Episode 1301 Scott Adams: Does Our Corrupt FDA Kill More People Than Governor Cuomo Touches Inappropriately?
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Content:
Why are two doses of COVID vaccination needed?
Insensitive imagery in Dr. Seuss books
Deep Fake movies using famous faces
Twitters hides "Offensive Comments" that aren't
Governor Cuomo and sexual harassment
Whiteboard: Illusion of Free Will
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Rogers taking off my sweater at the beginning of the broadcast.
Wish I'd planned it, but I didn't.
So, we've got one of the best live streams, maybe of all time, really.
If you were to look at all the live streams that have been broadcast in the last 15 billion years, this one, best one, yeah, of the entire 15 billion years span, best one. I know it's amazing.
And all you need to make it better is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice, a stand in a canteen, a jug of glass, a mess of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the other day thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And it's going to happen now, all over the world, at the same time.
Thus, simultaneity.
Go! Well, whoever's taking a bong hit, I just see in the comments, good choice.
Good choice. Well, let's talk about all the news, shall we?
Ex-CIA head John Brennan said on MSNBC that he's, quote, I'm increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days.
He's embarrassed to be a white male.
Well, John, I'm a white male.
And I'm a little bit embarrassed, too.
A little bit embarrassed.
Maybe not for exactly the same reasons as you, but I have to say I feel it.
I do feel it.
Of course, in my case, it's being caused by John Brennan.
But I've been told that I can take credit and also the blame for what total strangers do who happen to share any pigmentation with me.
So if there's anybody who is also white who's committing a crime right now, well, that's on me.
If there's anybody white that I've never met and never will who's inventing something cool, I take the credit for that.
Why? Obviously, similar pigmentation.
Why wouldn't I take credit for the work of strangers if they have similar pigmentation?
That's just logical.
Well, IKEA is selling a tiny pre-built home that comes on its own sort of trailer situation.
They'll pull it right up to your plot of land, and there you've got a little home.
Now, people said to me, what's so special about that, Scott?
We've always had mobile homes.
Ikea making one isn't that different, is it?
But you'd have to see it.
It's very window-centric.
Instead of a classic mobile home that's more metal-sized and little windows, it's sort of open.
You know, it's window-y.
And if they got the insulation right, I don't know if they did, but if they did, for $47,500 you could have a tiny home with one tiny bathroom and a bedroom and etc.
Now, the big deal, I think, is that companies like IKEA are getting into it.
But I still think the big win, and where this is going, think of this price.
Think of this price.
Let's say rounded to $50,000.
Suppose, in a few years, Apple Computer gives you this option.
You could have a home that's worth, let's say, $100,000 to build, so something twice as good as this.
Maybe better than twice as good by then.
So it's twice as good, and it's free.
And it's made by Apple Computer, so it's high quality, right?
It's just free.
It costs $100,000.
If they were going to sell it on the market, probably it would cost you maybe $200,000 to buy it.
They give it to you for free.
But you have to use Apple products as long as you live there.
All of them. So if you're going to have Wi-Fi, you get it from Apple.
If you're going to have a phone service, you get it from Apple.
If you're going to have a laptop, you get it from Apple.
And Apple makes its money By just forcing you into their system, and they don't even care if you pay nothing for rent.
Might pay some energy costs, maybe to Apple, maybe to Tesla.
Maybe it's a Tesla house, give it to you free, and all you have to do is pay for electricity.
Or pay for the Tesla products, let's say.
So you wouldn't be paying for the electricity directly.
I think that's where it's going.
And maybe this is the first sign.
Alright, there is yet another study showing that one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, and I don't think it matters which one you get at this point, that one dose will give you something like 80% effective protection from hospitalization for serious problems.
80%. Now, if they give you the second dose, that gets into the mid-90s or higher, right?
So, here's a question I asked.
What if we ever had a two-dose regimen before?
When that happened, I said to myself, well, I get that we've always had vaccinations, but why is this one a two-dose vaccination?
Whereas, yeah, that...
My dog is so loud.
Snickers, wake up!
Wake up! There you go.
She snores so loudly.
So I was curious why this was the one where multiple makers of the vaccine thought it needed two doses.
And I was curious about that.
Now, the latest studies show that maybe it shouldn't have been two doses at all.
Was there anybody saying that who was credible...
Early on, was there anybody credible saying, hey, if you do the math, one dose at 80% protection, given that it's limited, right?
If you had unlimited doses, then of course everybody should get two.
I think we'd all agree on that, right?
If it's unlimited, give everybody two.
But it's very limited, and time matters a lot.
Under that condition, Would you take 80% protection really fast, or would you really, really slow things down to get to 95% for the few who actually get the shot?
Just in your sort of general, common sense, statistically ignorant brain, which one sounds better?
Well, let me add a little wrinkle.
Let's say that if you're a senior citizen, specifically let's say you're in a senior care facility, Let's say we give all of them two.
Nobody would argue with that, I don't think, right?
Because there aren't that many. You know, you can give all of the nursing home people two and still have plenty to give people one.
Well, I believe there were people like Nate Silver and other economists and statisticians who would be typically ignored for a medical question because it's outside their field.
But as Andres Backhaus was pointing out to me this morning, privately, just that there were people who were on this early, but they weren't doctors.
They were the wrong kind of expert, except that they were the right kind of expert.
Because what you needed was somebody who could do math.
That's what you needed. You didn't need somebody who knew what a vaccine was, or you didn't need somebody who was like the virology expert.
You needed somebody who could do math.
Say what you will about Nate Silver if you're politically opposed to his opinions or whatever.
But what you can't take away from him, he can do math.
He can do math.
And he just did the math.
And he said, uh...
If the one dose is anywhere, I'm sort of putting words in his mouth, he didn't say this, but the idea is that if one dose gets you to something like 80%, and it was a strong reason to believe that that would be true, we're doing it all wrong.
I mean, like, really wrong.
As wrong as you could get.
Indeed, I would say that the decision to do two doses rather than one may have killed millions of people.
Or might in the long run.
That one statistical error, which the qualified statisticians pointed it down right away, right?
It wasn't like we didn't know.
The people who can do math raised their hand and said, I feel like you're doing the math wrong.
Now what does this sound like?
Does this sound like another situation?
No. It should sound like the rapid test issue.
So the same math that makes sense in the vaccines, which is a lower effectiveness single dose, can get you to wider immunity faster.
The same argument, or similar enough, is that the lower quality rapid testing might only be 80% or 90% effective as opposed to closer to 100%.
But if you did lots of people quickly and cheaply, you'd still catch so much of it that you might stop the pandemic that way.
Well, the FDA has approved yet another rapid test.
The other rapid test, I think you still have to send it to a lab, but you can do it at home.
But then you have to wait for the mail, etc.
But the new one, apparently you can do it yourself, and you get your own result, and it's 80% effective.
Or no, something like that.
It's not perfect, but it's high effectiveness.
And you can do it at home.
And you don't have to wait for results.
You get a result in 10 minutes.
So we're done, right?
Didn't I tell you that if you could have a quick home test that was at least that good, you would probably get all of the super spreaders?
Because the ones that it misses are the ones who are not shedding that much, right?
So the difference between whether these cheap tests catch the virus or not is not about the quality of the test.
The test is the same test every time.
It's just if you have a lot of virus, you're a super spreader, it'll catch you every time.
But if you're maybe just at the beginning, you just got a little bit of shedding, well then that might miss it.
So as long as you get the super spreaders, and you get them quickly enough, Pretty much the pandemic's over, right?
Oh, no, I forgot to tell you something.
No, the pandemic isn't solved.
Do you know why? Our FDA decided that you need a fucking prescription to stick this thing up your nose.
What? Are you kidding me?
Yeah, look at the comments.
You're dumbfounded now, aren't you?
Can you think of any reason that the FDA would require a prescription to get this thing that you can do at home and, you know, a 13-year-old can do it?
You're just sticking something up your nose and putting it in a vial, basically.
Can you think of any legitimate reason?
No, you can't.
You can't think of any legitimate reason.
Now, suppose that's just a failure of our imagination.
Suppose there are actually a good reason for it.
Do you give the FDA a pass?
Because there's a good reason?
Fuck no. Because they didn't tell us the reason.
If you don't tell us the good reason, we must assume you are corrupt.
We must assume that.
And so I would ask you to assume that, that your FDA... Has now signaled unambiguously.
I mean, before I was a little suspicious.
No, I was very suspicious.
That something was going on that wasn't quite right.
Because we should have had these tests approved a long time ago.
But now it's confirmed.
The adding the requirement for the prescription either doesn't have a reason, which would mean there's a corrupt reason, or, and this is the part you can confirm, they're not providing a reason.
It's the same thing. Either they don't have one, or they have one and they're not telling you.
In either case, this is a complete failure of the FDA. For whatever reason, it might be a mystery.
Now let me ask you this.
If Trump heard this, how would he act?
Somebody said, hey, Mr.
Trump, looks like we've got a solution.
Oh, looks like we don't.
Because they added this requirement for a prescription.
Now, when a doctor prescribes it, what do you think the doctor is looking out for?
To make sure that somebody knows how to do it right?
Now, it could be that the only reason is to limit the number of them, which would be the shadiest reason in the world, in my opinion.
But suppose somebody comes to Trump and they say, oh, well, we got the technology now.
We got the technology so we can solve this problem with this rapid testing.
When I say solve, that's hyperbole, right?
We can make a big difference.
And what does the president say?
He goes, great, everybody will get this, right?
No, it turns out the FDA put a requirement on it for a prescription.
So basically it won't make any difference to the pandemic.
It really won't. It won't make any difference if you require a prescription.
It just won't be enough of them.
What would Trump say?
What do you think? What would Trump do in that situation?
Well, we don't know.
Like, we'd have to speculate.
My guess would be that they just told him the difference between a successful presidency and an unsuccessful one.
And that he would have ripped the FDA out by the roots to get that changed.
I think. I think he would have ripped them out by the roots to get that changed.
Now, I speculate...
And only weekly on this following point.
That Trump wasn't aware.
In other words, his advisors had never brought him this proposition about the cheap, less accurate tests being a good solution if you do it right.
I feel like maybe nobody ever brought that to him.
Because I think he would have made it happen.
Again, just speculating.
No way to know that, right? But what will Biden do?
Will Biden say, trust the science?
I feel like he might.
Is this science?
Nope. Is he going to say he trusts the experts?
Because there must be some reason that they're putting this requirement on there.
I feel that he's committed himself to trusting the experts.
And the experts appear to be screwing the whole country.
Maybe killing millions.
There is no...
There's no even similarity...
Between how many people died in the Governor Cuomo case of putting infected people back in nursing homes, and that's in the thousands.
Horrible, horrible situations.
Thousands of people died from that mistake.
How many people will die from this mistake?
A lot more. Like, way more.
It's not even close. If you're comparing government fuck-ups...
Biden's fuck-up right now, which by the way, let me be as clear as I can, if this had been President Trump, and he also didn't fix this, or at least obviously trying to fix it, it would be the same fuck-up, right?
Nobody gets a pass for their party affiliation.
You're fucking the whole fucking country by whatever this is, right?
I was savage about Trump not pursuing this same option, you know, with the cheap tests.
And now I've got to say the same thing about Biden.
I mean, I was just as savage with Trump, most of you heard me, and I'm not going to pull it back because it's Biden.
Biden, you're in the barrel.
It's your job. If you don't fix this, or, and I would be satisfied intellectually with this, it wouldn't be as good, but at least I'd be satisfied intellectually, Give us a good reason.
Just tell us a reason that the FDA requires this to be a prescription thing.
If there's a reason, I'm open to it.
I'm not an unreasonable person.
I just need to hear the reason.
If not, Biden, you need to go.
You need to fucking be fired with Cuomo.
Because these are the size of mistakes that are completely unreasonable.
And by the way, if Trump lost his re-election because he didn't handle the coronavirus well enough, I'm fine with that.
I'm absolutely fine with that.
If Trump really did lose because of coronavirus, because I don't think he nailed it.
I think what he did with the vaccinations was amazing.
That was Kennedy-esque leadership.
Nobody can take that away from him.
But the testing part, the rapid testing part specifically, I think Trump failed on that.
And Biden is failing now.
So, listen to statisticians, too, not just medical people.
Apparently, Biden has declared that this is Irish American Heritage Month.
March is. Now, I guess this is a fairly normal thing.
Every year, the government just re-ups and says, hey, it's Irish American Heritage Month.
To which I say, we only have 12 months.
Now we've got Black History Month.
That seems like a good idea.
I'm all for that.
Now we've got Irish American Heritage Month, so that's March.
We've only got 10 left.
Is that enough?
Because I feel like there's going to be a lot of underserved ethnicities here, and that doesn't seem right.
By the time we get to Estonian Americans, what month are they going to have?
Nothing. They'll all be used up.
And I think that's a little bit racist, isn't it?
Now, if the guy who is declaring its Irish American Heritage Month happens to be an Irish American, say Biden, How do you feel about that?
It feels like he's the one who shouldn't do that.
It doesn't feel like you should declare a month for your own people if you're the leader.
If Trump had declared Scottish American Heritage Month, what would the news have done to him?
Is there such a thing as Scottish American history?
So that would have been Trump.
If he had tried to get away with that, that would just be white supremacy.
But maybe Biden can get away with this because it's a long, long tradition.
But are we using the same standards for the left as the right?
Let's keep an eye on that.
Let's talk about Dr. Seuss.
You all want to talk about that.
So I've been following this story lightly.
Like there's some stories you dig in and There are other stories, you just read the headline and move on.
And this Dr. Seuss one, I've been reading the headlines and moving on because I trusted that the following would happen.
I trusted that just being a consumer of news and, you know, dipping in all the time and turning on the news all the time, that I would clearly and unambiguously be presented with the examples Of those things which maybe didn't look so bad when they were first done, but society has evolved and maybe they look bad now.
So I wanted to see some of the examples of the horrible, horrible things in these Dr.
Seuss books. Have any of you seen any?
Has anybody actually seen an example of one of the offensive things?
Now, I've heard them described, but I haven't seen them.
Now, are we so sensitive?
Snickers, wake up!
I have to be more exciting.
I'm boring my dog to sleep.
It's causing a problem.
All right, so none of you, I believe none of you have seen any of the examples, right?
Somebody says, I don't think Scots-Irish is a real thing.
I don't know what that means. So the description of these offenses is that it's a, quote, racist imagery of Asian and black characters.
Now, I think that's a real thing, Mike.
In my opinion, and I have to deal with this all the time because I'm a professional cartoonist.
So when you're a professional cartoonist, the market will ask you to have diversity in your product.
That's reasonable, right?
Make your comic look like the real world.
That's what I want to do. I draw a comic about the real world.
So, of course, I want it to look as much like the real world as possible, including a diverse cast.
But there's a problem.
Do you know what the problem is?
It's a big one.
Here's the problem.
If I, as generic white guy, introduce, let's say, an African-American character into my comic, what would be the personality I would give that character?
Because remember, to make it a good comic, all of the characters have gigantic flaws.
So Alice gets angry too quickly, the boss is clueless, Dilbert is sort of a nerd.
You know, he doesn't have his social graces.
Wally's lazy. Ashok the intern, who's the only person who has any interesting flavor at all, because he was born in India.
But Ashok the intern in the Dilbert comic, the only flaw I could give him, that I could stay out of trouble, was that he's inexperienced.
That's it. His only flaw is one of youth, which of course is self-solving.
So I couldn't even give Ashok, the one character in my strip, I couldn't even give him a real flaw.
I had to give him the only kind of flaw you can give somebody that isn't real.
You just grow out of it like everybody does.
It's like being a kid. Now what happened when I introduced an Indian-American character?
I was blamed.
Accused of being a racist.
Because the Ashok character sometimes did silly things.
And people said, you should be cancelled for saying such bad things about black people.
Now, my defense was, he's Ashok the intern from India.
He's not a black character.
To which my public said, Stop making this racist comic about black characters.
To which I said, maybe you didn't hear me the first time.
There are no black characters in the strip.
And the reason I do that is out of respect.
Because I don't know a way that I could add a...
Well, and out of fear as well.
But it is also out of respect.
That I don't know that I could treat the character right.
And I do think I have some obligation to do that.
And my public says, but why are you being so racist about your black characters?
To which I say, I don't think you hear me.
I don't have any. And there's a reason.
There's a reason. It's because you can't.
You just can't do it. In our current situation, there's no way I could do it without getting cancelled, because I would have to add a flaw, and then that's the end of it.
I'm cancelled, right? So, Dr.
Seuss, of course, had a different situation in the Dr.
Seuss books, because they were old enough that he just did whatever seemed appropriate at the time, but now looks wildly inappropriate by our modern eyes.
And I would guess that he has some pictures of Asian and black characters That probably are so...
probably so racist by modern standards that you would laugh when you saw them.
You know, you would laugh comparing them to what is acceptable now to what was acceptable then.
But I'd like to see them.
Because I think we should laugh them away.
Am I wrong? Let me ask you.
If you are...
Let's say if you're black or Asian American, you're watching this livestream.
Let me ask you this question. Don't you think we'd be better off publishing the pictures and all having a good laugh?
Isn't that healthier? Because I don't think there are any white people who are saying, yeah, the world is better if we make the non-white characters weirdly stereotypical.
There is zero people on the other side of the argument.
Nobody. There's nobody on the other side of the argument.
Nobody says, well, I would really like the non-white characters to be, you know, insultingly drawn.
Nobody. Nobody's on that side.
It's not like statues where people have some unrelated argument about free speech and history and stuff like that.
There's nobody on the other side.
If we can't laugh at this together, Like, what the hell?
We're not even trying.
Let me tell you how to solve this.
Here's how you would solve the Dr.
Seuss thing. Somebody owns the rights.
I don't know if it's family members or publishers or who owns the rights by this point.
I think that they should hire a black cartoonist to suggest a non-offensive, let's say, drawing style to replace the originals.
But to keep it within the style of the original Dr.
Seuss. But also make sure that everybody knows what the original is.
So that in the book it says this was modified for this reason.
You should be able to see the original.
You don't want the original to be forever gone.
It needs to be put in its proper context.
But I've been thinking about doing this for Dilbert.
Because on one hand, you know, and I know my audience especially is thinking some version of, Scott, don't be so weak.
Just make your characters, do what you do, let the chips fall.
I don't live in that world.
I don't live in that world.
I live in a world in which I prefer people to be polite.
Forget about the wokeness and all that stuff.
Can't we just be polite to each other?
Do we even have to worry about any of the other stuff if you're just polite?
How polite is it To publish offensive characters of some group.
Now, I get that it maybe wasn't as offensive in the past, so maybe we're too woke now.
But here we are, right?
Here we are. However we got here doesn't matter.
Here we are. It's just not polite to do offensive things that people find offensive, if you can avoid it.
And how hard would it be to get a black cartoonist and say, look, give us a hand.
Redraw these characters.
We'll just change the ones that are offensive.
And then we'll annotate it so everybody knows what we did.
Same with the Asian American characters.
That's why I wanted to handle it. And by the way, I've been thinking for a long time, and I feel as though I'm going to pull the trigger on this, although this could backfire.
I'm thinking of doing the same thing with Dilbert.
I'm thinking of asking Black Lives Matter, for example, literally, to say, hey, I've got this issue.
I'd like to add some diversity.
I can't do it alone.
Nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with saying you can't do it alone, right?
I can't do it alone. Give me a hand.
Help me develop a character with a flaw...
Got to have a flaw or I don't want it.
And not one of these weak flaws like they're inexperienced.
I need a real, give me a genuine flaw.
But you need to develop it for me and then I'll operate with it.
Now, is that too woke?
Have I gone too far to the other side to say, hey, give me a hand on this?
I don't think so.
Because I'm saying that there's something that I can't do.
I'm just in a situation where, like, it wouldn't work if I do it.
That's just a practical statement.
If I get a hand, maybe I can do it.
And then I have more diversity in the strip.
I don't know how...
Somebody says it's pandering.
So that's what I was getting for.
I don't think it is.
I don't think that evolving your product to be more compatible with the customers is pandering.
I think that's commerce, right?
Pandering feels different.
Pandering feels like you're doing it Just for maybe looks.
Or you're doing it just to make somebody happy.
That would not be my motivation.
My motivation would be to have a product which more people like.
That's it. And be polite.
Just be polite and have a product people like.
Alright, I'm repeating myself too much.
And thank you for pointing that out.
There's a company called MyHeritage.
All one word, MyHeritage.
In which you can take an old photo...
And they will animate it like a Harry Potter photo that moves.
So you could just take an old photo of your grandparents and turn it into a photo where the head, instead of just looking at you like it's still a photo, is looking around a little bit.
Look around the room. Now, how hard would it be to take it to the next step where the photos all follow you when you're walking around?
That's going to happen. So this is fun.
In the world of deepfakes, even our photographs will come to life.
And already have. So this is current technology.
There's nothing about this that is speculative.
This is right now. And they look really, really real.
A lot of people are saying, what's going to happen when the deepfakes are so good that you can make a famous actor with the software?
Does the original actor own their face?
What do you think? Does Tom Cruise own his face?
If somebody wanted to make a deep fake and then make a movie about it?
Is there a lawyer here?
Because I don't know the answer to that question.
And what would it take for it not to be owned by Tom Cruise?
Suppose you took Tom Cruise and you made him black.
But otherwise, it looks just like him.
Does Tom Cruise still own it?
Or did you modify it enough?
Somebody says he should.
Why? Now, he should if you were trying to sell a movie as if it were the real Tom Cruise.
Now, if somebody's trying to sell a deep fake as the real person, that's definitely illegal.
No question about that.
But, suppose somebody makes a movie and they say, we're going to make a software version of Tom Cruise, but we're not going to try to fool you.
We're just doing it in software.
It's not really Tom Cruise.
He has nothing to do with this.
Is that illegal?
I don't know, but I'll bet it's legal.
Only because the law didn't anticipate it.
Yeah, it would not be a counterfeit if you labeled it correctly.
It's only the false labeling that gets you in trouble.
Am I right? So here's my prediction that you will not...
See big movie studios trying to make movies with fake versions of real people.
There will be some of it, but it will be a transitional period.
In other words, there will be a period in history in which maybe you put a younger Paul Newman into a movie.
Or a younger any actor into a movie, and maybe the real actor is still associated and agrees that their younger self will be there.
Maybe they even do the voice.
Maybe somebody does the voice of their own younger character.
So you're going to see a period where that happens.
But long-term, the economics guarantee that it will not be real actors that the fakes are.
And the long-term, simple economics...
And by the way, have I ever taught you that if you add economics to your talent stack, you can see around corners?
A simple understanding of economics...
Just lets you see the future.
Because money talks.
Money is predictable. People are predictable when it comes to money.
So whenever money is involved, you immediately become very predictable.
Because people act the same way around it.
And here's the predictable part.
Why would you pay Tom Cruise?
Tom Cruise is expensive.
If you're going to work with him, and you probably would, to use his CGI deepfake, that's really expensive.
Do you know what's better than that?
Making a version that's not Tom Cruise that's better than him.
Because Tom Cruise, as engaging as he is, he's not the best-looking guy in the world.
Wouldn't you like a taller Tom Cruise?
See where I'm going? Tom Cruise is 5'6".
Wouldn't you want a taller one?
Come on. Of course you wouldn't.
So why would you make one that looks just like The star when it would be trivially easy to make a better one.
Do you think that Tom Cruise is, let's say, what do you call it, symmetrical?
Probably not. I think the thing is, his nose is a little weird, right?
All you do is start with what's good, and then the AI will very rapidly figure out what people want to look at.
It will create characters based on what people like the most.
It could even do it in real time.
Just show you a character.
Which of these two do you like better?
People would vote, and as people are voting, the AI is changing the choices so that it just...
Builds in real time the perfect character that everybody wants to see.
That's the one you want to get.
You don't want the crappy old looks like Tom Cruise with all of his pimples and warts and his 5'6 and he's getting older.
Why would you want that?
Why would you pay twice as much?
For the thing that's clearly worse.
So in the long run, regular actors will be replaced.
There's no possibility it could go another way in the long run.
No possibility it could go any other way because of economics.
All right. Have you seen that Twitter does this thing where they'll note that the comments may have some offensive ones?
And you can't read the rest of the comments until you click on a thing that says they may be offensive.
And then you click on it, and there's nothing offensive there, even slightly.
Is this another shadow banning technique?
I'm trying to understand what it is.
Because it feels like just another way to hide stuff from certain people but not others.
Now, I don't have direct evidence that that's the purpose of it.
But what I also don't have is any clue what would be a different reason for it.
Can you think of any reason that most of my comments would be hidden that way when none of them are offensive, or even a little bit?
What is the second possible reason for that?
I can't think of one.
Now again, if I've taught you this a million times, You have to be careful that the real problem here is the limit of your own imagination.
So I'm saying, think of all the other reasons that some comments would be routinely hidden that way.
I can't think of one.
Maybe technical limitations?
Maybe there's an AI that's not so smart that it can't tell the difference?
Is it that people reported some comments?
And they report maybe conservative stuff more than others?
Maybe. Yeah, I suppose if you really stretch your imagination, you could kind of sort of imagine some other reason that might be happening.
But it's a stretch, isn't it?
It's a stretch. We live in a world in which, if it looks like it's obvious some bad behavior is happening, it probably is.
It probably is.
Somebody says YouTube is frozen.
It looks like it's working to me.
Anyway. Biden is considering putting sanctions on Putin, I guess, over the jailing of Navalny, the Putin critic, and the crackdown on the protests.
And there's some intelligence review, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What do you think Biden's going to do with Russia?
Because they've been criticizing Trump forever.
But what else is there to do?
How many tools does Biden even have?
What the hell is he going to do?
I feel as if he's trapped here, as he is trapped in many cases, in which he'll end up just doing something that looks like what Trump did.
If you know the Khashoggi story, the Saudi Arabia situation where MBS allegedly ordered the The death of Khashoggi.
When it came out, Biden did exactly what Trump would have done, which is let the leader slide.
Just let it slide.
So there's not really any serious difference yet between Biden and Trump on the international stuff.
And the things where there's a clear difference seems to be trivial, such as rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.
It doesn't really matter.
So all the important stuff is the same as Trump, and the unimportant stuff, well, doesn't matter.
And I guess Biden is also looking at the reports that Russia allegedly placed bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Now remember that Trump was criticized for not acting on that.
But the other part of the story is there was no evidence of it.
So Trump was criticized for not acting on what Democrats said was real, but the intelligence agencies said, we can't find it.
And now Biden, being on the side that said it was real, it's his job to do something about the thing that his own people say isn't real, but when he was out of office he said it was real, or his people did.
I don't know how much he said about it.
So how do you handle that?
How do you handle it? I don't know.
I think Biden's kind of in a corner.
So there's a top-rated Arizona news anchor who resigned because she didn't want to report fake news anymore.
This is somebody who worked on a local Fox affiliate, Carrie Lake.
She resigned basically because she didn't want to report fake news anymore.
Think you'll see more of that?
I don't know. So let's talk about Governor Cuomo.
He's got his third accuser now.
If there's one thing that you can guarantee, if there's a famous politician who has two accusers of sexual harassment, you can bet there'll be a third.
You always get the third.
It must be some law of the universe that if there are two, there are always three.
Because when two people come forward, Then it becomes a lot easier for the third one to come.
And if there are two, there almost certainly are more.
So, apparently what he said at a public gathering, so this had nothing to do with any of his employees, but this is the latest thing.
He was holding some woman by the head, and he alleged asked, can I kiss you?
And I don't even think it was somebody he knew that well.
Just sort of somebody he was interacting with at a bar.
And she was offended and she's talking about this.
Now, the first thing I'd like to add is that Governor Cuomo really doesn't have much game.
He's really lacking something in the flirtation department.
There's like a gene missing or something.
Because if there's one thing that...
Let me ask you this.
To the women watching this.
So this question is just for the women.
If you're a man, don't answer.
Because I want to know that the answer is only from women.
For only women, here's the question.
What do you think of a man who asks you if he can kiss you?
Versus just taking a shot and being turned down or not.
What is your feeling of somebody who asks if they can kiss you?
Go ahead. Just the women.
Just the women. And I won't know exactly if it's just the women answering, so I'll go tell you.
Somebody says, yuck, go for it.
Lame, weak, insecure, creepy, drunk or drunk on power.
No. Depends if you're married.
Low T, weak, loser.
I think this is the men saying that.
Coward. Depends on the man.
Asking is lame.
Wet blanket. Somebody says, I like it.
A woman, I assume.
Loser, but in this day safer.
Wimp, gross, beta.
Yes, polite. I see.
No way, buddy. Male feminists.
I'm just looking at your comments. Beta.
No. No good.
Yeah. Well, so there is not an agreement on this.
Here's my best take on this.
I do believe we still live in a world where women would prefer you to make the move.
I think we live in a world where they prefer that you make the move.
But here's the wrinkle.
Don't be an idiot about it.
Nobody likes it if there are no signs that it would be warranted.
If you're trying to kiss somebody and there are no signs...
That this would be acceptable?
Well, that's a pretty big problem, and it looks like maybe Governor Cuomo has that problem.
We can't tell from one anecdote.
But if the anecdote is representative, and we don't know that, it looks like he doesn't have that sensibility.
Maybe he can't read people, or doesn't care, or something, I don't know.
But you have to separate the question of whether somebody makes a move without asking, From the question of, do they have enough sensibility to know when that makes sense and when it doesn't?
I don't believe in my whole life I've ever...
Oh, I'm sure I'm wrong.
I'm sure as soon as I say this, somebody from my past will come and say, well, that's not true.
I can't think of any time I've ever tried to kiss anybody where I didn't have a good idea I could get away with it.
I mean, I'm searching my data memory for decades.
I can't think of a time.
And have you?
Have you ever tried to kiss somebody who had not shown you that they were interested?
I mean, it happens a lot, apparently.
And because it's slow news time, Cuomo is getting extra lambasted here.
Now, there's also some photos of him having...
I guess dinner and some drinks with a female aide, and there's some indication from the photo, but it's a little hard to tell, that his hand under the table might have been on her leg.
Now, you can't tell from the photo, but the photo does at least suggest that his hand is extended a little bit.
It might be on a leg.
It could be just on the bench next to them.
You can't tell. Of course, since we're primed to think it's bad, it looks bad.
Now, I'll tell you, he's making the Pence rule look good.
The Mike Pence rule that he would not have a meal, he won't go to lunch with just a woman, unless somebody else is there or else he brings his wife.
Now, the Pence rule sounded ridiculous the first time you ever heard it, didn't it?
The first time you heard that, it's like, are you serious, Mike Pence?
In a business setting...
You would not go to lunch, a business lunch, with a female who had every right to be there and you had business.
You wouldn't do that.
Didn't that seem like the dumbest thing?
Yeah. Not so much now.
This is why. And we're also seeing Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn, a young, very young guy, who's being blamed for things he did in college that made women uncomfortable.
And so I asked this online.
I said, what percent of men do you think have engaged in something that was...
Sexually inappropriate.
By modern standards, sexually inappropriate.
Either sexual harassment, words, touching, any of that stuff.
What percentage of adult men do you think have participated in that?
Now, if you look at my survey, it's interesting because the answers are really spread.
There are just as many people who think only 20% of men-ish Have ever done that as there are people who think that 90% of men have done that.
Think about that. Just as many people think 20% of men are sexual harassers as there are who think 90%.
That's a big difference.
And then the middle is sort of just smeared.
In other words, there is a gigantic difference between what people would call, and I'm going to put this in big air quotes, normal.
Now, in this case, normal is illegal, literally illegal, if you think it's normal to be sexually harassing somebody in the office.
Literally illegal, at least inappropriate, at the very least.
But what percentage of men do you think have done that over their lifetime?
I feel it's close to 100%.
It's definitely 90%.
It's definitely not 20%.
And if you know any women who are attractive, and I hope you do, ask them how many times they have been sexually harassed in their lifetime.
Or I could even make it simpler.
Ask them how many times they've been sexually harassed this week.
Just this week.
Do you know how many times an attractive woman gets sexually harassed in just one week?
It's insane.
It's just off the chart.
It is so mind-boggling that you can't even believe it.
Now, I happen to be married to an unusually attractive woman, so I get to hear the first-hand stories of things that happened today, but also have happened the whole life, and you can't even believe it.
It is so beyond anything that a man could even really just understand.
I mean, it is so bad.
And of course, one assumes that the higher you get in the desirability index, the worse it is, right?
Because people being people.
But then I asked a separate question.
How many men have been sexually harassed at work, given today's modern standards of what it means to be sexually harassed?
How do you think that came out?
A lot. A lot of men, over 50%, have been sexually harassed at work by modern standards.
Over 50%.
And the ones that have not, they're not your good-looking men.
I can say this about men.
I wouldn't say the same thing about women.
Because women, I think, are closer to universally sexually harassed.
It's close to all of them.
With men, it's probably close to half.
And it's the half that are more attractive to women and to gay men, I suppose, because it's a little bull.
Now, I would say that I've been sexually harassed a bunch of times.
I mean, I don't even know how to put a number on it.
By modern standards, I've been sexually harassed in the workplace 25 times, 100 times, I don't know how many times, by modern standards.
So I guess I'm like at the bottom of the 50% who, at least when I was young, was worthy of harassing by somebody.
Now, I don't think that's even unusual, right?
Because if you're counting any off-color joke that was initiated by somebody else, have you ever been the subject of an off-color sexual comment by a woman in the office that you did not start?
Of course you have. Of course you have.
So if you take it all the way to inappropriate comments by modern standards, yeah, we've all been in that.
So this is not meant as any kind of a softener or anything for what Governor Cuomo is doing, but it's good context that he's somewhat universally In a category of bad behavior.
But that won't matter.
Because it's political. Let me teach you something about willpower.
I told you that I would teach you at least one thing every day.
Or reinforce something that's worth reinforcing.
But I do it through the lens of current events.
And this is that time.
Here's a topic which I've spoken on before.
But when you have a perfect example for it, it helps.
Here's a filter to see the world.
When I talk about filters, I don't mean what is true or not true.
So nothing about this is truth or reality.
It's about choosing a filter for looking at your life and your situation that's a useful filter.
It doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't mean it's better than other filters.
It just means it's useful.
Here's one that's useful.
Get rid of the idea that free will exists.
You can still keep it.
You can still keep as one filter that free will is a real thing.
In fact, our legal system requires it.
In order to punish somebody for a crime, which is necessary to reduce the number of crimes, You have to treat them as though they have free will and that they chose to do the crime.
You can't change that.
Nobody's come up with a better system.
If they do, they'd be great.
But we don't have a better system.
You have to pretend for the legal system to work.
You have to pretend...
And that's what a filter is.
It's pretending that free will is a real thing and exists.
But when you're trying to decide how to feel about something, you don't have to use that.
If you're in the legal system, you have to.
Outside it, you don't have to.
So you could have a different filter outside the legal system, and this is the one that I use the most.
People have urges.
Some people have more urges.
Some people are hornier than other people.
Some people are more selfish.
Some people are more afraid.
Some people just have different levels of urges.
If these urges are low, it's easy for you to stay below the line of bad behavior in any field because you don't want to.
No effort at all. Well, I don't really even want to do that.
I don't have much urge.
But as your urge increases, and let's say you're getting into a flirty...
Situation or somebody that's starting to activate your mating reflex.
There is a point for men, and by the way, can the men watching this confirm this for the benefit of the women?
Because I don't know what it's like to be a woman.
I can only speak to a male experience.
But I feel I can generalize for the male experience.
When you get horny enough, your brain turns off.
And I'm pretty sure we're designed that way.
I feel like that's a feature and not a flaw.
Because if you had complete common sense, you would never mate.
You wouldn't. Because if you just did a cost-benefit analysis of having children and stuff, some people would still do it, but a lot of people wouldn't.
So you have to believe that we evolved in a way...
That for men, it's probably evolution put this in there for a reason.
You know, you're not going to have quite as many babies if you think about it.
So we're going to turn off your brain in any of those situations where mating is a possibility or you think it is.
So brain turns off at about this point and then bad behavior happens.
Now, whoa, let me talk to the dumb people for a minute.
Smart people, take a little break.
This next part is only for any dumb people who came in.
Because this is an open live stream.
The regulars are all smart.
You don't need this at all. So what I'm going to say is completely useless for the smart people.
But for the dumb people who came in, this is going to be really important.
I'm not actually defending bad behavior.
Again, this is just for the dumb people.
I know it seems like I am.
Because I said, wait, your brain turned off and you don't have free will.
Therefore, the bad behavior is going to happen.
So the dumb people now, you're thinking, I think you just said that Governor Cuomo can rape anybody he wants.
No, no, I didn't say that.
I said the opposite, that in terms of the legal system, you have to act like all this is real.
But you're acting. It's just an act.
You have to do it, though. So, this graph, you could argue it's either time or opportunity because they're somewhat adjusted.
And then to the earlier comment, where this line is, the bad behavior line, let's say we're just talking about sexual harassment, where this line is, is a little bit subjective.
Meaning that, I hate to say it, but if somebody is funnier, they can get away with more.
If you don't have any sense of humor and you try to tell a sexually suggestive joke, well, welcome to human resources.
Because that wasn't funny.
It was just offensive.
But if you pull it off, let's say I tell some joke that's sexually offensive, people, I hope, would say, oh, wait a minute, that guy is a professional humorist.
His intention is just to be funny.
He's not trying to insult anybody.
Humor is the point.
I'm laughing. I get it.
Okay, I'll let that go.
So this line does change if you're funnier.
Does Governor Cuomo have the kind of sense of humor where he could lower this, no, I guess raise the bar, so that people say, I get it, that's just a joke?
Apparently not. Apparently he doesn't have that kind of sense of humor, but maybe he thinks he does.
And that looks like the problem.
Because he said directly, I thought I was being funny.
But I'll bet there will be no example that you'll ever hear of something he said where you would say to yourself, yeah, okay, that was kind of funny.
I'll bet nothing like that.
I'll bet everything that he thought was funny, if you heard it, you would say, hmm, not so much.
And the second thing is your hotness.
We're not supposed to talk about this.
But whether you're male or female, your hotness level is going to adjust this whole graph, right?
Because if you're not attractive, people are not going to have the same urge.
It will be easier for them to avoid it.
So that's your model.
It is not the only model to understand life.
Like I said, the The criminal justice has to be different.
But I find it always useful when you're trying to decide how to feel about any of this to have this context.
All right. If we're being objective at all about Governor Cuomo, I feel like you have to be a little bit glass half-full sometimes, because you could be overwhelmed with the negativity.
And I would just like to say...
Just put it out there. Objectively speaking, there's still a lot more people that Governor Cuomo has not killed and not yet sexually harassed.
If you were to compare the numbers, the number of people he killed in nursing homes plus the number of people he sexually harassed, very small compared to all the people he hasn't killed and all the people he hasn't sexually harassed.
Just keep it in context. That was a joke.
For the dumb people? For the dumb people, that was a joke.
Alright. Seems to me that forcing the people on the vocal left to live by their own rules is working quite well.
It's working with the Cuomo thing.
Here's some other examples that I thought were funny.
I just saw this on the internet.
That a lot of so-called racist images are being removed from old food products.
So Aunt Jemima's going away, Uncle Ben, Land and Lakes, they all decided that their imagery was a little too racist.
But what's the outcome of that?
What is the predictable outcome of that?
Well, it turns out the predictable outcome is that all the remaining faces are white.
So you go into your grocery store and there are no people of color on your packaging because they were all removed.
Is that what they wanted?
Right? Now they got what they wanted, so what happens if you just keep giving the left what they want?
Do they get what they want if you give them what they asked for?
That's where we're at. So the left pretty much had to cancel Al Franken because that was sort of their thing.
Right? They kind of had to.
And I think they'll have to cancel Andrew Cuomo.
There's really no choice for that.
I mean, I don't think he can survive this.
I don't think so, but maybe.
And then even letting Portland go ahead with their autonomous zones and whatever, all of that has the benefit of letting people get what they want to find out they didn't want it.
It's like letting the dog catch the car.
I mean, Biden is the dog that caught the car.
I'm going to do something really different with the Khashoggi.
Okay, maybe I'll do the same thing.
I'm going to do something really different with North Korea, except what can you do?
I guess I'll do the same thing Trump did.
Biden caught the car.
Good luck with it. Same with Putin's sanctions.
Is there anything left? I mean, really?
What can Biden do? How about kids in cages?
What did Biden do with the kids in cages?
Well, he did the only thing he could do.
He changed the words. We're going to call them containers.
But they're way better tents.
Our tents and containers are way better than these chain-link fence things.
And then the transgender sports thing is maybe the most perfect example of this.
Because the reason that women's sports exists is because women complained.
They were being treated as second-class citizens and said, why are all these sports facilities in schools and why can't women be part of that except as cheerleaders?
And so, yeah, perfectly reasonable that things evened out a bit there.
But now the transgenders come along.
And once you've opened the door, and I think we all agree women's sports is a good thing.
There's nobody on the other side of that, is there?
But once you've opened the door, you kind of got to expect the door stays open.
Now the transgenders are a threat to women's sports in a way they're not to men's sports.
And again, we'll see where that goes.
I know you don't like me talking about that topic.
There's some interesting drama over at ABC News with George Stephanopoulos and up-and-coming David Muir And I guess Stepanopoulos was kind of the big chief anchor there, but David Muir is the new up-and-coming person.
And here's the interesting part about that.
I've watched a lot of George Stepanopoulos, and it seems to me he's basically just a Democrat politician who somehow got a news job.
Like, he seems like the least objective person on TV, who's not on The View, I suppose.
And so, why does a news organization even have someone who isn't even...
He doesn't even pretend to be objective, does he?
I mean, he's a weird choice for news.
He's like the opposite of news.
He's an opinion guy, just pretending to be a news guy.
But what about David Muir?
In the small world, I spent an afternoon with David Muir.
A number of years ago, in which he was doing reports and stories, and one of those reports was about me.
So I spent a whole lot of time with him.
Sort of hung around all afternoon as he asked questions and put his report together.
Great guy. I just enjoyed him as a human being.
He was just a great guy.
I can't remember seeing him saying anything on TV that was necessarily super biased.
Can you? And I feel as though this is a good change.
Maybe it signals something.
Jordan Peterson apparently had warned at one point, and maybe I think Brett Weinstein might have said this too, that eventually the left would come for the evolutionary biologists.
In other words, people were literally just scientists and trying to tell you that evolution got us to where we are.
In other words, we have some things baked into us that evolution handed us.
It wasn't our choice. And apparently on a clubhouse event, That somebody was challenging Brett Weinstein, who I believe is an evolutionary biologist, and was saying that that's just another name for a eugenicist.
So now evolutionary biologist.
People who belong to the science that I thought the left liked, right?
Doesn't the left like their science and their experts?
But now they're calling this group of scientists eugenicists.
Same thing.
Same thing. Because if you believe that people's biology has anything to do with their actions, then you're probably a eugenicist, according to the left.
Muir is as most journalists left.
Yeah, I think David Muir, you could properly say he's more associated with left-leaning things.
But Stepanopoulos, he was just a politician in disguise.
It's very different. All right.
And I think that's all I wanted to talk about.
Let me make sure. So, that's all we got.
Isn't being left part of their job description?
Yeah. All right, I'm just going to look at some of your comments for a moment.
Did they really remove Washington's statue from George Washington University?
You know, the statue feels like...
Like old news?
I wonder if we'll have any statue events under the Biden administration.
Because it feels like there were some events where they only existed because Trump was president.
As if the event itself was ginned up to give a reason to hate Trump, even though the event may have not been a Trump-related event.
And so the Confederate statue thing feels like something that was a national topic because Trump was president.
And that it gave you something to, you know, another weapon to use against him.
And that was maybe the only reason for it.
Otherwise, people don't really give a shit.
I mean, once I learned that something north of 20% of African American people polled want to keep the statues...
What do you say to that?
Over 20% of black people want to keep the statues?
Why can't they have their statues?
Why does their opinion not count?
I know the majority gets the rule, but I should tell you that there's something going on that's not strictly racial about these statues.
I'm anti-statue, by the way, on the same basis that I'm anti a lot of other things.
It's impolite. That's it.
It's just impolite. And I don't want to be involved with impolite things.
It doesn't help anybody. All right.
Somebody said we should have more statues.
All right. That's all I got for now.
And I will talk to you tomorrow.
All right, you YouTubers who are still here.
What do I think of Biden ending the deportation of sex offenders?
You talk about non-documented, non-citizen people.
Well, I don't know how he...
How does he justify it?
I would love to know what the argument is.
I've said this about Trump and I'll say this about Biden.
If you don't show us the argument, we have to assume it's corrupt intent.
You just have to assume it.
Because our politicians do need to show their work.
It's not optional. If somebody wants to make a change like not deporting sex offenders, explain that to us.
Just go in front of us and say, look, I realize you think this is a good idea, but here's my reasoning.
There's some bigger purpose.
I'm open to a reason.
But if you don't offer a reason, you have to assume corrupt intent if it's governed.
