All Episodes
Previous Next
April 2, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
32:36
Episode 886 Scott Adams: Swaddle up to Your Screen. It's Time for Positive Thoughts Before Bed.
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody, come on in.
It's time for positive thoughts.
While swaddling in a soft blanket, trying to feel good about things.
I have not watched the Tiger King, but I'm feeling like I just sort of have to.
Everybody's talking about it.
Maybe I'll have to wade into that.
So yesterday I tweeted, and I quote, It's too quiet today.
Something big is coming.
Now, I don't know if this was it, but today the president announced that he's moving the military against the drug trade from Venezuela.
This is soon after he said that I think they put a price on Madura.
Of Venezuela. And it looks like they're trying pretty hard to get him out of there.
Now this is sort of a twofer.
Because, number one, it could maybe slow down some drugs.
And deny some drug money to the Bandura regime.
It's very uplifting.
Because their oil revenue is down.
But the interesting thing is, so here's the good news.
Here's the good news.
Venezuela and China were kind of big trading partners until all the stuff went down, I guess.
So to the extent that China could be pushed out of this part of the world by getting rid of their toehold in Venezuela, it could be kind of good in the long run.
It could be kind of good.
So I've got a feeling something is going to happen militarily that might be bigger than just moving against the drug trade.
I've got a feeling that maybe this is all about putting pressure on Maduro and getting some military assets a little bit too close, if you know what I mean.
Because I think we're negotiating with them.
It's always easier to negotiate if you have your entire military within shooting distance.
We're just in the neighborhood.
It's about the drugs. You don't have anything to do with the drugs, do you?
We're just after the drugs.
Yeah, we do have a lot of warships here, but it's just about the drugs.
So, it seems that it's now considered a fact You always have to be careful about these things, but I think the news on both sides is now, correct me if I'm wrong, considering in effect that China lied about their death toll,
which misled our experts about how severe it was, which caused them not to raise the alarm as loudly as they might have if they had accurate information.
And it looks like that's maybe the explanation for why we got a late start.
Now you can always argue we should have had more ventilators and stuff like that.
And that's a conversation worth having.
But now that we know that China absolutely screwed the world on this by lying about how bad it was, and they haven't even stopped the fentanyl trade, how long has it been?
How long ago was it that they promised, oh yeah, we'll take care of that fentanyl stuff?
So, you know, it took me a long time to come around to the idea that China's government was intentionally doing things to kill Americans.
But I don't know what they're thinking, but the effect of it is a lot of dead Americans.
So I'm pretty sure that at the end of this, there's going to be a serious reckoning.
I think the president's smart and...
You know, downplaying it at the moment because he wants to sell some food, sell some foreign products to China.
So, you know, the president's in a tough place.
But I think in the long run, China's got a lot to answer for.
Now, I promise you, I would answer some questions, and I will.
David Angel asks, Do you think Joe Biden will get to the finish line in October, or November?
And the answer is, Um, I don't think so.
But, you know, you can only put the odds on these things.
So anybody says yes or no is just kidding you.
But if I had to put the odds on it of Joe Biden actually being a candidate and being the candidate and still being in the race on Election Day, 25% maybe?
Maybe that's a healthy odds.
Maybe 40%? I'll give it 40% that he's still in the race for any variety of reasons that could change.
All right. Everything we knew as normal is over.
Well, that's not true. Government...
I don't know about that.
I think that there will be some things that change a lot and other things that improve a lot.
Some things get worse.
It'll be different, but 85% of life is going to be exactly the same.
Rebecca says, tell us some more stories during our nighttime swaddling story time.
Well, I'm glad you asked, Rebecca, because I'm full of stories.
What kind of stories would you like?
The funny kind?
The embarrassing kind? Here's a story that a friend told me.
Now, this requires you to know what a...
Oh, I probably told this.
I think I've told this before.
I don't want to give you the same stories.
So let me tell you one of my first jobs.
I was working on my uncle's farm.
So my uncle had a dairy farm, and it was sort of walking distance, if he didn't mind a long walk.
So my siblings and I would work there, mostly my brother and I, and we would do every bad farm job you could do.
I mean literally shoveling manure and getting the hay out of the fields and piling hay bales and milking cows and cleaning everything basically.
So I had all these terrible, terrible jobs.
But one of the jobs was that you had to get the cows.
That's what we called it.
It was just called getting the cows.
And what it meant was that during the day, the cows would be left out of the barn.
And there was several hundred acres that my uncle had.
And it was, you know, forest and open parts and swamp and stuff.
It was pretty big. And so the 40 or so cows, I think, probably around 40, would go out into the forest.
And they would mostly hang around within sight of each other because they're cows.
Cows sort of have a herd instinct.
So they tend to be not too far away from each other.
And so the process of going and getting them and gathering them up And herding them back to the barn and across the street was something that everybody who worked on the farm had to learn.
It would be your turn eventually to go get the cows.
Now this was easier than you think because there would be a trained cow dog and the dog would actually do all the work.
So the dog would learn from other dogs.
That's how you teach a cow dog.
The way you teach a cow dog how to herd dogs and get them back at night and stuff is you just I think some breeds are better than others, but you just introduce a puppy to a situation where there's already a trained dog, and the older dog just teaches it to herd cows.
It's kind of an amazing process.
So anyway, we had a trained cow dog, and it was my turn for 25 cents, which was the payment for this task.
I had to take my trained dog and a stick, Because you have to hit the cows often to get their attention.
It's not as bad as it sounds.
Usually the sticks were sort of switches, you know, little bendy ones.
And cows are literally made of leather.
So you can hit them pretty hard before they'll even look at you.
Like, you can hit a cow, like, really hard, and the cow will just be eating grass.
It'll be like, I feel like there's a fly on my back or something.
So... So I had to have my little stick and my cow dog and my 25 cents and I went out to get the cows.
And you have to know that it was a little bit before dark.
So I go out there and I'm trying to sort of get around behind the cows and the dog goes the other way and pretty soon I've lost the dog.
So now not only have I not found the cows, I haven't gotten any cows back and they seem to be dispersing.
They've lost all of their cow instincts suddenly.
Instead of herding up and just sort of automatically going back to the barn as they've done every day of their life, they decided when they saw me to just sort of separate.
And they just started dissolving into different parts of the swamp and the forest.
And so I'm like, oh my god, I've lost the dog, I'm losing all the cows, so I'm going deeper and deeper into the swamp to try to sort of get around them.
Because I think, well, if I get a few cows moving, usually that's how it works.
You get a few cows moving in the right direction, and then the other cows, their herd instinct kicks in.
They're like, well, cows go in that direction.
I guess I'm going that way, and they'll just start going.
But I couldn't get behind the cows, and then it's getting dark, and now I'm lost.
And I don't even know which direction is the cows.
So now I'm in the middle of the swamp.
I have no cow dog.
I've lost all 40 cows, and it's dark, and I don't know which direction is home.
This is before cell phones, as you can imagine.
And so I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to be sleeping in the swamp, or I'm dead, or something.
So eventually I hear, Scott, Scott, and it was my uncle who ran the farm, and maybe my brother, who was somebody else who was with them, and they called out to me, and I called back, and they found me with their flashlights, and Took me back to safety.
But they're taking me back and I'm feeling really bad because I didn't get any cows and I lost the dog in the forest.
So I'm like, ah, we can't go back yet.
I don't know what to do.
I've lost all the cows and I've even lost the dog too.
And my uncle said, oh no, the dog took the cows back to the barn an hour ago.
I got completely lost in the swamp, and the dog just took care of it.
So the dog just went and rounded up all the cows, took them back to the barn, because that's what the dog does.
That was the dog's job.
It wasn't the dog's job to follow me around.
The dog had a job description, took care of business.
True story. So...
Want to hear some more stories?
Oh, I got lots of stories.
You know I do.
One day my grandfather, who was my uncle's father in that same farm, was working in the field and he thought he heard something.
He turns around. This is in upstate New York on a dairy farm.
He turns around and there's an elephant standing behind him.
It was like an actual live elephant standing behind him in his own field on the farm.
Now, as it turns out, that a few farms down the road was a company that would train elephants.
So they trained elephants for various circuses, and their main elephant had some name, I forget, some circus-y name, got away.
It just, like, went for a stroll.
So my grandfather was just like, you know, working on the farm and turns around and there's an elephant.
So it wasn't much of a punchline to that story, but you know, your standards are low.
Let's face it, if you're listening to this, you have low standards.
Oh, shrooms? So you want to hear my taking mushrooms story?
I know you do. All right, so I've told this story before.
Only once have I ever done a hallucinogen, and it was mushrooms.
It was when I just got out of college and came to San Francisco, and there was somebody I knew from college.
I won't give you too many details.
But she and I decided to try some mushrooms.
Now, normally, of course, I wouldn't do that because I wouldn't know, you know, how much do you take?
Do you go crazy? It was dangerous.
But she had done some from the same bag the day before with some other people, so she knew how much to do, and she knew that this particular bag was really what it was supposed to be.
So some of the main questions of risk were answered just because it was a known quantity.
So she talked me into it, and so...
And so I gagged a few down.
And my God, they taste terrible.
I mean, they really taste terrible.
And we decided that we would just take the streetcar, the J Church streetcar, to the beach.
And we would just watch the sunset.
And that was our plan.
And pretty much my whole life changed that night.
And the reason that my life changed is that it was my first distinct experience of a different reality that still worked.
And it's the fact that it still worked is the part that changes you forever.
Because you would see your reality like you'd never seen it before, like it was brand new.
So every part of it, from your hand to the cars to the trees, were just brand new.
Like you were visiting another planet and seeing things for the first time.
But you still knew what they were and how to use them.
So you could navigate your world just perfectly.
Now, you know, you wouldn't want to drive a car or something like that.
But in terms of your just, you know, existing and going and having a snack and walking around the block and stuff.
You can do all that stuff.
But you are in a completely different world.
And what you get from that, that you keep forever, is the idea that your reality, there may be some base, objective reality, but it's not available to you.
if there is an objective, real, base reality, the odds that you can perceive it are low, because we know that people could have completely different movies in their minds, and they all work.
You can believe that Trump is a monster, somebody else can believe he's the savior, and you can both buy toilet paper on a good day, but maybe not lately.
So we went to the beach, and every time somebody got on the streetcar, I remember thinking it was the most entertaining thing I had ever seen, because people's faces are so different, you know, from one to the other.
Every one was just like a marvel, and I just couldn't stop looking at them, just the way their faces look.
Went to the beach, and it may have been the best sunset...
Of all time. Or it could have been an average sunset and I was really in the mood for it.
But the other thing I learned is just how good you can feel.
Because I had never felt that good before.
Or even close.
The amount of good you feel under those conditions is so good It doesn't map to any other experience.
It's sort of a multiple of the best thing you've ever felt.
But I've had only a passing interest in doing it again because it does feel like the sort of thing that once you've done it, you don't need to do it, if you know what I mean.
So once you've seen behind the door, or behind the curtain, let's say, once you've looked behind the curtain, you don't need to look a second time.
Because you've already seen what's back there.
And what's back there is that reality is far more subjective than our normal experience would suggest.
So, there's that.
Let's see what other questions you got.
Thoughts about what the general said today?
Well, the general was very persuasive if you saw the press conference.
I thought he was good at being a general.
Who knows what's going to happen there?
It's so early that nobody knows really what's going to happen.
Did you ever finish watching A Star Is Born?
I did not. And for those of you who know, the newish version of A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, the reason I didn't watch it, the rest of it, Is that the first part of the movie was so perfect, I didn't want to ruin it.
The movie was that good that I couldn't watch the second part because the first part was just too perfect.
I mean, I liked it that much.
I've never had that experience before where I didn't want to ruin the movie by watching the rest of it.
Because let's face it, movies do sort of peter out after a while.
They're a little longer than they need to be.
I wanted you to see this.
It must be an old comic from, oh yeah, from way back.
Interesting. Alright.
How would you make writing a book into a system?
It seems very goal-oriented.
Well, that's a very good question.
Roly-poly. And here's your answer.
If you try to do something as big as write a book, take it from someone who has written, I don't know, 11 books or whatever it is.
I've lost count. Every time it seems impossible.
Every time I'm ready to write a book, on day one you think, how many words on a page?
How many pages do I have to write?
How many times am I going to have to rewrite this?
How many chapters am I going to throw away completely and just start over?
And if you play with the enormity of it, you just can't start.
It will just stun you into submission.
But there's this weird thing that happens when you start just working at it in little chunks, if you can get going, that they suddenly start adding up.
Because time flies, which is bad when you're trying to enjoy yourself, but it's good when you're doing something unpleasant like trying to finish writing a book.
So you can get to the end of that nine months or however long it's going to take you to do it.
That nine months just sort of always goes fast.
It's just the way of the world now.
Everything goes fast. So what I would say is the main thing is to take the smallest, smallest increment and then just do that.
And for me, the smallest increment and the way I always start is I just open a blank page and I start writing titles.
You know, this title, this title, this title, this title.
And I'll have a bunch of titles that I'll delete the ones I don't like, you know.
And then I'll get down to what I'll call a working title.
And the working title is what I need to make sure that everything I write can be tied back to that in some logical way so that I'm not straining to make the title make sense.
But I almost always change the title.
I don't know how many times, well, I don't know if it's always, but often I'll have a working title for quite a long time, and then I'll change it at some point, and maybe my publisher and editor look at it, and they say, let's run this by the salespeople, and then the salespeople say, you know, this word would be better than that word.
So it tends to be an iterative process.
So, start with the title, and then start writing your first sentence.
And your first sentence should be the sentence you rewrite the most.
So there'll be lots of sentences in your book that you write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.
That's normal. But the first sentence, if you're doing it right, will be the one you rewrite the most.
If you write a good first sentence and you just look at it and that's the one that you end up with when you're done with the book, you probably have a bad book.
I realize that's harsh.
But that first sentence has to just do a lot of work because it's the first impression.
The first sentence... It tells people how they're going to feel for the rest of the book.
And you can kind of tell.
If you spend any time reading books, pick up any book, read the first sentence.
You kind of know how it's going to go, don't you?
I mean, it's that important.
You can be a little sloppy later on when people have a sense of what the book is and they've decided if they liked it.
But that first sentence, you've got to rewrite that a lot.
So, roly-poly, I would say...
Try for a working title.
Open up a document. Try writing a few opening sentences.
And think in terms of rewriting the opening sentence 20 to 50 times.
And you might actually have one you like, write several chapters, and then still go back and change it 12, 15 more times.
That's very typical. For me, anyway.
Now everybody has a different process, so that That has more to do with my specific process.
Now, you know, I've told you that I studied persuasion for decades as part of honing my writing talent.
And that's a perfect example.
Because what a writer would maybe not obsess about as much is that first sentence.
But I would obsess about it because I know the importance of the first impression.
It's something you learn with persuasion that you might not learn with writing so much.
Hypnotize you. Okay.
I'm going to hypnotize you, but I'm not going to put you in a trance.
And it goes like this.
I know you're wondering if I can.
But part of the reason that you watch these periscopes is you think that I can do some things that other people can't do.
And as you're listening to me, you're wondering, can he actually do that?
Can he put a suggestion in my mind that will actually change my programming?
And the answer is yes.
I'm actually trained to do that.
I've been doing it for decades.
It's easy. And all it really requires is that you be open to it.
So if I were to suggest something that you didn't want, Wouldn't work at all, because you wouldn't be open to it.
And that's the most important requirement.
But suppose I suggested that you had an unusually good night's sleep tonight.
How many of you would object to the idea, no strings attached, to simply having a really good sleep tonight?
How would you feel if, as you're drifting off tonight, you remembered that I told you that you would, And it starts making you even sleepier because you're thinking, is it working?
I can't tell if I'm sleepy because I was sleepy, or I'm sleepy because the cartoonist, who was also a hypnotist, told me that I was.
And then you're going to be starting to think, am I doing this on my own, or is it because he suggested it?
And then you're going to remember my voice exactly the way you hear it right now.
And you're going to hear my voice, and you're going to hear my confidence.
And you're going to hear me tell you the suggestions, when you're open to them, always work.
And you are open to them because you like to have a good night's sleep.
You always feel better when you do.
And you associate that good night's sleep now with my voice and the suggestion that you're going to have an amazing...
Amazing night of sleep.
One of your best.
And if you don't have the best sleep tonight, you might notice that it happens tomorrow.
It could be the night after.
And you might notice that it's just the average that starts to improve.
So some of you will start right away with an incredible night's sleep.
The really refreshing kind.
With either no dreams that you remember or the good kind.
And you're going to feel refreshed and relaxed when you wake up.
And you're going to wake up and you're going to think to yourself, man, I feel good today.
Better than normal.
And then you're going to think about the suggestion that I'm giving you.
And you're going to say, damn it.
Is that why? And the more you think about the fact that I suggested it, And the more you realize that it could be a coincidence, but you would notice that you can sleep better in the future.
Is that a coincidence?
And as you associate your ability to sleep better with your memory of my voice, as you hear it right now, you'll be able to replay my voice in your mind almost perfectly.
And in fact... If you wanted to feel it right now in a way that you could remember, I'm going to count to 20.
And when I reach 20, only if you want to, those of you who don't want to experience this, can just observe.
But if you wanted to, you could close your eyes right now and just listen.
And you could listen to me count to 20, and you would find that There's something about my voice, something about my cadence, the way I talk, that makes you more relaxed as I count up from 1 to 20.
And as I count, you'll find yourself getting deeper and deeper and more relaxed.
And with each count, you'll go deeper.
But if I were to reverse the count from 20 back toward 1, temporarily or permanently, you would start to feel less sleepy, more awake.
But if I were to reverse it again and count back to 20, it would be much more profound and you would go deeper more quickly.
And so now you can feel yourself relaxed.
Make sure that your feet are flat in the ground or you're propped up so that you can support yourself without using any muscles.
And listen to my voice as you go deeper.
One, going deeper.
Two, going deeper.
Three, four, five, going deeper.
Now more relaxed.
Feel your arms heavy, your legs heavy.
All your muscles, one at a time, as you think about them around your body, each of them relaxing.
Think of a muscle and it relaxes.
Think of your neck muscles and they relax.
Seven. Doesn't matter if I skip a number.
Nine. Getting deeper.
Ten. Going deeper and more relaxed.
Listen to my voice and play it back when you want to relax in the future.
Eleven, twelve.
Going deeper. And now, I'm going back the other way.
You'll be a little bit more awake.
Ten, nine, eight, seven.
You feel yourself waking up a little bit.
Six. And now back.
Oh, it feels better to go this way, doesn't it?
Seven. More relaxed.
Much deeper this time.
Each time you go toward twenty, you get deeper than the last time.
Nine. Going deeper.
Ten. Eleven.
Going deeper. Thirteen.
Deeper. Now twice as deep.
Fifteen. Twice as deep again.
Sixteen. Seventeen.
18, now very deep, very relaxed, feeling very good, almost floating.
18, 19, 20, now completely relaxed, and going even further.
21, and now very, very relaxed.
22. And you'll be able to count yourself into this relaxed state just by listening to my voice in your head and playing it back.
And if you want to take yourself out of this state, well, you could just wake up anytime you wanted feeling refreshed or you could hear me counting you back as I will do now.
So from your totally relaxed state, 20, 19, 18, starting to get a little bit more awake now.
16, 15, starting to wake up.
12, 9, 8, starting to wake up.
6, 7, it's going to feel great when you come out of it.
5, 4, almost completely awake now.
3, 2, shake your muscles.
1, totally awake.
And feeling better than you thought you could feel.
Surprisingly better in such a short amount of time.
And now tonight, when you go to relax and you close your eyes and all the weight of the day is off of you, you'll hear my voice and you'll count to twenty in my voice and you'll drift off to sleep.
And that It is my little gift for you today.
And I will see you in the morning, you know when.
10 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m.
Pacific, for the simultaneous sip.
▲
Export Selection