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May 20, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
35:50
Episode 985 Scott Adams: A Bubble Reality I Recently Discovered, What I Learned About Learning
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Hey everybody, come on in.
It's time for the evening edition.
I thought I was going to take questions, but once again I forgot to push the right button so we won't be taking questions.
But will we have just as much fun?
Yes, we will. I would love it if Periscope could fix that bug so that once I start a live Periscope, I can remember to invite guests, but it's too late.
All right. Well, we got stuff to talk about.
For example, let me tell you what I found out about drumsticks.
Interesting, eh? I've been trying to learn drums and mostly online.
I had an online teacher for a while, and now I'm going through online self-teaching through YouTube.
And here's one of the things I've learned.
Man, is it hard to learn anything from YouTube videos.
Let me give you the beginning of every YouTube video.
And hi, everybody, and we've got notes at the bottom, and...
You know, 10 years ago I heard this thing and then I met a guy and in 15 minutes after I'm done droning, I might show you the one little nugget of information you want, but probably not.
You'll probably give up. So the first thing is that the people who make these very well, they look well produced, meaning the lighting's good, the sound is good, the camera work is good.
But they don't know anything about teaching.
I'm talking about the full body of YouTube videos about how to play the drums.
Now, that just happens to be this one domain I dug into.
But imagine all the other domains.
Are they this bad? Let me give you an example of how incredibly bad it is trying to teach yourself just by looking at videos.
So I found out after two years of noodling around and not being able to produce any kind of good sound and also never being able to drum fast enough, I found out that there's a way to hold the sticks that's completely different than anything I've been exposed to so far and that if you didn't know how to do that, nothing else works.
So for two years, I've been holding the sticks wrong, and if you do that, you just can't progress.
It's not possible.
And all I knew was that you held them light, you know, sort of in your fingertips like this, and that, you know, you were supposed to hold them light.
And I thought, well, there you go.
What else is to know?
I'm holding it light.
I'm hitting things.
But I would look at professional drummers and I think, I don't know, it just looks different.
Whatever they're doing looks different.
And I thought, am I just old that I can't get the speed?
And I'd be like, I'm drumming as fast as I can, but I feel like I'm maybe a quarter of the speed of the people doing it on every YouTube video at every age.
It's like everybody in the world is faster than me.
And it turns out, It's not a speed per se, it's a technique.
Specifically, if you try to hit it three times in a row, let's say fast, you sort of whip it down and then the stick comes back, but the next two hits you're not using your arm and your wrist, you're actually just using your fingertips to slap it down again as it bounces back the other two times.
So you're using the bounce back and slapping it with your two hands.
I learned that today, after two years of looking at videos in which this was never mentioned.
Not once have I seen it.
I even took lessons online for a while.
And not once was this critical thing, which makes everything else possible, didn't show up anywhere.
I wasn't even looking for it.
I just chanced on it. Alright, so the point is, It's not about drumming.
It's not about me. The point is, do you know how much better online education could be if I could go right to the thing I wanted and it was in the order that I wanted to see it?
Can you imagine? Do you know how much happier and faster it would have been, happier I would have been and faster it would have been than taking a lesson?
Because with my human instructor, you've got like the first 45 minutes is getting to know you.
And you're like, you know, 45 minutes.
I could have learned quite a few things.
And, you know, then the next day, it's how you're doing.
You know, my equipment, let's get your equipment lined up.
And do you mind if I take a phone call?
But if you could give me a bunch of really quick videos with no introductions, emphasis on no introductory material, I just go right to the point where it says, hold your stick like this.
Hit it and then do this.
And you'll be three times faster than if you just try to hit it three times.
That's what you get is the speed.
So... I don't know about you.
I mean, everybody learns a little bit differently.
But if you could take me right to the thing I need and it's explained well by somebody who knows what they're talking about, I could learn a lot of stuff really quickly.
It's only the boring stuff in between that keeps me from learning.
It's all the bloat.
It's the setup.
It's the waiting.
It's the get to the point.
It's the, I heard it already.
Can you get to the new point?
If I could control the exact pace of the information just by forwarding and going right to it, I think I could learn three times faster for a lot of tasks.
Some things you need to practice.
Anyway, so I wanted to...
Oh, I saw a funny tweet today from Melissa Francis.
She said that she made a clever tweet basically saying that Trump has the right to choose what happens to his own body, which made me think of abortion.
So Trump has the right to choose what happens to his own body, whether it's hydroxychloroquine or whatever.
So, of course, that story continues.
The CNN acting as if, well, you know, I don't have to say any more.
This will be the story that brings us all together.
So I called a friend of mine who is my smartest friend who also doesn't like Trump, meaning that he's smart and he doesn't like Trump.
And for a few years, we haven't been able to talk.
We've sent messages back and forth, but sometimes I can't read them because he seems angry and deranged to me.
And I've never really understood it, because he's not just smart, he's an Ivy League brilliant guy.
And yet, we saw the world so differently, and I never understood it.
And so I called him today, and I found out why.
I got to the bottom of it.
Rarely do you get to the bottom of things.
So here's what I found out.
He told me that his news sources are CNN, MSNBC, and New York Times.
Pretty much just those three.
I probably don't even need to finish the rest of it, right?
Those are his three sources.
How much would you know about the world if those were your three sources?
And it turns out that he was unaware that somewhere around 2016, The news stopped even trying to be anything like news, at least for the political stuff, and it became just full-out, you know, team play.
He was unaware of that.
He just thought, well, there's crazy people on the right of Fox News and stuff, and I don't look at that.
And then there's these completely reasonable people who just try to get it right, the CNN, MSNBC, New York Times.
And he argued especially that the New York Times plays it right down the middle, him and their They're like just good, legitimate news.
And I tried to tell him, Josh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't use his name.
I said, hey guy, you know, you're a little bit behind the news because these major publications stopped being anything like news in 2016 or so.
So I asked him specifically, Some questions to test his knowledge.
And if you didn't see my pinned tweet on this, it's got like 3,700 retweets already, so people are relating to it, I guess.
So here are the following things that my friend...
And keep in mind, he's well informed.
This is somebody who reads the news every day, follows the news, you know, follows those news sources.
And here are the following things that he'd never heard of, okay?
He didn't know that you have to pair the hydroxychloroquine with zinc or it doesn't work, and that the studies that were showing hydroxychloroquine by itself wasn't working shouldn't surprise you because it wasn't with the zinc, which is the active part.
He'd never heard that.
I'll bet every one of you has heard it, right?
He'd never heard that.
Now, if you had never heard that, you would think that those studies were somewhat reliable.
Now, here's another one.
He was unaware that something like a quarter of doctors, at least according to a poll, said they would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and zinc.
So he didn't know that a quarter of doctors would say, yeah, I'd do that.
Didn't know that. Didn't every one of you know that there are real doctors prescribing it every day?
Literally, didn't every one of you know that?
Because the people who are sort of Trump supporters, mostly that's who's watching this probably, you see the mainstream news, but then you also see Fox News and other sources.
But if you're only watching the left and you just can't stand to look at anything else, Look at the things you wouldn't know.
Here's what else he didn't know.
He had never heard of off-label prescriptions.
He didn't know that was a thing.
He didn't know that the doctor can prescribe something even though it was only approved for a different use, as long as the doctor has some good rationale.
But legally, ethically, and even as a normal process of medicine, it's very routine.
Didn't know that. I'll bet every one of you knew that.
How about he was not aware that a lot of the frontline healthcare workers are taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc, I assume.
How many of you knew that, that they were?
Almost all of you, right?
He didn't know, had never heard this, that the frontline workers, many of them, not all of them, are taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc.
Here's the one that really blew my mind.
He was not aware that there are lots of other countries that are massively using the hydroxychloroquine.
And as I like to say, they have doctors too.
Have you heard of India?
It's a real big country.
They've got doctors and stuff.
Their doctors think it's a good idea.
The doctors in India didn't come out of the bad doctor school.
Not all of them.
You know, they've got a pretty good educational system over there.
And, you know, Malaysia, there's a bunch of other...
But imagine that you'd never heard that.
I mean, seriously, you'd never heard that.
All right. Here's some more.
He had never seen the Russian troll farm memes...
So he still believed that it's definitely a fact that Russia interfered with the election.
So I had to agree with him that they attempted it.
So I had to find that agreement place first, because he was quite adamant.
But I found the place we could agree.
I said, well, we'd agree they tried, right?
He's like, yeah, okay, we can agree that they tried.
And then I talked about whether they succeeded.
And I said, did you see the memes?
Like the actual memes that they ran on Facebook.
Did you see them? And he hadn't.
But I have.
And I said, nobody who's seen them thinks that they influenced the election because it looks like a sixth grade project that didn't go well.
I mean, you just have to look at them to know that they couldn't have possibly.
I mean, not in your wildest imagination.
Could these lame little...
It would be sort of like saying, I influenced the election because I sent somebody a hallmark greeting card that one time.
I mean, it's just so insanely not likely that that had any effect on even one vote.
But he didn't know it.
He thought that there was some evidence that.
I also asked him, he also argued that if 17 intelligence agencies say something's true, well, you can count on it.
And I said, what? What?
How in 2020 could you make that statement that if 17 of our intelligence agencies agreed that that makes it credible?
It's almost the opposite.
Because, first of all, not all 17 looked into it.
You know, the 17 wasn't real anyway.
They finally admitted it wasn't.
It was more like three, but it was really like one, and it wasn't the whole one.
It was a few people, and really it was the one guy.
So 17 intelligence agencies usually boils down to One or two people.
And then the others either didn't disagree or they said, oh, those guys are good.
They know what they're doing.
So I'll sign on to that.
But to imagine that it is more credible, the 17 intelligence agencies looked into it.
And my friend actually believed and said so directly that That he believed that they would not give their opinions, the 17 intelligence agencies, unless they had each individually investigated.
Do you think that all 17 intelligence agencies independently investigated?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Do you think two of them might have?
Probably not.
If one of them did it, I'd be a little impressed that anybody did it.
But to imagine that 17 intelligence agencies means something.
He also believes it's a fact that Russia hacked the DNC. It might be true.
It might be true that they hacked the DNC. But we don't know it.
Meaning that I don't know it.
I didn't see it.
And I didn't hear it from anybody credible.
So if I didn't see it myself, and I didn't hear about it from anybody credible, which is the case, well, I don't know that they hacked it.
I saw a story in Politico, somebody sent me, that showed that some other countries tried to hack that as well, but they were less successful.
Alright, did you hear about Joe Rogan?
Moving to Spotify.
How cool is that?
So, well, it's not cool if you're not a subscriber to Spotify, I guess.
So here's what's fun about that.
So I guess he's taking his product off of YouTube, and I think iTunes, because he's going to be exclusive on Spotify.
So you get to hear it just by being a member of Spotify, I guess.
And, you know, people are estimating it's a $100 million deal, etc., And I'm really interested in this because I too realize that YouTube doesn't have an upside.
So I moved to the locals platform and it's also subscription.
So both Joe Rogan and I have moved to a subscription service because YouTube, for different reasons I guess, wasn't enough for getting it done.
So I think that's going to be a trend.
I think the trend is going to be people don't want to see ads and ads don't work.
So both between the people who don't want to see them and the advertisers realizing they don't really work, I think you're going to see a lot more subscription entertainment and you're going to be happier about it because no commercials.
So good for Joe for nailing that down.
I'm really happy that that worked out.
All right. Somebody says, willing to bet your intelligent friend can't change a tire either.
I bet he could.
I'll bet he could change a tire.
Somebody says, wrong, he's going to be on the free version of Spotify.
So is he going to be on the free version so that it drives people to Spotify and then they'll subscribe?
Anyway, Spotify is paying him, apparently, not...
Not advertisements.
So maybe we'll find out more about that as time goes by.
All right. I'm working on a few micro-lessons.
And thank you for signing up.
Change attire.
So I'm working on a few micro-lessons, but not for tonight.
Is there anything that you would like to hear?
I'm looking at your comments to see if there's anything you wanted me to talk about.
So it could be today or maybe something you want me to prepare.
So I know there's a little delay in the comments.
So podcasts are free on Spotify.
Did my intelligent friend bend at all?
Oh yeah, let me give you the punchline to that.
So He is mentally agile, meaning that he can change his mind if the argument has been presented and it's solid.
The argument I presented was sort of mind-boggling in the sense that I was telling him that everything he thought he knew about politics was wrong because he'd been listening to sources that he trusted and were literally just lying to him for years.
And how...
How easy is it to accept that that's happened?
I did tell him, after I filled in all that information, I believe that he trusted me that the information I gave him was both available on other news sources and true, and also highly relevant to the conversation.
So I do think that I shook his confidence.
I do believe that he...
He will rethink the sufficiency of his news sources.
I don't know if he'll change them, but I think he'll at least have that bug in his head that there was a whole bunch of stuff that was relevant to the headlines that I knew and he didn't, and I don't think he's going to forget that.
Did I witness cognitive dissonance?
No, because it was a phone conversation.
So I think you're asking about that tell where you see somebody's face go blank there for a minute.
So no, I did not detect that.
Did you ever mention Elon Musk's tweet about the red pill?
I didn't, and other than it being a Matrix reference, I don't know what to say about that.
Alright, the Trump slaughter meter.
I'll tell you, I think the stock market has already voted, don't you?
I feel as though that we're going to see non-stop good-ish news from now until victory.
So it's not that we won't have any bad news, of course, because the death count is going to rise, etc.
But I feel like...
The news cycle went from one bad thing after another for a few months to we're more likely to hear about a new therapy or a new vaccine or a new technique.
I feel like the news is going to turn unambiguously positive.
I also feel that if we can get through this next two weeks without the death curve going up, And I think we're going to, actually.
Because everything that we're hearing about where all the problems are, I think we've largely identified.
So we know you don't want to be in a choir, in a closed space.
You don't want to be in a cruise ship.
You don't want to be in a nursing home.
You know, you don't want to be in a sweaty crowd.
And there aren't that many people who are going to be in those situations now.
So the odds that we're going to flatten this thing just by being smarter is really good.
It's really good. And I gotta say that the quality of the protests has been excellent, meaning that people have been pushing, and I call the protests a productive friction.
I think it's productive for the The medical community to try to push for as much shutdown as they can get away with, I think is productive for the citizens to push back and say we need to live and eat and have jobs too.
So I like that fight because that's how you get to someplace that makes sense in the middle.
So I'm pretty happy about that.
Somebody says, I predict the normal flu season gets hugely flattened too.
That's a good prediction.
But the normal flu season, as we've learned, probably wasn't ever killing many people at all.
So the whole thought that the regular flu was killing 50,000-80,000 people a year, it just was never true.
The regular flu hardly kills anybody.
And if the flu kills you, if the regular flu kills you, you are probably really close to gone anyway.
The regular flu isn't killing 40-year-olds.
Somebody says the regular flu does kill.
It does. It's just very rare.
It's not 50,000 or 60,000 in all likelihood.
Because you would know people who died of the flu if that were true.
Um... Like clockwork, experts are releasing news saying they were skeptical of Moderna as a result.
Well, aren't there over a hundred vaccines that are in some form of production?
Not production, but Development and testing.
So you would expect that there are at least 100 competitors who are willing to say that that other company doesn't have the answer.
Because they don't want all the money and attention to go to whoever gets there first.
They want to stall them a little bit so they can be up there in the final three or whatever.
Pier 1 went bankrupt, somebody says.
That doesn't surprise me.
Micro lesson idea. How to nail the interview.
I can do that.
You want to know that now? How many of you would like to know how to nail a job interview?
I think I could do that right now.
So here's my advice for a job interview.
First of all, there's nothing better than just being the most prepared person.
So obviously, if you've got a good talent stack, etc., that's the best thing you can do.
The next thing is you want to show that you have a commitment to learning.
Because the best employees are the ones that are going to learn and going to take on new stuff.
So you want to project the thought that you're a learning machine.
You've learned a lot of things.
You want to learn new things.
You want to You want to learn everything there is.
So when you talk about your desire to learn new things, your employer just lights up.
It's like, oh, okay, I guess somebody will be able to really fill in a lot of things, obvious promotion.
So learning is just a key.
The other thing is they want to be comfortable with you.
So you want to know that you're not a complainer.
So you don't want to say something like, you know, when he says, why did you leave your last job?
The last thing you want to do is to say that your boss was a bad boss.
Never say that.
Never throw your old company under the bus if you're trying to get a job at a new company, because they would quite rightly say, that's the way you're going to talk about me when you leave.
All right? So you want to always put the best possible spin on your last employer.
So that's important. You also want to make sure that you've presented to them what's in it for them.
So you're not there for them to just ask you questions.
You're there to present a proposition that hiring you is better than hiring the other people.
So you've got to make a direct proposition what you can bring them.
And it has to be direct.
So one of the things you could say is, look, I have all the qualifications for this job, but I've looked into your company a little bit, and I see you also have a little weakness over here.
That's something I can do, because I have those skills as well.
So if you hire me, you get a twofer.
I'll do the job and I'll be good at it.
I have all the qualifications you're looking.
Probably a hundred other guys have them too.
But the other thing I'm going to bring you is I can do this other thing.
So if you can find somebody else who can do these two things, good luck.
So that's where your talent stack helps.
But more specifically, you want to give them a concrete proposition of what your extra is.
Because the other people won't do that.
The other people just answer questions.
Maybe ask a few. But they're not going to be selling themselves.
So you don't want to be selling yourself too much.
But if you're saying, you get me plus these extra benefits, and that might be valuable to you, then you've told your employer what's in it for them.
So you want to show that you're agreeable, you're easy to work with, And by the way, sometimes I say that directly.
Actually, almost all the time I say this directly.
When I get into a business arrangement with anybody for anything, I generally tell them directly and upfront that it's my philosophy to give extra.
Because it is. So, you know, if I have a job description, I would tell my boss, look, I'm not about sticking to the job description.
I'm going to do what needs to get done.
So, you know, don't hire somebody who's just going to slavishly do the job description.
I'll do that too. But I'm going to do what needs to get done.
I'm an adult. And so you want to sell yourself as somebody who's bigger than the job, but not so big that you will want the boss's job.
You don't want to threaten the boss's job.
That's not good. But you want to look like you're so helpful that you're going to be the easiest person to work with.
You'll be a self-starter.
You'll be teaching yourself new things.
You'll be volunteering to fill in places that nobody even knew needed to be filled in.
So it's all about presenting the extra.
Think about the extra.
And then also use pacing and leading.
So pacing is when you match the person in any way.
So let's say you walk in and you see the person's got hunting paraphernalia.
You're not a hunter.
You don't even like anything about hunting, let's say.
But you know you want this job.
So you might use language.
That's sort of hunting related because it almost certainly will work.
So you might say, well, you know, I was locked and loaded and, you know, I was just walking down the trail.
I was, you know, I got off a good shot or something like that.
Those are terrible examples because they sound too violent.
But the point is, if you can get a read on the person...
You can adjust your language to use the type of words that would be most comfortable to them.
And they say, oh, you're one of me.
Yeah, I talk like that.
Just like me. So you want to match your boss without being too obvious about it.
Your potential boss is the one that's going to hire you.
Somebody says, psychological manipulation.
Is it? You know, put yourself in the boss's position.
Put yourself in the boss's position and I come in for the interview.
It's not me, the cartoonist.
I'm just coming in for a job.
And I do everything I just recommended.
What would be your opinion of me?
If I did everything I recommended and you knew that I was doing it for the purpose of getting the job, you knew that I was manipulating the situation to get the job, what would you think of me?
Well, if you're smart, You'd say, how well am I doing it?
Because if I'm manipulating him and I'm doing it well, meaning that I have legitimately offered a value proposition, I've explained it well, I haven't made a mistake, I hire that guy.
Do I care that he's putting on a show?
No, that's why I invited him here.
I invited him here to put on a show.
That's why you're here.
So if I put on a show...
And he knows I'm putting on a show, and he knows it's part of the theater and the psychological manipulation of it, but I'm completely transparent.
There's nothing tricky going on.
I'm putting on a show.
That's why we're here.
And I do it well.
I got the job. So, that is what I recommend.
Match your potential boss's breathing, posture, sit up straight, use your body language, take up space, etc.
All right. What are your best questions to ask them?
Oh, that's a good question to ask me, actually.
First of all, you should always ask them questions.
You should have some prepared.
And it should be a question that shows some insight about their company.
That's the best question.
You don't want to ask a selfish question, such as, what kind of cubicle would I have?
Would I have a view? Those are not the good ones.
The good questions are things such as, I've noticed that your industry is starting to move in this direction.
But if you do, does that put you in direct competition with Amazon, and how are you going to handle that?
You ask a question like that, You got the job, right?
Because people just don't think strategically about what they're doing.
Now, that was sort of a big picture one.
It might have been a smaller question.
You could say, you know, I notice that your production's almost at capacity and business is good.
What do you think is going to happen when you're at capacity at this plant?
Because that shows you're thinking ahead and you're looking at the big picture and stuff.
So the question is not about getting the answer.
The question is a way to show that you can ask a damn good question.
If you can ask a damn good question, that's very impressive.
It's one of the most impressive things you could possibly do is ask a good question.
That really stands out because it doesn't happen a lot.
Somebody talked about the firm handshake being out.
You know, that's true. And it does make me wonder about the awkwardness, because the value of the handshake is it was like punctuation.
You knew where the end of the sentence was and the beginning of the sentence.
It's like, okay, beginning of the sentence, and then later, end of the sentence.
So the ceremony of shaking hands had a number of benefits, but one of them was you could tell when it was over.
What's going to happen when people can't tell if the meeting's over?
Because haven't you ever rushed a meeting up by the handshake?
You know, you'd be chatting at the door and you're just like, okay, we're done, we're done.
You're thinking in your mind, but somebody needs to say we're done.
And since nobody can say, well, we're done now, okay, bye.
It's just awkward. How many times have you ever just put out your hand and said, wow, it was great to see you?
Because that's exactly the same as saying, we're done here, I've got to go.
Now we need a whole new thing.
Like actually a new thing, a new standard for we're done here, I gotta go.
Both palms on table.
I've got a lot of suggestions in the comments here.
Alright, I'm going to go Eat some dinner.
That's what I'm going to do.
And I will see you in the morning.
And you should look forward to good news, top to bottom.
All good news tomorrow.
That's my promise to you.
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