All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 8, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
27:10
Episode 1180 Scott Adams: Let's Explore the Depths of my Cognitive Dissonance and Congratulate President Elect Biden
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey, everybody. Come on in.
It's time for a very special afternoon bonus coffee or no coffee with Scott Adams.
And that means you don't need to have a beverage this time.
You could just join in without any kind of a beverage.
So it's kind of special that way.
Well, let me start out by saying congratulations, President-elect Biden.
According to the vote, I don't think the official vote will change too much.
But we're going to talk about what might happen that might surprise you.
Just maybe. Because I like a good story.
And I'm going to give you one.
You ready for it? So congratulations to President Biden and Kamala Harris for hard fought battle.
According to our system, you won.
And I congratulate you for that.
But is it over?
Oh, is it over?
That's what we're going to talk about.
Because there might be something coming that you don't see.
And you're going to want to stick around for that.
Oh yeah, you are going to want to stick around for that.
But the big question is, and I've been seeing people ask this on social media, am I experiencing cognitive dissonance?
And I would like to explore that with you, and you can be the judges.
Because the nature of cognitive dissonance, if I've told you anything, is that the person who suffers from it is the only person who can't tell that they have it.
So the allegation is that I am suffering right now because of the election outcome from cognitive dissonance, and I just won't let go of President Trump's chances.
So, you be the jury.
I would tell you that there are two ways you could spot this alleged cognitive dissonance in me, and that it would be invisible to me by definition.
Because if I could see it in myself, then I wouldn't have it.
Alright? Number one, you would look for a trigger.
The trigger would be something that I had experienced or observed that I knew to be true That violated my sense of myself or my sense of how the world should be.
Did that happen?
Is there anything that has happened so far that violated my view of reality?
And the answer is, no.
Not even close.
I thought Trump would win, but was there any time I thought that it was somehow an impossibility that Biden would get more votes?
One way or another, no.
So in my case, there's nothing that I've observed that is different from my mental model.
I did think that the polling was terribly wrong, and sure enough, even though the result was slightly different than I thought, the polls were totally wrong.
So that was accurate in terms of what I expected, and of course anybody could win.
So I don't believe I have a trigger.
People who got triggered by Trump couldn't believe he could possibly get elected in this country.
It was too horrible to imagine.
But I don't have any feeling like that.
Biden is the most sort of ordinary politician in the world.
It's not the biggest surprise in the world that the Democrats put up a big fight and that a lot of votes were cast.
Now the other thing is, I would argue that I do not have a trigger because my worldview has not been violated.
But is there evidence that I'm acting irrationally, which would be the other tell?
You kind of need both of them.
You need there to be a trigger, something that obviously violated somebody's sense of reality.
But then also that they're acting irrationally because of it.
So I'm going to enter into the irrational part.
Are you ready? Now, those of you who have been watching me longer have a little better context for this.
You know that I'm doing this for fun.
But it could be right.
And you know that when I think of the odds of things happening, I don't think in terms of this will happen.
And this can't happen.
I typically think in terms of the odds.
I think it's a 90% chance this will happen or a 50% chance.
And I'm going to tell you a story of what I think will happen based on the odds.
So what you should be looking for is anywhere where I've estimated the odds in an irrational way.
Because if you agree with my estimate of the odds in each of the things I'm about to talk about, you're probably going to be pretty close to my opinion.
But if any of my estimates of the odds are just way off and crazy, well, that would suggest maybe I've got a little bit of confirmation bias, a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on, and that sort of thing.
Let me say as clearly as possible, it is not my opinion That the only way that Joe Biden could have won is if the vote was faked.
That's not the only way he could have won.
He could have also won, it's possible, by getting more votes.
So, I would say that if I believe the only way he could win was just this one explanation, that would be a little cognitive dissonancy, right?
Likewise, when the Democrats said, the only way Trump could have won must have been Russian interference.
Well, if you thought it was possible, you might be a rational person.
If you thought it was the explanation, that's a little cognitive dissonancy.
But if you just thought there were some chance of it, that would be a little bit different at least.
Alright, here are the odds of things, according to me.
Let's see if you disagree with any of them.
Number one, will anomalies be found in the vote?
Now, when I say anomalies, I don't mean these little anecdotes of, I saw somebody fill out some ballots, or I saw somebody throw something away, or there was something in the trunk of the car of the postal service guy.
I'm not talking about the little one-offs, somebody saw something.
If you added those all together, they probably don't add up too much.
And I'm not talking about even necessarily the stories of the big van that pulls up with all the Biden votes only, because I suspect that you're going to find out that nearly all of those stories are not true.
Okay? So, do I sound crazy so far when I say that nearly, if not every story that you're hearing in the media about fraud Is either completely untrue or smallish.
Does that sound crazy?
Alright, so, but hold on.
This gets more interesting, I swear.
Now, I would say there's a 100% chance that anomalies will be found.
Now, would they be scientifically proven in the long run?
Or are they things that look like anomalies but have perfectly good answers?
It doesn't matter.
For the point I'm going to make next, it doesn't matter if the anomalies are alleged and not real or alleged and real.
Because the point I'm going to make is that it would be enough for political purposes, for the Republicans to say, hey, can we do an audit, let's say a digital audit, of the entire digital database software situation?
Just to feel comfortable that everything went the way it was supposed to go.
What are the odds that Republicans will ask for a digital audit?
What do you think? I think there's at least a 90% chance, because why wouldn't they?
Why wouldn't they? The Democrats asked for it.
The Democrats asked, well not for a digital audit, but Democrats several times tried to reform the voting system, and Republicans said no, I hear, because And again, this is just an eye here.
Because they didn't want Trump's election to look like maybe there was something wrong with the voting system.
It would make it less credible.
But now, that's not the situation.
Because the situation is that, at least officially, it looks like Biden has won the presidency.
So would the Democrats want to look into the voting system with an audit if their person won?
Of course not.
So you would expect the roles to reverse, because it's politics, and you would expect the Republicans to say, hey, let's audit this system, because it might change the result.
At the same time, you would expect Democrats would say, no, no, no, let's not audit that system.
We'll maybe do some reforms, but that's for later.
Let's not revisit the past.
Biden's the president. That's what you'd expect.
Now, here's the fun part.
Suppose President Trump takes advantage of a gift that the Democrats gave to him that he never asked for.
And here's the gift.
He is the king of creating an asset out of nothing.
In this case, he would just have to recognize that the Democrats accidentally created a gigantic negotiating asset for him That he didn't even try to get on his own.
And it goes like this.
Democrats believe he might not want to leave peacefully.
Right? Now, who created that asset?
Because he actually has something to negotiate with now.
Trump can say, I will leave peacefully, but you've got to do this one thing for me.
Now, I'm not telling you yet what that one thing is, but would you agree That the Democrats have essentially brainwashed themselves into believing it's a real thing that Trump would not leave the White House.
Did Trump do that?
I mean, he didn't hurt it.
He probably contributed to it.
But I feel like the Democrats created that asset out of nothing.
They created a belief that was a little bit crazy, in my opinion, but they believe it, that he won't leave the White House.
Now, what are the odds that President Trump will not recognize that that asset has been created and he can use it now?
He's going to recognize it.
That's what he does.
He recognizes a free asset that's a psychological construct.
If he sees it, here's what he could ask for.
And tell me if this sounds unreasonable.
Hey, I know the Republic really depends on the peaceful transfer of power.
As a patriot, I believe in the peaceful transfer of power, and I certainly want that to happen this time.
But you know what else the Republic requires to support that peaceful transfer of power?
It requires a credible election.
And I'm going to ask you just for one thing, an audit of the digital part of the election.
That's all. And when that audit comes back and it shows that I lost, or even if it changes a little bit, I'm sure I'll still lose, and then I will proceed with the peaceful transfer of power.
Now, is there anybody in the public, I'm talking to you, voters, is there anybody who thinks it's not a good idea to audit a digital system?
Is there anybody opposed to that?
Democrats raise their hands in unison.
Nope, we don't want to audit the system.
What's that do? That frees the electoral college electorates to do whatever the hell they want.
Because if the Democrats don't agree to an audit of the system, they're basically telling you it's not a credible system.
Now, they might have other reasons for it.
And some people will believe those other reasons, and they might even be real.
They might have totally factual, reasonable reasons why you can't or shouldn't audit the election that just happened.
They might. But all it requires is the Republican legislatures to say, wait a minute, you're not going to comply with the most reasonable thing any American could ever ask for?
Transparency in an election?
Tell me what is a higher principle than transparency in the election?
It's the smallest thing I'm asking for.
That's all I want.
And then you get everything you want.
You get a President Biden, a peaceful transfer of power, and my congratulations.
So, If the Democrats play hardball and say we're not going to allow an audit, it probably frees up the Electoral College so that those closest states could say,
you know what? We're going to have to do what the Constitution was designed to take care of, which is have our smart electors make a decision that could be independent of the official vote because we can't certify that the vote was...
Incredible. So maybe we'll just go 50-50.
What would happen if the GOP electors in the Electoral College said, in just the ones that are close, they said, look, we honestly can't tell who won in our state because there's a little too much non-transparency.
We'll just split it down in the middle.
Half for Biden, half for Trump.
Where does that end up?
Depending on which states, I suppose, it could go either way.
Now, let's say instead that the Democrats call his bluff and they say, you know, Let's do this audit.
If it's the only way to get Republicans on board and we want it, you know, Biden is the unifier.
And if you're the unifier and you're Biden and you're a centrist, isn't it a pretty reasonable request?
It's a pretty reasonable request.
All it would take is for Biden himself to say, you know, I want to get past this.
I want my presidency to be as credible and valid as possible.
So, yeah. I realize that a politician might say no to this, but I'm just going to be regular Joe.
I'm just going to level with you, no malarkey.
If you want to do an audit, go ahead.
What would happen? Suppose the audit starts.
Here's where we get into some other odds.
And see if you agree or disagree with the odds I'm going to put on this stuff.
So if you've done any Googling or you've spent time on YouTube looking at how our election system works, you will be amazed and appalled when you hear how at least the digital part of it is done.
You will learn that it is done not by our government, but by contracted private companies.
Private companies.
You will learn that in several cases they are not American companies.
What? That's right.
Non-American companies are handling important parts of our counting our votes.
And I believe at least one of them is in Spain, one of them is a Canadian company, etc.
Now that by itself, that's not the biggest problem in the world, is it?
Because you would expect that there would be transparency.
But those companies also have proprietary systems, proprietary software, And so they have never been audited because nobody else can see their stuff.
This is my understanding anyway.
So let me ask you this.
What are the odds that these digital systems that support the vote, what are the odds that they're hackable?
We'll talk about whether they have been hacked separately.
But just the question of is it possible to hack them such that the vote could be changed in a database or as it's happening without anybody knowing.
How many of you think it's impossible?
Raise your hands.
Let me tell you a little bit about hacking.
I'm no expert, but sometimes it helps that you've got a little bit of a skill stack where you've been around it.
So I've been around a lot of software development, including my own companies.
And one thing I can tell you for sure is that most systems have at least some weakness that could be hacked.
That's generally true.
And probably these two.
But you don't even need to have a digital way to hack it.
That's not the way it's done for the big stuff.
For the big stuff, such as throwing an election, you bribe an insider or blackmail them.
How hard is it to bribe an insider to get a change made in any company?
Turns out it's really easy, and there's plenty of evidence that it's happened in other big companies.
They just find the person who's in charge of it.
Maybe they're earning $200,000 a year.
How would they like a million?
A lot of people will take a million dollars to flip a bit.
So, if you say it can't be hacked, that would only be because you don't understand enough about the world.
Either the technology could be directly hacked in some cases, Even if it's hard.
But remember, the people who would be trying to hack it would be governments.
We're not talking about the kid in the basement as good as that kid in the basement might be a hackie.
We're talking about the best hackers who have ever existed on earth in each of the major countries.
Probably every one of them took a run at it, right?
So is it hackable?
I'd say the odds of that are 100%.
Is there anybody who disagrees With that estimate of the odds, just as a general concept, it is 100% hackable, even if the hack involves bribing an insider to do it.
Then the second chance is, what are the odds that somebody did succeed in hacking it?
Because that's a separate set of odds.
I would say the odds that somebody will eventually hack it, because it is hackable, and the The upside gain of hacking it is so gigantic, I mean it's billions or trillions of dollars, that people would keep hammering at it until they succeeded.
So presumably the intelligence services of each of the major countries would try to get an insider here, or try to get somebody close to the insiders, or try to get their own person on that job, or try to hack it.
And they would just keep hacking and hacking away.
And eventually I would say the odds of somebody hacking it Whoever.
Could be domestic, could be foreign.
But if you wait long enough, the odds are 100%.
Because it's hackable, guaranteed.
They have the highest incentive in the world to hack it, and they wouldn't stop trying.
Nothing would stop them.
So eventually they'll get it.
So the real question is, has it happened yet?
It kind of comes down to that, doesn't it?
That's all it comes down to.
Because there's a 100% chance it will happen.
We just don't know if it happened yet.
So, given what I've just explained, do you think that the Electoral College electors would feel complete confidence in the system if it were not audited?
Given what you just heard, do you think an audit is just pretty much required?
I do. Even if it doesn't change this election, don't you think they should plug those holes and audit the heck out of that thing?
Even if it has nothing to do with Trump, nothing to do with Biden, what's more important than this?
What else are you doing that's important?
So, here's the The weird, strange path that Trump still has.
And the summary of it is, if you can create enough doubt, and it doesn't look like that would be hard to create that doubt, you could free the Electoral College in a way that's never happened before.
Do you remember when Chuck Schumer said, everything's on the table now?
Everything's on the table now.
Well, this is on the table.
If the Republicans decide to fight with the same no-holds-barred Chuck Schumer thing, they can, without violating any laws, the Constitution gives them complete freedom to express as much doubt as they want about the integrity of the election system.
So, for those of you just joining, let me frame this a little bit.
I'm not that Japanese soldier who's been on the island for 45 years and doesn't know the war is over.
I know what the vote was.
I know that Biden is going to get more votes in the election.
So we know that.
And I accept that, according to our system, this is the time.
When it is perfectly appropriate to congratulate the winner and try to get past any bad feelings.
It is nonetheless true that there's still a path for Trump.
But I think you can also say, our system did what our system did.
We got a result.
We can probably live with it if we have to, even if he didn't like it.
Somebody says, no way, we don't think Biden even had the popular vote.
Well, wouldn't you like it to have an audit?
Now, I don't know if a recount gets you what you want.
I don't know.
But if I were going to do an audit, here's how I would do it.
And this is just one example.
And somebody who knows more about databases than I do can answer this.
Is each transaction or Or change to the database logged in some way?
Would it be possible to see the time and the amount in some kind of a log of everything that ever changed in the vote database?
Does anybody know? Is that a thing?
Because I can imagine it could be a thing, I just don't know if it's architected in a way we could retrieve that.
But let's say it's a thing. Let's say there is a log of every change to the database and it could be audited.
Here's what I would look for.
I would look for situations in which an exact amount of numbers was subtracted from one column and added to the other column in the same amount at the same time.
Because there's a good chance that whoever, if somebody hacked it, there would be a good chance that they would be dumb enough to do the switch simultaneously, or maybe they'd have to, because it'd be discovered otherwise.
And so all you'd have to do is find any times where a big number is exactly the same as, you know, a subtraction and an addition at the same time.
Now, I don't even know if there should be subtractions.
Maybe if you find any subtractions, that should tell you something too.
Now, I'm not suggesting that that's exactly how you would find a problem.
I'm suggesting that if you put enough attention into it, the odds of finding something there are pretty good.
Now, just so you know, I'm not crazy.
And as my final defense for not having cognitive dissonance, is it not completely possible that if it got audited, they would find that the only people who hacked it were Republicans, but they didn't hack it enough?
Because you can't rule out the possibility that the system was rigged by some Republican who was just a good hacker, or Republican-friendly, And they didn't hack it enough.
And Biden just legitimately got a lot of votes and it was more than the hack.
Can't rule that out.
You're right? And if you're not willing to be able to say that as easily as I said it, well, you might be in cognitive dissonance or denial.
But don't be in any of those things.
The country will be fine.
And if you're worried about your taxes, they might go up, but probably not as much as Biden wants to.
And here's why. It goes like this.
Are you ready? Jake Tapper doesn't want his taxes raised.
I use Jake Tapper as my example of a media person who has a high income who I'm guessing doesn't want to pay 65 or 70% of his income in taxes.
Probably doesn't. So I would think that the messaging on that from all of the rich media people We'll be a little less supportive of that tax increase than maybe what you thought when it was just a campaign.
So maybe your taxes won't go up under Biden as much as, you know, the worst case scenario.
All right, that's all for now.
▲
Export Selection