Episode 1254 Scott Adams: I Unveil a Wokeness Linguistic Kill Shot, Election Security Insights, and Apophenia
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
MSNBC discusses how to punish Trump voters
Don Lemon's standard of guilt by association
Counterforce to leftist violence and rioting
BLM activist John Sullivan arrested
Reed Berkowitz: Q...a well designed game?
Election integrity questions
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And I'm going to unveil my linguistic kill shot for wokeness.
Yeah, you've been waiting for that.
Took me a while. But to make this day extra special, here's what we're gonna do.
We're going to maximize it by grabbing your closest cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
I'm doing that just to mess with people who are listening to this at 1.5 speed.
I sound like a chipmunk, don't I? This is called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to make everything better.
If you don't believe it, well, I feel sorry for you.
Go. Go. Have you heard of how mushrooms are actually connected to each other under the ground?
And this great sort of psilocybin mushroom connection, they can all talk and connect under the ground.
Well, that's exactly like the simultaneous sip.
There's your analogy for the day.
All right, let's talk about some things.
Representative Eric Swalwell.
He's... You've been put back on the Homeland Security Committee, which is exactly what you want to do with your representatives that you are concerned may have been influenced by China.
You put them right on the Homeland Security Committee.
Now, I rush to tell you that there is no proof that Representative Swalwell is influenced in any way by China.
There is no proof of that that I am aware of whatsoever.
In other news, Swalwell compared Trump to Bin Laden and said that he is likewise radicalizing his followers.
So I tell you again that there is no proof that I'm aware of that Representative Swalwell is in any way influenced by China.
It is simply a coincidence that That he acts exactly like he is.
You get that, right?
It's not causation.
It's just coincidence.
So, in other news, Julian Assange is, I don't know if she's current or ex-girlfriend, Pamela Anderson is making a big push to get Assange pardoned.
And when I was looking at the story about Pamela Anderson, I said to myself, she has two good points.
Moving on. You may have seen on the internet, there's an anti-lockdown study.
It's a study that says...
That maybe the lockdowns were not effective.
You like that, don't you? Don't you love the fact that there's a study that says the lockdowns were not effective?
Don't you love that?
Well, I loved it too until I read that the study was bullshit.
So I'm going to start a new thing.
I guess in a way I've already started it, but I'm going to be a little bit more dedicated to it.
Which is I'm going to recommend people to you who are unusually unbiased and also unusually good at sorting things out for you.
Now one of them I talk about all the time is Andres Backhaus.
Probably the best on Twitter that I've seen in terms of looking at papers and studies and data and telling you what's obviously wrong with them.
So, if you don't have his voice in the back of your head, telling you that everything you're seeing on the internet is bullshit, and why, you know, with high credibility, you don't really know what's going on.
I feel like you need at least that protection of that little voice in your head.
The other person that I recommended, I'll talk about in a little bit.
So, two recommendations today.
Andreas Backhaus is one.
So the study about the lockdowns not being effective, you should treat that with a credibility of zero.
Zero. You should treat it like it didn't even happen.
That's the amount of credibility to give it.
All right. I made the mistake yesterday in the car because some commercials came on on whatever I was listening to.
And I thought to myself, I'm just going to...
Sample some other stuff.
Now usually when I'm sampling the ideas on the left, I go to CNN. Because I feel like they're a good, they capture, you know, that left-leaning kind of bias quite well.
But every now and then I go a little bit further.
And I go all the way to MSNBC. And I turned on MSNBC and And my God, it's just frightening.
Now, to be fair, it's probably exactly how their audience feels when they log on to Fox News accidentally or they visit their uncle and it's on the TV. They probably stand there going, what?
What the hell am I seeing?
Well, that was my experience watching MSNBC. So there was a serious conversation...
And this is the part that's mind-blowing, that this was serious.
About how to punish all of the Trump supporters after he's out of office.
That's actually being discussed like it's totally normal.
Totally routine.
It's just something you talk about on the news.
Yeah, let's talk about punishing one of the political parties for who they supported.
That is, that's a type of evil That's so palpable and so...
Like, you can feel the evil.
But they don't.
They don't. To them, it's just talking.
And it's just mind-blowing to actually go over there.
It's like you've entered another reality or you're on another planet or something where you can talk about that like it's just a normal conversation.
Punishing your political enemies.
It's mind-blowing, really.
But the question I wonder is, how do they think that ends?
What's the end point of making it a precedent or making it a big thing to go after and punish the political party that you feel really, really was bad?
And I'm not even talking about the leaders.
I'm talking about the voters and the people who just took jobs in the administration.
Did you want a President Trump with nobody taking jobs?
Did you want that? Was that your better solution is that Trump gets elected and then he can't hire anybody?
Because if he does, their lives will be ruined in the future.
Is that what you want?
It's sort of like the dog chasing the car.
So MSNBC, suppose you get your way.
Suppose you get everything you want and every Trump supporter is punished in a way that they can really feel.
What did he get? What did he get into that?
Revenge? Justice?
Did he make it a better world?
I don't think so.
And when I listen to it, I just think, is there some inability to think things through?
To what kind of effect that would have on the whole system?
To make it somehow normalized that you punish the voters?
The voters who voted wrong get punished?
The people who just took jobs in the administration?
Because you still have to run the government.
You still have to have a secretary of this and that, right?
It's shocking. And of course, you know, Don Lemon said some similar things in the sense that he was saying the other day, that there are too many members of the Klan support Trump, so if you also support Trump, you're basically in the Klan.
You know, by association.
Now, I would like to see if we had an actual news industry, you know, people who work in this thing called the news, who would ask important questions and stuff like that.
If we had anything like that, here's what I'd like to see.
And we don't, unfortunately.
I'd like the news industry to ask every prominent Democratic politician if they agree with Don Lemon.
Just get him on record.
Don Lemon says that if there's some bad people in the group, let's say they're in the Klan, and there are members of the Republican Party, that the Republican Party is now basically associated with and therefore can be considered almost as bad as the Klan by association.
That's the Don Lemon belief.
I would like to see every Democratic leader ask that question for the record.
Do you disavow this or do you embrace that opinion?
Don't you...
Oh, that's interesting.
Somebody says there's no Twitter simulcast.
There is a...
There might be a setting that I didn't hear hit.
I had some system trouble.
Anyway, just go over to...
Go over to YouTube if you want to see it.
All right. So, given that the Don Lemon thing, which is the idea that if you're in a group and you're a bad person, then the entire group is defined by the bad people in the group.
So that's what the mainstream narrative is selling us, that all Republicans are bad because some are bad.
All Republicans are bad because some of them attacked the Capitol.
Now, what do you do about that?
Because the wokeness idea has gone from, hey, you individual, you did some bad things, you individual.
It's now spread all the way to, if any individuals do something, you're all the same individual.
That's what it's become.
And so I came up with a linguistic kill shot.
A linguistic kill shot is something that Once you hear it, it's kind of the end of the conversation.
The first one that you might have been aware of was when then-candidate Trump referred to Bush as low energy.
That was a linguistic kill shot.
As soon as Bush was seen as low energy, you couldn't ever see it any other way.
That's it. It was the end of it.
So that's what makes it a kill shot, is that once you've heard it, you don't have anything else to say.
You just have to walk away at that point.
So in our wokeness situation where an entire group is being branded by the reputations of the few in the group, here is my linguistic kill shot.
And I'll tell you why it works after I tell you.
And it goes like this. I tweeted this this morning.
If you think a group of people can be fairly defined by the worst person in the group, the worst person in your group is Is you.
I'll read it again, then I'll tell you why it's a kill shot.
If you think a group of people can be fairly defined by the worst person in the group, the worst person in your group is you.
That's the end of the conversation.
Now, you can't do that with a lot of topics.
I think there are a lot of topics for which there is no linguistic kill shot.
But now use your imagination, and you're watching, let's say, a CNN segment in which somebody's saying something similar to what Don Lemon says, which is all Republicans or all voters for Trump have to answer to the worst people in the group.
And then you imagine that the person, let's say it's a Trump supporter, just says this one bumper sticker saying that if you think a group can be defined by its worst member, the worst member of your group is you.
Would there be any more conversation?
There wouldn't be anything left to say.
Because when you hear that, it sounds really true, doesn't it?
Doesn't it? It sounds true.
It's like, oh yeah, somebody who would tar an entire group by the reputation of the few, what do we call them?
Is there any name for that?
What's a name for somebody who thinks that a few people in a group define the whole?
Would it be racists?
Oh yeah, racists.
Would it be sexists?
Yeah, yeah. Would it be bigot?
It would be.
Would it be worthless piece of shit?
It would be.
And so, I recommend this linguistic kill shot to you.
Every time you hear somebody saying that they're defining the group by a small number of bad people, just break this out.
Now, why does it work?
What is the engineering of it that makes this work?
Whereas any number of a million different things you could say do not work.
Number one, calling somebody a hypocrite has no persuasive value.
In the history of the world, nobody's ever won an argument or changed anything because they pointed out correctly that some hypocrisy was happening.
It's just useless.
Now, it's useful for entertainment.
It's useful for context.
It's useful for educating yourself.
So the accusations of hypocrisy, they have some value in terms of rounding out the picture, but they're not going to change anything.
Do you know what can change the world?
A good bumper sticker.
I hate to say it, but it's true.
If you tell somebody a complicated argument that's excellent, you say, hey, Bob, Here's a complicated argument, but it's really solid.
It's complicated, but it's solid.
Why don't you take this solid, complicated argument and see if you can change the world with it?
Good luck, Bob, because solid, complicated arguments don't change anything.
They don't. Because nobody understands them.
They can't repeat them.
They don't feel them.
They don't feel it in their body.
But you turn something into a sentence, Or, yeah, in this case, it's exactly one sentence.
You make it one sentence, you make one point, and you make that point a good one.
And it has the same power as a rhyme.
You remember when OJ was on trial, and one of the defense tricks, which is a real good hypnosis trick, is to rhyme the defense.
If the glove does not fit, you must acquit.
If the glove does not fit, you must acquit.
Years later, do you all remember that saying?
If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.
It's the one thing you remember.
That's how good Johnny Cochran was.
If you're wondering who are the best hypnotists in the world, or persuaders, let's say, Johnny Cochran.
Johnny Cochran.
Really, really good.
So, Just understand that if you can simplify to a sentence, and the sentence has some power, that the bumper sticker version is way more persuasive.
Way more persuasive than any complicated, excellent argument.
So there is your kill shot.
You should be able to, if this were repeated as the normal response over and over every time somebody goes all Don Lemon on you, you would eventually be able to wipe it out.
This is a kill shot.
It would end that problem.
Alright, here's something I shouldn't say out loud, but watch me do it anyway.
You know, the weird thing about...
Let's say any pressure on freedom of speech, no matter where that pressure comes from, either the government pressure, which is the official freedom of speech thing, or private industry with their censoring that's good for the private industry, maybe not so good in your opinion for you, and then of course individuals and social media and what they say about you.
So there are a lot of pressures on freedom of speech, and I've never felt them more strongly than I feel them today.
I feel that the field of things I can even say out loud is just sort of shrinking every day.
So I'm going to say something out loud that could get me cancelled.
So this might be the last time you see me.
And I don't know if that's true or not.
I couldn't put some odds on this.
What are the odds that the next thing I say will be the last thing you ever hear from me?
It's pretty good. Let me put an odds on it.
20%? Probably there's a 20% chance that after today you'll never hear from me again.
Just think about that.
I'm going to tell you something that is honest and useful, good context, Nothing about it is wrong.
I mean, in the sense that opinions can't be wrong.
I'll show you my work.
There won't be any facts that are in question.
And I'm just going to say this thing out loud, and I feel as if, there's no way to calculate it, of course, but I feel as if there's about a 20% chance that I'll never be able to speak in public again after I say this.
Think about that. Think about what that does to the conversation.
And believe me, the thing I'm going to say, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
I'm not aware there's no hate involved in it.
I'm not inciting anything.
It's going to sound like I am, though.
So I'm going to be in Trump territory where I'm going to tell you directly, I don't want any violence.
That's as direct as you can be.
I don't want any violence.
I don't want anybody to act on anything I'm going to say.
So nothing should be construed as inciting, but you know it doesn't work that way, right?
If anybody says, but you are inciting, it doesn't matter that I told you I'm not, all right?
It won't matter that my intentions are different from what I'm being accused of, because the accusation will be the important thing.
You ready for it?
Is that enough of a build-up?
All right, here we go.
While I completely disavow The capital assault.
I disavow the violence.
I disavow 100% entering that building.
I disavow everything about the bad parts of that.
Everything. Complete 100% disavowal.
That's the first part.
Here's the second part.
I think it helped.
I think it made us safer.
Here's why. We watched for a year and it appeared that the left was willing to get violent and get to the streets and actually control territory.
Literally conquer territory.
And there was no response.
No response from the police, at least not enough to stop it.
Not enough response for the politicians.
I didn't see the politicians doing enough to stop it.
In fact, they encouraged it, at least the Democrats.
So what was going to happen if that situation continued?
What would have been the most predictable outcome of people on the left being able to get away with rioting and violence and breaking things on a massive scale, while people on the right did not?
And whatever happened to them, however bad they thought it was, they just stayed home.
What happens if that just keeps going?
Now, I don't believe in a lot of slippery slopes that don't have a logical connection to them, but some things have logical connections.
And in those cases, you can predict it'll go.
And one logical connection in this case is that anything that works, people are going to do more of it, right?
And if something doesn't work, You'd expect I'd do less of it.
If there's more friction on something, they'll probably do less of it.
If you remove friction from something, probably be more of it.
You don't need the slippery slope to describe what's obvious.
People follow incentives every time.
Incentives always work.
So what would have been our world if the left could do violence without any pushback?
Because the police gave up.
Let's just be honest.
The police kind of gave up.
Now, it wasn't their fault.
I'm pro-police completely.
But I don't think they had the support that it made even sense that they could do much about what it was that was their job.
It was their job to stop this stuff, but I don't think they had the support.
So you can't blame the police, right?
You blame the leadership.
So what is the logical outcome of That I would not have asked for.
I certainly would not have asked anybody to go to the Capitol and get in that building.
Absolutely not.
But it happened. So once it happened, you can talk about it.
And I think that we came out ahead.
Now, when I say we came out ahead, I have to be really careful about this.
Five people got...
Killed. A whole bunch of people got injured.
There are lots of bad, bad, bad, bad things that came out of this.
People's lives will be destroyed.
The Trump supporters are being vilified.
A lot of bad stuff.
Right? So if you're adult enough to work with me on this, we can accept that the bad stuff is just as bad as everybody thinks it is, and don't minimize it.
Nobody's minimizing it.
Still, I think we came out ahead.
Even with five dead.
And many injured and all the trouble it caused.
Here's why. This is the first time that the left realized there was a counterforce.
That's it. That's the whole argument.
It's the first time that the left realized they can't go much further without Risking a counterforce.
And the counterforce was pretty impressive.
I disavow it.
No violence.
No way. I'm 100% opposed.
I'm not even opposed to the trespassing, much less the breaking of windows and stuff.
Of course I'm opposed to all of that.
But it's just a fact that what the left watched scared the fuck out of them.
Right? If you're on the left and you watch that, that was the first time you realized there was a counterforce.
Because the right doesn't act the same way.
I have this personality quirk, which I think may be somewhat common on the right.
Maybe less common on the left.
And I always warn people about it in my personal life.
I tell people that there's an aspect of my personality that I'm not proud of, but I need to warn you about it, which is that I'm perfectly flexible until I'm not.
It's just a personality quirk.
I am so flexible.
I'm okay with that.
Yeah, that's not good for me.
That's fine. I'm flexible.
I'll bend over. I'll take a little extra.
You don't have to meet me halfway.
I'll go 75, you go 25.
I'm cool with that. I'm the most flexible guy you'll ever find in your life.
Until I'm not.
And one of the trade-offs for being the most flexible guy in the world is that when I'm not, I'm really not.
I don't take not flexible as hyperbole.
When I decide to be not flexible, I'm going all the way.
To the wall.
No deviation.
No hesitation. Nothing will stop me.
There's a brick wall in the way.
I will tear it apart with my teeth.
But until I'm ready to do that, I'm flexible.
Now, I say this with, like, getting into any kind of a physical altercation.
If you lived life as a male person, you know that you're...
It's just in the environment.
If you're male, you're often getting into situations that could turn violent.
Because you're with other men and things can escalate and it's just a normal part of life.
You know, women have their own dangerous situations with men.
But if you're a man... You're somewhat continuously getting into this, am I going to have a fight now?
Or is this traffic situation going to turn into bloodshed?
It's a male life.
If you're a woman, you have no idea what I'm talking about right now.
Could the men who are on here give me a confirmation so that the women who are watching see that I'm not making something up that's crazy?
If you're male, you are continuously in a potentially violent situation.
See the yeses. So the men are confirming this.
Men are dangerous.
Duh. We do the wars, we do the crimes for the most part.
Men are dangerous. We are really dangerous.
But you haven't seen dangerous until you've seen me stop being flexible.
And I feel as though the Republican Party has a little bit of that quality to it.
Wouldn't you say? Pretty flexible.
Pretty flexible. Until they're not.
And I feel as though the capital assault, which I disavow completely, no violence, no way, I do not approve of any of that.
But there was an education involved in it, wasn't there?
The left just learned something they didn't know, which is, if you turn this thing on again, we don't know what the fuck is going to happen.
So maybe you shouldn't turn that on again.
Now, the way it's going to go is that the people who did the capital assault will be the ones who were blamed.
Trump will take his share of blame, and I agree with that, by the way, because I think he could have stopped it.
He should have done more. I think his supporters will take some blame.
Should we? Sure.
Sure. If somebody wants to say, Scott, you're a little bit to blame for Trump, Trump existing as president and therefore his decisions.
If you'd like to make that case, I'll say, okay.
As long as we're consistent.
You know, you're also to blame for Biden.
But I don't think you should be punished.
Right? You could be blamed for voting for the wrong person, supporting the wrong person.
That's fair. But could you also give me credit for, let's say, more peace in the Middle East?
I'll take the blame.
For the things he did wrong, in your opinion, if you'll let me accept that I thought he would do some big things that would be lasting, and he did, in my opinion.
So, here's my bottom line on that.
I disavow violence in all of its forms, but I think the left just learned that the right can summon a lot of people with guns really quickly.
And if you're telling me that doesn't change the balance of power in this country, I think you're wrong.
I think the left now has an understanding that they don't have a free pass forever.
What they do have is a Republican Party that's really flexible.
Really, really flexible.
Until it isn't. So, next topic.
You're probably watching, as I am, the story of this fellow John Sullivan...
Who's been associated with Black Lives Matter, but he was also part of the Capitol assault, and I guess he was doing a documentary, he was filming it, but he was also caught on tape, actively involved in incitement while he was there.
Now, the interesting part about this is that there's some pushback Because apparently the local Black Lives Matter people didn't like him either.
So he was sort of kicked out of Black Lives Matter, which I don't really understand because there's no actual formal way to be in it versus out of it.
I think to be a member of Black Lives Matter, don't you just have to say you are?
How do you get kicked out of your belief?
Because Black Lives Matter is more of a belief, right?
Right? The people marching on the street don't have their names in a book as I'm a member of this organization with a name tag or anything.
You just have to say you're in it and you're in it.
So apparently that wasn't good enough for John Sullivan because apparently he said he was in it.
But Black Lives Matter said, no, you're not.
Get out of here, you troublemaker, they said.
But what does Don Lemon say about this?
What's the Don Lemon take?
If he was a member of Black Lives Matter, but Black Lives Matter, at least some number of them, didn't want him in there, does that matter?
Because he's in there.
If he thinks he's in Black Lives Matter...
Then he's in it. That's all it requires.
You just have to think you're in it.
So wouldn't the Don Lemon theory apply that, therefore, Black Lives Matter has to take responsibility for the assault on the Capitol?
That's stupid, right?
It would be completely stupid to say that Black Lives Matter is responsible for the assault on the Capitol because a few members...
In this one group, we're also Black Lives Matter.
It would be stupid. But that's the Don Lemon theory, that we're all tainted by our associations.
Speaking of tainted by associations, you know, the Lincoln Project is having a good old time, because they believe they succeeded.
One of their members has been accused of sexual improprieties, and I think they took his name off of their co-founding website, So, here's the thing.
Again, applying the same standard.
I have no proof or evidence that this one individual who is the founder of Lincoln Project, I won't even say his name because they're allegations, right?
He's only alleged to have had these sexual improprieties.
Just allegations. I have no proof.
How would I have any proof?
But, Could we say, would it be fair to say that one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project was a sexual offender, allegedly?
Allegedly a sexual offender.
Would it be fair to say that all the rest of them are also alleged sexual offenders?
Because if one prominent member is, and remember, he was a co-founder.
He wasn't just somebody who says, hey, I'm associated with you.
Co-founder. If a co-founder is a sexual offender, allegedly, Doesn't that mean they all are?
Now, of course, the answer is no.
No, it doesn't work like that.
The fact that every member of the Lincoln Project looks like a sex offender doesn't mean they are.
The fact that their stupid little beards make them look exactly like sex offenders, that is not indication that they are.
And I don't want you to think that they are.
Looking exactly like one And having one of your prominent members be accused of being one doesn't make you one.
It just makes you somebody who looks exactly like one.
I don't know, they have that vibe.
But I don't think you should take that to mean more than it does.
Because, you know, people can look guilty and be innocent.
People can look innocent and be guilty.
You're not really good at telling.
So the fact that the Lincoln Project people look exactly like sex offenders, that doesn't mean anything.
There's no evidence that any of them are involved in any of that.
Well, no proof. Yeah, there's no proof.
Let me be more specific.
No court has ever confirmed that the Lincoln Project are mostly made up of sex offenders.
And therefore, I think you can conclude that they're not.
Are we clear? Okay.
So, there's a great piece of writing by a guy named Reed Berkowitz that I tweeted this morning, and I recommend it.
And what he's talking about is Hugh, and he's a game designer by trade.
So, somebody who's a game designer, and I'm not talking about just a programmer.
But a game designer, somebody who understands the psychology of a game and the rewards and why some games work and some don't, the X factor of what makes it sticky, all that stuff.
So he's an expert on all that stuff.
And he writes about Q as if it were a designed game.
Because Q has all of the elements, as he describes it as a great piece of writing, of a well-designed game.
So a poorly designed game might just tell you something is true, but a well-designed game will keep your curiosity and your independent thinking intact and say, here's a hint, figure out what it means.
And if you give people hints and tell them to figure out what it means, it really engages them.
So you'll see a better job of explaining the game psychology That is either coincidentally or intentionally.
We don't know. But at least it exists in the QAnon situation.
And if you're trying to understand why it is that so many people could buy into something that perhaps some of you are saying, I don't believe any of that's true.
If you're wondering how people could buy into it, this explains it.
It's explained because the psychology of how Q evolved either coincidentally...
Maybe intentionally. I don't know.
Maybe intentionally. Mimics the exact psychological hooks that a good game would have.
Now, it's worth reading the whole piece for a couple of reasons.
Number one, Reid Berkowitz.
I don't know who he is except a game designer.
He's an extraordinarily good writer.
So the second reason to read this is just to read his sentences.
Read how short and clear his sentences are.
And you can absorb a fairly long piece like it wasn't long.
Wait till you check it out.
Because the way he writes in such bite-sized, clear, direct sentences, it's just a pleasure.
You actually feel good as you're reading it.
Because he takes all the friction out of the writing.
I've been looking at a number of things this week where the writers were terrible.
They were smart. They knew what they were talking about, but they were terrible writers.
And you could feel your brain overheat just trying to read the sentences because they're too complicated.
But then you read Berkowitz's sentence and you go, ah, this is what writing is supposed to be.
Where I'm just feeling the ideas and I don't feel any friction In the way they're described.
It's really good. Yeah, I see my cat behind me.
All right. Let's see what else is going on here.
The Justice Department walked back their claim that the Capitol rioters wanted to, quote, capture and assassinate elected officials.
Now, there was chanting to that effect.
But my guess is that had more to do with crowds getting worked up and somebody says it and then they chant it.
I'm inclined to agree with the Justice Department, based on just what we've seen, that there doesn't seem to be that intention.
There definitely were a few people chanting it and talking that way, but if you're looking at the crowd in general, I'm trying to imagine A situation where, let's say, somebody in the crowd got a hold of, let's just say, Mike Pence. Like, physically got a hold of him during the Capitol assault.
What would the other protesters have done?
Would they have said, yeah, we got Mike Pence?
I don't think so.
I feel as if a fight would have broken out within the assaulter group with the people who said, that's crazy, let Mike Pence go.
We're just here for our free speech.
I think it would have been a slaughter.
I think the people who said, let Mike Pence go, even though we're mad at him, would have outnumbered anybody who was chanting, let's get him.
I don't think it would have been close.
No way to know. And remember, it's a mob, so you can't predict anything, right?
A mob is unpredictable.
But my feeling of it is that the claim that the crowd was there to do that, that case is not made.
I think there's a far stronger case that most people did not intend that, and if they'd seen that going down, I think they would have stopped it.
I think they would have stopped it.
Just my belief. All right.
Here are some questions that I have on the election integrity, and I put these on Twitter in a thread so that people could respond.
Now, these are the questions that if they were answered to my satisfaction, and I think they could be, by the way, that's the beauty of them.
I ask questions that I think can be answered by people who have the right information.
So, there are questions remaining on the integrity of the election system, but I'm not going to get into any allegations.
There are a long list of allegations, but separate from the specific allegations, I have general questions about how good the integrity of the security is for a system, and here they are.
And if these were answered, I would walk away and say, all right, I'm happy.
I feel as though my questions have been answered.
Question number one, has there ever been a large scale, and each of these, just hear the word large scale with each of these, I'm not concerned with the onesies and twosies and somebody's dead uncle voted.
I'm talking about large-scale things that could change a national election.
Has there ever been a large-scale election fraud that was discovered by chance?
Here's why this is important.
Somebody says, this guy has a big ego.
Well, welcome, new person.
There's a lot of context to that that you don't have, but I'll accept that comment.
So the reason this question is important is, has there ever been a large-scale election fraud that was discovered by chance?
It would indicate that you could do a large-scale fraud, and you might have gotten away with it, but it was discovered by chance.
Wouldn't you like to know that?
And if so, Is the type of fraud that got discovered by chance, if it exists, does that opportunity still exist?
So wouldn't you like to know, just as context, have there ever been, and let's say recent-ish, because how the voting is done has changed over time, but are there any recent examples where somebody did try a large-scale fraud, and only by luck it was discovered?
Wouldn't you like to know that?
Because suppose the answer is no.
Wouldn't that mean a lot?
If you told me that nobody's ever gotten away with a large-scale fraud, that would mean something to me.
Now, it's not the whole story, but it begins to put a bigger, better picture together.
All right, here's the next question. Could a hacker who had God access, meaning they got into your software and they can change anything, that would be like an administrator access type, Could a hacker with God Access change a national election result in a big way that would be undetectable via recount or audit?
In other words, is it even a thing?
Is the system designed in a way that as long as you do a recount and you do an audit, you'll catch everything?
Do you know the answer to that?
Because I don't. I don't know the answer to that.
One of the people who responded to this is one of the ones I'm going to recommend that you follow, Christopher Hill.
You'll see him in my Twitter feed toward the top.
He's a co-owner of Three Guys Game Studio, and when it comes to software development-type questions, he's a really clear thinker, so I recommend that you follow him.
The reason I'm recommending these people who are independent and clear thinkers is because you need something to protect you from the news.
The news is not trying to be news the way it used to, if it ever did.
You need some independent people who have a long track record of not being on a side, just looking at the logic of a situation.
So Andreas Backhaus is one for looking at data.
For looking at software-related questions, I would recommend Christopher Hill.
And here's what he said.
If I didn't expect precincts to compare the cumulative totals amongst one another, in other words, my precinct can't check with yours and yours can't check with mine, but everybody can check their own.
So as long as the only thing you can check is your own numbers, Could you come up with a way with software with a god-like hack in which nobody would know that you cheated?
And here is a software developer's answer to that.
And this one scared me.
Because there are so many ways to cheat anything that when you hear a new way that you'd never heard before, like I actually have goosebumps.
Literally goosebumps now from just even this thought.
Let's say you're one of the precincts and you want to check the system to see if your votes were recorded correctly.
So you know that you have exactly, let's say, 100,003 votes.
So you want to check the final tally to see if those votes were recorded correctly.
So you go in and it says yes.
It matches. And then you log off, and then the number changes back to the wrong one.
But then you want to double check, so you log back on, and when your logon is detected, the system knows you're from that precinct, and it changes the number back to what you wanted to see.
And then you log off, and it changes it back to the fake number.
How would you know? How would you know?
Now, has something like this ever been done?
Yup. I've done it.
When I had a problem with a stalker.
So on my website, Dilbert.com, there's a stalker that I get every few years.
She comes off her meds. And she'll write hundreds of comments on, at the time it was on my blog post.
And she would write so many, just hundreds and hundreds of comments every day.
Hundreds every day.
And they're long ones.
And they're crazy. And they accuse me of things.
They accuse me of sex crimes and stuff.
And keep in mind, it's somebody I've never met.
Doesn't even live in this country.
So we tried to discourage it.
I tried blocking, but she would just sign up with a new account every day.
And finally, the tech people came up with this idea.
They said, we know her IP address.
I guess it's always the same in her case.
So we'll make it look, when she signs on, that all of her comments are showing up.
But anybody else who logs on won't be able to see them.
So we created a situation where this stalker would log onto my website every day, write hundreds of comments that she believed everybody could see, but they couldn't.
She was the only one who could see her own comments, and the problem went away.
So, that's precedent.
Of the only person who doesn't see the system right is the person that you've designated who can't see it right.
When they log on, the system changes to just show them what they show.
Now, you could still catch this problem if there were two precincts who said, hey, let's get together and compare notes and add them up.
There would be a way to catch it.
But would the normal system catch it?
It's not enough that it could be caught.
You also have to know that the system does that thing that catches it.
I don't know that that's the case.
Is there a part of the process where somebody looks at each precinct and checks their numbers to the end point?
I don't know. Maybe.
Maybe there is. But these are the questions I ask.
All right. So that is one suggestion of how if you had got access to the software, you could have changed it, but probably other people would have to be in on it, I think.
So I'm not even sure you could get away with that.
How about this? Here's another question.
Would selective recounts and audits, the type that are requested by the losing side, be sufficient to detect fraud that could be spread across multiple precincts?
So let's say you had a fraud that was a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there, so that if you found it in any one precinct, you wouldn't find enough to change the election.
In that situation, would you be able to detect that if you said, hey, let's do a recount or an audit in this place and this place?
What are your odds? What are your odds that an audit and a recount can find all of the problems...
Or could they only find some kinds of problems, do you know?
I don't know. Why is it that we've gotten to this point, and I can't answer the question, would an audit plus a recount find all of the problems, or only some types of problems?
Why don't I know the answer to that question?
It's like the most basic thing.
If our experts had told us from the beginning, oh, I know you have these fraud allegations, but let me assure you that every type of fraud that could happen would always be caught with these two simple methods.
You do a recount, and then you selectively pick things to look at just to make sure that the votes are real too.
Do you know the answer to that question?
Would those two simple steps, recounting plus auditing, which goes further than recounting, would those find all the problems?
Is there any kind of a problem that wouldn't be detected by that?
Now, I think that there's two sets of problems that you should think of.
One is any kind of irregularity that might happen at the point of voting, right?
Things that happen around the voting machines, And around the local counting machines and the local ballots.
But then all of that stuff gets summed up and sent electronically to some larger database, obviously, so that they can get the total.
Is there a difference in how secure we are at that first part, the counting of the ballots, the local stuff?
Are we just as secure after it leaves the local area and becomes part of a larger database in the sky somewhere?
I don't know. Do you know?
Or is that second part of the system designed so well that even if you hacked it, it would be immediately discoverable?
Beats me. Do you know?
I have no idea.
I couldn't tell you if it's 0% hackable or 100%.
No idea. And why don't I know that?
That's the problem, right?
It's because we don't have a useful news organization.
Because everything I'm going to ask are things you should know already.
But you don't. Here's another one.
On a scale of 1 to 100%, if you were to talk to, let's say, an expert, somebody who really understood the election systems state to state, you'd have to know more than one state.
If you ask somebody like that, on a scale of 1 to 100%, how secure are our state election systems?
At least secure in terms of the big frauds, not small stuff.
What do you think an expert would say?
And why don't I know the answer to that question?
Would somebody who really, really understands the systems say, you know, Scott, I got to tell you, you know, forget about this specific election.
There's no way anybody could cheat.
It's like 99% secure.
Is that what they would say?
Or would they say, Yeah, I think we're 90% secure.
Is 90% secure?
If somebody said your bank account is 90% secure, would you put your money in a bank that only said it's 90% secure?
I'd love to know what an expert would say about that.
Here's another one. Have elections ever been rigged?
And when I say ever... Let's say last 20 years.
Keep it local. Have elections ever been rigged in ways that election officials had never contemplated until they discovered it?
Has that ever happened?
Has anybody ever rigged an election using a technique that nobody even thought was a technique until it was discovered?
Because if that's ever happened, what would stop it from happening again?
Right? Right? If it's ever happened, there's not a logical way that you can rule it out from happening again.
It would make you say, I feel like it could happen again.
Let's take any Microsoft software that's released.
We'll just use Microsoft as an example.
When Microsoft puts out a new operating system, a new version of Windows, do you think that it is 100% unhackable Or some other percentage?
Well, I think if you've lived in the real world, you know that even Microsoft, attracting the best minds and programmers in the world, continually are surprised that somebody found a new way to hack them, even though they didn't think there was any way.
How often does that happen?
Isn't it 100%?
Has there ever been a new version of Windows?
I don't know the answer to this, actually.
Has there ever been a new version of Windows that didn't get hacked pretty soon, one way or another?
I don't know that it's ever happened.
So if the best programmers in the world can't foresee what a hacker might come up with, why would that be the case with the election systems?
Why would the election system be better architected Than Windows?
I mean, I realize there might be a complexity difference too, but I don't know the answer to this question either about has it ever happened.
All right, and here's another one.
Have election experts, and I'm talking only about experts, seen any red flags for widespread fraud in this election?
Now, a red flag doesn't mean that they can prove it happened.
But if you were an election expert and you're just sort of taking the big picture and you're just looking down at it and seeing the claimed anomalies, the vote count, anything really, if you were an expert looking at it, did it look like a fair election?
And would all the experts agree?
If you had 100 experts and they all looked at it, would they all say, yeah, that was fair?
Given what I know about how easy it is to detect fraud, you can assume that's fair.
Would they all say that? Every expert?
Or would some of the experts say, yeah, you can't tell.
Probably fair. Might be fair.
But there's no way you can tell.
And I have to admit, there are a few red flags there that I'd look into a little bit closer.
I don't know. So these are some big questions that don't depend on any specific allegations.
These are things that American voters should understand about their voting system.
We should understand...
Is it vulnerable? And I don't know that we've seen enough opinions on that.
All right. So, that is what we've done today.
We have created a linguistic kill shot to destroy at least part of creeping wokeness.
Not all of it, but it might help.
We have designed a new system to give us some second, let's say a second opinion to the fake news.
And that new system is the independent thinkers, some of whom I mentioned today.
And if you compile on your Twitter feed, you just keep adding the independent thinkers, you're going to get a different view of the world.
So I feel as if the independent thinkers are the key to making things work.
All right. That's all I've got today.
Yeah, I hear a lot about blockchain for voting, and I don't disagree with that, but I think I'd have to be much more of an expert to know if that creates any new problems as opposed to solving the old ones.
All right, I'm just looking at your comments for a moment.
Oh, how about Epiphenia?
Yeah. Apophenia is, I'm sorry, I put that in the title of the live stream and then I didn't talk about it.
When I talked about the game designer, Reid Berkowitz, his article, he mentions a word, apophenia, and it's the seeing patterns where they don't exist.
So the QAnon people would see, they thought they would see patterns, but it's just because your brain sees patterns where they don't exist.
That's all. So there's a word for it.
Epiphenia, I guess. Did I read Peter Navarro's election fraud report?
Yeah, I read Peter Navarro's fraud report on the same document as the debunks for them.
So if you haven't seen the debunk, For the Peter Navarro-specific stuff, you should see them together.
Now, suppose you've seen Peter Navarro's claims, and you've seen somebody saying that they're debunking them.
What do you know?
What have you learned?
Nothing. Nothing.
Those two things by themselves don't have any value at all, except to tell you where to look into more, I guess.
But if anybody brings you an argument and says, here's my claim...
And then here's the counterclaim.
You don't know anything.
Because you need to hear the response to the counterclaim, and then another response to that, and another response to that.
Let me put it this way. Each iteration gives you more comfort if you're smart and you're looking at something.
So the first event would be a claim of anything, whatever the claim is.
The credibility of a claim in our world should be zero.
It doesn't even matter who says it.
It could be the Pope. The credibility of any claim is zero, even if it's true.
You don't know, so it's zero credibility.
A counterclaim to the claim gives you no more comfort than the claim itself.
You might think it does, but until you've heard the response to the counterclaim, you don't really know if the counterclaim is true either.
So what if you hear the response to the response to the response to the response?
Well, if they're staying on topic, instead of doing like in the real world where one of them goes off onto another point or moves the goalpost or something, but if they stayed on topic, Then each iteration of challenging a point or a counterpoint would get you closer to some kind of knowledge.
But the first claim and the first counterclaim?
Zero value. And you should look at it that way.
Alright. Should there be a death sentence for the Q guy?
Well, I don't know that...
It's a good question.
I don't think there should be the death sentence for the Q guy, but the larger question is, did Q directly cause the violence?
There were lots of causes.
If you took any of them away, it probably wouldn't have happened.
If Q didn't exist, would there have been the assault on the Capitol?
Probably not. If Trump didn't exist, probably not.
Lots of things had to exist for that to happen.
If the fake news had not been who they were, would the assault on the Capitol have happened?
Probably not. Because the news would have said the election was fair, and people would have said, oh, that news is dependable.
I guess it was fair. So you would have to remove a lot of stuff.
Let me put it this way.
A lot of things had to be just the way they were for this situation to happen.
But the fake news is at the top of the list.
If you didn't have fake news, you wouldn't have had the capital assault.
And the great thing about the fake news, great thing, which is a terrible thing, is that the fake news can cause an insurrection, which they call it.
I don't call it that.
They can cause this problem...
And then they can assign the blame to somebody else.
And that's what happened.
So the fake news caused riots, and then the fake news assigned the blame to the riots to Trump, and they're going to use it to impeach him.
That's happening right in front of you.
It's shocking.
Not to say that Trump doesn't have responsibility, because I think he does.
All right. Yeah, you know, all the references to the Reichstag fire, I just find ridiculous.
And I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
Here are the things that you should compare to the Holocaust.
Nothing. Here are things that you should compare to Hitler.
Nothing. Here's what you should compare to, you know, the whole Nazi experience.
Nothing. The whole reason that that's in our minds as the biggest sort of thing is because it was different.
If it was like everything else and sort of predicted how things go, you'd see a lot more of it.
But the reason that it exists sort of in its special place in evil history is because it's not likely.
It's very unlikely to happen.
Yeah, and even if you take the other Holocausts, the Pol Potts, the Stalins, the Maos, they are their own situations.
The things in common is lots of people died, but they are different situations.
