Episode 1309 Scott Adams: Cuomo, Coronavirus, Crisis, Corpulence, China and Coffee
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Content:
Tracking your mail-in ballot
Reparations in COVID relief package?
Resilient COVID myths
Under 40, low BMI and thin
George Floyd trial juror fears the coming riots
Whiteboard: Who to Trust
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It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and the Simultaneous Sip.
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Yeah, it's called the Simultaneous Sip.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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Let's do it right now Yeah, yeah, that was good Now some of you might be concerned if you start the simultaneous sip a little bit late There is a grace period Yeah, there's a 10 second grace period.
If you get your sip in anywhere in that 10 seconds, simultaneous.
Alright, the biggest news of the day, by far, is that Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as straight.
I'm not making that up.
Milo Yiannopoulos just came out as straight.
He's decided that he's going to push conversion therapy, or use your religion to, let's say, erase the gay.
I'm not sure how he would put it.
I don't think Milo is the most credible person in the world right now.
But he's getting some attention, and he's good at that.
So, anyway, for entertainment reasons, he's always good for entertainment.
Just to be clear, I don't think conversion therapy is a good idea.
All right. Well, here's a surprising story.
I don't mean to shock you, because I know you didn't see this coming.
But sit down.
Sit down. I have some surprising news for you.
There is a sixth accuser of Governor Cuomo.
Yeah, who saw that coming?
It's almost as shocking as if...
I'm going to go out on a real thin branch right now.
I feel a prediction coming on.
Seventh accuser.
Now, I don't want you to think I'm psychic.
Because I'm not.
But I can see the future sometimes.
And I feel there's just a seventh accuser.
I feel there is.
But will we hear from that seventh accuser?
I think the odds are pretty good.
Probably tomorrow.
Oh my god.
And with all this badness going on, people are trying to talk to Governor Cuomo's ex, his ex-girlfriend, or was it wife?
I guess girlfriend. Sandra Lee.
And the headline that I saw said that she was seen pumping gas in Malibu.
She was pumping gas while her ex-boyfriend was trying to do something This sounds a lot like pumping gas.
Have you noticed that the G on the end of pumping sort of disappears the G at the beginning of gas?
If you say it closely, or you say it carefully, it sounds like what Sandra Lee was doing.
She was pumping some gas.
But if you were to say this about her ex-boyfriend, Cuomo, It would sound different.
He was pumping gas.
Yeah, he was pumping gas.
Say it quickly. It's funnier if you say it to yourself.
Well, we have a situation on the border.
It's not a crisis. Darn you.
It's certainly not a crisis.
How could you think it's a crisis?
No, it's a challenge.
We're told by the Biden administration, it's definitely a challenge, not a crisis.
And the resources are overwhelmed.
So it's an overwhelming challenge, but not a crisis.
And I feel better about that.
Do you remember when kids were in cages and it was a crisis?
I'm so glad all that's behind us, because now it's just kids in containers with an overwhelming challenge.
And I feel a lot better about that, even though there are way more people involved.
Jen Psaki said an interesting thing, and I refuse not to put a P in front of her name.
She's Pisaki.
You could call her Jen Psaki, if you like.
But if you're going to put an unnecessary consonant in the front of your name, I think I can pronounce it.
Don't tell me what's silent.
Don't tell me to shut up about the silent P. I'm like, you know, Pierce Morgan.
I want my freedom of speech.
If I want to pronounce the P in front of Psaki, well, damn it, I'm going to do it.
So Jen Psaki, or Psaki if you like, said that most immigrants are being turned away.
What? How can the Biden administration turn away anybody?
Are there, what, good immigrants and bad ones?
Because it's almost as if Biden is saying that some of them are good people.
And I guess they get to come in.
But some of them, even the Biden administration, is turning away.
In fact, most. I would like to hear in one of Joe Biden's many press conferences.
He has several today.
You probably haven't heard of them.
You probably think there have been none.
But I'd like to hear Joe Biden describe the philosophy.
What is it that would let you say some of the immigrants can get in and some of them cannot?
What exactly is the philosophy?
Trump had a very clean philosophy.
America first. That pretty much takes care of all of it, doesn't it?
America first. Are we done?
Is there anything else that needs to be explained?
Pretty clear. But with Biden's policy of being kind and more human, I guess, which we all like on a conceptual level.
Conceptually, who doesn't like being kind?
It's a pretty good idea if you can afford it.
But I think Biden needs to somehow articulate why some people can get in and some can't.
Now, I know there would be a distinction between the people who are claiming asylum.
But do we think the asylum claims are real?
I mean, not really.
Do we? Some of them surely are real.
But I would think the vast majority of them are just people gaming the system.
So, do we let the people in who game the system?
It's like, oh, okay.
You're part of the good immigrants because you're gaming the system.
I don't know. It feels like you either need to let people in or not let them in.
It's a weird place to put a dividing line.
And I'm sure Biden will be talking all about that in his many, many press conferences that happened, really.
Don't they? Aren't there press conferences?
Here's a story that's got me wondering about things.
There was a Nevada man who on Twitter mentioned that he had tracked his mail-in ballot and found that somebody else had signed it and voted for him.
So he never got his mail-in ballot but somebody did and somebody voted for him allegedly.
The question I asked is, what?
Isn't there something wrong with this story?
There's something wrong with the story, right?
How in the world do you check to see if your ballot got in?
Well, apparently, at least Clark County, and I've heard other states and other places, they do have a portal, a website, where you can go and you can check to see if your vote got in.
And Doesn't it feel like this is a whole category of thing that we should understand as a public, if you're engaged in the questions about voter fidelity and transparency and stuff?
We've all been talking about this endlessly, but how come you and I don't know whether you can check your mail-in vote everywhere, or how many places can you?
And if you can check, is it easy?
Do you just go online and put in your social security number and it tells you if they got your vote?
And this gentleman who was sharing this experience showed me that I think they had emailed him when he contacted and said there was some problem.
They emailed him the actual signature of the person who voted on his ballot.
It was a different person. Now that's just one example, right?
Just one example.
Um... Whoever's saying I can't hear you, you know the problem's on your end, right?
There are a lot of comments going by.
It looks like they can hear me.
So work it out.
That's funny. It's all about you, that one person who can't hear me.
Let's stop everything. Everybody just stop.
There's one person who can't hear me.
I think we're going to have to just pause until he figures it out.
All right, let's go on. So my question is this.
If we were to simply publicize all the places that have portals where you can check to see if your vote got counted...
Now, I don't believe you can check to see if your vote...
Was tabulated for the right candidate.
Because that would be crossing the line into knowing who voted for what.
I think you can't do that.
But you can tell if your vote was counted.
If your ballot got in.
So why don't we do that?
Why don't we publish?
Just pick a county or pick a place where you think there might have been a problem.
And just publish the portal.
I've never seen it, have you?
Have you seen any news report?
It probably exists, but I haven't seen one, where somebody says, hey, by the way, did you know you could check to see if your vote got in?
And here's the address, just click here, put in whatever, probably social security number, I'm just guessing, and you could see if your vote got counted.
Now, there are people who believe they did not vote who would find out their vote got counted.
How many of them are there?
Wouldn't you like to know?
How many of you, let me ask you, how many of you who voted checked on the portal to make sure, if it was a mail-in vote, to make sure that your mail-in vote was received?
Somebody says it's not social security number, might be address or name or something.
I'm seeing lots of yeses.
Oh, a number of you did.
Sure did. Oh, well, I'm quite surprised.
How many of you who checked found out that somebody voted who wasn't you?
So, just so we don't get confused in the comments.
So stop answering all prior questions.
Forget answering all prior questions.
The only question is, if you checked...
Did you find that somebody voted and it wasn't you?
Is there anybody else who found a problem when they checked?
So far, I'm only seeing that people had no problem.
They checked and their vote was there.
Yeah, received is not the same as counted, but at least we can find out if it got received.
Somebody says a driver's license is required.
Maybe. Maybe.
A lot of people did check.
I'm surprised. I'm actually impressed.
All right. Well, I can't tell from your answers if anybody found any problems.
But certainly, wouldn't that make you feel more comfortable if a lot of people checked and there were no problems?
I would like to know that.
Speaking of voting irregularities, which I must tell you, no court...
Have I mentioned that no court has found...
Any, any proof of widespread voter fraud.
We all understand that, right?
No court, no court in the land has found widespread voter fraud proof.
Now, they haven't looked for it, which seems important, but I will get banned from social media if I don't tell you that they haven't found it.
They also haven't looked for it.
Which could be a big reason they haven't found it, right?
But early on in the process when people were questioning the election, I told you that I was aware of some stronger evidence that had not come out yet.
Apparently it still hasn't come out.
But Matt Brainerd, who...
Probably is the most credible among the people looking into this stuff.
Says that he got delayed a little bit, but he's got a report coming out about Nevada, in which he claims...
He claims by tweet.
We haven't seen it yet. Just a claim.
Don't kick me off of social media, because I'm not claiming this.
Not me. I'm just saying somebody did.
That his report on Nevada will show that there are more fraudulent votes...
Than the margin of victory.
Now, that doesn't mean the election was rigged.
But this is the claim.
Now, people have been mocking me for months, saying, may I do an impression of my critics?
I'd like to do a dead-on impression of all of my critics.
Oh, Scott, where's that good evidence you said was coming?
Where's all that good evidence?
I think that was a pretty good impression.
And my answer has been, hold.
It is so hard to have any kind of self-control in this world, talking about politics.
And do you know how much self-control it takes for me to just say, yeah, no court.
Not a single court has found proof of any widespread fraud.
And I'll just keep repeating that.
But in my mind, I'm thinking, hold.
Hold. Hold.
And this is what I'm waiting for.
So I've been waiting for the Matt Brainerd stuff.
Now, if the Matt Brainerd stuff produces nothing credible, then I will say in public that I was misled.
I was misled and wrong, completely wrong, that there might be stronger evidence that you've not seen yet.
So hold me to that.
I think people like me should be held to account for making a statement that is strong and not being able to back it up.
Because I made a pretty strong statement that so far I have not been able to back up.
And just to make it as definitive as possible, if the Matt Brainerd stuff doesn't produce anything that looks credible to you, then I will just say, okay, I guess I was completely wrong that there wasn't anything that I saw that you hadn't seen yet that would make me think there was something there.
So we'll wait for that.
But if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I'll step up to that.
Here's an interesting story.
Lindsey Graham is calling part of the COVID relief package reparations.
Because part of it allows that black farmers can get up to 120% of their loan forgiven.
Who made that 120%?
That was a pretty bold...
Whoever came up with 120% instead of all your debt is forgiven?
I mean, I get why they're doing it, to create a little stimulus and help people get back on their feet.
But it was an interesting way to do it.
So somebody got away with something there.
So Lindsey Graham calls it reparations, which of course is provocative.
But let me ask you this.
Have you seen anybody who favors the bill and favors that part of the bill explain it?
Has anybody been on TV to explain why they favor this specific part of the bill?
Have you seen that? I haven't seen it.
Shouldn't we be asking somebody who voted for it or who favored it or who put it in there to just give us their argument?
And I would like them to give us an argument in a way that didn't sound racist.
Because maybe they could do it.
Maybe they could do it.
But if what happened is they snuck some reparations in there, without calling it reparations, it would feel a little bit dishonest, wouldn't it?
Because I'm not even engaging with the question of whether reparations should or should not be paid.
That's an argument that can be had.
And I've been actually quite, let's say, I've been open to that argument, far more so than I imagine some of my audience.
But if you sneak it in, and you hide it, and you don't call it what it is, that's a different problem.
To me, it just looks like racism.
I don't see how you could call it anything else.
Now, you could say it is racism, but it's reparations, and so it's adjusting for a past wrong, and so therefore it's the good kind of racism.
But I think we have to be careful about labeling some kinds of racism good.
It seems like that could be a problem down the road.
All right. And of course, Biden will be talking all about this in his press conferences.
Won't he? Won't he?
Here are some of the...
You know, the coronavirus pandemic has created more fake news and bad beliefs than anything I've seen recently.
Let me just run down a partial list...
Of the things that people are still disagreeing on.
So you, of course, have strong opinions of which of these is true or false.
I'll just run down the list.
We still don't have general agreement of whether masks even work.
So I won't get into the mask argument.
I'm just saying, how did we get to this point without knowing if masks work?
Are you kidding me? Now, I've been pro-mask since the beginning.
Even when the CDC and the Surgeon General were saying, don't wear them, I was saying, yeah, I'm sure they work.
That's dumb. We should wear them.
So I've been pro-mask the whole time, but I'm going to tell you something that I've never said directly.
It's not because I'm sure they work.
I think it's more likely they work than not.
If I had to guess, if I had to put my money on it, I would say they must work a little bit.
But that's not why I'm pro-mask.
That's not why.
It's the persuasion part of it, I have to admit.
The persuasion part.
Because when you've got a mask on, you also are just constantly reminded that you're in this situation.
The moment everybody takes their masks off, you will instantly forget about social distancing.
Instantly. Now, somebody has said, you put the mask on and it causes people to get closer to people than they would have because they feel safe.
Well, that's a judgment call.
I don't know if anybody studied that.
And I can see a reasonable person would think that's a big factor.
But my... My observation and my belief with some understanding of persuasion is that wearing the masks is what allowed us to do social distancing.
I just think that the moment we took them off, we would just forget.
We would just forget.
And watch the minute they come off, everybody's going to be hugging again.
It's going to be instant. Because I think the human instinct for...
Touching is just too damn strong.
If you don't have something that you're wearing on your body, you're going to shake hands.
Right? Let me put it in the simplest possible terms.
If I don't have a mask, and I'm talking to somebody who doesn't have a mask, and they put out their hand to shake hands, and neither of us have a mask...
Probably going to shake hands, right?
Even if I think about it, I think, ah, probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Suppose we both have masks.
We both have masks, somebody puts out their hand.
That's happened, right? You've probably been in that situation.
And what do I do?
I say, social distancing.
And everybody goes, oh, okay.
Immediately. Having the mask on allows me to turn down the handshake.
You get that, right? Now, there's a similar argument going on in Texas because the government of Texas, the state, decided that they would drop their mandates, but individual businesses might still want to require masks and distancing.
So now the pressure is on the individual company.
They've got to enforce this thing.
They don't have cover from the state anymore.
That could make a difference.
So we'll see. We'll just keep an eye on that.
I think Texas did the right thing.
In my opinion, the pandemic is over.
You know, plenty of people will still die.
That's a tragedy. But I think the pandemic is over.
Because at this point, we know if you're under 40 and you don't have a high BMI, your risk is now not much bigger than just the risk of life.
You know, just getting hit by a car and stuff.
So I feel for people under 40 who have good health and low BMI, especially, it's kind of over.
We're still going to go through the formality of it to mop things up, but the hard part's over.
Here's some more resilient myths.
It was just the flu, that there was no pandemic at all.
It was just the flu. And again, I'm not giving you an opinion of which is true and not.
It's just a miracle that Or just remarkable, I guess, that there are so many things we still don't agree on as people.
We don't agree that lockdowns worked.
Probably we'll never agree on that.
I think they didn't.
I think my personal guess is that it did make sense to stop the mass gatherings.
Probably never made sense to close schools.
Probably never made sense, at least maybe in the beginning when we didn't know much.
It probably never made sense, once we knew a little bit, to stop retail stores.
Now, how about gyms?
That's sort of an edge case.
I suppose you could say people could not go if they're worried.
But, you know, at this point it does look like the lockdowns were a little too aggressive.
That seems clear. We don't agree whether Sweden was a success story or not.
We don't agree on hydroxychloroquine still.
I don't think it's anything at this point.
I thought it had some potential in the beginning, but at this point, at this point, if you don't know for sure that hydroxychloroquine worked, it probably didn't.
Just saying. There's also the belief that the masks and the lockdowns are part of a larger plan by shadow elites to train the public to put up with anything and grab power.
That one's crazy.
Some of these I could imagine that my opinion would be wrong.
For example, I could easily imagine that my mask opinion would be wrong.
Easily, right? That's the kind of thing where you could be wrong.
I could easily imagine that I'm wrong about Sweden, wrong about hydroxychloroquine, wrong about lockdowns.
I could be wrong about all that stuff.
It's all possible.
Let me tell you what I'm not wrong about.
That it's a big plot to grab power.
I'm not wrong about that.
It's definitely not a gigantic scheme to grab power.
That's the only thing I can say with complete certainty.
Everything else is sort of up in the air.
Here's another one that I heard today, and I'll ask for a fact check on this.
So one of the beliefs is that hospitals are over-counting COVID because they get reimbursed more for treating COVID people.
How many of you believe that to be true?
That we're over-counting COVID because hospitals have an incentive, a financial incentive, to count people as COVID? How many of you believe that?
There's a little lag here.
See a lot of yeses. Yes, yes, yes.
True. Agree.
Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Absolutely, says my audience.
Here's a comment I got on Twitter, and give me a fact check on this, okay?
That hospitals are not reimbursed based on what disease you had.
And as soon as I heard this, I felt stupid.
Honestly, I felt stupid.
Hospitals don't reimburse based on what disease you had.
That's not a thing.
That can't be a thing.
Here's the second part of that, because you're not convinced yet, right?
Because you've been reading the reports that that's exactly what they're doing.
How many times have you read a news report that says that's exactly what they're doing?
They are, in fact, exactly charging more for coronavirus victims, right?
You believe that. Don't you believe that's true?
Here's the second part of this Twitter comment.
Hospitals charge based on the services they provide.
To which I said, oh, yeah, that's obviously true.
Let me put it this way.
Do you think they're going to shove a ventilator down your throat so they can charge a little extra?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I don't think they are.
Do you think that they're going to put you in the COVID expensive ICU if you don't have COVID? Because they're testing you, right?
I don't think any of this is true.
I think it's almost a 100% belief on the conservative side of the world, and I don't think it's even slightly possible to be true.
Now, give me a fact check on this.
I could be wrong, right?
And I could certainly imagine that in the margin, you know, you could find a situation or a particular...
A patient who is mischaracterized.
I'm sure that's true on individual cases.
But as a widespread phenomenon, no.
They're charging you for the stuff they do.
And the hospital is not doing a bunch of extra stuff, just pretending you have COVID so they can overcharge you.
That's not happening.
So, how many of you just had your head spun around?
Probably most of you, you won't change your opinion, because that's how it works.
New information doesn't change people's opinion.
We're not wired that way.
But some of you just said to yourself, what?
I just thought that was true.
Not only is it probably not true, it's probably not even possible.
But fact check me on that.
I could be wrong. Here's another one, that we really have a case-demic, not a pandemic, because the tests are getting all the...
they're too sensitive.
So we're picking up people who don't have it.
I don't think that's true.
How many of you believe that's true?
Do you believe that we're vastly, like really a lot, over counting the number of infections?
Because our tests are too sensitive.
And they're over...
Look at the yeses.
Yes, yes, yes.
I see some no's.
Okay. So here's another one I could use a fact check on.
But my current belief is that that's not a thing.
I don't think it's a thing.
Is it? Because, so I know somebody recently who got a false positive.
So false positives are definitely a thing.
But if you get a false positive, you usually get a second test, don't you?
Don't you? If you have no symptoms and you get a positive test, don't you always get a second test?
And given that the reporting...
Is by individual.
Would the second test erase the first test in the database?
In other words, if you tested positive, I assume that gets reported to the government, right?
The moment you get tested, the government finds out.
What happens if a week later you get retested and you find out it was a false positive?
You're the same person.
Does that cancel out the first test?
You'd like to think it would.
But do you think they designed it that way?
I don't know. I'm not sure they could.
So, here's what I think.
I think calling it a case-demic is clearly wrong, and that the problem of miscounting the number of people who actually have it is probably a thing, but it's not explaining your observation.
Meaning that as long as the number of infections was somewhat related to the number of hospitalizations and deaths, you didn't have to worry too much about the accuracy of those tests.
Because if they're moving in the same direction as deaths and hospitalizations, you are measuring something.
So I'm not sure that it matters too much how accurate those are, at least within the parameters we're talking about.
Here's another one. People believe you can compare completely different countries and their outcomes, and you can learn something.
Sweden being the obvious case.
But any two countries you compare...
You're almost always making a mistake.
I just saw one yesterday.
It was another case of, you know, this country didn't do masks, and this one did, and their curves are identical.
Right? And that's on the internet.
And you're like, okay, here's a country, no masks.
Here's a country that looks sort of like it.
They did masks, and here's the curve, and it's just the same.
It takes about five minutes for somebody else to come on Twitter and say, oh, that one you said don't wear masks, all the big cities wore masks.
So in other words, they both wore masks.
So every time you think you've hit one of these golden nuggets, it's like, ah, I found these two countries that are so similar that I can tell something by comparing them.
Never. Never.
Zero times is that going to work.
Zero times. You should assume every time you see that one country compared to another country, you should assume it's false.
And you will be right probably 100% of the time.
And if you're only right 90% of the time, you should still default to it's probably not useful.
All right? Here's a question that I wonder why I don't know the answer to.
Why don't we know more about therapeutics?
And I was suggesting that this could be studied fairly quickly, and you would do it like this.
Let's say you're a researcher, and you call some major hospitals that deal with coronavirus, and you say, can you give me your coronavirus death and hospitalization statistics?
So I think you could collect statistics by hospital if you contacted them and you had some legitimate reason for it.
I think you could. Correct me if I'm wrong.
And then you ask them, what is their dominant therapeutic resource?
Like, what's the thing they're using and what date did they change from, let's say, one set of recommendations to a new one?
Let's say when ivermectin became a thing, is there a hospital that went from not recommending it to saying you've got to use it every time?
And then you take those...
Now, if you were going to compare two hospitals, how useful would that be?
Zero. I just told you, comparing any two countries is worthless.
Comparing any two hospitals, worthless, because there are too many other variables.
But suppose you've got a bunch of hospitals, and you've got enough of them so that whatever other differences might be canceling out, and you say, look, all the ones that did ivermectin had great results.
All the ones who used something else had less results.
And that still won't tell you for sure, because there are still too many variables.
But it certainly would get you a little closer, right?
You'd be Maybe crawling toward the truth if you had enough confirmation.
And I'm just wondering why I don't see anybody trying to get more information on therapeutics.
Because when we keep talking about this amazing drop-off that was unexplained, somewhat, after the holidays, and of course, smart people said, uh, it's just the holidays.
We just stopped traveling and now the curve is going down.
But at about the same time, weren't we hearing a lot about therapeutics?
Wasn't there a lot of news about therapeutics in the pre-holiday through today?
So I would imagine that the techniques the hospitals and doctors are using changed quite a bit.
Wouldn't you assume that the, let's say, the weight of If not the specifics, but at least the weight of what was prescribed therapeutically, don't you think that looks completely different in February or March to what it did in, say, November? Do you think that on average the doctors are prescribing pretty much the same stuff therapeutically?
I don't know. But I feel like this is a giant thing that we should understand better.
And it's studyable. It might be hard, but I think you could tease it out.
Do we have enough data now to know that in hindsight, and I don't blame anybody for not knowing this earlier, I'll say again that I don't hold our leaders fully responsible for their mistakes because they were all following expert advice and nobody knew what to do.
So I'm very soft on leadership mistakes during the pandemic because it was fog or war.
Some people guessed right, some people didn't.
The only obvious mistake, or maybe there are a few obvious mistakes, But one obvious mistake would be Great Britain not doing any kind of control, and then of course they had to back up and put some controls on.
But do we know now Now that we have the benefit of more information, don't we know that the way we should have handled this is to say that everybody who was under 40 and had a healthy BMI and no major comorbidities, that they shouldn't have had any restrictions at all?
Do we know that yet?
Or if we don't know that, let's say under 40 was healthy if you're thin and no comorbidities, do we know enough to know that under 30 It would have been better.
Because remember, we have to go all in on the costs and the benefits, because you're talking about everything from suicide to economic hardship and the ripple effect through time.
Maybe a million people will die from the lockdown itself, some are saying, long term.
But at this point, don't we know for sure?
That we played it wrong?
Again, I'm not blaming anybody.
We didn't know. But I think we could have kept the over-40s home and the over-weights home and just plugged along.
I think we could have.
And what would have happened?
Here's my second question.
It's related. Let's say everybody under 40, just hypothetically, just say everyone under 40 got infected because they didn't do any social distancing, And the coronavirus is really sticky, so they just all got it.
How much of an extra risk does that put on the people who had to stay home?
Well, some.
But do you get the same amount of super-spreading from a thin person as you do from somebody who is overweight?
Why don't you know that?
Because you know there are such things as super spreaders, right?
Some people are responsible for most of the spread.
It might be an 80-20 kind of situation, just roughly speaking, where 20% of the spreaders are doing 80% of the spreading.
Are those super spreaders, are they all over the weight spectrum?
Could you be a super spreader and weigh 120 pounds?
Because you're not putting out much air.
And you didn't have as much of an infection.
Now, I'm sure there are some thin super spreaders, but everything we're doing is statistical, right?
It's all a matter of risk.
If you had stayed away from only overweight people, would you have also stayed away from almost all of the super spreaders?
Now, of course, you can't make any policy about overweight, because who's to say who's overweight, right?
And people wouldn't abide by it, and it would be discriminatory, and it would be fat-shaming, and it would be everything bad.
I mean, look what happened to Chinese-American citizens when China got blamed for the coronavirus.
So it's dangerous stuff.
I don't know if you could make a policy about weight, because it would tear the country apart.
But just statistically, we might know by now that that would have been the way to play it.
I don't know. I think it all depends on the question of whether thin people can be super spreaders.
Well, not can be, but how often it happens.
If it could happen but rare, then we should have just let the thin people go on with their lives.
I asked this question on Twitter, very unofficial, unscientific poll.
How many people gained weight or lost weight during the pandemic?
Let's see your answers in the comments.
Did you gain weight or lose weight?
And if you don't mind, show us the pounds.
You know, if you gained 20 or lost 20, just show us the pounds.
The result was 40% said they gained weight, and 20% said they lost weight, and the rest were about the same.
So, in any given year, it feels to me that in any given year, 40% of people gain weight, don't they?
Alright, I'm looking at your numbers.
Lost 20, lost 30, gained 13, lost, gained same, lost, gained up 10, etc.
You know, I feel as though this experience really highlighted the importance of framing.
Now, I've told you that I'm going to try to use current events to teach you something useful for your actual life.
We'll just use the context of current events to do it.
Do you think it's because of the topic or the technology?
It wasn't my Wi-Fi, because I've got two devices running on the same Wi-Fi.
Okay, it looks like we're back.
Alright, looks like we're back.
Alright, so I was saying that I'm going to try to teach you something useful for your real life based on current events.
So it won't be just talking about the news.
Try to make it useful. And here's a framing that I think made a big difference.
In the beginning of the pandemic, when it was clear that we would spend some amount of time not being able to do our normal lives, I told you that you should see it as an opportunity.
Because there might be never another time in your life where you would have, we thought weeks in the beginning, but it turns into months, you would never have this opportunity to work on whatever your side project is, or to get in shape.
And that rather than seeing the pandemic as nothing but a problem, You should see that it opened up some opportunities that you would never have any other way, which is the ability to maybe work out more, spend time with your family, do whatever you want.
Learn language, develop a thing.
And when I'm watching the comments go by, I wonder if the mental framing that people brought to this determined whether you lost 40 pounds, as a lot of people did, or whether you just had a bad year.
I look at it myself.
I think I started two businesses, and I doubled down on my weight training, got a little extra going here on the muscles.
And I looked at it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do the things I could never otherwise have done.
I will bet you that to people who simply said, and it's just a point of view, hey, opportunity.
I'll bet you they're the ones who lost weight.
I'll bet you. And if you don't think that simply changing your frame or your filter on life, if you don't think that just reframing things can change your actual life, this is a really good example.
Now, I can't prove it because I don't have the data to do that, but I would really, really strongly suspect that the people who framed their impression of the situation as an opportunity Actually came out ahead.
Probably did. And if you thought it was nothing but a problem and you just had to wait it out, that's probably what happened with you.
So, the George Floyd trial is on.
One of the jurors, juror number eight, he said he was concerned that rioters would attack his house If he served on the jury and his name was released, that's how I would have gotten out of jury duty too.
In fact, I might have gotten out of jury duty once for something a little bit similar, but I'll tell you about that in a second.
If you're in a situation where you could be killed for just sitting on a jury, you don't have to sit on that jury.
Nobody can tell you you have to sit on that jury.
Let me say it as clearly as possible.
If you have a legitimate reason to be afraid for your safety, and I think these jurors do, this is very legitimate, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who these people are and that there could be some trouble after the fact.
So I would say that every one of the jurors should refuse to serve.
They should all refuse. And the trial should just get moved to some place where they're not worried so much about it.
So that was a smart juror because he said something that was honest.
It was true. It is what the court wants to hear.
They want to know what's honest and true.
And props.
I would say this was exactly the way to handle it.
I'm going to take it aside and tell you about a little experience I had at jury duty.
Now, first of all, I have served jury duty, and I believe that you all should.
In my opinion, everyone in the country should serve jury duty.
At least once.
Because your sense of buying into the system is really enhanced by sitting through the whole process.
Your sort of faith in the system is restored.
Believe it or not, it actually restores your faith in the system.
And part of it is that you see so many people Who are unambiguously serious about getting the right answer, right?
Everybody there, I mean, the defense attorney wants their, obviously, advocates.
But everybody involved, from the citizens, the judge, the people working in the court, they actually legitimately just want to get the right answer.
Just want to do what's good for the country.
And when you get immersed in that, it does change you.
So I highly recommend it.
If you've spent your whole life trying to avoid jury duty, just go once.
Go once at least.
You've got to feel it.
You have to breathe it to really buy into it.
Here's how I got on a jury duty once.
The trial was about...
A person with a gun in a meth lab.
So it was a dangerous, repeat criminal.
Somehow we knew it was a third offense.
I don't know if we were supposed to know that.
But would have gone to jail forever, and blah, blah, blah, and guns were involved, and it's a violent kind of a person.
Now, I was already famous by then.
So while all of my other jurors may have had no risk whatsoever...
I would be sitting here with my name completely known, because it wouldn't take long for people to figure out who I was.
And I would be, if he got convicted, he would know that I voted to convict him.
And he's a guy, a criminal with a gun, who has used guns.
Now, I said to myself, I do not want to be on the other side of a conflict with an armed career criminal.
And so when they asked, is there any reason anybody else thinks they shouldn't serve, I raised my hand and said, I think drugs should be legal.
And the judge said, what?
I said, yeah. It was a case about a meth lab.
I said, yeah, I said, I think drugs should be legal.
And the judge said, but do you think you could be impartial anyway?
No. And then I said, I would intend to.
As a citizen, I would certainly intend to look at only the facts and the law, but it doesn't work that way.
Bias is not the thing that you intentionally overcome.
If you have bias, you're the one who doesn't know it.
So I said, I would intend to use the facts and not be biased, but that's not a real thing.
People are not designed that way.
I could only intend to do it.
It's not something I could tell you I could pull off.
Well, I get dismissed.
Surprise, right? And the process is you go to the bailiff, and the bailiff has to sign something to let you leave.
And as I'm in the back of the court, they're still talking to the other people.
The bailiff whispers to me, he goes, you're in favor of legalizing meth?
And he just looks at me like I'm the biggest piece of turd that's ever been at this courtroom.
He goes, you're in favor of legalizing meth.
And I looked at him and I said, maybe.
And then he looked at me and said, you're a fucking idiot.
And then he signed my form and And I got in my high-end sports car, and I drove back to my mansion, and I felt really bad for being an idiot.
He was still there working his job as a bailiff, but I guess he's the smart one.
I guess he's the smart one.
So no, it wasn't because I wanted to legalize meth.
I just didn't want to be killed.
And so I decided that this was a job for a different citizen.
Now I'm happy to do my part, and even more than my part, as a citizen.
I appreciate actually stepping up to help wherever I can.
But this was not the job for me, because I would have been a little higher risk than other people.
How many days are we going to go before the Biden administration answers the question about why they haven't done rapid testing?
Same problem with the Trump administration.
Why the FDA has not allowed the rapid tests.
And I guess it's because there's a reporting requirement, which is a dumb reason.
So we have to assume there's corruption.
There's corruption in the Biden administration.
I assume it was the same corruption in the Trump administration.
Because it doesn't seem to be the elected people.
It seems to be maybe the career people.
And it looks like the FDA. So I'm just going to say, as a default operating assumption, the FDA has to be assumed to be corrupt.
And only because they haven't even addressed the question.
If they ever address it, and they have a good reason, I would say immediately, oh, that's a pretty good reason.
I wish I'd known that. But if they don't even address the question, the default assumption has to be corruption at the FDA. It has to be.
You can't run a country without making that assumption, that if you can't get transparency, corruption has to be assumed.
Dr. Scott Atlas, who was with the Trump administration, he was provocative because he was more of a Open up the economy kind of a guy.
He had an opinion piece here that said something really interesting.
Apparently his field and his expertise is a health policy expert.
So Dr. Scott Ellis, in addition to being a doctor, specifically he was a health policy expert, which he refers to as, quote, my field.
With a broader scope of expertise than that of epidemiologists and basic scientists.
And his point is that if you're listening to an epidemiologist, you're listening to the wrong guy, even if it's an epidemic.
Do you buy that?
Because the epidemiologist only knows his well of information.
Whereas somebody like Dr.
Scott Ellis has a specific expertise in incorporating everybody as well and making a decision that looks at all the costs and benefits, which would include everything from the suicides from the lockdowns to the economic stuff rippling forward, etc. What do you think of his argument?
Is that a good argument?
That the generalist would be the better person to make the decision Than the specialist.
Because we just spent a year mocking people who would not believe the specialists, didn't we?
Didn't we just spend a year telling each other we're fucking idiots if we don't listen to the specialists?
And then he comes along and he says, do you know there's another specialty, which is the person who can evaluate the specialists?
And that's him.
He's looking smarter every day, isn't he?
And so I ask you this.
Suppose there was a question in which Bill Gates and doctors, or let's say a doctor, we'll pick a doctor, disagreed.
How would you know which one to trust?
I'll give you an imaginary situation, but it's not too far from what's happening.
Suppose you add a doctor, and let's make this average doctor pretty smart.
IQ of 140 would be genius level.
Not Einstein genius, but sort of ordinary genius where you're in the top 2% of your class.
That's sort of pedestrian genius, not Einstein genius.
But smart enough to be a doctor.
That's pretty good. Get through medical school.
And let's say this doctor did some reading on the topic.
So it's a doctor who dug in a little bit on the topic.
And let's say you have a choice of listening to this doctor, really smart, genius, and has looked into the topic.
Or Bill Gates.
Bill Gates, I don't know what his IQ is, but if you know anything about his backstory, is probably in the 180 plus range.
It's not normal.
Let's just say that if Bill Gates had a conversation with somebody who had an IQ of 140, that person would be like a chimpanzee.
To Bill Gates. Now, I know you don't think that because you don't have an IQ of 180.
And so you can't possibly put yourself in his point of view.
But just as your dog doesn't know how much smarter you are, but you do, right?
It's kind of invisible.
You can't tell.
You really don't know how much smarter 180 is than 140.
But let me tell you, it's almost a different species.
It's a big difference.
Now, let's say that Bill Gates decided to do a deep dive, and he talked to lots of doctors.
He talked to this doctor, he talked to other doctors, he read some papers, he did some analysis, etc.
And let's say they came to different conclusions about what's the best thing to do.
Which one of those would you believe?
Okay, I'm not done yet.
First, you're going to say to me, Scott, a doctor is dedicating his life to helping patients.
You can trust a doctor, in general, because they dedicate their life to helping patients.
So, that's pretty good.
As opposed to Bill Gates, who's a robber baron, who's dedicating his life to taking over the world, possibly taking all of your money, maybe enslaving you, Possibly putting a chip in your body to control you forever like a robot.
Did I forget to mention that stuff?
Well, here's the thing.
Bill Gates walked away from the most profitable thing you could ever imagine, which is running Microsoft.
And, of course, he could have made any number of investments that would have been wildly profitable.
Do you think that talking about the pandemic or the Green New Deal, he's doing for money?
Let me say this as clearly as I can.
If you think that what Bill Gates is doing in Africa with helping them get toilets, curing malaria, turning 90%, I think, of his fortune toward charity, trying to get other billionaires to do the same, if you think that his interest is making money, I want to say this as clearly as possible.
You're fucking stupid.
Sorry. You're really stupid if you think Bill Gates is in it for the money.
I mean, that's really stupid.
Super stupid. I can't even come up with an argument why that would make any sense.
So, here's my bottom line.
If you can't tell the difference between these two things...
Now, by the way, it doesn't mean that Bill Gates would always be right.
I'm just saying that if you had to bet...
You know, since you don't know who's always right, anybody can be wrong.
But if you had to bet, I would bet on Bill Gates every single time.
Every time. It's not even close.
These two are not close.
These are worlds apart in credibility.
Worlds apart. So, that doesn't mean Bill Gates is right about everything, right?
Everybody can be wrong.
I saw somebody complaining about maybe it's risky to visit China, like for business or for tourism, I guess.
Jeff Wasserstrom, he's a China specialist, he was saying that he used to go there all the time, but he's worried about going there and being detained.
To which I say, who would go to China?
Unless you work for the government, and you kind of have to.
Why would you ever go to China in 2021?
Seriously. I would never go to China.
Now, in my case, since I talk about anti-Chinese stuff all the time, and I know that they know everybody is there and wherever they are, Going to China would be the most dangerous thing I could ever do.
I would never go to China, because I would assume they would target me.
Why wouldn't they? But more generally, I am more prominent, maybe, because I talk about China in public.
But why would any of you ever go to China for anything?
I mean, rethink that.
China is planning, of course, to be technologically dominant and try to develop a whole new technology that competes with the United States technology so that they can control smaller countries in the future, etc.
And here's the question I ask.
Why isn't China already technologically dominant?
What is it about the United States that allows us to be so inventive Successfully.
Everything from cars and smartphones and computers and aircraft.
It feels like America invents all the big commercial stuff.
Now, we have lost control of the chip business.
Apparently, Asia just owns microchips, and if we don't get that back, we're in real trouble in the long run.
But I guess I'm curious why China hasn't already dominated.
Is it just that our system is better?
Is that it? Is it just that we have better ways to get capital and there's less corruption or something?
Is that what's happening?
So I guess I don't fully understand why we've had this long a dominance for so long in the first place.
Oh, and of course the big story is Harry and Meghan.
We must talk about them.
So Piers Morgan, he quit because everybody got mad because he didn't believe Meghan Markle.
Apparently he once had a lunch date with her that didn't go well.
She ghosted him. It's reported.
And so maybe he has some personal feelings about her.
But I would like to point out the following thing.
I believe that Harry, who looks like a good person, Wouldn't you say?
Doesn't Harry look like sort of a good soul?
Like you'd want to know him.
He'd be kind of a cool dude to hang out with.
Everybody says so. I think Harry's a good person.
There's something he may not know, though.
You can't really make a woman happy.
It looks like he's trying really hard to make his wife happy.
Now, I think he has to try.
But he's still at that age where he thinks it's possible.
I've never seen it done, have you?
Have you ever seen a man make a woman happy?
That's not a thing. The best you can do is, you know, you can give people what they ask for.
You can give people, oh, sorry, what they want.
But I've never seen anybody make anybody else happy.
Have you? Let me ask you.
Have any of you made your wife happier than she was when you met her?
You know, if you asked them, they'd say, well, I'm happy I have a family, or I'm happy I'm mad, I'm happy we got married.
So people would answer that.
But if you had, like, a happiness meter, you could just put it on people and measure their happiness.
Do you think that your spouse is happier just in general?
Than when you met them? It's not a thing.
People's happiness pretty much just stays the same.
And when I was younger, when I was Harry's age, I didn't know that.
I didn't know that.
And I believed that if I met a woman who had a specific set of complaints, And I could solve those specific set of complaints, I would turn somebody from unhappy into happy.
That makes sense, right?
Somebody's unhappy because of a specific problem, you solve it, now they're happy, right?
Nope. Not in the history of humankind has that ever happened once.
Not once. Not once.
People will be glad their problems are solved.
You should definitely solve problems.
But it won't make them go from unhappy to happy.
So when you see the, you know, people were teasing Meghan Markle for being a princess, you know, she's a wealthy princess actress talking to Oprah, and she's got complaints, and people are saying, uh, you have the smallest problems I've ever seen, and you're pretty unhappy.
And Here's where we learn that it doesn't matter what is happening in Meghan Markle's life.
She will be exactly this person in every scenario.
It has nothing to do with the royal family.
They just happen to be the ones in the barrel this time.
So poor Harry, he's on the treadmill trying to make Meghan Markle happy.
He just doesn't know it's not a thing.
It's just not a thing.
I can't decide if I'm happy that Piers Morgan quit over having his opinion so attacked.
Because it isn't an opinion show, right?
Wasn't he giving an opinion on a show about opinions?
So, kind of weird that it led to this.
Unless they all always agreed with each other until this point.
But I don't mind that he's making a statement about this, and I think he's entitled to his opinion.
Here's a question for you.
I think there's a new form of racism, and I want to run this by you and see if any of you have encountered this.
I had a situation recently in which I could hire somebody to do a job, Temporarily.
And because of the unique nature of this, I knew that I could pick somebody who was either black or non-black.
So you don't need to know the details.
Just know that there was a job and I had a choice.
And I could either probably hire somebody black or probably hire somebody who wasn't.
Now, if I'm judging my own racism, I'm indifferent.
So I don't have a personal preference.
I had no reason to think there was any difference in any of the people.
So on that level, how do I feel about it?
No difference. But we just went through the age of Trump, and I ask you this question.
What should I assume about the general sentiment of the average black citizen in the United States in the year 2021 About me.
Forget about my opinion about them, which is just fine.
Is it fair to assume, statistically speaking, all things being equal, is it fair to assume that if I'm working with a black citizen of the United States and they come to understand who I am and that I said good things about Trump, is that a problem?
And Here's the better part.
Would I be doing them a favor by putting them in that awkward situation?
Would you want...
Let me switch around so you can get an example of it.
Suppose you are being asked to do a job, you take the job, and then you find out the person who hired you is a pedophile.
After you take the job.
Are you happy that you got a job?
Or are you unhappy that you accidentally ended up working for a monster?
So, same situation.
If I were to hire somebody who would be, by the nature of the hiring, would be working with me for a while, would I want them to be uncomfortable?
Because I feel that most black Americans would be uncomfortable spending time with me.
Is that unfair?
And have we created a whole new type of discrimination that didn't even exist two years ago?
Where you're discriminating against people under the reasonable assumption that they don't like you.
And is that unfair to do somebody a favor by not exposing them to you?
It's a little confusing, isn't it?
Because I can't quite wrap my head around if this is a new form of racism and I'm participating in it, which would be horrible.
Or if it's just a bad thing that happened.
I don't know. All right, let me leave you with one useful thing.
The first politician who can consistently and clearly articulate the argument on the opposing side will become president in a landslide.
Never had one. We've never had a president who could give you a full accounting of the opposite opinion.
Somebody who could say, look, I'll tell you what I'm going to do is X. But a lot of people are against X, and I want to fully explain their opinion.
And now after having fully explained their opinion, I'll tell you why I don't agree with it.
That person wins every presidential race in a landslide.
Landslide. Won't even be close.
Because what do people want to know if you're not going to do things their way?
They want to know you heard them.
They want to know that you heard their argument.
Because you can go the other way if you give full respect to the way you didn't go.
You never see that. You just see the politicians say their way is bad, my way is all good, my way worked, blah, blah, blah.
Somebody said Bill Clinton, and I think that's actually...
You might be onto that.
I think Bill Clinton came close.
He came the closest to somebody who could give respect to the other opinion.
You're right. And how did Bill Clinton win re-election?
Landslide. Landslide.
So I think that proves the point.
But imagine you could take that to the extreme.
The first person who does that...
Take somebody like a...
I'll just pick your name. Matt Gaetz.
So if you don't know, Matt Gaetz was a champion debater in high school, I think, or college, I can't remember.
But he has a background as like a state champion debater.
And when you see him debate, you see that debate talent come out.
But debate is still advocacy.
It's still trying to be on one side.
It's not really trying to represent the other side.
But he's an individual who is, I would say, intellectually agile, meaning that he can make corrections, like he can tweak things.
Not everybody can. Some people are just locked into whoever they are.
But I think he could adjust.
He could do things.
Somebody like him could say, look, here's the other side's argument, and I'll explain it completely.
Now I'll tell you why we want to go the other way.
Landslide. Landslide.
Yeah. And it's weird that nobody's tried it, right?
Somebody said Yang tried to do that.
Yeah, maybe on some level Andrew Yang would be a good example of that.
But I think you would agree that they just brushed.
They sort of brushed against it, right?
There are certainly times when some people were more forthcoming, but it's just sort of a little bit brushing the topic, I think.
Somebody says, you're wrong as hell on this one, Scott.
I'm wrong that somebody who explained the other side's argument would not win in the landslide.
Well, I think that you have to account for skill.
If you took an average person with not much skill...
That might be a way to end your career, because you gave too much attention to the other side.
But if you were good at it, and maybe I should have said this more clearly, if you were a trained persuader, telling the other side's full story won't hurt you at all.
Not even a little bit.
If you're bad at it, telling the other side's argument just puts it out there, and then it competes with your argument.
That's not good. But if you're a trained persuader, you can pull that off, and it's a dunk.
I've said before that except for my shady personal personality, I could become president easily.
I would just do that.
And I would just tell them what system I would use to give you transparency.
I could easily become president if I were a different person.
I'm just saying my skill set would make me president easily if I were starting with a different person.
I'd have to be taller, have hair, maybe have voted recently, something like that.
That would help too. Alright, somebody says voters don't care about that.
You don't have to get many to care about it.
You only have to keep some people who might have gone either way to feel that you're the most transparent of the options.
So you're only looking at that 2% slice of people who can be moved, and that's all it takes for a landslide.
And that's all for now, and I'll talk to you later.
Yes, I would need more hair to become president.
Am I the puppet master?
How would you know?
Somebody says, Bill Gates is a college dropout who bought DOS. Well, if you think that Bill Gates became the richest person in the country because he got lucky, you really need to examine that.
