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April 4, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:01
Episode 890 Scott Adams: Swaddle With Scott is Happening Now!
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Oh, that's better.
Thank you.
Nice and soft and warm.
Just the way I like it.
Well, how have all of you been since I saw you last 12 hours ago?
It doesn't seem like 12 hours, does it?
Feels like I was just here.
Bill Maher is on?
Well, he's going to have to wait.
You can record him.
So it looks like the number of new deaths spiked quite a bit today.
I got all excited because it went down yesterday.
It was down from the day before.
So here are the numbers. So on April 1st, it was 1,049, but it dropped a little on the next day, April 2nd, to 969.
But on the third, it jumped from $9.69 to $13.21.
That's a pretty big jump, percentage-wise.
So that's not good.
So I keep complaining about not seeing good numbers for stuff.
And apparently New York is doing a good job of it.
I was not aware that Andrew Cuomo is...
He's doing exactly what I keep saying the task force should do, but he's doing it for his state, which is to show how much they think they'll need of each of the pieces of equipment in shortage, and then show how many they think they can get.
Pretty basic, right?
Here's what we think we need.
Here's what we think we have.
So why the federal government couldn't do this also is beyond me.
But here's what we know.
So apparently the predicted amount of ventilators, the prediction changes a little bit, but I think the most current one is that they'll have 25,000 patients who will need them at the peak, at the most, but they only have 15,000 available.
So they have 15,000 available with all of their different sources in New York City for 25,000 patients.
So it's really going to make a big difference if that estimate of 25,000 is accurate because there could be 10,000 people who basically just drown in their own lung juice because we don't have enough ventilators.
Now if I had to bet I would bet we'll close that gap.
Meaning that either the number of deaths will be less than this, or maybe they start giving them hydroxychloroquine and there are just fewer deaths.
That would be the optimist.
We don't know yet if that drug works, but maybe.
Or I would think we'll get more ventilators there.
So at least that's within, it feels like that's within striking distance.
Still an emergency level problem, no doubt about it, but it feels like we might be able to close that gap.
But then I saw, and I was going to print it out, I didn't have time before we got on here, but he also showed the number of masks.
And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but the number of masks I think that they would need was something like 20 million.
And the number that they have available is One or two million.
What? I think I saw that right, that the number of masks they need is 20 million, and the number that they think they can get is one or two.
I think I read that right.
And some of the other materials are in short supply as well.
Now, remember I've been telling you the whole time that you, you being the citizen of the United States, would act differently If it's closer to 0%, then it is closer to 90%.
This is a pretty good example, right?
How do you feel about the fact that New York City might be short, like 90% short, on the most vital thing, the masks?
Pretty big problem.
Now, even if they start to reuse the masks, that still gets you from, you know, Maybe two million masks to four or six?
And you need 20?
So they're not even in the ballpark.
And that's with, you all heard that 3M was allowing some sales out of the country.
Now, my understanding is probably that it wasn't 3M per se that was letting them out of the country.
It was the distributors.
And 3M was just selling it to distributors, and distributors are doing what they do, which is sell it wherever they can sell it.
But I imagine that 3M could have stopped their distributors from doing that if they required them to do that.
So that's a good example of something that clearly was a mistake, meaning that we should have stopped that from the jump.
But if we corrected it quickly, that's not so bad.
So the president came out and said, yeah, maybe you should wear some.
It's recommended but not required.
Wear some kind of a face mask when you go out in public.
Probably shouldn't be one of those high-grade medical ones because you want to save those for the pros.
And then the funniest thing was watching the Surgeon General come on and try to explain why the new recommendation, Was completely different than the old recommendation.
Did you see that?
Oh, that was so cringeworthy.
Because he was so busted.
And maybe we'll never know the story of why The original recommendations were so just awfully wrong.
I suppose he was believing the World Health Organization, maybe.
Or he was acting to reduce shortages.
That's possible, too. But, oh, man, I felt so sorry for him trying to explain why he just completely reversed on such a basic, obvious thing that we all knew was true, and it took him, what, weeks to come around to it?
But here we are. So the President, in his inimitable way, in which he...
I say this about the President all the time, but it's impossible for him not to be interesting.
Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's good interesting or bad interesting, he just can't turn it off.
And this simple thing, talking about this new recommendation for masks, and then he throws in, you know, I'm not going to wear one.
So our role model is saying, you know, you might want to wear a mask.
Well, I'm not going to. It's optional.
Now, when he tried to explain why he wasn't, I think he was going for, it wasn't presidential.
Not that anybody was really caring about that at the moment.
I mean, at least in terms of a medical issue, you don't care.
So nobody would have thought it was unpresidential for him to wear a mask.
I think he just didn't want to be photographed in it.
He thought he would look silly, maybe.
So it was the worst possible reason for not wanting to wear a mask.
Here would have been a better answer.
Here's the better answer. Well, the reason that we're making it optional is that everybody just really needs to make that choice for themselves.
So there's no situation like mine.
This is the choice I'm making.
You all can get to make your own choices.
Make good choices. That's all I would have said.
I would have just said that's the whole point of it being optional is you get to decide about your specific case, weigh all the variables.
I would have just gone for that.
But his was way more interesting because it's more provocative.
He just doesn't know how to be uninteresting.
It's impossible. Yeah, and President Trump made the joke about models.
He just couldn't help it.
Where is Scott's net death count?
I believe that the gross is over 7,000, which means the net would still be quite negative.
So... But we added, I think, 40% more deaths today than the day before, so that would suggest it's going to climb up there.
Now, are you having the same questions I'm having, which is why we're not seeing the stories of the gigantic crushes yet?
And I worry that the people who are saying, hey, the models said that we would already be at a higher level.
Are we missing it by that much?
Because the whole point of this is that the increase will be very fast.
Once it hits that fast part of the curve, every day is going to be much more than the last.
So if you were to miss the peak projection by, let's say, a week, let's say the experts were off by one week, Of where the peak would be.
Well, that would still make us really calm today, and still all hell could break loose by next week.
But, they told us that last week, right?
Shouldn't we already be in critical situation right now?
So, this is the damnedest situation.
We all have to settle on the reality.
But there are two of them that are just running full speed.
One of them is, it's a gigantic problem, just like the experts are telling us.
That movie is as clear as day.
Couldn't be more clear.
All the experts seem to agree.
Other countries have had a bad time with it.
We seem to know viruses pretty well.
So that just seems really clear.
It's going to be a terrible, terrible thing.
And, you know...
Tens of thousands will die if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
But the other movie is still completely running.
And the other movie is, it's just a mass hysteria.
And it would be a weird mass hysteria because you can't deny that people are dying and the doctors are saying, oh, this is different.
This is not the flu.
So there's something different about it.
But there were also different things about Ebola and swine flu and all that.
So they all have their own characteristic.
But what if it never comes?
What if we never get the ICUs completely crushed and running out of ventilators?
What if it never happens?
Because as of today...
That possibility seems completely open to me.
Completely. Now, by tomorrow it could be closed off and maybe the one movie just rules for all time.
I mean, it would just take a few days of bad results and we'd say, there it is.
We were just missed it by a few days, but that's not how models work.
They're not that accurate. But every day that goes by and the model is not delivering these At least thankfully, not delivering all these deaths.
I ask myself, did I get taken?
Because I don't know.
From this perspective, I'm asking myself, was this as big as we thought?
I think you've got to ask the question at this point.
Here's what I think we should do about getting back to work.
Now, I've said this before, but I think we need a checklist.
And number one on the checklist is, do you have antibodies?
I think if you have antibodies, it just should be automatic.
You should be able to go back to work, period.
Now, maybe you need some evidence of it or some paperwork or something.
But that should be automatic if you have...
And we want to get to the point where we can test that.
The other thing is...
We know there's such a big correlation with things like weight and gender and are you a smoker?
What's your age and your underlying conditions?
And maybe someday we'll figure out if there's a genomic connection.
Shouldn't we just have a checklist and have our smartest people figure out that if you check these boxes, Your risk, just for you personally, is the same as maybe the risk of a regular flu.
So let me give you an example.
Let's say you're 25, you're fit, you're an athlete, no extra weight, you're female, because that gives you an advantage, and no underlying conditions, right?
What are the odds for that person?
If you're young and fit and female, don't smoke, don't have any underlying conditions, can somebody tell me the odds for that person?
Because why is that person not getting to go to work?
If the only people who went to work are the people whose odds of dying were, pick a number, one in a thousand, what would be...
What would be an acceptable death rate of just the part of the public that we do send back to work first?
So don't talk about the old people and the over-60s and stuff.
Just forget them. And even forget people who are overweight and have medical problems.
Just forget them for a moment.
Just the people that the scientists would say are in the smallest risk group.
Healthy female, doesn't smoke, you know, a certain age.
Let's say their risk was one in a thousand of dying.
Would you say go back to work, one in a thousand?
How about one in five thousand?
Actually, I'd like to see this.
In the comments, give me your acceptable level of risk for the first batch that go back to work.
Those will be the safest ones.
What would be your acceptable level where you say, yeah, if you can get down to that, at least those people should go back to work.
So I'm seeing 1%.
So 1 in 100.
So you'd say go back to work if 1 in 100 died?
Young, healthy women, 1 in 100?
That's pretty high. A lot of people are saying one in a hundred.
Now, I think you might mean that because the stakes are so high, but that's a lot to ask, isn't it?
Let me ask you this.
You didn't see this coming, do you?
What was the last war that humans were involved with in which we sent to battle, to fight the war, we sent our youngest females to the front lines?
When has that ever happened?
It might happen now.
I'm looking at your numbers here.
So I'm saying 1 in 10,000.
People are saying 1 in 1,000.
5 per 1,000.
And the reason I ask you is that the consensus of the crowd is really going to matter.
Because it has to be okay with us.
1%. So I don't see anybody who's over 1%.
Oh, somebody's at 5%.
Okay, I don't think you mean that.
You wouldn't let 5% of the people who go back to work die.
If you knew that 5% of young females going back to work were going to die, you'd be okay with that?
I don't think so. Yeah.
Well, so the most common numbers I'm seeing is 1 in 100, and 1 in 1,000, some 1 in 10,000.
And how close can we get?
Can somebody tell me?
Is there anybody here who could do the math on the back of the envelope?
Because we sort of know.
We've seen statistics from different categories.
Could we get to 1 in 1,000?
I feel as though we should do these calculations without the benefit of the government.
Maybe somebody smart can come up with a checklist and rank it by what each of these things means.
If you check this box, how many points do you get?
And then we should present it to the government.
I don't think it should be the other way around, do you?
By the way, if the Rasmussen poll is listening...
Here's the poll I'd like to see.
For the first group of people who go back to work, you'll have to work on the wording of the question, but for the first group that go back to work, the safest group, what would you, the poll respondents say, is the risk you think is acceptable?
Because it's not up to the president, is it?
The president might get to decide with his team.
He might have to decide, but how is he going to decide?
How is the president going to decide what level of risk the country should take?
It's his job, right?
He has to. But what is he going to base that on?
I would suggest that as you've observed this process, you can see the public pushing the professionals, can't you?
That's obvious to you, right?
Is it obvious to you that this was a very interactive process, where our leaders were saying, I'm going to do this, and the public said, hey, wait, are you sure about that?
Then the leaders said, well, let's look at it.
And then there was this continuous dance with the public, the experts, the leaders, in which it seemed to be that the leaders were continually, meaning mostly Trump, testing the public, getting a response, and then adjusting.
Now, if you say that that's wrong, you know, wouldn't it be better if he were magic and everything he did was right the first time?
Well, yeah, that'd be great.
But it's not the real world.
In the real world, it's probably the best process you could come up with is to really feel out the public as you're adjusting your policies.
You know, really tune in and see what the response is.
So here's my point.
I don't think we should make Trump wait To find out what the public's okay with.
We should present it.
There's nothing in our system that stops us from doing that.
It's not unconstitutional.
And then certainly in the context of an emergency situation, completely appropriate.
It's within our ability.
We can do it.
We should do it.
It would be the single most important piece of data that comes out of any of this.
You could argue there's some other important data.
But what would be more important than knowing the public's consensus for the risk that they're willing to bear to get back to work?
I'd really like to know that.
And I feel like it's going to come out somewhere...
I'll bet any group would come out about where you did between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000...
And then have our experts say, can you promise us?
From what you know already, can you promise us that?
Now, I haven't even thrown into the mix the hydroxychloroquine and whether or not that works.
That, too, is a two-movie situation.
I started out being quite optimistic that the hydroxychloroquine was going to be a game-changer, as the president says.
But every day that goes by...
Without that being confirmed vigorously makes me think maybe it won't be.
So at this point, the two movies on the hydroxychloroquine are also completely alive.
One, that, of course, we've seen so much evidence that works.
6,000 doctors were surveyed.
By a wide majority, they said it's the best thing.
But even the doctors...
Who have been using it, I think only 37% of them said the hydroxychloroquine made a difference.
But that's not what we're hearing from other people, right?
We're hearing something like it works every time.
But then they talk to the doctors and they're like, eh, 37%.
And then there's another study that says, well, in this case, it doesn't seem to make the virus go down at all.
I would say there's a big old question mark on that drug right now.
So... And if it turns out to be completely useless, I will say that my predictions were wrong.
So let me state that.
So at this point in time, it's sort of a jump ball.
I'm going to say 60% chance the drug does make a difference if you get it early.
40% chance it doesn't, just based on what we know right now.
That's my current instinct on it.
So what I'm saying is, somebody smart needs to help me come up with a checklist of your risk.
We need to agree on it.
Maybe a few people will try a different take on it.
We'll see who gets the most retweets.
The beauty of Twitter is you can sort of just see what people like right off the bat.
You just see who gets the most retweets.
So if you do that, tweet it at me, make sure I see it, and if it's a good job, I'll retweet it, and we'll just track the traffic.
If people like it or they want to play with it a little bit, they can do it.
But absolutely, you should be thinking in terms of these citizens presenting to their government what they will accept.
Think how much you would like that if you were the president, right?
Remember, this is not a spectator sport.
If you can find anything you can do that would be the least bit helpful, try it.
Do it. Almost all day long, since this whole crisis started, people contact me privately in a variety of ways, and they say, you know, I have this idea for helping.
Should I do it?
And mostly I say, yes.
It doesn't mean it'll work.
It doesn't mean it'll help.
But if you have an idea for helping, it's just always yes.
Just yes. If there's something you think will work, even if you don't know it'll work, yes.
Assuming it's not dangerous.
So this is one of those cases.
If you were the president, wouldn't you want your public to present to you the level of risk that they're comfortable with?
You don't have to take it.
You don't have to take the recommendation.
That's how it works.
You're not commander-in-chief, and neither am I. And this is war.
So if the Commander-in-Chief looks at our input and says, I'm going to take a higher risk, or I'm going to take a lower risk, well, that's why we elect people, to make those decisions.
Let's see if you've got any...
No one cares. I'm looking at your comments here.
Maybe... Alright, give it a shot.
It's got the meaning of WI5H. I don't know what that is.
Oh, you know the other thing that I don't think any of the models capture?
Here's what the models don't capture.
See if I'm right about this.
The models sort of make some kind of a general assumption about social distancing, don't you think?
So this is more of a question.
I think that I'm right about this, so this should be an accurate criticism, but maybe not.
We'll see. When the models figure out...
How well social distancing works?
Because that's one of the main variables, right?
If you're doing a model of who's going to get infected, you've got to put in some variables for the effectiveness of social distancing.
But my guess is that they take some kind of an average.
They say, okay, the average person will only social distance this well.
But I don't think that's what's happening.
I think what's really happening is that people like me, who have a special risk...
I just go nuts on the isolation.
I have no human contact.
I mean, if the coronavirus finds me, it's going to have to work for it.
Now, I don't do crazy stuff, but I have no human contact.
I'm not within 20 feet of a human.
I don't touch things that other people have touched unless it's washed down.
No, I'm not perfect.
But don't you think that because I have a risk, and I'm well informed, I'm taking like super extra duper efforts to social distance, but an average 25-year-old probably isn't trying that hard.
So, what does it mean when you take me, the only one who's maybe in danger of actually dying, in my simplistic thing, I'm in danger of dying, but I'm doing super effort to isolate.
The people who don't have a risk of dying, well, they're not trying so hard.
So what would it mean to have one variable that represents me just nailing it on isolation, and some 25-year-old who's not, and then you calculate with our average?
That's probably what's happening, right?
And my guess is that because the people who have the special risk know exactly who they are at this point, that we're just hiding really well.
So here's what I would think is at least possible.
I think the models could be way off in this critical variable, which is how well people isolate.
Because the ones who know they need to isolate are probably doing a pretty good job.
Like, way better than average.
And I don't know if the model takes that into account.
Maybe it does. Maybe it does.
But I don't know how, you know, it could slice at that finely.
Big fan. Love your videos.
Wonder why we don't simply keep people over 60 with preconditions home.
That would be one of the possibilities.
Just keep it simple and just say, all right, here's the deal.
If you're over 60 in preconditions, stay home.
But I think I'm seeing that weight and smoking and gender seem to be at least as important.
You know, if you added them together, they'd probably be as important as age, right?
I don't know if this is true, but if you say that age is the big variable...
But if you also were overweight male and you smoked and you added those three variables together, that's probably just as big as being over 60, right?
Maybe more, I would think.
That's sort of a precondition.
Yeah, and then diabetes and all those things.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but by now...
Aren't there enough people who've been infected that we would know that all the people who had lupus, in other words, all the people who were already on hydroxychloroquine, wouldn't we know what the result is?
Do we have to do a study of people taking hydroxychloroquine before they get infected?
Do we have to do that study?
Or can we not just say, okay, there's How many people are infected now?
Hundreds of thousands?
There's like a quarter million infected or something like that?
How many of the quarter million also have lupus and were on hydroxychloroquine?
There must be a thousand?
I don't know. How many people have lupus out of 250?
But probably there are hundreds.
Hundreds of people that we should be able to find pretty easily, look at their record, there's the lupus, there's the hydroxychloroquine, still alive?
Are they still alive?
Because if they're all still alive, and they have lupus, because you'd think lupus would be a condition, right?
That would be a risk.
But if the hydroxychloroquine protects them so well that even with lupus they don't die, Well, that's a pretty good advertisement for the drug.
So why don't we know that?
It feels like that would be the most knowable thing at this point.
All right. What else is going on?
Where are my Trump pills?
Yeah. So I'd like to see by tomorrow, I think Jared...
We'll have some more useful numbers.
That would be my guess.
What about the folks who don't know they have a condition?
Yeah, so the risk would be people who don't know they have some condition.
But I wonder, could you check for those conditions?
So, for example, let's say somebody didn't know...
How many people don't know they're diabetic?
Or how many people don't know they have hypertension?
Well, maybe that's a condition.
So maybe you say, even though you're 35, you have to have your blood pressure checked, and you have to be checked for, I don't know, diabetes or something.
So it seems like that could be a checklist, too.
Have you checked it? Not just the honor system, but did the doctor say you could go back to work?
Are you backing off your original trumpet pill mania?
No, I would say that I'm exactly where I was, but no matter what happens, people are going to say that I was wrong.
So, one of the most annoying things about being me is the number of people who will misremember what I've said and then declare that I'm wrong.
After they misremember what I said.
So I've never said the pills work.
I've said that anecdotally they work, and I've said that there are small studies that are not credible, and I've said that.
So that's still exactly the case.
We have more information, but it's just more of the same type, which is, well, there's more information that works, and then there's a little more indication that maybe you should question it.
So it's almost exactly where it's been.
But I will say that every day that goes by and we don't have more clear information is making me wonder why.
Why do we not have better visibility?
You're right to be wrong, somebody says.
I don't know what that means. Why do the people who insist that you're wrong still watch your periscopes?
Well, I think people want me to be wrong.
It's like anybody.
Any celebrity, sometimes you kind of want them to be wrong, don't you?
Admit it. Admit it.
As much as you might like it when I'm right, there's a little part of you.
Admit it. There's a little part of you.
That doesn't mind when I'm wrong either.
See me knock down a level.
Come on. You can admit it.
You're human. It's called schadenfreude.
It's that feeling you get when other people get knocked down the peg.
You don't mind it too much.
So I think it's entertaining either way.
Is your lung capacity affected by pot smoking?
Well, I can't give you a medical answer to that.
I will tell you that the only study I'm aware of, this was a few years ago, so there was a study of lung capacity of marijuana smokers versus people who didn't smoke anything.
So there was people who smoked a lot of marijuana every day and people who didn't smoke anything, cigarettes or anything else.
And These researchers were surprised that the marijuana smokers had more lung capacity on average.
And it was statistically noticeable.
Now, it was one study, and they were like, well, we don't know.
This is exactly opposite of what everybody thought it would be.
So they speculated, why would that be?
Now, of course, what they didn't speculate is we did the study wrong.
The first thing I would think is, it's not a valid study, maybe.
But they didn't say that.
They speculated that the act of smoking marijuana requires you to take deep inhales and hold it.
And they speculated that maybe the marijuana smoke wasn't degrading your lungs as much as the daily practice of heavy breathing and holding your breath, Was actually helping you.
So maybe.
I'm not saying that's true.
And by the way, I make no secret that I'm a medical marijuana user.
But every now and then I like to be clear that I don't recommend it.
So I don't recommend it for you.
I don't recommend it for anybody.
And the reason I don't recommend it is I'm not a doctor.
I'm not a doctor. I think there are situations in which it would be the worst possible thing you could do.
Smoking marijuana. There are people in situations, certain personality types, certain situations where maybe it's just the worst thing you could possibly do.
But there are other situations that are unique, and you have to look at every situation differently, and I am one of them.
And, you know, one of the things I have going for me is that, you know, I can make my own schedule and, you know, I have a lot of experience and it doesn't affect me the way it affects other people.
One thing people don't know about marijuana is that it affects everybody differently.
And so the way it affects me is overwhelmingly positive.
But that doesn't mean it would be for you.
And for me, it's overwhelmingly positive basically every time.
I don't even know if I can think of an exception.
Basically, it's a guarantee.
Your life has improved, in my case.
But here's the observation I have.
For those of you who have never experienced marijuana, my observation is that it doesn't make you...
Dumb or stupid or any of the things that people say.
What it makes you is more of what you already were.
So what I mean is, if you're naturally lazy, oh, it'll make you lazier.
It'll do that.
If you are already lazy, it'll make you lazier.
But if you're self-motivated...
And you're sort of a creative person full of energy.
It will make you more of that.
So in my case, I'm naturally creative, and it makes me more creative.
I mean, just really, obviously.
It's not even comparable.
I'm naturally motivated, and I find that it makes me even more motivated.
But here's the other trick, and this is the biggest trick.
There are lots of different kinds of marijuana, and they don't act the same.
And if you don't learn that, you're going to be really surprised.
And you'll wonder why, hey, I liked it this time, and this time I just got sleepy and fell asleep, and it's completely different.
So the big difference is there are two main types.
You've got your indica dominant and your sativa.
Two different kinds of plants, but they're both in the same family.
The sativa...
It gives you energy, it makes you creative, it makes you just enjoy your day, and you can do almost everything just as well, if you're an experienced user.
If you're not experienced, you don't plan to do anything important.
But if you're experienced, it's a completely different sensation and experience.
So if you take the sativa during the day, let's say you're a medical marijuana user only, because recreationally, I would not even recommend it recreationally.
It's just not a party drug.
I don't even know why. I'm not even sure why people use it.
But it does have many, many benefits to your life in the right circumstance.
So the sativa will wake you up, make you more productive.
Somebody once referred to it as worker weed.
It's the kind of marijuana you would want to smoke before work.
Especially if you had a job that didn't require too much thinking.
But the indica...
It's the opposite. It makes you relax, and you're probably just going to want to take a nap and watch some TV and pet the dog.
So if you don't know which one you're doing, if you do the wrong one in the daytime and the other one at night, it's not going to be a good result.
So that would be yet another reason not to recommend that anybody do it, because you really got to know what you're doing.
You know, there's a big difference between getting the right strain and And doing it at the right time and just randomly saying, well, let me just try some of this.
You'll get a very different result.
And then within the types, there are infinite varieties with slightly different characters.
Some make you hungrier.
Some might make you paranoid.
If you're a regular user, you don't get the paranoia so much.
And some make you...
Some are good for your libido.
Some are good for exercise.
Some are good for just all kinds of different things.
And sometimes you don't know those things until you try it.
But it's so consistent, you can definitely tell there's something going on.
All right, so...
That's what you need to know about that stuff.
Again, I don't recommend any of it.
You should only do it if a doctor says it works for you.
I get it mostly because I have a light form of sleep apnea.
It's not so bad I need a CPAP, but it's not so good that I can get to sleep easily.
But a few hits of indica, and I have the best night's sleep, and I wake up feeling great.
You're not you when you're high.
Are you talking about me?
Are you talking about somebody else?
Why does that matter? One of the things I hear most from people who don't want to do any kind of mind-altering drug, and it's probably good that they have this, shouldn't talk you out of it, but people say stuff like, well, like you just saw in the comments, but you're not you.
You're somebody else.
Or you're escaping from reality.
To which I say, so?
Those aren't reasons.
Those are statements. There's no reason in any of that.
Why can't you be a different person sometimes?
Because you're not the same person when you're tired.
You're not the same person when you're hungry.
You're not the same person when you get a promotion as you are when you get fired.
You have lots of different you's.
There's not one of you.
You have a whole range of different preferences, different feelings, different internal feelings, different actions.
So to say you wouldn't want to have a drink or smoke marijuana or something because it makes you not you, it's a meaningless statement because you're never you.
You're always this ever-changing thing and the chemistry and your environment are always part of who you are at any moment.
It's just not a real reason.
There are plenty of reasons not to do those things, like plenty of good reasons.
I mean, alcohol is just poison, basically.
And you should never do marijuana unless your doctor says it's a good idea.
So you don't need any other reasons not to do it.
Do I dab?
I did exactly once.
And I thought my head was going to come clear off.
So you think you're experienced until you find out the even stronger way to do it.
So I don't recommend any of that stuff.
Do I metabolize caffeine fast or slow?
I don't know how to measure that.
I know coffee and I get along really well.
I can't speak for other people, but I get along really well.
So I don't remember seeing your responses to how many of you are sleeping better because I've told you that you will.
So in the comments, if there's anybody here who's sleeping better at night because I helped you sleep better at night, just let me know because I'd like to know how that's working.
Jack Herrera.
Jack Herrera is among the best, as you know.
Can I go to sleep after caffeine?
Oh, easily. Yeah.
I can actually go to sleep anywhere, anytime.
It's like a superpower.
So I fall asleep when I'm getting my teeth cleaned.
Like while the dental hygienist is in my mouth with power tools, fall asleep.
And I wake up and it's really scary because I wake up and, you know, you come out of your sleep and there's somebody in your mouth with power tools.
You're like... So I fall asleep and wake up like three times every time that I'm getting my teeth cleaned.
It's a horror every time.
Oh, okay. So the comments are coming in.
Look how many people are sleeping better because of the suggestion.
Alright, so here's some more good sleeping tips.
Don't think about what you need to do tomorrow.
That's number one. Alright.
Do not go to bed, close your eyes, and then think about what you have to do tomorrow.
Ever. Never.
If you need to think about what you're going to do tomorrow, get up.
Make a list, you know, so all the things that are on your mind, write them down so that you'll remember in the morning.
But do not plan your day when you're in bed, ever.
Never make an exception to that.
Get up. It doesn't matter if it's 2 in the morning.
If you can't stop your mind from planning your day and it's 2 in the morning, get up.
Get up. Because you never want to associate those thoughts with being in bed.
You have to be a maniac about separating the sleep experience from the thinking, you know, stressful experience.
So get up, make your list, you know, just half an hour later, put the list away, and then try to get back to bed.
And if you can't stop thinking about it, well, just get up again.
But don't lay in bed thinking about what you're going to do ever.
That's what people do wrong the most.
The other thing is, what do you think about when you're trying to go to sleep?
Do you have a go-to set of thoughts?
Now, some people count sheep or try to think of boring things.
Here's what I do. I imagine good outcomes in the future.
But in more of a not a real world way.
So I'm not thinking so much about what will happen tomorrow.
Because again, you don't want to think about tomorrow too much.
I think about fantastical long term outcomes.
And I create a little movie in my head where I put myself in it.
And it's sometime in the future and something good is happening.
It's because I've accomplished something.
I got lucky.
I was in the right place at the right time.
It doesn't matter why. It's just something good is happening.
And I force myself to think about this little movie I'm creating of something good.
Now, would you like to know what I've been using for most of my life?
I'll tell you something. One of them is flying.
So I have an imaginary flying future.
And in this future, again, this doesn't have to be based on any kind of reality.
In the future, I learn how to fly just with my body.
I can just hover above the ground.
And when I was a kid, about once a year, I would have a flying dream.
And what was cool is that every year I'd have the dream, from childhood through adult, every year I'd have the dream...
I could fly better in the dream than the last dream.
So the initial dreams, I could sort of jump up in the air and hover a little bit and then come down.
And then I could sort of make long jumps where I'd sort of hover before I came down.
And then the next year, and I'd only have this dream once a year.
And once a year, and then finally I'd be able to float around the ceiling.
And then finally when I was an adult, After decades of this dream once a year, I got so I could leave the building and fly around in the atmosphere as hard as I wanted, like Superman.
I always thought that the dream was an omen of something good.
But anyway, because I've had so much time thinking about it, I can actually put myself in the air, in my mind.
So I can close my mind, and I imagine my astral projection or my body or whatever leaving my body.
You can also just imagine that you can fly.
It works the same. And then I imagine in my head...
The actual what it feels like and what it looks like as I'm floating over the houses in my neighborhood.
So since you have a general idea of what it would look like, you know, you could sort of imagine, well, if I were hovering over my house looking down, what would it look like?
So I simply go flying.
And I've been doing it for years.
I'll put my head down, close my eyes, Maybe I have some other thoughts in my head and I want to get rid of them.
I say, it's time for a flight.
And I just, oh, I see other people do the same thing.
And so I take off.
And I just fly around the neighborhood and I, you know, I land on a roof and I hop off the roof and fly over to another one.
And it's so absorbing.
And it's all positive.
That it just takes me out of my life, and next thing I know, I wake up the next morning.
Now, I had that dream, and I always thought that it presaged some good news, and the last time I had that dream was...
Right after I became a syndicated cartoonist.
So I felt like, you know, just for fun, it feels like that was my prediction, that there was something good ahead of me and it was that.
So the other thing that...
So I'm going to tell you something.
I don't think I've ever told anybody this.
But my other one that I would think about all the time, from childhood on, it went like this.
That someday the President of the United States would call me to meet with him in his office.
It's crazy, right?
I told you that you should pick a fantasy thing that you know is not going to happen in the real world.
So ever since childhood, my most common dream falling off the sleeve fantasy is that the President of the United States has summoned me to the Oval Office To chat.
Just because of something I did or said or something, that he actually wanted to talk to me.
And the essence of the fantasy is that it wasn't me trying to get a meeting with the president, but rather he invited me.
That just the president invited me to go meet with him in the Oval Office.
So of course, that's like a ridiculous thing.
You know, it's not like the president ever invites you, hey, why don't you come over and chat with me in the Oval Office?
Except that it happened.
You know, most of you already know the punchline here.
So the president in 2018...
Through staff contacted me and invited me to meet with them in the Oval Office.
And it was, I can't tell you how freaky it was, because it was exactly the thing I fall asleep, that I've been falling asleep to for decades.
And I chose it specifically because it couldn't happen in the real world.
Sort of like the flying one.
You pick them because they can't happen.
They're better than life.
It's the exaggerated version.
And then it happened. So maybe I should have set my sights a little higher.
True story. Yeah.
That is wild.
Did I tell him that?
I did not. No. By the way, there's a day coming up in which I'm going to tell you Really the only substantive part of the conversation I had with the president.
Now, you know the rule, right?
If you ever get invited to talk to somebody in government at a high level, you don't talk about the conversation afterwards.
That's a hard rule, right?
It's a private conversation.
Doesn't matter who asks.
Literally, doesn't matter who asks.
Even your spouse. That's a private conversation.
It's the privatist There's something he said that was downright psychic.
And you have to hear the exchange, but only after events prove it out, right?
So I'm not going to... If it turns out that events don't go the way I think they're going to go, then I'll never tell you.
But it would be an interesting little tidbit if they do go the way, because you're going to see how psychic he is, and it'll blow your mind, really.
So, that's all I got for today.
I think you're going to go off and have an incredible night.
You're going to sleep well.
You're going to wake up relaxed.
Remember to count to 20.
Think about your flying dream.
Think about your it's so impossible feeling of success or happiness in the future.
And have yourself a great sleep.
I'll talk to you in the morning.
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