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Dec. 28, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
44:06
Episode 1234 Scott Adams: Nashville, Psychology, Passion, China

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Nashville bomber Chinese Uighurs in concentration camps Coronavirus psychology and hypothesis The observer problem Mental illness and control of your reality Wokeness and mental illness ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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*clap clap* Hey everybody!
Come on in!
Come on in. It's time.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and there's going to be a little bit of a surprise today if you happen to be watching me on the YouTube live feed.
And that surprise is that the power is going to go out sometime in the middle of this broadcast.
So if you're on YouTube and the power goes out, skip over to Periscope or catch it on the replay.
The reason is that these stupid iPads have one hole that you use the microphone for, which is plugged in.
It's the same hole they used to charge it.
So if I want to charge it while I'm using it, which would be the most common thing you would do, I can't do that because there's just one hole.
So YouTube, you're just going to disappear in a few minutes.
But if you'd like to enjoy this while it lasts, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a glass, a vessel.
Of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. I see in the comments that somebody says there's an adapter that will help me with this.
I will look into that right after this.
I really will. I'll look into it.
So, are you happy that I moved my books behind me?
It was the most frequent recommendation is to move my books so my head wasn't in the way.
But it looks like my head's still in the way, so maybe we'll work with that.
We'll do a little more A-B testing.
Alright. Let's talk about that Nashville bomber.
When I first heard that the Nashville bombing happened, and I heard that there was a camper And it had a speaker on it with a warning to get away and they blew up a phone company.
I did not have to be a highly trained FBI profiler to make the following prediction.
It was gonna be a 63 year old white guy with an IT background.
Was there anybody who didn't see that coming?
Everything about this crime screamed 63-year-old white guy with an IT background.
It was the first thing I thought.
The last thing I thought was foreign terrorism.
And as soon as you told me it's a camper, and it's got like a tricked out cool technology for his explosion, And it was a phone company.
The one thing that you knew for sure is that he was a Dilbert fan.
And I thought, oh, please don't call this the Dilbert Bomber.
It's going to happen.
Somebody's going to call this guy the Dilbert Bomber.
You know it's going to happen.
All right. So, I guess we're still waiting to figure out what that's all about.
We don't know his motive, but...
But we certainly could have guessed who he was before we found out.
Over in Nazi China, have you ever heard the phrase, never again, about the Holocaust?
That's sort of the slogan, never again, because never again will the world stand by when some ethnic group is rounded up and slaughtered.
But indeed, never again is happening right now.
As China has rounded up the Uyghurs, and although they're not being slaughtered yet, somebody asked me, Scott, what do you think about people who invest in Apple Computer who allegedly their parts are made by Uyghur slave labor?
To which I say, what exactly was the alternative?
Would it be better if the Uyghurs didn't have work?
Because I feel like they would be sort of expendable, if you know what I mean, if they didn't have slave labor.
So while I'm not in favor of slave labor, it might be better than the alternative that China has planned for them.
If they could get some value out of them, that's probably the only reason they're alive.
So both are horrible in the extreme, but being dead is probably a little bit worse.
I don't know. And then somebody, when I tweeted this, somebody said, Oh yeah, you hypocrite?
I don't see you saying anything about Israel and the Palestinians.
To which I say, I do not make decisions based on bad analogies.
I would say that the Nazi analogy is reasonably good under the limited situation that somebody is rounding up an ethnic group and putting them in concentration camps.
Now, if that exact thing is happening then I think a Nazi analogy is reasonable, right?
If somebody invaded Poland I would say, okay, okay, that's where a Nazi analogy, that works pretty well.
Hitler invaded Poland.
But you can't use a Nazi analogy for everything.
I mean, on the internet we do.
But I like to keep it for those things that are right on the nose, you know?
A concentration camp for one ethnic group, that's right on the nose.
I think that's a fair analogy.
Comparison, whatever you want to call it.
But when you're talking about Israel and the Palestinians, you've got all kinds of other things going on, but the most important difference is that the Palestinians have a clear ability to affect their own fate.
The Palestinians, if they wanted to, could build a powerful region, have self-control, have nobody bother them, be good neighbors, make a fortune, but they don't want that.
If they wanted it, they could have it.
Everybody wants them to have it.
There's nobody who doesn't want them to have a good life.
So long as they don't bother other people.
So I think those are the worst analogies in the world.
And my general take about the Middle East is that the only thing that matters is power.
And whoever has the power uses it.
And you don't really need to dig down much deeper than that.
But it does matter if you have at least some amount of control over your own fate.
Yesterday's poorly planned livestream that I did here, I told you I overslept and didn't have any content, so I just put together some stuff that was on the top of my mind right before the livestream, turned out to be one of my all-time most popular livestreams.
And so, The moral of the story is there's no point in working hard and being prepared because it doesn't seem to have any impact on your outcomes.
Well, that's not true.
But in this case, weirdly, the less work I put into it, the better result I got.
So the thing that people were commenting on is I did a little takedown of psychology.
Now, I'm not saying all of psychology is BS. I wouldn't know.
I'm not an expert in that field.
I'm not saying mental illness isn't real.
Some people are interpreting that way.
Of course it's real. The symptoms are real.
If you actually have symptoms, that's as real as anything could be.
What I was commenting on is just the labels that they give something like, This is narcissism, and this is this other thing.
When they all overlap and the symptoms are all over the place, there isn't any reason to label some of them with a name when that happens.
So YouTube just gave me a low warning, so we'll probably lose, I think we've probably got 10 more minutes on YouTube before it goes dark.
But here's my take on that.
First of all, whenever I go after a field in which I am not an expert, everybody pours in and says, you cartoonist, you're not an expert.
Why are you criticizing this field?
But I would like to lay claim to the following.
I would like to say that my personal expertise, and one which I've pursued publicly all my life, the 30 years or so of my public life anyway, That my one expertise is calling bullshit on other people's expertise.
That is sort of my expertise.
Now, I don't get into the details of other fields that I don't understand, but generally you don't need to.
It's pretty easy to call bullshit on things that are just sort of obvious.
I don't call bullshit on, say, Einstein's theory of relativity.
Do you know why? Well, how would I know if it's right or wrong?
How could I possibly know, right?
I couldn't know. So instead, I go after the low-hanging fruit.
And I want to give you some examples of that so that you can get it in context.
I've told you that the Dilbert comic strip basically took out the whole field of management consulting.
And I basically called bullshit on the entire field of management and consulting, which was not my field.
Not exactly. I mean, I didn't do it for a living or anything.
So that was my first case where I called BS on a field that I was not part of.
Later, and I told you this yesterday, when I took on the personal finance field, again, not an expert, but it took about five minutes of research to find that the personal finance investment advice Industry is just bullshit.
It's just people making things complicated so that they can tell you they have a purpose, so they can take a piece of your money.
So again, two examples of calling bullshit on things that are not in my expertise.
And do you remember when the experts said that masks don't work?
Now, some of you still think masks don't work, but the general consensus is now that they do.
What did you see me do?
You saw me call bullshit on a field in which I have no experience, the medical field, and, at least at the moment, the current thinking is that they caught up with me, not the other way around.
Now, if it turns out later that masks are really bad, we'll all revise our opinion, right?
But at the moment, the strong consensus of the experts is that I'm right.
So I have quite a track record, and I could bore you with a bunch of other examples, but I do have a long track record of seeing the low-hanging fruit in other fields.
Not all the details of the field, I can't tell if that's right or wrong, but just the obvious stuff.
And one of the other obvious things that I took on was the idea that you needed passion to be successful.
Do you remember that? I first blogged about it, and I don't remember the exact year, 2011, 2012, something like that.
And the blog post, I think it was titled Passion is Bullshit.
I can't find it now because I've changed my blog enough that I couldn't find the original post.
But it was so popular that it became a chapter in my book published in 2013.
Now, if the book is published in 2013, you can work backwards to when it was written, which was 2012-ish, and then you can work backwards from that to when the original blog post was written, so it was either 2012 or 2011, something like that.
So that's when I was saying stuff such as passion is bullshit, and it's better to do something you're good at, and then you'll get passion if...
You make money and it works out.
Your life is good. Now, since then, you've noticed that that idea has made its way into a number of different books.
And I was just watching a video of Scott Galloway, who was repeating almost, it sounded almost word for word from my book.
So in a video, somebody asked him, you know, some secrets of success, and he did the Passion is Bullshit speech pretty much exactly as I laid it out in my book.
Now, he didn't credit me for the idea, which is fine, because I don't think ideas need to be credited.
I don't think that's a thing.
I think if somebody took your actual content, like a copy of a page of a book, or a photo you took, or something like that, that's no fair, because that's a copyright.
So it's not a copyright unless it's the actual material that you created, or part of it.
But if you just have an idea, That is catchy and people like it.
That's not copyrightable.
You can't copyright an idea.
So anybody who uses an idea without attribution, I think that's fair.
I don't have a complaint with that.
Because I use other people's ideas without attribution all day long.
Usually because I don't know where they came from.
Now, I'm seeing in the comments that it was Mike Rowe who said it first.
I believe Mike Rowe said you should take your passion with you, which is not the same thing.
But if you can find something that looks more like what I said, then that would be good.
There's also a Cal, what's his name?
Cal, somebody who wrote a book about that in 2012-ish.
But I think you would find that my blog post was the original statement of that.
Not positive, but it also doesn't matter.
I know I didn't get it from somebody else, but it's possible that other people were saying the same thing about the same time.
So the point is that regardless of where it came from, this is part of my history of calling bullshit on things and then the public coming around.
Kel Thomas, thank you. Kel Thomas's book.
He talked about passion being bullshit in around 2012.
So I think it was after my blog post came out.
So Here's the point.
Have I earned the ability to call BS on a field in which I'm not an expert on?
I would like to think I have.
And I'd like you to do some...
I'm going to ask you a favor.
I want to win a bet with somebody.
It's just a private bet.
It's not a public thing.
But I made the claim that when the coronavirus pandemic happened that I might have been the first person...
To say in public, anyway, that the vitamin D pattern might be expressing itself in the different outcomes in different places.
Now, before you jump on me, I know what you're thinking.
You're saying, uh, Scott, you did not invent the idea that vitamin D is good for you and especially good if you have, you know, maybe a virus situation.
No, I'm not claiming that.
So I'm not claiming that I'm the one who told the world that vitamin D is good for you.
That's obviously well known forever.
I'm making a very narrow claim that the claim that The different outcomes in different places may have had as much to do with the vitamin D levels as it did with leadership or technique or masks or social distancing.
And so the question I ask you is if anybody could find the Periscope, the video and or tweet in March of 2020.
It has to be March. So here's the task.
See if you can find March only And it had to be in the context of not just saying take vitamin D, because everybody did that.
Joe Rogan did that.
A number of people were saying that.
So that part is just standard medical care.
Find me the part where I said, it looks like Tehran has a lot of smog and they also have a problem.
It looks like Wuhan has a lot of smog and they have a problem.
And that was the time I was saying, hey, Why is it a coincidence that wherever you can't get vitamin D easily, they're also having the worst outbreaks?
Now that was generalized later, when I learned that a lot of diseases, such as diabetes, you have low vitamin D. I didn't know that when I was first saying it.
But, here's the thing I want you to find.
The exact first time I said, this is the key, the first time I said there's a pattern Not just that vitamin D is good, but there's a pattern, and that it included black people having worse outcomes.
So if you can find that for me, the first time has to be in March.
Could have been February, but I think it was March.
The first time I said it might be a pattern, especially noting that skin tone might have to do with your vitamin D uptake.
So if you find something from May, that's too late.
Only interested in March.
Alright, sorry, that was just for me so I could win a bet.
Now I know Dr. Shiva was talking about it, but I believe he was talking about it therapeutically, which is a different context.
I was talking about it as a way to identify why some countries were doing better than other countries.
So see if you can find that for me.
Alright. Speaking of patterns, here's another one.
Watch this test, okay?
I'm going to give you a little test, and I'm going to see if I can blow your minds.
I've never done this, so I don't actually know how it's going to turn out.
But I suspect it's going to blow your minds.
In the comments...
I want you to mention two countries that did unusually well with the coronavirus, and then two countries or places, could even be a state if you want, a state in the United States.
Pick two places that had really bad outcomes, right?
So tell me, but you have to tell me which one it is because I don't know all the states.
All right, so Taiwan, good outcome.
Sweden, Norway, Taiwan, South Korea.
Okay, now keep in mind all the ones you said are good.
Japan, Taiwan, Sweden.
Alright, so New Zealand, right?
Vietnam. Keep all these in your mind, right?
Now do the other one. Now do the countries that had really bad outcomes.
Go. Or states.
You could do a state in the United States.
Tell me who had bad outcomes.
USA. I don't know about Australia exactly.
New York, New York City.
Alright, Italy. Italy.
So I'm seeing Italy and New York City.
Do you see the pattern? Tell me the pattern.
Bad outcomes. Now, I'm not going to do all the countries in the world.
I'm just going to make the case on the ones that you suggested.
So you suggested New York and Italy.
New Jersey, too, I think.
So New York, New Jersey, and Italy on bad outcomes.
There are lots of other words, but let's use those as examples.
What do they have in common?
And now, what do the ones that have good outcomes have in common?
Now, remember, the good outcomes are not all Asian, because you've got your Swedes in there, etc.
Some say. Some would say they don't have good outcomes.
What do you notice about them?
Now, let me give you a little more hints.
Alright, so here are some extra hints.
We have learned that the coronavirus doesn't seem to spread on surfaces very easily, right?
We didn't know that before, but now we know that.
It doesn't spread on surfaces.
So we know it's airborne.
Here's the other thing we know about it.
If you were in, let's say, a chorus, and people were singing, they would be exhaling more stuff out of their bodies, and that stuff coming out of their bodies, the air, would be more likely infected because they're exhaling when they sing.
Do you see it yet?
I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet.
I'm giving you every hint in the world.
Oh, you haven't seen it yet.
I'm really surprised.
What do New Yorkers and Italians have in common that Japanese do not?
It has nothing to do with age.
Now, I think density and age and all those things do have...
Somebody got it.
Loud talkers.
Where are the loudest talkers in the world?
New York?
New Jersey?
Italy? Where are the softest talkers in the world?
Japan? Taiwan?
Do you see it?
It's really kind of clear, isn't it?
Now, you'd also have to factor in age and, you know, Probably something about what they did and how they treated.
You know, it's not the only factor.
Now, I would also say that when you're looking at the island countries, you probably have to take them out of the mix.
So I would take Taiwan out.
I would take New Zealand out.
I would even take South Korea out.
Because it's effectively an island because of the DMC. So, here's my question.
Number one, what is the average weight of an Asian man?
The average weight of an Asian man.
Now, I'm not talking about your high body fat makes you die.
I'm talking about how much air you put out when you talk.
Do you think that the average 110 pound Vietnamese man Puts out as much air as a 250-pound Texan man.
Probably not even close, right?
If you could measure just the amount of air coming out of the lungs of a sumo wrestler versus a 110-pound office worker, I don't think it would be even close, would it?
So, maybe that's one of the biggest patterns.
Maybe the biggest pattern It's how much air comes out of your lungs and it's a factor of are you loud talkers and just how big are you?
Are you a big person or not a big person?
And then how close are you when you talk to people and density and all that?
That matters too. All right.
Here's the worst...
The worst take of 2020 on the virus.
This was a tweet today.
Somebody said, yet the survival rate for COVID is 99.9 and we are told to stay home and wear masks.
How about they all F off and let people make their own decisions?
I would call that the worst take on the pandemic.
It's the worst opinion.
And here's why.
First of all, it's not 99.9.
It depends on your age and your comorbidity.
If there were a 4% chance of dying, let's say you were older and you had a comorbidity, would you take a 4% chance of dying versus...
So YouTube's gonna crap out in a minute here.
Would you take a 4% chance of dying?
That's pretty high. But here's the thing that's wrong with that.
If the hospitals were not impacted, if the hospitals were not impacted, I'd say, oh, good point.
Doesn't seem to have much impact.
We have other things that kill us.
Not much point. But the hospitals are impacted.
So that matters.
The other thing is that it's temporary.
It's temporary by its nature.
People are saying, but this many people die of cancer every year or this many die of tuberculosis.
But here's the thing. If we knew that two billion people might die of cancer, In the coming year who would not have died otherwise.
They wouldn't have died of cancer, but let's say there's some environmental problem.
And you could avoid two million cancer deaths if you shut down for six months to take care of the environmental problem that's causing it.
We might do that.
So everybody was saying we don't do it for other diseases.
It's because the other diseases have a different character.
If you gave it the same character, we probably would treat it similarly.
If you said, yeah, we just have to lock down for a few months, we don't know how long, but you could save maybe 2 million people from cancer, we might do that, if it were temporary, you know, and there was a specific thing to be solved in that year.
And the other thing is statistics.
It's like saying there's only 10 people who have AIDS. So I guess we don't need to worry about AIDS. Only 10 people have it.
Why would you worry about something that only 10 people have?
Well, you worry about it because more people are going to have it, right?
That's how it works. And also because vaccinations are on the way, there's a time limit, obviously.
And then also there are lots of long-term illnesses, it appears.
So even if you do survive, you're 99.9, you might have something like a 20% chance of a permanent long-term problem.
Does that feel like a good odds to you?
20% chance that if you go outside and you ignore social distancing, 20% chance you'll have a long-term permanent health problem?
Are you okay with that?
Well, how about the fact that if the young went out, the people who really do have not much of a risk, that if they got infected, they could bring it back?
Now, the news is saying that there's very little chance if you're asymptomatic that you're a carrier, but I'm not sure that means as much as you think it does.
Because I think the reason that we make people who are asymptomatic wear masks is, tell me the reason we make asymptomatic people wear masks if the whole idea is that you're trying to stop the germs coming out of their mouth, the mask is not trying to stop the germs, or not the germs, but the virus from coming in.
So what would be the purpose of wearing masks if we could prove that asymptomatic people are at zero risk?
And it looks like It looks like that might be actually kind of close to reality.
But let's say something like that happens.
I don't think it's quite confirmed, but we're heading in that direction.
Let's say that asymptomatic spreading just doesn't exist.
Would you tell people who are asymptomatic to wear masks?
Some people are saying it's virtue signaling.
Nope. It's not virtue signaling.
If you did not make the asymptomatic people wear masks, nobody would wear a mask.
Now, when I say nobody, I don't mean literally nobody.
Somebody would. But the only reason the symptomatic people wear masks is that they would stand out if they didn't.
That's it. The other masks, if it turns out that they don't make any difference if you're asymptomatic, the other masks are purely to identify anybody who's not wearing a mask.
So, I don't think it has anything to do with virtue signaling.
I mean, that may be part of why people do it in their own minds, but I don't think that has anything to do with why it's a guideline.
It's a guideline because it's the only one that would work.
The moment you said no, If you think you're coughing, if you think you're coughing is from a cold, well, that's not really asymptomatic, is it?
So why don't you use your judgment about whether to use a mask?
And then old Coughing McCoronavirus goes out in public, coughs up the entire subway, and says, I didn't know I had a...
I thought I had a cold.
I thought it was...
I thought it was pretty sure I just had an allergy.
I had a little dryness in my throat, but definitely I didn't have any symptoms.
Yeah, I'm a little hot.
I have a little bit of fever.
Sure. Yeah, I can't smell things, but I feel like that's from my allergies.
Sure, I can't smell anything, but sometimes that happens when I get a cold.
You see where I'm going? There's no practical way You could have any kind of an effect telling only people with symptoms to wear masks.
It just couldn't work. So I would say it's a persuasion thing.
Jake Tapper says you won't have Kayleigh McEnany on his show because she's a liar.
To which they say, is there anybody on CNN who's not a liar?
I didn't even know they booked people who weren't liars.
Really? I mean, the whole show is lies.
So it's just funny.
There's a writer named Arwa Mardawi, I think for The Guardian or something, and somebody called her out for two of her statements, both of them in writing.
One of them, she said, men are less likely to wear masks, another sign that toxic masculinity kills.
But not long after that, she said, if women are hesitant about the vaccine, it's because the health industry hasn't earned their trust.
That's right. If men ignore science, there's something wrong with men.
But if women ignore science, there's something wrong with science.
This is an actual opinion of a real and living human.
Now, do you see the observer problem?
It's a phrase you're going to hear a lot.
The observer problem is, maybe it's the observer who's the problem, if you know what I mean.
And So, let me ask you this.
If narcissism is a mental illness, as we've all been told, why is wokeness not?
Because if you have...
Let's say there are two kinds of narcissism I've learned recently.
The grandiose narcissism is the one we always talk about, where you think you're better than other people, etc.
Now, I don't think it exists.
It's not a real thing, in my opinion.
There's a longer description of that.
But... Here's the thing.
I learned yesterday also that the people who have that narcissism are more successful and happier than other people.
Is it really a mental illness if you're more successful and happier?
Because I thought the whole mental illness idea was that you're less happy and or less successful.
Isn't that kind of built into mental illness?
So you see the observer problem.
Let me give it to you this way.
Let's say you're chewing your food, and you're near somebody who doesn't mind hearing you chew food, because you can always hear it a little bit.
But other people are really, really bothered by you chewing food.
Who has the mental illness?
The person who is chewing, just eating, normally.
They're not chewing loudly, they're just eating.
Do they have a mental illness?
Or does the person who's bothered by it to the point where they can't even be in the room...
Well, you'd say it's the person who's bothered by it, right?
But why is it with narcissism that the person who's perfectly happy, just like the person who's eating and chewing, minding nobody's business, perfectly happy, why did they have the mental problem, but the person whose life is being ruined by it, because they can't stand this person, they can't work with them, they can't be around it, just like the chewing, Why is it that the person observing it isn't the one with the mental illness?
Because they have all the problems.
See where I'm going in this?
You can't separate the observer from the observed.
The observer is the sick one.
That's my main thing about narcissism.
Apparently there's another kind of narcissism where you don't think you're wonderful.
You have more of a victim mentality, but that's a different kind.
That surely exists, at least in terms of the symptoms are real.
All right. There's part of me that's wondering if all mental illness...
And here's where I'll really get in trouble.
There's part of me that wonders if all mental illness...
It's about whether you think you can control your reality or not.
Whether you think you can control your reality or not.
Now, I've only thought about this for a few minutes, so I'm not trying to debunk any mental health people, so I'm not disagreeing with anybody.
I'm just sort of putting it out there.
I notice a commonality among, and I'm not going to say all mental illness, that would be crazy, but I'm wondering if a lot of it A lot of mental illness comes down to whether you think the world is controlling you or you control the world.
Now, I'm not saying that either one of them is true.
It is not true that the world controls you and it's not true that you control the world.
There's an interplay there.
But I wake up every day believing I control the world.
And I feel as though I have tremendous mental health.
Because every day I wake up and say, well, if that's a problem, I can change that.
If I made that mistake, I can change that.
If I'm not good enough, I can get better.
I have a complete sense that I can control the world.
Now imagine if you thought that people were after you and they could hurt you and people have said bad things about you and you can't handle your I feel like, you know, obviously there's an organic part to mental illness.
You're not just thinking your way into it.
But I got a feeling that a lot of it would go into that category of whether or not you can control, you feel you can control your life, whether it's true or not.
People of faith believe God is the controller.
That is an excellent point.
Thank you, commenter.
Commenter Carol. I do think that it's useful to put your sense of control in a third party.
And I think that that's one of the things that religion does really well.
Independent of what's real and what's not real in your religious belief, it's just a good technique to imagine that control is with this friendly character who's got your best interest in mind.
I think that's good for good mental health, too.
I think religion is an excellent...
Technique, no matter what you think about the reality of it.
Anyway, let's talk about wokeness again.
Here's the definition of mental illness.
Significant changes in your thinking, emotion, and or behavior.
Would you say that the people who became woke had significant changes in their thinking and emotions?
I think so. Would you say that the wokeness people Are distressed or they have a problem functioning in society because of their wokeness philosophy?
I would say so.
So, if wokeness has all the characteristics of mental health, meaning it's bad for you, why is that not a mental illness?
But narcissism, the grandiose type, is literally good for you and makes you happy and more successful, and that's considered a mental illness.
Now you can see it, right?
It's the observer problem.
It's the observer who has the problem, not the observed.
Alright, that is what I wanted to say today, and I think I'll end it early so that YouTube does not crap out on me, which is going to be probably in the next minute, I think.
So I'm going to shut you down on YouTube and say thanks for watching, and we'll do more tomorrow.
And you periscopers still here because you still have some electricity.
Who defines wokeness?
Well, I would say that wokeness is a victim mindset.
Right? So, as I understand it, the one form of narcissism where you have a victim mindset sounds a lot like that.
So, I'm not sure that wokeness would be considered much different from...
What is the other kind of narcissism?
There's another vulnerable narcissism, I think.
Why is it crapping out?
Oh, I just forgot to charge my other iPad, so my YouTube electricity will run out in a minute.
Somebody says, depression is inability to take action.
You know, one of the questions I have about depression is...
Again, there are all types of it, and there's the real kind that is different from just having a bad day.
But I wonder to what extent depression could be fixed by having more energy.
Because if you've ever been in a bad mood when your energy was high, I feel like if you could fix everybody's energy level, it wouldn't fix all mental illness, obviously.
But I think everybody would be better off.
All right.
Now, the other thing is I get called a narcissist literally every day, which is a weird part of my life.
And I'm always confused by it, because...
If you said to describe yourself, I would say, well, I'm a person who is really good at this small set of things, and I can demonstrate that I'm really good at them with numbers, such as, you know, I'm good at writing a book because I have best-selling books.
Is that narcissistic?
Or is that just the data says I must be good at this because I sell a lot of books?
So there's a small set of things that I know I am good at, and I can objectively observe it with objective data.
And then there's this gigantic list of things I'm terrible at, even simple things.
Putting things on calendars, remembering my schedule, directions.
I'm terrible with geography, even in the town I live in, just finding my way across town.
Terrible at it. And I could make a really long list of the things that I'm not good at, and even if I tried hard, probably still wouldn't be good at it, right?
You know, a lot of sports that I wouldn't be good at no matter what I did.
So, what does it mean to be a narcissist?
If you believe you're good at some things which you can objectively prove you're good at, and you're bad at a far larger list of things, even with important things on that list, how is that narcissistic?
Do you see that this is the observer problem again?
It's the observer who doesn't hear me say I'm bad at this long list of things.
Who only hears me talk about one thing.
And yesterday there was somebody who was quite angry because I had referred to myself in video yesterday as a famous cartoonist, I think, more than once.
Now, in the context of what I was talking about yesterday, it was necessary for context, if anybody didn't know my day job, that I'm a famous cartoonist.
It was just part of the story. And somebody was really, really...
Turned off by that.
Like really had a bad reaction to that.
But is there anybody who doubts the objective fact that I'm a famous cartoonist?
How is that my problem?
Because she thought I was a narcissist specifically.
Why is it my problem that I simply told you what my job is and you can observe that I'm famous?
You could Google it.
You would find quite a bit about me.
So this woman was having a mental distress because my actions of just saying what my job was caused her mental distress to the point where she needed to leave me a comment and then tell me she didn't want to watch me anymore or whatever she said.
Wasn't that a mental problem on her part?
And she was pretty sure the mental problem was on my part.
Again... It's the observer problem.
The observer is the one with the mental illness.
I was sitting here quite happy.
While she was criticizing me, having a good day.
How is it my mental problem that I'm having a good day?
Gaining an audience, making money.
See what I mean? Alright.
So ask yourself, is it really the other person who is the problem?
That. That is your lesson for the day.
And you should also know that narcissism can be a tool in the sense that overconfidence can be useful.
I intentionally try to be overconfident on things that I know I can do pretty well at, but I'd like to do really well, like I'd like to perform well.
So building up my confidence is Even artificially, beyond what makes sense, is just technique.
It's just technique.
And if somebody witnesses me using my technique, and they think I'm a narcissist, again, it's the observer problem.
That's all. And that's all for today.
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