Episode 1224 Scott Adams: I Teach You When to Disagree With the Experts Because That is an Essential Skill
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Who should get the vaccine FIRST?
All US gov computer systems are compromised...now what?
Whomever controls violence...controls the government
Statistical oddity, Counties with Dominion, Hart systems
Eric Swalwell's fate
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Go. Well, speaking of the Moderna vaccine, I guess that got approved, so we got a second vaccine.
And the interesting thing is, how do you decide which one to take?
Because I'm starting to hear reports of the Moderna one might have some advantages over the other one.
What would you do if your healthcare provider offered you, let's say, the other one, but you wanted the Moderna one?
What would you do? Would you wait?
If the only one you could get is the other one because maybe your HMO or something just has one of them?
I don't know. It's going to be an interesting question.
My advice to all of you will be the same.
This is what I'm going to do.
In terms of my decision of what vaccination to take or not, I'm going to wait until the last minute.
And you should too. You don't need to make a decision.
Until somebody says you can come in and get it.
Until somebody says that you personally can go get a vaccination, don't decide.
Don't decide because there might be extra information by then.
So if you decide now before you have to, why would you do that?
Wait until the last minute.
You could be quite sure you're going to take it or quite sure you're not, but don't decide yet.
Wait until the last minute.
That's the smartest place to Place to make the decision.
Here's the most controversial story that I have completely changed my opinion on.
You saw the story about the ethicist who, I guess the New York Times had his article, and the ethicist claimed that it might be better for society if before older people get the vaccination that the frontline healthcare workers get taken care of.
And part of his argument, which made the headlines, was that he thought that old people shouldn't get the vaccination first because they're mostly white, and that frontline healthcare workers are more diverse, and so if you favored the frontline workers, you would get a more diverse and more fair distribution.
And the way that was reported is, uh, racist.
Oh, it's kind of racist.
Really, really racist.
Is it? Yes.
So, let me agree with the first part of the criticism unambiguously.
You ready? But no matter what you do, it's racist.
Sorry. Sorry.
No matter what you do, it's racist.
There isn't the non-racist option.
If we had a non-racist option, I would say, my God, why are we even obtaining this idea from this clearly racist proposal?
But that's not our situation.
It's not. And we can't get to a situation where there would be any kind of a non-racist process.
Here's why. No matter what rules you pick, no matter what group you say, even if you don't use race, if you just say, well, we'll do people over a certain age, well, mostly white, right?
It wasn't your intention. But it would just turn out that way.
So things are racist by outcome, no matter what your intention was.
So would you agree with the first point, that the outcome has a racial element to it, even if nobody was thinking in those terms, even if racism was nothing to do with the decision, you'd all agree that there's always an outcome.
That favors one group or not, no matter what you do.
You can't avoid that.
So let's talk about intention.
Because if the outcome is going to be racist no matter what, you can't get rid of the racism part.
So why would you worry about the thing you can't change, right?
That just can't be changed.
But you can question motive.
That's always fair. You can question intention.
If I thought that someone had suggested in public That white people should not get the vaccination in an early way, even if they're old.
What's your first impression of that?
Sounds pretty bad, right?
But let me ask you this.
Suppose somebody came to me.
Let's personalize this.
Take it out of the realm of public policy.
Take it down to you personally.
Somebody comes to you and they say, Scott, you're over 60.
You know, I'm 63.
And I'm in a, you know, I've got a little asthma.
So I've got some comorbidities.
I'm not old, old, but I'm, you know, the beginning of the older category.
And suppose they said to me, I'd like you to make the decision, Scott.
It's up to you. We know that, let's say, Older black people have much worse outcomes.
Would you mind socially distancing a little bit longer?
And we're going to focus on black citizens, not because they're black, but because we know they have worse outcomes.
So if you're looking at the greater good, you want to give the vaccination to whoever gets the best outcome, right?
It just happens that they're black.
That's not anybody's choice.
It's nobody's intention.
It's just a biological reality.
So if somebody said to me, Scott, would you personally...
You're not making a decision for anybody else.
It's just you personally.
It's not a public policy.
It doesn't apply to anybody else.
It's just you. Would you personally socially distance a little bit longer and take a little more risk for the benefit of black citizens in the United States Who are at greater risk?
What would I say? I'd say yes.
I'd say yes. If somebody asked me that question directly and said, look, it's up to you.
There's no penalty.
You will not be punished.
You won't be punished.
It's just up to you.
It's your own conscience, your own risk-reward calculation.
You can be selfish if you want.
It's up to you. If you want to get it first, we'll put you right in front of the line and nobody will ever give you a hard time for it.
It's up to you. I think I'd still wait.
I think I'd still wait.
Because that's actually a pretty fair proposition.
If they can identify people for whatever reason, be they black or have a comorbidity or be they a certain age or be they healthcare workers on the front line, if you can make a strong case That this person is in a high-risk group and I'm in a slightly less high-risk group?
Yeah, I'm okay with that.
Absolutely. Because, you know, it's a war, right?
It's a war. And sometimes you've got to be the one that does the dangerous stuff so that somebody else doesn't have to do it.
Sometimes you've got to brave the bullets to pull back your wounded comrade off the field, right?
So we're in a situation where personal sacrifice should be a pretty big part of the equation.
If you're not thinking of it that way, then you're not in a, let's say, a military mindset, and maybe we should be.
We're in a war against a virus.
Maybe let's act more like soldiers, right?
So, somebody says white guilt.
Am I suffering from white guilt?
Because I would say the same thing No matter who the risk category was.
So would you criticize me if I said I think people over 80 should get the vaccination before me?
Would you criticize me for that?
If I said that frontline healthcare workers should get it before me, would you criticize me for that?
If I said that people who...
What's the worst comorbidity?
Maybe it's diabetes. Let's say diabetes is...
I don't know if that's true, but let's say it's the worst one.
If I said that everybody with diabetes should get the shot before I do, would you criticize me for that?
Why would you criticize me if I say, no, there's an obvious category.
Black citizens in this country clearly have far worse outcomes.
Why is that different than diabetes?
Why is that different than being 80 years old?
All right. So there's your provocative thought of the day.
I didn't think you'd like it, but I feel it's worth mulling on.
And I would say that the story about the ethicist and his opinion was presented a little bit out of context.
So when I first heard it, it just sounded straight-up racist, and that was my first impression.
But when you hear the actual argument...
And you understand that there is no non-racist outcome.
You can't get there.
It's not a possibility. It's only who gets the advantage.
And if you decide that it's going to be a little racist, but you're going to do it based on the greatest risk, that's about as good as you can do.
It's about as good as you can do.
Now, if you told me that every black person would get the vaccination before every white person, that doesn't make sense.
But if you're talking equal to equal, let's say a black guy who's 63 years old and has a little asthma, I would put him in front of me, in line, because it's a war.
If this were a competition, And I were competing against my fellow citizen, yeah, I'd push him off the cliff, right?
If I treated this as a competition, I'm going to get mine, and I'm going to make sure you don't get mine before I get mine.
But it's not. It's a war.
So if I were competing against black people, sure, I'll do what I have to do to compete.
But they're on the same team, so I'm going to treat it like a military operation.
Alright. There's a new site that's sorting the news in a useful way.
I think a lot of testing on how to get our news better, you know, better platforms or better ways to present the news so it's less biased, would be good for testing.
So I'm not going to say that this particular one and its URL is tidyreport.com.
Tidy, T-I-D-Y, report.com.
What they do is they organize the tweets Which, of course, usually connect to the news directly.
So they organize the, I think it's mostly the political tweets, by positive, neutral, and negative.
So in other words, whether the tweet is saying something positive or negative about the topic or neutral.
And whether the person saying it is associated with the left or the right.
I'm not sure exactly how they figure that out, but they're probably close.
So it's called tidyreport.com.
I neither recommend it nor disrecommend it.
The important part of the story is that people are starting to A-B test different ways to present the news to get past this immense bias situation.
So check it out. Maybe that's one of the ones.
Pompeo. So Mike Pompeo says that the Russians are, quote, pretty clearly behind the cyber attack.
What does pretty clearly mean?
Does pretty clearly mean we're sure of it?
Is that the same?
It's pretty clearly.
I don't know if that means they're positive.
It's an interesting choice of words.
But it's somewhere in that neighborhood of high confidence or high likelihood.
And some experts are saying what I think is unfortunately obvious, that the only way you would be able to get rid of Of whatever access Russia has had for apparently a long time.
The only way you'd be able to get rid of it is to replace all of your software.
All of it. Because the allegation, which is probably pretty reasonable, is that once they had God access to all of the systems, they could embed viruses in different places to be activated under different situations or open up different doors, etc. So it wouldn't matter how...
How good you were at finding a problem, because they would just open up a new door as quickly as you found it.
So you pretty much have to get rid of all of it.
I wonder if we have the technology to do that.
Let me give you, let me flush this out a little bit.
Flush it out or flesh it out a little bit?
I always get those confused.
Flesh it out? You flesh it out, right?
That's the saying? So the idea is this.
Could you write a software application that's main purpose is to remove all of the software in a company and replace it with the clean version of the same software?
So in other words, could you write some kind of a master god program that would take every piece of software at IBM Delete it.
And I don't know how hard you have to delete it.
Maybe you have to extra delete, bleach it or something.
Just get rid of all of it and reload the same fresh thing.
So you keep your databases.
So none of your data would be directly affected.
So I don't think there's a problem with data.
I guess I'm not that technical that I can answer that question.
Would we have any issue with just a raw database?
I don't know if that can hold a virus.
But if you get rid of everything, just wipe everything that has any software element to it in your system, could you write one giant program that just rolled through a Fortune 500 company, took it down for an hour, It's just done for an hour.
But an hour later, it's reloaded all of its software, rebooted in the right order, and brought everything back up.
Could you do it? Is that a thing?
Let me give you a little bit of history.
Do you remember when the year 2000 bug was coming?
When the year 2000 bug was coming, all the experts said, we don't have enough time.
We're in real trouble because the companies are not taking it seriously and that date is coming when year 2000 bug will hit and all computers that were designed before a certain date can't handle the year 2000 as a date and they'll all crash and the world will end.
And as that was approaching and we were actually in the year 2000 and we're getting close to the year 2000, yet it gets closer and closer and closer, I was saying in public, we're fine.
We'll be fine. Now, here's the reason that all the experts said, no, it can't be done.
It's too much work. You know, if everybody worked on it full-time, you just couldn't get it done.
We're doomed. And I said exactly the opposite.
I said, no, we'll be fine.
What happened? What happened is, we were fine.
Now, why is that?
Well, exactly what I predicted.
That it would take a long time to do it manually, But it wouldn't take a long time to figure out how not to do it manually.
In other words, it wouldn't take that long to write programs that would do what the humans would have to do that would take a long time.
And what happened? People wrote programs that looked for these bugs and corrected them.
And then they ran the programs.
The bugs were corrected.
The year 2000 came.
Bam! We're fine.
So until you could imagine that it was possible to write software that would Fix, you know, universally go out there and find and fix all the bugs that you didn't even know where they were.
You thought you were doomed.
I think we might find a similar, maybe an industry, could be a whole industry pops up, maybe a consulting industry with some kind of technical background.
And I would guess that we will probably birth an industry that Because of this, because of the hacks, they go in and shut down your whole network and wipe it and then reload it and, you know, they control the process so nothing gets out of control.
And they just go rescue one company at a time.
I feel like that's going to be in the industry really soon and should be.
And I think that'll be the only answer because we should assume that People will get so far into our systems again that we'll just be right back in this situation, right?
So even if we found every bug and got rid of it, it would just reproduce.
I mean, you know, even if we got them all, which is impossible probably, but even if we did, they would just hack back in and, you know, they'd find another way in.
So you need some way to wipe all of your software every now and then, every bit of it, and I think that'll become an industry.
Here's the funniest thing that's happened lately.
If you don't follow this Twitter account, you really should.
It's a parody account, and the name on the account is Titania McGrath.
And there's a little photo of a youngish blonde woman with sort of glasses like mine.
And what's brilliant about it, besides the fact that it's brilliantly written, is that it's a parody account that is so close to reality, people are often fooled, which is part of the joke.
So a lot of people who see this account for the first time really can't tell.
And something happened that a thread that Titania, or whoever runs the account, tweeted that just as Amazing.
And here's why. I've been telling you for a while that parity and reality have merged, such that there's not really that much difference between a wild parity and what you're actually observing.
You want to see an example of that?
Titania, in her thread, gives you several examples of predictions that she, or whoever runs E-Count, made that were pure parity, That have already happened.
In other words, the parody came before the reality.
But listen to this list.
It's freaking mind-blowing.
All right, you ready? So these are the claims in Titania's thread.
She said, on December 2018, I called for biological sex to be removed from birth certificates.
Now, that was parody.
We're going to take your biological sex off of your...
Birth certificate. Said that in 2018.
In 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine concurred.
So the New England Journal of Medicine is now recommending in 2020 what Titania said as purely a joke in 2018.
Purely a joke. Is that the only one?
Well, I mean, if this had only happened once, if it only happened once, you'd say, oh, that's a funny coincidence, right?
If it only happened once.
So, also in 2018, Titania criticized Julie Andrews, who played Mary Poppins in the movie, for having chimney soot on her face.
Because, you know, that was in the middle of the blackface stuff.
So, as purely a joke, she tweeted that and criticized Julie Andrews for having chimney smoke on her face in the movie.
That was in 2018.
In 2019, the New York Times concurred.
So the New York Times basically took on Julie Andrews for having soot on her face and blackface.
It was literally a joke two years before it became real.
Is that the only ones?
Oh no, I'm not even close to being done.
So the thing that's funny is not the individual examples because they're sort of trivial.
What's funny is how often it happened.
It's the often part that makes the joke.
All right, here's another one. March 2019, Titania published a book called Woke, in which I argue that skyscrapers are oppressive phallic symbols.
In July 2020, The Guardian Concurred.
So in 2019, literally joking, the skyscrapers are some oppressive phallic symbols, and then the Guardian writes a serious article one year later saying exactly that.
In that same book in 2019, here's the finisher.
In 2019, in her book, also the same book, Woke, I called out Helen Keller for her white privilege.
Time Magazine just did that in reality.
Now, this is just a sample.
The actual thread is longer.
I just picked out some of the fun ones.
But when you see how many times parody and reality overlapped, it changes you.
I mean, this is one of those things where You know, I've predicted this.
I predicted it often and in public that parody and reality were on the way to merging.
And then to watch it in real time, it actually merged.
Did that sound like a real prediction when I said it?
The first time you heard me say, parody and reality are merging?
That didn't sound exactly technically real, right?
It sounded more like a humorous hyperbole.
No, I meant it.
And it happened. So there you go.
Alright. Speaking of predictions, one of my other predictions is that history would get complicated because we would no longer have one of them.
We would have more than one history.
And that if you went to school, it might be a problem because you're trying to learn history and there are two of them.
And they're different. Which one do you believe?
Did you think that that was going to happen?
My prediction that there would be two histories?
Well, here we are.
President Trump, he unveiled his choices for the President's Advisory 1776 Commission.
So this will be a commission to make recommendations about how to push against the 1619 project that is already in schools.
So the President has literally created a commission To create an alternate history to compete with the history that's already being taught in the schools.
Two histories. Literally being taught in schools.
Now, when I said to you, we've got a problem here because we have two histories, like we've never had before, did that sound real to you?
The first time you heard that, it's like, no, we'll still agree on one history.
Nope. Literally, we're teaching two histories, if this commission goes forward.
I don't know how much time they have before Biden scraps it, so I can't imagine they get much done.
But there you are, two histories.
All right. The most interesting claim about election fraud that I've seen comes from Kankoa the Great, It's a Twitter account.
So I think maybe Kanekoa, K-A-N-E-K-O-A, the great, all one word.
Kanakoa the Great. A good follow.
He's got lots of stuff. I don't know who he is, but he's got lots of good content.
So he made a Twitter thread, which I'll talk about.
But before I talk about it, do you remember the golden rule of all election fraud claims?
The golden rule, well, it's not golden, but it's a rule.
95% of all the election claims you hear are fake or not real or mistaken or in a context or something.
But I also believe there's a 100% chance the election was stolen because it was easy and people had the motive to do it.
So of course it's stolen.
It's always stolen under those conditions.
But any specific claim you hear, probably BS. Now, I'm going to give you a specific claim after telling you that every specific claim is probably BS. I'm going to apply the same standard to this one.
Now, this one sounds really good, okay?
So I'm going to give you an argument here that on paper, you know, on paper, it's really, really strong.
But is it true?
I don't know. I would just apply my standard to it.
95% chance it's not.
But here it is. So there is a working professional statistician, somebody who is very capable and experienced and in the sweet spot of his career.
So somebody who really, really, really Understands statistics.
So this is the source, and there's a video from the statistician explaining what he did.
So the first thing you need to know is that the person making the claim is very qualified, right?
Now that doesn't mean it's true, right?
Because we'll talk about experts and when you should trust them, but just know that he's very qualified.
And what he did was he was just sort of messing around with a lot of the data.
He explained it as almost a hobby, something that the statisticians like to do.
It's like, oh, I wonder if there's a correlation between this thing and that thing.
And he discovered, somewhat just by poking around, a correlation that almost is impossible to be natural, meaning it's a signal for fraud and With something like a greater than 99% chance that it is really fraud and not some fake signal.
Now, does that mean it's true?
No. Remember, we're only dealing with claims that you and I can't check.
I don't have the skill to check it.
I don't know where the data was.
I can't really check it. So, no matter how credible this sounds, just keep this little tape playing in the back of your head.
No matter how credible it sounds, There's a 95% chance it's not real.
Okay? Just keep that playing in the back of your head.
Here's what he found. If you took the 3,000 U.S. counties, I always wondered how many counties there were, which is weird.
I was wondering that exact question.
There are over 3,000 counties.
Now, counties have a lot in common.
There could be a lot of diversity within a county, but you can make some claims about their consistency over time.
And the statistician started out by predicting who would win each county based on a number of demographic variables.
So he would say how many Democrats are in the county, what's their age, a bunch of stuff.
And he found that he could predict with 90% accuracy Who the county would go for based on their demographics.
And you could apply it retrospectively to other elections, and I guess it works.
So it's about 90% good at knowing in advance who would win.
And then he looked at who actually won.
And he found, eventually he poked around and found this strange data oddity.
That there were lots of counties that did better than his model would predict.
And there were lots of counties that did worse than his model would predict, and that's quite natural.
So if you've got 3,000 data points, they're going to be spread around, but his point was you could draw a line through the middle, and that would be his prediction, and the differences would just be sort of equally on both sides of the line.
So if he was off, it was just as likely he was off in one way versus the other, so there'd be just as much below the line as above the line.
And then he found that in those counties that used Dominion voting systems and one other kind, I think Hart or something?
It was another company, Hart, H-A-R-T. So I guess there are maybe six or so different machines in different counties and different ways to account.
But in those counties that had Dominion or Hart systems...
There were consistently over 5% more votes than would be expected for Biden.
Now here's the interesting part.
The correlation holds in Trump counties.
So counties that Trump won, Biden did 5% better.
In counties that you knew that Biden was going to win, because they always go Democrat, also a little bit more than 5% So the amount that the Dominion and Hart machine counting counties were off was consistent, meaning that there was a gigantic difference.
Let me see if I can say this simply because I'm botching this.
If you looked at what you expected these counties to do, based on their demographics and past behavior, etc., the ones that had Dominion and Hart machines were way, way...
I think 73% of them had a Biden advantage that was very similar.
Now, the odds of only those two machines having 73% of the oddities going in the same direction, but in the other counties those oddities went in both directions equally...
But only where you have the Dominion or Hart machines, you didn't have an even distribution.
It's the only time.
And it's very consistent, and according to the statistician, not according to me, that the odds of any of that being anything but fraud are vanishingly small.
You could say it might be something else in the extreme.
It was an alien invasion or something.
But not really.
Not really. Now, this is very different from the quadrillions argument.
The quadrillions argument was debunked, right?
So the quadrillion argument is that if there's, let's say, a bellwether place that always went to Republicans and this is the only time it didn't, you know, that...
That's a signal and then there's this other signal and this other signal.
That is not good analysis because all it would take is one big effect that could affect all of those things.
So that's not a guaranteed signal of fraud.
But this is really specific because you can trace it all the way down to the specific vendor.
And if you can trace the difference down to specific vendors, That's a really stronger case, I think.
Now, I don't know if Andreas Beckhaus is watching this video, but if you are, he'd be the best debunker of things that I say.
So debunk me on Twitter if I've missed anything obvious.
So I took this and I sent the link to my Democrat friend that I always mention, my anti-Trump Democrat friend, Who has the qualities of being very smart and well-informed, and yet appears to act crazy.
He's completely rational, in fact one of the most rational people I know, in all other domains.
He's just like this really rational guy.
It practically defines who he is.
He's so rational. And I sent him the statistical analysis, and as luck would have it, he's also...
Good at statistics.
So one of his talent stacks is statistics.
So I sent him a statistical argument to a guy who really knows statistics.
No, it's not Sam Harris. It's a personal friend.
Nobody you know. And here's why I did it.
My friend says, and has been saying, that there's no evidence that there is anything fraudulent.
So that's his view.
No evidence. So I sent him this evidence.
But the evidence has a special quality to it, that no matter how much you know about statistics, you can't really just look at it and know if it's right, right?
You can't tell.
So this expert is making an argument that unless you probably, unless you really dug into his work, you can't tell if it's real.
So I did this intentionally, not as here I've proven my case, because I don't think anything like that's happened, remember?
95% of all evidence is fake.
This is no different. So I didn't think it was a kill shot, but the reason I showed it to him is because I knew he wouldn't know it wasn't, and he wouldn't know if it was, because it can't be known.
It's just too hard to know it based on what we have available to us.
And I wondered if he would reject it, or would he say, okay, this does not prove fraud, and I would agree with that, but it certainly tells us we should look into it.
So that's what I was looking for.
I was looking for a rational response that says, you know, Scott, I know a lot about statistics too, but I don't have access to all the data he has.
If he did this analysis right, it would be very meaningful.
And it does look like he's capable.
Capable of doing the analysis.
If it's right, This is something that would be important.
It should be looked into. So that's what a reasonable person would say, right?
Do you think he said that?
Nope. Perfectly reasonable to say it didn't prove anything, and I agree.
Here's what he said. You can find any correlation in lots of data.
Now this is what I would call the Bible code The Bible Code is an idea that if you looked in the Bible and you did various schemes to find secret messages, you would find all these messages, such as, I'll just pick one, this is random, not a real one.
If you took the second letter of the first sentence, But you took the third letter of the next sentence, and then the fourth letter of the next sentence.
So it was all these little algorithms that would run against the Bible, and it would spit out things that you didn't think could possibly be natural.
So it would be like little predictions, and you'd say, yes!
Look, it's like a full sentence prediction, and it actually happened.
So there was a time when people thought the Bible had these secret codes.
That was debunked.
By some scientists who took their same algorithms and ran it against any big book, like War and Peace.
Turns out War and Peace is full of secret messages and predictions that actually came true.
Because it turns out that if you've got something as complicated as a big book filled with letters, you can find some algorithm that will produce full sentences, Just by trial and error.
And they will look like predictions that happened.
So it can work with any book.
It's obviously not the Bible code.
So his argument was that this statistician had basically fallen for the Bible code error.
Does that sound like a good response to, here's a video by a hugely qualified statistician, Are there any hugely qualified statisticians who don't know about the Bible Code?
There are none.
There are none.
That's not a thing.
There's no such thing as a professional.
A professional statistician Who's never heard of this problem with the Bible code?
That's not a thing. Obviously, the statistician was aware that that's one of the risks that you have to guard against.
So, I feel as if this is a pretty clean example of cognitive dissonance.
The reasonable reaction would have been, I can't evaluate this, but if it's right, it's meaningful.
Right? Is that not the only reasonable response?
To something you can't analyze but looks important and an expert in it?
All right. So...
The other thing my Democrat friend said as a response is that the courts have rejected all of the evidence that was presented.
It's just mind-boggling.
So my Democrat friend, because the news is so fake...
He believes that courts have looked at evidence of fraud.
That never happened.
He actually thinks that happened.
It didn't happen. Apparently he was unaware that the cases are being thrown out for technicalities without actually looking at the claims.
It's about standing and doctrine of latches and whether or not you can bring the case and who's got jurisdiction.
It's all that stuff. But as far as I know...
The claims, per se, have not been judged in any court of law.
I don't know that the witnesses who make direct claims of observing fraud, have they had their day in court?
No, right?
So here's a really well-informed guy, but his information comes from the left and actually thinks an alternate history of the United States is happening right now.
He believes there's an alternate history happening in parallel with the one you're experiencing in which those claims are being debunked by courts.
Nothing like that's happened.
Nothing even close to that has happened.
They've never even looked at it.
Beyond that, would it make any difference that other claims were debunked?
Does it matter how many people are found innocent of a crime Let's say this.
Let's say three people were accused of a crime and you found out they didn't do it.
Does that tell you the fourth person who was accused of an unrelated crime?
Does that tell you the fourth person didn't do it?
It doesn't really work that way, right?
Anyway. Trump signed some legislation that would kick Chinese companies off of the US stock exchanges unless those companies allow financial audits that are required for American companies that are on those exchanges.
To which I say, why did this take so long?
Are you telling me that there are Chinese companies on American exchanges Who simply decide not to abide by the very, very, very important rules of transparency that all American companies abide by or else they get penalized greatly?
Are you telling me that China can just be on our stock exchange and ignore all the rules that were required?
The important ones, not even the trivial ones.
Like, the most important one is you've got to have some transparency.
That's like right at the top.
That's not a detail, right?
And so Trump signs this legislation that will kick them off if they don't allow these audits.
And I'm thinking, why did that take so long?
And do you think this would have happened under Biden?
Do you? Because I feel like probably it wouldn't.
It's going to be fun watching Trump try to get things done between now and Inauguration Day.
We'll see how much trouble he can cause.
Alright, let me teach you when to disagree with the experts, because of course we all do it.
But there's a good way to do it and a bad way to do it, and this will be your important lesson of the day.
You ready? Okay. Here's what you should not do.
Do not disagree with experts, and then cite as your reason for disagreeing with the experts a fact which all the experts know.
Okay, I just gave you an example.
That all the experts in statistics know about the Bible code.
So stating that as the reason for your argument doesn't make any sense.
Because the expert knows that.
Here's some more examples of that.
I've heard the argument that CO2 can't be causing a climate crisis because CO2 used to be much higher in the past.
You've heard this argument, right?
People say climate change isn't real because CO2 used to be way, way higher in the past and there was no civilization back then.
If there were no humans and CO2 was way higher in the past and things seemed to be fine, so it's all hoax, right?
Here's the problem with that.
Every climate scientist knows CO2 was higher in the past.
Do you see where I'm going? All the experts who say climate change is a problem, they know what you know, that CO2 was much higher in the past.
That's not a reason to argue against them.
What that proves is that you don't know why they have...
you don't understand their argument, basically.
Now, I believe that I read once that CO2 was higher in sort of the distant history of the Earth, But it was the same time that I believe the Sun was less strong, so there was some countering force that is easy to demonstrate and well-known.
So, in general, if you're disagreeing with experts, but you're using as your basis for disagreement a fact that every one of those experts knows, you're almost certainly not making a good argument.
You could be right, because experts sometimes are wrong and you don't know why, so you could be right by accident.
But you should check yourself and say, wait a minute, my argument is based on one fact that the other people already know.
There's got to be some other argument or that's nothing.
Here's another example.
When I predicted that Trump would win in 2016, I was going against all the experts and all the pollsters.
Was that smart?
Was it smart for me to disagree with the experts when I was using their same data?
Because they knew what the polls were.
We're all looking at the same data, right?
So I should not have disagreed with the experts, wouldn't you say, if all I were using was the same data they were using?
Because they would know more than I do, plus they know the same data I know.
Except, here's what's different.
I was not using their same data.
I was using my expertise, which is different from theirs.
My expertise was persuasion.
And as a trained persuader, and other trained persuaders saw at the same time I did, they said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't like the past.
We've never had this skill set running for president.
And you guys don't see it coming, but I'm kind of an expert in this persuasion stuff, and I do see it coming just like a train.
Like, I can see it. I can see it coming, right?
So if you disagree with the experts because you're bringing knowledge that they don't have or expertise that they don't have, that might be a reasonable disagreement.
Again, doesn't mean you're right and they're wrong.
Could go either way.
But at least you're being reasonable.
That would be a reasonable way to disagree with an expert because you're bringing something new that they don't have.
But if you're only bringing the stuff they already know, I think I'd lean toward the experts, not you, in that case.
I had one other expertise in the case of calling Trump's 2016 victory, which is that I know a lot about my white males.
As a white male of a certain age, I kind of have a little more insight into white males of a certain age.
And I know what they're willing to say out loud in public, and I know what they privately think.
And it's a little bit different.
So I'm not sure that all the experts had maybe the same experience with this group of people who ended up being influential in the final outcome.
So whenever you think you have some extra insight or expertise or data, then maybe disagreeing with an expert makes some sense.
Here's another one. I've disagreed with climate change experts about their projections of how bad things will be in 50 to 80 years.
Does that make sense?
I'm not a climate change expert, right?
So if I'm disagreeing with the experts, aren't I being irrational?
Because there's no fact that I know about climate change, and this is true, there's no fact I know about climate change that they don't know.
So they know all the facts that I have, Plus lots more.
Would it be reasonable for me to disagree with them when they know everything I know, plus the scientific method has backed them up, they say, plus the majority of experts are on the same side, plus they know way more than I do?
Is that reasonable for me to disagree in that case?
Well, if that's all the variables that were involved, the answer is no.
If there were no other variables, it wouldn't really be reasonable for me to disagree.
I don't have anything to add to it.
But when you're predicting what's going to happen financially, you're now in my ballpark.
Because I worked as a person who made financial predictions for big corporations, did it for years, and I have expertise in it.
So when I'm criticizing climate change, The part I don't criticize is the science part.
The science part is that if you add CO2 to the atmosphere, no matter how it gets there, human or other, no matter how it gets there, all things being equal, would that warm up the Earth?
Probably. I'm not disagreeing with experts because I don't have any extra data.
What extra data do I have?
What extra science do I have?
None. So when they make a claim that CO2 should warm the atmosphere, all things being equal, I say, I don't have anything to add to that.
I'm not going to doubt it.
And I'm not going to confirm it.
I'm just going to say, well, you're experts.
I don't know. But when you get to the second part, which is they make a financial, not a scientific, but a financial estimate of what it's going to do with the world economy, you're in my expertise.
So if I criticize you from my expertise, and you're a scientist, you should listen to me.
Literally. If a scientist tells you to believe a financial estimate or a financial prediction and a financial expert who makes these predictions or has for a living says no, who are you going to believe?
The person who knows the most about financial predictions Or a scientist, because scientists are not financial predictors.
So when I disagree with climate change, I'm not disagreeing with scientists on science.
I'm disagreeing with scientists on my expertise, not theirs.
My expertise. I have another expertise too, which is, again, persuasion.
And so I have a theory of why Maybe scientists could be, you know, fooled or biased or subject to confirmation bias, at least on the financial part, financial predictions.
And it is, you know, everything that you already know, which is that there's a group think and there would be a penalty for going against the grain.
So if you're going to disagree with the experts, at least have a theory of why they're wrong.
So sometimes I have a theory that...
There are just too many penalties for them to say, going against the grain, so it's cognitive dissonance or confirmation bias, or that I have extra facts or extra information.
All right, here's another example of the same thing.
I see this argument all the time about wearing masks, and it goes like this.
This was tweeted at me today.
The problem with this...
I'm sorry.
It was tweeted at me today that...
We know masks can't work because the tiny holes in the mask are way bigger than the even tinier virus.
Now, most of you have probably made this argument, right?
How many of you have made this argument?
Scott, Scott, Scott. The scientists have looked.
They've seen that the masks have these big holes on them when you go microscopic.
And the hole is this big.
The virus is the size of a pea.
Let's say, relatively speaking, the virus is the size of a pea.
The tiny holes in the mask would be the size of, let's say, a basketball hoop.
How does a basketball hoop stop something that's the size of a pea?
Have you made that argument yourself?
Raise your hand if you've ever made that argument.
If you did, you would know you're disagreeing with the majority of experts who say that masks work.
Now, here's my test.
Do you think that the experts who say masks do work, do you think they're unaware of your pee-going-through-a-basketball-hoop brilliant analogy?
Because if they're aware of that fact, then you're adding nothing to it.
It's a fact they know.
It's a fact you know.
That the size of the holes in the masks are so big and the virus itself is smaller.
Do you think they don't know that?
The experts? I'm pretty sure all of the experts know that.
But they know everything you know, which is, let's say, that fact, and more.
So they know everything you know.
They know that big hole and little virus exists.
But the other thing they know is that it's been tested in a variety of real...
Real-world situations.
And in the real world, the evidence is very strong that masks work.
So they're aware that when you test it in a laboratory, you can come up with a very good reason why maybe it wouldn't.
But it might have to do with the water droplets being bigger than the virus itself, so maybe they don't get through the basketball hoop.
Could be that it changes the direction or the viral load.
We don't know why. Don't know why.
But the point is, if the experts know everything you know about the size of that virus, there's something you don't know.
And that's what you should take away from it.
You shouldn't take away from it that the experts are lying if they know more than you do.
Now, how often have I disagreed with the experts?
And let me see if I'm consistent with my own rules of knowing when to agree or disagree with experts.
When the question came up of closing travel from China, the virology experts said in the very early days, no, you don't need to do that.
And I disagreed with Vehement, cursing public statements that we should close the travel from China immediately.
Now, who was right?
Well, I was right. I think history shows that I was right, that we should have closed China travel as early as I said, which was well before Trump did it, which I think was a week later.
But was I... So even though I was right, let's examine...
If I was right for the right reason.
So what was it that I added to the experts?
If the experts say it's not a risk, why should I say it?
What do I know that the experts don't know?
And here's what I do know.
Risk management.
Are scientists experts in risk management?
Because if you studied economics and if you have an MBA and a lot of experience in business, as I do, I would consider myself not like a world expert in risk management, but certainly it's my expertise.
So understanding risk and making decisions in the context of risk management is what you learn when you get an MBA. It's what you learn in business.
I'm good at it. So when I looked at this situation, I didn't say, I'm smarter than epidemiologists.
I said, I don't think they understand risk management because the risk is catastrophic.
And here we are, right?
We knew the risk was catastrophic.
We knew that it would be expensive to close travel, but it would be better than catastrophic.
So from a risk management perspective, it was kind of a no-brainer.
Anybody who understood my expertise, risk management, would have found that an easy decision.
And in fact, who was it who famously followed on pretty quickly?
It was Trump. Would you say that Trump...
Is he also an epidemiologist?
No. Is he an expert on risk management?
Yes. Yes, that's exactly what he is, in the same way that I am.
If you're experienced with business, you are somebody who's been making risk management decisions for decades.
Yeah, Trump is very, very experienced at risk management.
So if you're disagreeing with the experts because you bring a different expertise, that can be valid.
It doesn't mean you're right, but it could be a valid disagreement.
When the experts were first saying that masks don't work before they said they do, I called that a lie on day one.
Now, did I call it a lie because of my expertise in virology and the physics of masks?
No. I brought a different expertise to that.
And that different expertise is that as the creator of Dilbert and somebody who's worked in business for a long time, I know how big organizations work.
And I know that big organizations will routinely lie to manage behavior.
And it occurred to me that since we were talking about a shortage of masks, at the same time we were talking, the experts were saying, nah, you don't need a mask.
But maybe the healthcare workers do need them?
No, you don't need them.
Save them for the healthcare workers.
Eh, it won't make any difference.
It seemed very likely to me that they were making the decision to manage the shortage, and it was not an actual scientific statement.
So in this case, my expertise in bureaucracies and how they lie to manage resources I applied to this situation and with no understanding of epidemiology or the size of the physics of the masks, I correctly predicted that they were lying.
And that was the truth.
How about what I said early on in the pandemic and I was saying that we should at least do a major test and really, really quickly on hydroxychloroquine because if it worked as claimed, it would be huge.
If it didn't work, Well, it's not much risk.
It's pretty low risk compared to the pandemic.
Now, my current thinking is that hydroxychloroquine almost certainly, at this point, we could say wasn't the game changer.
I don't know if it works a little, but it certainly isn't working so well that everybody's adopting it.
We would know that by now, in my opinion.
But was I right or wrong in saying we should go hard at hydroxychloroquine In the environment of not knowing whether it worked or not, I was 100% right, as was Trump.
Not right that it works, but right that there's enough evidence it works that we should go hard at it and know for sure, because we tested it rigorously, that we should just go at it as hard as possible.
And at least eliminate it as a possibility.
At least eliminate it.
So I think I was right on that as well.
All right. So Swalwell, it turns out the information is that there's some confirmation that he did actually have a sexual fling with the Chinese spy, Fang Fang.
So here's my take.
We know that Swalwell pushed the Russia collusion hoax harder than anybody except Adam Schiff.
And we know that it was a hoax, and we know that that was very bad for the country.
And so what Swalwell did...
Was unambiguously very bad for the country.
But it could have also been just a mistake, right?
And I think that you have to allow that your people that you elect in Congress are going to make some mistakes.
So I don't know that you would necessarily fire somebody for pushing the fine people, I'm sorry, for pushing the Russia collusion hoax because maybe he believed it.
Right? Maybe he was just wrong.
That's not the worst thing in the world.
And if Democrats said, well, we like him in general, and even though he pushed this hoax, or maybe they believe the hoax, I don't know.
Maybe that's not enough to lose your job.
You could argue it is, but maybe not, for at least his voters.
And then there's the question of having a fling with a Chinese spy.
Let's say he didn't know it.
That's the reporting, right?
The reporting is he didn't know she was a Chinese spy.
Should you lose your job...
If you had a relationship with somebody that you didn't know was a spy, and the moment you found out, you cut contact.
I don't think so.
I don't think you should lose your job for being fooled by a spy, especially if there's no damage that you can identify.
So you've got two things that are sort of really close to something you should get fired for, but individually?
I don't know. Now suppose you added them together.
He did two bad things.
He didn't do one bad thing.
He did two bad things. Is that enough to fire him?
Well, I don't know.
I suppose that would be subjective.
But here's the thing.
Those two things he did wrong are not unrelated.
Meaning that a Chinese spy, you would expect to want you to put pressure on Russia...
And away from China.
Now, we don't know if that's why Swalwell did what he did.
We don't know if Swalwell was motivated, persuaded, or brainwashed in any way to push the Russia collusion hoax.
All we know is that we watched it.
And if these two facts are true, that you saw Swalwell going balls to the wall to do something that a Chinese spy would certainly want him to do, which is put all the pressure on Russia and, you know, Hurt the integrity of our elections and question everything, etc. He did exactly what a spy would want him to do, a Chinese spy.
Now, that doesn't mean he did it because of that.
But we don't know.
That's grounds for removal.
The fact that we don't know if the only reason he damaged the country so badly is because he was influenced by a Chinese spy...
It doesn't matter if you can prove there was a connection between those stories.
The fact that what he did was so perfectly exactly what a spy would want him to do, that's enough.
Even if he's completely innocent, you can't have that person in public office.
And I feel that that could be unfair to him.
I've told you before, I've met Eric Swalwell a few times because he knows some people I know in local parties and stuff, so he's been around a little bit.
And so I don't have bad feelings about him as a human being, and I don't like people to lose their jobs over politics and stuff like this.
But this is sort of a no-brainer.
This isn't one of those situations where you can put The well-being of Eric Swalwell over the well-being of the credibility of the republic.
He's just less important than the republic.
And I think he's got to go.
And by the way, I'm positive I would say this if he were a republican.
I don't know if you would.
Your mileage might vary.
but I'm positive I would have the same opinion no matter his politics.
So I said provocatively that, although I oppose all violence, and I do, that if conservatives don't start planning now to control the streets, they'll never win another election.
There's no point in having an election.
Because, for all practical purposes, whoever controls violence in the country runs the country.
Let me say that again, because it's one of those things that takes you a while to connect the dots.
Whoever controls violence Meaning that you can get away with it, is the government.
Effectively. Even if they're not the government in name, whoever can control violence is in charge.
There's no exception to that.
It's not like a bias or a, hey, there's a correlation.
It's a definition.
Whoever controls violence in the country runs the country every time.
No exception. And we watched that the Antifa and Black Lives Matter and Democrats, they controlled violence in the streets, and there's good reason to believe that that affected the Supreme Court to want to stay out of the election because they didn't want more violence.
So under this situation where violence...
Appears to be our political system now.
If you want to not have that be your government, you know, street violence, the only response to that, since the police apparently have been politically neutered, the police aren't going to help you.
And it looks like we're not going to employ the army because that would have its own problems.
The only way that this gets fixed that I can think of is that the number of conservatives who show up is way more than than the number of other people who might have violence on their mind.
Now, don't bring guns.
Don't bring knives or bombs.
I'm not suggesting that anybody bring weapons of death to any kind of event.
But if Antifa were outnumbered 5 to 1 in the street where they were trying to make trouble, 5 to 1 would probably...
Make a lot of these things go away.
So I would say that if conservatives don't actually literally organize and have names of people who have signed up to literally go onto the street the moment it's needed, and you don't have five times as many of them, there's no point in having an election.
There really isn't. And the Proud Boys have fucked up everything.
Let me say this. I don't have a problem with the Proud Boys...
Stated philosophy. I know they're accused of things which is not within their stated philosophy.
They're accused of being racist or whatever, but that's not part of their deal.
I don't know if any of them are racist.
They're probably racist everywhere.
But the Proud Boys, unfortunately, they brought their brand into the mix.
And while I believe that they were well-intentioned, in many cases, sometimes I think they just like to fight, but I think they were sort of well-intentioned.
They're patriots. But they completely fucked up the situation because they drew all the attention and they were too easy to paint as the bad guys.
The people who need to be in the street needs to be everybody but them.
Even though they're the most capable in terms of fighting, the most effective would be people who are not part of an organization.
You don't want them to show up and say, hey, we're Proud Boys.
You want people to show up and say, we're conservatives or We want to save the country or we're patriots or something.
You don't want them part of a club.
As soon as you make them part of a club, then anybody who does something bad in the club messes up the whole thing.
So as soon as you say it's a club, any one bad apple in that club ruins the whole club in terms of political opinion.
So just don't bring a club.
I mean, an organization club.
The other club, probably a bad idea too.
So, you think lawyers are pretty good at arguing, right?
You'd say that maybe artists are not good at it, but lawyers are real good at it.
And I hear lawyer Ross Gerber, who's literally an impeachment lawyer, and he teaches at Tulane Law School, so a very qualified guy in the law.
And he tweeted this at me.
He said, Mostly on behalf of Republicans.
So he's saying that he's sort of unbiased here.
And he said, I have seen lots of misconduct and irregularities.
So here's a person who's experienced and he knows that elections can have lots of conduct and irregularities because he's seen it himself.
So far, so good.
And he said, I expressed concern heading into this election.
Even better. He's not only seen a lot of fraud in elections, but he warned us about this election.
So far, so good. And then he said, And then he referred to my analogy about the no-melted ice cream.
Does that seem like a good argument?
Is that a world-class lawyer argument there?
Hmm. Because I'm pretty sure there are a lot of things in this world that I haven't seen that actually happened.
For example, suppose you were to witness a murder by gunfire.
And you saw the person take out the gun, aim it at the victim, pull the trigger, bang!
And then the victim gets a hole in their body and they go, ah, and they die.
And that's what you witnessed.
Can you say...
That you witnessed the person with the gun shooting the victim who the bullet entered and died.
Can you say you saw that?
No. Because you can't see the bullet.
Right? You saw the gun go off, and you know what guns do.
You saw the person with the bullet hole, and you logically connected them.
But did you see it?
No. Because if you can't see the bullet, you don't know the bullet actually came out of the gun.
You don't know if somebody behind him shot him.
Now, of course, if you do the ballistics, you'll find out.
But in terms of witnessing, there are a lot of things we don't see, such as actually watching the bullet, that you know happened.
Because you heard the gun go off, you saw it was aimed, you saw the result.
You don't have to see it all.
You don't have to see every bit of it.
So likewise, here's a guy who has seen enough election fraud personally that he knows it can happen.
So he knows it can happen because he's seen a lot of it.
And he knows that the incentive to do it this election was sky high.
That's all you need to know.
It can be done, which he confirms because he's seen a lot of it.
And the And the motivation was sky high.
You don't need to see the bullet to know that it happened.
I think his argument was poor.
I've got a few other things that I don't think are interesting enough to talk about, so I won't.
And that, my friends, is the end of Coffee with Scott Adams for today.
I think it's maybe the best one I've done so far today.
Don't you think? Alright, I'm just going to look at your comments for a moment because I've been looking at my notes.
Oh, yes. The Space Force...
How did I skip that one?
The Space Force has decided that the name for their fighters, the name for their military people will be Guardians.
They'll be called Guardians.
What do you think of that? I don't like it at all.
I wanted to like it, but I don't.
Number one, it reminds you of the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, so automatically it feels silly because there's a talking raccoon in that movie.
So Guardians of the Universe, that's what I think of, and so it makes it seem less serious.
So that's not good. But here's the other part.
The problem for me is that they're in heaven.
Meaning that they're in space, so they're sort of up there like God, basically.
You know, in an analogy sense.
And there's something about the word guardian that feels religious.
Guardian doesn't sound military, and maybe that's what they wanted.
But guardian doesn't really sound like the right word.
Guardian feels like a cult.
I guess that's what it is. I just realized that that's what it is.
The word guardian doesn't sound like a military term.
It sounds like a cult.
In NXIVM, The cult we've been talking about.
What was the name they had for, or at least in the sub-part of NXIVM, where Keith Ranieri had his, let's say, his disciples, I don't know, lovers, disciples?
So he was called Vanguard.
So in the context of an actual alleged cult, the name that they used for their leader was Vanguard.
Guardian feels like that word, doesn't it?
It feels just a little bit more like a cult than it does like a military thing.
So that's my opinion. I don't think it's important.
I think any name you put on it's going to be fine.
Somebody says Vanguard.
Yeah, I understand that a guardian is one who guards.
It's not that it's not technically accurate enough.
I don't have any better ideas, so I don't think it's a big deal.
That's all I got for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
All right, all you YouTubers, I'm still here for you for a moment.
Should have gone with Starship Troopers.
Troopers wouldn't be bad.
Orbitiers. The Orbitiers.
That's not bad. Tara Keepers?
What's that mean? That's right.
I love you the most on Periscope.
It's true. Space Force Tubins?
I don't think that's going to catch on.
Did they ever admit about lying about masks?
They did, yeah. Fauci did.
In a sense. In a sense.
Because they admitted there was a shortage problem.