Episode 1322 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About the Bad Arguments in the News About the Second Amendment, Vaccine Safety
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Ground News feature detects brain damage
Mass shootings
Sidney Powell's 100% solid lawsuit defense
Ethnic bias poll
Dumb advice: follow the science
Watch how often Harris touches Biden
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Bum bum bum bum Bum bum bum Hey everybody Come on in. Now, if I were to ask you, what would be the best moment of your entire life?
Well, it'd be hard to come up with that answer, maybe.
You'd be thinking about the birth of your children, maybe a big promotion you got, maybe the day you got married.
But no, the best day of your life is It's right now.
And if you'd like to make this even better, I know it's hard to believe, but you can, just a little bit better.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice stand, a canteen drink of flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything Everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and you're about to experience it, and you're lucky if you are.
And it happens now.
Go! Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Well, Trump is back in the news, so everything's looking a little brighter now.
I guess he had some long interview yesterday with Fox News and he was on Newsmax and blah-da-blah-da.
So it looks like we'll have a steady diet of Trump.
And so far he's not making a lot of news.
He's just complaining about Biden, which makes a little bit of news.
But apparently the scoop is...
That Trump will be returning with some kind of a platform, some kind of a social media, or maybe it's a news platform.
We don't know what kind of platform it is, but he's going to be coming at us with a platform.
If I were him, this is how I would have done it.
I would have tried to get investors to do a roll-up, which is combining, let's say, Rumble and Parler and some of the other Some of the other properties that try to compete with the major brands.
And I'd make it an alternative internet, basically.
But we'll see what he does.
Here is the coolest thing ever.
Alright, I may have oversold this a little bit.
Back it up. Back it up.
It's a cool thing. You heard about how scientists say that if you consume too much news from one source, either all on the left or all leaning right, that it will cause brain damage.
Brain damage.
And they don't use that word lightly.
If you only follow the left or you only follow the right, you actually get brain damage.
Now, wouldn't you like to know how much brain damage you're getting?
Because nobody is perfect, right?
Nobody is perfectly balanced.
Wouldn't you like to know?
Well, it turns out that there's a brand new tool that I just tweeted.
So you can just go to my Twitter account.
It's right at the top at the moment.
And you've heard of Ground News.
Ground News.
They tell you which news sites, left or right, are covering which stories.
So they'll often hilariously post something that says everybody on the left is talking about it and literally no one on the right, or vice versa.
So that's very illuminating.
But they came out with a new little tool, a new app, in which you can put in the name of any Twitter user, including yourself, and it will tell you Based on your Twitter activity and who you're following and tweeting, I guess, how biased your followings are.
So if you're interacting primarily with the left or primarily with the right, science says brain damage.
Brain damage. And so you can find out how much brain damage you're giving yourself with this app.
Is that about the coolest thing you've ever heard in your life?
So, ground news, congratulations.
So I just ran my own through it, and I came out relatively balanced.
I definitely lean a little bit more right.
The people I interact with are more likely to be on the right.
But the bottom line for me is that I follow enough news on the left and enough people, and I interact with them enough that I am not giving myself brain damage.
How about that? Yay for me.
Some of you may get a different result.
And it'll be even more interesting if you put other people in there.
So let's say somebody's arguing with you on Twitter and they're just being a moron.
Stick them into the app and find out if they have brain damage.
Do you see why I'm so excited about this?
Yeah, look in my...
Somebody's asking for the link.
So I just tweeted it just a moment before I came on.
Just search for Ground News, like the ground you're standing on, and you can follow them, and you should.
Or you can go to my Twitter account, and it's the one I just tweeted this morning.
So you'll see it right at the top.
So you can actually have a Twitter debate with somebody and send to them the result of how brain damaged they are.
Could anything be better?
Is there anything you've waited for that would make you happier than this?
Seriously. If it looks like I'm just like dancing in my seat, it's because nothing could make me happier than being able to prove to somebody, I mean, I don't know how much science you want to say this is, but certainly it would be entertaining.
Even if not strictly scientific.
To say, you know, according to this app, the things you follow and the things you interact with strongly suggest according to science.
And you do follow science, right?
Do you love science?
Do you? Do you love it?
Because I love it.
If you love science, here's the evidence that you've got brain damage.
All right. Of course, there's yet another mass shooting.
Apparently, there have been seven mass shootings in the last seven days.
I'm seeing a pattern develop here.
Now, some of the mass shootings are more like inner city...
Situations where things got out of control, I think, as opposed to the kind where somebody gets a gun and plans it and goes somewhere just to shoot people.
But seven of them in seven days?
Even if you're pro-Second Amendment, as I am, I'm very pro-Second Amendment, you've got to worry about seven shootings in seven days, seven mass shootings.
We learned today that the Denver shooting, in which 10 people tragically died, including a police officer, were told that the suspect is male.
Well, I didn't see that coming.
Is anybody else as surprised as I am that this mass shooter was male?
What are the odds of that?
But, interestingly, the ethnicity of the shooter has not been released, has it?
Yeah. If I'm going to take a guess, probably a youngish white guy.
I'm just going to put it out there.
Because if you're young and white, there's a pretty good chance you're in the same category with a lot of mass shooters.
Now, obviously, there's a lot of urban shootings that have a different character to them.
They're more crime-related or gang-related or a party got out of control.
But when somebody actually plans it, the odds of them being a white male with an AR-15, pretty, pretty high.
Pretty high. Why is it that the AR-15s are used in so many of these mass shootings?
I just saw a list this morning of how often they're used.
Pretty often. Pretty often.
So why is it that the AR-15 is the most used weapon?
Handguns being second.
Now, you say to yourself, well, the reason it's being used is because it's the best weapon that's easily available.
Best in terms of killing power.
That's not exactly true.
I think most gun experts or gun hobbyists will tell you that if you went into exactly those same situations with the right automatic handguns, you would do the same amount of damage.
Because if it's a crowded space, the handgun is going to do just as much damage.
So you're not really getting that much extra killing power from the AR-15.
And by the way, I know there's lots of gun enthusiasts watching this.
So check my math on that, right?
Now, here's the first thing we learned.
None of those mass shootings involved a fully automatic weapon.
None of them involved a fully automatic weapon.
Why is that? Yeah, I meant semi-automatic, sorry.
Gun people are correcting me as we go.
So I often use the wrong gun terms, because guns are not exactly my hobby.
I'm pro-Second Amendment, but I don't make a hobby of it.
So, yeah, why is it that fully automatics were not used?
Because they're illegal. Well, not illegal.
You can own a fully automatic, but it's harder.
It's just more difficult.
So, doesn't this give you a lot of evidence, short of a scientific proof, but doesn't this strongly suggest that banning fully automatic weapons may have worked?
In the sense that nobody used an automatic weapon.
But, like I said earlier, maybe the total number of people killed ends up being about the same.
Because a person with handguns in a public place is going to do just as much damage, no matter what kind of weapon you have.
Maybe there's a little faster firing with the...
My understanding is that even if you had an automatic weapon, unless you were shooting into a crowd at close range, you'd still rather take a shot at a time.
Gun people, confirm this for me.
If your goal was to kill a bunch of people, and unless they were clustered all together, as long as there's a little separation, your best technique for getting the most people dead would be one shot at a time.
Can anybody...
Can anybody confirm that?
Now, somebody's saying there are fewer rounds than a handgun, but of course you would bring extra rounds with you.
You'd be slapping a clip in there, I guess, pretty quickly.
But the gun experts have schooled me, people with actual military experience, etc., And saying that a shot at a time, you know, well-aimed, is going to get you more kills than...
And one of the reasons is that automatic weapons will ride up.
Have you heard of this? Here, let me do the example for you using my backscratcher.
So, apparently, if you have an automatic weapon and you put it on automatic and it starts shooting, it will go like this.
And your gun will rise.
So you actually end up being very inaccurate if you keep it on the fully automatic mode.
So the point being that a non-fully automatic and even non-semi-automatic revolver is going to kill a lot of people, even if it doesn't shoot as quickly and doesn't carry as many rounds.
So there's your master shooter education for today.
How long will it be before we find out the ethnicity of the killer?
And why would they keep that from us?
Makes you curious, doesn't it?
Makes you curious. All right.
How about some good news?
In Appalachia, the place in the United States most famous for poverty, somebody built a greenhouse that is the size of 58 football fields.
What? What?
It's an indoor greenhouse.
We're growing all kinds of stuff.
And it's the size of 58 football fields.
One of the largest in the world.
Now, here are the benefits of growing indoors.
Saves on water.
Like, a lot.
And agricultural use of water.
One of the biggest problems in the world.
So that's good. Number two, saves on shipping.
Because, in theory, you could locate your indoor...
Indoor growing, closer to the market, so you don't have to ship it from another country, etc.
So you save on water, you save on shipping.
I'm assuming you save on pesticides, because it's a controlled environment.
So in theory, you wouldn't need any, right?
So they would be...
I don't know if this is true.
I'd have to get an opinion on this.
But that might make them organic...
Just because you don't have to control for pests?
I think that might be true.
Although you would still fertilize them, so maybe that's not organic.
And then the third thing is that our food supply would be safer from climate change.
So if you believe that climate change is going to make it worse for growing in some way, because it disrupts the weather pattern, and I know you're already typing, Scott, don't you know that more CO2 is good for plant life?
And there is more vegetation in the world now than there has been in years because of all that CO2. So climate change is really good for crops, Scott.
Don't you know that? Scott, Scott, Scott.
Well, I do know that.
But if climate change, I'll put an if there, because I know some of you are skeptics, but if climate change causes massive weather disruptions, those disruptions and floods and whatever could be a larger impact than the CO2. So there is some risk.
We just don't know which way that goes.
Climate change could end up being the greatest thing that ever happened to farms.
But it could also make farms in some places non-viable while making farms in other places the best year they've ever had.
So it's nice to have some greenhouse options here.
To me, this is one of the best stories ever.
It just doesn't seem interesting.
Right? But the fact that you can make greenhouses this big and apparently they figured out how to make it profitable, it's a big deal, I think.
If I were to design a city, and I do plan to do this before I die sometime, I would put a massive greenhouse right there.
So I would make sure that you paired maybe a nuclear power facility, possibly a Gen 4, you know, smaller, safer kind of thing, Then I would put a massive indoor farm.
And then I would make sure that your water situation was taken care of.
You were close enough to a major airport.
Boom! Perfect city.
More to that later.
There's a statistic that says 42% of Americans report undesired weight gain during the pandemic.
And the average weight gain is 29 pounds.
And 41 pounds for millennials.
Do you believe any of that?
Aren't we at a point where you just don't believe any statistics?
All right. No, seriously.
Do you believe that the millennials were gaining 41 pounds on average?
41 pounds?
I don't believe that anyone gained 41 pounds this year.
I don't even know if you could gain 41 pounds in a year.
Could you? If you tried really hard, could you gain 41 pounds?
I mean, you'd have to start at 300 to gain that.
So the first thing you need to know is that this is very unlikely to be true.
That's very unlikely.
And secondly, how many people got healthier?
In the comments, all right, are you ready?
In the comments, you're already starting it, but I want the rest of you to do it.
Tell me your weight, gain, or loss, all right?
So tell me your weight, gain, or loss.
I want everybody to participate.
Either the same, you know, plus 10, minus 10.
Give me your number. I'll tell you mine.
I think I'm plus 5, but intentionally, okay?
So I intentionally gained five pounds for cosmetic reasons.
Christina likes me, you know, five pounds heavier.
I like myself 5 pounds lighter because when I look in the mirror, my stomach is tighter and I can see my abs.
Christina likes me a little beefier because my face looks a little more filled out.
I look younger that way. So I gained 5, but it was under control.
I'm going to read off your numbers.
Negative 10, negative 20, plus 20, plus 10.
Wow, minus 4, plus 40.
Jeez, sorry about that. Plus 7, plus 15, these will all be pluses.
12, even, same.
20 pounds lost, congratulations.
Minus 18, good work.
Lost 18, and again, good work.
Plus 10, minus 7, good work.
I feel as if this pandemic really, really told you who you were.
Didn't it? About 5, minus 1, plus 10, plus 4, minus 5, plus 10, plus 2, plus 5.
Whoa, hold on, hold on.
Did I really see that? Jungle...
Well, I'm not going to read your name because it's offensive, but did you really lose 64 pounds this year?
Could be. Um...
Lost 10, lost 10.
All right. Somebody says they lost 41.
I don't know about that. Minus 25.
Good job. Lost 15.
Good job. All right.
Here's what I think happened here.
When you have something like a pandemic and suddenly you don't know what to do because you haven't been in a pandemic before, and you have to make your own decisions...
Most of the time you're put into a situation where the decisions are kind of made for you.
You kind of know you've got to get a job and you have to wear clothes and if you want to go somewhere there's a certain way to do it, etc.
But you hit the pandemic and suddenly all the rules are wrong and nothing's the same and now you have to figure out what to do.
I think this really told you who you were.
There are people who see crises and say, oh wow, this crisis is going to give me an opportunity to do something I never could have done without the crisis.
And one of the things that I wanted to do was take a year to work on my fitness more than normal.
And so I did that.
And so at least my muscle definition is probably better than ever.
I said to myself, I'm not going to waste this crisis.
I started a new line of business.
I got healthier. Got a lot of stuff in order.
And so I came out ahead.
And I knew I would because it was my plan and there was nothing to stop it.
There was no friction. I had every opportunity in the world to come out ahead.
I had more time to work on stuff so I could do things that I've been putting off.
And I could work on my fitness because I don't have a social life, like most of you.
And on day one, I tried to get you a little bit pregnant with that philosophy, that you should be looking at this as an opportunity, not just a problem.
It's a big problem, but it comes with an opportunity.
Now, here's the payoff for this topic.
Number one, ask yourself, look at the people who lost weight.
If you look at all the people in the comments who said they lost weight, I don't think it was a majority, maybe 25% of you, perhaps, said you lost weight.
That could have been you.
That could have been you, right?
Because nothing stops you from taking a walk, and nothing stops you from eating more healthily.
If you need some help in losing weight, See my book behind me, How to Fail Almost Everything and Still Win Big?
Two of the chapters in there are about fitness and diet systems.
Now, when I talk about a system, it's as opposed to having a goal of losing weight.
If you have a goal, usually you're just going to work harder.
I'm going to try harder to not eat, and then that's just something that most people can't do.
But if you have a system that makes it easy to lose weight...
Or easy to exercise.
Well, then most people can succeed.
Because you took something hard and you just made it easy.
Let me give you an example.
I remove from my home food that's bad for me.
That's the system. How hard is it for me to simply not buy food that's bad for me?
It's not hard. Because as long as I'm not hungry when I'm shopping, which is also a system, right?
Make sure you're not hungry when you're shopping.
I just don't have anything in the house that's bad for me.
So when I'm hungry, I eat what's in the house.
Because it's easy. So I've created a system in which eating bad food is sort of impractical.
Because I made it that way.
Now, there's a whole bunch of other system tweaks, such as a system of continuously learning how to prepare food that's good for you in a way that you enjoy eating.
So, I never stop experimenting on how to make a yam taste good.
And by the way, I have a really good way to eat a yam that makes it taste great.
Soy sauce and pepper, mmm, it's good stuff.
If you're not experimenting continuously how to make the food that's good for you taste good also, the difference between how good your bad food tastes and how good the stuff that's good for you tastes is going to be gigantic.
But you can learn to close that gap by learning to prepare it just the way you like and figuring out what works and what doesn't.
Anyway, that's the short version.
If you want to see the longer version, It's in my book.
People who have read that book report losing massive amounts of weight, gaining muscle, and none of the book is about really weight or diet.
It's only about systems.
So you would design your own systems.
I'll give you some examples. But it's about coming up with a system that's designed for you, not one that I give you.
But here's the payoff for this bullshit statistic.
About 42% of Americans...
Report undesired weight gain.
And this comes from Nate Silver, who you should be following on Twitter.
Nate Silver, even if you disagree with him on everything, he can do math.
He can do math.
Better than you can.
Probably. At least statistics, anyway.
So, here's what he says.
This really calls out for a control.
Meaning a control part of the experiment.
How many Americans have undesired weight gain in a typical year?
Did any of you think of that question?
If this year 42% of Americans gained weight they didn't want, what's a normal year look like?
I'll bet it's pretty close to 42% of Americans gained weight they didn't want.
Right? It's probably exactly the same.
But you don't know that, because they don't tell you that.
And it takes somebody who lives and breathes statistics to flag this obviously missing part of the analysis, which could be that there's nothing to see here.
This might be just like every other year.
In fact, the thing that can't be ruled out is that people gained less weight This year than before.
I don't think that's true, by the way.
But you can't rule it down based on what we know.
So that's why native silver is a sort of a national treasure, because Americans are statistically ignorant.
And I would include myself in this category.
You know, my skill stack It has some statistics in it, but not enough that I would consider myself capable to be a good analyst in that area.
So, Sidney Powell.
You all know Sidney Powell.
She made lots of claims about Dominion Software.
And Dominion Software is suing her for saying these things they say are untrue.
Guess what her defense is?
You don't have to guess. I'm just going to tell you.
Her defense is, she's arguing in new court filings, that no reasonable people would believe what she said.
That's right. Her defense is that no reasonable person would have believed anything she said about dominion.
What do you think of that?
Legally speaking, is that a good defense?
So when she was saying things such as the Dominion software had some Venezuelan dictator connection, and that it was, you know, her claim is that it was rigged, etc., did you,
as a reasonable person, as a reasonable person, did you say to yourself, well, I don't think I could believe that just because she's saying it, Now, there's a little bit more to the argument, which is that a reasonable person should know that just because Sidney Powell says something is true, that you would still need to check, you know, legally, you'd have to do audits or whatever, you would still have to check to know if it were true.
So the point is, even if you agreed with her, Like your instinct, etc., was the same as hers.
So even if you did believe there was some gigantic irregularity here, you would also be smart enough to know that you wouldn't take it based on just Sidney Powell said so.
Right? No matter how much you think she's right, isn't it also true that you, as a reasonable person, would still say, but you still have to check, I mean, it's not just because a lawyer is pretty sure it happened, because she didn't say, here's my source code, look, you can see it yourself.
She did not say, here's the proof, you can see it yourself, although she did, I guess she showed some evidence.
But I think it should have been obvious to anybody who is a reasonable person How do you define a reasonable person in 2021 when literally nobody is a reasonable person?
It's just not even a thing.
But here's the thing.
I consider myself a reasonable person.
The evidence is in the Ground News app, which suggests that I follow enough news on the left and the right to be relatively non-brain damaged.
That's right. So now I have an app which has looked at my body of tweeting and commentary and decided that, unlike many of you, I don't have brain damage from politics.
Now, what if you ran your Twitter account through the Ground at News app and it came out showing that you're only following news on the right?
Well, that would say that you have brain damage.
Scientifically speaking. Or the same as if you are only following news on the left.
It doesn't matter if it's left or right.
If you're only following one side, science says you've got brain damage and you're giving it to yourself.
Now, would you say that a person who has brain damage would be a reasonable person?
No, that's the opposite, right?
A reasonable person, by definition, wouldn't you say is somebody without brain damage, right?
That would be pretty much understood to be in the definition.
So I'm a reasonable person.
I can demonstrate with this app that I don't seem to have an indication of brain damage.
And when Sidney Powell was making her claims about Dominion, do you know what I said out loud many times in public?
Well, there's no way that's true.
That's what I said.
And I'm a reasonable person, and I can prove it with this Ground News app.
So, how good is her defense?
I'm a reasonable person, and to me, her defense is 100% solid.
Because there was no way that me, you know, I, as a reasonable person, believed any of her claims.
I did believe it was worth looking into.
I did believe that if you looked into it, you might be able to determine if her instinct was correct or if her instinct was off.
Right? You'd be able to figure that out.
I think she has an airtight defense.
I honestly do.
Because I would defend it just the way I said.
Show me some reasonable people Who, according to the app Ground News, do not have brain damage.
I'll show you a few. Here's one.
His name is Scott Adams.
Check for yourself.
Look at his body of work.
Check his Ground News app and find out if he has brain damage.
There's a reasonable person.
Scott, you're reasonable.
Did you believe everything I said?
Or did you think, like a reasonable person would, that you'd have to validate it by really looking into it?
I think she wins. I think she does.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
When I get into the legal stuff, I'm way over my head.
But I think this type of case, it's not a reasonable doubt case, right?
It's one of those civil things where the jury just has to be weighted in one direction.
They don't have to have 100% agreement.
So she does have some risk, but her defense is solid, I would say.
So I guess there's a lot of movement in, I guess, King County, a county that includes Seattle, Washington, will spend $5 million a county that includes Seattle, Washington, will spend $5 million of their COVID relief that they're getting from the government to fight what they call anti-Asian bias in response to recent shootings in Atlanta.
Georgia, etc. Now...
I think that anything that reduces bias is good, and anything that reduces violence is good, and anything that reduces anti-Asian violence is good.
But I didn't even need to throw in the anti-Asian part, right?
Because anything that reduces violence is good.
But here's the question.
How do you do that?
What would be the way to reduce anti-Asian bias?
Because what's it based on?
If you knew what the anti-Asian bias was based on, then you could work on the base assumptions to make sure people are on the same page.
But I have, let's say, a hypothesis that the anti-Asian bias has to do with their success.
Maybe not 100%.
But don't you think the biggest part of why Asians are being targeted has more to do with the fact that they're doing great?
Like in American society, they're doing better than almost any other group.
And do you really think that a Chinese-American citizen is being targeted because the Chinese Communist Party...
Which is, you know, X number of people.
It's not China, and it's certainly not all Chinese people.
Is there anybody who is targeting Asian Americans because of what the Chinese Communist Party is doing?
Like, we're being told that that's a thing, but is it?
And did the violence suddenly spike, or are we just more aware of it?
It only takes a few high-profile incidents.
And if you look at the Atlanta one, that looked like a coincidence.
The fact that the people who were killed were mostly Asian was because it was a massage parlor.
It was the massage parlor that was the problem, according to the shooter.
It wasn't the ethnicity at all.
So... First of all, I assume anti-Asian bias and violence are real things, of course, and that there should be a lesson.
But I don't know if you can do it if the real problem is that Asian Americans are too successful.
Because I feel like that's the problem.
Let me ask you, who is the most hated group in America right now?
Who is the most hated group?
I would say white, rich people.
You know, the elites, the people in power.
They're probably the most hated.
Why is it that the most hated people are elite, rich, white people?
Isn't it because they're successful?
You know, it's also because the people who are in charge, or the people you think are in charge, Create all the rules, and if the rules seem bad, then who are you going to blame?
But don't you have a problem that the people who are the most successful are always hated?
Is there any exception to that?
Can you think of any exception where the people who have the power Don't also have a third of the public or more just hating them.
It's sort of automatic, isn't it?
So I have a real question of whether anti-Asian bias can be addressed in like a substantial way as long as they continue to be successful.
It feels like that's the problem.
So I did a little very unscientific poll on Twitter.
They're all unscientific, but this is the most unscientific of them all.
The least credible poll ever taken.
I ask this question.
In your opinion, which ethnic slash racial bias is the biggest problem in the United States in 2021?
So forget about the past.
We're just talking about 2021.
Which ethnic racial group is subject to the most bias?
Now, my audience is probably 87% white, and surprisingly, or not, the results were that 87% of the respondents said that white people are subject to the biggest ethnic bias.
Surprise! If 87% of my audience had been Asian Americans, I think 87% would have said Asian Americans are the biggest bias victims.
Likewise black, likewise Hispanic.
But just for fun, knowing that my audience is overwhelmingly white and male, so it's as non-scientific a group as you could ever come up with, But they say, that group says, that the biggest bias is against white people by 87% say that.
7% say the biggest problem is with black Americans.
5% say Asian Americans, or Asians, I guess, because not all are citizens.
And 2% said Hispanic.
Now, to me, that's the most interesting one, isn't it?
How could it be that we have hordes of migrants trying to come across the border?
One of the biggest political questions is the number of Hispanic migrants coming into the country.
It's, you know, one of the main things we talk about.
And yet, my audience, again, deeply unscientific poll, my audience says that only 2% think that Hispanics We're suffering the biggest ethnic and racial bias.
Why is that?
I have a hypothesis.
They don't complain as much.
Isn't that the whole story?
Hispanics just don't complain as much.
Especially the immigrants.
Because if you willingly came here and took a big risk to get here...
At the very least, cognitive dissonance would make you think you were in the country you wanted to be in.
So, number one, one of my biggest problems with trying to be tough on border security, because I think rationally you have to have a good border security.
I just think you have to. Now, how much you open it is a separate question.
But you have to control it first.
That's my view. And anybody who's willing to take the risks and they're ambitious enough and they want to live in this country with me, it's hard to not like them.
It really is.
If somebody just walks up to you and says, you know, I really like you.
I really like you.
In fact, I'd like to spend more time around you and people like you.
That's how much I like you and people like you.
How do you dislike that person?
And to a large extent, that's what immigrants tell us without saying it.
They're saying they're voting with their feet and their lives.
They're risking their lives.
Risking their lives to be more like me and to be closer to me.
Right? That's not the purpose, of course, but it works out that way.
And so...
From an economic perspective and safety and all that, you have to control immigration.
But I can't feel bad about it.
I can't feel bad about Hispanics wanting to be part of what I'm part of.
So I think that makes sense.
And that population seems mostly interested in work.
They're less interested in complaining And they're more interested in work.
And I don't know.
I can't feel bad about that.
So there we go.
I think everybody thinks that their group is the one that has the most bias.
So that just makes sense. All right.
So Biden's coming up with this new $3 trillion infrastructure proposal on top of all the trillions we've spent already.
And here's the thing.
Do we understand anything about national debt?
Like anything?
You know, I've been on the side who said that during the pandemic you should just pick the biggest number and just get that money out there because the risk of the whole system falling over is much bigger than the risk of we added 20% to the debt or whatever we're going to add.
And so it made sense during the pandemic.
But once you get to spending outside the focus of the pandemic to just stuff we need, infrastructure, clean energy, etc., shouldn't there be some kind of limit on that?
Shouldn't there be some kind of limit on how much we spend?
Or at the very least, shouldn't our leadership say, look, here's the deal.
We're going to spend trillions of dollars...
On stuff that we think we need, and there'll be good investments, etc.
But here's how we're going to pay back the debt.
I feel as if they need to tell us that.
That they can, or how much risk there is, or whatever.
Because I'm not saying that we shouldn't spend this money.
I'm just saying it's an incomplete plan.
It's a half a plan.
A half plan says we're going to spend this much money.
The other part of the plan is, and we're going to pay it back?
And if we didn't pay it back, what does that do?
What happens to inflation?
What happens to taxes?
So I believe that we will be presented, the country will, with this ginormous $3 trillion jobs and infrastructure proposal, and that our news industry will not insist...
For a complete picture.
A complete picture that explains how much debt can the United States take on?
How are we going to pay it back?
Now again, during a pandemic, you don't have the luxury of asking those questions.
But we certainly have the luxury now.
I mean, it's the end of the pandemic-ish.
But we should be asking that.
But that won't happen.
And that is a gigantic failure of the press.
And you can predict it.
You don't even have to wonder if that'll happen.
There's no way in hell we will ever get any good information on this question of, do we even need to pay back this debt?
Because national debt is different than personal debt.
You can keep national debt forever.
Personal debt, you kind of have to pay off, or you're in trouble.
All right. I was asked on Twitter what I thought about this effort to study the origins of the virus.
Apparently there's some science that you can apply to, if you have enough samples from the right places, you can apply your science and maybe you could find out the origin of the virus.
To which I say, that sounds like a complete waste of time.
Here's why. What is the most predictable thing that you could say if there's a team of scientists studying the origin of the virus?
The most predictable outcome, I would say 100% certainty, is that if they were to come up with a decision and say, okay, it started in Wuhan or started somewhere else, no matter what they said, and no matter how much they showed you their data and how they got there, there would be other scientists who say they studied it wrong.
100% chance.
So what would you do as a citizen or as a leader if you knew that one group of scientists said, yeah, we studied it and it came from a banana in Switzerland.
And another group of scientists said, we just looked at your data and it doesn't look right, here's why.
Now it's your job to follow the science.
What do you do? What do you do?
Do you look at the work and say, all right, let me dig into this a little bit.
Let me look into the work of how these scientists came up with this idea of where it came from.
I'll look at their statistics that I don't understand.
I'll look at the genetics that I don't understand.
And then what? Am I going to decide who's right?
No. This is the problem with the dumbest thing anybody's ever said, which is trust science.
Trust science is one of the dumbest pieces of advice.
After be yourself, maybe the worst advice in the world is be yourself.
You should try to be better than yourself.
You should try to raise your game.
Being yourself is the worst advice.
But follow the science doesn't work because we don't know what the science is.
We don't see it.
It would be like, you could replace the sentence follow the science with follow the magic leprechaun.
Whatever the magic leprechaun tells you to say, do that.
Now, that wouldn't be easy, would it?
Because you don't know where to find a magic leprechaun.
And if you did, you wouldn't believe him.
Because it's a magic leprechaun.
Not very credible.
So, You could tell us to follow the science all day long, but we can't.
That's not a thing.
All we can do is hear what people say.
Noise is not science.
What you hear when the experts are talking, the scientists, is noise.
Noise is not science.
Then your brain does this thing where the noise is translated into thoughts, the thoughts are formed into opinions, and then you say to yourself, oh yeah, I guess I just heard some science.
I guess I'll follow the science.
You never came close to science.
What happened to you was that some noise, some vibration of air, entered your ear, and then your brain did something with it.
You are so far from science.
It's like science is in a sealed lead container on the other side of the universe.
It might be in there, but you can't get to it.
And you can't see it.
And nobody can tell you what's in there who is credible.
That's it. Now, science, of course, is better than anything else we have.
But the whole fetish of trusting science is for stupid people.
If I can say it as plainly as that.
Follow the science is for stupid people.
Just like be yourself.
It's advice for stupid people.
It's just the worst advice. Alright.
There was a nursing home in New York State that burned up and some people were trapped inside.
I didn't see the injury and death count.
Well, let me tell you.
If there's one place you don't want to be on this whole earth, it would be a nursing home in New York.
Because nothing good happens in those places, apparently.
Rasmussen, the polling people, say that 58% say that masks should be required until everyone is vaccinated.
58%. So a nice, fairly solid majority say wear masks until everyone is vaccinated.
What do you think of that? Of course, it breaks down by political lines.
76% of Democrats say you should wear your masks until everybody's vaccinated.
But nearly half of Republicans, 46%.
So nearly half of Republicans say the same thing.
I know my audience is more anti-mask.
But here's my take on this.
As much as I think masks were a good risk management decision, we now have enough data to see that it doesn't seem to move the curve.
And if it doesn't move the curve, it doesn't mean they don't work.
It just means that maybe you can't see the effect because the other variables are just bigger.
And I think at some point the death rate is low enough that even if masks work, You shouldn't wear it because it does lower your quality of life quite a bit.
So I think you should drop the masks before it's safe.
You know what I mean?
So even if masks help, you should probably drop them sooner than later just because it's not that big of an effect and the citizens want some freedom.
We'd like some freedom. All right.
Oakland is going to do a big UBI test, the universal basic income.
So basically, some group of people in Oakland, not all of them, but some group will be selected to get free money, and then they can do whatever they want.
They just give free money.
What do you think of that?
Well, I love an experiment.
I think I've told you this before.
So I am 100% in favor of this experiment.
It's Oakland's money.
They want to spend it on this.
Okay. But I've often said that the difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans consistently understand human motivation, whereas Democrats consistently act like it's not even a thing.
That if you reward people for stuff, they won't do more of it.
Weird. Or that if you penalize somebody for something, they won't do less of it.
Whereas Republicans think, no, if you reward people, they'll do more of it.
If you punish them, they'll do less of it.
It's never different. Friction works every time.
Not 100%, but it works at least a little every time.
So... Testing this UBI makes sense, but what would you expect to come out of the test?
Here's what I expect. People who are intrinsically motivated will very quickly not need it because they'll go get their own work, etc.
And people who are not intrinsically motivated will just spend the money and it won't make any difference.
And I feel as though that the real way we should be thinking of this...
Is that modern society has evolved to the point where it's so complicated and hard just to live and navigate our complicated world that a huge percentage of the population will never be able to work, never be able to thrive in civilization as it has evolved.
So there's going to be some percentage, maybe 20%, who are going to do great.
Because they can handle complexity, they can find all the advantages and strategic things and put it together.
And if you're unusually smart and capable and ambitious, this is a really good time to be alive.
But if you happen to be just a person who wants to Kind of get by in life.
You are in the wrong civilization.
Because you have to work to get by, and if you're just not a worker, it's going to be tough.
So I would expect that the universal basic income would keep people who are not ambitious, they would continue to not be that way, whereas they might have been forced to do something productive otherwise.
But here's a...
So I'm going to say...
Two things about this. One is that we need a second path for human beings.
One path is the common one that we see now, which is if you go to school and you're smart enough and you're not addicted to too many things, you can probably make a nice life for yourself.
But I feel as if we need to create a path for people who will never be competitive or successful In such a complicated civilization.
That's going to be a lot of people.
It could be a third of the public just won't be able to work or succeed when drugs are freely available and temptations are all over the place.
So I think we need this second path, which would require a lower cost of living.
Maybe you're building new communities from greenfields.
But basically a tribal living situation where everybody can do a little bit to contribute.
You know, they can chip in a little bit.
But they don't have to be a real go-getter.
And they don't have to be able to thrive in the complicated world.
As long as they can do well and help out in a sort of a tribal, more cooperative environment...
So when you hear stuff like that, you say to yourself, my God, Scott, that's communism.
Keep that away from me. To which I say, maybe people are different.
Personally, I would not want to be anywhere near communism.
Because I feel I can thrive better if I compete.
And I feel I have some competitive advantages, so I'd be better just competing.
But there are a lot of people who can't compete.
And we just have to face that.
Because it's just real.
A lot of people just can't compete in the modern world.
They need a path where they can have a reasonable life.
It just costs less. So they don't have as many...
Maybe they don't have cars because you build a community where you just don't need one.
So they don't have to pay for the car.
All right. So anyway, lowering the cost of living for the second path is just...
It has to happen. It has to happen.
And then the other thing, if you want to get really controversial...
Shouldn't we only be comparing ethnicities by happiness?
Suppose you were to do a poll and you found out that black Americans were just as happy as Asian Americans or anybody else, white Americans.
Do you need to fix that?
So let's say one group has more money and more advantages, and that difference is real, and it's caused by bias.
It's caused by racism.
Let's say that's real.
But what if both sides are just as happy?
Isn't happiness the point?
If you had two groups that are happy, and let's say one person has a million dollars, and the other person has a hundred thousand dollars, a very artificial example, but they're just as happy, What would be the argument for taking the money from the rich person and giving some amount of it to the less rich person?
What would be the argument for that?
Like, why does that need to be balanced when the point of life is happiness and they're both just as happy?
So, I would say that looking at economics and trying to balance it, we're just looking at the wrong thing.
I do like, you know, economic equality.
I'm all for it.
But I'm not sure that's the point of life.
Elon Musk said something provocative.
He tweeted a little meme that said the strongest argument for...
Well, what he tweeted was he said the strongest argument against aliens, meaning against the idea that aliens are visiting in their spaceships.
And he showed two graphs.
One showed the camera resolution...
Improves, you know, has been improving, like, greatly in recent years, especially recently.
But the photographs of UFOs are still low definition, which is kind of funny.
How much further into the future can we go where every photograph is really, really clear, you know, and everybody's got a camera, at the same time that every photograph of an alien spaceship is a grainy smudge?
You know, At the moment, you can say to yourself, okay, it's because the spaceship is moving fast, and maybe it's up in the clouds, and maybe it's got some alien technology that keeps it from being photographed or something.
I don't know. But the longer you go, the more it becomes a little obvious that somebody would have gotten at least one good picture.
At least one. So that was Elon Musk's provocative tweet today, or yesterday.
The AstraZeneca vaccine everybody's talking about, the company itself says they did some more studies and found out it was 79% overall efficacy and 100% success in keeping people from severe hospitalization.
100%. Do you believe that?
Do you believe that there's a vaccination that is 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and severe disease?
No. No, you should not believe that.
It could be close to 100, which would be cool.
But of course, I tweeted this because it looked like good news.
It took me 10 seconds for somebody else to say, but what about all these other stories?
For example, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. officials said they were told that AstraZeneca may have released outdated information.
What? In its disclosure of trial results.
What? What?
And they may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.
What? Now, do you see the problem with following the science?
Which science? You've got two sciences here.
One science says, yeah, this stuff's good and it works.
And the other science says, we don't know if it works.
And then there's yet other science that says it causes blood clots.
But then there's yet other science that says it doesn't.
So trust the science.
It's on both sides. It works and it doesn't work, according to science.
So I don't have an opinion on whether this is a good vaccine or not, but I'd probably take it.
I'd probably take it.
Breaking news, senior citizens are dying, and they're dying within days of doing, it turns out, anything.
Anything. So senior citizens are dropping dead all over the world within just a few days of having done, well, anything.
Watching TV, eating an apple, getting a vaccination.
Yeah, pretty much senior citizens are dying after everything.
And so the EU is considering a A ban on all human activity.
Because if people are dying within days after every human activity, I don't think we can continue having human activities.
People are dying within days all over the world, and it's not stopping.
Do you know why there are senior citizens dying after human activities?
There is a cause.
It turns out, and this is science too, I looked into this, did some research, it turns out that the number of people who die after they've already died, zero.
Or at least I couldn't find any.
I mean, maybe a zombie here or there.
But it turns out that only people who are already alive are dying at all.
People who are already dead, The death rate for them, the additional death rate of being dead and then being more dead, zero.
So exactly zero dead people have died after getting this vaccination.
It's good to know.
But a lot of people who are alive have died after literally everything.
Riding a bike, taking a shower...
Died within two weeks.
tragic.
All right.
So that is my show for today.
Ainsley says, careful, you're prescribing genocide to cure death.
That explains why Biden isn't doing anything.
Oh yeah, so there's a story that says Biden and Harris are traveling together.
Here's what I think is happening.
Now the thinking is that the reason for that is that she's learning on the job and she's going to take over any minute.
I think that that is part of it.
I do think that they're giving her more presidential exposure because they think she's likely to take over before his turn is over.
I feel like everybody believes that, right?
But I think there might be a second explanation, and I'm going to use the science of body language for this hypothesis.
And when I say the science of body language, I mean a lot of it's guessing.
But if you saw, there was a video I was watching this morning of Biden and Harris.
They were traveling together, or they were getting on or off a helicopter or something, and they were chatting with some other official-looking people.
And on a number of occasions, you saw...
Kamala Harris put her hands on Biden.
Have you seen that video?
So she'll just sort of, you know, she'll be talking and then she'll pat him on the shoulder, or she'll just lightly touch his back while she's talking to him.
Watch how often she touches him.
What's that mean? Well, if it were the other way around, it would be sexually inappropriate.
But when a woman in a business setting touches a man...
It's fine. Well, the man doesn't care, so it actually is fine.
But watch how often she touches him.
Here's what I think is going on.
Just a hypothesis.
I believe that Joe's mental state is deteriorating.
And I believe that he needs people that he has a certain level of trust in to keep him on the right track.
And I believe that Kamala Harris' real job is a little bit like a nurse.
And I mean that literally.
Meaning that I believe she's there to tell him things that other people can't tell him.
Because he's not quite mentally capable.
So I think a lot of people are saying, Kamala, could you tell him he needs to do this?
And then maybe she's the only one he trusts.
Because he's got a history with her and she had a relationship with Bo, etc.
So, yeah, I'm not sure a handler is exactly the right word, although there might be a little of that.
I believe that she's there as an emotional, mental, let's say, support.
And I believe she's there to maybe step in if things look a little weird.
That's my guess. Yeah, and his wife serves a similar role.
I would say that, yes.
Somebody's saying she prompts him and helps him finish sentences?
Maybe. I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
And then I guess there's a story of Kamala Harris was asked about the crisis on the border.
And was she going to go there?
And she laughed and said, not today.
And people said, it's not funny.
Why are you laughing?
But of course the laugh was about not today.
It wasn't about the situation, etc.
But it turns into a news story that makes her look bad.
So, yeah, Kamala Harris does have a problem that she can't Stop laughing when she's talking about a tragedy.
I don't feel bad about that because I've got the same problems.
Sometimes I laugh at tragedies.
I know I shouldn't, but I do.
Oh, do we know the name of the shooter?
I'm not going to say that name out loud, but somebody in the comments says that we know the name of the shooter.
But I don't want to say the name because that would be...
Let's just say there would be some racial bias if you heard the name.
At least the one that was in the comments.
I don't know if that's the real name.
All right, that's all I got, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Well, if I can turn this off, I will.
All right, YouTubers. I'm just looking at your comments.
So it does look like there's some news about the shooter that we're hearing.
I guess there's a name out there now.
Do we suffer brain damage getting our news from you?
No. Your brain is healthier because you got your news from me.
Because I'm not partisan.
It might seem like it, but I'm not.
BitClout. I haven't checked my...
My value on BitClout.
I need to check that.
So yeah, you can buy an NFT of me, I guess, on something called BitClout.
All right.
My coin is in the top 10, Christian says.
Yeah, I'll go check that.
I have not read that book by Rod Dreher.
I'm reading your comments.
If you're listening to this on a podcast, I'm sorry that you can't see the comments.
By the way, do you know that if you have a digital device, the one made by Amazon or the one that's built into your Apple phone, I don't want to say their names because I don't want to activate your device, But you can say to them, device name, which you know, and then say, Play Coffee with Scott Adams.
And my podcast will just pop right up.
Have I heard of Decentraland?
No, but I like it. Just based on the name, I think I would like that.
Have we been hypnotized into watching you every day?
Yes, you have.
That's what the simultaneous SIP does.
Glad to hear you've come to your senses on masks, probably having no...
Well, you were wrong.
You're wrong. So the thing that I'll have to explain for the rest of my life is risk management.
When the decision of hydroxychloroquine came up early on, I said, the science does not prove it works, but as a risk management decision, you might want to try it because the downside is low.
Certainly try it in one state or one country or something to see if it makes a difference.
That doesn't mean that I am right or wrong about whether that drug works.
And at least 75% of the population can't understand that point.
When you make a risk management decision, the decision can be right even when the outcome is wrong.
Do you get that? So as it is with masks, since the science was undependable, and we didn't know how it applied to this new situation, we wouldn't know.
We wouldn't know. And we wouldn't trust the data that said it worked or that it didn't work, because nothing is dependable data-wise.
But common sense says that if the amount of the viral shedding matters, if you get more viral exposure, you get more sick, that the masks, if they reduce moisture coming out of your mouth, and they do, and moisture is what carries the virus and it does, that it makes sense that you'd spread less of it.
But it is true that we're not seeing it in the data.
I've not seen any data that would suggest that mask wearing by itself makes any difference at all.
I still think it probably does, but I would admit that we don't see it in the data.
That does seem to be the fact.
Now, years from now, will we know for sure if masks worked?
Maybe. Might find a way to test it better or something.
But I'm going to guess that it works a little.
It might not work enough that we would be happy to use them in the next pandemic.
I don't know. So for those of you who are mistakenly imagining that my opinion went from masks work to masks don't work or probably don't work, you're misinterpreting completely.
Your risk management decision might change.
But in both cases, you're not saying definitely yes or definitely no.
You're just saying, I don't know, it looks like the odds are in favor of this.
And I would say that even still, I don't mind putting on my mask because I think there's a good chance there's some little improvement.
I'll take the extra edge.
Yeah, they might help, so why not?
Yeah, the why not is whether or not it makes you crazy.
Because it's definitely not free to wear a mask.
It does make you a little crazy.
Somebody says the risk level is how much time you spend with a confined person.
Yeah, I agree with that. But also common sense tells me that Maybe without a mask, you could be totally infected in five minutes, but maybe with a mask, you wouldn't be totally infected for seven minutes, right? Something like that.
So you might not ever see that difference in the statistics, but there must be a lot of interactions where the length of the interaction is changed by wearing the mask, you know, whether you could get it from that.
It seems logical. Are lockdowns poor risk management?
In retrospect, yes.
When we were first doing the lockdowns and we were talking about two weeks, that was a good decision.
Because maybe it would have worked.
In retrospect, it didn't work.
But it could have. It wasn't unreasonable to close down for a few weeks.
That was actually a good leadership decision.
It didn't work. But that doesn't make it a bad decision because it was a risk management decision.
Somebody says, anger is killing me.
You know, I've felt a little of that lately.
Keeping the mask on is unhealthy.
We might know more about that in the future.
Now, it's easier for me to be pro-mask because I have that elite situation.
Where I don't really need to put on a mask unless I leave the house, and I don't have to leave the house if I don't want to.
And if I do leave the house and I'm outdoors, I don't wear a mask.
So masks are not the biggest problem in my life, but imagine if I had a job where I had to wear one for eight hours a day.
I'd be pretty anti-mask then, especially if I were younger.
The camera looks great, and somebody says, no, it's the same camera.
Yeah, it's a luxury opinion.
I tweeted around an article by Rob Henderson, who's a few years old, talking about how elites, such as myself, can have these luxury opinions.
Where I'll say an opinion that's bad for poor white people, but not me.
Because it'll make me sound good.
Yeah, open those borders and let everybody come in.
Because they're not going to be competing for my job.
They're going to be competing for somebody else's job.
So isn't it great that I could have such a liberal, open-minded opinion about immigration?
Because it's only bad for you.
It's not bad for me.
For me, I just get, you know, cheaper gardener.
That's it. Thoughts on crypto.
So I'm not a crypto guy, meaning that I'm involved with crypto, but I'm not any expert on it.
And here's my take.
If I were young or I had a big enough portfolio where I could diversify, I would definitely own Bitcoin at this point.
So there was a time when you could say, I don't know if Bitcoin is going to stay around, but I think we're past that time.
It does seem like It's going to be here.
So any young person's portfolio should have some Bitcoin.
Every old person who has a big enough portfolio should put a little bit in there.
