Episode 984 Scott Adams: Talking About Those Disagreeing Doctors, Pelosi's Insults, Artistic Breakthroughs
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
Robots Read News (comic)...using CNN as a humor template
Defending President Trump, Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc
Kudos to Nancy Pelosi for using President Trump's technique
Coronavirus death model tweaked DOWN
Fareed Zakaria's strong piece, class decisions on coronavirus
Mark Cuban suggests a federal job guarantee
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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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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the damn pandemic.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
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Mmm...
Uh...
I can feel the zinc being delivered to my ACE2 inhibitors.
Don't even know what any of that means.
But it feels good.
It sure does. So, as people are pouring in, let me tell you about a cool thing that happens in the life of artists or creators.
Whatever you want to call me.
I usually don't call myself an artist because that's just that word.
I don't know. There's something wrong with the word artist.
That just rubs me wrong.
So I'd rather be a creator than an artist.
And there's a cool thing that happens in the life of creators, and you're lucky if it would happen to you once in your life, because it's such a cool feeling.
I'll tell you one of the times that happened.
Once was, I was in my cubicle in 1988 at Pacific Bell.
And I was drawing little comics on my whiteboard in my cubicle, and I started developing this character, Dilbert.
Now, he didn't have a name.
He was just sort of a technology worker in a big company, like the people I was working with.
So he was a composite of people I worked with.
But he didn't have a name.
And so I had a Name the Nerd contest.
So I put a little label that says, Name the Nerd, and I drew the picture of what would become Dilbert.
And people would come into my cubicle all day long and they'd say, huh, he looks like he'd be an Irving.
They'd write it down. I think he'd be Poindexter.
I'd write it down. I think he'd be Bruce.
And every time I'd see a name, I'd look at it and I'd go, no.
No, he's not a Bruce.
He's not a Poindexter.
He's not an Irving.
And one day my boss at the time came in, and he goes, I got it.
And he walks over, and I can remember it like it was today.
He picks up dry erase marker.
You know, I'm sitting in my chair, and the picture is just so amazingly burned into my memory.
And he writes on the board, D-I-L-B-E-R-T. And he puts the top back on the pen.
He goes, that's the name of your character.
And I said, what just happened to me?
Because I actually felt my entire body go down a tunnel, like I had just gone forward in time, into the future.
And I saw the name on the character and felt it like I had experienced the future.
And as he starts talking, I felt myself going back down the tunnel, the other direction.
Bam! And I was back in 1988.
And I just looked at that name, and I looked at it on the board, and I thought, what just happened?
What just happened?
I feel like I just saw the future.
From about that moment on, I could not have been Talk down of Dilbert working.
Because from that moment, I just saw it.
And all I did was follow it.
I didn't even make it happen, it felt like.
I mean, obviously, I did make it happen.
But it felt like I was just following the path that I had just seen.
Now, if you could have that happen once in your life, It's amazing.
There are these moments of creative or artistic clarity when things just happen.
Now of course you can always explain it as false memory or I'm making up the story or something.
So there's no way that you would fully appreciate what that did to my head.
Because it really messed me up to see reality just get turned inside out like that.
Or at least my experience of reality.
The base reality probably didn't change at all.
Then there was another point.
There was a point when I launched the comic and it wasn't really successful.
Well, it wasn't successful.
So it was another comic that was going to get launched, do a few years and disappear.
But people kept emailing me and saying, you know, Dilbert should be in the office.
It needs to be an office comic.
And the moment I realized that I could turn it into an office comic, all of the tumblers of the, you know, the gears came together and it was like, click, click, click.
Oh, yeah. If I just make this an office comic, it's easier to write, you know, it's going to relate to these people.
And it was the answer.
So that was like a second moment When I had this creative clarity, it's like, oh yeah!
And then Dilbert found its voice.
And that's sort of an artist talk.
Art is no good until it finds its voice.
So it can bump around being almost right forever and it'll never catch on.
But there's that moment where it locks in and you go, ah!
There's the voice. And the voice is, let's say in the case of the Dilbert comic, it's the pointy-haired boss's perspective versus the cubicle worker.
So once you understand it as pointy-haired management versus employee, that's the voice.
And then you could write it forever.
Well, an interesting thing happened.
I've been playing with this comic called Robots Read News, where it's just a static picture, three pictures of a robot, always the same, but he's reading the news.
And I'd been doing it for a few years now, like off and on.
I'd trot it out and try it, and it was all right.
You know, every once in a while it'd be a good one, but not really.
And the other day I was playing with it, and I realized that if all I do...
Is make the robots read news the way CNN does?
It'll be hilarious.
And that CNN is my pointy-haired boss.
And the moment that locked in, you can't believe how easy it is to write these comics now.
Just as an experiment with about three minutes before I went live, I wanted to see if I could write one from scratch in three minutes.
I did. It's pretty good.
And all I did was I looked at the CNN homepage, and I just scanned the headlines for their most ridiculous story.
I was like, oh, there it is.
Their most ridiculous interpretation.
And I just made a comic that basically says what they say.
I just put it into sort of funny comic words, which is so easy, it's ridiculous.
So the other thing that came together is, you know, I'm keeping most of those comics will be for subscribers on Locals.
And I didn't plan it that way, but I just sort of, I tested this at the same time I was testing Locals, and I thought, well, I guess that'll be its main home.
And the other thing is that I can make the characters say anything I want.
So I can make them curse, I can make them be offensive.
Do you know how long I've waited for this moment?
How long I've waited as a creator to be able to write a comic in which the only thing that matters is that what they say is funny.
Now of course I'll do a little bit of self-censorship because my own sensibilities are not so extreme that it needs to be gross or something.
But the fact that I don't ever have to control my first impulse of what would be hilarious is a freeing experience that I can't even explain.
To have it happen again, well really for the first time, it's like a completely free experience.
I'm so happy I can't even stand it on that On that one front.
Alright, so that's just a little tour of what...
Let me give you some other examples of that.
There are moments when, for example, I was writing my book LoserThink or Win Bigly.
When you realize exactly how to do it...
When I wrote Win Bigly, those of you who read it know, that it's a series of persuasion lessons about how to persuade...
But it didn't come together until I realized I could wrap it around the story of the election.
And once I understood it as something that would layer on top of a story, and my experience of it, it was like, ding, ding, ding, it all came together.
So those are the moments that a creator can almost see the future.
Probably not really, but it feels like it.
Now, of course, the big story today is Trump saying that he is taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc, the important part.
Now, I did a more detailed video on this last night.
If you want to see my opinion of all the hydroxychloroquine, I did, I think, a good job of laying out the thinking last night.
That's worth seeing if you didn't see it.
But the summary is this.
If you find yourself getting into online battles about whether the president is being crazy and reckless and ruining the world by announcing that he's taking this unproven drug, unproven I say, unproven, here are some things to say to defend yourself online.
Number one, This unproven drug has been taken by many people for various conditions for decades and decades.
Can you produce for me the statistics showing the number of people who are dying from it?
I'd like to see the URL, you know, just something that shows that in fact there are some health risks.
You will first notice it's really hard to find that.
I'm not sure it exists.
Okay, that's the first thing.
It's because somebody did look for it and couldn't find it.
But if you can find it, I'd like to see it.
So that's the first thing. Do you have some data that would suggest it's dangerous?
I know you say it's dangerous, but what would be, for example, a source of information?
Because I know you like your science, don't you?
You love your science.
You love your data. You don't want to be listening to old orange man bad.
So instead of listening to Trump on this medical condition, why don't I listen to you, dear troll on Twitter?
I would like to take your advice on this.
Could you provide me the link to that source that describes The number of people, statistics specifically, of the people who have been damaged by this drug.
Because now that we have decades of experience of it, we probably have a pretty good idea how many thousands is killed.
Right? Now, if somebody could find that link, it would be interesting.
But I don't think it exists.
I don't think anybody has that.
So that's the first thing.
So first you want to go after their sense of certainty.
And then here's the next thing.
You want the high ground kill shot?
Yeah, you do. Eric Fedman, good to see you.
Here's the high ground kill shot.
This is a risk management decision, not just a medical decision.
And unless, dear trolls, you can show me your risk management calculation with an actual decision tree that says if you go this way and you take it, there's this percentage it'll help, this percentage it'll kill you, I'm this age or these comorbidities, so I have this level of risk.
Versus the other path.
And the other path is, well, maybe it'll help.
Don't really know. I'd have to put an assumption on that.
10% chance? Make your assumption and then do the math.
Now, if somebody is telling you that the president's making a poor medical decision, you should say, well, that's funny because it's not really a medical decision.
It's a cost-benefit decision in which the medical advice is part of it.
And the president is making a cost-benefit decision.
If you think he's wrong, I think you could talk me into that.
So, by the way, this is a persuasion technique.
Instead of starting out by saying, you're wrong, I'm right, which just hardens everybody's defenses, try saying to somebody who thinks that the president's giving bad advice, Medical slash risk management advice.
Say this. I think you could talk me into that.
I think you could convince me.
Can I see your math?
And they say, math?
I don't have any math.
Yeah, you know, when you did the cost-benefit calculation, what did you multiply?
What risk factors did you assume?
Because if you did the math right, and I agree with your assumptions, I think we're both looking at the same news, I'll take your assumptions, I'll check your math, and if it's right, I'll change my mind.
Because it's really just a math question, right?
We don't have to disagree.
It's not about my priorities.
It's not about my preferences.
This is one of those rare cases where it's just math.
And if your math and mine disagreed, it would be because we had an assumption that was different.
The assumption might be that the risk of taking it is X versus something else.
But we would at least know what the difference in assumption was.
So, do you think anybody's ever done that math?
No. No.
I don't even think the experts have.
Because you'd probably see it on the news or on social media by now.
So I would challenge any of you to simply put that little spreadsheet together.
I don't know how many numbers on the spreadsheet.
It's not a lot, right?
Maybe a dozen different numbers and assumptions.
That's it. That's your whole model right there.
And just show your assumptions.
Give us the spreadsheet.
We'll tweak it to get our own number, then we'll be on the same page.
But here's the thing.
Do not let anybody get away with telling you that he made a bad risk management decision unless they're willing to show their work.
Because if they can't show their work, they're just blah, blah, blah, and there's nothing coming out.
So don't accept it without the math.
They've got to show their work, or they're in the same boat you are, just guessing.
All right. I loved watching, and this is not a joke.
I know that you think that maybe this is hyperbole, but when I read CNN in the morning, which I do every day, I'd do it for the jokes.
Not just making jokes about it, which is fun as well, but because it literally makes me laugh to watch how hard they strain to tell their version of it.
No, I'm not saying that Fox News doesn't also do that.
I'm just saying that for whatever reason, CNN is just funnier about it.
I don't know why.
I mean, maybe it's because of my bias or something.
But here's one of the lines from one of the opinion pieces.
That said the president's health care is normally the best.
Normally. So they just throw out a little question mark about whether the president has a good doctor.
Well, normally it's the best.
But since we as CNN are disagreeing with what the professionally trained top-of-his-field doctor is saying...
Let's use our CNN judgment to say that normally it'd be the best, but...
I don't know. We'll just leave that as an open question.
But normally it'd be good.
And of course, CNN is trying to mock Fox News for being inconsistent in their coverage.
And what they do is they say that the Fox News can't decide whether the hydroxychloroquine decision by Trump is a reasonable one, as opposed to being right.
You can only say whether it's reasonable.
Is it reasonable or sort of unscientific and doltish and dangerous?
And they blame Fox News for not being able to decide and being on both sides of the question.
And they used examples of Neil Cavuto saying things and having an expert on, and Laura Ingram, etc.
And here's the funny way they framed it.
They framed it as Fox News can't decide.
Fox News had doctors on.
It was the doctors who couldn't decide.
It wasn't Fox News that was inconsistent.
Fox News had actual trained doctors on, one after another, and those actual trained doctors did not have the same opinions.
That's not Fox News being inconsistent.
That is the medical community being inconsistent.
That's what that is.
To report that it's Fox News being inconsistent, when the news is coming directly from the mouths of the actual medical professionals while you're looking at it, That is just an amazingly ballsy framing.
But in any event, the president is completely right.
He's right that it's reasonable for him to take the risk.
And even on CNN, I think one of the experts, a doctor, said that in the specific situation of the president, because he would be monitored so closely for his health...
That he doesn't have the same risk as, say, someone else in his same situation who might be on hydroxychloroquine.
Maybe they're not monitored as closely so they would have a little extra risk.
So even CNN's expert was saying, yeah, the president's kind of a special case.
It's not the same risk as everybody else.
And I don't think, you know, I guess was that a case of CNN having inconsistent coverage?
Because the expert, and then the expert actually was asked to weigh in on Trump's doctor, and the expert said, yeah, it's just a tough call.
I don't know what I would do in that case.
It's a tough call. So even CNN's expert that they bring on basically to say that Trump's doctor is stupid or made a bad decision, you wouldn't do it.
So even CNN can't determine if it's a good idea or a bad idea, but they can determine that there's a risk involved and that reasonable people are on both sides.
But they've turned it into an amazing story of Trump supporters being dumb, so dumb that we'll drink bleach because of the fake news.
And now they're doing the thing where they get multiple examples, but they're all fake news.
So they could add the president's statements on hydroxychloroquine by turning it into fake news about the president thinks an unproven drug works, which is not what's happening.
He just thinks that, given the uncertainty, he likes the odds.
That's it. But they turned it into he's promoting unscientifically valid drugs.
And then they'll add that to the other fake news that he promoted, which they actually did today, of course.
They added it to the fake news that he promoted drinking disinfectants, which, of course, didn't happen.
So now they've got, like, a list.
All right, well, he did this.
He did A. You know, if A alone was the only thing he did, well, that'd be one thing.
But he's also done B. And I'm pretty sure there's a C out there that's another fake news.
I'll think of it in a minute. But now that they've got their fake news laundry list, what do I tell you about the laundry list?
You don't need a laundry list if you have one good thing.
All right. Kudos to Nancy Pelosi.
For learning the Trump insult technique, I think she got it right.
Did you hear what Pelosi said about Trump?
Now, I'd like to preface this by saying, I do not approve of fat shaming.
Don't approve of fat shaming, no matter who it is.
Now, some of that comes down to my thoughts about free will.
Nobody weighs 300 pounds because they decided to do it.
They woke up and said, hey, I think I'll be 300 pounds.
So there's something about free will, there's something about the way different people are wired, that what is easy for some is maybe impossible for others, depending on what you think about free will.
And so, philosophically, I just don't buy into mocking people for their weight, in any case, because it's just too much part of the human experience, right?
But watching Nancy Pelosi do it to Trump, I can't say I hate that.
I can't say that I dislike that, because Sort of turnabout is fair play, right?
You know, Trump has defined the playing field.
She's just playing on it. And so she has this great line, which you knew was going to be national news, and it was.
She said, Pelosi said, he's our president, and I would rather...
This is funny.
She pretends to show fake concern.
He's our president, and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group, And his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say.
Now here's the best part, and the part that made me love it, is that the last two words, comma, they say.
Because she did what Trump does, which Trump always says, well, they're saying, you know, everybody's telling me, a lot of people are doing, everybody's saying.
So it's a Trumpism to take the insult away from yourself and say, well, they say.
They say you're morbidly obese.
I might argue with them, but I'm just reporting what they say.
They say. Now, do you think there was any chance that the phrase morbidly obese would not be a headline today?
So, if I'm being fair...
If I'm just talking about technique, not whose side you agree with, Pelosi gets the win for the day.
That's the play of the day. It's impossible to ignore, and it's pretty effective.
Well done. So there's that study of some church choir group, and I guess they determined that Being in a crowded room and singing together is just about the worst thing you can do if one of you has the coronavirus.
So if you think anybody you know has the coronavirus, do not get in a small room with them and then sing loudly for many minutes at a time.
Turns out that would be a bad thing.
But I'd like to point out a possible good thing.
This could be the beginning of the end of car singing.
Are you a fan of singing in cars?
Because I have this weird situation going on.
I was going to tell you a story, but I think I'll skip it.
Let me just say this.
No, I'm going to tell you the story. Christina, if you're watching this, you'll laugh at it.
So I've told you before that I don't listen to music just sort of casually as a hobby.
So I treat music as more of a medicinal thing.
So if I can find some music that works for my exercise routine, that would be good, etc.
So it's basically... I'm using it specifically to inject the music to change my mood in a way I want to, not just randomly listening to the radio.
So if you don't randomly listen to music, and you're not around other people who are randomly putting on music that you would hear, you never hear new music.
So I can go months at a time without knowing there's a new hit song, because I just have never turned on anything that's presenting me random music.
Except if I'm in the car.
So if you're in the car, it's not unusual that whoever you're with will turn on the radio and then I'll get to hear new songs.
So really the only time I would ever get to hear a new song is in the car and on the radio.
Now if you're driving and there's somebody in the seat next to you, who is operating the radio?
Could be either one of you.
But if I'm driving, and I usually am, I would rather not be the one who's also the DJ. Why should I take my attention off the road?
I'm driving. So the DJ is always the passenger in my car.
If I'm in charge, I'm driving, the passenger is the DJ. It's just safer that way.
Now the DJ, of course, is going to be going through the radio dial and picking good songs and skipping bad songs, right?
So I'm never going to hear a new song that's a bad song, because the DJ will turn the station as soon as the first few notes come on.
Ah, not that one. Ah, not that one.
Ah, not that one. So now I'll never hear a bad song, but at least I'll hear the good songs.
Because the DJ will have selected the good song.
So the good song comes on, and what do you do to a good song?
Well, if you're in a car, and you like music, and a good song comes on, you sing along.
Right? Now, I can't sing along because I've never heard the song.
So Christina sings along to the song.
That's the first time I would have ever heard this song.
Except that if you've ever been in a car...
Where the song is on and there's also somebody singing along, you don't exactly hear the song.
You hear more of the version of the person singing it.
So, I think I've gone years without actually hearing a new song.
Isn't that quite true?
But it is true that I'll never hear one on my own.
I'll only hear one when Christina's playing either her playlist or something that she's controlling in the car.
She doesn't play bad ones, so if it's a bad song I'll never hear it.
And the good ones she sings along.
So I actually haven't heard a new song in years.
True story. Christina, when you're watching this, just kidding.
But keep singing, because I like it.
Alright, here's a financial tip for you.
I tweeted this.
If you were once injured by taking hydroxychloroquine for a few weeks, back when you had to take it for your whatever, your malaria or your lupus or your rheumatoid arthritis, If you had bad side effects and it damaged you in some way, don't give that story away for free.
Because I know a news network that would pay a million dollars for a good personal story about somebody who was injured by the president's drug hydroxychloroquine.
So that's just a little tongue-in-cheek financial advice for you.
Don't give that stuff away.
Somebody would pay a million dollars for that story.
Alright, so a big coronavirus death model.
Got tweaked slightly down.
So, not much, but I think it's one of the first, well, it's one of the rare times that they've tweaked it down, and nobody expected it to be tweaked down to, now it's 143,000 people, to die by August 4th.
That's the model. And I thought to myself, that's a really good sign, isn't it?
Because we've been reopening places, so to be reopening things and to have even a minor tweak downward in the death rate now, I don't know what that's going to do to the stock market, but that's a pretty hopeful sign.
If two weeks from now the death rate is projected down or the same, we got this thing.
In two weeks we're going to know a lot.
Think about it. Because, you know, you've got the incubation period.
So I don't think we've yet seen the effect of states reopening.
It's probably a little early for that.
But imagine if we go two weeks and the death rate is either modestly down, projected, or, you know, even the same.
Or even a little bit up.
Just a little bit.
In two weeks, if we can flatten this thing while also going back to work, we win.
That's how close we are.
Think about that.
So you're probably thinking in terms of, God, the end of this is when?
2021? Is it the end of the year?
Your brain is putting like a...
You feel like you're more at the beginning of it than at the end.
But I would suggest to you...
That in two weeks, this is the most optimistic thing I could say, because we don't know this will happen.
But in two weeks, if that death rate looks flat, or a little bit down, you know, the way it's predicted anyway, not the actual, but the prediction.
If we get that in two weeks, we win.
In two weeks, if that death rate hasn't moved, there's nothing you can do to keep the American public indoors.
There's nothing you're going to do from keeping the American public from reopening their businesses.
If in two weeks that number looks flat, it's over.
Now, it's not over for anybody who in the future will suffer and die.
There will be tragedies. It's just unavoidable.
But the long horror of the shutdown, at least intellectually, psychologically, and for all practical purposes, We might know something in two weeks.
Because if that number doesn't move, what the hell would keep you from total social...
What would you call it?
An acceptable protest, let's say, of just going back to work.
All right. Here's an interesting thing.
I've often talked about CNN's Fareed Zakaria because I like how his mind works.
And his take on things...
is often non-standard and in a good way.
So if you like to think about things in a new way, his program is excellent.
I always enjoy watching it.
And he had a long little monologue.
I think it was yesterday. And here's just a sentence from him.
I think it's extraordinary.
He says, imagine you're an American who works with his hands and you've lost your job because of the lockdown.
You turn on the TV and hear medical experts, academics, technocrats, and journalists explain we must keep the economy closed.
All these people making that case have jobs.
It was a pretty strong piece, and he makes the case that we think we're making medical health decisions, but somewhat accidentally...
It became class decisions.
Because the people making these stay-safe pronouncements are getting paid, and the people who are being told to stay safe are not.
And it's not even close to being a credible situation.
It's the sort of thing you could take for a little while, because the experts do have some capital, but it's not something you can take in the long term, because the stark difference between the people who have jobs and the ones who don't, we're going to notice that.
We're going to notice that.
Mark Cuban continues to be productive and one of the top voices, I think, so far in terms of the coronavirus situation.
Stepping up He's got some ideas, totally worth looking at.
One is that he doesn't think the free market is going to produce the 18 million jobs that we need fairly soon, in the next two years, he says.
And he's talking about some kind of a federal job guarantee, not unlike The Depression, in which you just basically have the government hire the unemployed and put them to work building and constructing things that have to be built and constructed anyway.
And as he points out, it's not the kind of idea you would have looked at if we'd been locked down for a month.
If we'd only been locked down for a month, well, let the free market just recover and do its thing.
But we've reached a point where the free market's going to be maybe a little sluggish, putting everybody back to work.
And since we need the infrastructure anyway, and because as far as I can tell, we can print money, I still have a big question mark there, but it looks like we can still print money.
So why not? I would say that Mark Cuban's suggestion for a jobs, a federal job guarantee, I think that should be in the top three things that we're thinking about, don't you?
I don't know if there's anything wrong with that.
Is there anything wrong with that idea?
It looks like it's just a good idea.
And then Mark Cuban goes on and says the government, until things are sorted out, we should get a $1,000 check every two weeks to every household with the caveat that it expires in 10 days if you don't use it.
That's a good add.
I don't know how you could give people money that expires, though.
Because can you take it out of their account?
How do you do that? I don't know if there's a mechanism for doing that.
You could do it if people had digital wallets or something, but not everybody does.
And just so you know, Mark Cuban has an advisory role.
So he's on Trump's Opening Our Country Economic Council.
So he's in the right place at the right time, and those are productive ideas.
You know, honestly, when I see stuff like that, I ask myself, why aren't there more Mark Cubans doing this sort of thing?
It feels like he's unusually productive with ideas that are all within the...
I would say every one of his ideas is well within the, you know, let's consider this range.
Somebody says a debit card would do it.
Yeah, if we could put that together.
If we could do it, if you could get everybody a debit card, it just doesn't seem like that's something you could do that quickly.
Maybe. Yeah, not everybody can handle a Bitcoin, but if they could, you'd have something.
I saw a great tweet by somebody whose name I forgot to copy and paste into my notes.
But he makes a really good point that the experience with closing the schools and having this situation where you got online school and homeschooling and it was just a mess sort of highlighted the flaws in the system.
And this one, I assume he's a parent.
I wish I'd written down who it was because it was a good idea.
But it was some blue check person with a good idea and he said that We should be rethinking school in terms of permanently making it a hybrid.
And the hybrid is not just go to school and stay there all day, and not just homeschool, but rather almost certainly there's some kind of a hybrid in which you do a little bit in person and a little bit at home or on your own pace or something.
And I thought that was a good...
A good take on it.
Because I would agree it's not just going to go all homeschool or online, because it just doesn't work well yet.
But I also think it can't be go to school all day.
There's something wrong with that model, too.
So I like this.
There's somewhere in between. Someplace in between.
That's good. All right.
Well, well, well. So again, we are $30 trillion in debt.
And answer, open up and quit printing.
Mark Cuban is wrong.
Alright, for those of you who are talking about the debt, be advised that there's no expert agreement on the debt.
I'm not even sure anybody understands it.
Because the first thing you need to know is that when we're printing money, that's not like our normal debt.
And I'm not even sure anybody understands how any of this works.
I've got a degree in economics, and I can't tell you that printing money is necessarily going to be bad in this specific situation.
It looks like it might be good.
I don't know. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that before this happened, you knew that debt was bad, right?
Right? Everybody knew debt was bad.
It's going to crush us. It's going to kill us all.
It's a matter of time.
It's a time bomb waiting to go off.
But that's not this situation.
This situation is that we might be able to print trillions of dollars and have no lasting impact because inflation just went away.
Well, you know, somebody's laughing with that emoji saying this time is different.
This time is always different.
So that's a clever little thing you said.
Oh, this time is different.
But the fact is, every time is different.
If you're trying to learn from history, you're the dumbest person in the conversation.
Because history doesn't repeat.
It can't. Because when history did what it did last time, people noticed.
And if you notice what it did last time, that tells you to modify this time.
So history doesn't really repeat.
Things get adjusted because of the last way things went.
Somebody says it's hugely inflationary down the road, but not immediately.
We don't really know that.
We don't really know that.
Because, remember, prior to the coronavirus, we would have said it would be impossible to have growth as good as it was and no inflation, right?
I believe something like 100% of economists would have said that the year 2019 wasn't possible.
It wasn't even mathematically possible.
That you would have low inflation and great growth.
Those two things just aren't supposed to work together.
But they did.
So when you're saying to yourself, well, the obvious mathematical outcome of printing money and adding it to the system is that when things recover, There'll be too much of it sloshing around still.
I don't think anybody knows that.
Because we didn't even know that 2019 could have growth and no inflation, or low inflation.
We didn't know that either.
Apparently, we don't know how the basic economy works.
And when I say we, I mean there don't seem to be any experts who could predict even something that basic.
That you could have growth without inflation.
That's as basic as you can get in economics.
We couldn't even see that coming.
So when you're saying to yourself, you know, I am certain with my lack of economic education, I am certain that we're running up debt or causing inflation.
Well, you can be certain about that, but you're not a credible observer.
Because absolutely nobody is certain about that.
If I had to guess, I think it'll be fine.
It'll probably be fine.
Alright, Krugman said it.
What did Krugman say? Has Krugman been correct a lot?
This is where we get all the crazy comments about economics.
So most of us don't understand economics, but we don't know it.
Yeah, the pension issues are going to be huge.
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
I'm going to go do some other stuff, and I will talk to you tonight.
If you missed my Periscope from last night, I did a section on how to increase your luck.
Now, not in a magic way, but in terms of going where you can have more luck and manipulating your life so that luck can find you better.
I highly recommend it.
I played it back myself just to see if I liked it, and I'm usually pretty tough on my own content, but even I liked it.
I just watched it myself, like a consumer, and I thought, huh, that was laid out pretty well.
I was pretty happy with it. So I think it's one of these small little micro-lessons, five minutes, I think, but it has the potential to change your life, If it changes how you look about assessing your odds.
If you do a better job of knowing where the odds are good, your life is going to be a lot better.
