Episode 1335 Scott Adams: I Fact-Check Politifact, Talk About a Banned Thing, and Maybe Get Cancelled
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
How the fake news could kill a million people
Mask mandate analytical mistake
Sidney Powell interview on Rumble
Derek Chauvin video evidence
CNN's riot encouraging "trace amount" HOAX
Fake news making silo-news consumers dumber
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Hey everybody, come on in, come on in, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Is it the second best part of your day?
No, never.
It's the first best part of your day.
I know, I know, probably some of you are having your first child, getting married, having incredible lovemaking with your spouse.
That's almost as good as what you're going to experience now.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called The Simultaneous Hip, and it's gonna happen now.
Go! Oh, that was good.
I hope yours was as good as mine.
You know what I need is a pen.
That's what I need. You know, is it just me?
Or do you start with good intentions with your pen holder?
And you say, you know, the kind of pen I need is this kind.
Pretty much all the time.
And if you wait like a month, pretty soon you've got a back scratcher, you've got scissors, and 15 of these.
Why? How does this happen?
I need a better system.
And then you start getting mad because there are all jams in there.
All right. All set now.
Shall we begin? No, there's no screwdriver, but I do have pliers in my one downstairs.
All right, so the good news on vaccinations.
Listen to this. More than 54% of Americans 65 and older have been vaccinated, fully vaccinated.
So that means two vaccinations.
And according to the CDC, and more than 75% of that same age group have gotten at least one.
Those are pretty good.
Pretty, pretty good numbers.
Yes, we're all afraid of the fourth wave.
You know, I want to be afraid of that.
I want to be.
But I just can't believe the news or the science enough to get worried.
Are any of you worried?
I mean, I know the story.
I know there's a variant out there.
It's affecting children more.
It's super spready.
Maybe the vaccine doesn't work.
Maybe it does. I just can't get worried about it.
And I think it's because nothing's credible anymore, right?
Doesn't it feel that way? Because it's a little too on the nose.
I think that's why you're all feeling that, right?
Because when you heard that, you know, we're really getting on top of the pandemic and we're beating it back and, you know, maybe the social distancing and the masks and the vaccinations are working, it's working.
Wasn't it a little bit predictable that there would be a variant that we have to worry about?
Kind of like right on time, exactly when you thought it would happen.
Now, that doesn't mean it's not real.
I mean, this could be the worst thing in the world for all I know, but we just don't trust it anymore.
So I just don't trust it, that's all.
If I had to guess, if you said, Scott, make a monetary bet, is the variant going to be like an extra bad thing?
Or one of those things we'd look back at and say, well, I guess we thought that would be worse, but it wasn't so bad.
I would bet on no big deal.
But I hate to say that in public, because then people will take fewer precautions, so it's very dangerous.
You can see the danger of the fake news.
Suppose it's real.
What if it's real? And the fake news has primed us to not believe it, because we think all the rest of the news is fake, why wouldn't this be?
That would kill a million people.
The fake news would kill a million people.
Because they made us all not believe the news.
And then when something was real, we didn't believe it.
You know, I have a fascinating sort of mental hobby, which is collecting examples of information which cannot be communicated.
And there are all different reasons for that.
One of the reasons something couldn't be communicated would be, let's say it's a state secret.
Let's say it's complicated, so you can explain it, but nobody would understand it, so it's the same as you can't explain it.
And there are lots of these weird little examples.
Let me give you another one. Suppose you were known as the biggest liar in town.
But you happen to notice a real UFO alien visitation.
They got out of the ship, they shook hands with you, they gave you a ride in their ship, and you're the only one who saw it.
Can you communicate that?
No, you can't.
It's uncommunicatable because you have no credibility, and nobody else saw it.
It just can't be told.
I told you the other day, there's a story that I know that I can't tell.
It's a different reason, but there are all these weird little categories of things which make information untransmissible.
It's just a weird little thing I track.
I'm wondering...
How many of the deaths that are happening now are the real kind?
Here's an assumption I make.
You know that from the beginning of the pandemic, people were saying, I don't think these deaths are real.
I think there's just old people dying who just happen to also have a virus.
A lot of people said that.
Now, I didn't say that, so I've never been on that team.
I've always thought the virus was real and that, you know, really lots of hundreds of thousands of people Are actually legitimately dying with the comorbidity.
But I have also been sensitive to the argument that there are financial incentives or maybe just people are wrong.
Maybe there's tests that are wrong, etc.
So you would have to assume that even if you took the position, as I do, that it's a real pandemic really killing people, that there's some portion of this large ball of death that isn't real.
Would everybody agree with that?
That even if you thought it's a real pandemic, real virus, really killing people, that there's some portion of it, and I won't say what portion, maybe it's tiny, maybe it's a little bigger than tiny, that's not real.
How many of you would agree with that statement so far?
That whatever is real, there's gotta be some sliver that's not real, alright?
Now here's the question.
How do you know when the big ball of deaths starts decreasing and it becomes this smaller baseline that just doesn't seem to go down?
Is that real?
At what point do we get down to just the fake ones?
Because the ones you can't get rid of are the fake ones.
You could stop all the people dying from the real virus, hypothetically, right?
We're not near that yet, right?
But hypothetically, you could stop all the real people from dying, and you would still report some thin band of deaths permanently that were never real.
But what I don't know, is that three people in the whole country, or is that...
500 per day in the whole country.
I don't know. I don't think we have a way to know.
I would just say keep an eye on that, because I don't know that the deaths need to reach zero for it to be done.
Maybe the deaths go from 1,000 to, you know, 500, and then we just can't figure out why they never go to zero.
You know what I mean? Hey, they just don't seem to go to zero.
What's up with this?
And maybe those are the ones that aren't real.
Maybe. Just speculating here.
Don't take me too seriously on anything medical.
That's a good general statement.
All right. I see people continually making the following analytical mistake.
That in places where they took the mask mandates away, infections kept falling.
Now, that's not everywhere.
But there are places where definitely...
They took the mask mandate away, and infections kept falling.
What do you conclude from that?
That masks made no difference?
Because once they were taken away, the infections didn't go up?
Would you assume that?
Don't assume that. That would be bad analysis.
Because there are too many variables.
There are two times that people would put masks on and take them off.
If things were really bad, And you weren't positive that masks help, but you think they probably do.
You'd say, add the masks.
So you'd be adding masks in an environment when infections are going up.
When do you take them away?
Well, you don't take them away until infections are going down, probably for other reasons.
Vaccinations, summer, herd immunity, the magic thing that makes viruses sometimes burn out that we don't quite understand.
But that's when you take the masks away.
So what you should see every time is that when you require masks, infections go up.
That would be normal.
That's why you required them.
And when infections are going down so fast, and you're confident that it'll keep going, that's when you say stop wearing masks.
Because the other factors are now so big that the masks alone are just not worth the extra, you know, You don't get enough.
What's the saying? The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
For the extra bit, the masks will get you.
So it doesn't mean anything that adding or decreasing masks doesn't show up immediately the way you think it would be in the data.
You all get that, right?
Because one of the things that I hope is that the people who watch these Live streams are just a little bit more analytically clever than the masses who are not too analytically clever.
All right. Rasmussen is reporting.
They asked, or in a poll, they asked the question, have race relations gotten better or worse under Biden?
What do you think the answers were?
Do you think people said that race relations are better or worse under Biden?
Remember, that's what he promised us.
It was one of the biggest things he promised us was to improve this very thing.
Maybe the biggest thing.
I would say the biggest thing he promised was this.
Well, 40% of the country think it's worse, and 22% think things got better.
You would not be surprised that things are by party lines, obviously.
But what do you think?
What do you think? Yeah, I think it depends how you define it, right?
Because I think there are some people saying, well, it got worse for me.
I don't know if it got better for somebody else, but it seems like it got worse for me.
So I'm not sure you can measure such a thing.
But if people believe it got worse, that makes it worse, right?
If you think you're unhappy, you're unhappy, aren't you?
There's no argument to that, right?
If you think you're unhappy, well, nobody can argue against it.
I can't tell you, no, you're thinking wrong.
You're actually happy, you just don't know it.
That's not a thing. So if you think things are worse...
I feel like that makes it worse, right?
Your mind forms your subjective reality, and for these people it's worse.
So they're living in a world, 40% of the country is living in a world that their subjective view of this world has got worse.
So that's not so good.
And of course, Rasmussen also asked if people thought that the Floyd trial would end with a You have a murder conviction.
You would not be surprised that liberals think that Floyd was murdered and that it's clearly going to go that way and that far fewer conservatives think that.
We'll talk about that in a little bit.
A little bit more on Floyd in a bit.
And now it's time to get cancelled.
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, I take it to the edge.
Yeah. Yeah.
Taking off the training wheels.
I need one more sip.
Hold on. And we're going to be flying close to the sun.
Are you ready? Are you with me?
Who's with me? If I get canceled, you can find me on Locals.
But we'll try not to.
The topic is Sidney Powell.
Sidney Powell. Okay?
And the topic is, I saw...
Dinesh D'Souza did an interview with her on Rumble.
Because you know why he did it on Rumble?
Because that's where you can do it.
They're not going to cancel you on Rumble.
And why is it that Dinesh, who is himself a controversial character, why is it that he was interviewing Sidney Powell instead of, let's say, you?
Or, let's say, a podcaster who was subject to less controversy himself.
Why is that? Because they'll get cancelled.
People are afraid.
Do you think I would have Sidney Powell on here, on YouTube, and just do an interview with her on YouTube?
Nope. Not unless I wanted that to be my last day on YouTube.
I think that would be pretty dangerous.
So we get our information the only way we can.
And I saw an interview with her, and it turns out there's this gigantic piece of fake news about her, according to Sidney Powell.
So when you're dealing with lawyers, everything is according to.
You know, you can't say what's true or false.
You can only say what they're saying.
And what she says is that the news that says that her defense in the Dominion lawsuit against her for allegedly saying things untrue And it was reported everywhere that her defense would be that nobody should have believed her, that nobody should have taken it seriously.
It was just an opinion.
And do you know what Sidney Powell says about that?
It never happened.
It never happened.
Nothing like that happened, according to Sidney Powell.
She says, that's not my defense.
She says, no, I'm absolutely asserting these things to be true.
Unambiguously, no doubt about it, I'm telling you, and of course, yep, this is what she's asserting.
I'm hoping I don't get canceled, because I'm just quoting somebody else.
Just quoting somebody else.
And she says, no, there's nothing to that.
That's just fake news. Holy cow.
Are you kidding me?
If somebody hadn't sent that little clip to me, I wouldn't believe that.
Because it's a common defense, right?
It's just an opinion defense.
I kind of thought it was true.
But I feel as if, again, you have to be careful when you're If lawyers are telling you something's true, you have to use your judgment.
Are they just defending themselves?
But I don't feel like she would say that so directly if that were not true.
I do believe the news would lie, but it's hard to imagine she would say this so directly if she didn't really know that it's true and believe it's true that she never made that defense.
So... Yeah, Anne-Marie is correctly calling me out for pushing that hoax.
You are correct, Anne-Marie.
I am guilty of believing the fake news.
Now, that's happened before, and I would apply the same standard to myself that I would apply to you.
Same standard. Which is, we're all going to get fooled by the fake news.
You know, don't beat yourself up over it, right?
The best you can do is try to expose yourself to counter-arguments and do the best you can.
But none of us are not going to be taken in by fake news.
I got taken in by the Covington kids.
Noose. That one got me.
And I also believe the overfeeding the koi fish in Japan one for, you know, ten minutes until somebody told me the truth.
So yeah, there's nobody who's immune from believing fake news.
So I'm never going to make that claim about myself.
That would be ridiculous.
And I won't hold you to it either.
I just think we should try.
Yeah, we should just try harder.
All right. So here's what I say about the Sidney Powell defense.
Knowing now that she is going full out, I'm going to basically prove my claims, this is getting interesting.
And now here's the thing you have to ask yourself.
Here's the thing to ask yourself.
And I've been very curious about this up until now.
Sidney Powell... One year ago was one of the smartest, most capable attorneys in Washington, D.C., according to everybody, right?
Am I wrong? Was there anybody saying when she was defending Flynn, did anybody say, ah, Flynn, poor bastard, you couldn't get a good lawyer?
Nobody said that, right?
Fact check me on this, please.
But I don't believe anybody said anything except she's the highest level, capable, maybe even a superstar.
Like even above normal good lawyers.
Universally, right?
And now a year later, the news has told us that she's a crackpot.
She's a big old crackpot.
Now, There are two possibilities.
Number one, we've all been wrong for decades.
And she only pretended to be really smart and capable.
And I guess it was luck that she keeps winning cases and keeps getting good outcomes and is able to charge exorbitant amounts, I'm just guessing, for her services.
And she's highly in demand.
But Just in this one case, suddenly she lost her mind.
She became a crazy person.
I mean, really just a cue believer, if you will.
Did that happen?
Which one seems more likely, right?
Let's say, is it more likely that we never understood that all of her career successes were luck?
Just luck, right?
I guess we just didn't know it.
And she just kept getting lucky for decade after decade.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
And we thought it was skill.
Maybe. Maybe.
And there are also people who are capable that reach a certain age and are no longer capable.
That's a thing. Right?
That's a thing. JD is saying, you are a gullible.
Do you think there's somebody who isn't?
The moment you think that other people are gullible but you're not, that's where you lose the plot, my friend.
So am I gullible?
Yes. We don't have the option of not being.
That's how your brain is wired.
Your brain is wired as a pattern recognition machine that's not very good at it.
That's who you are. You don't have the option of not being gullible.
We're all gullible.
Yeah, you don't get the hall pass to be the not gullible one.
Anyway, so do we believe that she suddenly became less competent?
Do we believe that she never was, but she was lucky for decades?
Or, and I'll just put out another alternative speculative possibility, and I don't know how likely you think this is, But what are the odds that the news is biased?
Is that possible? Have you ever seen any evidence of that?
Any time the news seemed like it was creating more of a narrative or something?
Is that possible?
Now, I don't know how this is going to turn out.
I've told you that I myself am greatly skeptical, as in really, really skeptical, about the, let's say, the Venezuela connection and Chavez and all that.
I'm pretty sure that stuff's not real.
But there's a lot of other claims which I don't know one way or the other are real.
The Chavez stuff I'm pretty sure that's going to not turn out the way Sidney Powell wants.
I also suspect, and I think I said this early, that that might have been intentionally seeded to ruin her argument.
In other words, there might be somebody who might have pushed that into the argument to spoil the rest of the argument.
Because if there's one part that looks completely garbage...
It's easy to say, well, if this part's garbage, why would I believe the rest of it?
So one of the ways that you can destroy somebody's credibility is to get them to believe just one thing that's clearly not true.
And then once it's part of the larger argument, you're like, well, you know, this one thing wasn't true.
Do we believe the rest?
So my guess...
And this is just speculation, right?
You know the difference.
Just speculation. Is that she will prove her case, but not the Venezuela part.
That part looks like maybe somebody played a fast one.
So that's my prediction.
And I will tell you again my opinion on the election security.
I have no evidence that the election was subject to widespread fraud.
No evidence.
If you're asking me, Scott, do you have evidence that would stand up in court of any kind of widespread fraud?
I do not. Nor am I aware of where it would be found.
That said, I've also said the following, that I will stand by forever.
Because our system is not 100% secure, it might have good hardware, software security, I don't know, it might, but there are humans involved.
And wherever you have a lot of humans involved, whether it's Dominion or any other system, you have the possibility that they will be corrupted, Either because they have a personal mission or some intelligence agency gets to them.
Somebody bribes them. Lots of different ways.
So here's the point. In the short run, it is possible for an election system with all these moving parts, all these entities, all these things that are not transparent.
In the short run, it's entirely possible for it to be a fair and free election.
Totally possible. In the long run, it's impossible.
It's impossible in the long run.
Here's why. It's just math, right?
Just check the math.
Day one, somebody says, I think I'd like to corrupt that system.
But what do they do on day one?
Day one, there's not much you can do.
Day two, I'd really like to corrupt that system.
But what can you do?
What do you do? Day two, not much.
So day two is pretty safe.
Fast forward 15 years.
Do you think that intelligence agencies can't get an employee placed in a tech company in 15 years?
Do you think that in 15 years you couldn't find one person to bribe who worked for some company?
I'm not talking about Dominion.
I'm talking about any company.
So, in the long run, Widespread fraud is guaranteed in a system that looks like ours, just sort of generally.
Lots of non-transparency, as somebody's saying.
So if you have non-transparency, you have technology involved, and human beings who can be corrupted, who have control of that technology, in the long run, it's guaranteed to be rigged.
Guaranteed. Does anybody doubt that statement?
That you might have to wait, you know, maybe you wait a hundred years, or maybe it's in five years, but in the long run, it's guaranteed.
Disagree with me. But give a reason.
I'm saying no.
I'm saying somebody says there's no doubt.
Somebody says no.
For the people saying no, What would be the argument?
Given that people would have the highest incentive to corrupt it, foreign countries would, Democrats would, Republicans would, the bad operatives would, and human beings can be bought, and every system is corrupted eventually, if it can be.
Think about it. Just sort of let that sink in for a while, the ones who are saying no.
Just think about that.
In the long term, it has to be corrupted.
Now, it's the same with our financial system.
Our financial system, of course, will be corrupted in the long run because you'll always have enough people going through the system who are willing to try.
Hundreds of people try to corrupt it.
They all get caught and go to jail.
Somebody's going to get away with it.
You only need one.
So eventually somebody gets away with everything.
They just keep trying until they get it.
So this is very much like the slot machine example.
Suppose I said to you, here's your situation.
You can go play the slot machines for as long as it takes.
We'll give you infinity to play the slot machine.
Just pull the lever as much as you want.
You're going to have to put your own money into it, but you can play it as long as you want.
What are your odds of winning? Zero, right?
Because in the long run, the machine is designed to take your money.
It's only the short run that you could get a jackpot.
But in the long run, you're always broke.
Now, suppose I changed one thing.
I'm only going to change one thing.
You can still pull the slot machine forever, but you don't have to put any money in.
The only thing that can happen is you'll lose or you'll win, but you'll never put any of your own money in.
Now, what are the odds that you'll win in the long run?
100%. What are the odds that you win on your first poll?
Closer to zero.
You know, 1%, 5%, whatever it is.
But in the long run, it's 100%.
The election system with non-transparency and with human beings who can be corrupted, populating it all, is the slot machine that you can poll forever if you're a bad guy, and you never have to put your own money into it.
You can just keep pulling it forever.
If you can pull it forever, the chance of an eventual jackpot is 100%.
It's not 99. It's 100%.
So once you get the math of this, you realize that Sidney Powell might not be right, but she's right eventually.
If she's not right today, she'll be right later.
Just wait. Yeah, that'll get me canceled.
I guess the Biden administration is offering half a million dollars to improve face mask design.
Some are worried that that's a signal that we're going to be wearing face masks for a long time.
I'd like to think it's because we're getting ready for the next one.
But who knows?
I have a face mask design that I would like to suggest.
I would like a hose that comes from my face mask, could come out the bottom, such that no air is escaping from my mask area, but rather my breathing is going down the hose.
And then the hose, let's say, goes down my pants, And it just points to the ground, maybe like a foot off the ground, so that when I'm exhaling, I'm exhaling my virus directly onto the ground, not on a surface above.
Now, I'm sure they'll still fly up a little bit, but wouldn't you like to be able to breathe freely through a tube and exhale onto the ground as opposed to exhaling directly into somebody's face?
I feel like there's something there.
I don't know what it is. I feel like there's something.
Now, this would only be for people who are going to wear it all day, right?
You know, because you'd have to hook yourself up and stuff.
It wouldn't be for casual stuff.
But I feel like there's a design there that could be had fairly cheaply.
Let's talk about the Floyd trial.
So... The video evidence of the void trial of the Floyd death is obviously the main piece of evidence, or at least it's the main thing that will influence people.
People said to me, Scott, but there were also witnesses.
Well, witnesses talk to you, and then sound goes into your ear, and so you're hearing something from people that you don't know are biased or not.
It's evidence, and it could convict you, but it's not the strongest kind.
If you had a choice of listening to an eyewitness or looking at the video yourself so that you feel like you're the eyewitness, which of those is stronger?
I heard somebody say it, or I saw it on video myself.
Well, the video shouldn't be that much stronger because video can lie, but it does have that effect.
You would be way more convinced by seeing a video than just hearing somebody talk about it.
Because that's how persuasion works.
If you see it, you believe it.
If you hear about it, you might believe it.
Maybe not. So the first thing you need to know is that video will be really the only thing that matters.
And so if you think video tells you the truth, you'll probably convict.
But here's what I would do if I were the defense.
And I'm not sure if this would be allowed, but I'll just put it out there as a As a persuasion argument, not necessarily a legal one.
I would say, you know the video gave you the fine people hoax, the drinking bleach hoax, the Covington kid hoax, and the Trump overfeeding the koi fish in Japan hoax.
Every one of them looked exactly like those things were happening until we learned there was extra context, etc.
So I would put video evidence on trial.
I would put video evidence on trial.
And I would say, if your only evidence is that you saw it with your own eyes on video, that's a reasonable doubt.
Because you know that video can't do that.
Video doesn't have the capability of giving you certainty.
We know that, because of all these other examples where people thought they were sure.
But they were completely wrong.
So as long as that's the case, that's just something you know about video evidence.
Do you know why lie detectors are not allowed in court as evidence?
Because they're unreliable.
You want to hear the most controversial thing that you'll ever hear today?
If lie detectors are not allowed because they're not dependable...
Now that doesn't mean they're always wrong, right?
The lie detector isn't always wrong.
It's just not dependable enough to be in court.
Video is the same thing.
Video, you could argue, should be banned from court because it's so unreliable.
In fact, I'll bet if you put lie detector up against video, at least the video that, say, is in the political realm, I don't know that the lie detector would perform worse.
Do you? Because when you say the lie detector doesn't work, I think that means it doesn't work 10 to 20 percent of the time.
And we watched right in front of us that the news has served up something like 80% hoaxes with nothing but video.
Now, yeah, I see in the comments somebody saying that this argument wouldn't work in court, and I agree with you.
You really can't put video on trial, but intellectually you have to wonder, why not?
Why not? I think you could put it on...
If logic is all that counted...
You could put it on trial.
But let's talk about...
So here's what a CNN article says about this.
So CNN is talking about there's the Floyd family attorney, this guy named Crump.
So he's the attorney for the family, not for Floyd, of course, who is deceased.
But this is what CNN reports Crump says...
And they don't do a fact check on it, right?
They just sort of report he says this.
And he says this. It's going to antagonize them over and over when defense attorneys try to tell them, tell the jury, that is, that Floyd's cause of death was not what they saw on this video, but some trace amount of drugs that was found in his system, Crump said.
And to which I said...
Trace amounts. Now this is CNN. They're a news organization.
And here they are quoting the lawyer saying that there were only trace amounts of drugs found in the system.
Do you think that CNN had a responsibility to put parenthetically that there might be another argument that there was more than trace?
In fact, the chief medical examiner Said that he had more in his system than you would use for pain management.
And indeed, the county's chief medical examiner told prosecutors...
So this is a guy who was in charge of the autopsy, the official government person in charge.
He told prosecutors that Floyd's fentanyl use was higher than what a chronic pain patient would be on.
And then, quote...
If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD. So according to the medical examiner, the amount in his system would be indicative of an overdose amount if there were no other circumstances.
And yet CNN allows this crump guy to say, without fact-checking it, That he had trace amounts in his system.
You see what's happening here, right?
CNN wants...
They want the riot.
Because it would be so easy to just say, you know, and by the way, here's a link to PolitiFact, and you can see that, you know, there was more than trace amounts.
Because this trace amount argument is now what everybody on the left believes is true.
And it's not. And if they riot, it'll be because they think, well, it's not because of the drugs in the system that he died, because there were only trace amounts.
I watched CNN, and on CNN, they're saying trace amounts.
So what am I supposed to believe?
Obviously, the cop killed. So CNN is really setting up the country for Pretty expensive stuff.
Now I wonder, could you sue a news organization if your business got destroyed based on a hoax from your news organization?
If the news reports a hoax and they know it's a hoax?
Because this would be a case where clearly CNN as an organization...
Knows that it was not true.
That it wasn't trace amounts.
They know that. That's facts and record.
Or at least they know that the chief examiner said it, which would be also news.
So if they go ahead and they create this riot the way apparently they're doing, quite intentionally, how are they not liable for that?
Because it seems...
I mean, it's so intentional.
I don't know how you could...
Imagine it's not intentional.
So let's talk about PolitiFact.
So how much do they have in there?
So PolitiFact was fact-checking the fact that Floyd had enough fentanyl in his system to have died from it.
And they say, no.
The autopsy doesn't say George Floyd died of overdose.
So we're going to fact-check PolitiFact.
So PolitiFact's view is Is that the autopsy doesn't say that Floyd died of overdose.
Is that true or false? True.
It's true. So, so far, in fact, it's true.
And they did report the exact...
The words from this baker guy.
So far they're good, right?
So far they're good.
They did show the counterpoint that this guy said there was more than trace amounts.
And it's true that the coroner labeled it as a homicide.
Do you know what a homicide is?
Do you know the definition of a homicide?
Homicide is intentionally killing somebody.
So the intentionally part is built into the definition.
That's not optional. Homicide is intentionally killing people.
So the medical examiner ruled that it was homicide.
How do you interpret that?
Why are we having a trial?
If the coroner has ruled it homicide, what's the point of a trial?
It's homicide. Just give him the penalty.
Because it's ruled a homicide, right?
You all understand that, right?
These are... This is the most scientific, credible, exactly the group that should be looking into it, and they've said it's a homicide.
Why do you even have the trial?
Well, I'm no expert on this stuff, but I'll tell you what I think.
I think that the way the system works is that the medical examiners give you a preliminary opinion But it's an opinion.
And then it's the trial that digs in and finds out if that opinion holds or doesn't hold and who it was that killed them, not just that they were killed.
Right? Does that sound right?
Fact check me on this if there are some lawyers out there.
Maybe I'm missing a nuance or two.
But how amazingly prejudicial is it if you're on the jury and you hear the evidence that the examiner called it a homicide?
You're kind of done, aren't you?
Do you think that the average person in the jury understands this distinction?
That when the coroner calls it homicide, that doesn't mean it's homicide.
That's just their best opinion at the moment before you've looked into it.
That's a big difference.
But let me read again what Baker said.
He was the chief examiner, right?
He said, if you were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to be called an OD. So what he's saying is that if there are other apparent causes that would mitigate your opinion or that would soften your opinion that it was an OD, and you would look to those other circumstances, so what are they?
What are the other circumstances that the coroner's looking at?
So he's looking at the body, And he's saying that the body, if that's the only thing you looked at, he would have ruled it in OD. Right?
That's what he's saying. But he's saying, but there's other evidence.
So I'm looking at the whole story.
Which he should, right? There's nothing wrong with that.
He should look at the whole story.
But then, what is the other stuff?
It's really just the video, isn't it?
It's the video. So, did the coroner look at the body and determine that it was homicide because of the body?
Or because of the video?
Well, it's hard to know, but as I read what PolitiFact says, quoting Baker, the way I read it, and again this is an interpretation, is that he based the result of the autopsy on the video.
I think he's saying that.
I mean, I would ask him for a clarification if it were me, but that's what it looks like.
It looks like the body alone would have said it's an OD. It's the video that makes it not an OD. He kind of did an autopsy on the video.
And the video isn't reliable.
So, did we even get a medical opinion?
I don't believe this is a medical opinion.
I believe this is an opinion of a guy who saw a video.
Just like you and I. What advantage did...
The doctor have when he looked at the video that you and I don't have after hearing some things about neck compression and stuff like that.
Now keep in mind that they didn't find any bruises on the neck, so that's part of it too.
Alright, so here's the part.
In order for the examiners to say it's homicide, they have to say it's deliberate.
And somebody on Twitter said to me, it's a reasonably good question.
They said, Scott...
He had his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes while people were saying, you know, hey, he's not breathing, and people were complaining and stuff.
How much more obvious could it be, nine minutes?
How much more obvious could it be that he deliberately killed him?
Well, here's my counterpoint.
If you were a police officer...
And you were in, let's say, a decision where you had to make a quick decision, like just a second to make a decision, and you kill somebody, would you say that you deliberately murdered them, or maybe it was just the heat of the moment, it's hard to tell, it might have been a mistake.
But if you go nine minutes, would we all agree that whatever the police officer was thinking, that it was deliberate?
In other words, he wasn't doing anything Quite in the heat of the moment.
Nine minutes is a really long time.
So there was no heat of the moment involved.
Whatever he was doing, he thought about, and he employed, and he kept looking at it and thinking about it and employing it.
So it was definitely deliberate.
Would you all agree with that?
That whatever he was trying to do was a result of thinking about it and then doing it.
It wasn't something he found out later he had accidentally done.
Right? Now, if you were a police officer, and there were a crowd of spectators watching you in a public place, of course they have their phones out, and they seem quite concerned about the way you're treating them.
Do you think that the police officer said to himself, you know, you know what would be a good thing to do here, would be to deliberately kill this man for no good reason, over nine minutes, really, really make it last, in front of witnesses, Who have video.
Does that sound right?
Is that something that somebody deliberately does?
Would you? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are Derek Chauvin, whatever.
You're watching the crowd.
You kill a man over nine minutes, slowly.
You slowly murder a man in front of a crowd of witnesses who are filming you.
You did that intentionally? I would argue that the existence of the crowd, and Shaven being very aware of it, because they're right there interacting with him, I would say that guarantees it wasn't deliberate.
It guarantees he wasn't thinking that.
Because there's no evidence he's an irrational person.
Right? Nobody says he's crazy.
There wasn't any evidence that he was so mad he was doing something out of some irrational reason.
He looked like he was a police officer doing a police thing.
I don't think you could have better evidence that it wasn't deliberate.
What could be more evidence than the fact that Hugh Shaven would have been destroying his own life slowly over nine minutes in front of a bunch of witnesses?
Who does that?
In the history of the world, will any rational person destroy their own life in front of a crowd slowly, even while the crowd is telling them they're doing it and they're filming it?
No. So somebody at the comments is saying that I'm mind reading.
What I'm doing is saying that there's a more likely explanation.
So the least likely explanation, so leaving the mind reading, because mind reading would say, I'm sure of it.
Let's bring it back to statistical likelihood to get down the mind reading.
Statistically, if you had to guess, and there are two theories...
One theory is that he intentionally, slowly murdered somebody for no apparent reason, no motive, right in front of a crowd of witnesses.
That's one possibility.
Or, he simply wasn't aware that the danger was this high.
And it fooled him just like everybody else.
Which is more likely?
Again, we can't read his mind, but if you're the coroner...
Or the examiner?
If you're the medical examiner, what would cause you to think that he did that intentionally?
That's only one of the two possibilities, and it's the fucking stupid one.
Isn't it? It's the stupid one.
The other one makes perfect sense.
They didn't know what was happening.
Of course you do it in front of a crowd.
You don't even know you're doing it.
He probably thought he was doing a great job.
He probably thought this crowd thinks I'm really handling this situation.
What would you think? If you were in that situation, you'd probably think you were doing okay.
Alright. So, one of the comments that I get a lot, especially since I've been talking about politics more often than in my earlier career, is a comment I got today.
Somebody said, I don't know what happened to him talking about me on Twitter.
Dilbert made my work life at the cubicle farm more bearable with his sympathy for workers over management.
Then something happened, and he's been losing ground intellectually ever since.
Now I get this comment a lot.
People say, Scott, you used to be smart, but now you lost it.
Something going on. Something made you all dumb.
Seriously, who calls me at this time of day?
Now, I would give you the Sidney Powell defense.
Is it more likely that I suddenly became dumb?
Or is there maybe something else going on here?
And of course, I told you that the ground news people have an app where you can see if somebody has brain damage.
They don't call it that.
They just say it's an app that shows you what kind of news you consume, if you consume mostly the left or mostly news on the right or something balanced.
And a user named AskAmyS, the person who said this about me, ran their account through the Grounded News app and found out that they consume 77% left-leaning news.
And the funny thing is that it shows the top three influencers of this account.
And one of the top three is Erin Rupar.
Now what's funny about that is that Rupar's last name has actually literally become synonymous with fake news.
To get Rupar'd is to have somebody give you a video that's misleading because it's out of context.
So one of her biggest three influencers is literally somebody synonymous with fake news, by definition.
And so I offered this explanation.
I tweeted back and I said, what happened is you got dumber.
The fake news did that.
So I don't blame you personally.
And then I said, I'm completely serious, by the way.
That's literally what happened.
Science supports it. The silo news people get dumber.
That's literally what happened.
Somebody was so badly Rupard by listening to left-leaning news that they got brain damage, according to science.
I'm using the word brain damage because scientists used it.
I didn't make that up. And that consuming the fake news on either side exclusively, doesn't matter if it's just the right or just the left, makes you stupid.
So the science actually indicates it makes you stupid.
So that's what happened.
So consider the two possibilities.
I was smart for about 55 years, and then I got dumb all of a sudden.
But yet I still do smart things in other realms.
So it's weird that I just got this weird little stupidity just in this right time.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe. It's like pocket stupidity that only just affects this one thing.
Maybe. Can't rule it out.
Or, science says, if you consume too much of one type of news, you just can't see the world clearly anymore.
Maybe that's what's happening.
All right, some fact-checking.
Two claims that I've made that got fact-checked.
Number one, I said that nobody intentionally takes fentanyl.
That it ends up in counterfeit drugs and you take it accidentally.
That was hyperbole.
Meaning that I was aware that there are people who are high-end addicts, very experienced, who will get fentanyl, it's cheap, but they also, I'm told, learn how to take it without dying.
They're really serious addicts with the needles.
My reference, my hyperbolic reference, and of course they know they're getting it and they have a risk.
My reference was people take pills.
Now I should have specified I meant pills.
I was talking about the Floyd situation.
He had pills apparently. And there's some indication, unconfirmed, that he may have popped some pills in his mouth so they didn't get caught with him.
Now, if you knew that the pills in your possession had fentanyl in them, would you throw the last two or three in your mouth?
I don't know if you did that. I'm just asking you hypothetically.
Would you throw any more of it in your mouth if you knew it were fentanyl?
Well, maybe. People will do anything.
But, and especially if you're already high, you're not making good decisions.
But what I do know about it is that a lot of people who think they're getting Xanax or bars or something end up with fentanyl.
It's more dangerous than they think.
They die. Now, so some experts were getting on me by saying that, you idiot, don't you know that people do know they're buying fentanyl in many cases?
To which I say, you're completely correct.
You're completely correct.
They do know that. And I also do that because I'd heard long explanations about people who inject it will sit in a chair with their head back because the real danger from fentanyl is that you pass out and your head goes forward and you cut off your own air supply without waking up.
So that's one of the main ways that people die.
And then if you're an addict, you know to avoid that specific danger and so you're much safer than the average person.
Now, the other thing, by the way, the coroner said is that Floyd had a heart problem.
That seems pretty important.
Yeah, and of course, if it's prescribed to you, of course.
Of course. So that's my first fact check.
The second one is that I've claimed a number of times that overweight people are super spreaders.
Now, I based that on some science I saw, but I've been fact checked on that.
By Andres Bacchus, who is my data conscience.
And he says that that's not...
I don't know the details, but apparently he's not convinced that the science says that overweight people are super spreaders, or more likely to be.
To which I say, I'm always willing to believe that the data is wrong, or that the science isn't confirmed.
So that part's fine.
But here's the question.
Is there any way that they couldn't be Super spreaders?
I mean, really? Now, I would certainly believe that some thin people could also be super spreaders.
I'm not saying they're off the conversation.
But just imagine, holding your head, Andre the Giant.
I'll just do the extremes, right?
Andre the Giant weighs, I don't know, 350 pounds when he was alive versus a 100-pound person.
They both get COVID. Which one becomes more of a spreader?
Well, I would say that if the 100-pound person and the 350-pound person...
Let's say it's not an athlete.
I won't use Andre the Giant because he was actually an athlete.
But let's say it's just an average overweight person.
And they both walk up the stairs.
Which one is exhaling more air just walking up the stairs?
Do we need science to know that?
I feel like if you're overweight, you're going to be breathing heavier, aren't you?
All things being equal.
Then what about the real estate of your actual lungs?
If you're a giant person versus a tiny person, don't your lungs just have more real estate to be infected?
Do you need science to know that there would be more viral concentration if there's just more stuff to get infected?
Obviously science could find out that our common sense isn't telling us the right thing.
It happens all the time. But I feel it just feels sort of obvious when you look at all the elements that the larger you are, the more of a super spreader you're going to be.
And if that largeness is largely overweight largeness, not just physical largeness, I don't know how they could not be putting out more stuff.
Now, as Andres pointed out, we don't see a lot of overweight people at super spreader events, but there aren't that many super spreader events.
I was thinking that the spread had more to do with People come in your house, actually.
So, I don't know what your house looks like, but I'll bet there's not a lot of mask wearing inside your house, is there?
Even when your friends and family come.
Are you? Are you all wearing your mask inside your house?
When your friends stop by?
You know, even these days?
I don't know. I think most infections are happening in homes.
I saw there was a statistic about that at one point that suggested it.
So I don't think that they have to go to a rave to be super spreaders.
I think the super spreader in this case would be one here, one here, one here, one here.
So they might have infected ten people, but one at a time.
Who knows? And then the other counter-argument is that if you are overweight, maybe your symptoms...
Hospitalize you faster and take you out of the mix so you're not mingling with the public.
Maybe that's part of it too.
But somebody says that's not a super spreader.
Right. So using the word super spreader would be technically incorrect, but it could be a person who spread it to a whole bunch of people.
If you don't want to call that a super spreader, that's fine.
But if one person gives it to a bunch of people...
Oh, Andre the Giant was 520 pounds, somebody says.
Alright. Somebody says, more to do with fats and lipids.
Does it? Somebody says, I don't have ulcers, but I'm a carrier.
Alright. Yeah, the one with the bigger lung capacity who also is the sickest would be spreading the most, you would think.
But I'm open to the fact that that's not fully demonstrated by science.
So, that's all for today.
And I will talk to you tomorrow if I don't get cancelled today.
