Episode 1304 Scott Adams: The Pandemic is a Fatdemic, Getting Kids Back to School, Trump and Rove, More
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Content:
Teachers unions vs. COVID science
Transgender athletes vs sports
President Trump's press release on Carl Rove
Obesity links to COVID deaths
Rapid testing default assumption: FDA is corrupt
The things you WANT, versus things you've DECIDED
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It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the best time of the day.
And let me tell you, let me tell you, what a day today is.
I've had a freaky last 24 hours, but we're going to have some fun today.
And before we get started, let's make this the best simultaneous of all time.
All you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of what kind?
Yeah, any kind. Any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the pandemic.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip.
It happens now. Go. Somebody from Hartwick.
Hello, Wayne. My old college.
Hartwick College. Boy, do I have stories from Hartwick College.
But that's for another day.
Another time. So how did you all enjoy the Capitol riot and assault yesterday from the militia?
That never happened.
We were promised a coup.
But nothing. Nothing happened.
Now, as I often advise you, make your predictions in public, if you have the option to do that, and then see how you do.
Because if you don't know how well you can predict, you don't know how well you understand the world.
Because if you understand the world well, your predictions should be accurate more often than not.
Nobody gets them all right. But yesterday, when we were wondering whether the Capitol would be assaulted by the militia, I told you, that looks like fake news to me.
And the obvious reason was, what exactly did this militia plan to do?
Were they going to capture and hold territory?
How many people do they have?
I figured maybe 15 of them could afford a plane ticket or transportation to D.C., What were those 15 people with, even if they brought guns, what the hell were they going to do?
Overthrow the country? There wasn't really any chance that that was going to happen.
Because people saw what happened with the first one.
You're not going to do that a second time.
It would be the dumbest thing in the world to even imagine that that was going to happen.
So sure enough, my prediction that it was fake news, I like the reactions, though.
There were two tweets that made me laugh until I cried, so I'll just share those with you.
So after we knew that the militia threat on the Capitol was fake news, I guess the Washington Post had a headline that said, At the Capitol, a March 4th threat from militant Trump supporters proves a mirage.
And then Mike Cernovich retweets that with, hoax, that's the word you're looking for.
That's like a perfect tweet.
Hoax, that's the word you're looking for.
I laughed when I saw that.
But here's the one that just had me...
I almost lost my breath.
I laughed so hard at this.
So it's just a Twitter user, gunloot.com, who talked about the insurrection that didn't happen yesterday.
And he tweets, maybe the real insurrection was the friends we made along the way.
That was so damn funny.
I just laughed for like 10 minutes after I saw that.
All right. So, as I understand what we're supposed to be doing as informed American citizens, or indeed citizens of the world, many of you are not from America, and we of course would like to follow the science, wouldn't we? Because you're not dumb, you're going to follow the science, right?
I mean, we're not a bunch of Neanderthals, are we?
No, we're Everybody agrees with following the science, except the teachers' union.
Now, the teachers' union wants to keep schools closed despite the fact that the science quite strongly suggests that we should open them.
It's worse for the students to keep them closed.
Now, of course, this is just a battle of power.
Teachers' unions are trying to support teachers.
That's what they do. The teachers union is not their job to help your kids.
Did anybody tell you the teachers union was on your side?
Or on your child's side?
They're very much not on that side.
That's not what a union does.
They are for their members.
So, what do we do in a situation where it's just a power struggle?
A lot of people in the public would like to open schools, but the teachers' unions have the Democrats by the balls, and so it can't happen.
Just power. What would you do to break the power balance, I guess you'd call it?
Let me give you a suggestion.
Now, this can't work because it would require somebody to organize it nationwide.
I don't know that there's anybody who sort of has that credibility or anybody that you're looking to as the school person, I don't know, an advocate.
And I'm going to borrow from what worked.
And by the way, you can fact check me on this, but I believe this is true.
That the credit in the United States, anyway, for recycling being such a big thing and for the Green New Deal to be such a big thing is that children were, let's say, brainwashed or conditioned to give their parents a hard time if the parents didn't recycle.
So my understanding is that recycling worked because kids would shame their own parents.
I'm seeing in the comments some people confirming that.
Now, what is the situation with school and Zoom and science and the teachers' unions?
We have this bizarre situation where the teachers are teaching science to the kids while the teachers' unions are aggressively ignoring science.
What would be a way to deal with that?
Well, I have a suggestion.
Now, the suggestion, unfortunately, probably can't work because it would require organization.
Like I said, I don't think there's anybody who has that ability right now.
But here's how I would do it if I could organize it.
I would tell every kid who's taking Zoom school that when the science class comes on, That they have to turn off the computer and that they will not do their science homework for, let's say, one week.
I just pick one week.
It could be three days. A Zoom and a science class.
Every time the science class came on, the kids would walk over and say, we're not taking science seriously, so I'm not going to learn it.
Boop. Goodbye.
I'll be back in an hour.
I'll be back for English, I'll be back for math, because those are real.
You're going to teach me those things and I'll use them.
But if you're teaching me something you don't fucking use yourself, if the teachers' union won't use science, kids, turn it off.
Turn it off. Don't listen to their fucking science.
They're not using it themselves.
Now, what would happen if the kids across the country, with their parents, of course, parents would have to be in on it, what happens if they just started turning off science class every day for a week?
Would there be anything else in the news?
No. It would be the biggest story in the news, especially if it were for a full week, because on day one it would be the news, day two it would be the news.
It would be a lot of news.
And what would happen to the argument that would crystallize the argument?
It would put the kids in charge, as they should be.
Do you know why the kids should be in charge?
Because the adults fucked up.
The adults are fucking worthless.
We don't have a Congress that can help them.
We don't have a state government that can help them in many states.
Some are doing well.
And we don't have a teachers union or teachers that will help them.
Obviously the teachers could also push back against the union if they wanted to.
So do you know why the children should be in charge?
Because the parents fucked up.
They fucked up.
And we're killing the fucking kids.
And the kids should organize.
And they should take control.
And if you don't think the kids could take control of this situation, they can take control.
Now, the problem is organization.
Who would organize it?
But parents, parents, you fucked up.
You fucked up, parents.
Adults, you fucked up.
It's time to put the kids in charge.
Because you know they would do a better job.
The kids would say, let's get back to school.
Most of them. Actually, a lot of kids are saying, let's just ride it out this school year.
But I think most kids would want to go back to school.
And I say, put them in charge.
But at the very least, if they're not willing to turn off the science class, I don't know to what extent you can ask questions during a Zoom situation, but I'd like to see at least one kid in every science class raise their hand at the beginning of science class every time and just ask one question.
Excuse me, just a question.
If we're going to learn science, why is it that the teachers don't use it?
Why does the teachers' union not use science?
Or better, we're learning science.
Just some context, please.
Is science being used in the decision about whether we should attend in person or not?
Could you fill me in?
Are we using the science for that?
Imagine if the kids forced the science teacher to answer that question before class every day.
Just make them answer that question every day.
All right.
For some reason, the transgender sports thing can't leave the headlines.
And I would just like to leave it at this.
We keep thinking that there's something wrong with a transgender athlete for wanting to play on the women's teams, etc.
And I feel that is just so missing the point.
What's broken is sports.
Sports are completely broken.
We're looking at it like these specific athletes, the transgender folks, we're looking at it like there's something wrong with that group.
There's nothing wrong with people.
It's sports.
They're completely broken.
They sort of drifted to where they are.
And if you were going to be smart about it, you would just rip it out by the roots and redesign sports.
There's no way to do that. It'd be too hard.
But why the hell does a tall guy get a college scholarship for basketball and I don't?
Why is it that somebody who's genetically gifted gets to go to college for free and have fun and be a student athlete and all that?
I don't get that.
I didn't have an option to be a college basketball star.
Don't tell me I had an option for that.
I didn't. So sports are designed to be unfair and to make stars out of the few people who are genetically gifted and to make everybody else a loser.
It doesn't matter who the one winner is, everybody else is going to be the loser.
So I know that I understand the argument about making it fair for women because men had this opportunity, women did not.
But what I would change is to take the opportunity away from the men.
The problem is not that men had an opportunity women don't have.
The problem is, why were the men getting honored and paid for a sport?
It's college. You don't even need the sport.
Somebody accused me on Twitter of being anti-sports because I'm bad at sports.
I hate to tell you, but as a kid, I played five sports a day.
I was actually pretty good at sports, it turns out.
I have a tennis court in my house.
That's how much I like sports.
But I didn't need to play on organized sports.
That wasn't necessary.
So sports are great.
We should keep sports, but we should re-engineer it so we don't have this problem.
Then everybody just plays...
On the team where their talent makes sense, doesn't matter your gender, doesn't matter who wins, because the trophy is just a trophy, it's not a scholarship.
Scholarships don't make sense for sports.
Alright, it makes sense for the finance of the college, I suppose, but that's why you have to re-engineer it all.
Here's something I'd like to brag about.
As I told you earlier, remember that you should And by the way, all the people who are offended by this topic, when I say that sports are bad and should be re-engineered, you are suffering cognitive dissonance.
So you think you're mad at me, but you're not.
And you think there's something wrong with me and that I haven't looked at it all or I'm not considering this or that.
If you're having any of those feelings, you're probably having cognitive dissonance.
Because you're sort of stuck in a mindset that sports are right, and so it must be the people that are the problem.
That's just not the case.
Sports are engineered poorly.
Anyway, made the same point.
Here's another thing I want to say that I predicted correctly.
Back in 2015-2016, I was a lone voice in the wilderness, saying something along the lines of, I'm watching your comments, and they're so cognitive dissonance that it's amusing.
You're not seeing reasons, you're just seeing emotional spouting off, which is the cognitive dissonance.
It's always fun to watch.
All right. So there's a data scientist guy, David Shore.
He worked for an Obama campaign, so he's a Democrat, and now he works for this Open Labs, some progressive non-profit.
Now, it's important that you know he's a Democrat and that he's a data scientist.
And he looked at the 2016 election and he said that the reason Trump won was not that he got more turnout, which was the story for several years.
The popular press was saying some version of it's just because turnout was high.
But this data scientist, this Democrat, says, no, that is incorrect.
Trump was persuasive.
And they can prove that by showing that the people who voted were not the usual mix.
Because if you saw the same mix of voters, there were just more of them, then that would support the story that it was just turnout.
More people showed up in 2016 to vote.
But it turns out that the mix of voters changed.
There were far more minority voters for Trump.
And it's a pretty clear sign that he was persuasive.
And so now you have somebody who really knows what they're talking about, who is not a Trump supporter, who is concluding with data that the book I wrote, Wim Bigley, which was focusing on Trump's persuasion of As the primary variable that explained in 2016 is now backed by Democrat data.
Boom! So I would say that would be one of the more controversial things that I've said in the last several years is that the biggest variable is that Trump Has a toolbox of special skills.
Whereas other people just said, nah, they're just more racist than we thought.
Or he just, he was good at manipulating the news, so a lot of people showed up to vote.
But in truth, he was Karl Rove.
So I love the fact that Trump picks fights with people that become sort of a defining fight.
So Trump is trying to make it clear that if you were anti-Trump before or now, There's going to be a price.
And this is one of the things he does better than I've seen any politician do it.
He makes this gigantic distinction between being on his side and not being on his side.
It's the biggest gap any politician leaves.
Joe Biden might call you a Neanderthal, but no real penalty for being anti-Biden.
But if you're anti-Trump and you're a high-profile person, either politically or either elected or not, you're going to get some pain.
He's going to send some pain your way.
And he's sending it toward Karl Rove, who I guess wrote an article saying that Trump's CPAC speech was long on grievances and short on vision.
And Trump just wrote an extended press release, just tearing him apart for being basically wrong and worthless in lots of ways that Trump says are true.
But watch how, speaking of persuasion, watch how Trump does this.
Because I don't think it would be fair to say that the reason he did the press release is because he was angry.
I'm sure he was angry.
But it's not the reason he did a press release.
The reason is for persuasion.
And he does this really well.
He'll pick an enemy that people can identify as an enemy, and then he can rally people against the enemy.
So the enemy is either illegal immigration, or the enemy is China, and now the enemy is Karl Rove.
So Trump does a really good job of picking enemies, branding them, and then rallying energy around it.
You're watching him do it right now.
Watching Trump try to consolidate the Republican Party, it's really interesting.
Because, man, he's good at it.
He's really good at it.
All right. So the Washington Post is reporting...
That we don't have a pandemic if you're thin.
If you're overweight, you do have a pandemic.
Because what they found was that in countries where less than half of the adult population is overweight, the likelihood of death from COVID-19 was about one-tenth of the level in countries with more overweight people.
And that correlation goes through hospitalizations as well as deaths.
Further, the World Obesity Federation felt that 88% of deaths due to COVID in the first year of the pandemic were in countries with more than half of the population was overweight.
88% of all the COVID deaths in the first year, 88% We're where the countries were overweight countries.
And even maybe the racial and ethnic correlations that we saw were probably...
Well, actually, I don't think you can say this yet, but we assumed, a lot of people assumed, I did too, that maybe there was a genetic component because black people were dying at higher rates, etc.
It could be that the correlation is that within the black American population there's more obesity, which is true.
So it could be that that's the reason that black people are having more trouble, is just a higher rate of weight issues.
So, do you think that's true?
I looked at the BMI index for a number of countries.
And let's see if this correlation holds.
So out of 190 plus countries that were listed anyway, I don't know how many are, but that's how many were on the list.
If you were to rank them from 1 to 190, with 1 being the least overweight, Sweden...
Oh, I'm sorry, it's the other way.
If you're toward 1, you're more overweight.
So the closer to 1, the fatter you are.
The United States is 20.
Out of 190 countries, the United States is number 20.
So we're in the top 20 of the fattest countries.
Where's Sweden?
103. So Sweden, more than 50% of the people live alone.
And they're not anywhere close to the United States in fatness.
Do you need to know anything else?
Is the Sweden experience now completely explained?
I wouldn't say completely, but it feels like 90%, doesn't it?
Like if you just took these two factors...
More than half of Swedes live alone.
Well, hello, social isolation.
And they're nowhere near the United States in obesity.
It's not even close. That's the whole game.
You've just explained the entire Sweden difference.
Forget about the lockdowns.
Forget about the masks.
That's it. All right, let's look at some more.
The UK is number 40, so they're also toward the top.
In fact, the UK had problems.
How about Germany? Germany did better than the UK, better than the United States.
They're at 77.
So Germany's in the middle of the pack in obesity and middle of the pack in results, I think.
How about some other countries we've been following?
India, for example, famously has way fewer deaths than can explain anything.
Except that India ranks 178 Out of 190, being not overweight.
In other words, India is one of the least overweight countries in the whole world, and coincidentally, is surprisingly doing better than anybody expected on COVID. As far as we know, data could be an issue.
How about Japan? Japan, too, doing better than people could quite explain.
But they're 166 out of 190 in BMI. They're one of the thinnest countries in the world, and also an island.
Also, you know, masking is probably more comfortable over there, you know, more used to it.
So I'm not going to say that every country fits this correlation.
China is also...
Somebody's asking China.
I thought I had that one written down.
And I believe that China is also one of the least heavy countries.
It's among the less heavy ones.
So... Again, if you're keeping track of who made good predictions early on in the pandemic, I said, hey, it looks like it's mostly about overweight.
And sure enough, it is mostly about overweight.
Now, you want to get really mad?
Skinny people didn't have a pandemic.
It didn't happen. If you were thin, it looks like your odds of the coronavirus was maybe 10%.
That doesn't translate exactly from this data.
But let's say it's somewhere in that 10% range compared to somebody who's overweight.
If your risk was only 10% of what those other people were, you didn't have a pandemic, did you?
You didn't have that huge risk of death which would characterize a pandemic.
Now, the pandemic is more about the spread as well as the deadliness.
So when skinny people said, scamdemic, they weren't wrong, somebody says, that's right.
If you were thin, you paid the price for the people who ate too much.
And you were in a pandemic that you didn't need to be in.
We could have, the world could have said, look, if you're over a certain BMI, stay home.
That would have been it.
You wouldn't have had to close any businesses.
It was all unnecessary.
Now, I don't blame anybody because, you know, a fog of war, you do what you have to do.
People were guessing, and I said from the beginning, a lot of guesses will be made, and they're not all going to be right.
But we didn't really have a pandemic, talking to the people who were lower BMI. We didn't have one.
But we had to pay for one, didn't we?
Had to pay for one, but didn't have one.
So that's quite a big thing.
I saw a tweet today saying that celebrities all seem to be getting tested every day.
Like if you're a sports, if you're a major athlete or you're on television.
And it showed a bunch of clips of celebrities saying, oh yeah, we have to get tested every day, blah, blah, blah.
To which I said to myself, are you getting results every day?
You're testing every day, but are you getting a result the same day?
Because I can't do that.
In California, I can't get a test the same day.
It takes days to get a result in California.
It's a year after the pandemic started, and I can't get a test result for days in one of the biggest, you know, hardest-hit states, and I can't get that test.
And somebody asks, why is it that celebrities can get tested daily, and I feel like they're probably getting results daily too, but the FDA won't allow you to get one of these cheap tests without a prescription.
I'm going to say again, the default assumption is that the FDA is corrupt.
That's a pretty bold statement, right?
Now when I say it's the default assumption, I'm going to say this.
If the FDA doesn't approve, let's say, unrestricted cheap tests, they have a restriction that has to have a prescription, which totally ruins the whole thing.
If the FDA doesn't tell you why that restriction exists, and it's not obvious when looking at it, it looks like an obvious mistake.
If they don't explain it, and they haven't, your default assumption has to be corruption.
Doesn't mean it's true.
They could simply be incompetent.
And maybe their incompetence extends to why they can't explain to you why you can't get it without a prescription.
But if they won't explain it to you, you have to assume corruption.
You have to. Because it's just the most likely explanation.
And the onus is on the government, and the FDA in this case, to make their case.
And if they can't make the case, you just need to fire them all for simply not communicating.
You don't even have to get into the next level of, you know, are you right or wrong on the science or whatever.
If you're not communicating to us why we can't use the most obvious useful tool, It's got to be corruption or massive incompetence, in which case you would get fired either way.
So there's something going on in the FDA. I don't think we can ignore it anymore.
Whatever is going on, they just won't explain it.
And that is a firing offense.
And I would imagine that there's somebody who needs to go to jail, I think.
If there's somebody in the FDA who's doing something because of a bribe or some other country got to them, probably need to go to jail.
We need to figure out who it is.
Or at the very least, get a name.
Back when we used to have a news business, when people would go get the news, I feel as if they could get somebody from the FDA, put them on TV, and say, hey, why do you make it so hard to do the rapid testing?
Give us your reason. We don't even have a news business that will even ask the most basic question.
Can you just explain why we can't have these rapid tests?
Because we can make them.
We just can't have them.
Explain. We have no news organizations that will ask the most important question.
Think about that. Nobody's asked that question.
That's mind-boggling that we're at this point.
Somebody says, how many died because Fauci blocked hydroxychloroquine?
Well, I would say the answer is probably zero.
Probably zero. Every day that goes by in which hydroxychloroquine is not, let's say, proven to work is a pretty strong indication, not proof, but a strong indication that it never did.
Or at least never worked In such a strong way that it's just so obvious you don't need to run a study.
Somebody says, Ivermectin works.
Yeah, I also wonder if all that's happening right now with the drop in deaths, I wonder if all that's happening is we're better with therapeutics.
Because when we talk about the drop in deaths, people say herd immunity, vaccinations, which are part of your herd immunity, Some people say there must be natural this or that, but could it be that the only difference is that we're Like 400% smarter about therapeutics?
Because now we've heard there's, I forget the name of it, fluvoxamine or something?
Wasn't it fluvoxamine, if I'm saying it right, at least in a non-randomized controlled study, seemed to reduce the deaths, or was it hospitalizations, to zero?
So I think we have therapeutics that can reduce the risk to almost zero.
Ivermectin and fluvoxamine or whatever it is.
All right. Yes, and we're probably a lot smarter about not putting COVID in nursing homes.
The other question I would ask you is, if we know who's vulnerable...
I can't believe there are more than 20 million people in the country who are obviously vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Shouldn't we be working through all of the obese and or, you know, compromised people pretty quickly?
I feel like we're going to get through all of the vulnerable people like this month, right?
And I think if all you have left is the people that you would be surprised if they died, you know, they look healthy to you, But there must be something different about them.
There's no reason not to open up after that.
So I feel as though the vaccinations are going to be like ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, and then the deaths will just fall off a table.
Nobies. Yeah, as somebody's saying in the comments...
Is the reason that the government won't focus on obesity, that it's politically incorrect, and that we don't want to say that this is a fat-demic and it's not a pandemic?
I mean, it's not a pandemic for thin people.
Is there a reason we just can't say it because it turns into fat-shaming?
It feels like that's what's going on, right?
It feels as if wokeness probably killed 100,000 people in this country alone.
Am I wrong? Would you be able to say, given that we know obesity seems to be the biggest variable, based on this anyway, and we know our government has not made a big deal about it.
Our government did not say, you know, if you get a few extra pounds, you especially should wear that mask and stay home or whatever.
I feel as if they didn't do that because they couldn't do it.
It would be fat shaming.
And it would cause, you know, thin people to yell at fat people or whatever bad things happen for that.
Now, to say... Let me say this again.
I say this often. I am very opposed, very opposed, to fat shaming.
It's something, you know, I've done in my past.
And my current thinking is I don't believe in free will the way I used to believe in it.
And I think that people who overeat There's a reason.
There's a reason. And it's a reason that doesn't apply to me.
So I don't overeat, not because I have such great character.
It's not my character that keeps me from overeating.
I think I'm just less hungry.
I think that's it.
I think I just like food a little bit less than other people.
And that allows me to have the illusion of willpower.
If you loved food like people love heroin after they're addicted, it's not reasonable to ask that person to lose weight.
It really isn't.
They're different. Their need to eat is just greater than mine, and I'm not awesome for being able to maintain my weight.
I'm just lucky. Now, in the old days, people said there was a metabolism thing, and there's a big, you know...
Some people will eat the same amount of calories as you, but they'll gain weight.
There's something to that, right?
That's not untrue, but it's not the big thing.
The big thing is the brain part.
How much do you want that cookie?
My brain says, eh, I could take it or leave it.
I don't really need a cookie.
Other people's brain says, oh, you're eating that cookie.
You're eating that cookie.
It has nothing to do with their You know, their metabolism.
The brain just says, go for the cookie, mine doesn't.
That's the end of the story.
So, given that I feel that it has more to do with what you were born with than what you're doing with it, I feel fat shaming is completely inappropriate.
The same way making fun of anybody in the LGBTQ community would be completely inappropriate, because we don't have a good society if we're blaming people for stuff they're just born with.
Alright, is there a way to hypnotize away from that?
Good question. Can you hypnotize somebody to lose weight?
The answer is, nope.
Nope, you can't.
Can you hypnotize somebody to quit smoking?
Nope. Nope, you can't.
Now, you've probably all heard stories of people who did.
You've probably heard somebody who went to the hypnotist, quit smoking, lost weight.
Those are true, but here's the statistical context.
People who want to lose weight or quit smoking will do it with any method successfully if they've decided to do it.
That's it. If you've decided to lose weight, as opposed to wanting to lose weight, that's a key difference.
If you've decided to lose weight, it doesn't matter what method you use, because you've decided.
It's not like rocket science.
Everybody could do the mechanics of it.
You eat less, eat better food, exercise more.
So we all know how.
Anyway. Yeah, watch an old movie, Everyone is Thin.
So just the last point on weight loss.
Hypnosis does let you lose weight and it does let you quit smoking, but no better or worse than every other thing you might have tried.
About a third of the people will succeed and At either of those things, smoking or weight loss.
But they would have succeeded with whatever technique they chose.
Because the part that mattered was the decision.
And if you're new to me talking about a decision versus a want, here's the difference.
Once you've decided, nothing's going to stop you.
That's the difference.
Wanting something means, well, if I get a little friction, I'm going to pull back.
But once you've decided and you run into a brick wall, the person who wants it says, eh, brick wall, what can I do?
The person who's decided walks up to the brick wall and starts hitting it with her head for a hundred years until they die or the wall is finally degraded and falls over.
Deciding is the thing.
And if I could teach you just one thing in life, just one thing, like one little hack that would change everything for your life, it would be that.
Know the difference between what you want and what you've decided.
Because the things you've decided are the things you're going to get.
Because you're going to punch through a wall to get it.
The things you want Only by luck.
You might get them by luck.
But you only get the things you decide.
So what's important about that is that it becomes a technique for, let's say, controlling what you feel is your willpower.
Anyway, your sensation of willpower.
Once you tell yourself you've decided, then you can also remove from yourself your option from quitting.
Just say, that's not an option.
Quitting is only an option if you want something.
Quitting is not an option if you've decided.
Once you've decided, all the decision making is done.
Let me give you an example.
Years ago, I've told this story before, but I like it.
Years ago, when smoking was still allowed in offices, I had a smoker who sat right next to my cubicle She was a chain smoker, which made me sitting in a cloud of smoke all day, and I said, this is undoable.
I complained to my management and said, I can't work in this environment with all this secondhand smoke.
Well, it was legal to smoke, and so my boss said, I can't do anything about it.
I can't do anything about it.
It's legal to smoke.
You're allowed to do it in the office.
I can't do anything.
So I waited.
I waited for my opportunity.
One day, the company passed around this thing that every employee had to sign.
It said you recognized dangers in the workplace.
It would have a list of dangers, and you had to, like, check off that you understood these were dangerous things and sign it.
And one of the dangers was secondhand smoke.
And I'm looking at this thing, and I'm thinking, Are you serious?
My company is telling me that it's my job that if I see one of these dangers on this list, it is my job to act.
It's not just my job to tell management.
That'd be one thing. It's my job to act on it.
Because it's a danger.
You don't put it through the channels.
It's a danger. So you act on it.
So I signed it.
And I took it to my boss and said, you see here, secondhand smoke is a carcinogen.
And I pointed it out to him and I said, so I'm going to discontinue coming to the office until the health hazard is remediated.
Now here was the trick to the persuasion.
I just said it matter-of-factly.
And then I did it.
And I said, so tomorrow I won't be coming to work And here's the fun part.
This was before you could effectively work from home.
Like, I didn't really have an option of working from home.
Not effectively. It was just a day of not work.
So I said, tomorrow I won't be in because the workplace is unsafe.
I've been asked by my company to act on it.
I signed off that I would.
I've given my word. I have to keep my word.
I have to follow the company directions.
Have I ever told you about getting your way through aggressive following the rules?
This is the best example you ever hear.
Following the rules can be a really good way to protest.
So I stayed home, and sometime the next day in the afternoon, my boss calls and said, are you really staying home?
Like, seriously, you're not coming to work?
And I said, this wasn't my decision.
The company rule says under these conditions, which are very clearly obvious, that I have to leave the dangerous area and remediate.
That's what I'm doing. My boss calls and says, seriously?
Seriously, you're not coming to work?
And I said, yep, I'm not coming to work.
It's dangerous. Next day I get a call from my boss's boss.
It's now escalating up.
And he said basically the same thing.
Seriously, you're not coming to work?
I said, nope.
And of course I knew that I could be fired.
How much risk do you think they would have taken on if they had fired me?
More than they wanted.
Because you don't have to know me long to know that I could be trouble.
People pick up on that fairly quickly.
If I'm asking for something, let's say in a service way or something...
People read me very quickly, and one of the things they read fairly reliably is that this guy's trouble, but only if he wants to be.
I'm the nicest guy in the world, if I can be.
But if I need to be trouble, people pick up on that really quickly.
And so my bosses eventually reorganized the office and relocated my cubicle to a place where there was little or no smoke.
And I got my way.
Now the point of the story was that the reason that I prevailed in that situation is because I didn't want less smoke.
I decided. I decided.
I was going to quit my job without having one lined up.
I would have gone to the local press to take down my whole company if they had fired me.
I was going to fight this to the death.
And once you reach that state of, what would you call it?
It's almost like a, I was probably using the wrong word, But there's almost a zen-like state when you've decided something.
You're always a little uncomfortable when you want something, but you're not sure.
Am I making the right choice?
I hope so. But when you've decided, this great calm comes over you.
And you attract power in a way that you can't even imagine.
Once you reach that point...
Of certainty, power just flows into you, and you can do anything.
I've said before that I've never been in a physical fight.
That's sort of true.
I had a few bully situations, but I don't think they would call it a fight because they didn't get a chance to fight back.
So I did have to We're good to go.
Would you? Because it feels dumb.
If you could just run away, why would you ever get in a physical fight with somebody you weren't willing to kill?
That feels like a losing strategy.
Because if you are willing to kill them, you have this moment of calm where all of your fear just disappears and you don't even care if you die.
And unfortunately, I find that place very easily.
And in those situations where it looked like it could have been a fight, people notice I get calm and quieter instead of anxious and louder.
And that's really scary.
The last thing you want to see is when somebody's getting ready to have a fight with you to watch your level of nervousness drop to zero.
You don't want to see that if you're threatening somebody.
Because it means they know something you don't know.
It's a bad situation to be in.
Alright. Somebody says they do the same.
Yeah, there is something about there's just this point where there's a A bit that just switches in my head, and then all fear just goes away.
All sense of consequences just goes away.
And you have just this immense power that only lasts while you're in my head.
Crazy beats strong every time.
Exactly. Crazy beats strong every time.
Alright, that's all I got for now, and I hope that was useful to you, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Alright, you YouTubers.
Give you something to live for and something to die for.
That's a good philosophy of life.
To have something to live for and something to die for.
Somebody says, I have a friend that becomes quiet, but his lip twitches, and that is scary.
His lip twitches.
That sounds like, is your friend Clint Eastwood?
Because I think Clint Eastwood would do that when he would be, you know, playing a guy who's mad enough to kill you any minute.
I think his lip would twitch.
Alright. What is the risk factor of obesity with COVID? Well, it could be anything from diabetes to pressure on the lungs to the fact that you've got less vitamin D if you're overweight, etc.
Probably a whole constellation of things is my guess.
Alright. There we go.
There's a comment I'm going to read out.
So, user Anna Montia says, I used, quote, decision to lose 150 pounds.
Best drug ever. Yep.
There you go. Know the difference.
Know the difference. There's somebody who lost 150 pounds with one brain hack.
