why he did it.
And then you say, oh, it was duplicate.
It was duplicate. He got rid of duplication.
Now, did getting rid of duplication change anything?
Probably made it better.
But it certainly didn't make it worse.
Anyway, so...
I'm going to read my tweet to talk about this vocal process.
And I'm going to show you that I'm randomly accentuating words, but I also, this is a technique I added myself, I sometimes randomly add a space.
Because if you're listening to somebody talk and they're at a certain pace, and they pause, Your focus goes right to it.
So if somebody goes, your brain just acclimates to it, and you're like, oh, there's this background buzz.
I'm trying to follow along.
I think I got most of that sentence.
I'm so bored. I'm thinking about other things.
I'm half listening. So the more the same your speech is, the less people pay attention.
What is the number one rule of persuasion?
Anybody? Anybody?
Attention. The number one rule of persuasion is attention.
See what I just did there?
Do you see how I left a little gap?
And you already even knew what I was going to say, right?
You knew what I was going to say because I said it twice in a row.
The second time I said it, I put it in a pause and I made you stop and pay attention.
And it worked. Now you were paying attention anyway, but you could probably feel it.
As soon as I stopped my sentence in the middle and there was an unexpected pause, what did you do?
You paid more attention.
That's why I do it.
So here I'll just read a tweet I wrote, and I said, As I told you on day one, based on experience alone, No, the White House didn't dissolve its pandemic response office.
I was there. The I was there was the guy who wrote the article, not me.
Now you see what I did?
Now if you said to yourself, yeah, but I wouldn't have known where to put the pause.
Doesn't matter. That's the beauty of it.
You can kind of put it anywhere.
It's only to make people pay attention.
It's not to make them pay attention necessarily to the next word.
Now, in the best form, you're making them pay attention for the next word, but you don't need to.
You can just use it to make them pay attention in general.
So, let's say I wanted you to understand that it's based on experience alone, because that's kind of a fun part of the sentence, that I made a prediction with no data whatsoever, based on experience alone, I did it in public, And the most unexpected thing, I would think, if you're watching this, wasn't it a little bit unexpected that I nailed that so hard?
I mean, admit it.
Who else? Did anybody else?
Was there anybody else in the entire frickin' country who said, in public anyway, some of you probably were onto it early, but in public, did anybody else say, nope, fake news probably got folded into another department because of redundancy?
Basically, I said that.
Ah, somebody just reminded me of something I desperately wanted to talk about and I kept forgetting.
So thank you. So somebody was saying, just said the word ego.
Somebody contacted me privately after Periscope.
Somebody was new to the Periscope and saw me bragging about a prediction.
And they said, you know, I like your work, but it just really turned me off.
When I saw you bragging about your success predicting something, I didn't like the bragging, the ego stuff.
And I explained to him that he's lacking context.
If you've been watching the Periscopes, you know that the purpose of me telling you bragging, if you will, and I'm doing it intentionally, is to reinforce that I have a certain filter on the world that I believe can be validated by being better at predicting, than other people. So, should I not tell you that?
Because that would be sort of egotistical, wouldn't it?
Well, one of the lessons that I've taught you, and I think maybe the most important thing I'll ever teach you, is to remove your ego from the situation if you want to be effective.
Your ego is your enemy and it's your obstacle.
It's not your friend. It's not who you are.
Your ego is a problem.
You should treat it that way.
Now, it can be a tool, If you convert it from a problem to a tool, but you have to work at it.
In this case, in order for me to let the audience understand that I'm making predictions, and I'm really reinforcing them when I get them right, but I'm also really reinforcing them when I get them wrong.
I think everybody would admit that, right?
You've seen me make predictions that were wrong.
I say it's wrong.
I'll tell you a million times.
I'll tell you why I thought it was wrong, etc.
So we're trying to process.
We're doing it in public. It requires me to make a public prediction and then reinforce how awesome it was that I got it right.
It has nothing to do with how I feel about myself.
I know that this is bothersome and annoying to some types of personalities, and it's probably It's probably interfering with your own ego, if I could put a guess on it, what's happening.
If you could remove your ego from it, then you would be okay with me doing what I'm doing, knowing that I'm embarrassing myself intentionally, because whether I'm bragging about my successes or I guess something wrong, both of those are reasons to be embarrassed, right?
Both of those are reasons for criticism, and indeed I get criticisms for both.
So I'm telling you in advance, I'm not going to feel bad when I get one wrong.
I just don't feel shame that way.
And I'm not going to be shamed into not crowing when I get it right.
And I'll say crowing, because internally I don't feel like I'm bragging.
I feel like this is a necessary piece of information to know when it's right and when it's wrong.
Take this emergency situation, for example.
Those of you who have watched me be right about who was going to be the president, those of you who watched me be right about talks with North Korea, at least calming things down, we still think there's a long way to go there.
Those of you who watched me right that we were not going to a kinetic war with Iran back then, those of you who watched me being right in the weirdest, most unexplained way, I might be right about Kamala Harris, although that one's probably more of a 50-50 situation.
But the fact that she's being, you know, she's in the top two conversation, top three maybe, conversation for being vice president, To somebody who would not be so much in control, we presume.
It's kind of a weird prediction to get that one, at least as close as it is, even technically wrong.
So if you watched me do those things in public and then tell you ahead of time I was doing them, why I was doing them, what the thinking is, what the filter is, and then watching it materialize, if you've gone through that cycle enough times, then when I tell you that the stock market is coming back, That we will recover, and that it will be fast when the recovery starts, and that you're going to be fine, and that you're not going to run out of food?
Do you believe me? Well, it's that crowing and it's the bragging that keeps the pattern in your head that says, oh yeah, he got some pretty unlikely things right, and the things that were easy, he got most of them right too.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to be right all the time, and I would make no claim to being magic at all.
I have no magic powers.
So you can watch, and you can judge for yourself, and I guarantee that every time I'm right about anything, I'm going to crow about it, because it's part of the process.
It's important. It's important for you.
I wouldn't do it if it were just for me.
It doesn't buy me anything to do that.
All right. I've got a recommendation for you, and it's along these exact same lines.
If you follow me...
And you're not following Mike Cernovich?
I don't know why.
Because certainly there might have been a time when you said, oh, you know, I'm not getting enough value out of that, or his personality doesn't fit with me, so I don't like to see him, and he's bragging about his accomplishments and stuff like that.
But, man, is he right a lot.
Including the earliest warnings on this virus.
He is right a lot.
And he has deserved, you know, he has earned, he has earned, let's say, not deserved.
I don't like that word. But he has earned people's attention.
So if you're not watching his take on stuff, and they're really different, and they tend to be way early and way more insightful than other people's opinions, if you're not following him, you're hurting yourself, I think.
He's shown that he's the real deal.
All right, that's about all I got.
I'll try to come back.
This afternoon. And I've got another podcast I'll be doing later today.
That's recorded, though. And I will talk to you all later.
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