All Episodes
Previous Next
April 8, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:03:03
Episode 899 Scott Adams: Answering You Questions and Swaddling Like a Pro. Blankets On!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey, it's time for your evening swaddle.
Grab a blanket.
Come on in. You know how to swaddle.
You were born that way. And we're going to talk about some of the events of the last 12 hours since last I talked to you.
Things are looking up.
And I'm going to tell you how...
They're going to look up even more.
Yeah, even more.
And you don't need to worry about anything.
Because so far, everything I've predicted has happened in terms of this coronavirus situation.
And so I'm going to make some good predictions.
The kind you're going to enjoy.
And it goes like this.
Number one. What would happen if the top 1% simply spent a little bit more money once we go back to work?
Now keep in mind that the problem of having tremendous income inequality is when you get a situation like this pandemic, The people who are at the bottom of the economic tree get hurt the most and they're in a dire situation.
People at the top might lose, you know, a third of their wealth, but they won't even notice it.
So that's the bad news.
But what about the good news?
The weird good news in this, at least potentially, and maybe you could tell me why you think this wouldn't work, But the biggest determinant of how quickly we get back to a normal economy is demand, because supply is going to be pretty easy, because we already have the factories built, the companies exist, the employees just need to walk back into the jobs, but only if somebody's buying stuff.
If nobody's buying anything, nothing's going to work.
And then we have the problem that everybody from, say, the upper middle class down just probably had a bad few months.
So this entire bottom, I don't know, 80% Maybe less, maybe 75%.
I would say the bottom 75% of the economic ladder is going to have a tough few months, some worse than others, but it's going to be tough for maybe three quarters of the country.
But three quarters of the country all added together probably don't add up, or even close, To the wealth and the income of the top 20%, 25% let's say.
So here's the math question I give to you.
Given that we're going to go back to an economy in which we have exactly one problem, not enough people with money to buy stuff.
Am I wrong? That's really the only problem.
Now, because if people are buying, then even people who rang up some debt Can get loans, et cetera, because they can say, look, I have all these customers.
Business is good. Bank says, all right, you can have a loan.
That doesn't fix every problem, but it certainly gives you reason to believe that at least the top 25% who still have plenty of money, most of them didn't even lose their jobs.
Maybe their portfolio went down by a third.
They don't even know the difference.
So the top 25% could easily take it upon themselves, voluntarily, to say, oh wow, I came out of this thing, okay.
I'm just going to pour a little money into this.
Now it'd be great, and I've said this before, I don't know if there's a way to execute this in time.
It'd be great if there was some way to commit in advance to overspending when we get back to work, say in 2021.
And then the businesses could use that as evidence to go get loans and staff up and everything else.
But I don't know how to do that in a way that people would follow through necessarily and how would you record it in a credible way.
For restaurants, you could just book a reservation a year in advance, I suppose.
And there might be other businesses where you could book a business a year in advance.
So there might be a way for the people who came out of this well to simply increase what they're doing 5%.
Give me a sense without doing any of the math, without being an economist.
We'll just see if there's any wisdom in the crowd.
So all of us being way too ignorant to know the actual answer to this, let's see if we can come up with an answer anyway.
Maybe there's some kind of magic average that isn't crazy.
So here's the question for you.
If you accept, let's say as an assumption, accept that the top 25% still would have plenty of money and still could spend more if they wanted to in 2021.
And that because the top income group has so much money relative to the bottom, that even though it's the top 25%, they still have most of the money.
So even though it's a third less, it's still most of the money.
So how much would they have to spend more in 2021 compared to whatever baseline you imagine they would have spent under normal conditions?
How much would the top 25% have to spend more in the coming year to basically refill all the pipelines with orders?
You know, maybe not in a one-for-one because the things they're spending money on are not exactly the things other people were.
But in terms of dollar amount, would you say, oh, I'm looking at the numbers.
I see 8%, but I see twice as much.
I'm going to read off some of the numbers.
20, 10, 5, 30%, 5%.
Now, if you take the wisdom of the crowd to be something, it looks like it's settling in that 10% range.
I'll just read a few more off and you see.
Now they look a little bit bigger.
15, 33, 20, 10.
All right. So, 100%, 33.
Here's my intuition.
My intuition is it's closer to 10% than it is to...
It's probably below 10%.
Because remember, the trick here is that the top 20% are gigantic.
If you added up all their money, it would be this much.
For those of you who can see me and you're not watching or not just listening, look at it visually.
So the top 25% have this ball of wealth.
Just look where my hands are.
That's how much they control.
The bottom 75% control something like a little golf ball size.
That little golf ball shrunk by 75%, just making up numbers here, to a marble size.
How much would this giant ball have to spend extra To reinflate a marble to the size of a golf ball.
And the answer is that that very big thing, the top 25% who have all the money, probably a 5% flex completely makes up for all the money that the entire 75% bottom of the income lost.
Now again, it's not one for one.
It's not like everybody would get made whole.
But it would certainly tell you that And the ability to get back to where we wanted to quickly is entirely psychological.
Would you accept now the premise that getting back to where we need to be is now boiled down to a psychological problem?
Because if the top, I'll just keep saying 25%, If they could be convinced to, say, patriotically spend a little extra or even just be convinced that there are a lot of bargains or it's a good time to buy some stock because it's a good price or maybe pick up an apartment building or something.
So it seems to me that if you could manage the psychology of the people who came out okay, they would become your extra buyers and we're all fine.
All right, that's my optimistic thought of the day.
I suggested this by tweet.
And I know how corny this sounds, but just bear with me.
This will be the corniest idea I've ever suggested.
But also the best, I think.
And the suggestion is that whenever President Trump picks that day to go back to work, that maybe the morning of or the night before, that he simply goes on television and announces it, or maybe he's already announced it.
But before we actually go back to work, or whoever goes back to work, whatever subset...
That he goes on live TV and leads the nation in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Now, corny, right?
A lot of people would say, I'm not going to take no Pledge of Allegiance.
And then other people are saying, well, I'm home in my living room.
I'm not actually going to stand up and cover my heart and do the Pledge of Allegiance if I'm all alone in my home.
Or would you?
Or would you?
I think you might. I think you might if you were all alone.
If you were there with the family, it would only take one member of the family to stand up, and the rest of you are going to stand up.
Except, you know, the teenage daughter, she won't stand up.
But everybody else will stand up.
Now, here's the power of the idea.
In order for the President to give the okay, and I've said this before, It really is very important for the public to have fully weighed in with their opinion of what level of danger they're willing to take for themselves and also what level of danger they're willing to accept on behalf of their fellow citizens.
So everybody would be asked to take a very large risk, whether they like it or not.
And everybody's already taken A very large, you know, piece of pain.
Even if only psychological in some cases.
But we all sucked it up.
Took a lot of pain.
And here's the thing. When we go back to work, the rewards are not going to be equal.
Some people might just slide back to where they were.
Some people a little bit more slowly.
Some people don't have a job to go back to.
But worse, Some people, especially the older and the people with conditions, are going to have problems that they wouldn't have had if we didn't go back to work when we did, whatever that is.
So the Pledge of Allegiance is simply a way to remind everybody that we're connected, that we're not a bunch of individual people making individual decisions, We're that also.
I mean, you don't want to lose that part.
We are also that, individuals making individual decisions in a free country.
It's less free at the moment, but it's free in general.
But you want to be reminded that the difference between you wearing your mask and keeping your social distance is that somebody on your team might die.
That there's somebody in this nation...
Who is vulnerable, who could die if you don't take it seriously and keep your distance and do the stuff you're supposed to do.
So the Pledge of Allegiance would just be a very American way for the President to remind everybody.
He doesn't have to get into the details.
Just remind everybody that you're on the same team and it is life and death.
It's literally life and death.
All right. I've been saying that the best way you can protect the president is by bouncing around some numbers of how much extra death you're willing to accept in order to get the economy running again.
I've got an update on this, so I won't just be repeating what I said this morning.
I did a little poll online and I said, would you be okay getting back to work if it's under 50,000 extra deaths It's caused by getting back to work early or under 100, under 200.
But my larger argument was this.
The larger argument is, until the public starts really wrestling with those numbers and having an honest disagreement about it in public, ideally, about what's enough and what's too much, and just gets as adult as we can be, until the public It displays some adult behavior.
The President is sort of handcuffed because you don't want your leader deciding who dies and who lives.
I mean, it's not the position you want to put your leader in and shouldn't be in that position.
You want your public to really wrestle with it.
Anyway, the update is this.
I was just watching Lindsey Graham.
What show was he on?
Was it Laura Ingraham's show?
But anyway, Lindsey Graham got on and what I liked was he actually used the number 50,000.
So he used the number 50,000 in a hopeful way that he hoped we could find a way to get back to work and also keep desks under 50,000.
And as soon as I heard it, I was reminded again why I like Lindsey Graham so much.
I know, I know.
You can all find something that time he did the thing and he didn't agree with the thing and he voted wrong.
I get it. You can find a thousand things to say that you don't like about Lindsey Graham.
He's been around a while, so he's probably done something to annoy everybody.
But I got to tell you, when it comes to messaging and sort of a clear-eyed view of things and being able to explain things In a persuasive way.
He's got that attorney gene.
He just knows how to put things.
And when I heard him throw out that number, what I immediately felt is that he was laying cover for the president, which is exactly what you should be doing.
We should all be laying cover for the president.
Forget about the Republican Democrat thing.
It doesn't matter who the president is.
That's irrelevant. Forget the politics.
Forget who the president is.
We're being asked to make a decision in which some of us will die.
We owe the president a little cover.
That we've really understood the risk and collectively we talked about it.
There's some kind of consensus and ideally the president and the experts would work with that consensus to come up with something that makes sense for everybody.
So I know there's at least a little bit of support for the idea that the public should be involved and I guess Rush Limbaugh mentioned my tweet on that topic today.
And he didn't say too much about it.
He was just mentioning it, I think, in a way that he thought his audience would be interested in.
He didn't say much about it in terms of opinion.
But just the fact that he thought it was important enough to mention it on the show to 20 million people suggests that it's worthy of consideration.
So I'm not going to say Rush liked it, so therefore you should like it.
It doesn't work that way. But certainly with somebody of his stature, if he says this is worth you seeing, it's probably worth you seeing.
So that was good because, you know, I come up with a lot of ideas and it's hard to know.
It's hard to judge your own output.
You have to look at something objective.
So until it gets a little traction in some way with somebody who's credible, I don't necessarily think I have anything.
But Let me go a little bit deeper on this.
This is going to be kind of fun.
You'll like this next part.
And I'm going to use a trick that a drug dealer taught me.
And I've talked about this before, but it's such a perfect way to prime you for the next part of what I'm going to talk about.
If you've heard this before, I'm sorry, but you've got to hear it again.
It goes like this. What I'm going to do is tell you a little story about solving the psychology of something, and then I'm going to extend that to getting back to work is really about solving a psychology problem as much as a health problem.
Let's say you were in college, hypothetically, and you and your friend put in some money and you bought some marijuana.
And you wanted to divide it up because you just got one little quantity of it.
But you don't have a scale.
So how do you divide it up in a way that you're both happy that you got half?
Now you say to yourself, well, if you make it look about right, that's good, right?
Well, back in the day when I learned this trick, there were things called seeds in your And lots of twigs and leaves and some of the buds were better than others and you couldn't really look at two piles and really know which one was the good one because there were a little too many variables going on.
It's less true today but in those days.
And so what is the trick?
What's the hack to make both people happy that they both got a good deal when you can't measure it and you can't even tell by looking at it?
And you don't want people later to think, ah, I think the other one got the good one.
And here's the trick.
And it's so simple that you'll laugh.
And the trick is this.
One person divides the two piles all alone, and then the second person picks a pile.
That's it. It solves every problem.
Because the first person is only going to divide them in a way that that person thinks looks fair.
So that person doesn't care which one he picked because that person thinks they were divided fairly.
The person who picks gets their choice.
So if perchance they thought one was better than the other, just pick it.
Now there's a second part of this story.
The person who shall remain nameless, a college friend of mine, taught me not only that trick, But this next thing, which, you know how sometimes very little things stick in your mind forever?
It's just the smallest interaction and it just rewires your brain forever.
And that happened the first time that we did this trick.
So the two of us divided it up.
And I was the divider.
So I was the one to go first.
So I divided them into two piles.
And here's what my friend and ex-classmate at college taught me next.
So he was supposed to come over and pick the pile that looked good.
He walked over and then conspicuously, without looking, chose one by just scooping it off the table until, you know, whatever.
So, the second thing he taught me was that once I had divided the piles, he didn't need to look at them.
And it was just one of those little moments where you realize that what he taught you is that he also trusted you.
And he didn't even need to look.
It was such a minor little, just the smallest little interaction, but I remembered it for the rest of my life.
Because it was just a display of trust that I wasn't expecting.
Anyway, so here we have the psychology problem of going back to work.
Because any way you look at it, We have to decide how many people are going to die.
And so I would suggest this mechanism for having a decision that incorporates what the public wants and thinks has been fairly considered, a system that they can support even if it's not exactly the way they would have done it.
Because that's the important thing.
You want the decision to be made in a way that even the people who disagree with it Agree that the way it was made was fair.
That's what elections get you, at least fair elections.
Even the people who lose go, ah, but at least that election was fair, so I'll support the system.
I'll just try harder next time.
So you need a good system.
Here's the system that I would suggest.
I think the public needs to take the lead in deciding Who goes back first and in what order?
So in other words, the public should be presenting to the administration or vice versa.
Maybe they could flow some ideas and let the public react.
But the public needs to weigh in on what order of things we think we're comfortable with.
And then also, what level of death we're comfortable with.
And then ideally, The government would tell us when to go back to achieve below that level of death.
So there would be two separate decisions.
You'd let the experts, you know, the Fauci's and the Dr.
Burke's and stuff, you'd let them tell you when to go, but you would tell them what you want to achieve.
So the public would say collectively, you know, just let's say we really deal with it and a consensus emerges, That we'd like to keep it under 50,000 deaths, net, you know, the 50,000, you know, no worse than the years before.
We'd sort of like to go in this order, and then Fauci says when.
So we say we want to keep it under 50,000, and then the modelers come back, and Fauci and Dr.
Brooks look at it, and they go, okay, the public has spoken.
They will accept up to, but not more than, 50,000 deaths.
Give me a model that tells you when to go back to work to get to that.
Now, of course, you have this problem where you might have to try something and pull back, and you might have to do that multiple times.
I read something from somebody smart that said likely what's going to happen is we'll probably try things and pull back, try things and pull back.
So there might be a lot of throttling.
But at least we'd be edging forward, I think.
So that is my suggested process.
Public says what order to go in and how many deaths we accept, and then the experts say when to go back to work to achieve the level that the public decided.
And then you take Trump out of the decision of who dies and how many die.
Just not fair. It's not a good system.
To have the leader, the person who's supposed to protect all of us to be put in a position of deciding which of us die.
In a military context, of course, it has to do it, but not in this, not in a civilian context.
All right. So I mentioned today that I saw this chart that I thought was bogus, and I asked people to look at it.
It was a chart that showed or seemed to show That the, compared to prior years, the number of pneumonia, I guess, diagnoses, or was it deaths?
Deaths, I think, maybe. The number of pneumonia deaths seemed to go up like normal, and then suddenly around January, it just fell sharply off, and it's never done that before.
And then the implication being that maybe some things are being miscoded as coronavirus Any other year would have just been pneumonia.
So I don't have an opinion about that.
But I said that my BS detector said it was probably fake.
So a bunch of people looked at it in the comments, and here's the conclusion.
I don't know. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. But I can tell you that one debunker said, reproduced the graph By putting in the data on the same day as in prior years, and it showed that all of the other years would have shown the same decline if it had the same lag of data, and they actually did have that lag.
So if you had looked at those other years the same day, they also temporarily would have looked like they were sloping down, but once all the data came in, that slope would go away.
So one debunker using the database, the same data, from the people who produced it, showed pretty clearly, I thought, that it was debunked.
It was just a lag in the data situation.
But because it's the internet, because it's 2020, was that the end of the conversation?
No, it was not.
The debunker was immediately debunked.
So there was the graph I was suspicious of, there was a debunker who had a very solid debunking of it, followed by a debunker of the debunker, and then as these things always go, I sort of lost interest and I couldn't quite follow the argument after that.
So I'm not quite sure if the debunker or the debunker of the debunker won the argument, but I'm still leaning toward the debunk.
So I still think it's fake.
It might be real data.
I'm not saying the data is wrong, but there might be an artifact in there of time lag and, you know, it's just the day that it was measured.
It's not that it was wrong, per se.
Joe Biden did another little video in which he referred to our leader as President Trump.
Snickers. Snickers.
That's the cat. You always bark at the cat.
You act like...
Snickers.
You act... You act like you've never seen the cat.
Of course you've seen the cat.
Every day. It's always the same cat.
You need not bark.
All right. I think we got that sorted out.
Back to me. Yeah, so Joe Biden referred to our leader as President Trump.
He corrected it, but how many times is he going to mispronounce a world leader's name before Alyssa Milano says, I've had enough.
So the other funny thing is that, well, it's funny tragic or funny interesting.
I don't know. It's not funny in the I'm not on the side of most of you who are watching this, I think, based on what I know about my viewers.
Many of you have a negative opinion of her political activism, but I don't.
I don't agree with her positions in many cases, but I like the fact that she's sincere and trying to help and Her intentions are good and she puts in the work and she's got skin in the game and I just respect activism if people have good intentions.
And she does. But she got kind of trapped by running out of candidates that were sentient beings so she's sort of by default because she can't be a Republican and I guess she doesn't want to sit it out because she's sort of an activist so she needs to have a candidate and she was left with whatever's left of Joe Biden who I believe is a saddlebag full of old letters And she's doing her best.
She's doing her best to be supportive.
And I think she said she's known him for years.
So I guess they have some kind of personal connection that goes back for a while.
So I guess I admire her loyalty.
But she has to know...
What's going on, right?
She has to know.
Because we all know.
There's nobody who doesn't know that he's not up for the job.
And again, I'm not making a Democrat versus Republican comment whatsoever.
You know, if you told me Andrew Cuomo was going to be the candidate, I would say, well, pretty strong choice.
That'd be interesting. At least we'd have some real competition then.
So it's not like I'm going to, you know, Mock every Democrat or something.
If anybody's new to my periscopes, that's not what I'm about.
But, I mean, seriously, Joe Biden, it doesn't matter what party we're talking about, he's just not capable.
It's obvious. But she's doing her best to defend him, and then it just gets worse.
So then there's this, you know, Me Too allegation against Joe Biden for something that allegedly happened years ago.
And the problem, of course, is that the allegation has every hallmark of credibility, you know, as these things are judged.
Because, you know, the story held together, it's clear that you could put them in the same room.
Apparently she told people about it at the time and they back up the story.
It doesn't mean any of it happened.
That's not how it works.
But it does mean that it meets at least the initial tests where, according to the rules of Me Too, somebody who is an activist should be backing the woman's story.
In every other situation, you'd expect that to be true.
But Alyssa Milano has decided to choose loyalty over Consistency, I guess, which is, you know, again, I don't even criticize that.
I'm not even going to criticize her for choosing loyalty or even choosing if she decides that an old saddlebag full of letters is a better president than President Trump and, you know, maybe look at a strong vice president so it'll all be fine, you know, whatever she's thinking.
I don't even criticize it.
But what a position to be in.
Like, I feel so bad for her.
Because, again, she puts in the work.
Like, she's worked so hard to, you know, to be, you know, part of the influence, you know, to be a positive, you know, positive force in society.
And then she gets trapped defending Joe Biden, and then he gets a Me Too thing, and then she's gonna, she's still hanging in there.
Uh... God bless her.
Anyway, the president said that he's going to put a hold on the funding for the World Health Organization.
I tell you, this president knows what's popular because putting a hold on the World Health Organization funding is very popular right now because I don't know what's up with that group, but it's not good.
There's something rotten there.
But here's the part that I found the best.
Do you remember when people made fun of President Trump's simple speaking style?
His simple half sentences and his repetition and using simple words and stuff.
But it is so powerful.
That, I swear, when I'm watching him sometimes, I mean, he does a lot of talking in public, and I'm not going to say it's all brilliant, but he has flashes of brilliance and flashes of humor that really are special.
And this made me laugh when he was talking about putting the funding hold on the World Health Organization.
He goes, we're putting a hold on it.
It's a powerful hold.
A powerful hold?
What's that mean? What makes a hold on funding powerful?
Because all you have to do is tell the Treasury not to write a check.
Is there a weak form of that?
What's the weak form of putting on the hold?
Well, Mnuchin, maybe you could consider like, I don't know, maybe slowing down-ish, maybe putting a hold on the funding?
Would that be the opposite of a powerful hold?
Or is a powerful hold like, Mnuchin, Mnuchin, get over here.
Put down your briefcase.
Mnuchin, come over here.
You put a hold on those funds.
I'm not talking about a regular hold.
I'm talking about an extra-duty hold.
I'm talking about metal, platinum, Silver gold.
We're going for everything.
This is the hold of all holds.
This must be powerful. I'm talking 220 volts.
Serious power. Hook it up to the Tesla and floor it.
Powerful, powerful hold.
Some other news that's no news at all, but it's interesting, is that advisor Peter Navarro, who we're learning now, Wrote a letter warning about the dangers of the coronavirus back at the end of January.
I think January 29th was the key letter.
And so the press is trying to turn this into a story, but there isn't one there.
And they keep poking and prodding and slicing, but no matter how they look at it, and no matter what kind of light they shine on it, there's literally nothing there.
Now, there's new information, but they're looking for, you know, who did something wrong, or who didn't listen to somebody, or was there an internal debate?
I mean, they're looking for some meat, but here's the best they can get, and the president's doing a good job of, you know, swatting this flyaway.
Here's the problem. Navarro was completely right, because now some time has gone by, and we can see that anybody who was warning about it In a dire way at the end of January, they were among the people who were the most right, most early.
Now, I beat him by a few days, but who's bragging?
I am. But Navarro was right, and so now, because it's hindsight, we can say, totally right.
Like, that guy totally nailed the risk, and he warned and tried to warn the right people.
Now, the President said he didn't see the memo, Which I think you could conflate with, you know, didn't remember it.
It could have been summarized to him, could have been summarized to him from another aide who forgot to mention what the memo was from.
Somebody could have said, hey, Pete Navarro says this, but then the president forgets who said it first.
So there are a million possibilities that are reasonable explanations of why the president doesn't have a specific memory of seeing the letter.
He's a busy guy. A lot of opinions flying around there.
So they're trying to find something that's wrong with the timing, except Navarro's letter warning about it happened to be just about exactly the same time that the president closed the flights from China.
So there's just no space to find the disagreement.
Because even though Trump says he wasn't aware of Navarro's opinion, he says Navarro's really smart, and he was thinking the same thing at the same time, and it's obvious that he was because he acted on it.
He closed the flights.
So there's just nothing there.
But man, watching the press picking away at this is like, if we get you to maybe describe it differently.
We can find something in the way you're saying it that would suggest that somebody should have done something differently in the past as if it matters now, but it doesn't.
All right, I'm going to take some questions.
I believe my technology will work.
Let's see who is waiting to ask me a question.
And if you've been here for a while, you may be thinking that you're surprised that you're going to be at it.
Harrison, do you have a question for me?
Hello, Harrison? Scott, how's it going?
Good, good. Do you have a question for me?
Yeah, I do. Quick question on skill stacks.
So I know it's something you talk about a lot.
I was curious if there are any emerging skills within a skill stack that you're seeing happen over the past couple of years that you might anticipate being important in the future.
Persuasion. I would say persuasion is the big skill stack.
I'm a big fan of design because you can learn the basics of design, sort of 80% of it, in about an hour.
It's the other 20% that you have to go to school for four years for.
But you can get the basics because we're all designers now.
You got to build a website.
You got to comment on somebody's app they're developing.
You've got to put together a PowerPoint slide deck.
So I'd say design and persuasion, communication and writing in general, writing and speaking.
But did you notice that because of the coronavirus, you've got all these people doing video stuff like I'm doing now?
Did you notice how many people are not good at this?
Oh yes, it's rough.
And even the people who are experts of being on TV, let's say Joe Biden.
If you put Joe Biden in a classic television situation, he performs well.
But that little bit of transition into the live streaming world with just that little bit of difference in what it is, you found that some people can do it and some can't.
And watching the Watching the people who can make the transition who can't.
So I think the world of appearing on video is going to be far more important, obviously, because we'll be doing more remote stuff.
And people who are good on video will have a big advantage.
So I think learning to do this...
Like literally what I'm doing right now, learning to do this, even if you're just talking to your coworkers or presenting to a customer or something, it's probably going to be one of the biggest skills because talking on a camera situation is different than talking in person, different than writing a memo, etc.
So anyway, thanks for the question.
Can I follow that up with how do you weigh that with kind of a quantitative skill set?
So quantitative economics, the real financial modeling that comes with that, that's required to actually present the information in a visual perspective.
Where do you weigh that in terms of importance?
Well, it's not so much importance.
It has more to do with fit.
So it would be like saying, what's the important ingredient of your ministry soup?
And the answer is, oh, well, what makes it good is that they're sort of all together.
It's the blend that makes it good.
It's not because the beans were so awesome.
So that's what your skill stack is.
It's not that there's some boss of all skills that you should just always start with this one and number two should always be this one.
I like to start with whatever you're already good at and say, all right, that's my base stuff, the stuff I'm already good at.
What can I add to that that quickly gets me to a superpower?
But in general, I think economics and business Are good to add to every skill stack as is persuasion and communication.
There's some that just always are good.
Adding design, communication, those sort of things to anything is good.
All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Let's see what else we got here.
We've got James.
Let's see what James has to say.
James? James? Do you have a question, James?
James? Hi.
Do you have a question? James is gone.
I never know if somebody just hits the wrong button or they get camera shy.
Let's see if people named Charlie are never shy.
That's my rule. Charlie, well, Charlie disappeared.
So I guess that rule didn't last very long.
Let's see if James wants to talk.
James, James.
Well, James, do you have a question, James?
I'm good. Fantastic.
I really, really love that.
It's a question about how to control emotion.
How to stop myself from running away with anger if you have a trick that's similar to the 22nd.
Yeah. Let me tell you the bad way to do it.
The way I did it most of my life is I would break something.
And observers would be very upset because I'd have just some frustration about nothing important, you know, just some, I don't know, the printer's out of paper or something.
It's the last straw. And I'd find that if I just, like, smashed something to pieces, something that wasn't expensive, you know, something I wasn't going to miss, not my computer or something like that, but just break the crap out of something.
Or let's say your printer's old and you're thinking of replacing it anyway.
Well, I'd throw it at a second store window.
That sort of thing. And I found that it would instantly take my stress away.
In a way that I don't think anybody could understand if they were observing.
Because it would look like I was so mad.
As soon as I break something, I go...
Like, you know, all these endorphins just fill me.
And I'm just completely good after that.
Now... The problem with that is it scares the heck out of the pets and anybody else in the house.
So don't do that. It was a very selfish thing because it worked really well, but you can't do it if you're a social creature in the world.
So let me give you some more practical advice.
Some of it is from Mel Gibson, actor Mel Gibson.
Now you may have your opinions about Mel Gibson, but he had this one little tip, or at least I heard it from him.
They learned in acting school.
In acting school, they taught him that if he wanted to portray an emotion, that the way to get into that emotion is to breathe the way that you would breathe in that situation.
So if you wanted to bring yourself into a state of, let's say, anxiety because the ghosts are chasing you or something, you would breathe the way you would breathe if you were in that situation, and that puts the rest of your body into that mode.
It triggers it. So, but...
That can work the other way as well.
So if you concentrate on your breathing, let's say you're starting to get angry, and you just go, and you say, okay, how would I breathe if I wanted to not be angry?
Like, I'll just pretend to breathe like a not angry person.
And what will happen is it makes you not angry.
Because your mood and your attitude is so automatically connected to your breathing and you don't know it.
On a conscious level, you're not aware of it.
But if you move one, it moves the other because they're almost handcuffed together.
So that's a little trick. So you just go right to your breathing.
You don't have to breathe.
Let me say it this way.
All you have to do is pretend to be relaxed And do like you're an actor.
Just pretend to breathe freely.
And you will. The other thing I find is that when you're angry, your body tenses up.
So sometimes you just have to broaden your shoulders and stretch your back.
Move your neck around and just take the tension out of your body.
Sometimes you just got to take a walk.
I find that the general tension level, you can take off 20% just by taking a nice walk by yourself with no tension.
And then everything's easier.
You're not going to get that mad in the first place.
So, in the comments, we have another suggestion, a couple of bong hits, but that would be up to you and your doctor.
So, those are the big things.
And the other is just practice.
You know, I definitely have a quick temper.
Some of you have seen it.
But here's the thing you need to know.
I never let my temper get that high unless it has utility.
So if I'm doing it on Periscope, it's because it's something I'm especially interested in making an impression over.
So I let it go.
But I'm conscious of ramping it up and ramping it down.
So I always feel I'm in control of it, even if it doesn't look that way.
So it's very intentional.
In fact, you've seen it happen.
You've probably seen it where I warn you that there's some swearing coming.
At the time that I'm warning you, I have not ramped up to full anger yet.
I just know I can.
And so once I've warned people to send the children away, I just let myself go.
And I can feel a raising like a temperature going up to 100.
And I can do it almost instantly, but I can also bring it back down pretty quickly.
So it's not too scary when it happens.
Anyway, I hope that helped a little bit.
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
I'll try that. All right.
Take care. That's a good question.
Let's see what Kathy has to say.
Kathy, how are you?
Do you have a question for me?
I do. So three years ago, A friend of mine was here.
We were having a pool party and she left a bag of marijuana.
And I placed it under an ottoman in this baggie, under an ottoman in my back rustic room next to a fake pine tree.
True story. And the other day I remembered it was there and I pulled it out and looked at it because it's probably been 25 years since I've smoked.
I looked at it and it's all these buds and it looks drier than dry.
So I was wondering, what do you do?
Throw a leaf of moist lettuce in there and let it sit overnight?
Because I'm thinking if there's ever a time to get crazy, now would be the time.
Well, I would, of course, being responsible, I never recommend anything like that.
Of course. That's for your doctor.
Of course.
But I'll answer this scientifically.
So the scientific answer is this.
In all likelihood, it still has potency.
I don't know if it's 100%, but I'm sure it would get the job done.
It doesn't get more potent.
No, it doesn't get more potent.
I don't want a microscope or anything.
I don't want to get too quick.
Assuming that it was sealed in the bag, so there were no bad things that got in there, in all likelihood the dryness will just affect the flavor, but nothing else is my guess.
If you don't care about the flavor, Not too much, no.
Not at this point. I think we have enough flavor going on.
Somebody's suggesting cooking it, but I never suggest that because everybody I know who's had a bad experience, it was from edibles.
I understand the advantages of it, but the disadvantages...
I just wanted to know if it was still, or if it was going to pop, snap, crack, blow up in my face, that kind of thing.
I'm not a doctor.
I can't recommend the safe or not safe.
I understand. The only thing I know for sure is that it would still be potent.
That's the only thing I could be sure of.
Thank you. And thank you for the swaddling so much.
You're welcome. Bye.
Getting interesting questions tonight.
Let's see what Brian has to say.
Brian, do you have a question for me?
...books that are over your left shoulder right now.
Especially the How to Fail at Almost Everything was amazing, I thought.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
But the thing that occurred to me actually is when you talked about the Like a two screens thing with a debate for the end of time.
Is this a real problem or did we actually stop the problem?
And so not a lot of deaths manifested.
Did we dodge a major bullet by having the persuasive power of a conservative President Trump instead of a President Hillary?
Because in my mind, a President Hillary Clinton could never convince conservatives to not think that this was a government takeover of society.
Ha ha ha! Oh yeah, I see where you're going.
Well, yes, but I'm not sure you can give the President that kind of credit because he just happens to be a Republican and he just happened to do what he did.
But you're right.
If Obama, let's say, had asked everybody to stay home and crash the economy, You're right.
I don't know if conservatives would have gone along for the ride.
He already paced them.
He paced the conservatives, trust him, more than probably any president since Ronald Reagan.
They would have been, I think, on board with a Democrat president.
Well, and the other thing he has going for him, which nobody's talking about, and I don't know why, which is that it's entirely possible he bankrupted himself.
To save the country.
Or to save a million people or whatever.
And I don't know if that...
So first of all, I don't know if he's going to bankrupt Trump properties.
But it looks like all the resort hotel properties are going to struggle.
But we hope they do okay.
But the fact that without even blinking...
Without even blinking...
At least in public, we didn't see it.
I think he destroyed his entire family business to save people he doesn't know.
And that's one of the greatest stories, but of course, the way things are, we'll never see it that way.
It'll always be cast in some small, selfish way.
But if things work out the way I think, Here's the other thing that I haven't seen anybody say.
I always say that there's no such thing as bad presidents and good presidents, with the exception of Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter might have been a bad president.
Rather, I say that by the time anybody gets to be elected president, they have a certain skill set.
They're not idiots. It's more about the certain personality and skill set being matched to the time.
You know, is it the right person in the right time?
I thought Obama was actually a good president for his time.
He was well suited. But, what would be the best president in the world for recovering quickly from a pandemic?
I'm sorry, say what you will about, you know, President Trump, make your criticisms of whatever you want, but there is no president You can even imagine who is more suited for the moment.
The moment being the moment after we get back to work.
The moment where he has to convince us that everything's okay and getting better.
Because it's that convincing us that everything's okay that makes it okay.
Literally the psychology of the economy is what will make it or break it.
And we've never had a better salesman for the economy.
Now, his critics will say, hey, you're lying, you're exaggerating, you're missing the facts, it's hyperbole.
And he'll look right at you and say, and?
It's working, right?
I'm a cheerleader for the economy.
You said it like several times this week.
I'm a cheerleader for the country.
I'm not going to apologize for it.
I'm going to keep doing it because it works.
And guess what? It works.
It totally works. Even when people say, well, I think he's exaggerating a little bit.
He's still talking happy talk.
He's still convincing enough people.
He doesn't have to convince every person that things are going right.
But if he convinces enough people, it starts movement and then the other people say, well, looks like things are going in this good direction.
Anyway, I think he's the perfect president for the next moment.
In the same way that I've said, if I'm being honest, he was not the perfect president for the very initial stages of this, in the empathy and making sure that the country knew he was feeling the right feelings and stuff.
He wasn't perfect for that.
But man, is he perfect for this next part.
So that's actually going to be fun.
I'm looking forward to just watching that unfold.
Thanks, Scott. We really appreciate it.
My wife and I listen to both of them every day, especially since all this started.
So just keep doing it.
And I don't have to encourage you because I know you like it so much.
But thank you. Thank you so much.
Take care. All right.
We're going to do one more, and then I'm going to go.
And we're going to take...
Patrice. If Patrice has good technology and strong Wi-Fi.
Patrice. Hello.
Do you have a question for me, Patrice?
Yes. So first, yeah, thanks for your books and periscopes.
You make me and everyone I talk to feel so much better about all of this going on.
Oh, good. My question is, do you think that face masks are really going to be in our future permanently?
I always hated looking at these poor Asian countries and thinking, oh, they've got to have these masks, and I really don't love that.
I'll tell you what.
We don't like things stuck to our face, but suppose we got used to it.
I've worn glasses all my life.
Now, the first, you know, week or two that you wear glasses for the first time is pretty annoying.
It's hard to get used to it. But I'd say at this point in my life, I'm completely unaware of it.
So you can kind of get used to things.
So that's the first question.
Could we get used to wearing masks?
Maybe not exactly the masks that are on the market, but let's say the market started delivering better masks, you know, So I'm a seamstress, and I'm kind of looking at, you know, I've been waiting for studies of efficacy about what to make that's actually helpful,
and I'm also kind of thinking, well, maybe I could take advantage of the fact that this might be around for a while, and, you know, I have something I can offer the world, you know.
Okay. Well, I don't know how long it'll be.
And of course, the big companies will jump in and take all the profit margin eventually.
But here's where I was going with this.
And by the way, hello, Christina.
I saw you sneaking in there.
My fiancé just came on watching this.
So here's where I think.
Have you noticed that we're slowly moving toward becoming cyborgs?
Because... You know, I've done this example before.
So first of all, you know, cyborg is part machine, part human.
So already I have, you know, corrective lenses and someday they'll have, you know, augmented reality in them.
I've already got my, you know, my earbuds.
So, you know, if I have these in, they're microphones and earphones.
And I can see the mask turning into have more function.
It would be easy to imagine that a mask is just always cleaning the air.
I mean, I can imagine them building in a little electronics so that you're actually breathing cleaner air than the air that's in the room.
I can imagine having a microphone built into the mask so that you could talk on the phone and it would be muffled enough that the people around you couldn't even hear you, which would be really cool.
I don't know if that's even possible, but it'd be really cool.
So the long version is we are slowly turning into cyborgs.
I am convinced that whether these regular face masks last or not, there's going to be just more augmentation in the head and arm and leg area.
Everywhere we can add some advantage in technology and adaptation, I think we will.
I think masks will be around probably for a year.
It'd be a fun thing for you to rip off a few good masks.
I would put a By the way, I would go for an American flag.
Keep it patriotic.
There's one way. But everybody's going to want their own version of it, so have fun with it.
Anyway, that's all for tonight.
I am going to wind it up now.
Thank you for the question.
And let me see if Christina...
Christina, why don't you ask to be invited on as a guest so I can bring you on?
Well, I don't think that's going to happen.
All right. That's it for tonight.
I will see you in the morning.
▲
Export Selection