My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
Joel Osteen says God is updating his software
Politico says it's Kamala Harris for VP
Joe Lockhart pushes "Fine People Hoax" as #ObamaGate trends
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Well, you know what. Time for coffee with Scott Adams.
Printing out my notes here.
I'm a little bit late.
Yes, I did a little thing called sleeping in.
Don't like to do that a lot.
Yeah, late again.
Overslept.
So, I know what you'd like to do probably this morning.
You'd probably like to join in on the simultaneous sip, and all it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day, I think it makes everything better, including the damn pandemic.
Damn pandemic.
Yeah.
Go! So Periscope has this minor bug in it that if you use a certain kind of headset where you can talk and listen, you have to remember to hit a button before you go live or else you can't talk to people.
So I had to redo it.
And that's all it was.
Good morning, good morning.
Let me grab my notes.
Don't go anywhere.
Well today the news looks like it's all repeat news.
Let me do the news for today, but I can also do the news for every day for the next three weeks.
Are you ready? Here's the news every day for the next three weeks.
There are some doctors in Provoflof who are doing a study on a new potential coronavirus treatment called Provoflof.
They have signed up people But it's not completely a good study because they don't have a good control group.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we're waiting on that.
Tuesday, the news will be, there's some doctors and blah, blah, blah.
They're testing some blah, blah, blah.
They're getting some people, blah, blah, blah.
We hope it works, blah, blah, blah.
I don't believe any of the news about tests anymore, do you?
I really don't. Everything that I see about this, they tried this, and they got a good result, and it's not quite scientific.
It's only 80 people, but it looks good.
I've got a feeling that none of it's real at this point.
It just feels like none of it's real.
Certainly by now, if hydroxychloroquine was a big deal, we'd know it by now, right?
Would you agree? Would you all agree with this statement that if hydroxychloroquine was a magic pill, as opposed to just being a little bit useful, which I think is where it's going to end up, we'd know it by now.
The same with most of the drugs.
If any of the drugs they're testing were really just knocking the crap out of this virus, we'd know it by now.
Let's talk about Obamagate.
When Obamagate first started trending as a hashtag, I didn't even know exactly what it was, but I guess it just refers to looking into the origins of the Russia collusion hoax.
We know now that Barack Obama apparently at least knew that the wiretap on Flynn had happened, but we don't know what else he knew.
What else did he know?
So I was looking at the trending hashtag and there was a tweet just a few minutes ago.
There was a tweet where it showed the hashtag at 2.6 million, which if you don't follow the hashtags, that's a lot.
Because typically a trending hashtag could have like 6,000 tweets or 60,000 if it's a really big one.
That would be a really big hashtag, 60,000 people retweeting it.
Obamagate had 2.6 million.
But here's what's interesting.
Just minutes after it had 2.6 million, it had 2.1 million.
I don't know if it's just a difference between how they count the hashtags at different times.
It might be a lag or something.
But I don't know if it went down or up.
I saw some other people complaining that it went down, but I'm not sure they saw it correctly.
I'm not sure I saw it correctly either.
So the weirdest thing happened last night.
Some of you had the same weird experience, and I want to see how many of you experienced this.
The first part of it, you had to have joined me last night when I was talking about, for the second time, the simulation.
And so I did my little periscope entirely on the topic of the simulation and how to reprogram your reality with stories.
And I'm done with that, and I'm kind of winding down for the night, and I turn on Fox News, and they were ending up a special about Watergate, I guess.
And I guess there was some time left over in which they'd stuck in and extended, I guess, a paid, must have been a paid thing, from Joel Osteen.
Now, typically, Joel would be in front of a church packed full of people, giving them his inspirational message.
But, because of the coronavirus, it was an empty church, and he was just giving his act.
Here's the part... That blew my mind.
It's Joel Osteen.
And the way he decided to talk about the coronavirus, our current situation, is that God was updating his software.
Can you believe that?
And he used the phrase repeatedly throughout his presentation.
He talked about the coronavirus being thought of as a reboot and that God sometimes needs to update the software.
And that he's updating the software, that's what the coronavirus situation is, gives us all time to, you know, take a pause and step back, and that when we go back we will effectively have rebooted civilization along with our understanding of our place in it.
It's exactly what I said, like half an hour before, except I'd left out the Christianity part.
Now the beauty of the simulation is that it works as an overlay on any religion.
You can put it on reincarnation.
Works for that. You can put it on the Islam, any religion you want.
Still works. So what were the odds that I would give a whole 45 minutes of presentation about the universe being a simulation made of software and turn on TV and find one of the most famous Christian preachers saying exactly the same thing?
Now, I'm not promoting his view or him or anything like that.
I know a lot of people like him.
He does a good job of keeping people, let's say, motivated and feeling good about themselves.
And if he makes money from that, I'm okay with that.
I don't think anything about that is too sketchy.
At least anything I've heard.
So if you know something, I haven't heard it.
But that was just weird.
Alright, here's an update on what could be...
My best prediction ever.
Now, I do think that my prediction about evolution, made 22 years ago, pretty darn good, but I'm never going to get attention for that one because people are still...
I don't think people are really going to change their mind about where things are there.
So I'll never get credit for that prediction for a variety of reasons.
But this one, the Harris being the vice presidential pick and then being considered at the top of the ticket, It's getting closer and closer.
Joel Pollack noted in his tweet that Politico is speaking about Harris as the likely one.
Politico is already talking about her as pretty much the one.
They don't go right out in saying it, but the They talk about the activity in the Democratic Party and who likes what and who's talking about what, and it's starting to sound like the consensus is pretty solid around Harris right now.
And they talk about Elizabeth Warren being a strong second, and I think to myself, I don't see it.
If the second place choice is literally impossible, in my view, Let me tell you this.
If Elizabeth Warren is picked for the vice presidential spot, I don't know anything about anything.
To me, that would just blow my whole world apart, because I would just say, I don't understand anything I've watched for the past year, if that happens.
Because what I watched...
Was Warren being basically a death sentence for the Democratic Party?
If they add her to the ticket, what the heck would they be thinking?
Unless they're playing for a draft pick next year, but I don't think it works that way.
So, when your second choice is just ridiculous, doesn't that kind of tell you they've settled on the first choice already?
Because you would have a little better looking second choice, right?
Obviously, Warren is super capable.
I'm not talking about that, but in terms of her fit and whether she can win and all that, it's just an obvious losing proposition.
Yeah, so if that comes in, that will be my finest prediction, but we'll see.
The dumbest pundit, do you have a, does anybody have a nomination for the dumbest political pundit working today?
I want to see your opinions.
Now, when you say dumbest, or when I say dumbest, I don't mean that they lie the most, because you're probably going to say, oh, you know, that's Jim Acosta.
He's the dumbest one. A lot of people watching this would say that.
But I don't have any evidence of that.
You know, they're You have evidence that he's, let's say, a member of one side, but you don't know what he really thinks, right?
Because a lot of people in the public say ridiculous things, but you think to yourself, well, they don't believe him.
That's just their job.
You're a pundit. You say ridiculous things about the other side.
You say your side is magic and awesome.
So you don't really know that they're dumb.
You just know that they've taken a side, right?
But there is one pundit that I gotta say, no matter what he's talking, all he registers is stupid.
Do you know what it is?
Give me some of your guess about a pundit who registers as actually just stupid, not just disagreeing with you.
All right, I'll wait to see your answers.
My nomination is Joe Lockhart.
Joe Lockhart even looks like the dumbest guy on TV, doesn't he?
Alright, now I'm going to be laughing because I'm looking at your choices.
Now, who would say Rachel Maddow?
Now, you could disagree with everything Rachel Maddow says, but how in the world do you say she's dumb?
She's brilliant. You could hate everything she says, but she's brilliant.
There's no question about that.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm seeing names like Silliza, Jay Rubin, Stelter.
I don't think any of them are dumb.
Not even a little bit.
I don't think Don Lemon's dumb.
No, they're the ones, Chris Cuomo, he's not dumb.
They're all the ones that I would put in the category of they're just on a side.
But you compare the names that you've just said to Joe Lockhart, I think it's a different category.
So Joe Lockhart is writing today for CNN.com.
He's wondering why no newspapers have called for the removal of President Trump.
And you say to yourself, what?
What are you even talking about?
Yeah, that's right.
Joe Lockhart's wondering why no newspapers have called like the boards of newspapers where they get together and they say, this is the opinion of our newspaper.
Because he notes that when Nixon was in trouble for Watergate, that there were lots of newspapers that called for Nixon's removal.
And he's saying, how come there's no newspaper doing that for Trump?
Because after all, Trump was guilty of calling those neo-Nazis fine people in Charlottesville.
And I'm just saying, what?
What? Are you kidding me?
First of all, that didn't happen.
Does he really think that happened?
It's the most debunked hoax in all of...
It's literally the most debunked hoax if you count the number of clicks.
Steve Cortez got over six million clicks On his debunking video.
I've probably gotten, I don't know if you added up all of the retweets I've gotten debunking that, several million.
Breitbart's run several stories.
Joel Pollack's run a number of stories debunking it.
How many hits did that get?
So just tens of millions probably of hits debunking this thing and he writes for CNN and of course they don't fact check him even on their own.
It's an opinion piece so they don't fact check him.
And he's wondering.
Now, at the same time that he's wondering why President Trump is not being asked to be removed from office, what's the biggest hashtag in the country?
At the same time, the biggest hashtag is Obamagate.
Literally accusing Obama of something worse than Watergate.
Because Obamagate is way worse than Watergate.
It's not even close.
Watergate was sort of an ordinary little crime that probably didn't have that big of a difference in the end result of anything.
But Obamagate was literally a coup attempt.
These things are not even close.
These are not in the same house.
They're not the same zip code.
If you were ever going to say something was worse than Watergate, Obamagate is a thousand times worse.
And while that's happening right now, exactly right now, not even in the same month, but the same day that's happening, Joe Lockhart is saying that President Trump It should be removed from office and he's puzzled that the newspapers aren't calling for it.
Are you kidding me? Today, of all days, this would be the day the newspapers would call for Trump to be removed after he's been basically cleared of all Russia collusion stuff?
That's when you want to remove him from office?
After he's been cleared of all charges?
And you know that the other side was running a coup?
This is the craziest, dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.
I don't even know how to react to it.
It's almost just I mean, that's what it feels like.
Alright, does anybody have any questions they want to ask me?
I did oversleep a little bit today and the news is boring today.
It's all just repeat news.
It's all repeat news.
What if I told you people who don't agree with your view, evidence or not, will avoid your content?
People who don't agree with me will avoid my content?
Well, that's how it works.
Yeah, somebody's mentioning Don Lemon a lot as being the dumbest pundit.
First of all, I would call him a host, not a pundit, but I have no reason to believe that Don Lemon is dumb.
What we see is taking a team side, but we don't see dumbness.
I mean, he has a pretty high-level job that he does well.
I doubt he's dumb. Senk Eiger?
How do you say Senk's last name?
Eiger? I don't think he's dumb either.
I don't see anything that would suggest that any of these people are dumb.
Mika? Mika's not dumb.
Are you kidding me? Did you see her interview with Biden?
It was very sharp, I thought.
Okay, well enough of that.
Does anybody have any questions that you would like to ask me?
Because I feel as if the news is hitting sort of a rut.
It just feels like the news is going to be the same every day for a while.
We shouldn't have opened up.
Look at the number of deaths.
It's worse than the flu.
Here's our death count. I just feel like it's going to be the same thing for a while.
All right. Let's see who we've got questions from.
I think Flip. Flip, let's see if you have a question.
Flip, do you have a question for me?
People who think in binaries, because it's either all or nothing.
It's we want grandma to die.
I feel like you can't even have a conversation with the average person because it's so polarized.
Well, I do find that just pointing out what you just pointed out usually works in person.
So if you're actually having a real conversation with somebody who's thinking in a binary The high ground maneuver, as I call it, is to take the adult position because if you say to them, well, you know, it's not either or.
It could be somewhere in between.
It could be a little bit of this.
Most people will agree with you that it's somewhere in between.
They will immediately go to the adult position because it's embarrassing to stay at the kids' table When you've already moved to the adult table and said something as adult as, well, you know, it's not as clean as this or that.
You know, there's a lot of gray area in the middle.
Almost everybody in person will come with you, but if you're talking on Twitter, you don't have the back and forth, and so they can just sort of keep their weird position because it's Twitter.
So I wouldn't even bother on Twitter, but in real life, you just point it out and they'll come with you because nobody stays at the kids' table When you're sitting right next to them at the adult table talking like an adult.
They just have to join you or else they just feel like the child in the conversation.
It works every time. So thanks for the question.
Hey, thank you. Rarely do I have advice that is that clean and useful.
All right. Fash, I don't know if this is a name or a label.
Or even if this will work, because it looks like we're not connecting.
Alright, looks like that didn't work.
Let's try someone else.
I think people get stage fright when I select them.
Let's take Cassandra.
Cassandra? Cassandra, are you there?
Hi! Do you have a question for me, Cassandra?
It has been so long since we talked.
I was wondering, you said a lot about Dilbert and losing your job and stuff like that.
I'm wondering, are you going digital?
Is there other ways that we can promote you and build this better?
You're the best. The background on that is I've gotten the Cats on the Roof letter from my syndication company.
Cats on the Roof is a reference to warning that there's Big trouble ahead.
At the moment, the cat's on the roof, but it's not looking good.
By the end of the year, I would not be surprised if I'm not a cartoonist anymore, because there just won't be newspapers.
There may not be enough advertising that even online stuff works.
Of course, I'm not going to be the guy who's complaining because we live in a world where I'm still in better shape than just about everybody.
So I'm not going to bitch about it.
I'm just going to tell you what it is because I think it's good that we all know what everybody's situation is rather than complaining about it.
And what about magazines and stuff?
Will any of those pick you up?
I'm sorry, what? Like magazines or any of those?
Will they pick you up? No, because magazines are all going out of business too.
They're not really big customers.
So here's what I'm doing.
I'm moving to a non-advertising based model.
So some of my material will be on Locals.com.
So I've already moved. That's a subscriber site.
So you can see everything that you can see here will also be there.
Conveniently, but it has a bunch of features that you won't have here and some material that you won't have here.
So I'll be putting special micro lessons there, things that you won't get anywhere else.
So the people who find the most value can simply pay a small amount subscription and they can get it.
And those who don't care will go watch something else.
So I'm kind of drawn to the subscription process, partly because it's optional.
You know, nobody has to do it.
Partly because I'm more comfortable in a situation where somebody says, oh, I got a value, so I'll give you some money that's equal to that value.
I'm always most comfortable there.
The whole advertising thing feels like I'm giving somebody something for free, but then they're penalized by watching a commercial they didn't want to watch.
It's not ideal.
Here's a dollar.
Here's a dollar's worth of value.
We both win. Everybody goes home.
I have great hopes for that.
So far, the subscription service, you can find it at Locals, with an S on it, Locals.com.
Just search for my name. So far, it's working well.
People are signing up. I didn't know how that would go, but it's going great.
Anybody who wants to support me going forward, that would be my preferred way to do it, because that way you get something for your money.
The Patreon stuff.
I tried it. It just doesn't feel right.
I don't like people donating money.
I'd rather that it's a subscription and they get something out of it.
But thank you for the question. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Thank you. All right. Take care.
Bye. All right.
Let's see what Joe has to say.
Joe, come to us.
Let the technology work.
Joe's technology was not working.
Let's try Lowell.
I still don't know why some people don't connect when I try to connect them.
I don't know if they're quitting or not.
This one looks...
Joel, can you hear me?
Hi. Do you have a question for me, Joel?
I do not. My name is Lowell, but I just wanted to tell you, Scott, that you are amazing.
Lowell, why did you change your name to Lowell?
Yeah, go ahead. Well, I just wanted to tell you, Scott, that you're amazing.
Man, I listen to you every day, and you're changing my freaking life.
I don't know. I just wanted to tell you.
I love you, man. Well, I appreciate that.
It would help me to tell me, what would be, could you point something out in particular that changed the way you think?
Is that what's happening?
Yeah. Any particular concept that you thought was especially powerful?
I guess it's kind of hard to put together since you're asking me, but I've read your books, man.
It's been a journey the last couple of years I've been following you, and I just feel like my life has gotten so much better.
Good. How old are you?
I'm 37. 37?
Yeah, the stuff I do seems to work for every age, but the younger you are, the more people find that they have more years to practice what they've learned, so they get a little more value on it.
Good. Well, I'm so glad for the call, and thank you.
Thanks for taking my call, man.
All right. Take care. Lionel, are you on there, Lionel?
Hello, Scott. Hi.
Do you have a question for me, Lilo?
Yes.
The spike of the guns is the coronavirus thing.
Yeah.
Is this going to move the needle at all?
As reality is?
And now they see...
Well, yeah.
Or do you think...
Yeah. I think mostly revert back to normal.
Anytime there's any kind of a shock to the country, people go out and buy guns.
But I think it's mostly the people who already have guns.
I feel like people were just getting extra guns.
I doubt there were too many Democrats who were anti-gun who said to themselves, you know, this is going to put me over the edge.
Now I'm going to get a gun.
There had to be some. But I doubt that there's any kind of long-term shift to that sort of stuff.
So probably we'll just go back to normal.
I have to admit, I always have that same reaction too.
It's like, any trouble?
I better get to the gun store.
But I'm in California, so buying a gun is such a pain in the ass that I think twice.
All right. Yeah, the question was about whether people would buy more guns because of the coronavirus stuff.
They already have, but I don't think it'll be a major change in society after that.
The audience couldn't hear you well, so I'm going to disconnect, but thank you for the call.
All right. Let's see.
Where is...
I was looking for somebody in particular.
I just saw sign on, but I guess we'll go with Norman.
Norman, are you there?
Do you have a question? I did enjoy your interface for reality.
What was the interface for life?
I'm still thinking about it.
I'm hoping it's a lot more than just, you know, the power of positive thinking, which, you know, sometimes can be hard to force yourself to do.
Yeah. I also enjoyed your...
I actually subscribed to Locals just to hear your thoughts on microfinance.
And I'm going to keep some of those in mind.
I'm a lot older than Lowell.
And I did have a question.
I thought the most important question you could ask regarding pundits that are not that sharp is whose predictions have been Proven wrong for most.
Well, you know, on the left, it's almost like a million-way tie, isn't it?
Because I think the people on the left, if you subtract Michael Moore, who was close to being right about Trump, once you subtract him, is there even one person you would say on the left who had anything like a good track record?
Who would you suggest as even in the running for that after Michael Moore?
It's unbelievable how wrong we've been over and over and over and over again.
And when you say we, do you consider yourself part of the left?
That's not what I... I am part of the left.
I am. But when I say we, I mean everybody, because I don't think anybody got it right.
Well, well, well, nobody got it right.
Well, except for you. Okay, except for you.
Of course, of course, of course.
But you're like a black swan.
Maybe. We'll see. If I get the Kamala Harris prediction right, will you admit that it wasn't a black swan?
In other words, you're...
No, I don't mean it was a black swan.
I said you're a black swan.
Oh, I'm a black swan. Okay.
You're like sort of consistently...
That's why people find you so fascinating.
This is why Naval finds you so fascinating because you look at things from a different way and it actually works.
You know, I was thinking about this when...
I was learning to play drums, and this will make sense in a minute.
I was watching some Dave Grohl, of course, famous musician, plays lots of instruments, and he was talking about learning drums, and also the drummer that he hired was talking about it.
And I'm amazed at how many professional musicians learn to play their instrument without taking a lesson.
Now, some of it is they just have some natural talent.
But I think there's some of the magic when people say, how come nobody drums the way Dave Grohl does, considered by many the best rock drummer of all time?
And you see him do it, he just doesn't do it the same way as other people.
And likewise, other great drummers, they simply don't do it the same way.
They've got their own thing. And I think a lot of that has to do with not taking lessons.
Or like Hendrix on the guitar, playing it left-handed and upside down.
The people who are self-taught, they end up looking like more of a better product if it works out.
Now, in my case, I'm a terrible artist who tried to become a cartoonist.
Now, because I didn't go through art school and I was just sort of working it out on my own and trying to figure out what kind of marker pens worked on the paper, I mean, just all of it, I just had to work it out on my own.
And I think that there's something to that that makes it look special when you're done because you can see it came out of one person's mind.
And when you're looking at art, You can tell the difference between a committee art and a one-person creation.
And it's really striking.
I mean, you would know if a committee painted a painting.
You know, you just say, ah, all the parts look good, but I don't know.
It doesn't hold together for some reason.
It doesn't touch me.
But then you see something made by one crazy, you know, Van Gogh or something, and you go, whoa, whoever made that?
That's some art there.
I don't even know how you would make that if you tried to copy it.
And so I wonder that about how I got here, not going through any normal path to be a person talking about politics.
There's some benefits to working it out yourself, and it makes you an original when you got there because you didn't learn it right.
So there's something about not learning it right that I find very appealing, and it works for me, but maybe not for everybody.
It's like if you can persist in your folly, you'll be a genius kind of a thing.
Yeah, I'll give you the simple version of this I wrote about once.
The best way to be a creative person is to try to copy somebody else you like in that field, but do a bad job of it.
Because other people won't recognize who you copied, because you're not very good at it.
And that's exactly what I did.
So I tried to copy Gary Larson's art, and I tried to copy some art from Mad Magazine and some other people.
And I would try to do it the way they did it.
As best I could.
But if I would draw a character trying to make it the way Gary Larson would draw it, it wouldn't come out right.
And it would look like my own character.
But it was still okay because it looked original.
So doing a bad job at copying other artists makes you look creative.
So that's the easy way to get there.
All right. Thanks for the question. Thank you.
All right, let's try Kim.
Let's see if Kim has a question for me.
Kim, do you have a question for me?
All right. What is your current thought about whether the virus was released from the Wuhan lab versus not?
Well, when you say released, you're not...
I mean, I've seen possibilities there was an accidental release.
Yeah, I don't think there's any...
There's no chance in my mind there's no chance anybody did it intentionally.
Is that the question? No, I was actually wondering if you've delved into whether it was naturally occurring and came from the wet market versus...
Well, you know, that's in the category of things we'll never know for sure, but if I had to bet on it, I'd say 80% chance it came from the lab, 20% chance it came from all other means put together.
So 80% chance. That's what it feels like to me.
But we're all just flying in the dark here.
I'm just saying that if there's such an obvious way it could have come from a lab and we know it was there and we don't know that there was ever anything like that in the wet market because they didn't have bats, it's leading that way.
So 80% chance, does that sound fair?
I'm with you on that. All right.
Well, maybe you have time for one more quickie, quick question.
Okay, go. Okay. I'm the unusual animal of being a conservative who loves Elon Musk.
And I've noticed that he has now become, you know, red-pilled, let's say, about governmental fascism.
And I wonder if he would, you know, disrupt, the next industry to disrupt would be the news using satellites, his satellites that he's launched.
I've never seen any indication that Elon was sort of interested in the news business.
It's not true. He has called for something called Pravda, which is a website that would check the truth.
Ah, yes. He has ventured towards that.
But that's more of fact-checking on the news as opposed to becoming the news.
Yeah, I don't know if he has an interest in that, but it does seem to me that you can't be a proper billionaire without controlling some part of the news.
I think Jeff Bezos and also Carlos Sims with the New York Times, they've sort of set the standard that if you're going to be this rich, it'd be nice to have your own news organization.
Exactly. And Fox has lost its way, so I think there's an opening there.
Well, has Fox lost its way or are they trying to show a little bit more diversity of opinion?
I don't know. Because you can see both, right?
It's not like nobody's telling Hannity what to say.
Nobody's telling Tucker what to say.
I mean, so you can't say Fox lost its way if their biggest talent is doing whatever the hell they want, just like always.
I mean, I do think...
I'm not there, but my opinion from the outside is that guys like Tucker and Hannity, Laura Ingram, the big opinion voices, I don't think anybody's telling them what to say.
I don't think their bosses are telling them.
Maybe, but I'd be surprised on the big stuff anyway.
The fact that you see more diversity of opinion on Fox, I'm not sure that's bad.
I can see why some of the audience would say, get that out of there.
But think about the biggest problem of CNN viewers is they literally don't hear the news.
Imagine consuming what you think is news all day and then you didn't get any.
Because the left just doesn't show the opinion on the right.
When I say Fox lost its way, I think they do present the other side better than CNN ever tried to.
So there is that. And that's what I'm looking for.
You know, something that would be in the middle in this way.
Yeah, I saw there's a really good app that I'm going to point you to.
I was going to mention this. If I can quickly find it, was it Ground something?
Maybe somebody can remind me before I... I'll find it quite quickly because I know exactly where I'm looking and the app is called, this is from Jeff Pilkington, he noticed this.
It's called the Ground News.
So ground, like the ground you're standing on, news.
It's an app and it takes all the different news sites and puts them in their left right All right.
Thank you.
Thanks. All right.
There's somebody I'm looking for here.
If I can find him.
He's asked to join.
Damn it. He keeps disappearing.
All right. Let's try Andres.
Andres, are you there?
Andres, are you there?
Hello? Ah, hi.
Do you have a question for me?
Yes. Basically, in the country where I live, we have also now people who hallucinate that the governmental power basically on the lockdown comes close to the Nazi power grab in 1933.
And, well, apparently they're seeing an elephant in the room that the rest of the people are not seeing.
I'm just wondering what's a good way to convince somebody they're hallucinating something.
Well, convincing somebody that they're hallucinating is almost impossible because they're seeing it with their own eyes.
They feel it. You can't talk somebody out of it.
But here's the best thing you could do.
The best thing you could do is get them to arrive at it through questions.
So rather than say, you're wrong, you're seeing it wrong, and people just harden in their opinion, you could say something like this, really?
You think that the German situation is like the beginning of maybe some kind of a Nazi lockdown, and they say, yeah, yeah.
Then you say, how different are things in Germany compared to all the other countries who are dealing with the same thing?
Are they treating it differently?
And then your friend says, well, I don't know.
I haven't looked at other countries.
You say, well, it seems to me if you did, they're all doing the same thing.
It seems like every country is going through exactly the same thing.
I'm wondering why only in Germany it looks like the beginning of a Nazi takeover, but in every other country, such as you name it, it's not.
But you also realize that every country is having the same conversation, right?
So I would broaden it away from Germany so that they can see that your situation is essentially identical to most of the other industrialized countries and just say, if it's happening everywhere, I don't know.
Is the whole country going Nazi?
I don't think so. Or the whole world?
Probably not. So that's the best you could do, is just point out that it's everywhere, so you shouldn't worry about it specifically.
That's not going to talk anybody out of it, but it might make them pause a little bit, because that's the sort of thing they have to talk themselves out of.
So you just want to ask the questions, let them deal with the new expansion of their thinking.
Maybe they go away and come back better, but mostly you're not going to be able to change minds on that stuff.
Only events themselves can change it, which means we get past this and things go back to normal.
But thanks for the question.
Before you go, correct me if I'm wrong, but I got disconnected from following you and then I re-followed you?
Does that sound... No, what I meant basically following back.
You never followed me before, so no glitch.
I never followed you before?
No, it was never shown to me.
Oh, okay. I've interacted with you so many times I thought I had, so I'm following you now.
But thank you. You're one of my best favorite Twitter personalities because one of the great things about being in my position, if you've got closing in on half a million followers, is that It attracts some people who are just unusually good at commenting on stuff, and you're one of them. You're in my top two or three, I think.
It makes what I do so much more valuable because I'll say something crazy, and people who actually know how to analyze things, sort of know how to look at the world, they come in in the comments and say, yes or no, or should have thought of this.
And I start with these bad ideas, and then the commenters, such as yourself, you're definitely one of the best, just carve it down into something real.
It's kind of a wonderful thing.
So thank you for that. Thanks a lot.
Bye. All right. Take care. That's a weird interface.
All right. It looks like the interface...
Let's see.
There we go. I've got some unusual things happening here on my screen.
Let's try Julie.
Julie, Julie, Julie.
Will our technology work?
Julie, can you hear me? Do you have a question?
I can. Go ahead.
I was wondering what your take is on the universities opening in the fall.
You were pretty early on saying watch what the other universities are doing and when they closed early you said the other universities would and they did.
So I have two 20 year olds who are eager to leave my house and get back to their lives at school.
Where are their schools?
They are 20 years old or almost 20 and they go to the University of Connecticut.
Yeah, I think there'll be probably a pretty big difference in terms of when things open based on the school and what resources they have and all that.
But I do think that whatever, it's going to be the same thing.
If some of them reopen, most of them will.
And I don't know if they're going to wait to see if the experience is bad at the other ones.
I doubt it. I think they're just going to have to And of pure desperation and self-defense, I think they're going to have to open.
Because the biggest risk to colleges is that people find out they can do without them for a year.
One of the things that Naval said recently is if we go a year, let's say this next coming year becomes more remote learning.
Let's say the students don't go to school, they stay home, but they do a year of school with remote learning.
What are they going to pay for that?
Are they going to pay the same as they would if they were there in person, not counting the room and board part?
What happens at the end if they get just as good an education, but they did it remotely?
How is the college going to justify charging the same amount next year?
Exactly, because especially with engineering, you really need the lab work.
You need to be in on it.
You can't just learn through the computer very well.
Although I think that's just because we're not good at it yet.
I would argue that we will reach a point where learning it on the computer will be so much better.
You'll be able to have a 3D view and you'll be on your computer and when you're doing engineering you'll actually be able to reach out and touch objects that don't exist and put them together.
So, you know, once you're actually manipulating a virtual space with virtual objects, then the online stuff will be way better than in-person.
But not yet. All right.
Thanks for the question. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, college is going to be just a mess.
I'm so glad I'm not having to deal with that.
All right, Joe, it looks like you came back.
Joe? Joe?
Hey, Joe. Do you have a question for me, Joe?
Scott? Yes. Do you have a question?
Yes. I really enjoy your show.
I really value what you do.
But I have to know, with this ongoing coup, is someone going to get perp-walked?
I've got to see somebody high-level punished.
Well, the problem is that the people at the high level are smart enough to not leave any, let's say, bloody gloves at the scene.
So, what I would expect is that it's going to come down to something like, well, I knew the President wanted me to do this, but he didn't say it.
Or, he didn't say it, but it was obvious that this would be a good thing and he'd like it.
Clapper didn't directly tell us to do this, but we interpreted this as part of our job.
So you get this weird, not direct evidence, assuming that there was any kind of a ringleader or ringleaders.
I don't think there's going to be direct evidence for them to be involved.
I think it will be, at most, a verbal conversation that could be interpreted two ways.
I don't think you're going to see anybody at a Brennan, Clapper, or Obama level doing a purple one.
I don't think that's going to happen.
Oh, no, no. I get that.
But maybe Comey? He seems like a natural fall guy from a simulation perspective.
He does. He does.
You know what I mean?
It feels like if you wrote this as a movie, Comey would be going down.
I feel the same way, and I don't know exactly why.
That was the point I wanted to make.
See, his name even sounds like Comey.
You know, it's perfect. Yeah, and Kami.
That is funny. Yeah, there's something about Komi that makes him seem like the natural for that.
I'd bet against it, though, because, you know...
Everything that Comey's done indicates that he's smart enough to know how the system works.
So Comey's another one.
You can say whatever you want to say about him, if you like him or don't like him, but you can't say he's not smart, right?
I mean, he's a smart guy. Well, he's smart with air cover and smart without air cover, too.
You know what I mean? Yeah, well, okay.
If the bosses love you, you don't have to be that smart.
That's true. That's true.
Yeah, go ahead. I just love what you've been talking about lately in terms of the simulation stuff.
I found it in my own life.
You've been really insightful.
You've validated a lot of things I've said.
I knew President Trump would win.
The moment I saw him come down those stairs, everybody thought I was insane.
I never relented once.
I said, have you seen Hillary Clinton?
Have you seen this guy?
I wasn't even a fan.
I'm just saying, you know, your bullshit detector, that really resonated, and your island stuff, you know, the Prisoner Island.
I was on Prisoner Island.
I know what you're talking about.
Ah, okay. Good.
Well, thanks, Scott. Glad that resonates.
Thanks, Joe. All right.
Let's take one more.
We'll give you one more. Can't we?
Who really, really wants to talk to me badly?
I don't know if anybody does, but we'll find out.
Alright, Leanne, are you connected?
Hi, what's your question, Leanne?
It's about the Convict Island thing you brought up on last night's Periscope.
Okay. Yeah, and when I was hearing you say that, I thought to myself, I think I have one of those stories, real or not, right?
But I'm just wondering if it's a little off, and I'm not sure if I should be using it as a story, so I wanted to tell you.
Yes, you can do it, but you have to make it the quick version.
Okay, yes, absolutely. Mine always involves a plane crash.
I'm always in it, whether I'm actually on a plane or just thinking about it walking around.
And I always survive, no matter the scenario.
Whether I go into a side of a mountain or into the water.
Even when the plane's going down, I'm helping people.
And I'm thinking, it's okay, because I know I'm going to survive this.
I'll always survive, no matter the scenario.
Well, that is a...
That is a really healthy and productive view, unless it makes you do dangerous things.
You don't do dangerous extreme sports, do you?
No, not at all. No.
I like that, because that sounds like just a really healthy mindset.
It's not really going to impinge on your real world, because it probably won't change anything you do in the real world, but it'll keep you with that positive mindset.
I like it. Now, the only improvement I would offer on that, to the extent that you could come up with news stories, It is one that had more about your own efforts being what keeps you safe.
I always like to pull out MacGyver-type things in my head, you know, how I get off the side of the mountain, you know, when it's full of snow and I'm, you know, wearing, you know, shorts and a t-shirt or something, you know?
Right. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
Yeah, yeah. So if you keep your little imaginary story where you're the hero through your own good work, and let's say your good work is something you could actually do, you know, something humanly you could do.
It might be a stretch, but it's humanly possible.
Okay. I like where you're going with that.
Okay. I'll keep rewriting the story a little bit.
Thank you. Thank you.
So, for those of you who didn't get the context there...
Last night I was talking about having stories of your life, and just briefly, one of my stories that's not a real story, but one that I keep as an operating system for the rest of my software in my head.
It's the thing that keeps me tuned to winning, if you will.
My story is that, imagine I'm dropped onto the island of convicts.
It's only prisoners on this island.
I'm dropped off from the helicopter, and on day one, they beat me up.
Day two, they beat me up.
Day three, they beat me up.
Day seven, they beat me up.
I'm just abused and turned into human whatever.
But if you come back in a year, I'm in charge of the island and I've killed everybody who touched me.
So that's the story that I keep.
Because you could beat me up for a week or two or a month, but when I'm done, if I ever get a little bit of traction...
If you ever turn your back, if I get the slightest advantage, I'm going to run your damn island and I'm going to kill every one of you and you can bet on it.
So that's the software I keep in my head that I apply to every situation because you come into situations and day one is often not so good and day two is often not so good too and three weeks in it's not so good but I'm going to run the island.
So it doesn't matter what the actual situation is.
I tell myself, yeah, getting beat up the first week, that's just part of the job.
I'm going to run this island.
So it doesn't have to be true.
It just has to be a story you run in your head that you let influence your general demeanor.
So it's how you program your personality with stories, because we're story creatures.
All right. So that's what you missed.
Never doubt the power of coconut and coconut pies.
Well, I don't know what that means, but I've never doubted.
I guess that's the island.
May we know your island takeover plan?
Roughly speaking, yes.
Yes, I'll tell you.
I would be able to influence people one at a time to think that Working with me was better than not.
So I would convince people one at a time that being on my side was their best play until I had enough of them and then I'd run the island.
But it'd be a one-on-one thing.
You'd have to convince them individually.
All right. That is all.
Ben says in the comments, I'm Scott's prison lover in my dream.
