Episode 1341 Scott Adams: Test Your Predictions, My Problem With Vaccinations and Passports, Reparations, and Coffee
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Content:
A BLM Marxist with 4 homes?
Army Lt. Nazario traffic stop
Reparations via education
Vaccination questions
Climate change and cost of steel
The Mating Filter
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That is correct. Yes, somebody says OAC's in trouble.
Well, I didn't see that story yet.
Hey, how would you like to enjoy today?
Like a lot. All you need is a simultaneous sip because that makes everything better.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a stein, a canteen, drink a 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 to the day.
The thing makes everything better, and you don't need a passport for this.
It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now.
Go. Now, I'm not going to tell you that drinking coffee will protect you from the coronavirus.
But... I've been drinking coffee every day and no coronavirus yet.
So that's a thing I call science.
You should always get your science from YouTube live streams with cartoonists.
Well, let's talk about all the things.
Fun story today from Joel Pollack in Breitbart.
And interestingly, I don't know what other publications will carry this story.
It seems that one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter...
Patrice Kahn-Cullors has bought four homes since 2016.
I think she still owns all four.
Now, here's my take on that.
There are two ways you could look at this.
One way would be, hey, I think this Black Lives Matter organization has some, possibly, possibly some questions to answer about where the money is going.
Because I don't know exactly what other sources of income she has, but she might.
She might get money for public speaking.
Maybe she has a book deal.
I don't know. I would feel like if you were a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, you could get a book deal if you wanted one.
So we don't know where our money comes from.
But the interesting thing is, what if it came from donations to the organization?
Because I kind of want that to be true.
And not because I want a crime to be committed.
And not because I want any, you know, the organization to be less credible.
But only because it would be reparations.
And it would be funny.
I think it would be hilarious because where does most of the money come from that backs Black Lives Matter?
Does most of the money come from donations from poor black people?
I don't know, but probably not most.
I would think that most of the money that goes to back the Black Lives Matter organization probably came from white people.
Mostly, right?
Big groups, billionaires, people who wanted to donate money.
So what I see is a story in which a bunch of white people gave some money to a founder of, or at least to Black Lives Matter, and one of the founders is living really well, it looks like.
So I don't care about any of this, do you?
Do you really care if a bunch of white people donated money and allegedly, potentially, I have no evidence to prove it, that this is the case, but people suspect that maybe some of that white money went to supporting a black woman's comfortable lifestyle, which to me, I don't even care.
Do you care? To me it's just funny.
But, we have not ruled out, let me say this carefully, she may have made the money in perfectly legal other activities because she would have the option to do that.
I mean, she seems to be a pretty high-functioning human being, so if she started Black Lives Matter, she probably also knows how to make money.
It is a little odd that she calls herself a trained Marxist and might own more real estate than 99% of the world, but...
She's allowed. She lives in the system that allows it.
So if she's playing the system and winning, to me it's just funny.
The George Floyd trial and the whole situation, if you will, May have almost got somebody killed, unrelated to the whole George Floyd thing.
And you probably saw the story.
Army Lieutenant Nazario, who is reportedly part black, part Hispanic, was driving his new car home and he was pulled over and he was afraid to get out of the car.
So if you saw the video, it looks like a person who's quite justifiably afraid the police are going to murder him.
Even if he cooperates.
So his hands were out of the car, so he was completely safe and under control, but the little part of the clip I heard, he was saying that he was concerned about unbuckling his seatbelt because that would require his hands to go down here while a gun is pointed at him.
Was he unreasonable to ask that maybe the police could unbuckle him Because if he moves his hands out of the review, he could get shot.
Was he unreasonable?
You know, in a normal time, that would sound unreasonable, wouldn't it?
It would sound unreasonable in normal times, but these are not normal times.
He's presumably watched that video of George Floyd as many times as you have, and probably thinks that the police are looking for a reason to shoot him.
Is that unreasonable?
I wish it were.
I wish that were unreasonable.
It's just not. And this was a military member.
When I see police officers treating a member of the military like this, it has a whole different, you know, it takes on a whole bigger meaning.
And worse. But it has to be said...
That he was also resisting, I won't say resisting arrest, but he was resisting doing exactly what they said.
But he was still in communication with them, still completely safe, his hands were out the window.
Clearly the police could have handled this better.
Clearly. But it has to be said, he could have handled it better too.
Now, I don't have specific advice for him, but I don't believe he handled this right.
But it wasn't really his job, too, was it?
I feel like the police had a little bit more responsibility to manage it so that he could feel safe while they could feel safe.
They were the experts, and they were in control.
And he was asking them quite clearly, give me a way to do this safely.
And they didn't.
They only made it scarier.
The more he asks for safety, the scarier they made it.
The police should be fired immediately.
I don't know if there are any charges that come with this, but if those police officers are still working today, that's not cool.
I feel like they should be gone already.
But we have to do something about the fact that You have a person of color who's afraid to even surrender to the police.
Gotta fix that.
That's a pretty big problem.
The Hunter Biden laptop story.
I feel like it's sending all the wrong messages.
In fact, the whole Hunter Biden story in general.
Because this is what I see so far.
The Hunter Biden did excellent drugs...
And had lots of orgies with strippers, which sounds fun.
I mean, I'm not recommending it.
I don't think you should necessarily adopt that lifestyle, but sounds fun while you're doing it.
And apparently that's all working out for him.
I think it's going to work out.
I'm not sure that's the message we want to send to anybody.
It's like, well, if you do that, you don't even have to remember if you lost a laptop.
Now, of course, everybody's laughing at the fact that he's actually going on legitimate, you would think, news and interview programs, and actually getting away with saying he doesn't know if his laptop was taken from him or if he dropped it at a place to be fixed and forgot about it.
How many laptops do you have?
Is there anybody here who has more than, say, two?
Or that are up to date?
I mean, I have two laptops, but one I don't use.
I can imagine somebody might steal that one and I wouldn't notice for a week.
But if somebody asked me, hey, do you have all of your laptops?
I think I could figure that out right away.
I've got two. One.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute. I had two yesterday.
So, yes, I see people saying three and four, but I'll bet you know where they all are.
So, the fact that he's getting away with that is just hilarious, and it tells you the state of our news.
And as others have pointed out, it would be easy for the people asking him this question to follow up and say, but...
Is the content we've seen real?
Kind of an obvious question.
You don't know if the laptop is yours, but is the content yours?
Which seems more of an appropriate question.
All right, so our news is failing us on that as well as everything else.
Let us test your predictions, okay?
So every time there's a big thing in the news, we all make a prediction about how it's going to go.
So we're going to test a few of your predictions about Iran during the Trump administration.
And this is from a tweet by Adele.
So Twitter user Adele.
And she points out that these are the things people predicted.
That if Soleimani was eliminated, there would be World War III. Did you think that?
I did not think that.
So my prediction was right.
If you predicted there would be war because of this, well, you were wrong.
How about when the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel, that there'll be World War III? I predicted that there wouldn't be.
There'd be trouble, but we'd get over it.
If you predicted there would be, you were wrong.
How about when Trump Designated the Iranian Republican Guard as a foreign terrorist organization.
World War III? Nope.
Hardly even heard about it.
None of that happened.
Now, as Adele points out, those same experts who warned against all of those things and were wrong on all of those things are giving us some more advice.
About entering back into the JCPOA. So there's your experts.
So what does it even mean to be an expert anymore?
I feel as if you can be an expert and just be completely wrong about everything.
I just don't know what expert means anymore.
It's losing its value.
Here's an interesting hypothesis.
I'll run this by you and see what you think, okay?
This comes from Twitter user CrumHunger.
Crum with a K. And he says, so this is his hypothesis.
Let's see what you think. Trump is being used to split the GOP in two now, which is why he hasn't been arrested.
Hmm. Can anyone else see the strategy here?
The Democrats are playing 40 chess.
What do you think? And I'm not completely buying that.
Not completely buying that.
Because, you know, any kind of legal action could take a long time.
Maybe it's not clear that there's anything to charge him with.
There could be lots of reasons that there are no charges.
But one of them, but one of them could be that people who are in charge of making the decision to charge or not might not want to do it.
They might want him to stay around.
Now, we know that the Democrats have used this exact strategy.
Well, exact might be subjective.
But exact in the sense that we have documents that show the Democrats did want the news media to promote Trump during the first election because they thought he had the least chance of winning.
So they were trying to keep him in the public eye because they thought that would be good for them.
That didn't work out in 2016.
But are they doing it again?
Is it possible that having him just sort of twisting around out there with legal issues over him is the ideal situation because it splits the Republicans?
I don't think I can rule this out.
Can you? I don't think you can rule it out.
But here's another hypothesis.
What would happen if Trump were arrested?
For what? I don't know.
As far as I know, there are no specific allegations with any kind of evidence that the public's ever seen.
You hear all kinds of unsourced references to things, but as far as I know, I'm not aware of any evidence of a crime.
Are you? We hear allegations and whispers and maybe this and maybe that, But any evidence?
I mean, I feel like the public would have heard something.
You know, something we haven't already heard before.
So, one possibility is that there never was anything illegal.
Right? So that would certainly explain why he's not being arrested.
Nothing illegal.
Another possibility is, can you imagine...
What Trump would do if he had nothing to lose?
Can you imagine that?
Do you know how many things Trump knows that the public doesn't know?
Do you know how much he knows about other citizens?
People he's worked with, people who've done things that he knows that you don't know?
Oh, my God!
If Trump ever goes down, There are going to be a lot of his enemies who go down on the same day.
Or soon after.
Because he's not going to go down alone.
You know that.
He's going to take as many of his enemies with him as he can.
And if I were one of his enemies, I would certainly wonder what he knows about me.
So this is really interesting.
He might be virtually unarrestable.
Or at least unprosecutable.
Because he's just too dangerous.
Maybe. Right?
I'd be pretty worried about what he knows.
Because he wouldn't be shy about telling you if he had nothing to lose.
Remember I told you that there should be something like the Turing test, except instead of trying to find out if it's a computer or a real person behind the curtain that's talking to you, I suggested the Dilbert test, in which you see if you can tell the difference between reality and parody.
So I'm going to read you a tweet, allegedly, or am I making this one up?
Is this a real tweet that a real person seriously said, or is it just a parody of people like this?
And the tweet went like this.
White people and men, do you ever take a day off from your nonsense?
Wake up and think. Quote, I am going to be less toxic today.
Please try it, just one day.
Is that something a real person said in public?
White people and men, do you ever take a day off from your nonsense?
Wake up and think, I am going to be less toxic today?
That's a real tweet.
Somebody looked at the world and said, this should go over about right.
Oh, a little controversial, but I think I'm on...
Strong ground with this one.
The tweeter is Sayira Rao, two names that I find hard to pronounce, so I'm just guessing.
And she's a co-author of a forthcoming book called White Women, Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better.
Is that a real book?
It's a real book.
White women. Everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better.
Well, I'd like to write a book for Sayira Rao to help her do better.
She needs a book. All right.
As you know, There is some talk of reparations.
I think President Biden, I think he wants some kind of a committee to look into options.
Here's what you need to know about the move toward reparations.
I believe nobody serious is talking about cash payments.
Can we start there? As soon as you hear reparations, you hear, oh no, this isn't going to work, because white people are going to have to pay money through taxes or whatever, are going to pay money to black people, and why are we punishing white people who had nothing to do with slavery in most cases?
Yes, they benefited, but maybe they didn't.
What about the poor white people?
What about the black people who were not burdened by slavery?
What about black people who became rich?
There's just no way you can do a cash payment.
Can everybody here start with the agreement that no matter what reparations for slavery could ever look like, it's never going to include a direct cash payment?
And if it did, there would be too much resistance.
So can we all agree that that's off the table before we talk about it?
Would you agree? Now, certainly you've got the slippery slope.
I know you're worried about that. And I can't say it would never happen.
I'm just saying it's not worth talking about.
Right? Because there's nothing to talk about.
It would be a horrible idea if it happened.
I know you'd hate it.
I would hate it.
I would argue against it.
But here's the only thing I would like to add to the conversation.
Sometimes... Because we're so automatically we go to our teams.
What does my team think about this issue?
What does my team think?
We turn everything into a fight.
And lots of times that makes sense because you're just on different teams and you want different things and it's kind of a fight, a political fight, but it's a fight.
But we sort of automatically think everything's a fight.
What if you change your frame and And just for conversation, just for the intellectual experience of it, you just say to yourself, what if it's not a problem or a fight?
What if it's a puzzle?
And the puzzle is this.
How could you do something that would have, let's say, the effect of reparations, the effect being something really good for black Americans, something that they felt was compensatory in some way toward the legacy of slavery?
Now, suppose you could do something in which they were happy, they, the black Americans who care about reparations.
It was something that made them happy.
At the same time, it made, let's say, Republicans, just to keep it simple, also happy.
Could you do it? Is there any way you could come up with a plan that would make those two disparate groups of Americans...
We're all Americans, right?
Should be something in common.
But disparate in many ways.
Is there anything that would be called reparations if you're thinking expansively?
It's not just a payment.
It's a way of doing things.
It's a change to the system.
It's an improvement. It's a tweak.
It's an adjustment of something that would make both sides happy.
Now, if you can't make both sides happy, can we agree it's not worth doing?
Are you okay with that? Let's say that the starting point is, if it's something that makes black Americans happy about reparations, but it made, let's say, poor white Americans unhappy, because they got whatever, they're just unhappy, it's not good.
That's not where we want to go.
It's got to be both happy or don't do it.
That's the starting point.
Here's my suggestion. For a creative way.
Now, I'm not saying this is the idea, but I'm giving you an example of a creative way to approach this that gets you everything you want for both sides.
What is it that Republicans want more than just about anything lately?
It's better schools, and specifically more competition in schools.
Would you all agree that Republicans want school choice School competition.
They want funding to follow the kid, not funding going to a school that's going to ruin them and indoctrinate them.
Right? Republicans want competitive, better schools, and here's the important part, they would open their wallets for it.
But it's hard to get Republicans to simply fund the existing school system when it's not what they want.
I mean, they'll fund it to the minimum, But Republicans say, that's not the system we want.
You're brainwashing our kids.
You're getting bad results.
You're not even helping black Americans.
What are you doing?
And what's the problem?
It's the teachers unions, right?
The teachers unions prevent the competition that would allow Republicans to be happy with the direction of education.
Now, what about black Americans?
What do they care about the most?
Well, they would care about racism, systemic racism, inequality in every way.
What is the biggest lever you could push or pull that would make a difference?
Now, if we accept that there are a million forms of racism embedded in society, and I do, I feel like that's a fair statement, meaning that no matter where you are, there's a lot of friction to get anywhere.
So if where we are keeps a certain groove from, you know, thriving, That's real.
But what's the biggest thing you could do?
Education. If you created a situation where every black kid, and every kid, right, just every kid, but every black kid, can have a good education, you've taken a problem that's this big of racism, and you just shrunk it to this big.
Now that last part's really, really hard to get rid of.
But the first part isn't.
The first part is just make education better.
So every black kid can get one.
That's the big thing.
That's the big lever.
And Republicans agree.
So could you do reparations by saying, we would like to do a grand deal?
No. I know we don't agree on stuff, but on this we do agree.
Republicans want black Americans to have a better education.
Totally want that.
Because they want it for their own kids.
And you can't really, you know, what would be a fair solution where it only goes to one side?
None, right? So Republicans would like everybody to have equal opportunity, and they would like black kids to have better education, they'd like their own to have a better education, and it's the same process.
You have to stand up to the teachers' unions, who are the source of most systemic racism, because they don't let you fix the big part, the differences in education.
That's the big part.
Still lots of little parts, not minimizing that they need some work, but the big part is education.
So, that's reparations.
Black Americans saying, we have the political clout, because they do, to deal with the teachers' unions.
Republicans saying, we don't have the political clout, but we got a lot of money, and we can give you our support.
Imagine Republicans and Black Americans saying, Look, let's fight about everything else.
But we're on the same team on this stuff.
Education. And once you realize you're on the same team, it's a puzzle.
It's not a problem.
It's a puzzle. You've got all the parts to form the complete picture.
You have all the parts.
Nothing's missing. Do we lack money?
Nope. We don't lack money for good things.
We lack money for things that people don't agree on.
But we could get agreement on this.
So, the larger picture is sometimes your problems are not fights, they are puzzles.
If you see it as a puzzle, you've got a chance of fixing it, satisfying everybody.
If you see it as a problem, it just stays that way.
So that was the least tweeted tweet I've ever done, I think.
People hate this idea.
People absolutely hate me even, like, giving any oxygen to this idea.
But I think most of it is because you're thinking of it in terms of a win-lose situation.
I have no tolerance, no tolerance, for a win-lose situation.
But I'm completely optimistic we can figure out how everybody wins.
This is one of those rare situations...
Where everybody winning is completely accessible.
Maybe you couldn't do that in every situation, but this one you could.
We're hearing that the Chinese vaccinations suck.
You might think our vaccinations are bad.
That would be your opinion.
But apparently even the Chinese are saying their vaccinations are not very effective.
And so they're suggesting that they might take some different vaccines that are not effective.
And maybe just add them together so they've got one super vaccine.
Nothing scary about that.
Take one vaccine that isn't tested as much as you wish it were, mix it with another one that's also not tested as much as you were, and then you've got a new vaccine that's made of two things.
When you put them together, nothing's been tested.
Because you've never tested them together.
So that seems like it's going from bad to worse in China.
And is this what happens when China doesn't have the ability to steal our technology, that they can't even make a vaccine?
So you've got American and European companies knocking out vaccines.
You might not like them, but they seem to be more effective.
And China can't make a vaccine unless they steal our technology.
Is that what's happening? I'm really curious about the apparent lack of innovative entrepreneurial technical ability in China, because clearly it's not an education problem.
It's not a wanting-to-do-it problem.
But why is it that China doesn't create and invent stuff as good as America?
Does anybody know why that is?
Is that entirely because their system is bad?
Because you've got to think that the same people who would come to America are probably inventing shit, right?
Literally the same family.
If some members come over here and work in Silicon Valley, suddenly they start inventing good things.
So it's got to be the system, right?
Right? Or their schools.
I don't know. I just wonder what it is that makes them so uncompetitive in this major way.
Alright, let's talk about vaccinations.
My feelings about vaccinations are, do you like this word?
Evolving. They're evolving.
I'm seeing a lot of people criticizing my opinions on vaccinations while not quite understanding them, which is basically Twitter, right?
Twitter is people being criticized for things that you don't quite understand and you misinterpreted them.
That's like 80% of Twitter.
But I'll give you my latest updated feelings about vaccinations and passports with a little bit of a change.
I would say an update from where I had been.
First thing that bothers me is that we have such a different risk profile in this country between, let's say, older and obese people and younger, healthy people, that if we all take the vaccination, are we all improving our odds?
Because I don't know that that's been demonstrated by any data, has it?
Do we know that young people would have...
A better chance of outcomes with the vaccinations, even if we do know that the older, weaker people do have it.
Suppose we know for sure that the vaccinations are definitely a good risk for half of the population, but what if there's another half of the population where it's not so clear?
Is the data obvious that it's good for everybody?
I don't know that we have that data, do we?
I feel like we've used an average, like on average it's good, but there's such a wildly different risk profile that I ask myself, wait a minute, am I in the old and sick group in which a vaccination, I would say, would be a good idea, based on what we know today?
A risk management decision.
If you were old and weak and the coronavirus was likely to kill you, maybe the vaccination makes sense.
But suppose you're younger and healthy.
If you get the vaccination, you still can get the coronavirus.
Right? You still have to wear the masks.
You still have to do all that stuff.
So you're not buying that much.
And you can still spread it if you have it.
So... The first question is, am I in the group that might be worse off with a vaccination?
And I don't even know if that's true.
I don't know if there is such a group because our data is so incomplete.
Or am I in the older group because I'm kind of on the bubble because of my age?
Don't know. It's kind of hard in my case.
But here's the thing that's...
You know there's always one piece of information that makes the big difference?
Maybe it's just personal or something.
But here's the piece of information that totally flipped my switch.
Are you ready? I don't know if this is different where you are.
Apparently, and I need a fact check on this.
Please fact check me. Apparently, I'm not allowed to know which vaccine I'm getting.
Is that true in California?
I think it's true here. Is that true anywhere else?
That you're not allowed to know in advance which one you're getting?
Because that's kind of a...
That feels like a hard no.
All right, I'm sitting wrong.
I'm looking at your comments here.
Not here. Oh, it's not true there.
So some of you are told.
They told you. But did they tell you before you showed up?
Did they tell you only once you were in the chair?
Not true in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, I did read a news report that in California you wouldn't be told which one you're getting.
I'm saying yeses and nos.
So I guess there's some uncertainty on this.
Not in Texas. Had to ask.
Yes at the appointment.
Okay, so I'm guessing that you learn once you get there, but you don't learn when you make the appointment, right?
And that bothers me.
That bothers me. Now, I get why they might want to do that, but...
At this point, I don't believe there's any way for me to say I will take the single dose, but I won't take the double dose.
I don't have that option, right?
At least in California.
But how long would I have to wait until I did have the option?
Because it seems like that would have to be in the future, right?
If you wait another, I don't know, however long.
Well, we get to the point where we have enough supply...
That I can say, okay, what kind of vaccine do you have?
I don't like that one, or I like this one.
I feel like the least you should be able to know is before you go, which one you're going to get.
Yeah, likely summer or fall, June maybe, something like that.
So that's a variable that, at least where I am, I don't know of any way to find out in advance.
But maybe where you are, you can.
Now, if you get the vaccination, you are likely to have maybe two days where you have, like, a flu.
If you don't get the vaccination and you get the actual coronavirus, you're likely to have a few days of the flu, maybe longer.
In both cases, you could either die, because even vaccinations can kill some people, And if you get the coronavirus, you might die, because the coronavirus kills some percentage of people.
And in both cases, there's a risk, but we don't know how much, of long-term health problems.
There's a risk that the vaccine could give you long-term health problems.
We don't know how much. There's a risk that the coronavirus could give you long-term health problems.
We don't know how much.
There's a risk that if you get the vaccination, then you can get a passport and you can go to more places.
But really? Do you think that's going to be real?
So one of the reasons that I'm less concerned about passports than most of you...
I'll be a little anti-passport here in a minute, so just calm down.
Calm down.
I know it looks like Nazi Germany.
Show your papers, blah, blah, blah.
But remember, you're already in that world.
There are very few things you can do without showing your ID. So you're already in Nazi Germany.
You've got to show your papers.
That's not different. It's just another thing you'd have to show your papers to.
So I don't think the argument that you'd have to show your papers...
Is persuasive because it's just already the case.
You already have to show your ID for all kinds of stuff.
But should we add to that?
That's a good question.
So here's my take on passports.
I think that they can't work.
So I'm less worried than you are because you think that it could be implemented and it would work.
I, with my background in business and life and economics, believe there's no way it could work.
And here's why. Let me give you a concrete example.
Let's say a restaurant decides that you must have a passport to go to the restaurant.
Would that work? Would it?
Restaurants have really small margins of profit.
If they were to lose 10 or 20% of their customers, it's the difference between profit and no profit.
If the restaurant next door, another Italian restaurant, because have you ever noticed there's never just one Italian restaurant?
There's not just one Chinese restaurant.
There's always competition.
So if you're right next to one that doesn't require a mask, and let's say you want to go to a dinner, and there are four of you.
Three of you got the vaccination.
One of you just recovered from the actual coronavirus.
So one of you didn't need a vaccination because you just recovered.
You can't go to eat at the vaccination place.
You've got to go to the competitor.
So the competitor gets everybody who wants to eat there.
Maybe some people say, I'm a little afraid, no vaccinations there.
So they go to the other one.
But pretty soon, I think the ones with the vaccination requirement realize that no foursome can eat there.
You could get one person.
You could get a couple to eat there, because lots of times couples get vaccinated around the same time.
But it'd be hard to get a table of four, where all four of them have a vaccination for a while.
So I think that competition will make it largely difficult for anybody to make this stick.
Now, where there is no competition...
It's a problem. Let me give you an example.
You saw the story of the volcano on the island, and the cruise ships said they would only take people who were vaccinated.
And then you said to yourself, I told you, I told you, as soon as it's an option, they're going to make sure you're vaccinated or you can't do stuff.
Well, this is exactly an example of no competition.
So remember, where there is competition, it'll probably be fine.
Because there's competition. That fixes just about everything.
Where there's no competition, uh-oh, we only have a few cruise ships, but we've got all these people on the island, and there's no other way to get them off.
That's no competition.
In that case, those cruise ships can do anything they want, because there's no competition.
Now, apparently it wasn't the ships that required it.
It was the Countries that they were going to deliver those folks to.
It was the countries that didn't want them delivered to them that made the cruise ships have that rule.
I think that'll probably get fixed.
I think there will be other boats and other destinations and other solutions.
So I think that everywhere there's no competition, probably there's workarounds.
And where there is competition, it kind of takes care of itself.
And I think that as long as the government doesn't require these passports, and so far it looks like they won't, because neither Republicans nor Democrats want them, I'm just not that worried.
Of all the things I'm going to worry about today, it's kind of toward the bottom, really.
But I don't fault somebody who wants to worry more about it.
it.
It's just that my experience shows that this has all the characteristics of something that will fall apart under its own weight.
Right?
So, there's that.
Okay.
What do you think about the fact that reparations are going to go to a committee?
That's kind of a way to kill them, isn't it?
The best way to kill anything is to send it to a committee.
The same thing with court packing.
And I saw some smart people, Jonathan Turley and other people are now agreeing that it's probably Biden's plan to kill a court packing by sending it to a committee.
The committee probably won't favor it with enough of a majority for anything to happen.
Here's a medical question for you.
I am continually bothered by the fact that we don't know how pandemics end because it's not by vaccinations, at least historically.
So that's the biggest unknown and the most important thing.
If we knew that, maybe we'd act differently.
And so the question is this.
Will the vaccinations make the virus mutate faster and become dangerous?
I don't know. I mean, it sounds scary, but who knows?
So here's my question.
Is it possible, is this a thing, to be exposed to trace amounts of the coronavirus, not enough to ever get sick, and not enough even to be an asymptomatic infected person?
In other words, if they tested you, it might not even show up.
Could you develop some little bit of antibodies without ever being really infected?
I know you can be infected asymptomatic.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Can you be exposed and somehow build this little bit of immunity without ever really actually having it?
Is that a thing?
Because we have this mystery of how a pandemic can ever end, you know, well before you get to herd immunity.
Some people have some kind of immunity.
It just has to be.
Now, I don't know if that immunity is genetic.
Could be. Could be genetic.
But I feel like maybe, especially with this coronavirus where it's everywhere, it's in the air, do you believe you haven't breathed in any coronavirus?
Because I feel like I must breathe it everywhere.
I feel like every time I go to the grocery store or whatever, I feel like there must be a little bit of coronavirus in the air, right?
Just a little bit?
So the question I wonder in my ignorant, non-scientific, non-medical brain is, is there something about it that people can get a little bit of it, never know they had it, but if they're ever exposed again, they're already a little bit ready?
I don't know. Let's see if somebody else knows that.
Somebody says it takes out the weak, but that doesn't quite explain it.
Because the healthy would still be infected, they just wouldn't die.
There's something that makes these otherwise healthy people just invulnerable, and I feel like it might be exposure.
Vitamin D levels?
Maybe. Yeah, I'm not sold on all of that.
Alright. There was a TED economist talking about climate change in a way that only economists can.
I've told you before that when scientists tell you what the risk of something is, the trouble is they're not economists.
Scientists are not economists.
And I'm not saying economists are always right.
I'm just saying it's a different field and understanding.
And so this Ted Economist, whose name I forgot to write down, made the following point.
Let's say you wanted to go to the steel industry and say, steel industry, stop putting CO2 into the air.
Could they do it? Well, it turns out they could do it physically.
They'd have to, like, tear down their whole factory and build it completely differently, and then they could make steel at fairly low CO2 production.
But it might double their cost.
So can they do it?
Is it economically possible for the makers of steel, which is one bigger component of climate and CO2, could they survive if they had to double their costs?
Seems obviously no, right?
Wouldn't every one of you say they can't really compete?
They certainly can't compete.
Because they double their costs.
Well, here's what you didn't know.
Suppose you went to buy your car.
How much of the price of the car is steel?
Because there's quite a bit of your car that's steel.
I think it's like a ton of steel in a typical car.
It's got to be pretty expensive, right?
Well, turns out you're wrong.
That the cost of a car Is mostly not parts, or at least not raw materials.
The cost of the car is the production, the assembly, the overhead, you know, the shipping, the sales, the marketing, blah, blah, blah.
It turns out that the total material cost of a car is 15%.
And that's not unusual for other products with steel.
Yeah, it's all labor and all the other stuff.
So if you took a car...
You say, okay, only 15% of it is materials, and only a portion of that is steel.
And if you were to double the cost of the small part of your car, what would it do to the total cost?
Well, a 30,000 euro car, to use this TED Talkers example, might go up $500.
But suppose you had an option of buying a car, same car, one is $500 more than the other, but the one that's $500 more, say 2% or so of your total cost, would be good for the planet, and the other one would not.
Eh, you might buy the expensive one.
It's better for the planet, because it's only a little bit more expensive.
$500 for the price of the whole car.
You wouldn't even notice.
So the surprising thing about this is, you could tax the piss on the things that are the CO2 producers, and you'd hardly notice.
In other words, they could do incredibly expensive things to remediate how much CO2 they put out, you wouldn't even notice.
Did you know that?
Did you know that?
So the 15% is all of the components.
That's not just the steel part.
So the steel part is much less than the 15%.
Now, he did say you also have to do the calculation on the other parts because every part creates some CO2, but they're not as bad as steel.
It's not as bad.
So the point is...
We probably do, if we listen to economists instead of scientists, there's probably a fairly obvious way out.
You just put a great burden on the things which are the problems, pass the expense along to the public, and the public doesn't notice.
Do you buy that?
They tax it all, though.
CO2 is not bad, and steel is not bad.
Well, CO2 is not bad in some quantities, but everything's bad in too much of a quantity.
There's very few exceptions, except maybe money.
That might be the exception.
All right. So I was just looking at your reaction to that to see what you thought.
Okay. Here's a little provocative thing.
So not long ago I made the following statement that people are talking about today, which is that all it takes to make a man happy, let's say you're in a marriage with a man, and I said all it takes to make him happy is some combination of at least three of the five things.
Respect, sex, exercise, work, and food.
So if you're married to a man, and it's within your ability to make sure he gets at least three of those things, or at least help him, he's probably going to be fine.
Doesn't have to be the same three every day, but you've got to get at least three of these things.
Respect, sex, exercise, work, or food.
Now, it seems to me this is very doable.
Food meaning eating with a man, helping him make a sandwich, or whatever.
I mean, you don't have to make the sandwich, but if he's got food and it's good food, he's going to be kind of happy.
So these are all very doable things.
So any woman could quite easily help make sure a guy gets these things just by making sure the scheduling is good, etc.
But does it work the other way?
It seems to me that, and I want to test this with you, all right?
This is going to be very provocative.
It goes like this.
If we take the filter that everything we do is some kind of reflection of our mating instinct, then that's a good filter.
It's very predictive.
If you just say everything you do is somehow being influenced by your mating instinct, you end up explaining the whole world.
It's a really good way to explain what's happening, and it's an even better way to explain what's going to happen next.
We have a situation in which men appear to want to make their women, you know, in your typical hetero relationship.
I think men want their wives to be happy.
Would you say that's true? Would you agree with the fact that men want their wives to be happy?
Now, if you use the mating filter, it makes perfect sense.
Because the man wants to have sex, and if his potential sex partner is happier, He has more chance.
So the main thing that a man is evolved to do, which is have sex and spread his seed, that's his main biological impulse.
And making a woman happy is how he gets there.
So does he legitimately want a woman to be happy?
Yes. Unambiguously.
Does it work the other way?
Does the woman have an unambiguous desire to make the man in her life happy?
I don't think so.
And I don't think it has anything to do with the character of the woman.
I think that through the biological filter, they just don't have an incentive.
And indeed, keeping a man slightly unhappy so he's continuing to give you resources...
It's probably the optimized situation, isn't it?
Because if the man is happy, he stops doing stuff.
Well, I got everything I need.
Why would I do more?
Why would I bring you flowers if you're already happy?
Why do I need to work harder to make money so that we're more comfortable if you're already happy?
I would say that making a man happy...
Is biologically suboptimal.
And that men, to keep our system working, you know, the biological part of our system, kind of need to be unsatisfied all the time.
So that we're working for stuff.
We've got to work for stuff.
Right? And I'm not sure that makes us unhappy, because we like to work for stuff.
We're sort of designed that way.
But, you know...
Everybody's different. I see Gene saying, untrue.
Not true, Sandra says.
I want my man to be happy.
Let me add a caveat to that.
I don't believe there's any woman who thinks this way.
Would you be okay with that?
In my opinion, no woman would agree with what I said.
Consciously. No woman is going to say, yeah, I do kind of like it, when the man I love is a little bit unhappy.
I believe nobody believes that.
So all of you, all of you saying, I'm seeing most of the women saying, that's not true.
I want my husband to be happy.
I do believe you believe that.
I don't believe it's biologically true.
So I'm not sure that all of your actions are compatible with that.
Many are, of course, because you're in a relationship.
So of course you're considering what your partner wants.
But I feel like there's a difference.
And that there's a biological reason for it that's somewhat obvious.
Do you buy that? Let me put this as just a provocative thought.
It's not what I'm telling you is true.
So tomorrow when somebody says, Scott says this is true, you will be lying.
I'm just saying it's a provocative thought.
Sandra says, you're not an anthropologist.
No, I'm not.
Have you ever seen me disagree with experts before?
I'm just going to say, look at my track record of disagreeing with experts, and then come back at me with how I'm not one.
If my track record were that the experts are always right and I'm always wrong, You'd have a good point.
Scott, you're not an anthropologist.
But if it were the opposite, you should say to yourself, wow, it's weird how often you're right, despite the experts disagree.
Somebody's asked me, do the LGBTQ community, do they have other forms of motivation?
And my guess would be, I don't know.
I mean, you know, there's nothing that's true for everybody.
So if you're in the LGBTQT community, you're already in a group that's...
I like to choose my words carefully.
Let's say non-majority.
I don't like to say non-standard because that implies something.
But you're in the non-majority, and there are always outliers for every situation.
So I think that you wouldn't make too many assumptions about that group.
Probably it's all over the place.
Um... What is this?
So this guy, Joe Van Pulitzer, says he turned down a $10 million bribe to not help a forensic audit of ballots.
I'm going to say I'd wait on the credibility of that story.
All right.
Catherine says, LOL, my husband is so lazy, he must be the happiest man alive.
That's true. That is true.
I don't know how you can be lazy and unhappy at the same time.
Because if you're unhappy, isn't that pretty good motivation to go change something?
Somebody says, Pulitzer, this...
Fellow Joe Van Pulitzer is very credible.
I would suggest that you look at his history.
I'll just put it there.
If it's your opinion that he's very credible, just research his history.
And if you still think that he's credible, then there you go.
