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May 5, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:08:34

Episode 956 Scott Adams: Come Sip the News

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: The revised death model Reaching a new level of contempt for CNN coverage Sean Hannity wants armed protesters to reconsider Chinese drones being used by US law enforcement? Civil disobedience is coming and growing --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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	Hey everybody, come on in here.
	It's time for a special Cinco de Mayo episode of Coffee with Scott Adams featuring the simultaneous sip, which I would say in Spanish if I could, but I can't.
	So let's just call it the simultaneous sip.
	It's not going to take much.
	Hey, you Walnut Creek in the house.
	Good to see you. Good morning, everybody.
	There will be no cursing this morning.
	I mean, unless things completely go off the rails.
	No cursing. I did my cursing last night.
	That will be my evening cursing.
	It's better to curse in the evening.
	I think it just fits better.
	This morning, I overslept, so I'd love to tell you I'm really prepared, but I'm not.
	What do you do when you're not prepared?
	There's one thing you can always do.
	It doesn't take much.
	All it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or a chalice or stye and a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
	Fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee.
	And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dope bean hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the damn pandemic.
	And it's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
	Go. Infection rates falling.
	I can feel it. Hello, New York!
	Alright, it turns out that I've developed two different fan bases, I think.
	One that likes it when I swear.
	One that prefers that I not.
	So it's like I've split into two characters.
	Somebody like some, some like the other.
	Alright, let's see what's going on here.
	So, the new coronavirus death model.
	That's right, I said a death model.
	Has been revised upwards, of course, because we're reopening some of the country.
	So, what do you call it when things go exactly the way everybody assumed they would go?
	You call that news.
	That's news, my friends.
	If things go exactly the way everybody said they should go, will go, can't really go any other way.
	That's called news.
	And so it's been jacked up to 134,000.
	So I guess 134,000 looks like it's not just the minimum.
	I'm looking at CNN's text.
	I think that it's maybe where they actually think it will be.
	It's a little unclear if that's the new minimum or that's just the prediction.
	Either way, it's a little absurd, but anyway.
	Apparently, it's predicted to kill 3,000 people a day by June 1st, nearly double the current number.
	Now, let's just game this out.
	3,000 people a day for June, July, and August.
	3,000 people a day for 90 days?
	How does that equal 134,000?
	Feels like it could be twice that.
	Now that depends.
	Of course, the model probably takes into account the summer months and something magic about summer that makes us get less of the virus.
	But what is that exactly?
	So I don't know if 134 is really the low end, the middle, or the high end anymore.
	But it's about where I thought it would be.
	So I would say it's pretty close to where I just assumed it would be there, right?
	That's the whole point. You go back to work, people die.
	So what does CNN do about this decision?
	Well, of course, they're trying to cram it down the president's throat.
	So that he will be responsible personally for every death that happens because we reopened the economy.
	And as I watch this forum, you can see it just sort of coming together.
	You know that what's going to happen, for sure, is that governors will open some states.
	But CNN doesn't really mock governors because it's not a good model for television, I guess.
	They prefer to mock...
	The head of the federal government.
	It's better TV. So Trump is going to get blamed for everything, no matter what the governors do.
	You know that, right? And watching this take shape is so disgusting to me.
	I think I've reached a new level of just contempt for CNN's coverage.
	I'll just say for their coverage rather than make it personal.
	And here's the thing.
	I'll say this a million more times.
	Nobody knows how to make the right decision here.
	I don't even know if there is a right decision.
	There are just two ways that people are going to die.
	Is there a right decision when there's just two ways people are going to die and you've got to pick which one?
	To put pressure on the leaders, let's say the governors and all the decision makers, throw Fauci and Birx in there too.
	They're leaders and decision makers in this context.
	To put that pressure on them, that these deaths are sort of going to be on their hands, is so low and so contemptible.
	Now, I wouldn't say that they've actually done that.
	You just see it taking form, because what else are they going to talk about?
	They're going to talk about who the leaders killed, right, with their decisions.
	Well, you made this decision, and now Aunt Sally's gone.
	And here's the people on this page, and here's all the names and their faces, and they all died because of the decisions made by these Republicans or whatever.
	And I'll say it again, there's nothing more important than that we as a country understand that there's no right decision.
	So if you're hamstringing your leaders to make any decision...
	Because you're ready to just eviscerate them no matter what, you're not really helping.
	You're not helping. You know, I think everybody has to get a pardon in advance for whatever happens.
	I'm talking about the governors, the experts, the politicians.
	I mean, we just have to find some way to be okay with decisions that can't be good.
	They can't be good by their nature.
	It's just two bad decisions.
	They're going to have to pick one.
	So somebody's going to die.
	And our leaders have the very unenviable task of doing it.
	I'm glad I don't.
	I'm glad you don't.
	Are you? Are you glad it's not your decision?
	I mean, you could make a decision.
	I could make a decision if I had to.
	You know, if it were my job, I'd do it.
	But I'm glad I don't.
	Because whoever makes it is going to be accused of murder.
	For just doing their job.
	Just trying to help the country.
	Trying to get the country to a better place.
	No matter what anybody does, no matter what their intentions are, no matter how smart they are, even if they make all the right choices, they're going to be accused of murder.
	Murder. Not just regular murder, but like mass murder.
	So that's the situation we put our leaders in, and then we ask them to make good decisions for us.
	Make us some good decisions, and by the way, we are going to accuse you of murder.
	Well, I take that back.
	We're going to accuse you of mass murder, no matter what you do.
	I just don't want to live in a country like that.
	Sean Hannity is surprised, in a way.
	He's actually requesting that the armed protesters in Michigan reconsider the military garb.
	And Sean Hannity's argument, I think, is completely solid.
	Somewhat unexpected, which is the fun part of the story, but solid argument.
	And his argument goes like this, that if you put a show of force on against police officers, that's a very dangerous situation.
	Because the police, they kind of have to maintain their own control, right?
	That's part of the job.
	It's not just standing around in a uniform.
	The police have to exert authority, right?
	They've got to exert that they are the ultimate force of control.
	That's what keeps everybody safe.
	The last thing you want is people saying, well, police, yes.
	Police, no. I don't have to do what they say.
	I've got a gun. They've got a gun.
	My gun's bigger. I don't know.
	Maybe I don't have to do what they say.
	So you could easily see it sliding in the wrong direction.
	And so I think Sean Hannity is making a very...
	Because even Dan Bongino came on his show right after and said, I don't know, Second Amendment, freedom of speech, everything they're doing is legal.
	Do you tell people to stop doing completely legal things in this country?
	And so you can see both arguments, can't you?
	I don't think Dan Bongino is wrong.
	You know, we got laws.
	What gives anybody the right to throw the laws away?
	When did that happen?
	So that's a good argument.
	Dan Bongino's argument, completely solid.
	Follow the Constitution.
	They're following the Constitution.
	As long as they follow the Constitution, why shouldn't we?
	But Hannity's argument is also solid.
	Why would you want to put the police at risk?
	And I think Hannity's got a good, you know, long history of supporting law enforcement.
	And so he's being consistent on that and confesses that it's a very hard call.
	To do anything that would be even slightly anti-Second Amendment, he's got to concealed carry himself, as he reminds us.
	So, here's my opinion on it.
	And I don't think anybody's opinion should sway you, because this is so subjective.
	I'm not going to tell you my opinion is right or not right, but Under these very, very specific conditions, meaning that the next time something comes up, don't ask me to be consistent with this, because this is just a one-off.
	So anything I say about this should not ever be generalized in the future to any other situation.
	It'll just be different. The people with the guns are there to support the Constitution.
	That's my understanding. They're not there to overthrow the government.
	They're in fact there to support the government.
	They're literally there to support the document, if you will, the Constitution, that binds us all together.
	It's the thing that pays the police.
	Ultimately, the form of our government defined by the Constitution allows a structure in which the police can get paid.
	So, are the protesters...
	Or are they protecting the system?
	It's really tough, isn't it?
	And who said this the other day?
	Oh, somebody smart on television said that when you've got a gray area...
	Somebody was saying that their father gave them this advice.
	Maybe one of you saw it.
	Somebody wise was saying this.
	When you have a gray area...
	And, you know, one direction is maybe safety, and the other direction is maybe freedom, but it's a tough call that you should always bias toward freedom.
	And that, in the long run, you end up better that way, if you bias toward freedom.
	So here's my take.
	I've never seen a situation where the armed militia types have ever fired.
	Have you? Because they show up in a lot of stuff.
	If you look at all the times that the same types of people, the ones who are into that lifestyle, the militia, the guns, etc., they're very anti-shooting, sort of super anti-shooting, I would say, because they're not there to shoot.
	They didn't come there for that.
	They didn't come to shoot anybody.
	What's the last thing any of them with a gun actually wants to happen?
	The last thing. The last thing any of them want to happen is to shoot anybody.
	They don't want to get shot.
	They don't want to shoot anybody. It's the last thing they want.
	So it's hard to get into the minds of strangers, which I just did, and so I probably shouldn't have.
	If I were to say, okay, let's treat them as mindless.
	We don't know what they're thinking. Yeah, I'd say you don't want guns and police officers in the same place.
	So if you ignore their internal mental state, and maybe that's the smartest play.
	Maybe Hannity has nailed this completely.
	Just look at the variables.
	Lots of guns, police, put them in the same place, nothing good can happen.
	That's a pretty adult opinion, and I would respect him for that opinion.
	But I've got to say, I'm leaning in the other direction.
	I'm leaning Bongino in this one.
	I'm leaning, if they're there to protest for their freedom, I don't know.
	If the whole point of it is freedom, how do you take their freedom away when they're protesting for freedom?
	Legally. Legally protesting for freedom in legal ways?
	And you take some more of their freedom away while they're protesting for freedom?
	How's that going to go? What's more dangerous?
	Well, I mean, nobody's tried to take their guns away.
	That would be, of course, crazy.
	But... I guess I would lean toward letting them do their thing.
	And here's another story.
	You probably saw this.
	Apparently there's a Chinese drone maker, of the smaller drones, the kind that law enforcement would use, And this gigantic Chinese company just dropped their price or donated some of them, and they're putting their drones in lots of different local police forces.
	And part of what the drones are doing is flying around and looking for social distancing violators.
	Do you feel comfortable with that?
	Do you feel comfortable that there's basically a Chinese-made computer, because each of the drones has a little intelligence in it, There's a little computer in those drones from China that's flying around and collecting information on our citizens.
	What kind of information is it collecting?
	What does it know just by flying around and being part of the police force?
	Could it listen in on the police force?
	I don't know. Could the drones be modified to collect information we don't know they're collecting?
	I don't know. Could anybody ever take advantage of any of the administrative or data that gets sent up to headquarters?
	Does that even happen? Does anything get sent to headquarters?
	I don't know. But does it matter?
	Does it matter?
	You've got a Chinese-made computer that they're giving away to local law enforcement?
	No. No, you can't let that company into the United States.
	Apparently Homeland Security has already banned them from Homeland Security.
	But the local police force is like, hey, free drone.
	Of course I want a free drone.
	Do I want a free drone?
	Yeah. Give me a free drone.
	That's what the local police say.
	So they're accepting all these Chinese spy drones.
	They're not made exactly for spying, but you know what I mean.
	And let me ask you this.
	Do you think the United States has any companies that make some drones?
	I think so.
	I think the United States has companies that make drones.
	Yes. Lots of them.
	Why the hell are we buying Chinese drones?
	We need to get rid of that immediately.
	In fact, let's just get rid of everything we buy from China.
	If there's any substitute in the United States, I don't care if it costs more.
	Of course, that's easy for me to say.
	I know. I know. All right.
	So that's going on.
	There's a Massachusetts golf course owner who's going to defy the state's lockdown and reopen for business.
	And this is a way more interesting story than it sounds like as a headline.
	Because the family that's reopening, I guess it's family-owned golf courses, the family that's doing this in defiance of the state just lost a family member to coronavirus, just lost a grandmother in a tragic situation.
	So whoever the representative of the family was saying, believe me, we get it.
	We're not confused about how deadly this is.
	Grandma just died from it.
	And we still want to open up the golf course, partly because it's something you can social distance a little bit easier than most, but also because there's no choice.
	There's just no choice.
	People need to eat.
	Got to get going. So I would say I support this Massachusetts golf course.
	If it opened in my state, I would go golf.
	The police would come, probably.
	Probably. And maybe I'd have to go home.
	But if they reopened the next day, I'd try to go golf again.
	And the police would come, they'd send me home.
	And then maybe some other businesses would try to reopen.
	Maybe there would be too many businesses for the police.
	Maybe. Don't know.
	Am I... Am I suggesting civil disobedience?
	I'm not suggesting it.
	I'm saying it's coming.
	I don't need to suggest it.
	Civil disobedience is guaranteed.
	This is America. Have you heard?
	Have you heard of Americans?
	You've probably heard of us, right?
	Most of you are American.
	We like to protest.
	So, I mean, we protest a ham sandwich.
	So, do you think anybody's going to have some civil disobedience about closing down the economy for another month?
	Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it's coming.
	So, I put some questions, or I put a tweet on Twitter, and told people to ask me questions, and I would answer them.
	And by the way, are you seeing that every day we get conflicting data about hydroxychloroquine?
	I feel as though every day somebody says, hey, it's great, this trial, well, it's not conclusive, but looks good.
	And then 10 minutes later, yeah, you know, here's all the reasons why it probably doesn't work.
	And I feel like we can't get any good information.
	What was the last thing we learned about that was actually true?
	Have we learned anything that's true about the coronavirus?
	Just fact check me on this.
	Is there even one thing about the coronavirus, one scientific or other data fact that actually turned out to be true?
	From the viral amount of it to what it was, the spreading to humans, do masks work?
	Are ventilators good or bad?
	Think of that. Name one thing we got right.
	I can't. I can't think of one thing we got right.
	We didn't have enough of stuff, and then we had too much of stuff.
	Name one thing we got right.
	Nothing. Not a single thing.
	Now, I'm not too harsh about getting things wrong in a context of a pandemic, because your first actions were just guessing, really.
	All right. I'm looking for my own tweet in which I ask people to ask me questions.
	If you would like to ask me a question, that's where you should have put it.
	There are 200 questions.
	Will Trump debate Biden in person?
	I'm feeling like the odds are no.
	If I had to bet on it right now, I'd say 70% no would be my bet.
	There would be two reasons for that.
	Number one... I think that the Democrats will do everything they can to not have a debate.
	They'll use the coronavirus excuse, etc.
	Trump will probably say he wants to do it.
	Biden might also say he wants to do it, but gosh, if only I could.
	No, I don't think it'll happen.
	And I think that the Democrats know that that's a losing proposition, so they'll use the coronavirus to avoid it, I think.
	Why are healthy people being quarantined?
	Because they could become carriers.
	Why are we still asking that question?
	How did we get to May?
	And there's somebody, and I know this user, because we interact a lot on Twitter, but this is somebody who's really following And I'm not making fun of you.
	I'm just honestly curious.
	How could you get all the way to May and not know at least the argument for why healthy people are being locked down?
	The argument is that they won't be healthy.
	They'll go out and get it and bring it back and kill grandma.
	Now, you could argue that that's not a good enough reason.
	You could say that the costs are greater than the benefits.
	That would be an argument. But to ask why are healthy people being quarantined?
	Don't we all know that now?
	I mean, I'm not saying it's the right answer, but we should know the reason.
	All right, and so we're seeing people criticizing Trump on the 60,000 expected deaths, and you saw it on Worldometer.
	Well, yeah, the numbers are all over the place, and everybody speaks...
	Imprecisely about them? And you saw me do it just a moment ago.
	So I was looking, I was reading CNN, looking at it, and I realized that the CNN report doesn't tell me if that's the low estimate, the likely estimate, or the high, or what?
	I mean, what good is that?
	When you've got a vast range, and they give me one number?
	I don't know.
	Is that the low? The middle?
	It's all useless information.
	What do I think about the 1619 Project?
	So that's the New York Times project where they were going to write a long series about institutional racism and how it all came from slavery, etc.
	And I guess they got the Pulitzer Prize for that, which Pulitzer Prize is like six people sitting in the living room who saw.0001% of the creative stuff that got created that year, and they said, oh, we like this one.
	The most useless, stupid, completely non-prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize.
	It's just ridiculous. It'd be like you just making up a prize.
	I'd like to give the Carl and Jane Prize for literature.
	It's just me, you know, just Jane and me.
	We just sat in our living room, and we decided we'd like this book better than this one, so we're going to give it the Carl and Jane prestigious award.
	That is exactly as valuable as the Pulitzer Prize.
	No difference. It's just some people in their living room, probably got together on Zoom, and said, do you read these seven books that were submitted?
	Yeah, which one do you like?
	They're all pretty good.
	How about this one? Yeah, all right.
	Pulitzer Prize. Useless.
	All right. And then I guess historians complained that some of the articles that came out of that 1619 project were inaccurate.
	I would go further and say that they were written for naked political purposes and that we shouldn't take any of it too seriously.
	Andreas asks, how have you stayed motivated before Dilbert became a success?
	Excellent question.
	And the answer is, for my entire life as a young person, I expected to be successful.
	And successful on some kind of a level where the rest of the world noticed, you know, not just sort of successful privately, but successful in some way that the public knew about it.
	And I've never not felt it.
	I think I was born with that feeling.
	I mean, I felt it from my earliest memories.
	I always thought, I'm going to be famous someday.
	Just always. And I've told this story before that adults would tell me that too when I was a kid.
	They would say, someday you're going to be really rich and famous.
	And I never knew why they were saying that.
	I mean, I knew I thought it myself, but I also didn't know if everybody thought that.
	I kind of wonder, how many of you, let me ask in the comments while I'm finishing my story here, how many of you, when you were a kid, thought that you would be famous someday?
	I'm just wondering. Because I always thought I would.
	Obviously, that causes you to make certain choices in your life that make it more likely it's going to happen.
	So there's a causal element there.
	But how many of you thought you would be famous when you were kids?
	I'm just curious. Because when I was a kid, I didn't know if it was just the way everybody felt.
	I thought maybe everybody was optimistic and dreamed about good things.
	But I didn't dream about it.
	I expected it.
	It just was a different feeling.
	I can tell the difference when I'm just dreaming about stuff.
	I'm looking at people's answers.
	This is fascinating. I didn't know where this would go.
	There were a lot of yeses. I see some no's.
	Oh my goodness. That's very common.
	I had no idea which way that question was going to go.
	Apparently it's universal.
	I mean, not universal because I see some no's.
	But if I were just based on the answers, which is very non-representative of the sample, it's just the people who wanted to answer, I don't know what percentage, but we can conclude from the comments that a lot of people thought that they would be famous someday.
	Interesting. So I guess I should take it to be nothing, because it felt like it was almost a premonition.
	But if everybody had the same premonition and it didn't work out for most people, I'd have to say it's just how kids feel, I guess.
	So to finish this answer, how do I stay motivated?
	I've never not been motivated.
	So I don't know what it's like to feel unmotivated.
	I don't even know what that feels like.
	Because I've always felt almost like there was a problem with myself that I needed to fix.
	When we talk about success and motivation and things, we tend to, because we're America and we're a certain type of people, we tend to put the most positive spin on success.
	And we say motivation, ambition, we tend to put a positive frame on those things because we like to encourage people to do those things.
	Makes sense. But when you're actually that person, And you're the person who has that ambition and has that motivation.
	It doesn't always feel like it's a positive.
	It feels like a flaw that you're trying to fix.
	Now, I don't know how many other people would back me up on that feeling.
	That may be highly individual.
	I don't know. But what I feel like is a continuous weight on me that I should have done more.
	And I can't shake it.
	I wake up thinking I should have done more, and I go to bed thinking I should have done more that day.
	And I can't wait to wake up.
	I hate sleep. I just dislike the old idea of sleeping, because it takes me away from my day.
	And my day is when I can do stuff, and I can get stuff done.
	I can accomplish things.
	I can make a difference.
	When I'm sleeping, Sleeping is like suspended animation.
	Sleeping is like practice for being dead.
	Sleeping has no place in my world, except, unfortunately, it's necessary for good health.
	So you should do everything you can to sleep a healthy amount.
	I don't want to convince anybody to sleep less, but I'm just telling you how I feel.
	So to answer André's question, I've never felt unmotivated, so I suspect...
	Some of that is just baked into your nature.
	I don't know.
	It's always been there.
	It's never gone away.
	And it feels like an itch that can't be scratched.
	But I spend my whole life scratching anyway.
	Is that good? I don't know.
	Because I don't know if I have the capability to be, let's say, retired.
	I'm at that age where everybody thinks seriously about it.
	And, you know, there are many times I've thought, you know, wouldn't it be great to be retired?
	What if I could wake up and just do anything I wanted?
	What if I didn't have to work?
	What if I could sleep as long as I want, do anything I want when I wake up, not worry about money, and just live out my days You know, like a perfect free human that nobody ever gets to be.
	Like, nobody ever gets to be free.
	Just wake up, do what you want, not run out of money.
	Who gets to do that?
	I have no interest in that.
	I have no interest.
	Because that's available to me now.
	I could stop working.
	You know, I know you hate me for it, especially now when people are having a tough time.
	But it's just the truth.
	I could stop working.
	I could just wake up and just eat and play around and just have a good time for the rest of my life.
	I could. I have no interest in it.
	It sounds like hell to me because it doesn't scratch my itch.
	It doesn't make me feel like I've done anything useful.
	And I don't mean useful for myself because I already got what I need.
	I'm almost entirely externally focused at this point in my career because if it's not good for you...
	Not interested. If it doesn't help someone else, no interest at all.
	Not even a little bit.
	So my ambition, to sort of further to Andrea's question, my ambition has changed over the years from a pure personal ambition to, you know, I've got to get somewhere personally, to, oh, now what do I do?
	Because once I got it, what do I do?
	What am I going to do with that?
	And so almost immediately upon getting what I thought I wanted, my ambition changed to external.
	And I thought to myself, well, could I run for public office?
	And I thought, what would be a bigger waste of my talents than to put me in a meeting?
	You know, if you've watched me long enough, you say to yourself, okay, what is it that you're good at?
	What is it that you could contribute to the world?
	And now you've got to go raise money and attend meetings.
	It's just been the biggest waste of time ever for my specific set of talents.
	So I try to find ways such as this in which I could do something that would be potentially useful, which is why I've started to put the micro-lessons on I'm always motivated.
	It's just the nature of it changed.
	Shata says, what are some techniques to wake up and start the day off great?
	And the answer is, if you don't drink coffee, I don't know what the answer to that question is.
	One of the things that I teach...
	In fact, just yesterday, somebody said that this lesson changed their life.
	So what I'm going to tell you now...
	This will be the short version of it, but somebody just told me yesterday, it changed their life to hear this idea, that we're moist robots.
	I wrote about this in my head, I failed almost everything and still win big book, you see on the shelf back there.
	And the idea of a moist robot is that it just responds to inputs.
	So if you put an input into a computer, you'll get an output.
	And that if you treat yourself like that, instead of some kind of mental creature, If you treat yourself as a mind, you don't know what to do with it.
	You don't quite know how to manage a mind.
	It's more of a concept.
	But if you manage your physical body and you manage it right, you can produce the right kind of thoughts and actions and stuff that your mind likes.
	So I teach people to reprogram their mind by programming their physical environment and their physical body and also associating Rewards with things they want their physical body to do.
	So one of the things that I want to do is wake up and be productive.
	Who doesn't, right? If it were free and easy and didn't take any work, wouldn't you all want to wake up and be productive?
	You might want to wake up at different times, but everybody wants to be productive.
	So I use the moist robot technique to train myself like a dog.
	And the way I do that is I say, hey, if you do this trick, you'll get a treat.
	And the treat is this protein bar, this specific one, because it's one that I like.
	I'm not saying you'll like it. I'm just saying I like it.
	And delicious cup of coffee, which when combined in the same bite, a bite of the chocolate peanut butter protein bar, with the sips of coffee, It's really, really good.
	And the coffee wakes me up, it gives me a buzz, and my body registers the buzz.
	It's a little shot of energy, and your body recognizes that as a treat.
	And then you do the taste treat, and maybe you were a little hungry when you woke up anyway, and then those two tastes go together, and it's like a taste explosion of awesomeness.
	Now, it doesn't matter that you don't like these things, because if you were doing it, you would pick your own treat.
	Your treat might be, I don't know, watch a TV show.
	Your treat might be take a walk in the morning.
	Maybe it's whatever you like.
	But the trick is, for whoever said, how do you wake up in the morning, is you should pair your wake-up routine, and you should turn it into a routine, so it's not different every day, with a treat.
	A really, really good one.
	And let me tell you, if you heard this and said to yourself, a protein bar and a cup of coffee...
	That's not much of a treat.
	That's just food and beverage.
	You could have food and beverage all day.
	Why is that a treat?
	Well, the thing you might miss is how much I like it.
	So if you don't like it, find something that you do.
	I really, really like the first two hours of my day.
	By far, they're extraordinary.
	The first two hours of every day for my life are extraordinary pretty much every time.
	There's almost nothing else that's as good the rest of the day unless Christina's involved.
	How popular will pop-up drive-in movies be this summer?
	Well, I saw that somebody's got some pop-up movie theaters that already happened.
	So I predicted that that would happen.
	And I know it's happened at least one place, maybe more.
	And there have been the drive-in...
	Church services as well.
	And I guess the people just parking in a parking lot and listening to the pastor on their car radio turned out to be too dangerous, which is ridiculous.
	If I had to guess, you'll see more of that in the summer, but not much more.
	Practical Bob says this.
	Is KB, I assume he's referring to my fiancée, Christina, as hot-looking in person as pictures?
	No. No, she is not.
	Christina is not as hot-looking in person.
	She is way hotter.
	Way hotter in person.
	There is no photograph that could ever capture her total beauty.
	So no, I'm sad to say...
	That she does not look as good as her pictures.
	She looks way better than her pictures.
	Way better. That's true, by the way.
	And the 15-minute COVID tests, can it be done at a time or is it one at a time?
	Well, that's a good question.
	Do you have to wait 15 minutes before you do the next test?
	And the answer is, I doubt it.
	I would assume that they can batch them up and just test, test, test, and then everybody's just waiting for results.
	Or at the very least, you've got more than one test station.
	So, yeah, there might be ways to make that faster.
	The New York Times calling for the DNC to investigate Tara Reade's complaint.
	How can they suggest such a thing with a straight face?
	It does make you wonder.
	Yeah, there's so much happening in the news that you just look at it and you say, do they really mean that?
	Or are they just saying that because they know it sounds good?
	You really can't tell anymore, can you?
	You really can't tell if people mean what they say in any real way.
	Do I follow brilliant geopolitical writer Peter Zahn?
	I don't I don't know if I follow him.
	I've read his stuff, but I'm not too familiar.
	I answered about the armed protesters.
	Sweet Caroline says, do you think most grown people will do what's proper, and if they want to work, they should be able to?
	And the answer is yes.
	Most people will do most things properly.
	But 20% will not.
	If 20% don't do...
	What they should do. Is that good enough?
	Will the other 80% be okay if the 20% don't do what they're supposed to do?
	And the answer is they won't be.
	When the 20% don't do their social distancing, etc., it will be a problem and it will extend to other people.
	But there also isn't another way.
	So I don't like to complain about things that can't change as a general rule.
	I probably do, but it's a good rule not to complain about things that can't change.
	And one thing that can't change is that you're not going to get 100% of adults to act like adults.
	There's no practical way that that could ever happen.
	So it shouldn't be part of our planning to assume that it would.
	So assuming that 100% of people or anything close to it Would obey social distancing would be, I think, probably unwise.
	Yeah, 20% failure rate could be catastrophic, but we don't know.
	So again, I'll throw this in the category of, is there any expert who can answer this question?
	No. No, there's no expert who can answer that question.
	It's just one of our many unknowns.
	Okay. Let's see.
	The research professor in Pittsburgh that was on the verge of making significant findings on how he was just found murdered in his home.
	What? Is this new?
	He was a coronavirus researcher, dead?
	Huh. Looks like a murder-suicide?
	I don't know. Questions?
	I got questions. Who knows?
	What do your notes look like for these periscopes?
	That's a funny question.
	The answer is, I just print them out before I start, and if it looks like there's a lot of text on the page, I didn't type that.
	I just cut and paste from news headlines, and then I talk about the headline.
	So usually I have two pages of notes that are just cut and paste from the What's happening?
	Some tweets and stuff. Does the Communist Party of China provide levels of remuneration to social media giants that should concern us?
	Well, you know, it's funny.
	In every situation that we know of in life, whoever has the most money in that situation ends up controlling it.
	Now that's worked out pretty well for the United States for a long time because the United States always had the most money.
	So we could have the most influence over institutions because we funded them, the most influence over other countries because we supported them militarily.
	So it's just a fact that whoever has the most money, be they the billionaire in the room or the rich country, They influence things more.
	There's no way to stop that because it's a power.
	They have it. They can use it.
	It's legal. It's going to happen.
	The problem is that China, simply by its size alone, will come to have more money than the United States.
	So if the United States and China both did, let's say, similarly well with their economy, just because of the number of people in China, they would be...
	Is it four times as big?
	Three times as big? Somebody do the math for me.
	Three times as big? Three to four times as big?
	So China should have something like three to four times more money should they even pull even with us in economics, you know, per capita, so to speak.
	So... In theory, China will dominate the world.
	It's just math.
	There's no way it can not happen.
	The only way China could not dominate the world in the future is if their economy doesn't grow as well as ours does.
	And so in order for the United States to continue its probably oversized dominance of a lot of things that we don't even know about, You have to assume that the United States does what China is doing, which is to use their power and influence and everything else to, you know, buy us everything that we can buy us in our direction.
	In order to keep that up, China has to do less well in the long run.
	One way they could do less well is we could send them back their stupid spy drones and we could not buy stuff in China in the future.
	So that would help. So yes, we should be very worried about their monetary influence on social media as well as every other part of our existence.
	What will happen to office politics in the age of mostly staying home, I guess?
	That's a good question.
	Because I do wonder, what is the value of all the in-person interaction in the office?
	The thinking has always been that all of this casual interaction in the office leads to positive but unplanned benefits.
	You cross-pollinate with ideas and you find somebody to work with and you get your answers quickly and all that.
	But nobody's ever tested that.
	I'm not aware of any scientific evidence that would suggest that being in the same office gives you a better result.
	We feel it intuitively like it's true, because you can influence somebody personally in a way that you can't influence them as well over video, so does that make a difference?
	We don't know.
	We only know it'll be different.
	So it could be that the politics will decrease, the time wasters will decrease, but there might be other problems.
	The work-at-homers will start just not answering their phone.
	That would be my guess.
	I think where it's all going is that when it's new, and everybody's working at home, and you're not used to it yet, you answer your phone when it rings, and you answer your Zooms and your Skypes.
	But something tells me that as we do more and more work at home, everybody will learn that the smart people don't answer the phone.
	And then what happens?
	I don't know. Will Biden be the candidate in November?
	I'd say 50-50.
	But whether or not he's actually the candidate on the ticket in November, I do think people will be looking at the Vice President.
	Speaking of which, oh my God, did you see what the President did last night?
	I think it was last night on an interview.
	Trump said that he thinks Biden should pick Elizabeth Warren because she deserves it.
	And I tweeted, nothing makes me happier than watching Trump give Biden bad advice.
	It is so diabolical.
	It is so funny.
	You know he does it with a twinkle in his brain.
	He's not letting on that this is a joke.
	But it is so diabolical, the way he gets in the heads of competitors.
	I would hate to golf with him.
	Have you ever thought to yourself, what would it be like to just golf with Trump?
	Let's say you were pretty good.
	You were a good golfer.
	Can you imagine how much he would get in your head before you even hit the first golf ball?
	I can't imagine he ever loses at golf, even if he plays people who are better, because he probably so messes with their psychology that by the time they try to swing, they're hitting the ball backwards.
	Anyway, here's the beauty part of suggesting that Biden owes it to one.
	She deserves it.
	Because when you use language like that, That's like emotional language.
	So he's trying, of course, to get the Democrats spun up to fight with each other, which is so funny.
	I saw that tweet.
	I'm like, oh, you just have to keep doing this.
	Because I think it's the second time now he's given bad advice to Biden, but made it act like he was serious.
	Yeah, I got your back on this whole terror raid thing.
	I think you should go out there and defend yourself.
	And when you hear...
	When you hear the president's bad advice to Biden, and you know he's only doing it because Biden is mentally degraded, let's face it, he's mentally degraded, these things wouldn't work with somebody who is more capable, but Biden is not that person.
	So the president can just totally mess with the psychology of their situation, do it with a straight face, and the news doesn't even know how to report this, because they can't tell, I don't know, is he kidding?
	Was that a joke? Is he trying to mess with them?
	Or does he really think that Elizabeth Warren would be, what's going on here?
	And of course, he's messing with them.
	It should be pretty obvious.
	I don't have to read his mind to know that.
	I would call that an obvious one.
	But here's the beauty of it.
	First of all, Elizabeth Warren would be the worst choice because she's stronger than Biden.
	That's rule number one of picking your vice president.
	You want the public to say, okay, of these two people, it's obvious which one is the presidential candidate, and it's obvious which one is the vice president, because they're like a weaker version of the president, right?
	If you see Donald Trump and Mike Pence, you know who is the president, right?
	I always say good things about Pence.
	I don't agree with him on a lot of stuff, on the religious stuff, etc.
	We don't see eye to eye.
	But Pence is a good egg, I think.
	He's just a good, solid citizen.
	And he's a perfect vice president because he just doesn't make too many mistakes.
	He didn't wear that mask that one time, but that's no biggie.
	But if you take Elizabeth Warren, And put her side by side with Biden, everybody's going to say, you see what's wrong here, right?
	Elizabeth Warren's like twice as capable as Biden.
	It's not even close. Mentally, if you were to...
	Let's say you were to give them both an SAT test or an LSAT or an IQ test.
	Elizabeth Warren versus Biden...
	That's not going to be close.
	Say what you will about your Elizabeth Warrens, and I have, but she's super smart.
	Can't say the same for Biden.
	So if you put her as the vice presidential choice, it just ruins everything.
	Which is why it's hilarious that he would say that she's earned it.
	He can't even say no.
	She's earned it. So that if he doesn't pick her, the president has put in their heads That he picks somebody who didn't earn it.
	So let me further my long-held prediction by saying this.
	If you picture Elizabeth Warren and Biden, you know, just in your mind, your mind's eye, picture them side by side.
	As I said, Warren looks stronger.
	Now picture Kamala Harris side by side with Biden.
	Ah, now you see it, don't you?
	Now you see it.
	Kamala Harris is close to, sort of similar to Biden.
	She didn't get far enough in the primaries to be sort of Elizabeth Warren level.
	She's one level down.
	She's just about equivalent with Biden, but she's strong enough because she went through the process of running for president.
	She's strong enough that if she were to become president, people would say, ah, that's legitimate.
	She was in the primaries.
	She made a dent in the primaries.
	She's a legitimate presidential candidate.
	People took her seriously.
	She had a lot of supporters.
	She didn't make it that far in the primaries, but she's a serious candidate.
	Yes, we accept her as our new president.
	if that's the way it's gonna go.
	So Kabbalah, she checks off every box.
	And somebody says, Scott is still trying to persuade his prediction into reality.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Do you think the Democrats are listening to me?
	Do you think there's anything that I'll say that could persuade the Democrats?
	My assumption is that they're going to end up there on their own because that's just water traveling downhill.
	In other words, the path of least resistance, I didn't create.
	I'm not the person who created the path.
	I'm simply describing it.
	I'm just standing there saying, look, there's two paths.
	One of them, this Elizabeth Warren, is a brick wall.
	You can see it. I'm not making the brick wall there.
	I'm just saying, you can see it too.
	I didn't put that brick wall there.
	Now look at Kamala Harris.
	It's a different path. Yeah, there's nothing in that path.
	There's nothing stopping her from being president.
	If Biden stays in, picks her as VP, wins the election, I think that's unlikely.
	But that would be the path.
	Stacey Abrams, I think, just can't be taken seriously.
	Think about the bad feelings you have for Kamala Harris.
	Think about your emotional feeling about Kamala Harris.
	And now ask yourself, how different is that from the emotional feeling That Democrats felt when Trump started becoming a serious candidate.
	Think about how they felt about him.
	It was like this visceral...
	It was almost like you disliked him before you had a reason.
	There was something about his personality, his braggadocia, his playing loose with the facts.
	It was like, ah! Ah!
	Now, maybe you and I didn't feel that, but you certainly observed that the Democrats were having this Just contempt feeling.
	That's like, you know, almost a bodily hatred for Trump.
	Now ask yourself, did that stop him from becoming president?
	No. Because that thing that made people hate Trump is just the other side of the thing that made people fall in love with him.
	And there are people who support Trump who are almost cult-like.
	They just love him. And this is true of Obama and other people as well.
	It's not just Trump. But Trump causes your emotions to catch on fire.
	And you either love him or you hate him, but there's not a lot in between, which is actually pretty predictive of somebody who could become president.
	The one you don't want is where everybody says, well, I don't love him.
	I don't really hate him.
	He's just in this middle ground somewhere.
	That's where Biden is. That's why Biden is so weak.
	Because he doesn't make you love him.
	He doesn't make you hate him.
	He just exists.
	That's usually not a good sign of future leadership.
	Kamala Harris, the moment I mention her name, some of you just go enraged.
	Yeah, that's too strong. But you have an emotional reaction to her.
	People are saying, ah, she slept her way to the top.
	She put people in jail.
	She lied about some racist stuff she accused somebody of.
	She'll do anything.
	She's a schemer. Think about what you feel about her.
	Don't you feel a stronger emotion, negative, about Kamala than some other people?
	Ask yourself, do you have the same feeling about Kamala?
	Like, just examine your internal feeling as you did of, say, Cory Booker.
	You might have said, oh, I don't think Cory Booker should be president.
	But do you have the same visceral feel for Cory Booker?
	I'll bet you don't. I'll bet you say, you know, Cory Booker looks like a good guy.
	He's just not the guy I'd want for president.
	How about Andrew Yang? Does anybody hate Andrew Yang?
	Probably not. Probably basically nobody.
	But do you get, like, super excited?
	Well, you get excited in a certain way with Yang.
	You know, he's interesting and stuff.
	But he doesn't cause you to love him like some people do.
	You don't hate him.
	You don't love him.
	He's interesting. But he's interesting in the middle.
	So here's my overall statement of that.
	The fact that you have such a negative feeling about Kamala Harris tells you there's something about her that's reaching you emotionally.
	If it's true...
	That there's another side to that.
	She might actually be able to move Democrats emotionally as well.
	So look for the person who can make you feel something.
	She definitely makes you feel something.
	I don't know if there's a positive side to that yet.
	I haven't really seen it. But she definitely makes you feel the negative if you're on the other team.
	So follow the power of emotion.
	Same with AOC. You can hate everything about AOC, But just examine the depth of your feeling.
	That's the thing that is predictive.
	It's the depth of it.
	Not your intellectual opinions.
	What is your favorite movie?
	At least at the moment.
	I dislike movies as an art form.
	Because in 2020, they just take too long.
	They're too self-indulgent.
	It's more about the director.
	And they put ridiculous hackneyed crap in every movie now.
	If I see one more...
	By the way, I have a rule.
	Let me tell you my rule for watching drama.
	I will turn on a movie.
	Okay, got good ratings, lots of action.
	I can watch that sometimes.
	As soon as the star, or any part of the movie, is tied to a chair, I turn it off.
	That's my rule. I've been following this for years.
	Do you know how many movies I've turned off because at some point somebody is tied to a chair?
	Yeah, 75%. 75% of all action movies I turn off when they get to the tied to the chair part.
	Because first of all, I don't want to see it.
	Everything that happens with that tied to the chair part is going to be unpleasant.
	I don't want to think about it.
	I don't want to imagine it even as a fiction.
	I don't want it in my head. I just need to fast-forward past that part, but I'm not gonna.
	The fact that you put that in there, and you thought that I wanted to watch that, it's just hackneyed, it's boring, it's redundant, and if that's the best you can do for your movie, I'm out.
	Like, if that's your symbol of creativity, why don't I do what everybody else does, tie somebody to a chair, I'm out.
	Alright, I'm a little bit over time here, so I don't want to go too far.
	Let's see if there's one more question.
	How much testing is needed to accomplish something useful in opening the country?
	My answer is, and I'm pretty confident to this, let's put my confidence at 75-80%.
	So, you know, a good solid 20-25%, I might be wrong about this.
	But my current thinking about testing is we can't get there.
	At all. That there's no way to test enough that we will consider in the end when we look back at it, oh, thank goodness we had enough testing and the right kind of testing and we tested the right people in the right way that we really got a handle in this thing.
	My prediction is there's nothing that looks even remotely like that's going to happen.
	Not even a little bit.
	We're nowhere near being able to test in the right way, fast enough, etc.
	Now, I have optimism in humanity in the sense that maybe something will get invented.
	But somebody would have to invent something that could be scaled up quickly that doesn't yet exist.
	Is that going to happen in three months?
	Or one month when we need it?
	I don't think so. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
	Could happen. You know, I'd like to keep that solid 20%.
	Maybe it'll happen. And I do think, generally speaking, that humanity will rise to the challenge.
	And as we're looking at this crushing amount of death that we're looking at for going back to work, if I had to bet, we're going to be super, super clever in the next 30 days.
	And that we will just devise things, you know, mechanisms, systems, technologies, inventions, I mean, it's going to look crazy in the next 30 days of how much human innovation just pops out of this.
	Some of it might be important and make a difference.
	I don't think it'll be the testing.
	If you had to guess, testing is just one of many variables that could make a difference.
	So what are the odds it's that one single one?
	I'm going to bet against it.
	So I'm going to say the testing will not be your answer, and I say the same thing about vaccines.
	I don't think the vaccine...
	Hope is real, frankly.
	I don't think it's real. I think that's just to make you feel good.
	It might work.
	But if we can come up with a coronavirus vaccine for the first time in human history, well, wouldn't that be surprising, if you know what I mean?
	All right. Does it make sense for Bill Gates to speak in favor of China's government's handling of the plague?
	And the answer is, I'm going to back Bill Gates every time he says something that is true, even if you don't like it.
	So is it true that the Chinese government acted aggressively and decisively in a way that only they could and probably made a big difference in the plague?
	I would say yes. I would agree with Bill Gates that as far as we can tell, We might find out something later.
	But as far as we could tell, it looks like China effectively handled it, even if you don't like the way they did it.
	Even if you don't like the fact that they locked people in their houses until they starved or whatever the hell happened.
	If you don't like the fact that they...
	There's lots of stuff not to like.
	But what I like about Bill Gates is he'll give you the difficult answer if it's also true.
	It's a difficult answer.
	Because do I want to say in public, yeah, you know, I got my criticisms, but if you looked at the big picture, the Chinese government took care of business.
	Maybe not in the way their citizens wanted them to.
	Probably a lot of victims out of that, but...
	You gotta say, it looks like they got past it, maybe.
	So, I favor Bill Gates saying things that are honest.
	That's one of his primary benefits to the country, I think, is that he does tell you what actually is true.
	He's also the largest donor to the World Health Organization and has conflicts of interest.
	Well, here's the thing. Tell me, if you will, what you think Bill Gates' intention is.
	If I thought that Bill Gates was trying to make money or influence politics, I would have a very different opinion of him.
	But you know that's not true, right?
	You know Bill Gates is not in this for the money, don't you?
	I mean, really? Don't you know that?
	That he's not into this for the money?
	Because it kind of wouldn't make sense for him to be in it for the money.
	I mean, not this.
	You think he decided to be the richest guy in the world and go spend a lot of time working on African toilet design, which he does, because he's trying to make some money on toilets?
	No! No!
	Bill Gates is the real deal.
	And maybe the reason I can see it In my opinion, more clearly, is because I'm the smallest version of him, meaning that I've experienced making my own money and then running out of things to do.
	I just talked about it earlier.
	I took care of myself.
	Now what do I do?
	And it's quite natural that you're, because you're a human living in a human society, that the next thing you say is, oh, I'm Well, if I took care of myself and my family, let's see what I can do for the world.
	So, I guarantee it.
	There are very few things I would say with 100% certainty.
	This will be one of them.
	I guarantee it.
	100% that Bill Gates is the real deal.
	Meaning that he's only doing it to help the world.
	Period. Nothing else.
	No, you could say, oh, it's good for him, too, because...
	People will feel good about his legacy or whatever.
	Okay, sure.
	I mean, that's part of it, too.
	But it's not the reason. It's not the reason.
	I don't do anything for a legacy because I expect to be dead.
	I don't think Bill Gates is a believer.
	I don't think he believes in the afterlife.
	I'm not positive about that.
	I don't know if he's talked about it.
	But I don't think he's playing for his legacy.
	I think he's playing for right now.
	I think he's the real deal.
	That's it. I'll talk to you tonight.

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