Episode 1324 Scott Adams: Voter ID Law Arguments Dissected, Biden Press Conference Reviews in Advance, and More Fun
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Content:
Biden puts Harris in charge of migrant crisis
Headline predictions for Biden press conference
Every week, another Cuomo scandal
Voter ID law arguments per the ACLU
Getting a photo ID should be free
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Get in here. I know you're scrambling to get your beverage ready.
You should have been up a little bit earlier.
Now you know, don't you?
Well, there are a lot of things that could go wrong today.
It's possible. But...
None of them will matter once you've had the simultaneous sip.
Oh yeah, the problems will still be there, but you won't care about them nearly as much.
In fact, I often like to look at the world this way.
Do you have problems, or do you have insufficient coffee?
See where I'm heading with this, right?
I don't think you have problems.
I think you have insufficient coffee.
And we're going to fix that right now, although you don't need coffee.
Could be anything. But you need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tango, a chalice, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask vessel of any kind, a filler with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Except the elections, for some reason.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
Go! Just as good as I was hoping.
Maybe better. Well, have you seen my mascot on Twitter?
A lot of you are not famous, but when you get famous, you can get a mascot.
Now, he doesn't think he's a mascot, but I don't think that's up to him.
He thinks he's my critic, who spends all of his days researching old tweets I've made to put them into the comments section of anything I tweet to criticize me.
Now, of course, everything's out of context and his criticisms are nonsensible.
But rather than blocking him, which would be too easy, because he seems to have dedicated a good part of his day, every day, to just trying to say bad things about me on my Twitter feed.
So I decided to reframe him as my mascot.
Because mascots are silly and you don't really care what they do.
They just draw attention to you.
So he's my mascot from now on.
And I referred to him as my mascot, and he tried to respond to that with a clever rejoinder.
Now, here's the problem.
I'm a professional humorist.
He's a guy who spends most of his day criticizing a stranger.
He can't really compete in this reframing stuff.
But he tried. And he's a very entertaining mascot.
Now, I've used this reframe before, and it's one that you can use.
I've told you this before.
Back when I owned a restaurant, one of the employees decided to do a protest.
So he staged his own protest every day with a little sign, just by himself, in front of the restaurant.
And day after day, he'd be there.
And my manager at the time said, you know, what do we do about this?
And I said, do about it.
Why would you want to fix anything?
Not everybody gets a mascot.
And so we redefined the protester as a mascot.
And as soon as we did, it just was fun.
And I'd come by, he's like, hey, where's the mascot?
Oh, he was just here. He'll be back in a while.
Took a break. So you can reframe things from problems to mascots.
And watch how it stops bothering you.
Twitter user rolypoly had a good suggestion for your job, right?
If you have a boss, Here's a good suggestion.
You can employ this. And he says in a tweet, he goes, anytime you need to admit a mistake to a boss or a client, bring up this Suez Canal ship disaster.
Talk to them about it for two to four minutes.
Get them thinking about how many billions of dollars one person's mistake costs.
Then tell them about your mistake.
It'll look smaller. Completely.
It's just completely true.
Now it's funny, but it's completely true.
That would literally work.
So roly-poly has been paying attention.
So Joe Biden put Kamala Harris in charge of the migrant crisis.
So now she has a portfolio.
What do you make of that?
Is it because the migrant crisis is a big problem, so you need to put your highest firepower on that job?
Is that why? Maybe.
Somebody suggested it's so that Biden won't have to answer questions about immigration.
He'll just refer the questions to Harris.
Maybe. Maybe a little bit.
That's certainly a side benefit.
But I have a hypothesis that he hates her.
Because... Can you think of anything that would be a worse job than to be a Democrat and an ex-prosecutor and being put in charge of immigration?
I literally can't think of a worse penalty because she's been so nice to him.
I mean, other than calling him a giant racist during the primaries.
If you don't count that, she's been really nice to him.
And he rewards her by giving her the one job she can't possibly succeed at.
It's like an impossible-to-succeed situation because the Democrat philosophy makes it impossible to do anything practical.
So I feel like Joe Biden hates Kavla Harris.
He's showing us in a very beta way.
All right. Or it could be just the vice presidents get portfolios and that was hers.
That's the other possibility. When Biden was asked about the press conference that he will be having today, we're all waiting for that.
That'll be interesting. I'll be watching that.
And Biden, when he was asked if he was preparing for the press conference, Biden said, what?
And then the question was repeated.
And he said, what press conference?
Are you worried yet? Now, my interpretation of this is that he was joking.
Because it's very much like the dad jokes he likes to do.
When Peter Doocy would ask him, who are you going to appoint to do whatever, he likes to quip, you!
I'm going to appoint you! It's just sort of his dad joke, brushing something aside.
So I'm pretty sure he was joking about saying what press conference, given that it was such a big story and everything, it was funny.
Well, or he thought it was funny.
But here's my professional humorist advice on self-deprecating humor.
Now, self-deprecating humor is not something that everybody should try.
There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.
A good self-deprecating humor would be, oh, I have to do whatever my spouse tells me to do, or my secretary is really the one who's in charge, or, well, I don't know what I was thinking, I was so dumb. But you don't really take those as being too serious, right?
The person doing the self-deprecating humor is clearly not really insulting themselves.
They're so much in power that they can insult themselves without really any risk.
But here's what you don't want to do if you've got some accusations or suspicions that you might have dementia.
You don't want to play a joke where it looks like you have dementia.
I'm just saying, in the world of self-deprecating humor, don't do the one that actually looks true, right?
You want to do the self-deprecating on the things that people think is not true.
So, for example, if they think you're very smart and capable, and they're not going to change their mind about that because of your whole history of being smart and capable, you can do a little self-deprecating humor about the time you messed up.
But if they think you have dementia, You don't want to do self-deprecating humor about maybe you do.
Because that makes you look like you have dementia.
Because it's not very smart.
Alright. So what's going to happen at this Biden press conference?
How do you think it's going to go?
What's your prediction?
Do you think he will gaff out?
Do you think he'll make such a mistake that it'll be a giant disaster?
What do you think? My prediction is he'll do fine.
He'll do fine. Because I think the press will be very kind to him.
I think they'll ask softball questions.
The few people who don't, let's say the Fox News people, he'll brush them aside and joke about them and say the canned thing that's written down in front of him, whatever.
Yeah, he'll do fine. I think he'll get through it.
It would be surprising if he didn't.
It won't be great.
But don't you wonder how the press will treat it?
Well, wonder no more, because even though it hasn't happened, I'm going to read you some of the reviews of his press conference before they even happen.
Are you ready? Let me find here...
So I asked people to write glowing reviews of Biden's performance today before it even happens.
Because, you know, you could write them before they happen.
All right. Let's see what some of the...
So my priming joke was that CNN will report after his press conference, Orange Man, bad, but Dementia Man, good.
World rejoices.
Let's see what other people said.
Christopher Hill says, in review of President Biden's first presser, join us as we discuss what Donald Trump was doing while it was televised.
So nice to have a president that doesn't lie Biden returns civility to press conference.
Doesn't shy away from the tough questions.
President's favorite food is...
Yeah, it's going to be that kind of stuff.
Let's see some more.
In a refreshing change of pace...
This is Matt Fitzgerald.
In a refreshing change of pace from the previous administration, Biden's press conference was a free-flowing exchange of ideas based in confident, mature leadership.
I came, and perhaps we all did, At least just a little bit.
I should have read that to myself before I read it to you.
Biden stumbles.
Russia suspected.
MSNBC. Country unites around President as he fixes everything.
Not the mean spirit answers we've been accustomed to from the previous administration.
He showed an empathy we haven't seen in four years.
He really cares.
So, anyway, that was fun.
You should read the rest of them on my Twitter feed.
Somebody asked on Twitter today, and I wondered the same thing.
How long before you can get banned from social media for saying that Biden has dementia?
It's coming, isn't it?
I feel like that's coming.
Although this seems a little bit more like an opinion, so maybe it'll last longer, but...
Now my defense, I've prepared my defense in advance, is that no reasonable person would believe anything I say.
I think that's a pretty good defense.
So no reasonable person would believe anything I say, so I'm safe.
According to Rasmussen, Rasmussen's polls, Biden's handling of the COVID-19 situation wins a majority approval.
I'm starting to think that averages don't make any sense in 2021, if you're looking at political polling.
Because if you dig down a little bit, it says 30% of conservatives think Biden is doing a good job on COVID, but 88% of liberals.
Does it make sense to average them?
I mean, I guess it does.
To find out if you're over 50%, it's useful.
But I feel like the concept of an average for the country doesn't make any sense.
Because it's just two different groups.
It's like averaging an orange and an apple.
Well, the average of an orange and an apple is a...
I don't know, what?
It's a nothing. There's nothing that's the average of an orange and an apple.
So... I guess we still have to know what's more than 50% for lots of reasons.
Alright, so there's more.
I feel as if every week is a new Governor Cuomo scandal.
And you think they're going to be done, but no.
There's another one. Turns out that maybe the governor of New York's brother, Chris Cuomo of CNN, May have had some special access to testing and stuff when he had his coronavirus infection.
Now, how much do you care about that?
Do you care too much that the governor's family gets a little extra resources during the pandemic?
I get the point.
The point is crystal clear that people shouldn't be jumping to the front of the line.
But I've got to tell you, of all the things I could be bothered about in the entire world, I don't really care about a politician taking care of their family.
Do you? Is that the thing you're going to worry about?
Now, if it had been a lobbyist, I think I'd care a little bit more if a lobbyist did it.
But are we really going to get down on people for taking care of their family?
Really? I get it.
I get it. He shouldn't have gone to the front of the line, slapping the hand.
But I feel as if you could even make an argument for it.
That the reason we have security for our leaders, but you don't get security.
The reason that they get a private plane if they're leaders, but you don't get a private plane.
So we do say that our leaders should have some special, I wouldn't say rights, but special treatment because their influence is leveraged on all of us.
So you want to make sure that the leaders are the most effective they can be in a way that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
And I think if a leader has some problem in the family and he's got a brother that's maybe in his ear, that making that problem go away is worth something.
Hey, hey, I'm your brother.
Give me some testing. I'm trying to run the state here, but I'm your brother.
Give me some testing. Seriously, I'm trying to run a state, but I'm your brother.
Give me some testing. All right, just give him some testing.
Just give him some testing.
We'll be done with this. Now I'm going to go run the state.
Honestly, I don't care about this at all.
I realize it's part of the bigger story, but I wouldn't care if Trump did it.
I wouldn't care if a Democrat did it.
Let them take care of their family.
I'm okay with that. But I get the argument against it.
It's not mysterious.
Let's talk about voter ID laws.
You ready? Alright, here's the meaty part of my show today.
Alright, so something like half of the country is against voter ID laws.
I don't know what the exact percentage is, but it's usually half when we're talking about politics.
But what's the argument?
And I keep waiting to hear the argument in favor of not requiring ID to vote.
And I assumed that there was an argument, but I just wasn't aware of it.
So I did a little bit of research, a little bit today, and I'll tell you what I found.
So half of the country thinks that the republic would be better off if the people without IDs do get to vote.
What's the argument for that?
Have you ever heard it? Is the argument...
Now, it seems to me that the argument for having no voter IDs either has to be something that's good for the republic, you know, good for the country, or it's good for the individuals who are doing the voting.
Ideally, it's good for both, right?
That would be the win-win. But it's got to be good for at least one of those two groups, or else why are we talking about it, right?
So is it good...
For the Republic, let's say, would better decisions be made if we threw into the mix the population that does not have identification?
Is there anybody arguing that it would be?
That we would pick a more qualified leader?
Or that we would have better decisions or policies if the people who can't get identification, or don't have it for whatever reason, vote?
If you throw them in the mix, do you give better decisions?
Because I've never heard anybody argue that, and it seems counterintuitive, right?
So if it's not that, what's the point?
If you're not getting better decisions, what's the point?
Well, here's another possibility.
The other possibility is you don't want to disenfranchise American citizens.
You don't want people to feel that they're not part of the system, Because then they won't, you know, be cooperative and beneficial and, you know, buying into the whole process.
And I think we would all agree that if citizens buy into the system, whether it's jury duty or voting or anything with the Constitution, the more you can get people to participate and buy in, that's better.
Do we all agree?
The more participation, the better.
But here's the thing.
Do these people who don't have identification, is voting in their top 100 priorities?
If you went to them and you didn't tell them that the topic was voting, you just say, look, I'm a researcher and I want to ask this question.
Write me a list of all the things you care about.
Your top priorities from top to bottom.
I want to see a list and make 100 of them.
It might take you all day, but I want a hundred priorities for you.
And they'd probably start out with health and money and freedom from crime and get my kid an education and not have racism in my life and no gun violence maybe, whatever.
And after you got through the top hundred, how low would you have to be?
Now remember, these are unprompted.
These are people you just say, tell me your problems.
Don't answer a question about voting.
Just tell me your problems.
Where would this be?
It would not be in the top 100, would it?
Because it seems to me that the people who don't have ID, certainly poverty is almost certainly the top reason for that.
But I don't think they care.
Do they? Or let me put it this way.
Rather than reading their minds, let me say this.
Is there any evidence that they care?
Because I've never seen any.
So if voting without ID is not beneficial to the Republic, there's no argument that gives you better decisions.
And it's not necessarily good for the people who don't have IDs because they don't probably care.
Or I haven't seen the evidence that they do.
You know, if somebody did a survey of it, that would be different, I suppose.
Now, so what's the point of it?
So somebody pointed me to an ACLU argument.
So now we don't have to wonder, right?
So I was just guessing what's the point of it.
But now we're going to read the ACLU's argument.
Why we should not have voter ID laws.
You ready? Now the ACLU argues in public.
So you've got lawyers involved, right?
Expert arguers, people who are good at making their points.
So if the ACLU can't give me a good argument for this, does it exist?
Well, let's find out if they have one first.
So here's what one of their articles says.
Number one, voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote.
It deprives them of their right to vote.
That's the first statement they make.
Is that true? What do you think of that?
Does it deprive people of their right to vote?
Well, I'm no constitutional scholar.
But does the Constitution specify...
That your right to vote includes any way you want to do it.
Does it? Is that in there somewhere?
Because I'm no expert. But does the Constitution say you have a right to vote, and by the way, any way you want to?
No restrictions. Now, I would like to vote the following way.
I would like to write my vote on a napkin, then I'd like to wrap it around a brick, And throw it through a window of Congress.
Why can't I do that?
Are you going to restrict my right to vote?
That's the way I want to do it.
Now, some people want to do it without ID. Or maybe they don't have a choice, because they don't have ID. But does the Constitution guarantee me a way to vote that I want to vote?
Because I don't remember that language in the Constitution.
Alright, let's go on. Let's see what else the ACLU says.
It would reduce participation.
True or false?
True or false?
It would reduce participation.
Yes. So that's a good point, right?
No, it's not. It's not a point.
It's a fact. A fact is not an argument.
Right? It's just a fact.
You need an argument, a reason.
A fact doesn't tell you anything.
So if it reduces the number of people who votes, or even if it doesn't, it's still just a fact.
It's not a reason.
So, so far, I haven't seen a reason that makes any sense.
Have you? Let's keep reading.
I'm sure they're getting to the good stuff.
Oh, here we go.
Here's the kill shot. I thought there were no good reasons, but then the ACLU gets to the meat of it.
So the other ones were sort of weak, but this one I think, this takes it home.
So here's the strong argument for why we don't want voter ID laws.
Because it stands in direct opposition to our country's trend of including more Americans in the democratic process.
What? That's not a reason.
Is there a reason that we can't stand in direct opposition to a trend?
Was that in the Constitution?
Oh, hold on people, hold on.
Oh, stop what you're doing.
Stop what you're doing right now.
I feel that some of you are doing things, I don't know exactly what you're doing, but I feel that some of you are doing things that are in opposition to a trend.
Well, that's no good. Stop it.
Don't be opposing a trend.
What the hell kind of reason is that?
And if you think that I'm getting to the good reason next, that was it.
That was the argument.
It opposes a trend.
That's not a reason.
There's some... Implication that people have a constitutional right to vote in any way they want, with no restrictions.
I don't believe that's in the Constitution.
And it reduces the number of participants.
That's just a fact.
Do you know what else reduces the number of participants?
Not letting, let's say, Russian citizens vote in our election.
I don't think that's fair. Because if you don't let Russian citizens vote in your election, aren't you reducing the participation?
So these aren't even reasons.
And here's the persuasion lesson I'll put on top of this.
Do you see how easily you can be fooled into thinking that there are reasons...
Because there are words, but there are no.
There are literally no reasons.
I'm not saying, and I want to be careful here, I'm not telling you that I've looked at the reasons and I disagree with them.
There are literally no reasons offered.
You get that, right?
They're not saying we disagree with you, here's my reason.
They're not offering any reasons.
Why is that? Well, obviously the reason is the Democrats want to win elections.
But they can't say that out loud.
So here's my question.
What do you think is a bigger problem for people who don't have identification?
That they didn't get to vote in an election in which they don't understand any of the issues.
Let me make a statement that I feel is fair to make.
That the people who can't get it together to get identification in the United States...
Now, it does cost something.
It could cost you a couple hundred dollars.
Got to get your birth certificate, etc.
So poverty is a real reason not to have identification.
That's real. But I don't feel like these people are adding a lot to the process.
That's what I'm saying. And it has nothing to do with race.
As soon as you think it's about race, you're in a different conversation because I'm not in that conversation.
Now, here's another reason.
I don't think it's specifically on the ACLU thing.
But there's a gigantic difference in what people have identification and not.
So did you know that 11% of U.S. citizens don't have identification?
Did you have any idea it was that high?
11% of U.S. citizens don't have any identification.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
I actually thought that the number who didn't have identification was trivial.
I thought it'd be more like 1%, 2% tops.
10%? I'm sorry, 11%?
But it's even worse than that if you go down to the racial component here, because I think black Americans are way less likely to have identification than white Americans.
So what you would end up doing...
Oh, here it is.
Minority voters are disproportionately lacking ID. This is also from the ACLU site.
Nationally, up to 25% of African Americans of voting age...
Lack government-issued photo ID. Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
25% of black Americans who are of voting age don't have photo ID? Did you have any idea that it was that high?
I had no idea.
Again, I would have guessed 2%.
But 25%?
I'm off by, you know, 10 times?
Somebody says they're called children.
No, specifically they're saying it's the number of people who are of voting age.
So specifically, 25% of voting age, if you throw the children in there, it's like 50%, right?
So the first thing we have to realize is we've got a real big problem with identification.
So which party is it who is saying, let's fix this problem with no identification?
Because how are these people with no identification going to function in society and move to the next level?
What the hell can you do without identification?
How do you get a reasonable job without identification?
So I would say that we should have a national movement to get everybody identified.
And if it costs $200 to get identification, it should be free.
Why doesn't the government just...
In fact, here's something the Republicans should do.
If Republicans are going to be on the side of you have to have ID to vote, they need to put some money in it.
Put some money in it and say, look, we're going to make it free to get your birth certificate so you can go through the process.
Or we're going to take all the birth certificates and we're going to digitize them So that you can just ask the federal government for your ID, and we'll just give it to you for free.
Because I assume that the reason you pay for your birth certificate is a hospital does it, or the state, or somebody.
It must be somebody who incurs some costs to do that.
Take them away. So I would say that the Republican argument without a plan to get people IDs is bankrupt.
It's a bankrupt plan.
So the Republicans, if they're not trying to fix the problem of ID, you can't give them any credit.
No credit at all.
And the Democrats, if they don't have an argument for their side, you can't give them any credit at all.
So you have two sides of this argument, neither of which are doing the minimum to serve the public, in my opinion.
In my opinion, neither the Republican...
Or the Democrat side is doing the minimum to serve the public on this question.
Because both of them should be saying, at the very least, let's get everybody ID. Separately, we can talk about needing ID to vote, but why aren't we solving this problem?
Why do we talk about this year after year?
You know, they should be free to get identification in this country because the government requires it.
Let me put it another way.
If the government is going to charge you to vote, the government is broken.
You've got to fix that.
Why are people being charged to vote indirectly?
because you would have to pay money to get ID and you'd need ID to vote.
So, now the argument is that the current situation, if you don't have voter ID, it would cause...
If you were black people to vote, it would disenfranchise more black voters than other kinds of voters, and therefore is racist.
But here's the problem with that.
It's a racist outcome.
It's not necessarily racist by intention, although clearly there are racists in the world who do have those intentions.
But everything is racist by outcome, isn't it?
Can you think of any government anything?
That doesn't have a racial outcome that some group gets more or less than the percentage of them in the country.
There's nothing like that. So to say that this is a problem because it gives you an uneven racial outcome, that's not a reason.
Because everything has that quality.
Literally everything. There's nothing that's big that affects everybody that doesn't affect them disproportionately.
If only because of difference in economic situation.
So it's not an argument.
It's just a fact that people would be disproportionately affected.
And I don't agree with that.
I would like to have more representative government, but we're not going at it in any kind of responsible way.
The responsible way would be to get everybody some ID for free.
That would be the way to do it.
All right. I saw an article in a publication called The Insider, and I don't know what to trust here.
But I'm going to give you something they said, and give me a fact check on this.
It says the number of mass shootings in the U.S. this year has already reached 103 as of March 22nd.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that there have been 103 mass shootings this year?
Already? Now, I suppose it depends on what you call a mass shooting.
I think it means if somebody opens up at a party and two people get killed, or there's, let's say, a drive-by shooting in which two people get killed by the drive-by shooting.
I don't know how many people have to die before it's mass.
Is there a definition of that?
What makes it mass?
If it's two, is that mass?
Is it three? Four or more, is somebody saying?
Somebody says it's greater than one.
But if anybody knows what that number is...
Anyway, I don't believe this at all.
And in order to believe it, I'd have to see a lot more information on it.
Here's some shocking news.
This is a set of Sky News.
So there's a 2017 study...
They found that sperm levels among men in Western countries has dropped by more than 50% over the past four decades.
And they examined 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men.
So remember, they're all healthy.
And somebody named Dr.
Swan believes that at this rate, men will be unable to produce viable sperm by 2045.
What do you think of that? So basically, it's the end of civilization.
Now, of course, there will always be some people who can.
In China, for example, we could have Chinese babies.
So we could get sperm from China in 2045, because they'll have plenty of it, but we won't have any.
And then we could just, since the women will still be fully functional, apparently, we can just get them impregnated with some of that sperm from China.
And there you go.
So there's your future.
China wins. Now the first thing is, is this study true?
Do you believe that it's true that men's sperm levels have dropped?
I think so. I would think so.
Because I would also think the drop in testosterone is probably related, or at least have the same cause.
Am I going too far into the medical unknown where I should not even be talking?
Nobody here should believe anything I say about medicine or health.
But, I don't know.
I don't know if I should worry about this or not.
Well, I won't be here, probably.
By then I will have evolved into pure software, so it's not going to be a problem for me.
Yeah, I would say observationally, this is one of the filters that you should use.
If you see a scientific study that doesn't match your observation, you should be skeptical.
Now, that doesn't mean your observations are reliable.
That's why we do science.
But if they don't match in a very obvious way, you should ask some questions.
But if you hear that people's, let's say, men's testosterone level has decreased greatly in recent years, that matches observation, doesn't it?
If I had to ask you, I'm not going to show you any studies, but what do you think?
Just sort of look around.
What do you think? Do you think the testosterone level is a little lower?
I think most people would say, yeah, it looks like it.
And so the science and the observation match.
Doesn't mean it's true, but it's better than not matching.
Well, there's always a new scare when it comes to the coronavirus, and here's my favorite in the news.
India has discovered a new, quote, double mutant variety of COVID-19.
That's right. No longer will we be simply dealing with a single...
COVID problem? We're going to have double special mutants.
And when the double special mutants come after you, well, you're in trouble.
Now, how worried should you be about all these?
Double mutant monster COVID things.
Well, I wouldn't be unworried.
It seems like a reasonable thing to be worried about.
I would expect that most of these will be susceptible to the virus, to the vaccinations, etc.
But I will just add this to the story.
The only thing I want to add to the story is this story would have happened no matter what.
So if you say to yourself, uh-oh, there's a story about a double mutant variant, do you say to yourself that now I should worry about it?
Well, maybe. But I would submit to you that there always was going to be this story.
And maybe not with the same words, but there's a guarantee, because of the nature of the press and the media, that they needed to find the extra scary thing when the scary thing was starting to diminish.
So that the nature of the press guaranteed this story would exist, but what is not guaranteed is that there's any substance to it, or that you really need to worry about it.
So to make yourself feel better about these double mutant variants, which sound pretty scary, just know that the story would have been here whether there was any danger or not.
All right. And that is just about what I want to talk about.
I'm going to look at your comments for a moment here.
Just looking at some of your comments here.
How is 1984 coming?
So I told you I was going to read the book 1984, which, amazingly, I'd grown to this age without having read yet.
And I bailed out.
So I'm not going to finish the book because it's unfinishable.
And here's the reason why.
I do not consume media that is a bummer, that makes me feel bad.
I got the sense of it.
I could read the Cliff Notes.
I don't need to live in the world of this guy who's suffering for an entire book.
And anybody who does that, I don't understand why you do that.
Are you reading the book for entertainment?
So when it stops entertaining and it just starts hurting...
Like it actually just hurts to read that book because it makes me feel bad.
So why would you read a book that makes you feel bad?
Why would you watch a movie with sad things in it?
It's just bad strategy.
Why would you listen to music that makes you feel bad thinking about your mate who cheated on you or whatever?
Just don't do it.
Just stay away from all the media that is filling you with bad thoughts.
You're not going to miss anything.
Because it isn't too hard to know what 1984 is about.
Just read the Wikipedia page.
You're done. Give yourself 15 seconds of pain to learn something.
You don't need 4 hours of pain to learn 15 seconds of useful stuff.
So stop watching crappy movies.
Stop reading bad books.
If they don't teach you or make you happy, skip it.
Because bad news should be condensed, not expanded.
The last thing I want to do is read about somebody's fictional problems.
I've got plenty of problems.
The world has plenty of problems.
I'm not going to read fiction with problems.
That's the last thing I want.
Alright. You can't take it too seriously.
What are your best systems?
Well, you can see some of my best systems in my book.
I had to fail almost everything and still win big.
But diet and fitness are probably the top of the pile.
If you get your diet and fitness right, pretty much everything else is going to work out better than it would have.
Your happiness, your quality of life, your ability to get jobs, your ability to just physically feel good, your ability to attract a mate.
If you get diet and fitness right, there's a whole cascade of good things that happen after that.
So those are my two most important systems.
I will do a micro lesson on both of those.
They're both individual chapters in my book.
Now the difference between a diet...
And a system is pretty big.
A diet, you're usually just trying to eat differently and use your willpower and stuff like that.
Whereas a system is something that you do every day that just makes it easy to lose weight or to maintain the right weight.
So if you have a system, you're not really working.
The system does all the work for you.
If you have a diet, you're doing all the work, which is why it doesn't work.
People are not successful with diets, but you can be successful with the system.
I'll give you the simple example, but if you haven't heard it.
One of the systems I use for diet is I don't keep bad food in my house.
So I take advantage of my own laziness that when I'm hungry, I'm going to eat something that's already in the house, and none of it's bad.
Now, that's just one thing.
It's not the whole system, right?
You need a number of these little systems to add up to a bigger system.
But it's not easy.
How hard is it to eat something that's already in the house?
There's no effort. I just pick it up and eat it.
And that's it. And then I've participated in a diet, but I didn't do anything.
I just picked up what was in the house and ate it.
That's it. Somebody says, it is easy for you, you don't care about food.
That's exactly right. Yeah, the most important thing you need to know about diet is that we have different cravings and desires for food, and it will be much easier for people like me, because I don't have those cravings as much as other people.
It is however true that everybody, no matter what your level of craving is, can greatly reduce the pain of dieting by having good systems.
So yeah, some people will be better than others, But the systems work for everybody.
They're universal. Somebody says, the willpower starts at the grocery store.
I disagree. I disagree.
The willpower starts before you go to the grocery store.
Because if you went there hungry, you did it wrong.
That's a bad system, right?
Shopping while you're hungry is a bad system.
So just don't do that.
Somebody says, I have the extreme opposite.
I like food so little it's a discipline to eat.
I do know people like that. I know actually several people like that.
Who, for them, eating is just a chore.
They'd rather not do it at all.
You can go all day without eating.
Um... Hungry and stoned, not a good combo.
So here's a system if you are a marijuana user.
Marijuana users know that they get the munchies and they eat a lot.
So what would be a system to reduce that?
And I'll tell you my system, and it works every time.
Just use mouthwash immediately after you smoke, if you're smoking actual smoke.
I forget which one I use.
It's Colgate or something.
I think that's the one that works the best.
But if you just do mouthwash immediately after, it gets rid of your cotton mouth.
It just gets rid of it.
And you don't get hungry, because there's something about the mouth feeling that triggers your hunger.
It doesn't seem to be entirely a mental thing.
So brush your teeth, use mouthwash.
You won't even think of eating.
It just won't even be fun.
Somebody says Joe uses Listerine.
I don't know if it's for the same purpose.
Paws smokers have low tea.
I don't know about that.
Financial literacy tips.
Financial literacy tips.
Have I not done a micro lesson on personal finance?
I think I did that within the Locals platform.
That's $7 a month to subscribe.
And by the way, my goal with the Locals stuff, that's a platform for...
People who want to subscribe to my extra content.
I try to make sure that if you're paying $7 a month for my content, that you always get way more than $7 worth of useful life benefit.
So that's what I'm trying to do.
It's not just going to be for some laughs.
You're going to get some practical stuff every month that when you say to yourself, was that worth $7?
You'll just laugh. Because you say, $7?
I would have paid thousands for that.
But I got it for $7. So that's what I'm shooting for.
Most people who are subscribers, and there are thousands of them now, are saying it's worth it.
They're saying it's worth it.
Alright, somebody says, you've lost me, Scott.
Maybe I have. I don't know that...
Somebody's asking about Periscope going away.
My understanding is that something's getting folded into Twitter itself.
I don't know if it's going to be Periscope-like.
I don't know. So I don't know any details of that.
Someday, if this isn't here, just go to YouTube and Google me and I'll pop right up.
So you can find me on YouTube.
And by the way, also on Rumble.
So every time YouTube demonetizes me, I do a commercial for Rumble on Twitter.
I've only done it once yet, but that's my new system.
So if I get demonetized for reasons that I think are unreasonable, which I think all of them are, then I'll just do a commercial for Rumble every time.
And you can find my stuff there.
Alright, that's all for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
All right, YouTubers, I usually give you a little extra.
Want a little extra? Talk about the sim.
I think I talk about that too much.
How should we develop people's financial literacy?
Well, some of you know, some years ago, I created, I think it was nine points, just nine bullet points of what you needed for personal finance.
And those nine bullet points...
Are the whole show. Because every one of those bullet points you could kind of easily just Google to find out more about it.
You just need to know what the order is and what the priority is.
So, for example, among the nine tips I would tell people to, if they have extra money beyond their expenses, to open an account as, say, Charles Schwab or a discount broker.
Now, if I don't give the details, About how to open an account at Charles Schwab or a discount broker.
You can just Google it.
So just knowing that you should do that is kind of all you need.
Because you just Google it.
It very easily will tell you how to sign up.
Likewise, if I tell you how to...
that you should have a...
Let's say I tell you you should have a 401k.
And you don't know what that is.
Just Google it. And you'll say, oh, it's one of these.
Something from my employer.
Ask your employer if they have one of those.
You probably already know. But you could ask them.
They'd say, no, we don't have that.
Or, yes, we do. Here's how to sign up.
So it's very easy to have financial literacy.
You need about nine bullet points, and you're done.
Because the way I organize them is you do them in order.
So you wouldn't have to work on all nine.
You work on the top one.
The top one says, pay off your credit card.
What else do you need to know?
That's it. Pay off your credit card.
Don't buy stocks until you pay off your credit card.
Don't do anything financially until you pay off your credit card.
And it's really easy because that's your highest interest rate.
You couldn't possibly make that much money in the stock market reliably.
You could, but not reliably.
So somebody's saying, where is it?
Google my name and...
Personal finance list or something.
It should pop up. It's all over the internet.
It's in a number of my books as well.
Oh, I see somebody's listing the list in the comments here.
So, believe it or not, it's actually easy to teach people personal finance.
It's literally one page, and they just have to tack it to their wall...
And work on the top one and just work their way down.
Very easy. None of it is complicated in the least.
Did I check out Decentraland yet?
I did not. I figure I can tell from the name of it what that's all about, but maybe I'll look into that.
Are the WEN tokens any good anymore?
They're still trading. Their value is low because the underlying company doesn't exist.
But they live forever.
They can't go away because they're part of the blockchain.
And there is a new app today.
Under development that would use them as its token.
So anything that creates a demand for that token can increase its value.
So in fact anybody out there who wants to start an app and just use a token that already exists could do that.
Struggling to understand financial jargon?
Yeah. That's a good point.
But everything that's financial jargon is easy to Google.
When you come into the word, just look it up.
Next word, just look it up.
You'll get there pretty quickly.
There's really not a lot of complexity to it.
The reason that finance seems so complicated is that the number of things you could know is gigantic.
The things you could know is just huge.
The things you need to know To have 100% of everything you need to know is just like this pinpoint of all the things you need to know.
Because if you understand diversification, if you understand how to diversify your portfolio, and you know how to open a Charles Schwab account, and you know that you want to pay off your debts that are high interest rates first, you're almost completely done.
You're almost done.
I mean, that got you to 90% of everything you need to know, and it took me three sentences.
Sunk cost is a good thing to know about it.
Yeah, there are a lot of psychological, let's say, obstacles to being a good investor that you should learn about as well.
But if you get an index fund, you don't have to worry about that either.
Do I own guns?
There's a question I would never answer.
Would you answer that question?
If somebody asked you in public if you own guns, would you answer that question?
You shouldn't. Never answer that question.
That would be the worst question you could ever answer.
Here's my answer.
I'm very pro-Second Amendment.
So if you want to mess with my house, that's all you know.
The rest you're going to have to guess.
I'm pro-Second Amendment, and if you're in my house and you mean no good, I could kill you in a heartbeat.
I'm just telling you my mindset.
If you came in my house to do harm to me in any sense, I could kill you in a heartbeat.
I wouldn't hesitate for a second.
And I'm pro-Second Amendment.
So do you want to know if I own a gun?
You don't get that information.
So... With your hands.
I could easily kill somebody with my bare hands.
If I had to, right?
If I didn't have a reason, of course not.
Let's talk about NFTs.
I'm seeing a lot of questions there.
So you all know what NFTs are?
They're a... It's a digital art that, because it's attached to the blockchain...
You can show that you have an original or one of the originals.
So that creates value and allows people to trade them and it's like any other art that can go up in value.
But the Dilbert NFT is already created but it hasn't been published yet for you to buy.
We're working on some technical stuff behind the scenes because it turns out when you actually get ready to publish your NFT there are a whole bunch of technical decisions.
And technical things you need to set up.
One of them is to allow you to buy it with U.S. dollars as opposed to having to have, let's say, a Bitcoin to even buy the NFT. So part of the reason it's taken me a few weeks is we just got things set up so that you'll be able to buy it with just regular money.
You don't have to have crypto to do it.
Do I own a gun safe?
I'm not going to tell you if I own a gun safe if I'm not going to tell you if I own guns.
