Episode 1040 Scott Adams: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Everything and Who Wins the Presidency
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Bill Maher seems to hate his own side
WaPo imagines what might be in Mary Trump's book
Mark Cuban's really smart, strategic political tweet
Jack Posobiec attended BLM/Antifa rally last night
DMCA, parody and CarpeDonktum
Raheem Kassam and moment of death video
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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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obviously But I'm still happy that bland stuff weird Hey everybody, come on in.
Come on in. You've found the right place.
The best place. For the best part of the day.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I don't know how the rest of your day is going to go, but there's one thing I can guarantee.
This part of your day Perfect.
And isn't it good to start off the day perfectly?
And all you need to keep it going is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice with stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, filling 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.
You know all the things that are all better.
As soon as you take the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. Mmm.
Well, how would you like to have your mind blown?
Blown. Here it comes.
I asked this question on Twitter just moments ago.
Still waiting for the answer.
And it looks like this.
Here's the mind-blowing question.
Think of any time in the past there was a presidential election in the United States and the winner was not, any time the winner was not the candidate who looks like he could beat up the other candidate in a fair fight, physical fight. Blows your mind, right?
Well, let's take a look.
Would you imagine in a fair fight that Trump could have beaten Hillary Clinton?
Probably, right?
Would you have imagined that in a fair fight, Reagan could have beat Carter?
Yeah, probably.
Probably. Do you think Kennedy could have beaten Nixon in a fair fight?
Kind of looks like it.
How about Bill Clinton?
Could he have beat Bush Sr.
in a fair fight? Probably.
Alright, you want the best one?
How about George Bush the Younger and Al Gore?
Who would win in a fair fight?
Al Gore or George Bush the Younger?
It would be a tie.
It would have to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Think about it. Oh, do you think Romney could beat Obama in a fair fight?
I don't know.
But I think Obama was also a special case.
I think the country was ready for Obama.
So even if you find the exception, even the exception might tell you something.
I don't think there's anything funnier than watching Bill Maher hate the side he's on.
Because if you've been watching Bill Maher, so he's no fan of Trump, and he's no fan of right-wing or conservative ideology.
But, he also frickin' hates the assholes on his own side.
He doesn't say it quite as clearly as that, but in context, it looks like he just hates being on the side that's canceling people for just about everything.
He was complaining about it last night on his show, and he was talking about the mayor of, I don't know, Minneapolis or something?
I forget who he was talking about.
He goes, and white people need to stop trying to cancel other white people whose heart was in the right place but didn't get it exactly right on the first try.
So he's talking about the ridiculousness of his own side, which I could not enjoy more.
There's something missing in my room here.
That's weird. I might have to take a break here.
Yes, I will.
Hold on.
Don't go anywhere.
Don't go anywhere.
I'm everywhere.
I'm coming back.
I'm almost back.
No. Seriously, I'm coming back.
Alright, so that's funny.
Anyway, isn't it weird how the two movies that I call them, the left and the right, I'm going to characterize them this way just because I think it's funny.
The people on the left think that the people on the right are a bunch of racists.
And that basically explains everything, right?
They're maybe unscientific, but mostly the left thinks the right is a bunch of racists, and that just sort of explains everything.
But here's the funny thing.
The people on the right, they are not aware that they are racist.
Because they probably aren't.
They probably aren't.
Meaning that At least in terms of their conscious thoughts and their conscious actions, they have no idea what the left is talking about.
Now, of course, every group has some racists in it, you know, overt racists, and I'm sure the right and left both have their share.
But isn't it weird that the movie that they see, you don't know you're in.
You're like, huh, apparently I'm surrounded by racists, but why don't I ever see it?
Why don't we know it?
But here's the funny part.
What the right sees is that the left is hypnotized by the fake news.
Is that not your dominant belief about the left?
Now, you're also thinking lots of other things.
You're thinking, oh, there's foreign influence, and you might be thinking George Soros is giving people money, and China is interfering, and Russia is colluding.
You're thinking there's lots of stuff going on.
And you're thinking that maybe the left was brainwashed in a certain way in college, if they went to college.
But doesn't it seem as though the breakdown is now the left thinks the right are racists, and the right thinks that the left only believes that because they've been hypnotized?
Brainwashed, essentially, by fake news and by the educational system.
Is that a fair breakdown?
And it's the weirdest thing because you can't even have a conversation with somebody who is hallucinating.
So here, by analogy, it would be this.
It would be people are hallucinating that you're really a werewolf or something.
And you're saying, I don't know how to defend myself from the accusation of being a werewolf.
Because I'm not a werewolf.
If I were a werewolf, I'd have something I could work with.
I'd say, you know, we werewolves are not all that bad.
You have to see our good side.
Yeah, we got some rough edges.
But werewolves, you know, we have our pluses too.
For example, we fight vampires.
I understand. So...
I don't know if we've ever had a situation where the two different movies are a hallucination of what the other movie is.
That's new. Let me give you some positive encouraging thoughts about the future.
So here's something you're thinking to yourself, oh no, there's a slippery slope.
These protesters are just going to destroy more businesses and destroy more public stuff until it's all gone.
What would be a counterforce that could make that happen?
And it's funny.
It's always the same counterforce.
There is so much in society...
We think it's up to us.
Like you and I think, okay, we've got this disagreement, so you and I are going to work that out.
And then you and I fight, and the people on your side fight, and then I fight, and then my people fight with your side.
And you think that's what the fight is.
Only to find out that it's always settled the same way.
There's an insurance company somewhere who said, you know, I'm not going to cover that.
And then it's over. Insurance companies basically run the world.
You don't think insurance companies run the world?
Try to do something that can't get insured.
See how that goes.
Try to drive your car without insurance.
Try to get a mortgage and tell your bank, you know, I don't think I want insurance on my house.
Yeah, I won't be able to pay you back if it burns down or something, but you know, I think I don't want insurance.
No, you don't have a choice.
You've got to get insurance.
And now we're watching this Seattle, you know, the Occupied Zone or the Autonomous Zone, whatever they like to call it.
And because there was a ruling that apparently the business owners who have been displaced by the protesters, they could actually sue the city.
Now, if you could get sued, what's your only protection?
Insurance. Insurance.
If there's a risk of being sued, and it's sort of built into your business process, the only way you can protect yourself is insurance.
Who's going to insure a mayor who won't protect their own city?
How do you get insurance?
If you're not even going to try to protect your own assets.
Would anybody give you insurance for, let's say, a homeowner's insurance if you insisted on having no doors and windows on your house?
You say, look, I just want a windowless, doorless house.
Yeah, any burglar could come and go and I don't have any security, but I still want insurance.
How about some insurance? And the insurance company will say, Sorry, we only give insurance to people who have doors and windows.
That's up to us.
There's no constitutional right to your insurance.
It's just risk management.
So the hilarious part about the occupation of Seattle is that it will be sorted out by insurance companies.
Because in the end, we all have to do what the insurance companies tell us to do.
Now, that's one of the biggest red pills in the world, when you realize that all of your battles are irrelevant, because it's just going to be decided by the insurance company.
It doesn't matter what you and I think.
And of course, the insurance company paired with the legal system that makes it expensive to do the wrong thing.
All right. Mary Trump has a book coming out.
Is that the president's niece, I guess?
So his brother's daughter.
And I saw a big article on it in the Washington Post.
It was all the headlines and social media, and I was like, oh man, it looks like Mary Trump's damning book about the president has just come out.
And then I read the headlines, and the book isn't even out.
The Washington Post is masturbating so furiously over the possibility of this book being damning that they've already started writing feature articles, guessing what's in it.
Did I make that up?
Nope. They just wrote a feature article in the Washington Post in which they're guessing what kinds of things she might say.
Have we reached a whole new level of ridiculousness?
And so here's the setup.
So Mary Trump, apparently, there was some dispute about her inheritance at some point.
So she's mad at the family.
So that part seems to be established.
She's got some reason to be angry at the family in general.
And maybe President Trump in particular.
Well, she wrote a book about him, so yes, it's obvious.
But here's the fun part.
She's a clinical psychologist.
So the thing that has the Washington Post salivating, and others I'm sure, is that how good would it be, finally, it's their holy grail.
What could they want more than Than a trained clinical psychologist who has spent a lot of time personally with the president.
Right? Because the thing they always lack is when somebody goes on TV and they say, I've never met the president, but he's clearly a schizophrenic, paranoid narcissist.
And then somebody will say, um, remind me about your professional ethics in the psychiatry business.
Are you supposed to diagnose people you've never fucking met?
And then they'll say, well, not normally, but the risks are so high that I thought I'd do it this time.
And then you say, ah, we don't want to listen to you anymore.
If you can't even follow your own journalistic integrity or your own professional integrity, You know, so those stories kind of come and go.
But what if somebody knew him personally and for years had been in the same room, saw all of the family dynamics, and was a trained clinical psychologist?
May I do my impression of Dale finding out that there's a trained clinical psychologist who hates the president and spent a lot of time with him.
So when she speaks, she can speak...
Intelligently.
Dale, did you hear that news?
And scene.
That was Dale enjoying the news that Mary Williams, or Mary Trump, has a book coming out.
Mary Williams is somebody I knew years ago.
And In my 20s, actually.
So Mark Cuban made the smartest political play maybe I've ever seen in my whole life.
And if you missed it, it's one for the ages.
Now, if you asked him, I don't think he would admit that this was a strategy.
And I'm not sure you could call it a strategy.
So let me describe the situation, and then you tell me What you would call this.
What I call it is somebody who's good at chess, figuratively speaking, good at strategy, good at business, good at sort of seeing the whole picture.
So that's Mark Cuban.
And he came out with this tweet, I think it was yesterday, because he's a Biden supporter.
And of course, the obvious question is, Mark Cuban, you seem pretty smart.
Why don't you see what we're seeing with Joe Biden, that his mental condition is not, say, 100%?
And of course, Mark has defended him as being perfectly capable of doing the job, and that maybe Trump has some issues there.
But he kind of did the final clever play that I talked about finding free money on the ground.
And he found this free money that I don't think anybody else would have seen.
It was like invisible free money that only he could see.
But then once he sees it and he tells you about it, you go, oh my god, now I can see it.
And it goes like this.
He tweets that he would be perfectly okay if randomly selected, so that they're not in anybody's pocket, randomly selected experts could do a psychological evaluation on both Biden and Trump.
Think about that.
Now, if you weren't thinking strategically or any other way, you'd say, oh, that's just a tweet.
It's just a tweet supporting his person.
Yeah, you know, Biden will take a test if Trump takes the test.
If you see it on the surface, there's not much there, right?
But think it through.
Think it through. Now, in all likelihood, that will never happen, right?
But by raising the question of Biden and his psychological test, you kind of think it might be more likely to happen, don't you?
And wouldn't you actually like to see a psychological evaluation by independent people of both Biden and Trump?
Wouldn't you? I would.
I'd like to see that.
And let me tell you, I don't care where it comes out.
If it came out that Biden was perfectly capable and Trump was not, according to actually experts that I found credible, I would take that to mean something.
I would take that to mean something.
Like that would influence my opinion.
And it should influence yours.
If you say it wouldn't, maybe because you don't trust the experts, but let's say hypothetically you did, wouldn't that change your mind?
Now, I don't think it would come out that way.
I think Trump would do pretty well.
I think Biden would have some problems.
But what if I'm wrong?
Right? None of us are so smart that you could be sure about any of this stuff because we can be easily fooled by confirmation bias and just rooting for your team, etc.
So by Mark Cuban just putting it out there, how about testing both of them?
Because I don't know anybody said that before.
And it's very provocative.
And because it's him, people pay attention.
Because it's Mark Cuban.
So now that's out there.
Now here's the brilliant part.
Suppose it happened.
Suppose it happened.
Now, you would expect that Biden might have some issues, and it might be a factor in him being changed out before the election.
Wouldn't you say that's reasonable?
A lot of people are talking about the possibility that That Biden will be switched out close to election day.
So that's not really a big surprising thing.
It's possible. But here's the other part that's really fun.
Mark Cuban, just by being in the public and talking about these things, his profile and his name are being associated with the run for the presidency.
At the same time, he's spending nothing campaigning.
Nothing. Mark Cuban is not running for president.
Officially. And he spent nothing campaigning for president.
And running for president is really expensive.
Hundreds of millions of dollars if you happen to be a billionaire.
He spent nothing. And I would say that with that one move, just by saying, hey, let's test them both, he put himself in the top five of potential replacements for Biden.
Because remember, he's pro-Biden.
So he doesn't have a negative connotation on the left.
And if you were to pick one person in the world who could actually reliably, I think, beat Trump, probably be him.
Because he could pick up Republican votes, he could pick up independents, and the people on the left would just say, we don't care, it's just not Trump.
So Democrats would just be automatic, because they'd say, You're not Trump.
Can you confirm your name is not Donald Trump?
All right, we're on your team. So it doesn't matter what the Democrats think of him.
They're still going to vote for him because I don't think he has anything negative that would get him canceled by the left.
Of course, when he was a young man, he had some fun.
All that stuff comes up.
Nobody cares. Nobody cares what you did 20 years ago, frankly.
Same with Trump. Now, so here's the thing.
So the correct question is, would Kamala not be the more likely choice if Biden faltered or were replaced before Election Day?
And I would say she would be, yes.
Kamala would be the first choice.
But I think Cuban's in the top five, isn't he?
Just think about it. Somebody says Cuban can't run, and I don't know if that's true.
Is that a question about being on the ballot?
Is it a question about being on the ballot?
So if that's the case, well, that would be interesting.
But what happens if the Democrats' candidate drops out before Election Day?
Does that mean there's nobody who can run?
Because I don't know that Kamala Harris...
No, I guess... How would that work?
Let's say somebody answered this question for me.
Now, if Kamala Harris became the replacement for Biden before Election Day, since she had previously announced and she was going to run for president, maybe the paperwork's all done?
So that she didn't have any paperwork problem?
Is that true? I don't know if that's true.
But what about, let's say they picked a mayor.
So let's say Biden picks a mayor for his vice president.
Biden is replaced.
Could the mayor, who had not already long ago filled out the paperwork to run for the top spot, is it too late?
Is it too late? I don't know.
So that's the question.
Somebody who knows what they're talking about, which would not be me, find out if somebody could run for president at the last minute, as long as the Democrats wanted that to be their candidate.
So let me know how that works.
Yeah, and I know that the delegates might want Bernie, etc.
So I'm not saying we'd know for sure who the person would.
I'm saying that Cuban put himself in the top five for the conversation, at least the possibility.
He's in the top five to be a replacement for Biden, and he hasn't spent a penny.
That's all I'm saying. So on a risk management level, this is so smart.
It's just one of the best plays I've ever seen.
Now, it probably won't pay off.
Because, you know, you just would be one of five people considered.
Biden still has to actually drop out.
Blah, blah, blah. So there's a lot that could go wrong.
But to put yourself in the top five for contention without spending a penny this close to Election Day?
I don't know. Would anybody else have seen that play?
That's all I'm saying. I did a little Twitter poll.
In which I asked people if a computer polled you, in other words, there's no human voice, it's a computer that calls you on your phone and says, who do you want to vote for in the upcoming election?
Would you admit that you were going to vote for Trump if you were a Trump supporter?
So that was the question I posed on Twitter.
Now it's a Twitter poll, so of course it's not dependable like a regular poll.
But I wanted to see if anybody would say it.
Because it could have been, you know, that Trump supporters might say, screw you, Scott, we're not afraid of saying who we support.
So I didn't know how it would come out.
So it came out that, so 45% of the people said they wouldn't answer.
So, you know, nearly half of the people in my unscientific Twitter poll said that if they were contacted by an actual scientific poll, that they wouldn't answer.
Now, if 45% of the people wouldn't answer, you know, you've got trouble collecting a good enough sample, but you could still do it, still do it.
But suppose, so if those who answered They add up to 55%.
So of the 55% who would give an answer, these are the percentages.
I'm sorry, I'm confusing you with the percentages.
So let me just give them to you straight.
45% said they wouldn't answer at all.
37% said yes, they'd say they were going to vote for Trump.
And remember, these are only people answering this poll who already said they would vote for Trump.
So 37% said they would admit it.
Only 37% would admit it to a computer.
They're not even talking to a real person.
They're talking to a computer, and only 37% of the people who follow me on Twitter, who are also Trump supporters, who also answered this poll, said that they would admit it.
And 18% in my little unscientific poll said that they would lie and say Biden.
Now remember, the 18% is only 18% of the total people but only 37% said they would say Trump and 18% would also answer said they would say Biden so you should really look at 18 being half of 37 roughly so roughly let me do my math better here roughly one third of the people who would answer would lie one third Can you believe that?
One third of the people in my unscientific, so you shouldn't take this too seriously, poll said they would lie and actually say Biden.
Now, be careful because I have primed my Twitter.
My Twitter following is not like any other, you know, Generic group of people.
They're pretty self-selected.
And they've been primed for this prank, so it would be a higher number in my, presumably, in my group.
But let me ask you this.
As unscientific as this was, deeply, deeply biased and unscientific, does it not still Does it not still show you that there's a fairly massive problem with people being honest on these polls?
I feel as if it's indicating there's a problem.
Like a bigger problem than ever before.
And let me put it in starker terms.
I don't think in 2020 it would be smart to answer a poll honestly if you were a Trump supporter.
Because there might be a day, keep this in mind, if the Democrats win, They've said directly that they're coming after Trump supporters.
Have you not heard that?
Have you not heard people on the left, the team that could win, that they would actually come after supporters?
And there would be, in theory, some database, even though a computer made the call, somewhere there's a database of this phone number had these responses.
So, you could kind of piece it together.
Would you want to be on a list when you knew people were going to be using the list to hunt you down and make you pay?
Now, probably that won't happen, but it feels kind of scary and people respond to the risk as much as they respond to reality.
So I was thinking that the worst was behind us in terms of the economy and coronavirus and maybe even the protests were losing a little steam.
And I was thinking, you know, finally, are we getting past it?
2020 has been pretty rough, but I feel like we're behind it.
And then I saw a headline that says, Tennessee police warn of flushing drugs that could create hyper-aggressive alligators.
So apparently if you flush your meth down the toilet, it can get into the water supply and then your alligators will be on meth and will be living in a world with hyper aggressive meth alligators.
Now, you might say to yourself, I don't want to live in any kind of a world with hyper aggressive meth soaked alligators.
That doesn't sound good.
But you know, I don't like to admit this.
I don't like to say this in public, but I'm going to do it anyway.
If we don't get any hyper-aggressive alligators, I'm going to be a little disappointed.
I'm not proud of that.
I'm not proud of that.
But if we got no hyper-aggressive alligators, none, not a single hyper-aggressive alligator, I don't know if I'd be okay with that.
We live in a world where, damn it, I need some hyper-aggressive, methed-up alligators, because, I don't know about you, but it's getting harder and harder to watch the regular news, the political news.
If I watch one more black man being killed by police on video, I think I'm going to shoot myself.
But I could definitely watch some news about some hyper-aggressive meth alligators, I could watch that all day long.
There's a new story out of town in Florida.
Hyper-aggressive alligators have attacked Main Street for fatalities.
Now, I'd say to myself, nobody's happy about fatalities.
Can't be happy about that.
I feel sorry for the families.
But I could watch a few more of these stories about hyper-aggressive alligators.
I'm not a good person, apparently.
Apparently there's something deeply wrong with me, but I could just watch more hyper-aggressive alligators.
That's all. That's all I'm saying.
You know, I've told you about my game that I play when I see a name trending on Twitter.
If you see a celebrity's name, you play the game COVID Cancelled or Dead.
So you say to yourself, uh-oh, why is this person's name trending?
And before you know the answer, before you click on it, you say, all right, Do they have COVID? Are they cancelled?
Or are they dead?
And so this morning I saw Jack Posobiec trending on Twitter and I was like, oh no.
Poor Jack. What is it?
Is it COVID? Is he cancelled?
Is he dead? Well, he's still alive and he's not cancelled.
Well, no more cancelled than any conservative would be.
And we don't know anything about COVID, but the story is That he attended without a disguise and without any security.
He attended the Antifa rally right in the middle of that Emancipation Memorial last night.
And as you might imagine, he was recognized.
So he was recognized by some little anti-fagat.
Well, he was well disguised.
So imagine, let's say, a fire hydrant with red goggles.
So just so you have the visual.
A fire hydrant, it's got a little hat on with a hood and red goggles.
And it's yelling at Jack Posobiec, who towers above it in height.
But the little fire hydrant was getting in Jack's face and it looked like, I don't know, it looked like maybe somebody threw water at him and they were all crowding around and getting in him.
And there's lots of video of it.
And it's really fun to watch because I don't think you've ever seen anybody in so much physical danger Who didn't seem to be bothered by it.
So you have to watch this thing.
It's kind of fun to watch.
Because he's surrounded by really angry and violent people who any moment are getting ready to attack him.
And they're right in his face.
They're all over him and they're jostling him.
And he's just sort of looking at him.
Like, alright, alright.
Who's next? And he gets escorted out.
Made news. I don't believe any other national reporter got anywhere near the center of the thing.
But, you know, there were a lot of cameras watching the entire event.
So you've got some views from different places.
And it looks like...
It looks like Jack was willing to take one for the team, if you know what I mean.
It looks like he was willing to take the punch.
Now, I don't think he was asking for a punch, because that looks different.
You've seen the Antifa people who are just asking to get punched.
They're getting in the cops' faces and stuff.
It was nothing like that.
He was simply asserting his right to stand there in public.
Think about it. Just think about that.
Jack Posobiec is trending today Just think about this.
This is like a pretty massive thought.
He's trending on Twitter and he's a national story because he had the temerity to simply stand there in a public place and just have a different opinion than the other people who were there.
That's it. He wasn't assaulting anybody.
He wasn't Wasn't doing anything offensive whatsoever.
He was simply asserting his right.
Obviously, I don't know what he was thinking internally, but in terms of physically what was happening, as an observer's perspective, not his internal thoughts, which are only his own.
He asserted his right for a lot of the people who are watching this.
He went right into the middle of it and asserted his right to be there in a public place.
Peacefully. Now, if he had been punched, would the conversation have changed?
I think it might have.
I think it might have.
So I really appreciated what Jack did.
Because I think, you know, all of us have to sort of make sure that we're pushing the envelope a little bit, because otherwise the walls are going to close in, as the left likes to say.
They would like to squeeze any Trump supporting or conservative opinions into nothingness.
And the only way that that doesn't happen is that there are some people who are willing to risk taking a punch.
If you don't go that far, The wall will just keep closing in.
So yesterday, Jack took a stand for freedom, I would say.
Again, who knows what his internal thought process was, but in terms of what it meant to me, what it meant to me is that he stood there and said, all right, we've reached the point where you either have to punch me or shut the fuck up.
Because that's where we are now, right?
Throw the punch, because there are a lot of people who are going to watch this punch if it happens.
Now, to their credit, the protesters did not throw any kind of a, let's say, a hospitalization kind of a punch, but there was enough of an assault Collectively there was enough of an assault that I guess the police have been informed and there may be some legal action which would be completely appropriate.
Now let me ask you this.
If there's a civil lawsuit, which I imagine there could be, I don't know that there will be, but there could be, and let's say that that fire plug with the red goggles is identified.
Already on Twitter you can see his name and picture, but I would not say that's necessarily the right guy yet.
So I would caution you that although he has the assailant, or alleged assailant, has been identified on Twitter, give that a couple of days.
You know, you don't want to get a false identification, so just give that a couple days to make sure that we're talking about the right person.
But suppose he got sued and lost.
Does that guy ever get insurance again?
Who would ever give insurance to the fireplug with the glasses?
I don't know. I'm not sure if insurance matters in his case.
So that's going on.
All right. So I have been trying also to stretch my boundaries of free speech.
And I've said there's this weird thing going on where some of us are actually slightly getting more free speech at the moment because of the weirdness of things.
So while most of you are getting less free speech, if you stick your head up, you're going to get cancelled.
And that's a real risk, and I don't recommend you do it if you are a civilian.
Let me say that again.
If you're a civilian, meaning you're not in it professionally, and you're not doing this in public the way I am, I would consider myself a professional in this context.
But if you're not a professional, you might want to keep your head down.
You might want to keep your head down, because it's not safe for you.
But there are some few of us Who are professionals who are actually weirdly getting a little extra space.
And the reason we're getting a little extra space is that people don't want to engage with us because the experts are too dangerous.
It would be too hard to cancel me at this point because I'm too vocal.
And I don't think people want to hear what I have to say.
But let me give you some examples of where I'm stretching my rights of free speech.
So a couple of days ago, I did this tweet, which I already told you about, but I want to just give you an update on it.
I said that, quote, white privilege is a racist term, in my opinion.
Anyone who uses it is either a racist, an idiot, or an asshole.
And then I went on to say that rich privilege is a thing, obviously.
Now that got close to 10,000 retweets.
Alright, so if you get that many retweets, it means that a lot of people not only agree with it, in fact, there were almost 28,000 likes.
Now for my account, that's about 10 times more than a viral tweet.
So based on the size of my Twitter account, if I get 1000 retweets on a tweet, I consider that one one of the bigger ones.
You know, that's 1000 for me is a lot.
Rarely, although lately it's happened more, I'll break 2,000, but it's rare.
This tweet had almost 10,000 retweets.
So that means it is massively agreeable to people.
They're putting themselves behind it.
And I actually said that white privilege is a racist term.
10,000 people retweeted that.
So this clearly, people are not only agreeing with it, but they're willing to say it in public.
The willing to say it in public Is the interesting part.
And I didn't get cancelled for that, because, and simply because it's obvious that white privilege as a term is a racist term.
If you actually get into the conversation, it's going to go my way, because it's a racist term.
It's not even a hard argument to make, right?
Which has nothing to do with whether African-American people are discriminated against and there's a legacy of slavery and all that.
It has nothing to do with those questions.
Just by itself, white privilege is obviously a racist term.
It minimizes white people.
So that didn't get me canceled.
So I thought, well, I'm going to have to push this a little bit further.
So yesterday I tweeted this.
I said, if I ever find a baby trapped at the bottom of a dry well, I'm not going to help until I know whether or not the legacy of slavery had a role in it.
If yes, I'll help.
If it's just an unlucky white baby, it's on its own.
And then I said, am I doing this right?
Now, you can see what I've done is I've simply taken the point of view of Black Lives Matter.
I've taken the point of view that if you had a legacy of slavery, that's a special condition which generates, in their view of the world, special privileges and or payments, reparations and or accommodations, maybe, that are a compensation for that That evil and that wrongness.
Now, nobody, of course, disagrees that slavery was the ultimate sin, the ultimate evil, except maybe the Holocaust was worse, but it's still in that category of ultimate evil.
So everybody agrees on that.
And here's the thing.
It doesn't make a lick of sense So, it's the most dominant, agreed-upon thing, even by both sides.
I would say both the right and left are both under the opinion that slavery had a ripple effect.
Of course it did. How could it not, really?
It had a ripple effect through time, and that it affects people today.
But, here's the thing that nobody wants to say out loud.
Who fucking cares?
Why does that matter? Now when I say who cares, let me be very clear.
I do care about the people, of course.
Black Lives Matter, of course.
So I care about all people, but that's my point.
I'm left of this.
Do you get that?
I'm left of the left on this.
Black Lives Matter says we need to do something about people who Who were, let's say, victims of slavery as it rippled through the generations.
And I say, how about we extend that?
How about we say that you're not left enough?
How about I say, there's something very selfish about that, because you're excluding, let's say, for example, a Filipino-American who's not doing well.
You're excluding, for example, An Hispanic American who is just not doing well.
It's not their fault.
They were born into a bad circumstance.
You're excluding a Chinese American.
Again, I'm just using these phrases as they're all Americans.
So in my example, they're all Americans one way or another.
But why do they not get help?
Because they have a different reason that they're in bad shape.
Does the baby have any responsibility For what the parents did that got the baby in this poverty situation?
No. No.
So if you're trying to carve out a special class of victim, there is no rational, logical, or moral support for it.
And we've all just swallowed this big fat fucking lie because we've been beaten into submission because we know we'll be cancelled if we push back.
Black Lives Matter is way too far right for me.
Way too far right.
Because left to them is you help everybody who's in trouble.
Left to Black Lives Matter is where I am.
Remember I told you I'm left to Bernie?
Well, I'm probably not left to Bernie on this one.
If Bernie thinks that only poor black people need help because of their circumstances, I will eat my chair.
I will eat my chair if Bernie Sanders doesn't say some version of what I'm saying, which is, no, Black Lives Matter.
Your issues are 100% valid.
There are lots of people who need help who are black, and there are reasons we can identify, which are certainly factors.
They're not the only factors, but they're factors.
Are you telling me the Hispanic kid who didn't do anything wrong was just born into a bad situation?
That's it. They were just born into a bad situation.
And you're not going to give them any help?
How's that right? So, how did I do on this tweet?
So this one got 388 retweets.
388. Compared to the other one, which I thought was about white privilege being racist, which got 10,000 retweets.
So they're both pushing the envelope of what I'm allowed to say without getting cancelled.
One of them only got 388 retweets and the other one got 10,000.
What it tells you is that the one who only got 388 retweets is too dangerous.
It was actually safer To say that white privilege is a racist term, apparently, then it was safe to say that all babies who are in bad shape should be helped.
Think about that. Think about the fact that people are afraid to say you should help a baby regardless of how it got in trouble.
It's amazing. I mean, it's amazing.
So I think that tells you that's sort of the edge of where people are comfortable with their freedom of speech.
But not me. I'm going to push a little further, as I did yesterday.
Want to hear what I did yesterday?
And I'm going to extend it a little bit today.
I made the following tweet, which is eight points, that I claim everyone who follows these steps to success does well.
Now, when you make a public statement like everyone...
For the benefit of people who are very particular and dependent, it never means everyone.
So if you ever hear me use the word, everyone does this, just in your head translate it to, oh, he means most of the time, or, you know, it's generally that way.
It never means everyone, okay?
But I say it to be provocative.
Everyone who follows these steps to success does well.
So listen to these steps, see if you agree.
Number one, focus on useful education.
I put in useful.
You know, find an educational path.
That by its nature is useful.
So maybe not be an art historian, for example.
Maybe be a mechanic.
So it doesn't have to be regular school, just useful education.
Number two, stay on illegal trouble.
Number three, stay away from drugs.
Number four, don't become a parent too soon.
Everybody knows what too soon is, right?
Before you're economically set.
Number five, build a talent stack.
So put together talents that make you useful.
Number six, be useful to others.
And this has to do with reciprocity.
If you are seen as being useful to other people in a variety of ways, everybody wants to be with you.
They want to marry you.
They want to be your friend. They want to hire you.
They want to buy your goods.
So being useful to others in an overt way, amazingly powerful for success.
Number seven, favor systems over goals.
You all know what I'm talking about, right?
It's not good enough to have a goal.
You need systems that can get you ready for a variety of goals.
I write about that in my book.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
Number eight, learn the basics of risk management.
And here I mean, learn that diversifying your stock portfolio makes more sense than buying one stock.
Learn that you might have to try 10 startups before one of them works.
Learn that if you're making an investment with other people's money, it's better than using your own.
Very basic things.
Yet, people don't know them until they're taught.
So there are a lot of basic things About risk management that people don't know that it's easy to imagine.
Well, wouldn't they know that? Just common sense?
And the answer is no.
No. Diversification as a concept isn't common sense.
Until you hear it the first time.
And then you say, oh, okay.
I get that. So it's not hard stuff.
So here's my provocative thought of the day.
If you want to measure racism...
I would say that the only way to measure it, or the best way, you can't really ever be sure you're measuring it perfectly, would be to compare the people who followed the eight steps In different groups.
So rather than saying, you know, just all the people who look the same who are in this group compared to the people who some visual way, you know, their melanin is the same over here, that kind of comparison just feels useless all the time to me.
It just feels like somebody is trying to cause trouble when they compare people on just, well, these are black and these are white.
How'd they do? It feels like you're just asking for trouble.
How about if you compared the people who use the same strategy?
Because I think everything on this list is available to everybody.
Everybody could have a useful education.
Now, I know it's going to be harder if your school system is a mess, etc.
But I think that when, let's say, colleges look at that, they actually factor it.
I think they take into consideration That you were from a bad school, but let's say you're an African-American student, so they're going to say, well, you know, I think we're going to give this person a chance.
So I think everybody could get an education, and if they can't, well, that's what you fix.
That's where you focus.
So I'd like to see the incomes of the people who did all the right steps compared to the other people in any other group, you know, white, Asian, whatever, who also did all these steps.
If you compare the people who use the right strategies to each other, then what's left might indeed be racism.
And it could be a big deal.
And I'd like to know what that is.
Because if that still exists for people who do everything right, wouldn't you like to know that?
I mean, seriously.
Wouldn't you like to know that...
That everybody who did the right steps did well.
Now, I see some provocative people here asking about IQ. And I know what you're going to say.
You're going to say, hey, isn't it just that IQ is predictive?
And the answer is, not really in the way that you think.
It's a popular thing on the right to say, well, isn't it just all IQ? And, you know...
And the answer is, not really, because IQ is highly influenceable.
For example, did you know that IQs have been going up for decades?
Well, how is that possible?
How could IQs go up for decades?
If IQ is just sort of baked into your DNA, it's not like we're evolving.
Are we evolving that quickly?
I don't think so. So there is something about The environment that operates with whatever your natural capability is that is very important.
So I don't think...
Let me extend this further.
I've said to you that you should think of your brain to include your body.
Because when I... Let's say when I'm cycling through ideas for jokes, for example, I feel them in my body.
Like I laugh or whatever, and that's part of my mental process.
So I think of my brain and my body as one unit.
Likewise, I think you could extend that, that your brain and your body and your physical surroundings are all part of your brain or your IQ, if you will.
For example, if you spend time in dirty, dingy, poorly lighted areas, how good is your brain?
You've probably experienced this, right?
You go to a well-lit, happy, bright place where there's no trouble and no physical risk, nothing to worry about.
How well does your brain operate?
Pretty well. You don't have a problem in the world.
I got light. I feel good.
I've had a good meal.
My brain's good.
Now take you, five minutes later, my dog is asleep barking if you hear some weird sounds over there.
Now take you, same person, and put you in just a really bad environment.
Is it good? Just as good as when you were in that other situation?
No. Because you should think of your brain and your body and your physical surroundings as your thinking machine.
Those are not the same machines.
Somebody says nonsense about light and neatness.
Whoever says that that's nonsense, you've never had a creative job, I can tell.
Anybody who has a creative job will tell you, I think 100% of us will agree, that your physical surroundings and how you manage your physical surroundings just completely change your attitude.
Yesterday I was having a bad day.
And I was just so depressed and my energy was just in the basement.
I couldn't even work out.
I just wasn't happy.
And I said to myself, how long have I been in this dark house?
Because I don't have good light in my house.
I thought, what would happen if I just got on my bike and took a ride?
I walk outside into my garage, get on my bike, pull it out of the garage.
The light hits me.
And my attitude changed like that.
My entire mental structure just went boom to complete happiness in five seconds of changing my environment.
It was actually that quick. And I realized it at the time.
So, here's what I'm saying.
I don't think that IQ is as accurate as you think, but here's my other provocative example.
For those of you who are watching, Let's say there are two groups.
This piece of paper represents any one group.
Let's say they're left-handed Elbonians.
And the bottom of the paper is the lowest IQ of any of them.
And then, you know, here's the highest IQ of any of them at the top of the paper.
Then they're being compared to, let's say, right-handed Elbonians.
So we'll imagine they're such people.
And the right-handed Elbonians have a few more geniuses, Here's the piece of paper held up.
So you can see that one is a little bit higher than the other, but not much.
Two, three percent. Let's say two percent.
So two percent more geniuses and maybe two percent fewer people who need, you know, let's say long-term mental health care.
But if you look at these two pieces of paper, even though there's a real difference, Between the left-handed Elbonians and the right-handed, almost all the people who have regular jobs are the same.
In other words, the only differences are at the top and the bottom.
Now the people at the bottom are all the people who can't hold jobs in the first place.
Do you compare those to the rest of the people?
You know, if some people are literally Mentally handicapped.
Are you just throwing them in the mix and saying, oh, you know, throw them in?
That doesn't make sense. You can't count them.
That's a special category.
And what about the geniuses at the top?
I have bad news for you.
You're not one of them.
And you know what? Neither am I. So, what does it mean to you that there exists in one group At the very top, some really smart geniuses and the other group doesn't have as many of them in that category.
What does that mean to you?
Nothing. Nothing.
You're not in that category.
It's such a small group of people.
They're literally irrelevant to anything.
You could just throw that group out of any conversation because they're freaks.
They're freaks. The people who are in that top, like, crazy 1% who invent everything that matters...
They're not you. What, are you going to take credit for that because you have some DNA in common?
How does that help you invent stuff?
Nothing. Doesn't help you a bit.
So the fact that there is some statistical difference between two groups is so close to irrelevant that I don't think it belongs in the conversation.
It just doesn't.
The fact that you might luckily be in a group that has a few extra geniuses If you're not one of them, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't help you a bit.
Alright. Here's something that should get me cancelled.
Let's talk about black privilege.
Am I cancelled yet?
Can you hear me? Are you still there?
Yes. I'm going to talk about black privilege.
The things that black people can enjoy.
Now, Obviously, there are huge disadvantages.
The Black Lives Matter people will give you a list.
You've all heard of the list.
I do not question anything on their list, so it's not about that.
I'm just saying, shouldn't we have a complete picture?
Is there anything wrong with that?
To have a complete picture?
So, we'll see how far I can move the envelope here.
Because I'm not going to say anything offensive, nor anything that anybody disagrees with, I think.
And I think you'll agree.
That there's a real useful reason to include this.
All right, here's some black advantages.
Do black people have advantages in college admissions?
I think the answer is yes, right?
Now, unless that's changed.
But my understanding is that black people have an advantage in college admissions.
What about college scholarships?
Would you have an advantage if you are poor and black?
Versus poor and anything else?
And I think the answer is yes, right?
Now again, please fact check this.
If any of this is wrong, I'm not saying it with any bad intentions.
You know, and wait for my point before you comment.
How about this? Do black people have an advantage in getting a job at a big corporation?
So a big corporation that would have diversity preferences?
If you are a black candidate and you have, you know, the qualifications and there are lots of other candidates, do you have an advantage that works for you?
And the answer is yes, and it's a big one.
It's like really big.
It's like guaranteed you're going to get the job big.
It's not statistically, well, you've got a 2% greater chance.
No, you got the job.
If you don't know that, I'm glad I could tell you.
So if you're black and you're watching this periscope, did you not know that?
That if you work hard in your school, that your odds of getting into college are basically 100%.
As long as you've got good enough grades, 100%.
And odds of getting a scholarship if you're poor and black?
Really, really good.
Odds of getting a job after college at a really good corporation, let's say an Apple, a Google, Facebook, you know, a really good job.
Do you have an advantage?
Yeah, it's pretty much locked in.
If you have the right major, if you have the right major and you're black, yeah, you can work at Google.
If you want to. If you want to.
But if you have good grades and you're white, can you necessarily work at Google?
Well, obviously a lot of people do.
But not just because you want to.
I mean, you've got to be, you know, in a very small select group to get a job at a company that's doing that well.
So that's an advantage.
Here's one that you would not expect.
But I assert this to be true.
Mentoring. If you ask.
Now, the if you ask part is the important part of this.
Mentoring. If you ask.
And I'll tell you my personal story of discrimination and racism to make this point.
So, because I'm a public figure and I talk about success, etc., I'm often contacted by people who would like advice or mentoring.
When I say often, I mean literally every day.
So every day I'm contacted by people who say, can we get together?
Can I talk to you? Can we have a phone call?
Would you answer some questions?
Etc. It's just an ongoing stream of those requests.
Now, how many of them come from generic white men?
Most of them. Most of them, maybe 95% of the people who would reach out who don't know me already and just reach out and say, hey, can I get some help, some advice?
95% of them white men.
Now, why is that?
Probably because I'm a white man.
Everybody feels more comfortable talking to somebody who's like them.
Why would women...
Not reach out for advice from me.
Well, maybe they think men don't have the right kind of advice.
Maybe women just are more comfortable talking to other women.
They don't want to look like they're interested in you, so they don't want to make that kind of a contact.
Who knows? But here's the net result of it.
When a woman contacts me, For mentoring.
It just wants answered to a question, pointed in the right direction, that sort of thing.
Or a black man or a woman contacts me for mentoring.
They go right to the top of the pile.
Every time. Now, am I discriminating?
Is that racist of me?
Yes! Totally.
Completely racist. It is completely racist that I prioritize black people who contact me higher than white people.
Now, it has something to do with the fact that I can feel the unfairness of it, and I'm responding to that, right?
There's a deep unfairness that white people do have a bit of a monopoly on sort of just knowing how things work, because there are more of them who have succeeded just as a gross number.
And if you're in a world where people are succeeding, you're just seeing how things work.
So white people are just more naturally, on average, exposed to good mentoring and advice just by living, because they're around other people who have advice, and they say, hey, Bob, give me some advice, and it's right there.
If you're coming from, let's say, a situation where there's more poverty, or you're just locked into your own social network, and it just isn't as, let's say, deep as you want it to be, And you want to get some other mentoring from some generic white people, such as myself, if you contact me and you're black, you go right to the top of the list.
Now, I don't normally admit this, but in the interest of deepening the conversation, I'll admit it to you now.
I absolutely discriminate in favor of black people.
Always have. Always have.
This isn't something new.
I just wouldn't have told you before.
Same with women. If women contact me, I'm more likely to give them advice.
Same reason. Now, and by the way, I don't defend this.
If you're saying to me, but Scott, that's inconsistent, because why wouldn't you just give advice to anybody who asks for it?
And the answer is, I can't defend it.
I don't defend it.
There's somebody in the comments.
Saying, am I the only black person in here?
You might be.
You might be. No, actually, you would be surprised that the number of black folks following me on Twitter is really going up lately.
And I hope for the right reasons.
Here's another advantage.
All right, so just to put a point on that.
If you're black and you don't know this, White people are more likely to help you than they are to help white people.
Let me give you the red pill of red pills for the one black...
Oh, okay, I'm seeing some black emoji hands going up, so great to have you here.
So let me say this if you didn't know it.
This is a big red pill.
You think that white people are cruel or uncaring or mean or whatever to black people?
You're probably right.
Here's the part you didn't know.
White people are terrible to white people.
Did you know that?
Did you know that white people are absolutely terrible to other white people?
All the time. Of course, we need a reason.
I mean, if you do something that makes me want to treat you terrible, I'll do that.
How about if there's a choice between something good happens for you and something good happens for me?
Well, I might choose me, because you're all allowed to do that.
Oh, I'm looking at all of my black followers who are weighing in.
It's really good to see that.
It's good to see you.
All right. So here's another advantage of being black.
Free speech. You don't argue.
There's no way you're going to argue with me on this.
Black people have free speech in this country.
White people do not.
I don't want to hear any argument on that.
If you don't know that's true, I mean really know that's true, you haven't been paying attention for a long time.
Black people have freedom of speech.
And I'm happy for it.
I would say women have freedom of speech in general.
But white men?
Not so much. Not so much.
We don't have freedom of speech.
Not completely. And then, of course, there's always the weapon, which is if you're black or you're a woman, you always have a weapon to use against white men, which is any accusation, because accusations are all taken seriously.
And the accusation alone Or the risk of it as a weapon.
So even if you have no intention of being that kind of person, and you say to yourself, yeah, I know, I could use that if I wanted to, but that's not my deal.
I'm about just earning my own stuff.
I'm not about trying to use some weird legal thing just because I could get away with it.
But the fact that it just exists as a weapon, Does modify other people's behavior, believe me.
So it does give you a little extra that you might not be aware of.
Now, that said, and let me bookend this by saying, I'm not saying that black people have a better deal than white people in this country.
I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, let's have the full conversation.
Let's talk about what's good being white, what's good being black.
Is there anything that needs to be done about it?
Can we just be honest?
Can the white public treat black people with respect for the first time?
Maybe for the first time?
Because in my view, treating anybody with respect means you're going to be honest with them, even if it's a little bit hard to hear.
If you can't do that, let's not pretend we're showing respect.
Respect is You can say what you're thinking, but you don't have bad intentions.
Now, I think one of the reasons I can get away with more than you can, and this is a pretty important lesson on communication, people will hear what they think you intend to say.
They'll never hear what you say.
They can only hear what you intend to say based on their understanding of your intentions and your motivations.
I've tried to create a public record that is unambiguous That I have good intentions.
How much would I like black people to be more successful in the United States?
A lot! Because it's good for me too.
How's that not good for me?
Right? Of course I want everybody who is poor to do better.
Because if everybody who is poor does better, well, then I sell things.
There are more people with more money who buy things.
How's that not good for me?
Of course I have good intentions.
It would be crazy not to.
Because self-interest is the same direction.
Alright, different topic.
Let's talk about TikTok, the Chinese government spy app, I call it.
Hotep Jesus was tweeting yesterday that he noticed that iOS 14, I guess that's the new iOS, the beta detects TikTok was reading data from user clipboards.
And then he goes on and says, iOS 14 has a feature which notifies users of this kind of behavior.
So apparently the operating system is looking for spyware, if you will, and it found some in TikTok.
And TikTok says they will stop the practice.
Well, TikTok, why did you start the practice?
What was it you were doing that made you need to know the data on a user's clipboard?
Can you give us any valid reason Why that code existed in the first place.
So TikTok has to go.
In the future, that just can't be an app in the United States.
It's too dangerous. Here's something fun.
So Akira Thedon dropped his album, which is, if you're new to this, this will sound like the worst idea in the world when you first hear it.
When you actually listen to it, it might feel like the best idea in the world.
So keep in mind that how it sounds, like just when it's described to you as a concept, doesn't sound good at all.
But you should see the comments and the reviews that this is getting.
So Akira the Don produced some music in which...
He's combined the audio clips from some of my periscopes.
I think mostly the one about the user interface for reality.
And he uses my voice and he does some minor modifications to it just to clean up the audio.
And he puts a musical track below it.
And I gotta tell you, it's really, really good.
Yeah, and he did it with Jordan Peterson, and he's done it with, I think he did it with Naval, but he did it with some other people who have the same characteristic, which is they talk about philosophical things in public.
Now, so Akira has invented this concept, and it is really fresh.
It feels like a new form of art completely, and it's better than the old forms of art.
I actually like it better than any...
Any popular music that's playing today.
So no, I may be biased because I'm part of it.
Oh, for full disclosure, I'm not part of it financially.
So some people ask me, Scott, are you making a profit from this?
Because I've been praising it so much.
And the answer is no. I'm not going to ask for any, obviously.
So if you wanted to find it, you would Google my name and the user interface for reality, and you'd look for it on Spotify and Apple Music.
But there's a fun thing on here, and it's by Akira the Don.
A-K-I-R-A. So if you Google any of those, it'll pop up.
You can also see it in my Twitter feed.
Here's the fun part. There's a hook.
On there, something that is my voice making a statement that repeats on part of it.
And here's the fun part.
It's one of those audio illusions.
Somebody says, it's just your ego.
Now, I thought that until I saw the comments.
Because the first thing, obviously, would be, oh, it's just because I'm involved.
That's why I think it's good.
That's the obvious thing that I thought about myself as well.
So I actually asked Akira...
When I first heard it, I had to actually ask him, are other people having the reaction I am?
And he confirmed it, and then I checked the comments myself.
And yeah, people are loving it.
That is objectively true.
You can check yourself. So there's this one statement that sounded to me like, if nobody works.
And it repeats, if nobody works, if nobody works.
And I heard it the first time when I listened to it and I thought, you know, that's weird because I don't remember ever saying that sentence.
It's such a unique sentence.
And I thought, why is it that I would not remember that?
And it's clearly me talking.
And then I saw a tweet in which the actual words were in text.
And it did not say, if nobody works.
What it did say is, it feels like it works.
Now, do those sound the same to you?
I will say both sentences.
See how different they are.
If nobody works compared to, it feels like it works.
You would never mistake those two sentences.
Am I right? You would never mistake them.
But like the Laurel and Yanni example, the audio thing, when I didn't know what it was going to be and I heard it, I heard it as clearly as you could hear a word, if nobody works.
Listened to it over and over again, it was always the same.
Once I read it, I went back and said, how could it sound like that when it really says, it feels like it works?
So I listened to it again and it's very clearly, it feels like it works.
Clear as day. And then I said to myself, what?
What's going on here?
And then I did this experiment.
I played, I repeated in my head the phrase, the wrong phrase, if nobody works.
And then I listened to it again.
And it is just as clearly obvious that when I'm repeating the priming statement in my head, it sounds exactly like it.
And then I can change it in real time.
I just go, okay, change the recording in my head to it feels like it works, and the audio changes in real time, instantly, to a completely different sentence while you're listening to it.
Freaky. Now, I tweeted this, but I made a hypnotist mistake, which made it not work for most of you.
I think a number of people said they also could hear the phenomenon, but here's what I did wrong.
I primed you by giving you the correct one first.
It feels like it works.
If you're primed by that, it's hard to get out of it because it's actually the correct one.
But if you're primed by the wrong one, as I was accidentally, then you can hear both.
So if I had set it up right and primed you right, you would hear both.
So try that at home. All right, and I tweeted it if you want to find it in my Twitter feed.
Let me give you an update on some of the Twitter business.
So you know that Carpe Donctum was temporarily locked out of his account for DMCA takedown notices, and I have a little more information on that.
So DMCA takedown, there's a website you can go to, And you can claim that somebody on some platform is using your copyrighted material without permission.
Now here's the bad part of the process.
The process is automatic, meaning that Twitter doesn't have a choice.
If the DMCA process is followed, even if it's illegitimate, even if you just say, my name is Paul McCartney and I'd like them to take my song down, you can make up anything.
And the process just doesn't check it.
It just says, well, okay, we got a complaint, so we got to take this down.
Now, normally that would apply to only the material, not the person who put it there.
So that would not cause their account to be locked.
But apparently Twitter has a three-and-out rule, which Carpe was not aware of.
And I've never seen either.
I've not seen it in writing.
Were any of you aware that if you received three DMCA takedown notices, that your account would be locked?
Did you know that? How would you know that?
How in the world would you know that?
Actually, some people say yes.
I don't know if you're answering that question, though.
But here's my point.
If somebody... It makes perfect sense to me that Twitter would block somebody who intentionally used copyrighted material three times in a row.
I actually agree with that.
Don't you? Because if somebody took my...
Let's say they took the Dilbert cartoon and just started publishing it in Twitter every day, well, I might complain once or I might ask them to stop doing that, you know, because the first thing you do is just ask.
So the first thing I'd do is say, hey, you know, I'd like people to go to Dilbert.com because it's advertising supported.
Would you mind not putting this on Twitter?
Most of the time that works.
If they continued to just publish my cartoon in competition with me, by the third time they did it and had it taken down, would I be mad that Twitter said, all right, you're just a bad user.
You know, you're not going to follow even by the laws of the United States.
Maybe you don't belong on Twitter.
Would I be concerned about that?
Not that much, because that's somebody who violated a rule that should be a rule.
They did it three times in a row.
They're not going to stop.
Okay. So, but what about carpe donctum?
He produces parodies.
A parody is protected.
A parody could be a matter of opinion, meaning that if it goes to court, you don't really know which way it goes necessarily.
So you've got this big gray area where Twitter is being put in the position of being a stand-in or a proxy for the court.
Because only the court can decide, did Carpe Dunctum do something wrong?
Do you know? Do you?
Do you know if he did something wrong, if he took somebody else's video, made an obvious parody by changing it in ways that are clearly parody?
Is that against the law?
I don't know.
Do you know who else doesn't know?
Twitter. It's not their job.
They're not the court. In fact, nobody knows until it runs to the court system.
So there is something very broken about this process that carpe donctum can be taken down just because somebody complained without any, let's say, confirmation that anything was done wrong.
Right? Don't you have to establish that something was done wrong before you're blocked from Twitter?
Especially if being on Twitter is your primary occupation, as it is for Carpe, in a sense.
So I would say that that process is completely broken and that Twitter should get out of the business of being the court.
They should just get out of the business.
If parody is even on the table, they've got to let it go, I say.
I say they have to let it go.
If they need to block the content...
That's another conversation.
Because they might need to block the content until it goes to the court system.
But blocking the person, blocking the person who may have, who has, let's say there's no, there's no verified evidence that the person did anything wrong.
Blocking the person, that's just wrong.
Let me state uncategorically, That's a Twitter mistake that just needs to be fixed.
Now, I think they are looking at it, actually.
So my information is that Twitter is aware of this as being a problem that Twitter needs to fix.
So we hope that they do, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of.
Now let's talk about Rahim Kassim, who also got blocked on Twitter.
He had a video that showed the time of death of somebody.
So it was the moment of death captured on video.
And, of course, your first thought is, wait a minute.
Don't we see that all the time on Twitter?
Haven't you seen people at the moment of death, like in the last month, a bunch of times?
I mean, George Floyd. I mean, all of the George Floyd videos are the moment of death.
So why would Raheem Kassim be singled out for having a moment of death video that he just tweeted?
It wasn't his video.
It was just a tweet.
And the answer is that the family had asked it to be removed.
So apparently the rule is if the family asks for something to be removed, then Twitter will act on it.
In the George Floyd case, the family did not ask, because I think it had a larger political benefit, so they wanted that up there.
Now, do I disagree?
That Twitter should take down a video showing somebody's death if the family requests it.
I do not disagree with that.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable rule that they should take that down.
But, again, why would you block the person?
Why would you block the user?
Just block the content.
The content is the problem.
Do you think that Rahim Kasim...
Wants to hurt somebody's family?
I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
I haven't read his mind, so I don't know what's in there.
But I gotta say that blocking people instead of content, there's just no way that that needs to be a long-term solution.
But here's a little red pill for you.
A lot of people are going to Parler or Parlay.
I don't know how you pronounce it. Parler.
Sort of an alternate Twitter, if you will.
But here's what you're going to run into.
The parlor rules for users are going to be the same.
It's going to end up very similar.
So the trouble is that...
Did I say Qasim instead of Qasab?
Did I pronounce his name wrong?
Somebody's saying I pronounced his name wrong.
Probably did. Somebody says Parler is a trap.
Well, the trouble is that if you go to Parler, you're going to be all alone with conservatives.
What's the point? Did you want a conservative platform?
I don't know. You'd just be talking to yourself.
So I don't think Parler will ever be a competitor in the sense that both points of view are presented because people on the left will just stay with Twitter.
Why wouldn't they? And you can't really get rid of your Twitter.
If it has any value to you at all business-wise, you can't really get rid of it.
I would have no intention of ever not being on Twitter.
It's too important. But in the long run, Parler is going to have exactly the same DMCA problems.
They're going to have the same moment of death problems.
It's going to end up being exactly like Twitter in the long run.
And I think people will figure that out.
Maybe not exactly, but there's going to be a lot of the same issues.
All right. The thing people would not expect is if there's any algorithmic stuff going on at Twitter or there are any human moderators who are being biased in their decisions, you would not have that on Parler.
But you'd also be talking to yourself because you're mostly just talking to people who agree with you.
So I don't know if you gained anything.
But, you know, I always appreciate rebels.
So anybody who is rebelliously looking at Parler, I'm emotionally on their side.
But I don't know that they're going to get the benefits they want.
All right. Let's see what else we got going.
I think that's it. We have talked about everything.
Did anybody do any research on whether the president who could beat up the other candidate or the candidate who could beat up the other candidate usually becomes president?
I would like to see that.
It probably only matters from the television age onward.
Because if you don't have television, maybe you don't care so much about the physicality of it.
And certainly if you go back to anybody in a wheelchair, it doesn't apply.
