Episode 1269 Scott Adams: Masks, Coups, Rick Wilson Clones and More Scary Stuff
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Content:
Handy guide: Coup vs not-a-coup
Nobel nomination: Jared Kushner and Ari Berkowitz,
Lincoln Project founder allegation
Stupid opinions about masks
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How can you make this day better than it's already going to be?
It's going to be a good one.
I know you don't believe it yet, but there's a good day ahead for each and every one of you.
Guaranteed. Or double your money back.
But all you need to make it a good day is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, junk or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I'm partial to coffee.
And join me now for the dopamine to end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And just watch what happens when we do this.
You ready? Go.
Well, yeah. That's the good stuff.
Well, everything's looking up today.
Do you remember when we used to have, what was the name for it?
It was called News?
News. You've heard of it, right?
It would be you'd wake up in the morning and something that President Trump had said on Sunday had caused the whole world to be on fire and people's hair was up, and then on Monday you'd wake up and you'd say, yeah, let me dig into this news.
This is a meaty, juicy, good quality news.
And then Trump decided to go silent.
And the news decided to just stop covering news, as far as I know.
Or the news all stopped.
Or the only news that mattered was about Trump.
I don't know. So we're going to have to dig deeper to get the news, because there isn't much of it.
Of course, the world did not stop producing news, but...
The news business isn't really that interested in the old kind of news.
They like Trump news, and they should, because that's the good stuff.
Let's talk about a few things that are going on.
Because we live in a simulation with lots of code reuse, we see stories that look like other stories, or they tell us something about those other stories, or they're just weird coincidences, such as we just had a Protest slash insurrection slash, some say, a coup in the United States, or coup attempt.
Now, the smart people don't say that, but a lot of people do say it.
At the same time, the country of Myanmar, which Fox News calls Burma, What's up with that?
Have you noticed that?
You go to the Fox News page and it's a story about Burma.
But if you go to CNN, it's a story about Myanmar.
I feel as if they can't both be right.
Are you telling me that the news doesn't know the name of a fucking country?
Which one of them is wrong?
Oh, do you know?
One of them is wrong, right?
Because the country only has one name, and the news is reporting it as two different kinds of countries.
So, I'm going to guess that one is politically correct, and that what might be what CNN is using, Myanmar, and I'm guessing that one of them is politically incorrect, which is maybe where Fox News is.
But... That said, after seeing the Myanmar, or maybe Burma, situation in which the military just took over for the civilian government, and they say it's going to be martial law for a year, these things often don't last just a year, but we'll see. So I decided to put together a guide for people who can't tell the difference between a coup and a protest.
So here's my little guide.
I tweeted this. This is for journalists because sometimes you just can't tell.
You'll be looking at a situation and you'll be like, wait a minute.
Is that a coup attempt or is that some kind of a protest with some law-breaking?
I can't tell.
So I put together a handy guide and it goes like this.
If what you're watching involves the military, well, that's a coup.
Myanmar or Burma is a good example.
The military took over for the civilian government, that's a coup.
When the military is involved, or somebody's military is involved, that's a coup.
But if the event you're watching involves a Viking hat, not a coup.
In fact, I don't know, in the history of humanity, has anybody ever worn a Viking hat to a coup?
Well, maybe in Viking days.
Maybe. Maybe they wore a lot of Viking hats back in Viking days.
But, no.
If you see no military involved, but there is a guy in a Viking hat who seems to have done pretty well in terms of how far he got in the protest, That's most likely not a coup.
That's most likely a protest in which things got out of control and some laws were broken.
Now, apparently Democrats are really bad at coups, at least the military kind, because they believe that you can take over the country with zip ties.
Now, if that were possible, we could save a lot of money on our military expenditures because we could just say, well, why would we need battleships and F-35s when we've just shown that you can take over a country with a handful of zip ties and a Viking hat?
If that's all you need to conquer a country, I believe we're overspending with our bombs and our bullets and stuff, which have no apparent use, because it's totally practical, according to CNN and MSNBC and New York Times.
These are credible organizations.
It's quite possible to take over a country with zip ties and maybe some clubs.
Because if you can take over an empty room, such as a room in the Capitol...
If you can control an empty room, you can control the whole country.
Yeah. And if you could take a hostage, let's say a politician, and you could keep them hostage, well, we would just surrender.
We would just surrender.
I would say to myself, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're going to hurt Mike Pence?
I abandon the Constitution.
Because I have to save Mike Pence.
Is that how it works? Or would we say, I'd sure hate to see anything happen to Mike Pence, but what are you going to do?
I don't think we're going to give up the country.
I don't think a hostage would be quite enough to overthrow the government of the United States.
But suppose you say it wasn't just the Vice President.
Suppose they had taken the President hostage.
No, it still doesn't work that way.
We would still let them kill the president.
We would. We wouldn't like it.
We would be very unhappy about it.
But we're not going to let them conquer the country to save one life.
It doesn't really work that way.
So for all the dumb people who thought there was something like a coup that happened, I would call that the big lie.
Now I know that The Democrats are trying to use that phrase, the big lie, in another context.
But I think the big lie is that there was a coup attempt.
When obviously, demonstrably, logically, factually, and in every way that you can look at a situation, nothing like that, even remotely like that, happened.
There was nothing in that zip code of being a coup.
You really need to kind of bring the military if you're going to do the coup thing.
You don't bring zip ties and a Viking hat.
That's just the rule.
I don't make the rules.
All right, Alan Dershowitz apparently is one of those people who can, by the nature of his job, I guess teaching at Harvard or something, that allows him to nominate people for the Nobel Peace Prize.
I didn't know how that worked.
But apparently he's a nominator, and he nominated both Jared Kushner and...
Alan Dershowitz did.
He nominated Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, who works with Kushner, for their work with the Israel and the Arab nations and the Abraham Accords.
What do you think of that?
Do you think that the Nobel Peace Prize is appropriate?
I would say I've never seen one more appropriate.
Never seen one.
More appropriate than this.
Now, we don't know how it'll all go, blah, blah, blah, right?
Anything could go wrong.
But can you even think of anybody who did something more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize?
I can't think of anybody.
I can't think of a historical example that was more appropriate to the Peace Prize.
Now, I'm going to give you a little behind-the-scenes information that I maybe wouldn't have mentioned if Trump were still in office.
But most of you know I got to visit with the president, President Trump.
And I was invited in to talk to him in the Oval Office.
It was kind of the coolest thing that ever happened to me.
But while I was there, I was with Avi Berkowitz, and he organized it and just made sure I got introduced to the president, and he was with me in the room when we were chatting.
And it is so, so cool...
To just have met somebody and spent a little time talking to somebody who just got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and totally deserves it.
Like, no doubt about it.
No doubt about it. Deserves, you know, he and Jared Kushner.
And I met Jared Kushner.
Well, I'm going to tell you this story.
So there's some stories that...
I wouldn't tell you in public, except that the president's now moved on and, you know, you feel like you can tell some things because they're not terribly important.
But when I was waiting to meet with President Trump, I was in this outer office, you know, that you're sort of waiting to get into the inner office, and Jared Kushner came through.
And he was with another gentleman, and he apparently recognized me and introduced himself.
And I guess a number of people in the White House had read my book, Win Bigly, and so they were kind of generally familiar with me there.
So Jared Kushner stops and says hi, introduces himself, and then this is the part I probably shouldn't tell you, but it's just funny, so I will.
He was with, I believe it was the Mexican finance minister?
It was a high official in the Mexican government.
I think it was a finance minister.
I'm not positive. But somebody at about that level.
And Jared introduces me to him as the Mexican finance minister or some job like that.
And then he just jokes.
He goes, he's here to pay for the wall.
And he laughs and I laugh.
It's just funny to be...
In the middle of history, just actually standing in the White House talking to Jared Kushner and a high representative of the Mexican government and just having a joke about who's paying for the wall.
Now, I wouldn't tell you that story if they were still in office, but it's just a funny story.
I guess there's a bigger point here.
So having met Jared Kushner, I got to chat with Ivanka a little bit as she brought me into the Oval Office.
I got to talk to the President a little bit.
I'll tell you one thing that all of those people I mentioned have in common.
Crazy social skills.
Like charismatic social skills.
When you see it up close, you can really feel it.
People who just have another...
Another gear. They can just sort of control a room, and they've got charisma and stuff.
So they all have that.
And that was an amazing, fun day.
Anyway, so congratulations to Jared and to Avi for the nomination.
I hope they get it.
All right. One thing you don't know about this Myanmar or Burma situation is that the reason that the military took over is there were some complaints...
That the election might not have been quite fair and fraud-free.
Yeah, there was some concern that the election was rigged.
But I don't want to be cancelled from social media, so I'd just like to say in public now, just say it once and get it over with.
In my opinion, the winner of the presidential election in Myanmar was Joe Biden.
And there is no court that has ruled otherwise.
I don't believe any American court has said that Joe Biden did not win the election in Myanmar.
So I think we have to be open-minded about that.
But there you go.
The funniest story this week, maybe, although we've got some funny ones, the funniest story this week is about the Lincoln Project.
Now, there's an accusation, an allegation, about one of the founding members, and the allegation has to do with grooming underage men for sex.
That's the allegation. I don't know anything about what did or did not happen there.
That's just the allegation that's out there.
But... The members of the Lincoln Project are not so popular among the people who may have been pro-Trump in the past, and watching them deal with this is kind of fun, I have to admit.
You know, it's kind of fun.
And the best part is I saw a picture of the four founders, and they all look like Rick Wilson clones that went wrong.
They're all these middle-aged, sort of, you know, don't-go-to-the-gym kinds of bodies, you know, dad bodies, bald head.
I think three out of four of them have facial hair.
They kind of look like Rick Wilson was the prototype, and then they did some cloning experiments, and they're like, ah, let's call this one Steve Schmidt.
It's a little too big, a little too tall.
And then they got another one that's like, ah, he's pretty good, but we don't like the message he's sending to young men.
Let's try again.
Try another clone, and it's just that other guy whose name I don't know.
And I thought to myself, how would you like to be in a group in which you were being called a clone of Rick Wilson?
I don't know. I would quit that club.
The minute I found out I was Rick Wilson's clone, I'd say, get me out of this club.
I don't want to be Rick Wilson's clone.
So there are these four clones in the Lincoln Project that are trying to explain why one of the clones went bad, allegedly.
But while it is certainly true, and it is 100% true...
That there are four individuals, and any allegations, true or not true, about one of the four should not have any impact on the other three who were not involved in this activity, alleged activity, and there's no evidence that they were even aware of it, at least at an operating level.
Maybe they heard rumors or something.
So we can't say anything about the other three.
But we do live in a world where those Lincoln Project people, they did try to say that the Republican Party, the Trump supporters, were sort of all the same as the worst among them.
That's sort of a precedent, isn't it?
That all the Trump supporters are kind of just as bad as whoever the worst Trump supporters are, be they racist or idiots or whatever.
And I think that's a standard that we should embrace.
Rather than fight against it, just say, you know, you got a good point.
If you're a group of four people and one of you has been accused of heinous activity, well, I think we can apply that to the other three.
I don't make the rules.
I don't make the rules.
I just apply them the way they've been presented to me.
If the rule is that everybody in the group is as bad as the worst member, well, then you're all Rick Wilson.
Ah, see what I did there?
You thought I was going to say you're all that bad one who got accused of stuff?
I was going to go there, but it was funnier when I said you're all Rick Wilson.
Because it's hard to imagine anything worse than being Rick Wilson.
Anyway, the fact that they all look like the same guy is just hilarious to me.
Let me talk about masks.
I think I'll watch my Twitter followers decline as I'm talking about this.
Let's see how low it gets.
I've got 604.1 thousand followers.
We'll see what it looks like at the end of the day.
Let's talk about masks and whether they work.
First thing you need to know is How would I know?
How would I know? Am I a doctor?
No. Have I studied masks used exactly the way they're being used for the pandemic?
No, I have not. Have I done a deep dive on all the research?
No, I have not.
But watch me have an opinion anyway.
Here is the dumbest opinion.
The following opinion, if you hold this, is just stupid.
I'll tell you why, but first I'll tell you it's stupid.
Number one stupid opinion.
Masks do not work.
That's just stupid.
Number two stupid opinion.
Masks definitely work.
Stupid. That's a stupid opinion.
So the two stupid opinions, which you should not hold, masks definitely work, and masks definitely don't work.
Those two are stupid.
If you hold either of those opinions, I'm hoping that you will improve on those opinions.
I mean, it's okay to have a preliminary opinion, but maybe you can shade it a little bit.
If you hear somebody saying, as there's a video of a doctor saying that masks don't work, and he only wears his mask to make people feel good, but that masks don't work, that's a stupid opinion.
It comes from a doctor.
But it's not less stupid, because it's stupid on the surface.
And one of the examples that he used in his stupid opinion is that if you took a bunch of dirt And you threw it against a chain-link fence.
Sure, some of the dirt wouldn't get through because it hit the chain part.
But that so much of the dirt would go through the chain-link fence, it would be as if the fence were not there for all practical purposes.
What do you think of that opinion?
Is that a wise opinion that maybe you agree with or you don't?
But is it a rational, good thinking?
No, it's not.
It's not.
Because the virus doesn't travel on its own, which is what the analogy of throwing dirt against the fence would imply.
The analogy that should work is that the flea is on the dog and the dog is trying to get through the fence.
In this case, the dog is the water particle.
Can your water particles get through your mask?
Well, why don't you test it?
Hold your mask up to your face and sneeze.
How much of the water got through the mask?
Now, sneeze without the mask.
Does the same amount of water get through?
No. Now take your mask and go up to a window and go and breathe on the window.
Does the window get as fogged up as it would if you didn't have the mask on?
No, right? You don't have to be a scientist to know that the mask is stopping water particles.
You can test it yourself, literally.
Just walk up to a window and breathe on it with a mask and then without.
Tell me if there's a difference.
I think there will be, right?
So if the water particles are clearly being limited by the mask, not stopped, but limited, if we know that the virus travels on the water particles, and we know the water particles are mostly getting stopped by the mask, you can test it yourself at home, What are the odds that the mask stops the water particles, but then the virus just flies off at the end and goes freelancing through the atmosphere?
It's not a thing.
As far as we know, it's not a thing.
So here's how to know who to believe about masks.
If somebody says, masks don't work, boom!
Stop listening to them, they're stupid.
If they say, no tests show you that masks work, Stop listening to them and anything they ever say for the rest of their life.
That's stupid. Now, it may be true that we do not have high-quality, randomized, controlled tests of masks, specifically in this coronavirus context.
That could be true. And probably is true.
But that's not telling you anything about masks not working.
It just means that we haven't studied it in this context, and it would be hard to study it because of ethical concerns, right?
You couldn't put somebody without a mask around the virus because you'd be putting them in harm's way, and that's not cool for a test.
Or at least you'd assume you might be putting them in harm's way.
So, here's how to know who is telling you something to believe about masks and who to ignore.
Ignore everybody who says they definitely don't work.
Ignore everybody who says they definitely do work.
And pay attention to anybody who uses the following words.
Risk management.
Friction. Water droplets.
Viral load.
If you hear any of those words when somebody is saying pro or con masks, listen to them.
Listen to them. Because they know what they're talking about.
Now, they could be wrong, and they could be right.
In fact, two people could disagree and still be talking about all those things.
Water molecules, viral load, friction, risk management.
So that's what you should listen for.
People who talk in terms of risk management and viral loads and stuff know what they're talking about in terms of a rational way to look at the question.
Doesn't mean they're right, but at least they're thinking right, even if they get the wrong answer.
Now, the other thing I get is, what about Dr.
Fauci, who once said masks are not perfect protection?
Somebody sent this to me just moments ago before I got on here.
Saying, look, Fauci himself, here he is, his own words, prior to saying that masks were important, he said it would be an illusion to think that masks are perfect protection.
So was Fauci lying when he said masks are not perfect protection?
Or is he lying now when he says masks are recommended?
So which is it?
Is one of those not true and the other is true?
The masks are not perfect protection.
That's what he said originally.
And now he says you should wear them.
Those are the same fucking thing.
There's no difference. They're not perfect protection, but you should wear them.
Do you know what else is not perfect protection?
You're seatbelt, but you should wear it.
Do you know what is not perfect protection?
The lock on your door.
But you should still lock it.
Somebody might try to get in through the window, but you should still lock the door.
So when Fauci said they're not perfect protection, he admitted later that it was in the context...
Of hoping the people did not hoard the necessary limited stuff that the healthcare workers needed.
Once he admitted that that was really what was behind it, then he took his earlier statement that they're not perfect protection, and he kind of put that in a different context, which is viral load, better than nothing, probably makes a difference.
What about the people who say, but Scott, Scott, Scott...
How many times do I need to show you this graph of this certain state or this certain country?
And here's the point where they introduce the masks.
And look, infection still went up.
So there's your proof that masks don't work.
Because the places that use them, they did not get better outcomes than the people who didn't.
Scott, that's obvious.
Mask here, mask there, same outcome, ah, proof.
Right? No.
That doesn't make any sense.
The fact that you compared two places, one had masks and one didn't, and they got equal outcomes, proves nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And if you think it did, why did you think that?
Because there's so many things that are different about those any two areas that you don't know if it was the masks that made a difference or not.
Now, where would be a place that you would have guaranteed required masks?
What kind of a situation would have mask requirements?
Well, I think it would be a place where they knew there would be a lot of virus problems.
And so if they had a hotspot, they would of course say, you better wear masks, because it would be even worse if you don't.
So what would a hotspot look like if it was only, let's say, 90% as bad as it could have been, because they did wear masks?
Well, it would look like not so good, because it's 90% as bad as it could have been.
Maybe the masks made 10% difference.
Would you know the difference?
Because you don't know what it would have been.
You only know what happened.
You don't know what it would have been without the masks.
And if you don't know that, you don't know anything.
So to compare a place that had a hotspot, so of course they had masks, the correlation is hotspot causes masks.
That's the correlation.
It's a hotspot, so that causes a mask requirement.
Another place is not a hotspot so much, no mask requirement, but they also have infections, maybe because they don't wear masks.
So if you had two places with the same outcomes, could you then declare that masks work or they don't?
Nope. No.
And if you think you can, then you don't know enough about how to analyze things and how to compare things properly.
You just can't do that.
Because you don't know what would have happened for the same situation with no masks.
You only know what did happen with masks.
The reason that we rely on randomized controlled tests is because every other kind of test is misleading.
You get that, right? The reason that there is a gold standard scientific test with randomized components and controlled and you've got the base case you're comparing to, the reason you have to do all of that and then you still have to repeat it and you still have to have it peer-reviewed before you know anything is because all of the other ways of looking at stuff are illusions.
You think you're looking at something that means something, but you're not.
Until you do the randomized controlled study, it's the only way you can know you're not being fooled by what you think is obvious, but the math doesn't support it.
So, that's my thing on masks.
If you're convinced they work, definitely, totally, 100% work.
That's stupid.
If you're convinced they do not work, that's stupid.
But if you think that there's a good risk management argument for them based on viral load and water vapor not going through masks entirely, I'd say that's a reasonable position even if you're wrong, right?
Could you have a completely reasonable position that masks cause some friction and they should work, but then it turns out, you know, someday we do some kind of randomized control study and we find out they didn't work?
Would I be the dumb one in this argument?
No. I would still be the smartest person in the argument, even wrong.
Because that's how science works, right?
You can be a very smart scientist, and then your experiment doesn't prove what you want it to, and then you're wrong.
You could be the smartest person and also wrong.
But you could be the dumbest person and accidentally get it right, because maths either work or they don't.
So whichever side you're on, there are going to be a lot of dumb people agreeing with you because there are only two sides.
All right. That was way more on that topic than I needed to say, but I feel like this mask thing, it embarrasses me a little bit.
It embarrasses me because the thinking about it is just so poor.
Whatever the truth is, I'm just embarrassed at the thinking about it.
Now I saw that, I think Rand Paul was suggesting that people who are immune to the virus should not have to wear masks.
So let's say somebody got the two vaccinations and waited enough weeks for them to kick in, or somebody who already had the virus confirmed and they're recovered.
What would be the problem with that?
What would be the obvious problem of making everybody wear masks except those few people who know they're immune?
What would be the problem? There's a big problem.
The big problem is that people who do not have immunity would just say they did.
They would just say they did.
They'd just walk into the grocery store without a mask and the manager would say, we require masks.
And the person who just didn't want to wear a mask would say, oh yeah, I'm immune.
I got my shots.
I had COVID three weeks ago.
I'm all good. As long as you can know with certainty that human beings are shitty people and we will lie and we will cheat to get out of wearing a mask.
I mean, half of the conversation about wearing masks is people telling you how they get out of it, right?
How they cheated the process or how they, you know, put a little hole in their mask or something.
So you know people are going to cheat.
So probably...
You just can't have a situation where some people get to not wear masks, even if scientifically it makes perfect sense.
Scientifically, it makes perfect sense.
But socially, you just can't do it.
Because too many people would cheat.
There's pretty much no real news happening.
Biden's got his dozens and dozens of executive orders that the news doesn't really report on except the headline.
It's like, he undid this, or he did this.
Are any of them bad?
I don't know. Here's a good example of how bad the reporting has been for the last four years.
So Trump did a whole bunch of executive actions, and a lot of them were environmental actions.
So Trump presumably was loosening regulations on environmental stuff.
Where was all the reporting?
About all the problems that happened because of Trump reducing those standards in various places.
I didn't see any.
Did you? Because you would think that if those standards were important, it would be real easy to do a story a few months later, measure the water quality or whatever you're going to do, and find out if anything's different.
See if it made a difference.
I never saw any reporting like that.
And it seems like the obvious thing.
If he changed something, that they would report on what that change caused.
But I didn't see it.
So we don't really have that kind of a news business anymore.
So Biden can just sign dozens and dozens of executive orders.
I don't know if there will ever be any news coverage on the ins and outs of whether there were good ideas.
Because there's just sort of no real news anymore.
At least about detailed stuff.
Let's see. So how long do you think Biden will get away with not answering questions from an unfriendly press?
Do you think he can get through his entire term without ever really being available to talk to the press?
Because his...
His spokesperson, Jen Psaki, I said this the other day, she's very capable, obviously smart and knows how to talk in public and stuff, but I think people are going to get tired of hearing from her and not from the president.
Until he hands it off to Kamala.
What's the betting on when he makes his move?
I'd say after the midterm would be the best bet.
I would think that they want to keep Biden in there through the midterm, but that after that there won't be a good reason to keep him.
There would be a good reason for Kamala Harris to get a little experience in the job so that she's the one who can run for re-election.
Or election, I guess, if you didn't get elected in the first place.
When will he meet other world leaders?
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, Biden hasn't met any other world leaders.
But I don't expect that will be any kind of a story.
Because, you know, Biden can put on a suit and shake hands with people so he can handle that.
Biden delayed the moon landing, ceding it to the Chinese, somebody says.
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
If Biden is not super serious about space force, and especially nuclear energy to drive space rocket ships, if he's not real serious about that stuff, we have essentially given the future to China.
And you might as well join the Chinese Communist Party now, get it over with.
Didn't look so capable last conference, somebody says.
Uh, Jen is imitating Dr.
Book's condescension look.
Alright, I'm just looking at your comments now.
I don't have much else to say.
Maybe there will be some interesting news today.
I don't know. We'll see.
On Locals, the subscription platform, Locals.com, I put yesterday a A micro lesson on using your physical environment to reprogram your brain.
So if you're on that platform, you can see that.
There are now dozens and dozens of my micro lessons on the Locals platform.
And they seem to be the most popular thing I'm doing there, so I'll do more of those.
