Episode 1056 Scott Adams: Pandemic Loserthink, Artists Behaving Badly, Protesters Being Bad
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Trump supporters, seeing physical danger...will vote
Becoming used to Biden's cognitive decline
The unasked question for BLM
Risk management and the value of masks
Republicans view this election as an EXTINCTION EVENT
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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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Go. I feel the infection rate dropping.
Despite all the data that says the opposite.
We'll talk about that. So it seems that China has decided to sanction Senators Rubio and Cruz.
Sort of a revenge sanction.
Because there were some Chinese officials who were sanctioned over treatment of the Uyghur minority in China.
Specifically rounding them up and putting them in prison camps.
And doing God knows what.
So now, China has sanctioned our two senators, Rubio and Cruz, for speaking out against the Uyghurs.
That's right. We sanctioned Chinese officials for being essentially killers, having prison camps for minorities.
And you know things are not going well in there.
And China sanctioned two of our criticizers for simply mentioning that they've got some kind of a genocide going on.
What?
What?
So, if Rubio or Cruz have websites to donate to their next campaigns, maybe this would be a good time to let people know.
Because, as you saw with Goya, the only way to protect...
People who are attacked in this way, be it for cancellation or be it Chinese trying to suppress freedom of speech in America, you have to reward the people who went first and took the arrows.
So I would say that Rubio and Cruz just pretty much guaranteed re-election for themselves.
Thank you, China.
I don't know what sanctions they put on them.
I was just reading that when it was time to go here, so...
The Washington Redskins are changing their name.
It's about time.
Of all of the various statue protests and political correctness movements, I would say the Washington Redskins should have been really close to the top of that list.
It's kind of surprising that it took so long to get here.
And here's why.
It's literally talking about their skins, their skin color.
I would think that that would be the one that would be most obvious that you would change first.
I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Now, I don't think anybody who used that name was using it in a negative way, as others have pointed out.
In fact, my My high school was the Warriors, and there was a Native American mascot.
My college was also, coincidentally, Warriors was the name of the team.
And again, it was an American Indian or Native American.
And in every case, I remember thinking that it was a sign of respect.
That's how I always took it.
I always took it that the reason that we had those mascots is because they were awesome.
That was the whole point of it, right?
That the Native Americans were awesome, so we name our sports team after them because we want our sports teams to be awesome.
So there's no question that the intention behind these mascots was all positive.
But still, skin? I'm okay with that one changing.
I know some of you disagree, and there's plenty of room for that.
Somebody says the Kansas City Chiefs You know, I would say that's a different situation.
A chief is nothing but a job title that's pretty awesome, whereas red skin is sort of about the color of your skin, so they seem different to me.
You know how you debate people online, and they give you a zinger, and you give them a zinger, but it's hard to know who won, right?
If you have these back and forth with critics on Twitter, It's always unsatisfying because you don't have a victory.
You don't even have a loss.
You just think, maybe I won, but they probably think they won.
Today I had a funny one.
I had said in a conversation, in the comments, I had noted, to make my point, it doesn't matter what the topic was, I noted that time was an illusion.
So that was my comment.
And then my critic said about my comment that that doesn't sound smart.
Literally, that doesn't sound smart.
So my comment was, time is an illusion.
And the critic said to me, that doesn't sound smart.
Do you recognize the source of my quote, that time is an illusion?
Well, I told my critic, why don't you work it out with Einstein?
It's his quote. Now, I don't know if I've ever won an online conversation quite as thoroughly as, take it up with Einstein.
It's his quote. Now, that doesn't mean that my critic will agree with me, because even quoting Einstein is not good enough on Twitter.
But I thought it was funny.
I rarely get to win an argument with, take it up with Einstein.
The two of you geniuses, can you work it out?
Let me know. If Einstein changes your mind, so be it.
But if you change Einstein's mind, and I can't rule it out, except he's dead, then I'll change mine too.
So I was telling my...
I'll call him my liberal friend.
So I've got a good friend for many decades who's super liberal, and of course this caused some tension in our relationship.
And so we have some back and forth now and then when I can handle his level of Trump derangement syndrome.
But he was challenging me when I said that if Biden wins, Republicans will be hunted.
Now, of course, I said that for the reaction.
In other words, the whole point of it The point of it is not me saying it.
So I wanted to get a reaction in which people all over the country would say, Scott, you are totally wrong about that.
There is no risk at all to Trump supporters, even if Biden is elected.
Now, I don't think that's even close to true.
There, of course, is risk.
The size of the risk could be debated, but, oh, there's risk.
I don't think that should be debated.
But my friend, when I made the follow-up comment that it's dangerous to be a Trump supporter and that there's videos and reports all over the place of Trump supporters being attacked and harassed and assaulted in public just for being Trump supporters, he was doubtful about that, my friend was.
And he is unaware of any danger to Trump supporters.
Which is interesting, isn't it?
So it's somebody who reads only the left-leaning sources that he believes are not left-leaning, like NPR and New York Times.
So I continually mock him for being a low-information voter, whereas he thinks he's a high-information voter because he consumes a lot of news.
But it's all on one side!
So he's definitely a low-information voter who doesn't know it.
His hypothesis, when I told him that I ran an online poll in which over 60% of the respondents said that they have lied about their support of Trump, over 60%, this is a non-scientific poll, but since most of the people answered it are Trump supporters, 64% of them said that they've lied, either by omission or directly, about supporting Trump to avoid trouble.
Now, my friend said this, that the real thing they're afraid of is not cancellation.
They're not afraid of cancellation, says my liberal friend, the under-informed one.
He says that what they're really afraid of is ridicule and criticism.
Now, does that...
I don't know if I've ever heard an opinion that was so far from reality.
Have you ever met a Trump supporter who was afraid of criticism?
I don't think I ever have.
I don't know. That's so far from being a thing.
There's no Trump supporter, nor is there any Biden supporter, who's afraid of criticism for their opinion.
That's so not a thing.
Yeah. In the comments, I think you'll agree.
And who is afraid of criticism for their political opinion?
Literally no one.
Literally no one is afraid of criticism for their political opinions because the whole point of your opinion is you think you're right.
Nobody's afraid of being criticized for being right.
You know, I'm sure it's a problem.
People have been criticized for being right, but nobody's worried about it.
It's the lowest thing anybody's worried about.
So my friend needed to explain away why 64% of the people in my highly unscientific poll have lied About their political preference.
I don't think that's, has that ever happened?
Has it ever happened?
That people would lie at that level about their political preference?
So my friend is trying to explain his worldview, because it doesn't fit The observed facts as I report them.
Now, he doesn't see the observed facts, so he is unaware that there is video after video, at least on Twitter, of people being beaten up, killed for saying all lives matter, which sort of suggests they're probably a Trump supporter.
It's amazing how unaware half the country is that their own side has turned into fascists, And they don't even know it.
And they can't know it.
Isn't that interesting? So my friend, there's nothing you could do to make him read news that's right-leaning.
He will never, ever consume it because he thinks it's evil and ignorant and wrong.
So he has no way to know that his worldview is a fascist-supporting worldview, even though he's not a fascist.
He's just He's accidentally supporting them, having no idea.
He just doesn't have any idea.
Now, people on the left think that the people on the right have the same problem, meaning that the people on the left say, well, the right doesn't see what we're doing, doesn't see all the news over here.
Wrong. That's completely wrong, because the mainstream news is mainstream.
The people who consume Fox News mostly also see the other stuff, because it's sort of everywhere.
But it just doesn't work the other way.
All right. Here are two things we know about Biden.
And this gets you to a point my mother once taught me when I was young.
She didn't make this up.
It was an old famous saying even years ago, that you can get used to anything if you do it long enough, including hanging.
Now, When you see how often that's true, it's one of the great truths of life.
And when you understand this, you can predict the future a lot better.
People can get used to almost anything.
We are practically used to a pandemic.
We're not. I mean, we're still fussing with our masks and stuff.
But are you a little bit amazed that in a few months, the entire planet went into mask-wearing mode And we're sort of okay with it while we complain, wish we weren't, and argue over the science and stuff.
But mostly, you can get used to anything.
It's amazing.
And one of the things that people are getting used to is Joe Biden's continued decline, his mental decline.
I don't think anybody doubts it anymore.
When I say I don't think anybody doubts it, There's going to be some hardcores who do doubt it.
But I would say that even among the left, they're quite aware that something's going on.
Because they don't have to read the news on the right to see it themselves.
They can just sort of see it.
Don't need to see the other news.
And here's what's amazing.
Biden continues to have a commanding lead in the polls.
If you believe polls, you know what I mean.
At the same time that his own side is getting used to his dementia.
That's right. You can get used to anything.
His own team is getting used to the fact that they're supporting somebody who can't possibly do the job of the most important job in the world.
And they got used to it.
Because that's exactly what happened.
It wasn't If you ask them, they'll tell you, well, it's a mental process.
Well, he's still better than Trump.
Well, he'll have good advisors.
But you hear these things and you say, a lot of that stuff would have applied to any president, but if you had received this choice from day one, If everybody who voted for Biden in the primaries saw him then the way they can see him now, would they have selected him as their leading candidate for the primaries?
I don't think so. But now, because they did, they're mentally obliged.
Cognitive dissonance requires them to come up with a reason for why they're supporting somebody who's mentally incapable and it's obvious.
Without the and it's obvious part, none of this is fun in terms of understanding the psychology of people.
But if you wanted to see what cognitive dissonance looks like, This will be the best example you've ever seen.
Here's the setup.
The setup is that somebody does something that they think makes sense, and then later they find out it was really, really dumb.
But because we don't like to think we are really, really dumb, even though it's obvious, because you just nominated somebody who's mentally incapable, any way you look at that from today's point of view, if you look at how you voted if you were a Democrat in the primaries, if you voted for Biden, if you were a rational person, you would say, man, that was dumb.
Because if I could go back in time, I definitely would have voted for one of the other candidates, because at least you want to get somebody who's mentally capable.
That's sort of the minimum. But how many Democrats will think like that?
How many will say, gosh, you know, it seemed like a good idea.
But now I guess I was just dumb.
I missed the signs because there was plenty of news even back then.
At least the Republicans were saying it.
I've been saying it since then, that there's a mental decline here.
I should have seen it.
Nope. That will happen to approximately zero people.
Instead, cognitive dissonance is perfectly set up for this situation.
In fact, if you were going to write a textbook and give some examples of what would cause cognitive dissonance, it's exactly this.
Not approximately this.
Not sort of like this.
Exactly, exactly, exactly this.
With no modifications.
Somebody committed to it in the past, they committed to a position that from today's perspective they really should not have.
It was obviously a mistake.
But now they're gonna defend it anyway.
And when they defend it, you're gonna say to yourself, you know you're lying, right?
Because it'll look like that to you.
As an observer, it's gonna look like a whole bunch of Democrats are looking you right in the eye and lying to you by saying, I don't see anything wrong with Biden.
And you'll be thinking, that looks like a lie.
Because you couldn't possibly be thinking that.
But it's not a lie.
It's not a lie.
It's cognitive dissonance.
You will see people who have hypnotized themselves accidentally.
They've hypnotized themselves into a ridiculous position that, no, he looks okay.
His advisors will be good.
He'll have a good vice president.
I don't see what risk this could be.
They've talked themselves into ridiculousness and don't know it.
If you ever need to give an example of cognitive dissonance, that's your perfect example.
All right, um...
Here's something I would like to see somebody ask a representative of Black Lives Matter and or whoever supports the protesters and that point of view.
I don't know if you'll ever see this.
It has something to do with the way interviews are done.
But here's the question that I'm really curious about.
And it goes like this. And pretend that you are a representative from Black Lives Matter.
And you have to answer this interview question.
And I say to you, Representative of Black Lives Matter, I've seen some of your demands, maybe most of them, and I hear what you're saying about police brutality, etc.
But what I haven't seen yet is can you paint me a picture of what a future looks like should Black Lives Matter get what they want?
What does it look like when you've dismantled white supremacy?
Can you tell us who has what kind of jobs?
Who's in charge? How are decisions made?
And what is driving the economy?
Does this still look like capitalism?
Or does it look like some modified version?
So to ask somebody who's with the protesters to describe their future.
And remember, don't limit it to police action.
Although you'd want to know about that too.
Kanye says it should be like Wakanda.
I don't know what that meant, but it's probably a good model.
So have the people who want to change describe what things look like after the change.
Because there are going to be holes there.
And those holes are going to be really big.
And let me surprise you and say this.
If they can describe the future in a way that makes sense, I'm all in.
Why wouldn't I be? Right?
Suppose, and I don't think this is going to happen, but I want to open your mind to the possibility of the other side, the people that you don't agree with.
I'm guessing most of you are not with the protesters on all the details.
I want to open your mind to the possibility, because you should do this in every case, not just this case.
Just open your mind to the possibility that there might actually be a good argument there, and just you haven't heard it yet.
So, one could imagine that some smart person from the right says, you know, nobody's really articulated this right, but let me paint you a picture of what the future looks like.
You've got robots coming, so capitalism isn't going to work the way it used to, because the owners of the robots would eventually own everything.
So we know capitalism isn't going to work in the future.
Because the robot situation will create some kind of a universal basic income problem.
There will be a lot of disruption.
So the first thing I'd say is, okay, okay, you have my attention.
I do believe that the robots will eventually make a big disruption in capitalism in much the way you say.
We don't know it'll go that way, but okay, give me the rest.
And then you imagine that they paint you a picture.
In which you've maintained enough incentives that people will work.
That's the hard part. I don't know how they would do that.
But they describe a future where it looks better.
Is it possible?
Maybe. Maybe.
I would tell you that in these situations where you're absolutely dead certain that your point of view is the better one, every once in a while, just do what I did.
Just try to imagine you're wrong.
It's really useful. Because someday you might need to change your mind.
And you don't want to do what the Biden supporters have done, which is create a trap for yourself that you guarantee your own future hypnosis.
In other words, the people who supported Biden, while they knew there might be something wrong, had set themselves up to be in cognitive dissonance if he worsened, which is what happened.
Don't do that to you.
Always keep alive, that little part of you that remembers, oh yeah, even when I was thinking back then, and I was pretty sure I was right, I did also acknowledge there was some chance there's something I haven't heard, an argument that is just not made yet, that would change my mind.
It's just a good mental balance to keep yourself in.
All right. Let's see.
So, a lot of you know, I posted some wedding pictures from my wedding on Saturday, and you can imagine what kind of comments we get.
So, 98% of the comments were just positive, congratulations sort of thing.
And about 2% of the comments were just awful trolls.
What percentage of the awful trolls were in the profession of writing and the arts?
Almost all of them.
When you start noticing that pattern, that the people who are not good at thinking, and they're just mean and nasty, and then you look at their profiles like, oh, an artist.
And then you can say, oh, it doesn't even matter.
Because the opinion of artists...
Let me say that again.
The opinion of artists, people who are just professional artists, and the artist could include author, which I include myself in.
But if that's all you have in your talent stack, unlike me, I've had a vast world experience outside of authoring.
But if that's your main experience, you should just ignore all of those opinions.
You should just ignore anybody who's an artist.
Primarily. Unless, as I say, they also have substantial other interests.
Now, why do I say Kanye could be a president?
It's exactly because he's more than an artist.
Kanye is a creator.
He's beyond artist.
An artist makes art.
A creator, he's just the creator all the time.
And he's created a gigantic business empire.
He's produced, he's written, he's got a proper education, etc.
Kanye has a talent stack.
So if you're an artist and you have a bigger talent stack, well, that could be a good thing.
But I would say you would just ignore any opinions from artists and you should just tell them that.
Which I do. It usually ends the conversation.
Here's one of the ways that I tell whether an idea is a good one or a bad one.
If you put an idea into the world and nobody does anything with their body, it's not an idea that's going to catch on.
Now, I use the body test all the time, and it never fails.
And it goes like this.
If an idea makes somebody do something, That requires them to move their arms and legs and eyes and whatever, then you have an idea that can move people.
Because it did. You observed it.
Oh, somebody did something with their body.
Now the thing they do with their body could be protest, write a letter, build a mural based on what you said, anything.
Tell their friend, buy the book, any kind of action.
And the other day I introduced my idea of the Digital Bill of Rights, an idea that In our modern time, there are a number of things that we should guarantee that the original founders, the framers of the Constitution, wouldn't have thought of because it wasn't a digital world.
Things such as how do you handle online privacy, that sort of thing.
And I won't talk about all the details, but I will note that ghostwriter Joshua, I hope I pronounced your name right, LISEC, L-I-S-E-C, Who is on Twitter, he's been on my Periscope, you've all met him, so it's Joshua Lysak.
He wrote up, he listened to my Periscope on the topic and then documented it, and because he's a professional writer, he documented it really well.
And so I've tweeted that.
You can see it in my Twitter feed and his, the Bill of Rights written up.
Now, it's written up as an initial draft, of course, for conversation.
So look at the comments as well, because you'll see people start to weigh in and say, oh, that one doesn't work.
You know, tweak it a little, or, you know, what problem this one might cause.
Those are all good, the good kinds of inputs at this point.
So it passed, the Bill of Rights, Digital Bill of Rights, has passed the body test.
Was there somebody who moved their body in a significant way?
And there was. So Joshua wrote it up, took him some time.
I think at least one other person tried to compile it, and that was what I was looking for.
So, given that it has passed the body test, have the comments frozen?
No, it looks like they're working. Then I'm going to push it through to the next level, which is Maybe try to get a little more attention.
I made an error yesterday in my Periscope, which I now correct.
I had referred to Tom Fitton, who's the head of Judicial Watch.
I'd said that he was an attorney, and that was a mistake.
He is not a lawyer or an attorney, as he clarified to me, and other people did as well.
So, that correction.
Now, I think he was an English major and had a bunch of experience after that, of course.
But the question, the topic is masks.
And I went through it again, but I went through it yesterday, but I'll give you an update.
So the topic is whether masks work.
And Tom Fitton had said in his tweet, That there's no science to support wearing masks outside of a healthcare setting.
Now there's some people that say wearing a non-medical mask in a healthcare setting would also be a mistake.
So that would be the non-medical masks.
But the science seems not quite settled in a number of ways.
So I did a little unscientific poll.
I asked this question.
And I said, based on your understanding of the science, and again, this is just a poll on Twitter, so this is not for experts.
This is just for you to weigh in.
I said, based on your understanding of the science, do non-medical masks reduce transmission of virus by partially blocking exhalations and the water droplets that carry virus?
So that's the question.
And the three choices were, Probably, somewhat, meaning it must work a little bit.
The other answer was, no, it's useless and maybe bad.
So it's definitely useless, but on top of that, it might be bad.
And then the other one was, it is unclear.
Now, the respondents were, 56% said probably would make a difference, somewhat.
Don't know how much, but probably.
At 56%, so that was by far the biggest category.
The people who said, no, it's useless, and maybe it's bad, 24%.
So a quarter of the people said that, and unclear, 20%.
Now, if you add the people who said it's unclear, 20, to the ones who say probably, those are the uncertain people.
So 76% say, I don't know.
But most of them that say, I don't know, also say, worth a shot.
You know, it's probably better than not doing it.
24% are sure that it's a bad idea.
Meaning that it's definitely useless.
And there's also a chance that it could be bad, so no doubt about it, it's a bad thing.
Here's my take on that.
Since none of us are scientists, at least most of us, or medical professionals, and I don't think that there is confirmed science about this specific situation, which you would need.
Coronavirus, pandemic, public using a variety of face masks, you're trying to protect from exhalation, you're not just trying to protect from people Infecting you.
Completely unique situation.
Hasn't been completely tested in the way that you like science to test things and repeat it and all that stuff.
So that hasn't been done.
So what do people do in the face of unclear information?
Well, Tom Fenton seems to have a strong opinion against masks, but he words it fairly carefully.
I would say this.
I would say the people who are bad at risk management Are the 25%.
Because there's one opinion that you can know for sure is wrong.
So of the three choices, I set it up intentionally so that one of the three choices would be the one that's wrong for sure.
And it's this one.
That it's definitely bad to wear masks.
Now, could it be true?
That it's bad to wear masks?
Yes. What did I tell you earlier?
Always keep alive the possibility that you're wrong.
It's a real good mental exercise.
Could I be wrong? Well, I couldn't be wrong because here's the thing.
If you're dealing about probability, And things go the other way, it doesn't mean you are wrong.
Your probability estimate might have been exactly right.
You know, it's two to one in this direction.
But the one happens.
If the odds are two to one, the one sometimes happens.
Like, you know, two to one.
But it happens. So, if it goes not the way you think the odds go, you're not wrong.
You're still right. It just didn't go the way you wanted it to go.
And so I would say that the people who were definitely wrong are the people who were sure about the science.
So if you had been sure that they work, oh, 100%, there's no question about it, you would be wrong.
Because this is not a situation in which certainty is a rational opinion.
You should not be certain it works, nor should you be certain it doesn't.
Those two opinions are the two that you can rule out as rational.
The rational opinions are, it might work, and it's worth a shot.
Or, it might work, but the risks, I think, are greater than the possible benefits.
Those would be rational, because you're dealing with probability, given that we don't know.
So, I did that to reveal whether people are good at Decision-making in general, risk management decision-making, and a quarter of the people on this very unscientific poll displayed a certainty in the face of something that can't be certain.
So that reveals very clearly that they don't have the tools of analysis that you need to have a rational opinion.
Even if it turned out wrong, it could still be rational.
Here's the most interesting election predictive news that I've heard in a long time.
There's some indication that the GOP is out-registering new voters compared to the Democrats in the battleground states.
Let me say that again.
In the battleground states, in other words, the only ones that matter, Because you know California is going to go one way, you know New York's going to go one way.
But the ones that are likely to be close, the ones that can determine elections, the so-called battleground states, more Republicans are registering than Democrats.
Now think about that at the same time you think that Biden has a commanding, overwhelming lead in the polls.
Which of those tells you more about what's going to happen?
Is it registration in battleground states, or is it a national poll?
And of course we don't vote in a national way, we vote state by state.
Which of those tells you something?
Well, let me give it to you in a different frame.
In which of those situations can you lie?
Or let's say, you can lie in both, but in which of those situations are you far more likely to be lying?
I would say a poll.
If a stranger calls you, given that 64% of people who answered my unscientific Twitter poll, 64% of Trump supporters said that they would lie, or they have lied, Wouldn't you expect the telephone pole, or even an electronic pole with a robo-voice,
could be an online pole, but anything that you could be discovered, and you don't need to tell the truth, there's no law, there's no requirement, it's not even really ethical to tell the truth to a pollster, you just don't have that obligation.
So that's the situation in which lying is It's pretty much guaranteed.
We just don't know how much.
We don't know if the polls are off by 1%, because that's how many people lied to pollsters, or is it off by 12%.
Remember, 64% of the people who answered my polls said they'll lie about their affiliations or their preferences.
All right, now compare that to registering to vote.
Do you see it yet? If you register to vote, how easy is it to lie?
Well, here's the thing.
You don't have to register to vote for Trump.
You just register to vote your party.
You could lie about your party.
I suppose Democrats could lie and say, I'm really signing up as a Republican.
But I don't think many people do that.
I think people register the party they really want to register for.
So I think your likelihood of lying in the registration process is very low.
And that shows a really positive indication for Trump winning the election.
At the same time, the one that you would assume, common sense, tells you that would be lying differs.
So one of them is telling you that he's going to win, and it looks good.
That's the registrations.
And that's credible, and probably no lying in there, not much.
And the other one, almost certainly, it's got some lying in there.
If I were a Democrat, I would be shitting my pants right now.
Because those statistics are really scary when you put them together.
Because think about it.
I've been saying this forever, and I don't know to what degree it's true, but it's at least a little bit true.
Trump supporters do want this to be not only a victory, but a surprise victory.
Am I right?
If you had a choice of Trump leading in the polls from day one and just going to a solid victory, so that's one choice, and it's up to you.
You get to choose.
Does he lead from the start and just go to a solid victory?
Or does it look like he's going to lose again, just like 2016, only to win in the end?
Which of those two choices would you pick?
You know what I'm saying.
You know what I'm saying.
All those people who answer polls about who they're going to vote to, they know those two choices existed.
One, Trump all the way, which wouldn't be unusual for an incumbent.
They usually win. Or, how about we do that 2016 thing to you again, but better.
Like, how about more of a surprise?
How would you like that?
That is somewhat irresistible.
That is irresistible.
If I gave you those two choices and you didn't have to sacrifice or pay anything, you just got to pick.
Commanding lead or surprise.
You know you'd pick the surprise.
By majority, anyway.
Some of you wouldn't want the stress, but I think if you had a choice, you'd like the surprise too.
It might cause a revolution, but that's another problem.
There are some doctors who are saying That the number of positive test results for coronavirus may be skewed by the debris from virus that you used to have and was defeated by your natural defenses because apparently some people have natural defense because they've had something like a coronavirus or something like this particular one.
Enough so that maybe people have immunity And it's destroying the virus, and the test is just picking up the broken virus of something you don't really have because you used to have it, but it never became symptomatic because you have immunity.
And therefore, you know, the tests are overdone.
Now, the tests would be misleading because not that many people actually are affected or something like that.
And the idea would be that you could reach herd immunity at a low number of people, like 10 to 20% of the population, under the theory that most of the rest have some natural immunity.
So if 10 to 20 have to get the coronavirus this year in order to build up an immunity, so the thinking goes that there might be some bigger part, you know, half of the country or something, who has some natural immunity, and if you add them together, You got herd immunity, because you want to get to 60-70% to stop something from spreading.
So, that is largely debunked by smart people, including Andreas Beckhaus, who I refer to often.
He's got an economics and PhD, so whenever there's some claim about a study, I try to make sure that he sees it, because he usually weighs in and says, ah, here's a gigantic problem with that study, and you look at his analysis and you go, okay, it looked good, but I guess it's not.
And so he's debunked that, debunked the idea that the tests are picking up the random bits of The virus that's been destroyed, because it doesn't happen everywhere.
So in other words, if this effect were real, you would see it everywhere.
Because there's no such thing as a country where their immunity would not cause the virus debris to be in their body.
So if humans respond the same, you would see it everywhere in every country kind of looking the same, and it doesn't.
So that hypothesis is rejected.
But it's out there, and even Ambassador, do you still call him Ambassador?
Richard Grinnell was tweeting about that science, and while it's interesting, I will just note that the strongest critic, the person who's best at debunking this stuff, in my opinion, calls it quackery.
Now, again, like I've said in all the other topics, leave open the possibility That even the critic is wrong on this one.
Could be. Maybe.
But I would say that I would side with Andres on this.
Because not being on his side on this kind of thing is just a bad play.
If you didn't know anything about a topic and the only thing you knew was Andres Backhouse says it's quackery, I'm going to bet on him.
Because I've been watching him for a long time and he's good at just ripping this stuff apart.
So the administration is throwing Dr.
Fauci under the bus, it looks like, trying to make him the mistake-maker so that the president can look better, I guess.
Probably a really good play.
Now, you could argue about the ethics of it and blah blah, but remember, it's a political campaign, so everybody's being unethical all the time, in the sense that they're all lying by omission, at least.
So that's the administration's take.
Now, let's talk about it not from its moral and ethical perspective.
You can handle that on your own.
Does it work? Is it a good strategy for persuasion?
Persuasion-wise, does it make sense to make Fauci the anti-Trump They make him the one who's causing you not to have a good life because he's making you not go back to school maybe because he's a little more hesitant.
Fauci's more cautious about going back to school.
I think this is actually brilliant persuasion.
Make up your own mind about whether it's good for the world, but persuasion-wise, I think it's really good.
And here's why. There's nobody on the left or the right who has a good feeling about experts at the moment.
Would you agree that both the left and the right have been disappointed by experts?
In different ways. But I think everybody has some more skepticism of experts than they did one year ago.
I feel that that's just a certainty.
And so having a face for the other side is always good.
It would be one thing to say, experts in general have not been reliable.
That would not be good persuasion.
Because experts in general is a concept.
Concepts are not nearly as good as build a wall.
Build a wall is not a concept.
It's a frickin' wall. As soon as you hear it, you imagine it.
You can see it.
You can put a price on it.
That's good persuasion, a real thing.
So when the president, in essence, is replacing the category of experts, which doesn't get any traction, with a real person who has made real decisions which affect you.
You and I have been personally affected by Dr.
Fauci's opinions.
Now, I think he's probably been more right than wrong.
If I'm being honest, if you look at the entire body of work, probably more right than wrong, but he's also famously wrong on some things that have been in the news, which is more important to persuasion.
So when the president, and I'm sure he will, will say, Fauci was wrong on X, you're going to look it up and you're going to say, yeah, he was a little bit wrong on closing China, and the president was right.
So the president is setting up this duality where you've got the experts who maybe are only trying to cover their own butts by making sure that fewest people die versus a leader.
A leader has to take the expert's opinion but weigh it against economics, which also kill people, which also destroy their ability to live, their livelihood, etc.
So I think this is a really strong persuasion play In the context of an election.
Here's a warning in a term I'd never heard before.
As we're all becoming a little bit smarter about looking at studies and data and trying to parse the science of things because we've had to.
We've just been forced into paying attention more than we want to.
And I'd never heard this before.
It's a term. It's called legacy data laundering.
And the idea is the legacy part is You know, past information that's brought forward to today and illegitimately put in today's result.
The example would be, if we discover that there were people that we should have said were positive with coronavirus, or we should have said died, but at the time we weren't sure, but over time we say, you know, we should take these deaths from the past and we should count them.
Well, you can't really plunk them in the past because the past has already passed.
So you might say, well, we found out about them today.
So you might plunk them today, which would be misleading because it would not only be the people who died that day, but you would have added to them the people who died months ago that you just realized you should have added in the totals.
Now, I don't know that this is really going to happen.
But it is interesting how many new things we learn about what to look for.
So I would say it's definitely something to look for, but I don't know that the data would be that corrupt.
That feels like an over-claim to me.
I don't think anybody's going to put past deaths into today's numbers, but maybe they would.
Just look for it. The current projections, as I understand it, for how many people might ultimately be dead from the coronavirus in the United States is 180,000.
Now, I remind you that I'd asked people early on, the people who were saying this is just a bad flu season, what number of deaths would make you change your mind, if at the end of the year You had X number of deaths.
What would make you willing to say, oh, okay, you're right, that was way more than the flu.
You had to take that seriously.
And at least some smart people were saying in the 200,000 range.
Now, is 180,000 enough to say, okay, you said 200,000, but 180 is pretty close.
Would you still say that's the flu?
Because even the worst flu season was less than half of that.
So is double the flu a pandemic, or is double the flu double a small problem, which is still a small problem?
It's up to you.
But that's the number we're heading for.
I talked yesterday about how there was a clip of Biden saying that Our culture is not imported from some African nation.
Our culture is not imported from some Asian country.
This is Biden. And then he went on to say that our culture, as he calls it, is European.
Now the context, as Vox points out, is, hey, hey, hey, you're taking it into context.
The context was he was talking about the rule of thumb.
Have you ever heard of that? So that phrase, rule of thumb, comes from old English common law that a husband was allowed to beat his wife with a stick that could be no bigger than your thumb was big around.
So it can't be any thicker than your thumb, but if you were beating your spouse with a stick Actually, specifically the husband beating the wife with a stick that was only that big, well, that was okay, according to old English common law.
Now, Biden had some larger point about our history, etc.
And Vox was making the point, hey, hey, hey, he wasn't saying our European culture was all good.
He was pointing out specifically that this European culture brought with it this specific flaw and probably others.
So therefore, he should not be viewed harshly, because if you look at it in context, he is criticizing the European culture, at least in part, that came here.
To which I say, how does any of that matter?
How does any of that matter?
If he's talking about the superiority of cultures, it's racist.
According to the rules...
That the left has handed down.
This is not my rule. I didn't make up this rule.
But if you're talking about the superiority of a culture that happens to be exactly matched with an ethnicity, because when he talks about African culture, he's not talking about South Africa, right?
He's talking about Africa, Africans, and black people.
That's the only implication you can get.
When he says we didn't get our culture from Asia, he's not talking about some white people who moved to Asia.
He's talking about people from that area.
And likewise, when he talks about European culture, he's talking about white people from Europe.
So if anybody on the right had said anything like this, that any culture had an advantage or disadvantage over any other, And culture is married to race in this example, Biden's example, they would be cancelled in a heartbeat.
The fact that the context was criticizing the European culture doesn't change anything.
You can't talk if you're on the right.
You can't use these words.
This is stuff you could not say exactly the way he said it.
You couldn't say that if you were on the right.
Am I right? Would you back me up on that opinion?
That he only gets away with this because people on the left are giving him cover.
Now, if you were to ask me, am I personally offended by it?
I would say, no, because I don't get personally offended by things.
It's just not my nature to be offended by stuff.
But, does it seem racist to me?
The answer is, yeah.
Totally seems racist. Like, not even a little bit not racist.
In fact, it's 100% racist.
If you were to make a list of the most racist things you could possibly say, this would be really near the top.
Right? Again, I'm not saying he had bad intentions.
He was indeed criticizing his own culture, which you generally imagine to be a fair thing.
You can criticize your own.
But the way he framed it, Was flat-out racist, and Vox tried to save him, probably did.
All right, speaking of Richard Grinnell, he also had an interesting tweet in which he was criticizing someone's criticism of the president, and he corrected him, said critic, Sam Stein, I think it was, and he said that That Trump is calling for balance and diversity in academic institutions.
So he used the word balance.
So look for that to see if that becomes more of a thing.
I think balance is a really good word for 2020 because everybody feels like things are out of whack.
It's like everything's just a little out of whack.
We just need some balance.
If you follow Jeffrey Toobin on CNN, There's a strange thing that's happened to my perceptions, and I'd like to run this past you.
I can remember a time that, before I was following Trump, I was far more, let's say, philosophically aligned with the left.
I still call myself left a Bernie in terms of the objectives of, you know, I'd like everybody to have healthcare and a free education, but unlike Bernie, I'm good at math, so I don't know how to get there.
You know, I don't know how to get there right away, but that's another story.
So, here's my observation.
These days when I see the personalities and the characters on CNN, sometimes I see them as having cognitive dissonance, but sometimes they just seem evil.
Do you have that impression?
There's some people that you see that you say, that doesn't look like cognitive dissonance.
That doesn't look like somebody who's under-informed.
That doesn't look like somebody who just has a different opinion or different priorities.
Sometimes they actually look evil.
Now, my assumption is that this is a subjective illusion based on the fact that I disagree or I just don't like what they're promoting, what their opinion is, and I think my brain Is changing how I look at their faces until they look like demons.
Does that happen to you?
Now again, I'm going to be very clear on this.
I think this is a perceptual illusion.
It looks like a perceptual illusion.
Somebody said Jennifer Rubin.
Yeah. Actually, Jennifer Rubin, if I were to say what she looks like, Again, this is not based on what she is.
So remember, the criticism that comes from me next, this criticism is about me, how I'm seeing the world.
This is not a criticism about the people.
Because I can't read their minds, and so I don't know that they're evil.
I'm talking about my perception, okay?
So this is not about the people, just about me.
Jeffrey Toobin looks evil, doesn't he?
Am I the only one who sees him, Jeffrey Toobin, and I think, you know, when I watch Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper does not strike me as evil.
Not even a little.
And I can disagree with Anderson Cooper on really basic stuff.
Say, oh, I don't think that's right.
I can disagree with him on facts, opinions, priorities, all kinds of stuff.
But he never, ever looks evil.
He doesn't. He just looks like he's a different worldview.
When I look at, let's say, Don Lemon.
Don Lemon looks like he's a person who has a worldview, so he's shading things for his worldview.
And, I don't know, he just looks like somebody with a different opinion, honestly.
But I think he's conscious.
This is just, again, I'm not reading his mind.
This is how it just looks.
He looks like he's completely aware of what he's doing, meaning he knows what team he's on, he knows how to support them, he makes that case.
He doesn't look crazy, and I don't think he's evil.
Don Lemon, to me, does not look evil.
He just looks like he's got a different worldview.
But when Jeffrey Toobin's on, he actually looks evil.
What is that? Right?
Because I'm sure there are people on the right that literally look evil to people on the left.
And then other people on the right, they think, well, you're misguided.
But, you know, Ronald Reagan, maybe people liked him, even if they didn't like his opinions.
So anyway, let me give you an idea of why Jeffrey Toobin maybe strikes me as being evil, although we don't know what's in his heart.
So that's not an accusation.
He mentions that apparently New York State has a fairly new law, conveniently, a new law.
So in New York, the legislature passed this bill in October of last year, I guess, in which the New York district attorneys can prosecute someone that the president has pardoned.
So in other words, New York State put in their own law to override a presidential pardon in the sense that they could prosecute somebody in the state and it doesn't matter that they've already been pardoned at the federal level.
Now, I don't understand the legalities of that, so I've got lots of questions, but my point is Jeffrey Toobin is sort of pushing this view that Roger Stone could ultimately be jailed again if New York State uses this law.
Now, Even if you knew this was a thing, and even if you thought it was newsworthy, it just feels evil to bring it up.
You know? It just feels evil to even mention it.
Because it feels like mentioning it makes it more likely to happen.
Because it's one way to test the public.
You just float it up there.
Well, suppose New York State decided to do their own thing.
How would you feel about that?
So it feels like a test balloon.
Which should disturb you greatly, because in my mind, a presidential pardon has to mean something, even if you don't like them.
All right. I know I had at least one more thing I wanted to say.
Let me just check my quick notes here.
And, eh, that's probably about it.
I think I hit the big points.
All right. I'm looking at your comments and I see Nadler and Schiff.
Nadler looks like somebody who had been bullied all of his life and is trying to win one.
Again, we can't read their minds, so I don't know what they're actually thinking.
But the way they look, the way they present themselves, is Nadler looks like a victim of bullies who's trying to win one, finally.
Schiff looks like he obviously knows he's lying.
So Schiff just is a partisan.
He doesn't look crazy.
He doesn't look like he has cognitive dissonance whatsoever.
Schiff does not look like he's confused about anything, in my opinion.
He looks like he knows exactly what he's doing, and it's not good.
All right. New York State bail is discriminatory to poor people.
Yeah, it is.
It is. Stone should be in prison.
I wonder if there's any alternative to bail.
Is there any way to democratize that and make it a GoFundMe situation so that poor people would always get bail, but there would still be some recourse or bail bondsman to take them back if they jump bail?
I don't know. A federal pardon applies only to federal laws.
That's true. And those are some of the questions I have about why this New York law is even special.
Because if a state can prosecute anybody anyway, I don't even know why you have to bring up the presidential pardon.
Slaughter meter is at 100% today, and the superior registrations for the GOP are the reason.
Let me give you a reason why I think the GOP is going to out-register the Democrats.
Are you ready? Here's the mental state of a Democrat.
I hate Trump.
Trump is bad.
But I'm also watching these protesters, and I'm also watching Black Lives Matter.
And about half of Democrats, I'll just pick a random percentage, let's say half, are saying to themselves, you know, I don't really want to live in a world in which the protesters got everything they wanted.
So I'm a little lukewarm about my own side.
Don't you think there are going to be a lot of Democrats who say, I don't want Trump But my own side is scaring me a little bit, so I'm just sort of lukewarm on my own team at the moment, and Biden doesn't have a brain.
So I feel as though the Democrats will be divided into hyper-interested people, but not many of them, and a whole bunch of people are like, yeah, I can see why it's better for us to win, but I don't know if I want to win.
This one. So I see ambivalence on the Democrat side, which is never a good sign for winning an election.
Now let's look at the Republican side.
What is the primary motive of a Republican?
Once you hear me say this, you will never be able to get it out of your head.
And you will think that the election has already been decided.
I'm going to give you a two-word phrase And the moment you hear it, you're going to do this.
You're going to sit back in your chair and you're going to go, oh, shit.
I see that now.
You ready? Republicans view this election as an extinction event.
How'd that make you sit in your chair?
Republicans view this election as an extinction event.
Meaning that if it goes the wrong way, Republicans will become extinct.
They could lose the House and they could lose the demographic fight, meaning that immigration would be a level where no Republican could win ever again.
Democrats are fighting for something that half of them don't want, which is this excessive change.
Half of them don't want what their own team wants.
Republicans Name me one Republican who doesn't think this is a potential extinction event for Republicans.
And the answer is none.
None. There is not any Republican by Election Day, because that message will be reinforced.
By Election Day, there will be zero Republicans who do not view this election as an extinction event for their way of life.
Who votes more?
Not even close. At the moment, this election should not be close.
And the polls are going to be so fucking wrong.
So fucking wrong.
Because do you register to vote for an extinction event?
Even I might register to vote this time.
And I don't register to vote.
Because I don't think that I know which candidate is going to be the good candidate.
But I do know what an extinction event looks like, and it's this.
So if I were to register, I would register...
Well, actually, I might even register as a Democrat and just vote Trump.
So I'm thinking of doing that.
I might register Democrat because I have some philosophical leanings in that direction, but not nearly as...
Not in type, but just sort of philosophically, but not operationally.
But I would vote against an extinction event, and I would vote against losing the two-party system, as opposed to voting for a candidate.
Because I think voting for a candidate just puts you on the team, and maybe at this point my objectivity is so compromised it doesn't make any difference.
So even I would consider voting this election, and I don't vote, but it's just not about the candidates anymore.
It's about the entire system.
I would vote to maintain the system more than I would vote for a candidate.
I don't know if anybody's said what I've said yet, but wait till you hear this phrase, extinction event, referred to as what's going to happen to Republicans and their way of life.
Because that's what's at stake.
It's an extinction event for Republicans.
Somebody says, I love it when you cuss about the wrong things.
Somebody says, you're already voting for Biden under your safety.
No, I didn't say that.
Let me clarify.
I have never said I would vote for Biden.
I endorsed him.
So I can endorse Biden, registered Democrat, vote for Trump and nobody else.
I mean, I don't even care about the rest of the ticket.
Vote for nobody but Trump, and I'm still consistent.
I've endorsed Biden for my safety, but I also want the system to survive.
All right. Do I like the way California is being run?
I don't like the results.
So to the extent that the way things are happening is because of the way things are managed.
And frankly, you can't always know that.
But it does look like that.
It looks like I would like to have a better outcome.
So, yes.
Why don't you cite?
Don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, you know, the other thing is I'm hearing a lot of libertarians and people who are sort of in the middle who didn't vote, who have decided to vote for Trump.
And I think it is this extinction event that's going to make the difference.
Now, I've told you in terms of persuasion, fear is always the primary motivator.
So people will be less likely to vote for a new thing that might have some risks than to vote to save themselves from death.
People will vote more for death, to save themselves from death.
