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March 31, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:28
Episode 882 Scott Adams: Simultaneous Swaddle Time. See my Joe Biden Impression.
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*whistling* *whistling* *whistling* *whistling* Just kidding. Those were not real birds.
No. No, not real birds.
Those are me. And that's not even my best impression.
Yes, I can do an impression of birds at a distance as heard through a window from a second story.
And it goes like this.
It's like you're there, isn't it?
Kind of incredible. Well, yes, I will be breaking out my Joe Biden impression.
And I will be taking some questions.
But I'm running a little bit hot in here, so I'm going to turn down the lights in the studio.
And watch this.
As if by magic, I'll start to get better looking.
It's not a big difference.
It's sort of an illusion.
You don't realize it's just getting darker.
You think I'm getting more handsome.
Quite, quite a magic trick.
I know it is. I know it is.
It's impressive. Yeah, that's what I thought too.
Waddle be captain.
Nobody's ever said that sentence before.
I always laugh when I see a sentence that I can imagine, you know, whether it's true or not, that I can imagine no one had ever spoken before or written before in the history of all spoken language.
And I will put it in that category, swaddle me captain.
That is a funny sentence.
All right, so what do we got going on here?
The funniest thing happening is that because President Trump seemed to have pivoted in his preferences from maybe wanting to go back to work a little bit early to listening to the experts taking their counsel and then going hard in the other direction compatible with the experts.
What does that leave CNN to criticize?
What do they have left?
Because They have to be against the president.
That's their entire reason for existence.
Their audience expects it.
They built a brand around that.
But what do they do when the president suddenly pivots to completely taking the advice of the most eminent experts?
And it also happens to agree with what all of the CNN people probably have been saying.
So it just completely took all of their material away.
And, as I've said before, you never pay a political price.
Well, I shouldn't say never.
There's probably some exception.
But it would be unusual to pay a political price for being too aggressive against a threat.
But you could easily imagine, and it would be obvious, that you would pay a price if people perceived you didn't do enough.
So the safer thing to do is always do whatever is perceived as the big push, not the little push.
But this is even funnier.
And by the way, I didn't catch this play until later.
Now, I'm not going to say that Trump thought this all the way through the way I'm going to describe it.
It could be just luck, you know, or instinct, or, you know...
It could be anything. So you can put your own interpretation about how intentional this was.
But the first part of the context is, you know, he's been going after CNN pretty hard.
And CNN, of course, going after him.
So the president has singled them out in the press conferences and really tried to shame them for not being on the side of the country, basically.
And then, as I said, they just took away most of his material.
Because the country seems to be sort of supportive of the president, more so than usual, and sort of liking his toughest hand on things.
So they've got nothing to criticize, but here's the play that I didn't catch until today.
You may have noticed that in a somewhat brilliant, let's say, programming decision, CNN has Chris Cuomo, Regularly, if not every day, I'm not sure, interview his brother, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
Now, I'm sure, obviously, CNN could have assigned someone else to talk to Andrew Cuomo every day, and they probably sometimes do, but isn't it better?
I mean, just for watchability, you have to admit, if you're the producers, Whoever's idea was, maybe it was Criscoll's idea, but it was a great idea because you sort of expect that they wouldn't do it, and then because they do, it's so much more interesting, frankly.
So in terms of producing and that decision, I kind of really love it because whenever I see the two of them on there, I'm watching that.
Because the brother dynamic just makes it just way more interesting, especially because they're both operating at such a high level.
One's a governor, one's primetime, one's CNN. And they've got this little edge to them that they don't hide that much.
Obviously, they love each other, but they still have this little brother edge that just makes a really good TV. Knowing that, let me get back to my point.
This all fits into the point.
So the President yesterday throws out this thing, this idea that maybe these masks are being stolen in New York City, which of course, of course, what does that cause to happen?
Well now, if the President of the United States makes any kind of an accusation, it doesn't matter if it's true or false, it's the news.
It literally doesn't matter what the president accuses who of doing what.
It doesn't matter if it's true.
It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous.
It's headline news.
You just can't change that.
It's the news. So the president turns this allegation that maybe there's some kind of criminal, sketchy behavior going on in New York, in the Andrew Cuomo state, and this causes Kind of a requirement that his brother Chris Cuomo has to ask his brother Andrew Cuomo, what's up with this alleged corruption?
Now, if you didn't see that coming, And again, I'm not going to say that the president thought it all the way through to the logical conclusion that it would make the brothers have this tense exchange, because Chris Cuomo still has to do his job, right?
I mean, everybody expects he's going to go a little soft on his brother, and I don't think anybody cares about that, frankly, right?
Because Andrew Cuomo seems to be doing a great job.
He doesn't really need to get beaten up.
So I don't think anybody minds that Chris Cuomo is pushing a little bit but not too hard.
It's his brother. There's no reason to push.
But the president just lobs this little grenade over the fence.
And when I first saw it, I was like, well, it was provocative and I thought, well, it's probably worth looking into.
And he tells the media to look into it.
Which, again, is Chris Cuomo, who has to ask his brother if his state is corrupt.
And then Andrew Cuomo acts like...
And this is the best part.
The answer to it, Andrew Cuomo's answer, was, I'm not going to say he was lying.
I'll just say he answered in the style of a liar.
Which I thought to myself was, really?
Really? Because here's what not a liar would say.
And again, I'm not saying he was lying.
I can't read his mind.
I'm just saying that there's a pattern that liars use, and I'll tell you what it is.
So if he had not been lying, and somebody asked him that question, and you're the governor, you probably wouldn't know the answer, right?
I mean, unless you'd already looked into it, which you probably hadn't.
So the right answer is, you know, I don't know about that, honestly, but I'll ask around.
Or we'll look into it.
Or we've already looked into it and I think we're just using a lot of masks.
Or it's the way they counted them probably.
I don't think it's what you think.
It's probably just the way they inventoried them.
But let me look into it.
I'll get back to you. That's what I would say if I were the governor and I didn't know what was going on and he probably doesn't.
Now suppose he did know what was going on and he knew that They were being stolen, but maybe he did, or maybe he didn't know who was responsible.
But he didn't want to get into it.
It was sort of a distraction.
How would you answer that?
So he acted like he didn't know what the president meant.
He said, well, I don't know what he meant like that, but if he has an accusation, he should say it directly.
And I thought to myself, I think that was pretty direct.
Now, the president didn't say he knew who was taking masks, if there weren't any taken, because it was a maybe.
He said it was worth looking into.
But the other thing the president did was he didn't take credit for the idea.
He said, you know, I was just talking to somebody who's like an expert, and he said to me, and then I just suggested it to the press.
And the next thing you know, the Cuomo's run TV and they'll have to answer to that.
That was just frickin' hilarious.
Alright. Would you like to see my Joe Biden impression that I've been working on?
It's my Joe Biden impression.
It goes like this.
Gotta get the eyes right.
And Somebody asked me a question.
Ask me a question in the comments, and I'll be Joe Biden, and I'll answer.
Now, you may say to yourself, Scott, can you see the questions?
And it doesn't matter, really, because here's my answer.
What you have to understand is, if the strategy, going forward, you can't be On what I'm saying before, and this is important,
and the president doesn't understand, that if you're doing the thing, what I'm saying is, I think, the so-and-so, and then strategy.
Take that to the bank, Jack.
Now, that's my Joe Biden impression.
I think I nailed it. Version 1.0.
Give me a break. My very first time.
And I don't know, what would Democrats be saying if they did not have the handy excuse of the crisis to hide their candidate most of the time?
I mean, the little bit he's on TV from his little underground bunker...
Well, the fact that Joe Biden is in a room that's like a bunker under his house, everything about it is wrong.
He's literally like...
He's like a guy in his basement.
President Trump is out there trying to save the entire country from maybe hundreds of thousands of deaths, possibly millions, and Joe Biden's hiding in his basement in the bunker.
You couldn't have a bigger contrast.
I believe this is the path to the end of this.
So this is what I'm kind of piecing together from what I'm saying.
So if you look at the trends of things, it seems that there's a lot of action to get the hydroxychloroquine into the approved system so that people can start getting it.
Tremendous amount of action in terms of getting pills manufactured, etc.
And then also a tremendous amount of energy into getting new, faster, cheaper tests so that you can start testing massive numbers of people.
So I think those two things are step one to keep people from dying.
So if you can do massive testing, and we'll probably go from a million to a 10 million.
I think we're going to ramp it up like crazy because we have to.
So if we get those two things, let's say that hydroxychloroquine is plentiful enough that people get it as soon as they have symptoms, and then we also test, so we know for sure who's got it and who doesn't.
Those two things would probably...
In the optimist case, the case that the pills actually work with the Zithra, Bison, etc.
So the optimist case is that the deaths plunge or at least get down to the level where we don't run out of ventilators.
So that would be the near term.
Lots and lots of tests.
And when I say near term, that's still two weeks away.
Because you could probably get pills into most people who need it in two weeks, given how hard I imagine they're pushing to do that.
Then I think there's this middle ground between just keeping people alive, which is what that would do, and getting to vaccinations.
That's pretty long wait.
And who knows if the vaccination really works, right?
So we don't want to have to wait like nine months Waiting for the vaccination, and that's where I'm guessing, and this is just me sort of putting together the pieces of the news that I hear, so by no means no authoritative voice here, but it seems like the getting us to the vaccination stage might have a lot to do with the convalescent serum.
So I'm seeing as phase one, the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, zinc, and just massively ramping up testing as much as our American ingenuity can get it done.
That's phase one.
Keep us alive. Phase two, you've got to build that immunity.
And you don't want to wait all the way until there's a vaccination.
So that's where this convalescent serum thing might work, taking the blood and taking out the good parts, the antibodies, from people who have already recovered.
And all the smart people say that it should work at least a little bit.
Now, I haven't heard anybody try to put a number on it, like, would this stop X amount of whatever?
But it seems like everybody says this is such a historically tried and true method that there's no reason to think it wouldn't work.
And then there's that wild card that somebody smarter will have to answer, which is, can it be reproduced in a lab or do you have to take blood out of real people?
Which would be, I don't know, I assume harder.
Maybe it's easier. Somebody says, can we make enough Trump pills or not?
Well, here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
I've been complaining that the task force, and Pence in particular, cannot be said to be managing the crisis until they're also measuring the The critical things like how much supplies and blah, blah. Now they are doing, it looks like, a good job of measuring things such as number of ICU beds.
We're seeing that and we're seeing deaths and how many people have it and how many recovered.
So the basic statistics probably in the ballpark are pretty good or as best we can get them.
But wouldn't you want to know how many ventilators we need and How money we have and how many are in the pipeline and etc.
for all the gloves and the masks and stuff.
So I've been saying that since we don't know that, Pence is not really managing it.
Because if you're not measuring what you have and what you need, you're just flailing.
You're not managing anything.
But yesterday and today, it was reinforced today, that Pence has ordered All the hospitals to report.
So I don't know how long that takes, but that was, of course, the right move.
Add this to the things you want to ask later about why that took so long.
Because you have to ask yourself, really?
Why did we just have to ask the hospitals to report to some central depository?
It feels like that should have been a little closer to day one kind of thing, but maybe there wasn't any place to report to until they built something.
So anyway, we don't need to rehash the past.
They're doing the right thing now, and I think I'd rather focus on that.
Here's an idea.
We've got all these hotels that are empty and look like they're going to be empty for a long time.
Could we use those hotels, given that everybody has to be locked down anyway, could we use those hotels for addiction treatment?
Oh, hold on, hold on.
Now keep in mind that first of all the hotels can't sell those rooms for any normal reason.
But suppose you only allowed people in who were tested.
So, you know, nobody even gets into the hotel unless they've tested.
So that might require a few more tests to be available.
But it might be a good time to get clean.
Because what else you got to do?
You know, rather than sitting around at your own house, which is all the temptation in the world, suppose you could just go to the Ritz.
And the Ritz says, you know, we'll make it, you know...
$25 a night.
Whatever. Or nothing.
Or the government pays it or something.
But the point is, those rooms are just sort of sitting there.
You probably at least have to pay for the maid service and the laundry and stuff.
But... And of course you wouldn't want to fill them.
You might want to make sure there's a lot of space and they still do some social distancing when they meet.
But they could just be meeting in the ballrooms and getting straight.
So... I don't think this will come to fruition, but when will you ever have another time when the hotels are empty and you could actually take a gigantic bite out of addiction because people didn't have anything else to do?
I'm just going to put it out there that I'm not saying it's a good idea.
I'm just saying if we don't consider it, When else are we going to have a situation like this?
At least put it in the hopper.
Put it in the hopper and think about it.
If you did not watch Tucker Carlson talking about the government lying to us about the effectiveness of masks, that was tonight.
If you recorded it, don't miss it.
It's really good.
Because When Tucker is accusing stupid liars of being stupid liars, nobody does that better than him.
Because he's got that disgusted face that just pairs perfectly with that attitude.
It's like, you're lying to us?
How stupid do you think we are?
You must be the stupid one if you think we're that stupid.
That's the most obvious lie in the world.
Of course, mass work. That's my version, not his version.
But that was a minor masterpiece.
Watching that was really entertaining.
And he was pretty brutal, which he was called for.
I think this situation, brutality was called for.
I've made a ruling.
Yes, I have. I've made a ruling.
I'm going to take some questions in a few minutes.
I made a ruling as the creator of Dilbert, I am endowed with certain powers, obviously.
And among those powers, as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, I'm authorized to determine dress codes in the workplace.
You probably thought that companies get to determine that on their own, but no.
Since the 90s, that's been delegated to me.
I'm sort of like a...
Like a cabinet member.
So I make the decisions about the dress codes, and then the companies act like it was their decision, but basically it's me.
So I've been noticing a really bad fashion mistake.
I'm watching the TV news, CNN, Fox, and you'll see the hosts, who would normally be in the studio, are broadcasting from home, but they're wearing suits.
In their own, like, hallways and living rooms and stuff.
And it looks so out of place.
So here's my ruling.
As the creator of Dilbert, I rule that the proper dress code, if you're a TV broadcast personality and you're broadcasting from your own home on Skype, the dress code is pajama casual.
That's right. Pajama casual.
Now what that means is like me, the bottom half is already for bed or perhaps got up not that long ago.
The top half, casual, did I sleep in this?
Wait a minute, is this the top I slept in or Is it just a casual shirt that I was wearing?
You don't know.
That, my friends, is pajama casual.
So that's my ruling.
If you're on cable TV news, no suits if you're broadcasting on Skype from your home.
It's pajama casual. I have ruled.
Let's take some questions.
Who would like to ask a question?
Who? Oh, that's too clever, using my own book as your icon.
How clever can you be?
I'm going to tell a story about that in a minute.
Very clever, using my book as your icon.
Do you have a question? Hello.
Hello. Can you talk about anti-aging a little bit?
I heard the other day That you mentioned that they figured out how to reverse the aging of a cell.
Go ahead, sorry.
Go ahead, finish your question.
I follow the work of David Sinclair in Boston.
He's a PhD researcher at Harvard and he's working on rejuvenating retina cells and optic nerve cells.
Which is really interesting to me because I have visual impairment and problems with my retina and optic nerve, so that's why I'm hopeful about it, but he also works on anti-aging.
Yeah, so I would not claim to know much of anything about that, except that, you know, I think ever since I was a kid, there have been periodic articles, maybe once a month, about some scientists who figured out how to reverse aging.
Well, that was 50 years ago, and they're still not reversing much aging, if you know what I mean.
At one point, it was the resestrophrol or whatever it is, the stuff that's in wine.
Resveratrol. Yes, exactly.
Isn't that exactly what I said?
Resveratrol. Yes, correct. Okay, I think I nailed it.
And, you know, at one point, I've seen so many of these studies.
So, The point is, that doesn't mean that the modern ones are also as bogus as everyone that has been every month for 50 years, because you have to figure we're probably getting closer to it.
If we're not there yet, we're certainly closer to being able to do it than we ever have been, I would imagine.
But here's the thing.
I've been saying forever that if I could stay healthy enough long enough, Even in my lifetime, they probably are going to figure out how to do exactly that.
How to stem cell you back to some better state and fix your eyes and give me the knees of a teenager and stuff.
And it does feel like...
I could hang on for another 20 years, I think.
So if there's anything left of me, short of full-on Joe Biden situation, I could probably...
They could probably stem-sell me back to my 50s, maybe, on a good day.
We'll see. Well, they say they're 17 years away now, so you'll be right there, Scott.
We need you. We need your wisdom.
Well, it's either that or I'm going directly into a computer to live forever.
My other plan.
All right. Thanks for the question. Thank you, Scott.
All right. Let's go to Steve.
Steve, Steve, are you there?
Do you have a question?...advantage of the United States canceling admission of KN95 face masks in the time of a crisis.
They just did that on the 28th, and that's the most abundantly supplied face mask in the world.
Wait. Well, I don't know anything about that story.
So the government canceled an order, or canceled what?
You can't import KN95 face masks any longer.
I don't know that, but all of that sort of story falls into the category of things where if on first glance it's absurd, it's probably because there's something that's left out of the story.
So there might be some extenuating circumstance.
It just has that feel of one of those stories that If you'd heard the full story, maybe you'd feel differently, because certainly, who can imagine why that would be?
I can't think of any reason.
Okay, thank you. Anyways, I didn't have much to add to that, but thanks.
All right, let's see what else we get.
I am not value-added every time.
I think Raphael needs to ask a question.
Raphael? Raphael, are you there?
Do you have a question? optimistic because of your predicted death count is small.
Then I hear Dr. Birx speaking and she says under the best situation, under the best conditions, 100,000 to 200,000 are gonna die.
How do I explain that, you ask?
Exactly. And wouldn't you like me to explain it in a way that makes you feel good again?
Because those darn experts getting those all wound up.
Well, here are the things you should consider.
Number one, nobody predicts the unpredictable, but I did, right?
So that's the first difference.
So the doctors are looking at what they know, and they're saying, based on what we know, it should be somewhere in this neighborhood.
And I don't have to do that.
I can say, you know, we've seen so many surprises just in the past week, things you didn't know that humans could figure out and do.
You know, all the different meds that look like they could work.
The discoveries will probably be doing serum and testing, and we got the test down to 15 minutes.
I mean, really just miracles of innovation in one week.
So, what are the odds that we're done innovating?
So this is how I predict things.
What are the odds that this was the week?
Well, we didn't have any other ideas.
We just got to the end of that week, and we've done all our good ones.
So it is what we got.
That's what we got. More likely, newer, better ideas are coming, and our ability to go from zero to, let's say, making a million tests is probably the hard part.
My guess is, if you go from zero to a million, going from a million to 10 million, You figure it out, basically.
You just get more of these machines and line up here and do what these guys are doing.
So it seems to me that we will just do very non-linear and explosively interesting things.
And I also think that there's a good chance that the hydroxychloroquine will be effective if you take it early.
So I'm betting that the unexpected is guaranteed.
A rational scientist and somebody whose job is to speak to the public can't say what I just said because it sounds crazy, even though it's right, because you should certainly expect the unexpected.
That's like the easiest thing to predict, but you can't say that if you're in their job.
What are they going to say? Well, I think it'll be 17 people, but I don't know how.
Something unexpected might happen, right?
So they have to just like go with the odds and bound it, but they also have this other responsibility, which is to manage your psychology.
You know, they're not blind to that.
That's a key part of their job, is to get you to do what you need to do, but short of just flipping out.
And that's a fine balance.
And I feel that part of my job is to catch the people who fell through the net and would flip out or were already willing to do what they needed to do and maybe you're one of them.
It's like, I'm going to do what you tell me to do.
I'm going to socially isolate.
I'll wash my hands. I'll do all the things.
But I also don't want to die of stress.
So I feel like I can...
Provide a service there.
Because you should not expect that the doctors are really giving you the lowest bound that's possible.
They should give you the lowest bound that will still scare you quite a bit.
And they did. If they had said what I said, they should be fired.
But I can say it, right?
Because I'm not the doctor. Nobody's going to take me too seriously.
And I'm literally predicting the unpredictable, which there'll still be surprises.
Things will go better than you think.
We'll get smarter faster.
That sort of thing. And I actually feel...
I'll tell you, if you had to bet...
By the way, my low count is a net, and that counts the fact that we might almost certainly save a whole bunch of lives just because we're not on the highways and doing dangerous sports and stuff too much.
You have to net that out because that counts.
That's part of the decision.
When we decided to shut things down, Everybody knew that that would save lives.
That has to be part of the variables.
If you throw that in, I think you're going to be closer to my number than 200,000.
That's my feeling. I have to admit, if there were more people who watched this Periscope, I wouldn't say this in public for the same reason that the professionals don't because they're trying to manage the whole country and they need you to be A little bit too scared.
That's sort of the sweet spot, is a little bit too scared.
So you're really going to do something.
Not just maybe do it, but really going to do something.
But with this smallish audience of smarter people, I have the freedom to say, I don't think so.
Now, everybody has to leave the door open that nobody's good at predicting.
Anything could happen.
Anything could happen. But I'm going to hold with my prediction at the moment.
Let's see. We've lost our caller.
Let's see if we can get another.
Perry is a commie.
Let's try that. Perry, do you have a question?
Hi. There's so much hope over the hydroxychloroquine.
I'm the public health nurse.
I talked to you the other night about the homeless shelter pop-up, but I just wanted to inform you guys about...
I inquired with a dear friend of mine that's a hospitalist.
She's one of the most respected ones at our local hospital.
The concern with that one is, though, is anybody with a cardiac arrhythmia, which is kind of common in folks of older age, cannot take that.
She treated a lot of people for many years in Africa.
In fact, she grew up in Africa.
She's an incredible doctor.
But anyways, yeah, it can cause sudden death.
So there are other antivirals coming down the line.
It's very hopeful.
But yeah, here in Central California, I'm going to say, it is great.
These pills are routinely already prescribed for the rheumatoid arthritis and malaria and stuff.
So it's the same question, right?
If they were prescribed to those people and they had the heart condition, it would be as deadly.
But clearly, that's within the acceptable risk, so that probably won't slow us down too much, I would guess.
I mean, given the size of the alternative risk, that seems like a pretty small one.
Oh, yeah, lupus is the other thing.
Yeah, and especially with the younger folks.
Although, I mean, you know, a few years ago, I had to have a cardiac ablation for, I don't.
Start to lose your signal a little bit.
Okay.
That is good to know, and you patients, you should know that as well so you know what to ask.
Alright, thank you. Thanks for that.
Alright, let's see who else we got.
Let's go to Mikey.
Mikey the monkey. All right, Mikey.
No, that's not Mikey. That's Chewbacca.
Do you have a question for me?
Yeah, I do. I wonder if you've heard about, and by the way, some of us use those monikers because we don't want our companies to know that we're engineers and scientists and talking to universal people, so don't discount that.
The other thing I wondered is, there was an article on Twitter that I reported people, we're off work now, but And it's about sterilizing the mass, and it's about using microwaves, not the microwave oven which destroys the mass, but higher frequency, 5, 8, 10 gigahertz,
12, and they can actually, it was a paper from Taiwan in 2015 by a research university, and I just wondered if you've seen that, because it actually talks in there about being able to sterilize the air, because the levels are lower than the IEEE SAR levels,
you know, the specific absorption rate stuff, It resonates the water dipoles at those higher frequencies, much like your microwave oven does, but at much lower power.
I was wondering if I could get that paper to you to send to somebody.
So say again, I think we had a little connection problem.
What is it that's popping the virus?
Was that UV or was it microwaves?
It's microwaves, so it can penetrate things and it can penetrate other things that UV can't, but it's at a higher frequency and lower, much, much, much lower power than your microwave oven.
I wonder if that's the technology that the mask sterilizing machines use because apparently there are some industrial mask sterilizing machines that are going into use right now.
I wonder what they use.
But anyway, you can send it to me and I'll see if...
I'll try to. How should I get it to you?
Just send me it on LinkedIn.
Oh, okay. Connect that way.
I would hope they're working on this, but I don't know.
I haven't heard anything about it.
That's why I'm concerned.
Okay. I'll pass that along.
All right. Thanks. All right.
Let's see who else we got here.
Let's talk to Paul.
Paul? Paul.
Hey, Paul. Do you have a question?
Paul does not have a question.
Paul disappeared.
We miss Paul, but we're going to talk to Nick, and Nick will be so exciting.
It's like two Pauls.
Nick, are you there? Nick?
Do you have a question for me, Nick?
I do, indeed. I was wondering, what do you think is going to happen with the oil prices and the Saudi-Russian stand-up there when no one's driving?
Well, at the moment, probably the bigger issue is lack of demand because the economy is stalled.
So I don't see the price of oil going up anytime soon.
Yeah, the oil industry is going to take Quite a haircut in this.
But on the good side, it operates like a tax cut for anybody who uses energy.
So we'll take it.
I don't know. Bad for the oil company is good for us, mostly.
Bad for the oil industry in this country.
But if you're commuting, you might like it.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
And I'm always fascinated at the range of questions that people ask.
and Let's see if Mikey has the best question of the day.
Mikey, are you there? Do you have a question?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm doing great, man. I had a question about persuasion.
Yeah, go ahead. So I've been reading through your reading list and everything like that over a long period of time in a group of my friends.
And I'm finding it a little difficult on translating some of the ideas into practical use in everyday life to try to, you know, grow that muscle and flex that.
And I wonder if you had any tips on, you know, how to do things like pacing and leading and practice things like that out in the world with your friends, family and things like that.
Yeah, you know, there's no substitute for just practicing.
So the best way I would explain it is if you've ever tried to learn to type without looking at your fingers, the first months of it, it just feels like it's sort of impossible and you couldn't possibly do it.
Same as if you're learning an instrument for the first time.
How do you get your left hand to do something and your right hand to do something else that doesn't even seem possible?
But then there's sort of that It's almost like one day that you realize, oh, Yeah, I just got separation and I can type now and I can do all these things.
And learning persuasion is like that.
So there's a whole bunch of just being aware of it and then thinking to yourself, oh, I'll try this one thing in this one situation.
So just keep reminding yourself and practicing, see what happens, trial and error.
But think of it in terms of a skill that you build up over decades, not something you learn in a weekend.
In a weekend, you can learn all the tricks.
You can actually get better at them just infinitely because they just become incorporated in the way you talk.
So at this point, And people have made this observation about me.
I consistently use the tools of persuasion, but I'm not thinking about it as I do it.
So I'm not thinking, oh, you use this tool.
It's simply the way I talk now.
And that'll happen to you.
It's just time and practice.
That's all it is. Fantastic, man.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Good luck with everything.
All right. Take care. Thanks.
Secret to everything. Time and practice.
Let's see what Brian has to say.
Brian. Brian.
Brian. Brian, do you have a question for me?
Brian. Brian.
Good. Get me in there waiting for the countdown.
First, I'm old and I remember when I worked for Boeing in Wichita, Kansas in the 80s, 90s.
Before you announced who you really were, we all were convinced you worked at Boeing up in Seattle.
Everybody did. That was in Boeing.
Probably everybody in every company thought you had to work in their company.
Yeah, I heard that a lot.
It was made worse by the fact that I have a common name.
So most of the biggest Fortune 500 companies, they have somebody with my name on the payroll.
And I know this because people told me the stories of, we knew you worked for Hewlett Packard, which I didn't.
They said, so we looked at the employee directory, and there you were, and then we knew it.
And then IBM told me the same thing, PG&E, and, you know, pretty much all the big companies had one of me.
But there was only one of me, and it wasn't any of those.
All right, did you have a question, or you just wanted to say that?
I just wanted, on the persuasion angle here, I just want to know.
Mike Lindell today is taking a lot of heat because instead of any of the other CEOs catching grief, he is probably because he dared to mention Jesus.
And then the other question more is on Dr.
Birx. Because she seems like a real star to me.
She seems like she has incredible credibility.
Is the fact that she's catching so much grief from the liberal media because they are so afraid of her ability to influence people?
No, I never interpret those kinds of motives, that somebody is secretly afraid of somebody's power or something like that.
No, I don't think so.
I think Dr.
Birx is associated with President Trump because they're working on the same project.
So that means that the anti-Trump press has to not love her too much.
They've got to walk that fine line because she's credible and she's a woman and she's got a great reputation.
So they can't totally trash her, but they might want to make her look a little less credible.
It might work in their favor.
But no, I don't look too far for the motives.
I think there's not that much cleverness going on usually.
That's probably true.
Alright, thanks for the question.
Bye. Let's do one more.
Or more.
Elmer. Elmer, who looks like a cat.
Elmer. Elmer, do you have a question for me?
Elmer disappeared.
Technical difficulties?
And that puts Carol in the queue.
Carol? Carol, can you hear me?
Carol, can you hear me? Hi, do you have a question for me?
Accidental death rate starts to decline, then If people recognize that, won't they see the disadvantages of going back to the world as it was a couple of weeks ago?
If what declined?
The death rate in general, you mean?
The accidental death rate.
Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot because I thought I was going to hate this more than I do.
Meaning, you know, being forced to be home, and I can go for a walk, but that's it.
And so far, I'm liking it more than I thought.
Now, I hate the fact that I'm not with my fiancé, so that part, you know, you can't get past that.
That's pretty big.
But in terms of my health, and I'm not bored, it's been better than I thought.
Yeah, same here. So, anyway, Did I answer any questions?
Or is that what you wanted to say?
Yeah, that was kind of, but I was thinking more in terms of like the travel industry, if people recognize that it was having such a bad influence, you know, like commuting and holiday.
It might be hard to convince people, okay, let's not go back that way.
Yeah, you know, you make a good point.
All of the people...
Who commuted these terrible, you know, two hours each way commutes.
There's something about how we just sort of drift into things.
But when you're forced to not do it for two months, maybe you just can't go back because you just say, my God, I feel so much better that I don't have to do that.
Anyway, so thank you for the comments and questions.
And I'm going, oops, I'm fat fingering that.
All right, so I think we've done enough for tonight.
I believe that we have now calmed ourselves down into a good place where we human beings will be in some ways observers to a fight between two viruses.
That's right, I said a fight between two viruses.
That's my dog making noise in case you hear that.
One virus is the coronavirus and the other There's a series of ideas, and those ideas use human beings as their carriers, exactly as the coronavirus does.
So the coronavirus doesn't kill you directly, it causes you to be programmed wrong and kill yourself.
Likewise, a bad idea could do that.
But in this case, these ideas become like idea viruses.
They spread to other people and people learn what to do with their masks and what drugs work and how social isolation works and what's bending the curve.
And so all these ideas formed like an army of ideas that And they're, you know, they're using our bodies as just their fortresses, basically.
But it's the ideas that are fighting the other virus.
So it's really virus on virus.
One virus has a physical form and one has a, you know, sort of a conceptual idea form.
But it's really the ideas are fighting the other physical virus.
And the humans are just sort of receptacles.
Basically, we're just the battleground in a way.
So if our ideas reprogram us productively, We can be part of beating the other virus.
That's all I got to say for now, and I will talk to you in the morning.
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