Episode 1291 Scott Adams: CNN Goes Full-Racist, AOC Starts Her Presidential Run, And Delicious Coffee Too
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Content:
Finland is teaching kids to spot FAKE NEWS
Michael Caulfield's 4 steps to ID FAKE NEWS
Australian Cory Bernardi on Biden cognitive decline
AOC grooming herself for Presidential bid
Matt Taibbi's special skill
People capable of seeing both sides
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Congratulations. The first thing you were trying to do today, for many of you, you got it right.
Yeah, you're here, on time, ready for the Simultaneous Hub.
And being ready isn't just a state of mind.
No. You also have to have a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with what?
That's right, your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here today, the thing that makes everything better, including the temperature in Texas.
Yeah, it's working.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
Go! Mmm.
Now, the coffee doesn't warm Texas by itself, because science, right?
Science. You also need Ted Cruz to not be in Cancun.
Suppose you only had coffee, but Ted Cruz was still in Cancun.
Would that warm Texas?
No. No, not even a little bit.
But, if you have the simultaneous sip, you also have Ted Cruz's Leaving Cancun like a hero, really, a hero, comes all the way back to the United States.
The temperature immediately turns around.
Today, it looks like we'll be above freezing in many places in Texas.
The power is being restored to all but 18,000 people so far.
I don't know if it's too early for some kind of presidential medal of freedom or something for Ted Cruz.
But what did you do?
Did you do anything to help in Texas?
Oh sure, some of you sent money, and yeah, you did things like that.
But did you do what Ted Cruz did?
Left Cancun, came back to the United States, boom, problem solved.
That's the way you do it.
Did you see any Democrats doing that?
No, no.
There was not one Democrat Who came back from Cancun to the United States to help Texas.
I'll bet there were Democrats in Cancun, don't you think?
There must have been a few. None of them came back to warm up the state.
Disgraceful! Well, one of the funniest things happening right now is that, as you know, CNN hired a permanent fact-checker Named Daniel Dale.
And he was there just fact-checking the crap out of President Trump.
Oh, he was so busy fact-checking and fact-checking.
But what do you do when Trump's out of office?
And you hired a fact-checker.
Now they didn't say he's the Trump fact-checker, in which case you'd say, well, he'll need another job.
He was the fact-checker.
So you can't really fire the fact-checker on the same day that Biden is inaugurated, can you?
That would be a little bit too on the nose, wouldn't it?
So you're kind of trapped.
Bureaucratically, you're kind of trapped.
And they're probably sitting there saying, oh, crap.
We can't really fire the fact-checker the first day we get the new president.
Everybody would know we were just doing it to get Trump.
So he keeps his job.
But if you have a job, you cannot do it.
You've got to do some fact-checking.
What would Daniel Dale's career look like if he came to work every day and said, well, it's another day of Joe Biden not telling a single lie.
He wouldn't have a job anymore, right?
So in order for Daniel Dale to keep his job, he's going to have to do a little fact-checking on Biden.
And so there's now a video package that's, you know, on top of the fact he's already fact-checked Biden's town hall, but now it's a video package.
Now, it doesn't get a lot of play on the CNN website, I mean, but it's there.
So he's plugging along, doing his job, and debunked, I guess, several numbers, statistical claims that Biden had completely wrong.
To me, this is just the funniest part of the whole thing.
Is that they desperately...
I'm guessing, right? I'm just speculating and mind-reading right now.
But don't you think that the management of CNN wishes this guy didn't have his job anymore?
Because what can he do?
He can't not fact-check him.
He's the fact-checker.
So they're a little bit trapped.
All right, uh... News today is that Kanye is divorcing Kim Kardashian.
So if you had voted for Kanye for president under the hopes that your first lady would be Kim Kardashian, apparently that would have been a bad move.
Although, has there ever been a first lady who got divorced or called for a divorce while being first lady?
I feel as though if Kanye had made it to the White House, that maybe Kim Kardashian would have said, well, I'll postpone this a little bit, a little bit.
But what would have been more fun, just hypothetically, of course it wasn't close to happening, but I'm just saying, what if Kanye had been president and then become single?
What would single President Kanye be worth in terms of entertainment value to the rest of the country?
Oh, a lot.
A lot. Can you imagine anything more fun than Kanye as president and single?
Seriously. Come on.
You would vote for him just to see that.
I mean, I like the country to do well and all that, and I actually think Kanye could do a pretty darn good job as president.
Like, literally, genuinely, truly, I think he could do a good job as president.
No hyperbole, no joke.
In case you think it's a joke.
It's not. I think he could actually do the job well.
But damn, would he be entertaining.
Oh my god, I want that to happen.
I don't think it will, but I want it.
There's good news about vaccines.
Apparently, Mayo Clinic has determined that if you get the vaccination, they were worried that you could also be a carrier, that you could have some kind of low-level infection that doesn't bother you necessarily ever, but you might be able to spread it.
And now they think it's upwards of 80% effective in preventing Infection in the first place.
Which makes sense to me.
I mean, it kind of makes sense that it would do that.
So now we've got the single dose coming.
We've got new news that the vaccination is better than we thought.
Things are looking good.
Except for that we're approaching in the United States another milestone, which is...
It's like a bad one.
Half a million...
Deaths. Half a million.
Now the number of deaths from the regular flu is reported to be around 10% of that.
So is there anybody left who says this is just the flu?
Now that it has killed, allegedly, and I don't believe the number of deaths from the regular flu, but it's reported, it's in that 50,000 range, I think between 30,000 and 80,000.
Let's say 50,000.
If we hit half a million on the coronavirus, it is ten times as deadly.
Is there anybody left who still says it's just the flu?
Ten times as deadly.
Now, I know some of you are saying, but they're counting it wrong.
It's not really half a million.
It's a smaller number. Even if it's a smaller number, it's three times as bad or something.
Yeah, so people say, I don't believe the number of deaths.
Well, let's get to that.
Speaking of fake news...
Actually, we'll do that next.
So CNN has decided to go full racist.
And see if this is too strong.
Okay? So I'm making the claim right now.
The CNN's coverage last night was fully, transparently, obviously, just racist.
Like, seriously racist.
Like, as racist as you can be.
I'm not talking about the woke kind of racist, you know, where somebody offended somebody, but you're not sure there was any racist intent or even maybe racist outcome of any serious kind.
I'm not talking about the woke stuff.
I'm talking about the real, like, classic, worst stuff you can have kind of racism.
Now, I'm going to describe what they did, And then you tell me if I'm over-interpreting it.
Have I gone too far?
Is this hyperbole? Let me tell you what they did.
So their reporting is that there are a number of state laws being floated to restrict voting in a variety of ways, such as limiting the use of drop boxes, eliminating Sunday voting, requiring IDs for mail-in voting, So things along those lines.
Now, every one of these has the effect of decreasing the number of people who are likely to vote.
Because every time you put any friction on something, what happens?
Anybody? Have you ever listened to me talk about friction?
Whenever you add friction, less of something happens.
That's how friction works.
Whenever you remove friction or reward something, you get more of it.
So wouldn't you expect that if they restrict voting, you'll get less voting?
That doesn't sound good, right?
Even though what they're trying to stop is the illegal voting, but you would probably go beyond that, wouldn't you?
There's no doubt about it.
There's nobody here who's an adult who doubts the fact that these things would decrease the number of black voters.
Is there anybody who would doubt that?
Does anybody think that it wouldn't decrease the number of black voters?
Of course it would.
Because it would decrease...
Wait for it...
All voters.
It would decrease all voters.
Now let me ask you this.
In Georgia...
Georgia is one of the states that's being looked at for doing exactly this kind of stuff...
I don't know the demographics, but wouldn't it be true that there are more poor white people still than poor black people?
Check my work on this, because I'm not positive that when I get to my ultimate point that I haven't missed something, okay?
So I'm going to give you this statement with a 65% level confidence on my side.
It goes like this.
If you do something to add friction, and it's the kind of friction that will grind on people on the low end of the economic spectrum, so I would say that every one of these voting restrictions would hit hardest at people who are on the low end of the economic ladder.
You'd agree with that, right?
Pretty much any kind of friction on voting is You know, it's going to hit the low economic group harder.
They may not be able to take the day off to vote unless they get a Sunday.
They may not be able to drive.
Might not even have a car.
Might not even have a bus fare.
So if you can drop off your ballot at the Dropbox, more likely to do it.
Requiring ID, if you're in a low economic situation, Maybe you're less likely to have 5D. So the things we can agree on so far is that poor people would be hit the hardest with any restrictions, at least these kind.
Everything we're talking about hits poor people the hardest.
Number two, fewer black people would be expected to vote because among the category of poor people, you have a number of black people.
And percentage-wise...
I think this is still true, right?
Percentage-wise, the percentage of black people in the bad economic situation would be a higher percentage than, say, white people.
So far, that's all true, right?
Have I said anything that's not true yet?
But here's the part I'm wondering about.
You don't vote for president with a percentage.
You don't say, hey, somebody won a percentage of the black vote so they can be president.
You still have to win the most number of votes.
Right? You don't get to be president unless you get the most number of votes.
It's a quantity thing.
It's not a percentage thing.
So aren't there way more poor white people everywhere?
Or is that different, say, in some Georgia cities, For example, where maybe it's important to the electoral college process.
So the question I'm asking...
Somebody's pointing out the electoral college, right?
So there might be some places, such as some individual cities, in which you would exactly have the impact of there are more poor black people there, quantity-wise, as well as percentage, and therefore maybe that could change the vote.
But basically, CNN is making the case...
That anything that affects poor people's voting will affect black people more.
That's racist. That's like pure racist.
That's not even a little bit not racist.
There's not even an argument against it, is there?
Is there any argument on the other side?
I don't even know what the counterargument would be.
I'm not even saying the counterargument is right or wrong.
I don't think there is one.
If you're saying that poor black people have less capability, this is what CNN is saying, effectively, effectively saying this.
That a poor black person would have less capability to solve how to vote than a poor white person.
That's what they're saying, effectively.
They don't say that directly, but by saying that it's racist to make these changes, you are saying, That somehow poor white people have this extra capability to figure out how to vote on a Sunday or to get an ID? I don't know that there's any data that backs that up,
is there? And again, I will accept the idea that as a percentage it would be a bigger percentage hit on the black population, but we don't elect presidents based on percentages.
You still have to get the most number of votes.
And if there are more poor white people, isn't it affecting that more than the smaller group of poor black people?
I'm really uncomfortable with this idea that...
Well, I don't have to say more about it.
I find it uncomfortably racist, the way they talk about it.
But the point of it, I have complete agreement with, by the way.
So... Philosophically, and in terms of what is good and bad, of course, you don't want to disadvantage one group over another.
So, of course, you don't want new rules that will disenfranchise any group, if you can do it.
All right. Look at some of these rules, like calling early voting lists.
So, basically, the activity of getting rid of voters that you know should not be registered, For real reasons.
How in the world is that racist?
It's racist to talk about it as racist, but it's not racist to have an accurate count of who can vote.
I mean, this is crazy stuff.
All right. Let's talk about how to determine fake news.
I tweeted around this morning that apparently Finland is teaching children as young as six how to spot fake news.
So Finland has decided that a national priority is teaching children to spot fake news.
How cool is that?
Can you imagine anything that would be really more useful than that?
To teach a child?
That's just about the most useful, smartest thing I've heard in a long time.
I can't think of anything that would be more useful.
As an educational concept.
Now, obviously, you need to read, write, and do math.
But in terms of beyond that, teaching people to spot bullshit?
That's really important.
Now, at the same time, in a weird coincidence, or not, there's an article in the New York Times.
The same day that I see this Finland story, the New York Times has a story about a digital literacy expert on a Washington State University in Vancouver, Mr.
Caulfield. And he's developed a four-point process for figuring out if news is fake.
And I'll tell you his method, and then we'll compare it to mine in a moment.
So the four steps of this.
Number one, so you read a story.
And you want to know if it's true or fake news.
The first thing you do is slow down to think about it, right?
So step one is stop.
Don't just read it and move on, right?
So the first thing you do is stop.
Two, investigate the source.
Who exactly is saying this?
Good so far, right?
Number three, find better coverage.
In other words, find a new source which you trust more.
It just fell apart, didn't it?
So in this four-point process, I haven't even got to the fourth point, and you know the process doesn't work.
Because the third point is find better coverage.
If you had that capability, you would not be fooled by fake news in the first place.
You don't know what is the better coverage, do you?
Is it CNN? Is it MSNBC, is that your better coverage?
Is it? Or is it Fox News?
Is it Breitbart? So, by the third of his four points, it completely falls apart.
It couldn't possibly work in the real world.
Because we don't know what the better coverage is.
Do you know why? The fake news fools us about what the better coverage is.
We can't tell. Now, I feel like I can tell, and so do you, don't you?
You feel like you can tell.
I'll bet you think you can tell.
But that's the problem.
Some of you are right. Some of you can tell.
But can the average person?
Do you think the average news consumer who's more of a casual news consumer, if you're watching this live stream, You're probably in the, I don't know, top 5% of people who pay attention to news, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
But the general country, you're not paying attention that much.
They can't tell which are good sources of news.
That's just not something they'll ever be able to do if they're casual consumers.
But then the fourth one is trace the claims, quotes, and media to the original context.
So this is good.
So the Fine people hoax, for example, if you had traced it to the original context, played the original video, you would have known it was a hoax.
But who in the world is going to do this?
You open up your homepage, there are, let's say, on Fox News or CNN, maybe 25 stories, and all of them are reasonably important to the world.
Are you going to fact check on your own and go look for other sources and stuff for 25 stories a day?
No. No, you're not.
There's no human way you're going to do this work.
But there is one interesting tidbit, so I'm going to ignore the four steps.
I don't think they're well devised to actually work.
But he does say one thing that's good.
Don't do a deep dive on something that you're not sure is true.
Because by the time you're done, you'll think it was true.
So if you find a video that's, say, an hour or two long, and it's like this whole conspiracy theory, if you make the mistake of watching the whole two hours, and you don't go check anything else to see if it's right or wrong, you will be brainwashed.
Because that two hours is going to be good.
It's going to be really convincing without any counterpoints.
So anything that you go into a deep well, you basically are brainwashing yourself.
That's QAnon.
QAnon is sort of the deep well.
You spend a lot of time on conspiracies until you talk yourself into it.
So Mr. Caulfield is recommending instead that instead of doing a deep dive and basically hypnotizing yourself on the topic, You do a, let's say, a shallow dive, and then you take it sideways or lateral, meaning that you check what other people are saying about the same topic.
So that it would be better to spend five seconds seeing what CNN says and five seconds seeing what somebody else says than it would be to spend two hours looking at what one person says.
And that is math I agree on.
That's where we're completely agreed.
In my book, LoserThink, which would be the book I would give to everybody in Finland who is trying to learn how to determine what is fake news.
In fact, it's probably the best book in the world on teaching somebody how to find fake news.
And I have one tip in there that I think is better than these four steps and better than whatever Finland is teaching their kids.
It goes like this.
In this country, anyway, I'm not sure it would work everywhere, but in this country...
Where we have such a siloed news from the left, and we have a siloed news from the right, use the following rule.
If both of them report the news the same, it's probably true.
So if they say there are freezing temperatures in Texas and the power is out, and they both say that, it's probably true.
But if one network says That the president once called neo-Nazis fine people, and you can find another major outlet that says it didn't happen, and here's why.
Which one do you trust?
The one that says it did happen, or the one that says it did not happen?
Always go with did not.
And it doesn't matter who said what.
That's the key point.
It doesn't matter if the left says it's true or the right says it's true.
If the other one, and it doesn't matter which of the outlets, if there's a major outlet that says it's not true and then shows their work, right?
They've got to show their work.
It's not true. And if you follow that rule, you'll be right at least 85% of the time.
I can't tell you it'll work every time.
Now, every once in a while, you get something that Fox News says is true that Breitbart says is not.
Now what do you do? Because they're both associated with the right.
Fox News says it's true.
The fine people hoax, for example, it's opinion people were saying it wasn't true, but the news people were sort of staying away from it like maybe it was true.
So you weren't quite sure if you were watching Fox News if that was true or not for a long time.
But if you read Breitbart, also associated with conservative viewers, It said cleanly, no, it's not true.
And often Joel Pollack would be the one.
And he'd show you why.
Shows his work. Oh, here's the transcript.
You can see it's not true. Under those cases, who do you believe?
Fox, not so clear.
Or Breitbart that shows you their work and says it's not true.
Breitbart, right?
Now, I'm not saying Breitbart, always better than Fox News.
I'm saying that whenever there's one that says it's not true, doesn't matter who it is.
Left or right. As soon as you see one of them say it didn't happen, it probably didn't happen.
Now, it gets complicated when you're looking at the question of did the election, was the election, let's say, fraudulent.
So you've got two different networks covering it differently.
What do you do? So you've got your CNN, let's say, I'll just use them as the proxy for the left.
You've got CNN saying, The election was fine, no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
You go over to Fox, and it's just non-stop stories about sketchy stuff.
Now, it doesn't prove the election was fraudulent, and nor does Fox make that claim.
They didn't say we found any proof.
At least the news part of it didn't.
The opinion people went a little bit further, but I don't think any of them...
Well, I don't know. It doesn't matter.
What the news people said...
It's what matters to the story.
Now, if they're a little bit different, what do you do?
Well, you've got this weird story where there are two potential fake newses.
One is that the election was fraudulent and proven, or that we have evidence that it's conclusive, and that's just not true.
We don't. And the other is that we know for sure it was not fraudulent.
Well, that's not true.
All we know is we don't know.
That's it. We know there's no widespread evidence that a court has accepted that there is widespread fraud.
We know that's true.
But we don't know no fraud happened.
That's a whole different question.
So they're both, in a sense, there's a little fake news everywhere on that one, so you have to be careful.
All right. So that's my rule.
If somebody's saying something didn't happen and chose their work, 85% of the time they will be the one that's right.
What you do is you censor anyone saying there is fraud.
Yeah, that will get you to the same place.
All right. Other stories?
On Australia's version of Sky News, there was a host named Bernardi who just tore apart the American media for basically protecting Joe Biden.
And this guy does this major monologue on Sky News, you know, major outlet in Australia, Saying that it's basically obvious to everyone that Biden is cognitively declined.
And he went at it hard.
Now, it's one thing to be in this country and making claims like, hey, your president's cognitively declined.
Because you automatically think, okay, you're in the battle.
Everybody's making accusations about everybody.
So you sort of discounted it a little bit in your head, right?
Because you say, well, the other team always says your president is crazy.
That's just standard.
It's like, you know, if Democrats accuse the next Republican president, whenever that happens, of being a racist, how seriously do you take it?
Because you know that if they're a Republican, they're going to be accused of being racist, so you just discount it because there's politics within the country.
But seeing somebody from Australia...
Who is just talking about the United States, like he doesn't have a dog in the fight.
He's just talking about it, just observing it.
And in his view, it's glaringly obvious that Biden is mentally unwell and certainly not up to the job.
It's just obvious. It hits you different when it comes from somebody who doesn't have a dog in the fight and they're just on the outside just watching.
It's like, guys, a little bit obvious.
A little bit obvious.
So that was interesting.
I would say that AOC, who I praise often for her political skill and persuasion, but not necessarily her policies, Now, one of the hits against AOC is that she has wild, crazy policies about the Green New Deal and it's all impractical.
I don't criticize her as much as you do for that.
Because you know who else had a plan that was crazy and impractical?
Trump. When Trump ran for office, he said he was going to literally...
Deport the, what, 11 million people living here without citizenship?
Or 25 million or whatever it was?
And the entire time Trump was running, I said, don't worry about that.
That's not going to happen because it can't happen.
It's just not practical.
There's just no way to do it.
Then sure enough, when he became president, the very first thing he did practically was say, well, not so much deporting people who have been here a long time.
But let's just work on the border.
Now, I said from the beginning, it was always just a big first offer to make him look like the baddest badass on immigration, and that once he had established that, you would be in a position to negotiate something more reasonable, but still tough on immigration.
So I say the same thing about AOC and the Green New Deal, which is there are elements of it Which you have to know she knows are not 100% practical.
But she does the big ask, just like Trump, gets all the attention, just like Trump, weaponizes that energy and the attention to take her to the next level, just like Trump.
So in terms of just technique, the similarities are striking.
It's the same game plan, just different politics.
And so get used to the fact that I will be saying good things about her technique, not her policies.
Although sometimes I might agree with them.
Here are two things that she's doing right now that, in my opinion, are brilliant.
Politically. So I'm not saying they're brilliant in a real-world way, but politically they're brilliant.
Two things are that she raised, I guess, two million dollars To help in relief and distribute supplies to the people in Texas who are suffering under the cold temperatures.
Now, because she's a representative of the Bronx and Queens, people say, hey, shouldn't you be helping your own district?
They've got problems too.
Why are you helping Texas?
I'll tell you why she's helping Texas.
Because she's going to run for president someday.
So she is establishing herself as someone who will reach across the political lines and even the state lines because she's looking at things from the big picture way.
I hate to tell you, it's brilliant.
It's brilliant.
Because, you know, it's Ted Cruz's state.
It makes Ted Cruz look bad for going off to Cancun.
So she sets up a contrast.
Bad Ted Cruz goes to Cancun.
Good AOC. She'll help any state.
Even if you're Republican, she'll help you.
That's really, really good.
That's like A-plus political material.
Now, Texas is also sort of on the bubble, isn't it?
You could imagine, maybe not yet...
But you could imagine Texas voting for a Democrat for president.
Because it's getting close, right?
I mean, it used to be real Republican, but shrinking that margin now?
Weren't so sure that Trump was going to win Texas, were you?
It was close. So AOC picked exactly the right state with exactly the right play, politically.
On top of that, apparently she's...
I was looking for the story, but I think it's true.
That she's backing an investigation of Governor Cuomo on the nursing home stuff.
Now, if that's true, this is her turning against a major Democrat political figure because it's the right thing to do.
Now, the more times that AOC does something that you could describe with these words, because it's the right thing to do, meaning that it's not purely political, although it is, right?
It's so political...
That it doesn't look political.
That's how well done it is.
It looks like she's just crossing the line and doing something for the other side and just doing the right thing and ignoring politics.
But the way she ignores politics is the best politics you'll ever see.
In the same way, by analogy, when ex-President Obama ran for office the first time, he did not run as a black guy.
He was a black guy, but if he had made that some kind of advantage that he was selling for why he should be elected, it would have worked against him.
So his politics, Obama's politics, were next level.
So by ignoring the racial part that is our normal politics, he just put himself above it.
And then when people said, okay, you are kind of putting yourself above it, that's okay.
You know, we want a president...
Who's, you know, above that, and he's not running because he's black, right?
And that allowed people to cross the lines easily.
So what AOC is doing is making it easy for some Republicans in the future to say, you know, there's a lot about her I don't like, but She does have a pattern of being able to do the right thing in the bad situations.
The Cuomo situation, the Texas situation.
And she's willing to go against her own party when it's the right thing to do.
That's really good.
That is really good.
I've always often said that one of the things that helped Trump is that he had once been a registered Democrat.
And he had lots of Democrat...
Kind of leanings.
He was more pro-gay marriage, pro-gay than past Republicans, etc.
So I think that Trump had that going for him too, which is that he would take what he thought was right, and he could sometimes disagree with his own party.
Not too often. Matt Taibbi, who I mention often because he's in that rare group of I guess he'd be called a journalist.
I don't know what title he would like to go by.
He's got a popular podcast as well.
Author, maybe. But he has this problem when I track him.
I just follow him on Twitter.
Where he'll say something smart and reasonable.
And people will just be triggered into cognitive dissonance.
Because you don't expect people to be smart and reasonable.
And that alone triggers people into cognitive dissonance.
Just the fact that he can talk objectively without the political filter about pretty much anything.
He has that special skill.
It's very rare. Or at least rare that people will exhibit that skill in public, and he does often.
So watching him have to deal with the fact that he triggers people to hallucinate is fun, because that's what I do.
If you've ever watched my Twitter feed, it's just full of critics who have misinterpreted something I said, and they're really mad at that hallucination that exists only in their head.
It has nothing to do with anything I said or did, nothing to do with my opinion, nothing to do with my effect on anything.
It's a pure hallucination.
But they're coming after me Because their hallucinations suggest that I've done something that literally never happened.
Said something I didn't say, meant something I didn't mean, something like that.
And for a long time, I thought it was just something about me, or the way I talk, or the way I word things.
So I thought, I'm just triggering people.
I can't even turn it off.
If I knew how, I'd turn it off, right?
And But watching Matt Taibbi do it, you know, a different person, completely different situation for me, and it's more clear when you see the pattern.
The pattern is there's a certain segment that can't handle it if you can see both sides of a topic.
That's it. If you can simply see and describe the argument on both sides of a topic, it doesn't mean you even picked one.
You can simply see them.
You can just describe them accurately.
That alone will trigger some percentage of the public into actually hallucinating.
Like literally imagining they saw or heard something that didn't happen or read something that didn't happen.
And so I'm glad it's not just happening to me, but it's literally that's all it takes to trigger cognitive dissonance.
Acknowledging the other argument.
That's it. That's all it takes.
Woody Allen is...
Could have a bad month.
I guess there's some new Woody Allen documentary called Allen vs.
Farrow coming out on Sunday.
And it says it goes beyond the scandalous headlines and makes an argument that Woody Allen got away with the unthinkable in a number of ways.
So I think they mean unthinkable...
Child sexual accusations or something.
I'm not exactly sure the details of it.
But here's what I would say about this.
Do you remember? I was talking about the four steps for recognizing fake news from Mr.
Caulfield, and he warned you, don't do a deep dive on one topic.
If you watch this documentary, this will be the thing he warned you not to do.
If you watch this documentary, which apparently its point of view is that Woody Allen is guilty of unthinkable acts.
Will you come away believing it was true?
Yes, you will.
Because if you do a deep dive, you're going to be sort of living in it and you won't see any counterpoints.
You will only see what the documentary wants you to see.
And you will believe that Woody Allen is a monster.
Is he? How would I know?
How would I know, right?
I mean, he's been accused of some bad stuff.
I wasn't there, but I do know the Murray-Gell-Mann amnesia theory, which says that if you're watching news that you personally know the truth of, let's say it's news about you, and you personally know what's true and what isn't, which is rare, you know that the news is fake.
But as soon as it's about something you don't have personal knowledge of, you imagine it might be true.
There's no reason to believe that.
Now, here's a caution I give you.
If you really want to screw with your own brain, go Google the two recent documentaries about Michael Jackson.
One documentary shows two accusers who are very credible, saying that he did horrible things with them when they were children.
And if you do a deep dive on that and spend the length of the documentary looking at that, you'll walk away thinking that could not be untrue.
I mean, that's really, really convincing.
Really convincing.
And that's certainly the experience I had.
I watched that thing and I said, you know, that puts the rest all doubts.
Like if anybody thought maybe Michael Jackson wasn't doing terrible things...
You just watch that documentary, it's pretty obvious.
When you listen to these witnesses, they look very credible.
Lots of details. And then, Google, I don't know the name of it, but there's a second documentary that came out soon after that, which debunked the first documentary perfectly.
Meaning that if you did a deep dive on the debunk, you would never believe the first one again.
Because the debunk is as strong as the accusation.
But if you'd only seen the debunk or you'd only seen the accusation, you would go down that well and you would stay there.
If you've only seen one of them, you would be completely sold because they're both that good, but they're opposite truths.
One is really compelling that none of this happened and it can all be explained in documented, easy, obvious ways that it didn't happen.
And the other one is just as convincing that it definitely happened.
Now, you watch this Woody Allen movie.
This is, by analogy, it's very similar to the first Michael Jackson movie.
You watch this thing, and I haven't seen it, of course, but I guarantee you that if you watch this documentary that comes out on Sunday, you will be convinced that Woody Allen is a monster.
Don't be. Now, I'm not saying he's not, and it's not my job to defend him or anybody else.
Personally, I have no knowledge of anything that Woody Allen did or did not do.
I know what he's accused of.
I know what it sounds like.
I just live in a world where stuff about celebrities, and in a minor way I'm part of that world, is so often untrue that it would be ridiculous to believe it because of just the math of it.
Things like that are usually untrue.
Most of the time.
I don't know that that's the case in this case.
I have no reason to believe it's untrue.
But I also have no reason to believe it's true.
And I would caution you that this advice about going sideways and looking for a little bit from another source that might doubt your source is way more useful Than going all the way down the well and having no other well to double-check it.
So, be careful.
Now, given that, what do you think about the fact that this documentary exists?
Because it's either a great service to the world, maybe, or it's complete bullshit.
Because one of those two Michael Jackson documentaries, I don't know which one.
One of them's bullshit, and it looks pretty darn compelling.
They both do.
So, I would not believe anything about the Woody Allen story.
I wouldn't believe anything.
I wouldn't believe he's innocent.
I don't think I have any reason to have that judgment.
But I also wouldn't believe that any of the specific claims are necessarily true.
We don't live in a world in which you could trust any of this.
Not any of it. And somebody's saying that one option is that they're both bullshit.
Yeah, you can't rule out the fact that the truth is somewhere in between or on the side or somewhere completely else.
So, I will recommend the following when you're trying to sort out your fake news.
Make sure that all the sources report it the same or it's probably not true.
You should listen to people Like Matt Taibbi.
People like Tim Pool.
People like Mike Cernovich.
People like Jack Posobiec.
People who can tell you something true or not, and at the very least, they're not lying.
They could be wrong.
Have you ever seen me be wrong about something?
Of course. If you've been watching me for a while, you've seen me be wrong.
But I've never lied to you.
How would you know, right? How would you know?
Yeah. Glenn Greenwald has a long, long history of being able to be on any side of a topic wherever the data takes him.
So he's proven he can do that.
So you should listen to him.
Jonathan Turley. Yes.
Alan Dershowitz, I would say.
Alan Dershowitz can be on either side of an issue.
He will actually follow the news.
And you can see some other ones.
Yeah, the No Agenda podcast.
I would say that would be another...
Excellent example.
Jordan Peterson, another good example.
He doesn't do politics as much, but that would be a good example.
Michael Malice is sort of a special case.
I'll agree that he'll go wherever the facts take him, but because his online persona is designed to be entertaining, That's a special case.
Naval doesn't talk politics.
So that's a decision on his part.
He just doesn't talk politics.
So if you want to learn how to be successful and have a good life and be happy, follow Naval Ravikant.
If you want to know politics, that would be someone else.
Yeah, you know, somebody's putting Ben Shapiro on the list.
So here's the thing. I don't know of any, personally, I don't know of any examples where Ben Shapiro has ever taken a side that would be maybe more associated with the left.
If he's done it, let me know, but I'm not aware of it.
I don't believe that Ben Shapiro has ever lied to his audience that I know of.
I don't think so. Because it doesn't look like there's any intention to do that.
There's no reason to do that.
He doesn't need to.
Doesn't make him more money to do that.
I just don't think that has anything to do with any of his motivation.
So I would say that Ben Shapiro would be a good example of somebody who you could trust to be honest But I think that his audience locks him a little bit into a conservative position.
I'm not sure that you're going to see somebody crossing over as much.
But he'll always be honest within the position that he takes.
Michael Knowles, I love his show, but I haven't watched enough of them to have the full context, but he puts on a great show.
Somebody said in the comments, my wife says everyone lies.
I think it's true that everyone lies, but maybe about different topics.
So there's probably something that anybody would lie about.
You're more likely to lie about themselves.
But if you don't have a reason to lie about the other side, that's good.
Somebody's saying Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson is an example of someone who has a long history of being able to take a side that the data suggests.
Yeah, he does have a history of that.
That would be a good... But I would give you a caution.
Anybody who's appearing on a network or entity that has a real clear audience preference, meaning their left or their right, they're going to have an extra pressure.
To be compatible with their team.
So I would prefer the, you know, the Taibbi, Tim Pool, even me, because we're sort of doing our own thing.
We don't have the pressure of the other people telling us what to do.
Yeah, Cheryl Atkinson, another good name.
Greg Gottfeld. Greg Gottfeld, a long history of being able to, you know, go with the what makes sense and not where the politics necessarily are.
All right. Dave Rubin, perfect example, yes.
Dave Rubin, he can be on the left, he can be on the right.
He just follows what makes sense.
It's rare. Joe Rogan, yes.
Bill Maher is interesting.
I have mixed feelings about Bill Maher.
I think Bill Maher suffered from TDS. Like a lot of people did.
But if you took away that, if the only thing you dinged Bill Maher for is a little bit too much TDS, if you take that out, he's pretty brave about being willing to go wherever his opinion and the facts lead him.
So I'll give him that.
And I would say that Bill Maher is, even if you hate him, like even if you hate his show, you disagree with him, He's very, I don't know, he's on the border of that national treasure kind of category.
Like, maybe it's too soon, but someday I think people are going to say of Bill Maher that he was one of the most valuable voices in America, I think.
And only because of how brave he is about the way he talks about certain topics.
So I think the bravery of it and the The freedom that that gave him was valuable to the country.
I think he's a service to the country.
Honestly, I do. Oh, I just got Andy Ngo's book.
I was going to hold that up, but I'll bring that upstairs in a minute.
Geraldo, somebody says.
Geraldo, same thing.
I have tremendous respect for Geraldo, even when I don't agree with him sometimes.
But I have tremendous respect for him because he also can fearlessly go left or right wherever the data takes him.
It's just kind of rare.
And we probably just mentioned 80% of all the people who can do that who are talking about politics and whose names you would recognize.
So that's probably about it.
All right. That's all I've got for today.
It's slow news day. And I will go do something else now.
And I hope that you go off and have a great day.
I know you will.
Oh, I know you will.
Take care. All right, all you YouTube people, I just turned off Periscope.
I understand that there's a little button that you're looking at called subscribe, and I hate it when the host at the beginning of any kind of a live stream or show, they go into their commercial first.
Is that the worst? You turn it on, you want to be entertained, and they start giving you their housekeeping.
And if you hit the subscribe button, blah, blah, blah.
But I'll throw it on the end so anybody who wanted the entertainment only can bail out.
But it does help this live stream if you hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified.
And... That will keep my voice active.
So right now, my numbers and followers...
Well, actually, the followers might be up, but I think the monetization just fell through the roof.
I don't know what's up with that.
But there are forces that want to, you know, lessen voices like mine.
And if you subscribe, it gives me a little more weight in the market.
