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April 1, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
56:47
Episode 884 Scott Adams: Taking Questions and Solving Pandemics Like it's Nothing
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here. It's time for Swaddling in a Warm Blanket with Scott.
You came to the right place if that's what you wanted to do.
It's all gonna happen here.
I've been taking questions on Twitter, meaning I tweeted to tell people to ask me questions.
And I'll be answering these questions.
But first, let me give you an idea of what's new and exciting.
Number one, people are starting to wise up to the fact that masks might be a good idea after all.
Who saw that coming?
All of us.
So it's sort of a crazy, bizarre thing watching masks Watching our experts slowly start to agree with the public.
It's supposed to work the other way around, right?
Aren't the experts supposed to have a position and then the ignorant public Eventually learns what the experts teach them.
Well, that would be great, except we just did it the opposite way, where all the non-experts, when they heard that masks don't help you, but they do help professionals, but they don't help you, half of the world who's not an expert said, well, I'm no expert.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure masks...
Help a little. And of course, the non-experts were right.
But that doesn't mean you should always listen to non-experts.
Just because in this obvious example, they were right.
For example, one of the most promising treatments apparently is this hydroxychloroquine.
And if you would listen to the experts, they would have told you, don't get so excited about this.
But if you'd listen to the non-experts, let's say Trump himself or me or many people on Twitter, they had been saying hydroxychloroquine is great.
So we might find out again whether or not the experts were right, downplayed a little bit, or the people who don't know anything about anything were right.
But that would just be two things.
I mean, you can't make some kind of a big general statement just because it might be that ignorant people were right about two things that experts weren't wrong about, but that's just two things.
Let's talk about those projections.
Because if there's one thing you can count on, it's that experts are good at projections.
They're making models.
If you've been watching me for a while, you know I can't stop talking about how accurate complicated projection models are.
I mean, is there anything they can't do?
Yes. People we don't know do things we don't understand, and then they produce graphs.
These graphs are made by experts, and we should trust them.
But when we saw the graphs, there was one...
Well, just a small quibble that I have.
But again, I'm no expert.
I'm no expert.
It's not like I'm some epidemiologist, because I'm not.
But when I listen to the experts talk about their own graphs, one of the little tidbits that Dr.
Birx threw in there, was that when they were calculating what the curve could be without any abatement, the steep one where two million people might die, and then they compare it to the lower curve, where if you do everything right, you really work hard and do everything right, you might be able to get it down to 100, 200,000 people dead.
And then the good doctor threw in this little tidbit.
That at first I thought I heard it wrong.
And she said, but of course these numbers treat New York in the average.
So New York, which is completely different than anything that's happening anywhere in the country.
You know, there are a few other hotspots that have their problems.
But New York is, what, half of all the problem?
And New York is an especially steep curve.
What kind of an average do you get when you take A whole big country that mostly doesn't have too many problems but a few little warm spots.
And then you throw in this one data point that's as big as all of the other data points.
And it's just one city.
And then you take the average.
That's the most worthless number you could ever have.
And I don't think I'm interpreting this.
I believe she said that directly criticizing their own graph.
She wanted us to know, quite reasonably, wanted us to know that New York was in the average.
Now, if you don't, you know, if you're not, let's say, conversant with modeling and math and spreadsheets and stuff, maybe you didn't even catch that.
Maybe you didn't catch that.
But what would have been far more, let's say, clear would be one model that's just for New York, And then another model that maybe isn't everything else, because everything else is so different from New York.
And then that everything else, I think, would look a lot lower than their lowest curve.
And then New York, if we try hard and put super resources into it, well, maybe we can get that down as well.
Somebody says she seems credible.
You know, I... She's very qualified, of course.
I was listening to it today while I was walking instead of watching it.
And I'd heard somebody say that she has a Valley Girl uptalk.
And I'd never noticed it before.
And I think that when you watch her live, you don't hear it the same way.
But if you just listen to her, she has a voice that does not...
We suggest scientific excellence.
And, you know, somebody's going to say, oh, I'm being sexist, but it has nothing to do with that.
You know, you could put a man into the same situation and be exactly the same comment.
It's just there's a certain style of talking that sounds authoritative and Male or female.
It has nothing to do with gender.
And she has the other kind.
But I'm sure she's very capable.
Everybody says good things about her.
But her voice maybe could be a little bit more professional sounding.
Very small quibble.
But anyway, that was to whoever said she sounds credible.
Yes, she does in terms...
She sounds credible in terms of her expertise, of course.
So here's the thing.
I'm still going to bet That the number of deaths are lower than their lowest estimate.
And that if you net out the people who didn't die because we shut everything down, which is going to be in the tens of thousands, probably tens of thousands of people won't die in car accidents, won't drown in pools.
Well, I don't know about pools, but a whole range of things they won't be getting killed at.
So, I'm still going to say 5,000 net.
Gross deaths might exceed that, but net, I'll say 5,000.
Now, you should not take my estimate to be likely, because what do I know?
I'm just the guy who's been right about, okay, everything so far, but that doesn't mean it's going to continue.
All right, so...
Is it my imagination, or are people definitely being nicer?
President Trump seems to be modeling a little bit of nicer behavior.
He did an extended interactions with Jim Acosta, which was not ideal, but you could easily imagine it would have been worse.
So, just watching the president calling Jim Acosta Jim, you know, he just used his first name a few times, and he did allow him to ask his questions, and he pushed back, but it was all way more polite than you're used to.
Likewise, when we found out that, unfortunately, Chris Cuomo tested positive for the virus, I didn't see anybody acting political or like a jerk.
I'm sure there were some because it's the internet.
But mostly people were just saying, you know, get well soon.
And that's exactly what I want to say.
No time for partisanship.
All right. Somebody says, only 5,000.
We're already at 4,000.
No. Listen to me carefully.
Because when you come back and tell me I'm wrong, this is the key point.
We're not at 4,000 net.
Net, we're actually negative.
So at this moment, of course this will change, but at this moment, more people have been saved than have died, meaning that people would have died in car accidents if we'd been driving to work, etc.
So we're actually ahead in lives.
I'm not saying that will last, but that's where we are.
We're actually in negative deaths.
Net. 60 hours ago you said 4,000.
God, I knew this was going to happen.
Everybody's going to misremember what I said and then come back to tell me I'm wrong.
Isn't it bad enough that I'm probably going to be wrong by 100,000, according to the experts?
Can't you live with that?
That, in theory, I should be wrong by like 100,000, at least.
If you're coming back, this doesn't bother the heck out of me.
If somebody comes back and says, you said, and it wasn't what I said, I know that's going to happen.
Why am I cranky?
I just took a nap. I just woke up from a nap.
All right, I got some questions here, which I will answer.
Jen Texer says, do you think Trump now needs a behavioral psychologist on his panel to get us through the anxiety and stress?
Well, that's my job.
That's what I'm here for.
I'm to get you through your stress.
Is it working? I have to admit I'm losing a little bit of confidence in the experts, but I think we're in the right path, actually.
Erica says, I just need calm.
I cannot take the press.
And the hatred didn't snark anymore.
Will it ever stop? Well, honestly, it looks like there's less than ever compared to our normal...
I mean, normally they're trying to impeach the president.
And today they're just wondering if he did the right thing as soon as he could have.
I mean, think about it. It wasn't long ago they were saying he should be kicked out of office and impeached and he was a tool of Russia.
That's bad.
What they're criticizing him today for is, well, he maybe eats up a little too much camera time communicating with the public.
Okay. That's it?
If you look at the nature of the complaints this week, they're very small.
They're kind of numerous because they need to fill up the page and stuff, but they're so small.
He did the right thing, and nobody did the right thing faster than any other country.
But hypothetically, had he known what he didn't know, he could have done it sooner.
Those are the kinds of complaints that people are making.
They're not very deep. David Angel says, Any better than the climate change models?
Well, I'll tell you, David. The further out you go in time, and the more variables you have, the worse your model, as a general rule.
The virus models are really short-term.
They're actually, like, weeks compared to the climate models that are, you know, decades, 80 years, 100 years.
And I would think that the virus model has far fewer variables, I think, right?
I mean, I haven't looked at it in that level, but you think a virus model, they're just going to say, I don't know, six variables?
How many could there be?
Whereas the climate seems more like infinite variables.
So I'm not saying the virus models are correct, but I do think, you know, the experts in Trump and Fauci, they had the worst time trying to explain to the public this simple concept, and it was making me crazy because they kept repeating it over and over, and you're probably already sick of it, which is that the models don't tell you what's going to happen.
They tried to explain this a million times.
Now, because I've done lots of financial modeling, you know, I'm automatically on that page.
The model, the prediction doesn't tell you what's going to happen.
It's going to tell you sort of directionally where things will go.
Is it real bad?
Is it a little bad? And, you know, if you make this kind of change, you'll sort of generally go that way.
They're very, very approximate.
So the models are doing their job of scaring people to You know, to comply.
But I wouldn't look for accuracy, even in the short term.
They are, however, useful.
So, who is it who said, somebody said something like, there's a famous quote, like, no predictions are accurate, but all predictions are useful.
All right. Something like that.
Nola Jody says, I'm in New Orleans.
I drove around to different hospitals.
They all appear dead. Ghost towns, why?
I don't know. I would think that all the activity is going to be concentrated in a few hospitals, so maybe it was a different hospital.
I don't know. What ratio of doctors to beds are needed?
That's a good question. What would you think, without knowing anything, if we just had to guess?
How many beds?
Let's say that means patients.
How many patients can one doctor handle?
That's a good question, isn't it?
I have no idea. Because, you know, obviously it depends.
But let's say you were taking the average of these COVID-19 patients.
You know, you averaged in X number need ventilation, X number don't.
How many could one doctor handle?
Let's say, you know, in any given day during an emergency.
50? Because remember, they're working long hours and they're really hitting it.
You know, they're not dawdling. So maybe one doctor could do 50?
Is that way too high or way too low?
I have no idea. Um...
Pancakes or waffles?
Neither. Um...
My opinion on today's briefing.
I thought the beginning of the briefing was very strong, and Trump's part in particular, he did very well.
I thought it went too long, and maybe he took too many questions, and that it seemed to...
Oh, look at all the estimates for how many patients a doctor can handle.
30 to 1, 10, all kinds of estimates.
I think the president probably should have kept that as shorter, but it was generally good.
Let me tell you what they are still failing at completely.
So the members of the press, they're so weak compared to the government now.
I don't know if that's just because of the era of Trump or whatever.
But they're asking all these questions of the administration, and the administration is just not answering them.
And it goes like this.
This form of the question.
How many ventilators do you think we'll need?
And how many do we have?
You know, including the ones that are coming.
That's like the whole question, right?
You could ask that same question again for masks.
How many do we need?
How many do we have coming?
I mean, you could add a little detail, but that's basically it, right?
And for each of the different components, the hydroxychloroquine.
And the reporters keep trying to ask that question in all kinds of forms, and even one of them was smart enough to say, shouldn't there be somebody whose job it is?
Just to be measuring that stuff so that everybody knows what we have and what we need and report it out.
Which is, of course, exactly what I've been saying for a while.
Mike Pence's answer is that we have that person.
And he named the person.
Works for FEMA, yeah, we have exactly that person.
You do? You do?
Because it doesn't look like you have that person.
If you had that person, when they asked that question, you would have an answer.
And even if the answer was approximate, for example, you might say some people think we'll need as many as 60,000 ventilators.
Others think it might only be 40,000.
That's fine. That's fine.
That's telling us something. And then you go on to say, we know that we have, let's say, 20,000 ventilators.
If you added up all the people who are trying to make them and promising, we don't know...
If they'll meet their commitments, but if you just added what they're promising, we should be up to 45,000 within three weeks.
How hard would it be?
Again, you could be way off, but it's more than we know now.
I mean, let's say the numbers were something like that.
We need 60,000, but it might be only 40,000.
We've got 20,000 in the warehouses and commitments for another 25,000.
Wouldn't that... You don't think anybody could have pulled those numbers together and just told us?
Now, it could be that they're lying to us, the way they lied to us about the masks, the way they lied to us about the hydroxychloroquine.
It could be a shortage situation.
I don't know. So maybe they're still just intentionally not telling us.
But I would say this is just a gigantic, glaring flaw that the press is totally letting them get away with.
And I don't know if the press just doesn't know that it should be reasonably easy to do.
I don't know. It's a big mystery why they're not pushing on that.
But I've been giving it a little time because Pence did say that they are querying the hospitals to get exactly this kind of information.
It could be it just takes a few days.
If it's like everything else in the world, you can't do it overnight.
But it's been a few days.
And I'd like to see at least, I don't know, one number.
Like, well, we got the masks number, we're still working on the other.
I don't have confidence if I'm not seeing those numbers produced pretty quickly.
Ian says, will anything ever be done about the obvious corruption of the World Health Organization?
Well, I don't know.
But I'd certainly be amazed if we continued to fund them, wouldn't you?
I mean, maybe they do some things that are so important that we have to anyway.
But after this situation where the World Health Organization seems to have been completely a bad actor, they weren't even just worthless.
They were actually a bad actor and may have caused a lot of deaths.
So I don't know how we would continue to fund them, but we'll see.
What percent are you, so this is what percent certainty, I guess, that we'll see some sort of attack by a foreign country while we deal with the COVID-19 here at home?
I would say none.
The odds that a foreign country would attack us under these circumstances are none.
Because first of all, who attacks the United States, right?
You know, who would intentionally ever attack the United States?
Nobody. When was the last time somebody who had a standing army, let's say, not terrorists, but somebody you could find, like with a real government, attacked the United States?
I mean, really, when was the last time?
So no, that's not going to happen.
Best investments for a 1-3 period.
Well, I don't give investment advice, but I will tell you this generic thing, which is diversification is good, and I personally have my money in the bulk of it in a Fortune 500 fund, just an unmanaged fund of American companies, so that way I don't have to pick winners and losers.
I'm basically betting on America.
And I would think that in our current situation, as whatever you think will happen to America, we're probably going to get through this better than anybody else.
I think. So if you had to put your money in a country, it's still kind of America.
It's still America.
Even as big as the budget deficit is and everything else, it's still better than the alternatives.
What the hell is up with the CDC? Good question.
Jenny Smith says, will you comply, as Bill Gates suggests, with an electronic certificate identifying antibodies in order to travel?
I would. Yeah, I would.
There are lots of things that I would do in an emergency situation that I wouldn't do in an ordinary situation.
But yeah, if I had to basically be tagged as somebody who had recovered so I could travel, yeah, why not?
I mean, it would just be for my own benefit.
That I would have this extra power that I could travel.
Dave says, tell us about the pranks you alluded to in your book.
Can't tell you. Can't tell you.
I'll tell you one prank, though.
It's not one of the ones I alluded to.
But in my first long-term relationship many years ago, I was living with a woman and...
Every night she would, I think she used them to, I don't know, take off makeup or something, these little cotton balls.
So she'd have a bag that she would buy with a big old bunch of cotton balls.
Now the thing about cotton balls is that when you take one out of the bag, it still looks like the bag is full.
You could actually take quite a few cotton balls out before you could convince yourself that any have even left the bag.
I don't know, they're expanding or whatever it is.
So one day, Pam was her name, she mentioned, geez, it seems like an infinite bag of cotton balls.
Every time I take one out, it seems like you can't even tell the difference.
And from that day on, I went to the store and I bought my own bag of cotton balls.
And every day, I was very dedicated.
Every day I would walk in and I would take, I think she would use two a day or something, and I would take two cotton balls out of my bag and put it in her bag.
So for months and months and months she's taken two bags, two cotton balls out of her bag and it never goes down.
I think I ran this prank for like a year.
Like a full year.
And she never knew that her cotton balls were always replenished.
Anyway, I'm very dedicated to my pranks.
How to fight through frustration when learning new stuff.
I've been stuck in the same project for two days.
Well, I don't know.
I'm maybe not the best one to ask because I very much dislike that period where you're confused and you can't figure out how to do something.
I'll tell you the tricks I use.
I mean, one trick is to make sure you get a lot of sleep.
There are simply things you can solve after you have a good night's sleep that you just can't when you're tired.
So that's one thing. Another thing is to ask some other people what they do, check the YouTube videos, and then just keep chipping away at it.
There are a lot of things that it seems like it's impossible to learn until you do.
So just keep chipping away.
Phil Blad says, if you were governor of New York...
I'm not going to read the rest of this.
David says, should Twitter personalities...
Who are you talking about, David?
Should Twitter personalities without mathematics, science, or engineering degrees be allowed to criticize probabilistic epidemiology?
Epidemiological models they obviously don't understand.
I think that's directed at me, David.
Well, let me put it this way.
When the epidemiologist says we threw New York in the numbers, I don't really have to be an epidemiologist to know that they should have been separated.
So the answer is apparently yes, I should as a Twitter personality.
I should criticize that.
For what it's worth, I did that kind of work for a living.
Alright. What portion of the people dying are from assisted living facilities that got infected before the shutdown?
You know, the general question is, we don't know who's dying and why.
And I've asked this question.
Which is, how many doctors who took the hydroxychloroquine before getting anything, how many of them have been hospitalized and ventilated?
I'll bet it's zero.
So that's the dog that isn't barking there.
That I believe the doctors taking that drug to protect themselves may or may not be getting the The virus, because I think you can still get it, but that it would be trivial if you did.
So I'm predicting that nobody who has been taking it for a while and then got exposed will be ventilated.
We'll see. What talent stack do you recommend learning to prepare for a post-Corona world?
Well, I wouldn't be a restaurant server.
So restaurants are going to be tough for a while.
I would say podcasting would be good.
And anything that you can do at home might make a difference.
So I think the real answer, though, is you should add to your talent stack whatever makes sense with what you're good at or what you already have.
So you should build it based on your specific situation.
Can any of the numbers we see for confirmed cases be taken seriously?
I don't know what seriously means, but you've got to take all of the numbers you're seeing, every estimate, every ratio, every raw number.
You just really have to be skeptical of it all, and I don't see that changing.
There's been a steady drumbeat of outrage of the arrest of the minister in Florida.
I don't know that story.
Was that somebody who refused to do social distancing?
Was that the guy who was driving around and driving people to his church or something?
I don't remember the story.
All right. Do you think this pandemic experience will sway anyone's view on the role of the government in health care?
Yes, I do. I do.
I think that the odds of some kind of major healthcare restructuring that somehow is informed by this or influenced by it is pretty high.
Because this is such a big healthcare event that it should start influencing all of the ways we think about healthcare in general.
Now, predicting exactly how that comes out would be the hard part.
But would it influence it?
Probably yes. Not guaranteed, but probably yes.
Does the COVID virus attack testicles, as Alex Jones suggests?
Well, when it comes to testicle-related science, I do go to Alex Jones for my testicle news.
And I believe that, in this case, Alex Jones is compatible with the science.
Now, again, everything you read...
About anything in this situation is suspect.
But I can tell you I did read an article that looked credible that said some number of people had testicle damage from it.
Apparently it hits men harder than women in general.
And that it could affect your testosterone production.
Which does make you think that it would be like the perfect weapon.
Imagine a virus that just made the other side not as aggressive.
What about that?
That would be quite a weapon.
Uh... Do you think Trump was pacing the American public at the outset of the pandemic?
It looked to me like he knew a lot of people would reject the ideas.
In other words, the idea of closing everything down, I think, and socially isolated.
So he paced us, meaning he acted the way we acted until he needed to tell us to act differently, and then we followed him.
I don't think he did that intentionally, but that's what happened.
I do think that the president's credibility went up Because we saw the journey.
The journey was public.
In public, he was like, well, let's get back to work, let's push it, maybe go back a little earlier than the experts say, but let's do that.
And then we heard the story of the experts coming into the Oval Office, showing him the numbers, and then he changed his mind.
And so because we saw the whole journey, it makes you actually feel confident.
It's like, oh, that's kind of maybe what I would have done in that situation.
So I think he handled at least the decision-making.
Yeah, I think you could make this distinction.
I would say the decision-making is very good.
Trump's decision-making.
But, you know, there's always something to quibble about the communications and the little stuff.
Will the next two weeks be as bad as Trump suggests?
Well, again, doesn't it really depend if this hydroxychloroquine works?
Because if they start giving it to people, I guess three days ago, and I don't know what percentage of people were getting it and at what phase of their symptoms, but if we started going a little bit more aggressively on that, The next two weeks could be worse than we're seeing, but maybe not a catastrophe.
Maybe not. So I would say there's a solid 50% chance that...
Well, there's no chance that the next two weeks will be good.
You could rule that out.
So there's no chance that, you know, just nobody dies.
But the odds of it being, you know, the nightmare scenario, I think no more than 50-50.
And, you know, I told you I'm betting on the low side.
Why did you block Larry the Liberal?
He loves you and is good fun in the worst of times.
Larry was DMing me multiple times per day his tweets, you know, so that I would see them and retweet them.
And I don't mind retweeting stuff, but I don't like people sending me multiple DMs a day asking me to retweet stuff.
So it was only because...
It was causing me work.
So it was nothing personal.
He's very funny. All right.
Do you see home values falling due to job loss?
Yes, of course. Yeah, home values will fall.
There's no doubt about that.
How should have virus prediction modeling been presented?
Well, I think I talked about that.
Should we send billions to Israel every year when we have thousands of homeless here?
You know, the whole Israel question, it's not a fair question.
The money you spend on one thing isn't the money that you would have spent on another thing.
It just sort of doesn't work that way.
So the first part is the question is not fair.
You should say, should we spend any money on Israel, yes or no?
Just by itself.
You don't say, and we could have used that money to keep somebody alive.
It doesn't work that way.
Because you could have borrowed money to keep that other person alive if that was a priority.
But to answer your question, my understanding is, We give them foreign aid, which we force them to use to buy our military stuff.
So really, it's like we're giving it to our own military-industrial complex.
It only seems like we're giving it to Israel.
Prosema says, Do you love trans women?
Yes, I do. I love all people.
Dave said...
Should we boycott AT&T for supporting their fake news company, CNN? I'm not the boycott guy.
I just, you know, I get why people get mad and they want to boycott, but I just don't think that's...
It's just not the way I'd go for anything.
Well, I don't know how I could weigh in on a medical question.
But I will say that if it's a question of things which have past scientific muster, we should look at them.
And if it's something that hasn't, then Dr.
Fauci is on strong ground.
And I don't know if...
I don't know. Has vitamin A been looked at?
So I can't ask. I can't give you a good answer on that.
Talk about the infrastructure bill.
You think it will really happen?
You know... If we were a rational species and a rational time, it would happen.
Because I don't think there's anybody on the left or the right who doesn't recognize it's just sort of a good idea.
If ever you were going to do an infrastructure bill, do it now.
Couldn't be a better time because of the economic stimulus and the fact that we need it and the fact that at the moment people are willing to work together.
Basically, every single condition you would want We have.
So if you can't get it done now, when can you get it done?
But I am skeptical that we could create a lot of jobs that way, but it might make people feel like things are going in the right direction.
That whole shovel-ready thing, that never seems real to me.
Simulation question. Do other people exist in your simulation, or are they just a simulated person to entertain you?
Well, Of course, there's no way to know the answer, but let me speculate.
If we are a simulation, we either just live independently as, you know, you're a simulation and I'm a software simulation too, but we could also be avatars that some other creatures are using to experience our game-like world.
Now, if it's that one, where there are avatars who are inhabiting us, Could be that some of us have an avatar, or some of us have a creature inhabiting us, and some of us don't.
So that's one possibility.
The other possibility is that only one of us is real, even in the simulation.
There's only one sort of main character, and then everything else is scenery.
So that's possible.
Or that some of us are real, And others are backgrounds and NPCs, as they say.
So I think any of those are possible.
At least you can't prove they're not true.
Mike says, can you give us an update on interface by WinHub?
Well, here's the thing.
It's sort of a perfect tool to be using in this situation.
My startup... It has an app called Interface where any expert can sign up to take a phone call and charge for it or not charge for it.
So it's the not charge for it if you want to part that's important here.
So it's a video call with somebody that you can easily find through the app who has expertise and is available for a certain thing.
Now it's exactly what you need for telehealth experts of all kinds in this situation.
But I've just not felt commercial these last several weeks.
The thought of selling something, even if it's something that people want, just my...
I don't know. I don't have the fire for anything that's just commercial at the moment.
My focus is more on the emergency.
But that said...
It is also a perfect tool.
So if there are any individual doctors, they could just sign up.
They could tweet it out and say, I'm on this app.
And they could charge zero if they want.
Or if they're already socially isolating and maybe they tested positive themselves, they could just keep being a doctor from home.
And you wouldn't need any approvals or anything.
Just sign up for the app.
It's called Interface by WinHub.
All right. Why haven't you talked about career millionaire politicians who have sold this out to China?
I guess the implication being that they're on the payroll or something.
You know, I don't know too much about that situation, except that it's obvious that China is buying influence everywhere.
So, I don't know what you do about that.
Because whoever has the most money is going to be buying influence.
And don't you think the United States buys a lot of influence?
Maybe not as aggressively as China.
Let's see. Beer Hayes says, I bought a special blanket for swaddle time, but wife is making me repaint the whole house, and I'm dead tired at 8 p.m.
Eastern Time already. Question.
Should I listen to my body, my wife, or you?
Well, you should listen to me.
Tell your wife, Beer Hayes, Mrs.
Beer Hayes, this is a message for you.
You should let your husband swaddle in his newly purchased swaddle blanket because this is important.
That house will still need painting later.
All right. Should we answer that?
Will you do a live stream with me so I can ask you about your childhood?
What would you ask me about my childhood?
Why would that matter?
Happy to answer those questions, but I don't know why you'd care.
Where is Hunter? There's a good question.
Where's Joe Biden? Where is Joe Biden?
Oh, calming lessons.
Would you like some lessons on relaxing?
Well, I've told you how to relax.
And I took my long walk today, and I'm feeling good.
Do you predict a spike in divorces?
Well, it's going to work both ways, because some number of people probably were going to get divorced, and this has changed their mind, and some will think, well, it's the last straw.
It's probably a little of both.
Couldn't add out to nothing.
Can I find interface by, it's Wenhub, W-H-E-N-H-U-B. So it's interface by Wenhub.
It's in all the app stores.
What do you think of the Canadian diagnosis kits?
I don't know that story. Well, what will happen in the travel industry?
It will be dead for a while.
But I think that, you know, people like to travel.
I don't think that's going to change.
As soon as they get money again, I think it'll come back.
It's going to be a while.
Will the NFL play?
I'll bet not. If I had to predict, I'd say no NFL season.
That's my guess. What do you think the new normal looks like?
I think May 1st will just be extending whatever we were doing before that.
I don't think May 1st will be a real change-your-life day.
Will we fight for gasoline like Mad Max?
Well, the good news is I think we've got plenty of gasoline.
This could be super cheap.
The bad news is that the oil industry might be going out of business.
Is simulation theory useful to self-hypnotize via narrative fallacy?
I don't really know what that means.
When is the John McAfee interview?
I was going to interview John McAfee and he agreed.
Which would be an amazing interview.
But he needs to use secure communications.
So he can't just call in here and he can't call in on FaceTime.
He's got to use Skype.
I didn't know how to do a split screen with Skype.
So I just couldn't get the technology to work.
What podcast do you follow?
You know, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts.
I end up listening to whatever people recommend.
People send me podcasts all the time and say, oh, you've got to listen to this one.
So sometimes I do.
Why aren't we hearing of Trump properties going to possible bankruptcy?
It's a good question. It's a private company.
And who knows what they are doing or need to do.
Now, a lot of their business is licensing.
So they don't own the building.
They've just licensed their name for it.
So there's still a problem, which is they won't get paid for the licenses if the company, the license that goes on a business.
But it's not like they have a loan.
So in those cases, it's just a stream of income that stops versus having something they owe a lot of money on.
But they have some of those too, I'm sure.
Do I like Victor Davis Hanson?
Yeah, he's always a good interviewer and a great writer.
Do I play chess?
I played chess with Christina before any of this business started.
For the first time, I hadn't played chess in a million years.
And I'm not sure I have the patience for it.
Gordon Chang. Yeah, I should.
What is the secret to the universe?
Well, what if the secret to the universe is that you can program it?
And that if you learn that, then you get everything you want.
Because sometimes it feels like that, that some people have learned how to program the simulation.
And there are people I know, I won't name any examples, but there are people I know who can so consistently make things happen that you don't think they should be able to do that...
That you just wonder about the nature of reality.
Let me tell you a story about the first time I realized how influential I was or persuasive.
So this is a real story.
So back in college There was an organization in college called the Coffee House.
And the Coffee House was a group that was run by students.
So the students volunteered to run it.
And it was a bar on campus.
So we'd have live music and serve, I think, only beer at the time and some snacks.
I volunteered to work there to get some experience managing a thing.
And I was the Minister of Finance.
So I was an economic major.
So I redid the accounting system and became one of the several managers working in this bar environment.
And it was the coolest job because it was a bar and you're 18 and in those days you could drink at 18 and you're...
So here's the situation.
We would hire bartenders, and then we as a group, the so-called managers, would have to fire them if they didn't perform.
And one of the people that we hired was a close friend of mine.
So I had talked the managers into hiring a friend, and he was the worst employee.
He would show up an hour late, he would be stoned, he'd do things wrong.
Just the worst employee.
So the other managers put up with him for several weeks and they decided that they were going to have a meeting and we're going to fire him.
So I'm in the meeting in which the managers are talking about firing my friend who I had recommended for the job of being a bartender.
I decided that That I was going to see if I could get them to wait for it, instead of firing him, that they would agree to make him their boss, to make him actually the head of the managers.
I forget what the title was, but that was open.
And I didn't want to be the head.
I wanted to be the one who sort of controlled the head, so to speak.
I didn't want that name, the title, but I wanted to have the influence.
And so I actually said, you know, what you're saying about him being fired, it's all true.
He really was late, and he's really not much of a bartender at all, and I don't think he has any of the natural talents that would make a good bartender.
But you know what he does have?
And I argued with him that he had a unique talent stack.
I didn't use those terms back then.
But he had a unique set of skills that would make him the perfect head of the organization that was talking about firing him right then.
So we were literally talking about firing him as a bartender.
And within 45 minutes, I had convinced everybody in the room That we should not fire him and instead promote him to be our own boss.
And they said, well, you're still going to have to, I don't know, go through a vote or something.
And I sort of argued my case.
And the next thing you know, he was fired as a bartender and promoted to all of our bosses.
And that actually happened.
And I tell that story.
Has anybody ever been almost fired but instead got promoted to be the boss of the person who was almost going to fire them?
I don't think that's ever happened in the history of business.
So, you should not be surprised that when I later studied hypnosis and the tools of persuasion that I had a reason to think maybe I had some natural talent in that area.
So it's just getting better.
Was he any good at the new job?
Yeah, actually. I guess that's the punchline.
The punchline, he was actually pretty good as a chairman.
I think it was a chairman was the title.
He was actually pretty good.
With my help, we completely turned the place around and lost money The business had lost money every year it had been on campus for, you know, decades.
And, you know, I turned it all around and changed the pricing and fired some vendors and basically it was just a turnaround.
And it was making money for the first time.
So that happened.
Anyway, here's another true story also from college.
The same friend that I was telling this story about and another one, the three of us, we would sit in our dorm room and enjoy the things that college students enjoy when they're sitting in dorm rooms, if you know what I mean.
And we would have wild ideas and plans for the future.
And I came up with this plan.
I said, why don't the three of us be in charge of the whole dormitory?
Yes, bombs were involved, that is true.
And I said, we should be in charge of the dormitory instead of having these professional managers.
So there was like a professional adult who lived there who was sort of in charge, and there were these resident assistants, students who were sort of like his little army of things.
And I said, you know, we should just take over.
We should like be in charge of the dorm, the three of us.
And we hatched this scheme to try to sell to the administration a plan where they would fire the adult And they would pay us, actually give us money, the three of us to be in charge of the dormitory instead.
Now, how high do you have to be to come up with that idea?
Well, a year later, as I was in my private room, which was available only to student managers, the name of the title which we gave it, and then we took it and we sold it to the administration, And sold it to these students who were coming into the dormitory the next year.
And we completely redid the form of management in the dormitory.
And I swear to God, I got a private room.
And I got paid.
And I also, you know, we had the students doing the jobs of security and cleaning the laundry room and other stuff.
And I took some of those jobs too.
Because anybody could volunteer for them.
So there were days when I would be working security at night, letting people in and out of the building, getting paid for that.
I'd be doing my homework in between, and then when there was nobody there and I was tired of homework, I'd walk across the hall and clean the laundry room, which I also got paid for.
So I got paid to be a student manager, paid to work security, and paid to clean the laundry room, and I did them all at the same time.
So I was working three jobs and doing my homework while I was just sort of staying up late.
So, the three of us we took over.
Years later, that dormitory still had that Same structure.
I think they ended up losing it.
But I was kind of persuasive back in college.
And those are just the stories I can tell you.
It was pretty fun times.
Alright, so that's enough of my college stories.
The only person who had a better scam in college He was one of the other students who worked security for the whole campus.
So he was a student who had a part-time job working security.
And mostly that meant he had a big walkie-talkie, and he would just go around and let people in if it was after the curfew at the time that the buildings were locked.
So he would get a call, go to a dormitory and let somebody in, and he'd walk over and do it.
But he didn't like doing that, so instead...
He would come to our dormitory and just party.
So instead of working and letting people in, he would just put his walkie-talkie down and get really high and have a good time with us.
And then a call would come in.
It's like, we got something that needs to be let in at our XY dormitory.
And he'd be like, okay, I'm on my way.
And then he'd just keep partying.
Then you get another call. It's like, oh, they're still waiting.
Are you on your way? He's like, oh yeah, I'm almost there.
I'm on my way. And then you just put it down and you keep partying.
And then you get a third call.
It's like, oh, cancel that.
Somebody was leaving the building and let him in.
He's like, oh, I was almost there.
He puts it down. And he would just stay there partying with us, and everybody who was trying to get in a building, if they waited long enough, somebody was leaving, and they would just go in when somebody left.
So he would just get paid for lying to his walkie-talkie.
It was pretty funny at the time, I have to admit.
All right. With that in mind, did I beat Christina in chess?
I did. I believe I did, yes.
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