Episode 1348 Scott Adams: How to Defund Police With Technology, Masks After Vaccinations, Why Liberal Men Are Unhappy, More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
School choice and money for education
Will facts and law determine Chauvin verdict?
Johnson & Johnson vaccine
Happiness speculation: conservative, liberal
Whiteboard: Success Reframed
Self driving cars to eliminate traffic stops
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If you'd like this to really exceed your expectations, and I think it will, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And I hope you are ready now.
Well, if that wasn't enough excitement for you, you can see that there's going to be a whiteboard presentation later.
Yes, yes, it's that good.
But let's talk about all the things.
In my ongoing segment of Joe Biden evolving into Donald Trump, we now have Biden playing golf while there's a crisis on the border.
So remember, every time you see Biden just evolving into a version of Trump, just remember who told you it was going to happen months before it did.
Now, since we know from the Project Veritas undercover video, we know that CNN, at least according to their technical director who was caught on camera, we know that they actively try to make Joe Biden look like he's vital and young and fit.
And they said it out loud, directly said, we're trying to make him look like he's a healthy guy.
And I have to compliment...
Whoever dressed him for the photo shoot, because you don't see him golfing.
I don't know if there's any video.
Is there any video of him actually golfing?
Because I'd sort of like to see his swing, if you know what I mean.
But my compliments to the wardrobe propagandist.
He looks really good.
There's a photograph of him in a really flattering golf outfit that looks new and shiny.
You know, if I'm going to be objective, There is a thing that Joe Biden does very well, which is he's a pretty good role model for fitness.
I believe he's been a lifelong exerciser, keeps his weight under control, even at his age.
You've got to admit, that's not nothing.
I wish we had more presidents who would...
We have sort of a fitness bias.
But it's funny because we know that this is sort of a staged propaganda kind of thing, but it still works.
I don't mind when our leaders...
I don't mind at all when a president does a staged thing to look strong and athletic.
That's fine. That's good technique, actually.
What about this argument?
You know the argument against letting kids use, let's say, private schools is that if you move the funding from the public schools, the public funding, to let it follow the students and they go to private schools, there will be less funding for what's left behind.
So the public schools will fall apart, so goes the argument, if you let money flow to the private ones.
I would like to challenge that theory.
And here's the assumption where I think we differ.
Obviously, math is math.
If money moves away from the public schools, they'll have less money.
That does seem like a problem, right?
So, so far, that's not crazy.
But there's a difference in assumption.
My assumption is that the only thing keeping massive extra funding of schools, both from private individuals, billionaires, endowed whatevers, as well as the government probably could put in more, I think what keeps anybody from putting more into the school system is what?
What smart person pours money into a broken system of They can't be fixed.
Nobody, right? So you would be forgiven for believing that whatever money we have is a fixed pot, and that if we move some of it, there will be less left over here.
Certainly true in the short run.
But it seems to me that because of teachers' unions, they've created this broken and unfixable system called the public schools, And they're preventing competition because the unions are so strong they can prevent anybody from competing with them.
They can just get the laws changed and such, which they do.
So here's the thing.
It seems to me that we live in a country where we could get unlimited funding for, let's say, startup education projects.
Because so many people want it, it's such an obvious public good, that I think billionaires would just open their wallets.
The only thing that they lack is something to fund.
Which sounds weird, doesn't it?
Wouldn't your first assumption be that schools are underfunded?
And of course they are.
But there's a very good reason.
If you put more money into the bad schools, apparently it doesn't make that much difference.
Because the system is broken.
So without competition, it wouldn't matter how much money you put into it.
Nobody has really an incentive to compete.
There is no competition.
And that's because of the teachers' unions.
So, just summarizing, the difference between, let's say, the left's philosophy and the right's, and I've said this before, but you'll see it in all different topics, is the left likes to assume that it's a zero-sum game.
Meaning that there's a fixed pot of wealth or resources, and if I have some of it, that's something you can't have.
So if I have some, that takes away what could have been yours.
That's not what the right tends to think.
The right tends to approach things from a perspective of abundance, which is there's never a limited amount of anything.
You can make more.
How you would make more money for funding schools is by giving them better things to fund.
There's always a way to make more for everybody, but only the right seems to think that's even a thing.
The left seems to think, it's a limited amount, we've got to get ours.
And then everything falls apart.
Here's the most alarming thing that's happening today, that we're acting like it's not alarming.
I've now heard three high-end attorneys who understand the legal defense world.
Three of them so far, and I think Dershowitz was one, predicting that the facts of the matter, Robert Barnes was another, and it was just another one I saw, people really know what they're talking about, saying that it's unlikely that the facts of the case and the law will be used to decide the outcome.
And that it's how the, I guess, how the jurors feel.
The emotional impact of the whole thing is almost certainly, meaning greater than 80% chance, according to people who know what they're talking about.
Not me. I don't know what I'm talking about.
But there's an 80% chance that there's an American citizen, an American citizen, who is innocent until proven guilty, and we're sitting here like it's okay...
With the complete knowledge that there's an 80% chance that he will go to jail for at least 12 years because he's a white male.
Now, you're going to say to yourself, that's not why.
It's because he freaking killed the guy on video.
That's why he's going to jail.
If he goes to jail, it's because he killed the guy right in front of us.
I get that, right?
That's a completely legitimate point of view.
It may not be technically exactly what happened, because you kind of need to know his state of mind and such, but certainly we watched something that the professionals have deemed a homicide, and I'm not arguing that it's a homicide.
So certainly the human actions had something to do with it, but still...
You have to support the system, right?
It's not always about the person.
You know, you can imagine there are cases where you just need to punish some person, bend a rule to do it.
But can you break the system in this case?
And just say, well, and apparently this wouldn't be the one time this happens, obviously.
But why are we okay with this?
Why is it okay? Because, and I have to be more careful about how they say this, I'm not saying that Chauvin is innocent or guilty.
That's actually irrelevant to my point.
My point is that his innocence or guilt won't be part of what puts him in jail or not.
It's just not part of the decision.
That ain't right. So what will be part of the decision, if not the law and the facts?
And again, this isn't my opinion.
This is people who are in the law and know what they're talking about.
If they're not going to be used, isn't it a racial outcome?
And how is it not, really?
How is this not...
I don't want to use the L word.
Because as soon as you use the L-Y-C-N, you know, that word, then it becomes a whole, you know, it's a distraction.
But clearly, the entire world is watching him getting ready to go to jail for 12 or more years because he's a white male.
Now, he might also, let me be very careful, he might also be completely guilty.
I think the prosecution made a pretty good case.
But that's not what he's going to jail for, according to the people who know what they're talking about.
They're not even going to look at that.
They're just going to vote on how they feel.
How is that okay? I guess we just don't have an alternative, right?
Nobody's got a better idea, and so we'll just say, well, okay, here's my theory.
The only reason that's okay is that we've been brainwashed.
That's my theory. That you would not put up with this for a second if the media had not told you to do it.
Now, not directly.
But the media has created a situation where this guy's guilty, and justice requires him to be punished.
Right? And that narrative existed long before we even saw the defense's case, long before we saw the prosecution's case, which I assert, again, is very strong.
So I'm not saying he's innocent of anything.
Prosecution made a good case.
It's just not going to be used to decide his fate.
I'm not cool with that.
I just don't know what to do about it.
So here's an interesting thing.
So now, you know, we know this...
And by the way, fact check me on this following thing, because I don't follow the vaccination stuff too closely.
But my understanding is that the J&J vaccination is sort of being pulled back temporarily while they're looking into whether it's causing some exotic or rare blood problems.
But, apparently, the state of our data and reporting is so bad that we don't know if it's rare.
Apparently, it's kind of hard to tell who's having what kind of reactions.
Now, I hate to be a conspiracy theorist.
He lied. Okay, I love to be a conspiracy theorist.
If I could be one thing, it would be a conspiracy theorist.
So, I kind of like it.
And here's my conspiracy theory.
So you've got billions of dollars at stake in these vaccinations.
I guess the government is paying it, but billions of dollars.
And you've got three competitors, right?
Three big pharmaceutical competitors.
Two of them are making this mRNA newer kind of vaccination, which requires two shots.
Would you rather have something that's newer And you require two shots or something that's been around so long we understand the risks a little better in terms of the technology.
Not the specific shot, but the technology.
And you only need one.
Which of those do you like better?
Well, it's obvious, right?
If you could take the one that's always worked forever and you only need one, right?
Now, here's the part I need to fact check.
The people who are getting the second shot and having all the symptoms, The J&J one doesn't have those side effects, right?
Can I get a fact check on that?
When I say side effects, I mean the feeling of the flu and like you got knocked out and stuff.
And people are saying that the other vaccinations had some side effects too.
We just don't know if they're significant.
All right. So, on paper...
The J&J shot would be better because it's one, better one shot instead of two, better because it doesn't have the side effects that might make you lose a day of work, better because it's not new technology, although, let's acknowledge, the new technology might be way better, but it's new. So you just have a little less visibility, right?
So what are the odds that the problem that J&J is having are real?
You see where I'm headed with this?
Do you know who is the biggest, I think, just visually it seems like, who would be the biggest funder of the news?
It would be pharmaceuticals, wouldn't it?
They're the biggest funders of the news because they buy advertising on the news?
And so the news has taken aside, basically.
Now, it doesn't look like it.
If you're just consuming the news, it doesn't look like they took aside.
It looks like they're just reporting the news, right?
The news says the J&J thing has a problem.
The news. These are just the facts.
No propaganda here, right?
Just the facts. A problem has been raised.
J&J's looking into it.
A little bit more reporting.
A little bit more reporting on that.
Hey, did you notice? A little bit more reporting.
Do you see the subtle difference between paid propaganda?
I'm not saying that's happening, by the way.
I'm just saying, could you tell the difference between just reporting the news...
And deciding that you wanted to kill one of the shots because the other two companies spend more on advertising.
Which, by the way, I don't know if that's the case.
I doubt that's exactly the case.
But my problem is, I used to live in a world where I could rule this out.
I could just say to myself, I don't live in a world where some company is going to start false rumors about another company, plant stories in the media...
Just so they can sell more vaccinations.
I certainly don't live in a world where something like that could...
Yeah, I do.
I do. I'm not making a claim.
There's no allegation being made here.
I'm just saying, we live in a world where you see this and you say, is it a coincidence that the unambiguously best shot just got ruled out by the media?
Is that a coincidence?
It could be nothing but the news.
I have no information that would suggest this is anything but exactly what's happening.
Science spotted some problems.
Science is cautious.
Science pulled back. Science is looking into it.
That's all we know. But man, we don't live in a world where you can just assume that's what's happening.
We do live in a world where there's a billion dollars on the table if you can place a story in the media.
What would you do if you worked for a big company and you personally could just get insanely rich if just you could get a few friendly reporters to just boost a little story and maybe see if it gets picked up by the other ones so you don't have to bribe them?
It'd be kind of tempting.
All you got to do is give somebody a story that's completely true.
Hey, reporter, This is totally true.
You can check it yourself. We've seen some problems with side effects with our competitors' vaccination.
Do you think this is a story?
I'll package it up for you so you don't even have to do much research.
Here are the people to talk to.
Here are the data and the source, and here it is.
That'd be a good story, wouldn't it?
That's how the world works.
Stories are planted. They're not always found.
Big controversy about whether you should wear masks after vaccination.
Dr. Fauci says that since you could still get the virus, even vaccinated, that means you could still, in theory, spread the virus, because anybody who has it can spread it.
And therefore, getting the vaccination, Dr.
Fauci says, is no excuse not to wear a mask.
Well, Dr. J. Bhattacharya, who appeared on Fox News, argues this.
He said that because of that argument, Dr.
Fauci is probably the number one anti-vaxxer in the country.
Boom. Reframed.
Boom. Here's his argument.
Dr. J. Bhattacharya's argument is that because Fauci is telling people they still have to wear masks, he's kind of telling them they're not going to get enough benefit from the vaccination.
He's also kind of saying maybe...
I'm not saying this, but if you were a conspiracy theorist, you were already worried that these vaccinations aren't even real.
They're real, by the way.
I wouldn't worry about them not being real.
But it plays into every fear.
If you still have to wear a mask, don't you say to yourself, Dr.
Fauci, you've been wrong about masks before.
Maybe once or twice.
So everything about this is like a caution flag to people who are already cautious.
This is a pretty good argument.
It's also a good reframe.
So by reframing Fauci as the obstacle to vaccinations and then showing a perfectly solid argument for why that would be the case...
Well done, persuasion-wise.
Now, let me speculate...
About why Dr.
Fauci might be saying we need masks.
I think other people probably say it too.
You see, he's not alone. But why would he say that?
What are the possible reasons he would say that when many of you are saying, no way, I'm not going to wear a mask after I get a vaccination?
That's cray-cray. Well, reason number one.
Dr. Fauci's job is not to make you happy.
It's not in his job description.
So if he had a choice of keeping one extra person alive because of his tight recommendations versus 20 million people are unhappy and God knows what happens because of that, he's going to pick The thing that he gets, you know, measured on, how many people you're keeping alive.
So he's not exactly, not exactly, he's completely the wrong person to give you advice.
You get that, right?
If you're a Democrat, you think he's exactly the right person.
He's the expert. I mean, if you're not an epidemiologist, people are going to come after you.
But you know who I would rather make that decision?
Nate Silver. Now, he got a lot of crap because he said something about the statistics of the pandemic.
And people say, you're not an epidemiologist, you're not a virologist, so what are you saying about this?
No, he's a guy who knows risk management.
It's a risk management question with lots of variables.
Dr. Fauci's job is not to manage all the variables.
So when he gives you advice, what should you do?
You should ignore it. He's the wrong person.
Suppose you're having a brain tumor, and the gardener from across the street comes over and says, Hey, I heard you had a brain tumor.
Have you considered stuffing weeds in your ear?
You wouldn't really listen to your gardener, because your gardener might be very wise about the wrong things.
The gardener is not really who should give you advice about your brain tumor.
And I would argue that Dr.
Fauci is exactly the wrong person to give you advice about wearing a mask, because he's sort of not allowed to consider all the variables.
He's sort of the medical guy, so he just can't look at the whole risk management and quality of life situations.
He's just the wrong guy, and you should know that.
Which is nothing about him.
As a person, he's just not the right job for this.
Here is how you would make this decision.
Let me walk it through you. So is the real reason that...
We want masks on everybody because the non-vaccinated would start cheating.
They'd say, oh yeah, there's no passports yet, so yeah, I had my vaccination.
I can go to the bar.
Yeah, don't worry, I had my vaccination.
So you have to worry.
Because remember, Fauci already told us masks don't work when what he really meant early on in the pandemic was that there aren't enough of them.
So we know Fauci has lied once, a really big lie, about the value of masks.
He might say he was mistaken, so we'll let him have that.
But we know he was wrong because he changed his mind.
Or maybe he was right the first time.
Whatever. But he changed his mind, so he was wrong one of those times.
So he might be just telling people to wear masks because it's the only way you can tell without passports.
It's the only way you can tell that the people who are not vaccinated are also wearing masks.
We don't really know the risk of transmitting, right?
Has anybody told you?
What is the percentage risk that a vaccinated person could catch the virus?
Now, we know that can happen.
But then we also know that you have to have a pretty good dose of it to spread it.
And we know that the super-spreaders are most of the spread.
How many super-spreaders will there ever be who had the vaccination?
And if they were a super spreader, I mean, it's going to be a special case with no immune system or something.
But, you know, they were going to be trouble anyway.
Right. All right.
So I don't think you can figure out what makes sense here, and you're going to end up defaulting to a lifestyle decision.
In my opinion, you will never have enough data to know if it is wise or unwise to wear masks once you're vaccinated.
But if you have no data, and it's certainly not obvious that it would make a difference, and maybe there's a little risk, I think you would admit there must be some risk, I feel as if I'm very solidly in the don't wear a mask after you're vaccinated camp, but I don't think we can know.
You end up using your hunch or your instinct because you just don't know.
Everything we know suggests that masking after vaccination might approach just dumb, right?
But you have to be careful.
Your common sense can be misleading, so you never know.
Here's a trend that's happening.
I always say that if you know economics and business models, you understand how business models work, that you can see the future.
You can predict things because economics can be kind of predictable in some sense.
And here's a trend that's happening.
It's a really big deal.
This following trend, if you're not watching this, you're really going to be blindsided by what could happen really quickly.
It looks like this.
There's a subscription service for authors called Substack.
Have you all heard of it yet?
It's a pretty big deal.
It's a real big deal, actually.
It's called Substack.
So if you're an author, you can work there, and at least at the moment, some of those notable authors, people who have brought an audience with them, are making up to half a million a year by charging a subscription for their regular writing.
At the same time, New York Times and Wall Street Journal writers are somewhere in 120,000 per year range.
The substack writers can write anything they want.
There must be some terms of service that they can't exceed.
They couldn't go full Nazi, I'm sure.
But in terms of standard other platform censorship, and in terms of somebody telling them from the top, Like a CEO saying, this is what you're going to cover, this is your narrative.
They don't have that. So Substack, because it's way more profitable than working for one of these propaganda legacy platforms, is going to suck off all of...
Let me say that differently. Might absorb all the best writers, because why would you work for one-fifth of what you could earn?
So Substack is going to suck all the people away from the ad-based businesses.
So if you're an advertising-based business, you're in real trouble, because you're not going to be able to hire talent.
And without that, you're dead.
Similarly, there's a situation with YouTube.
So, YouTube is, you know, ad revenue plus you could subscribe.
But if you're a creator making stuff for YouTube, you would make a small fraction of what the same creator would make on Locals.
So I put a lot of my content that you don't see here, most of the micro lessons on success and persuasion and stuff, fitness and whatnot.
I put those on Locals because if I only put them on YouTube, it would be...
Just a fraction of the same financial impact.
Now, YouTube has a response because they have a subscription service.
If you are a consumer of YouTube, and you should be, it's like the best thing out there.
As much as I complain about YouTube for this or that, as a platform and a service, oh my God, it's good.
It's like just the best thing YouTube is.
But it's not so good if you have to watch the ads.
So for my money, it's one of the few things that's just so totally worth the subscription.
However, that does not help the creators as much.
You know, that's just good for the people watching.
So I highly recommend YouTube if you are a consumer.
For creators, They might be able to do a little better in some other platform.
Locals being the one I would recommend, because that's where I am.
By the way, full disclosure, I have a small equity stake in Locals, just so you know.
All right, apparently we're having a mass shooting just about every day now.
And even way more than last year, and last year was crazy.
Now, we don't know how much of this is because of the pandemic, right?
We don't know how much of this is because of, I don't know, police maybe pulling back.
It's hard to know exactly what's behind this all.
But I'll tell you one thing that's definitely behind it.
And experts talk about this all the time, the copycat people.
Imagine a world where all of the news wasn't covering these mass shootings all the time.
What would people even think of to do?
If you didn't know there was such a thing as a mass shooting that was happening once a day, and you had some kind of feelings of violence, what would you do?
Well, you wouldn't even think of it.
It's pressed into our heads to the point where it's literally the first thing you think of if you have a bad day.
Yeah. Now...
We have to know it's happening, so you can't not cover it.
But I would certainly make some kind of law that says the only coverage is the statistics, and none of the coverage is human.
So that you just couldn't show any footage of the event.
All you could show is the box score.
You know, three people dead, suspect dead.
Boom. Tuesday.
At least you know what's going on, you know, in maybe West City, etc.
So you wouldn't be in the dark, but you wouldn't be encouraging it the same way.
And it could be that the shooter, you know, video games may have an effect on people's psychology as well.
But man, we're in a situation where the news basically causes these mass shootings.
Let me say that again. The news causes the mass shootings.
Now, one of the things that confuses people is the difference between legal responsibility and cause and effect.
Cause and effect is just physics.
This cause this, cause this, cause this.
Legal responsibility can be its whole separate thing, right?
So, in terms of who's responsible for shooting people, it's the person with the gun, from a legal standpoint.
If all you're looking at is the law, we all agree it's the person with the gun who is the one responsible.
But if you're looking at a chain of cause and effect, outside of the context of the law, it's the news.
The news makes the mass shootings, and then the news covers them, and the news makes more money, and then they generate another one.
So it's the news business, basically, is the cause.
Alright, let's see what else we've got going on.
Rob Henderson, who writes about human nature, he's a good follow on Twitter, Rob Henderson, so look for him.
And he was talking about a new survey that came out that said conservative women, he was talking about who's the happiest, you know, conservatives or liberals, men and women.
And the top line result is conservative women are particularly blissful.
40% say they are very happy.
That makes them slightly happier than conservative men.
So both conservative women and conservative men, fairly happy compared to the average, and significantly happier than liberal women.
So that's pretty far down the list.
But the unhappiest are liberal men.
Only a fifth of liberal men consider themselves very happy.
Are you surprised?
Now, I was trying to think before I got on here today, I was thinking, alright, I should probably talk about at least what the possible reasons are.
I could at least mention a few reasons.
But you know what stymied me?
There were too many reasons.
There are so many reasons why this must be true that I got tired listing them.
I just saw somebody here say low T. You're not wrong.
I think there is actually literally, no joke, probably a scientifically valid difference between the testosterone levels of conservative versus liberal men.
And I don't think that's...
I think that would actually hold up, like literally.
And we know that your testosterone level influences your happiness.
It's pretty direct. So, that might be part of it.
Let me speculate on some other possible causes.
This is just speculation, so we're just being idiots pretending we're scientists, okay?
So don't take any of this too seriously.
One possibility is that conservatives are more likely to follow traditional gender roles.
Yeah, I said it.
I said it right out loud.
How about that?
Now, You might know that I consider myself left of Bernie on especially the social issues.
And I certainly don't feel like anybody should ever be pressured to do any traditional gender roles.
Like, I don't want anybody to feel any pressure for traditional gender roles.
If that's not your thing, you don't fit into that, I'm all for you.
Just follow what makes you happy.
So no suggestion that you should do this.
I'm just saying there's a really good chance that this is one of the keys to happiness.
And my take on it is that whatever gets you closest to your biological evolutionary truth is what makes you happiest.
What I mean by that is if you're on the path toward happiness, Finding a mate, creating new people and taking care of them, that will always feel like some kind of a satisfying, happy thing.
Now, there's lots of trials and tribulations, but at least you'll feel like you have meaning, etc.
But again, not everybody's doing that.
There just might be more of that happening on the conservative side.
And it might just connect them a little bit more closely with their biological reality.
Perfectly optional. But it might work.
Of course, religion.
There seems to be a difference in religiosity.
And while I am not religious myself, there's no doubt that it makes people happy.
I'm pro-religion, very pro-religion, because I observe it makes people happy.
And why would I deny anybody happiness?
Here's another possibility.
Tinder. Tinder.
You know that Tinder is ruining the world for young people, right?
Oh, not all young people.
Apparently the top 1 or 2% of good-looking men are having a great time on Tinder.
It's all the other ones who are not getting a date.
So if something like Tinder, and let's say online ability to find people, is allowing pretty much all women to simply pick the most exceptional men and ignore everybody else, Should we not have a massive problem with male loneliness?
And would it not be, let's say, more pronounced in the, shall we say, less muscular part of the world?
Would that be fair?
Do you think that people could tell the difference between a beefy Trump supporter and And a maybe-didn't-quite-go-to-the-gym Hillary supporter?
Do you think if you're flipping on Tinder, you can pick out the ones with the most testosterone?
I feel like there might be some kind of a correlation there.
Because I do think that...
I do think if you did a scientific experiment where you just said, here's a bunch of male faces, just tell us which ones have the most testosterone.
I think people could do it.
Better than a chance would suggest.
So if it's true, and again, you could fact check this.
I don't know if it's true. But observationally, it feels like it could be that conservative men are more likely to have a little, especially young, have a little extra testosterone.
And maybe when you're flipping through Tinder, you can see it.
And maybe they get more dates.
I don't know. Maybe.
Again, fact check me on that if there's any way.
Alright, so, but here's my favorite one.
I made this one up just for fun.
Imagine you're planning a party, okay?
You're the party planner, and there are two, let's say, groups of people you hang out with, but you don't want to mix them together.
So you're going to have a party, and you're either going to invite one of these groups or the other, but you're not going to have them at the same party, because it won't work.
Let me describe these two groups.
You tell me which one you'd invite to your party.
One group believes that America is a toxic wasteland of bigotry that's based on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
So if you invite that group, that's what you get.
The other group, which will remain nameless, thinks that America is a great place to pursue happiness because everyone is equal under the law.
Your party has to have one of those two groups.
Which one do you think would make a better party?
So, I feel like there are really good and somewhat obvious reasons why liberal men are the unhappiest they've ever been.
And I don't think it's funny, even though I'm laughing at it.
There's something about the situation that's funny, but when you get to the individual person who's dying of loneliness and doesn't know why, that's not funny.
I mean, that's legitimately like a big, big problem.
So I don't want to minimize the problem, but we do kind of know what the problem is.
I think we know what the source is.
All right, you want to go to the whiteboard?
Are you ready? Okay.
I believe that one of the problems that liberals have, that conservatives have less of, and again, everybody's different, but sort of a generality, is that sometimes, and maybe I shouldn't even make this liberal versus conservative.
I just forget that part. This is just different ways of looking at the world.
There are two ways to look at success, and this is just a slice of success, right?
Not all of it. And I'm going to reframe something for you.
Wouldn't you believe in your common sense and the way your brain is organized, doesn't it make sense that in order to succeed, doesn't it make sense that you should understand the facts as well as you could?
How could that not be true?
The better command you have of reality and the facts...
The more likely you'll be successful.
How many of you agree with that statement?
The better you understand the facts, the more successful you'll be.
We'll see in the comments if you agree with that.
Because there's a little bit of problem with that, as logical as that sounds.
You can't tell what the facts are.
Didn't you used to think you could?
You used to think you could tell the facts.
Now, in a world that doesn't exist, but like a hypothetical world, where you could actually tell what was true, that would be a pretty good strategy for success.
The more you know about what's true, the more you can craft the right strategy.
That makes perfect sense.
But you don't live in that world.
You have a perfect strategy for a world that just doesn't exist.
How many more times do you have to see in the last 12 months that the facts change right in front of you?
What you thought was true yesterday just isn't true today.
So if you use what's true as your main filter, you're just going to run into a wall over and over again.
Sometimes it'll work great, but there'll be a lot of walls.
Now let's say you were irrational.
And you said to yourself, I don't know why this thing works, but it seems to work, so I'll just keep doing it.
Well, what are the facts you're using to determine you should do that?
I don't really have any. Because your life is mostly this stuff, where you test stuff and you observe what happened.
If you walk down to one door of your house and every day a baseball hit you in the head, but you couldn't figure out where it was coming from or why it always hit you in the head when you walk down one door but not the other, Wouldn't you still stop walking out that door?
You wouldn't have a randomized gold standard trial that is scientifically valid, but you still have to make decisions.
So if one door always hurts you and the other door doesn't, you're going to do what works without knowing anything about the facts.
So if I can sell you just on the concept first, now let me fill in some examples, because until you see some examples, this is just nonsense, right?
Here are some examples. Here's something that's true, as far as we know, that bigotry exists in the United States especially.
Well, that's just what we're talking about.
Bigotry exists, and it influences the outcomes of things, and that it's unfair.
That feels like those are facts in the United States.
Bigotry exists, it influences outcomes, and it's unfair.
So that's what's true. So suppose you built a strategy around what's true.
How would that work out for you?
Well, you would be miserable.
And you would probably be directing your attentions in the wrong places.
But you'd be working on facts.
Suppose you worked on what works instead.
Let me give you an example with that being.
Acting as if you control your own destiny by your actions.
Is that true? Do you control your own destiny by your actions?
It feels like that's only a little bit true, right?
Well, yeah, somewhat, but what about all these other things?
Those are pretty big, right?
I'm not saying it's true that you can control your future by your actions.
What I'm saying is that everybody who believes it's true gets a better outcome.
You're going to start to see it in a minute, right?
Following what is true throws you completely off the path of success.
Following what you're simply acting like is true, which is that you control your own outcomes, will make you act in that way, and you're going to get pretty good results.
Let me give you another one.
This might be true, that you're not the best at a given task.
So let's say there's something you're going to be doing, and it's just true you're not one of the good ones at this thing.
So if you base your strategy based on what's true, You're going to be going into it with low confidence.
And what does that predict?
Well, low confidence predicts low performance.
But suppose instead of dealing with what's true, that you're bad at whatever this thing is, you say to yourself, I'm going to exceed expectations.
And you just tell yourself that.
Yeah, I'm totally going to exceed expectations.
I'm going to nail it this time.
Is it true? Well, there's no truth or fact to it whatsoever.
It's just something in your head.
But it would make you perform better.
A little bit of confidence might calm you down, and you might perform better than you expected.
So again, if you start your strategy based on the facts and what's true, you just run off the trail.
If you just imagine a world that's true, it's very useful.
Here's another one. Here's a fact.
Science can't prove God exists.
Alright, hold on, hold on.
There are lots of different religions.
So, for this example, let's say that science can't prove that somebody else's religion exists.
Okay? It can't prove somebody else's religion exists.
Yours is fine. So the facts are that science can't prove somebody else's religion exists.
But it's also true that religion makes people happy.
Definitely. Religion makes people happy.
Makes them more successful.
I think they live longer, right?
And healthier. I believe that the science is completely consistent about that.
So, should you go with what's true, which is, ah, I can't do a science experiment and find me some God, so I don't know if I can deal with it that way.
But suppose you just go with what works.
Seven generations of your family worshipped God.
They all did great. So you do it.
And it works out great.
Let me give you another one.
Let's say unions are good for workers, and we should support them.
Doesn't that sound completely reasonable?
Now, I don't want to get into too much the argument of unions are good or bad.
But I would say most people, most Americans would say unions have a role and they've made the world better, especially for workers.
So isn't it a fact that unions are good for workers and we should support them?
And if you took that as a fact, you'd have a certain set of policies.
But here's another view.
Teachers unions don't work because their opponents are children.
The only union...
That has as its opponents children.
You can't take the teachers' unions and throw them in with the argument in which it's adults against adults.
The teachers' unions is the only one where it's adults and the teachers' unions whose opponents are literally children.
That's not where you want a union.
I want a union where I've got a powerful force, let's say the owners of the company on one side, And then the workers, you know, they get together to equal the force, and then you've got a nice competitive, you know, productive, competitive situation.
Everybody gets what they want.
That's not the teachers' unions.
The teachers' unions, they're treating the children as the enemy.
That's not fair. Now, I know technically, you know, they're negotiating with their bosses for raises, but that's not how it works out, right?
So here's my point.
Every time you get stuck in what are the facts, you're probably leaving out some options that might be better.
No two situations are alike.
Clearly, there are plenty of cases where you should just follow the facts.
Maybe you can recognize them when you see them.
But my point is that following the facts slavishly is a loser strategy because you don't know the facts.
And believing you do is what leads you over the cliff.
Alright. I've got one more story here.
Maybe two. In The Washington Examiner, writer Eddie Scarry is writing about how the media is treating the Duante Wright tragic shooting and death.
You all know that story, right?
That's the one where the police officer mistook a taser for a handgun and killed this guy in the attempt, hoping to taser him, but killed him.
And so Columbia University professor Sarah Sio, she weighed in on it, I guess in the New York Times, and she said this, that traffic stops...
Should not be harrowing or dangerous experiences, but too often they are for people of color.
And then she proposed that if somehow a camera had picked up his license plate and just sent him a ticket, then he never would have been stopped, and there never would have been any opportunity for anybody to get hurt.
Is that a good idea?
Well, as Eddie Scarry points out, that's not exactly...
Covering the whole context here, right?
The context is that the only reason there was a problem is that he had a warrant, an arrest warrant.
I think a weapon was involved in the arrest warrant.
I can't remember what the warrant was for.
And he resisted arrest.
And then there was a tragic mistake of the confusion of the taser.
So, is it fair to say...
That if we could have changed things police-wise, we would have gotten a better result.
I don't know. So as Eddie Scarry writes, you know, the idea that Wright ended up dead because of expired car tags, which was the original reason for pulling him over, I guess.
Even though he did, it wasn't expired, it just wasn't posted in the right place.
It's something about an air freshener that nobody believes has anything to do with that.
But why do you think he got shot?
Do you think he got shot because he got stopped, or did he get shot because he resisted arrest?
Which of those is the truth?
Well, you could argue about this all day long, and obviously you needed everything to happen the way it did for it to go the way it did.
But let me suggest this.
Every time somebody says to me, there's no way to reduce I always feel like that's a limit of imagination.
I do not believe that it would be impossible To defund the police, you know, in some percentage, not all the police, of course.
But I do think you could get a whole bunch of technical advantages to lower the economics of it and get rid of danger.
Let me give you a specific example.
Suppose you said to Detroit, I'll just pick a city where there's, you know, gun violence and police stopping people.
You say, Detroit...
We're going to let the big car manufacturers who want to build self-driving cars bid for your city, and then they're just going to sort of own the roads.
And they'll be able to put their own self-driving cars there and maybe phase them in over time, whatever it is.
And Detroit will become the testbed for, I'll pick a company.
Let's say it's Tesla, but it could be any big car company.
And Tesla will own Detroit and And eventually they'll have the franchise that if you want to call a car, like an Uber, it's going to be a Tesla.
And that's all there is.
And they'll just own the city.
And the advantage is that the cars will all be networked so that, you know, everything knows where everything is and doesn't bump into everything.
So under that situation, how would you ever have a traffic stop?
Because the self-driving cars will never be pulled over for a traffic violation.
So the entire reason for pulling somebody over is gone.
Now, what are the odds that someday we'll have self-driving cars?
100%. There's no chance that's not going to happen.
What are the odds that someday we'll only have self-driving cars?
Well, that might take longer.
But it's 100%. I don't think there's any chance that we're going to let perfectly safe self-driving cars on the road with crazy, organic, defective humans driving them.
That's crazy. Maybe cars will be in recreational areas, but you're not going to use them for basic transportation in the future.
There's no chance that's going to happen in the future.
So that might be 20 years away, but suppose we just sped it up and said, Let every major car company adopt a city.
Maybe you start with one block or whatever.
Make that just the self-driving car area.
Then you expand it until you own the city.
What the car manufacturers...
And by the way, the car manufacturer could be Apple Computer.
Could be Google, right?
Because a lot of people are going to be making self-driving cars.
And you just say, you own the city, but you also have to do all the transportation.
You've got to make it affordable.
And you just have eliminated traffic stops.
Now, how do you arrest somebody who's got an arrest warrant if you don't stop them in a car?
Well, I somewhat tongue-in-cheek said the police could have an override button and just make your car drive to the police station so you could safely take you out of the car without trouble.
I don't think, literally, you want the car to drive to the police station, but it could.
Yeah, it could.
Now, I heard some people say that we'll never have self-driving cars everywhere Because it could get hacked.
And then, you know, what would happen then if it got hacked?
And I would just say that every new technology has the same kind of problem.
Every new technology.
I used to work in a bank when the very first ATMs were being introduced.
And the argument against them was, nobody's going to trust these machines with their money.
Of course, ATMs are everywhere.
I'm sure when the airplanes were invented, well, I know, the thinking was, well, you're never going to have, like, an industry of travel by airplane because there's no way you can make an airplane safe, right?
Or Elon Musk.
You're never going to have a rocket that shoots up, you know, unloads its payroll and Payload, not payroll.
Sort of unloads its payroll, too.
Unloads its payload and then comes back down and somehow stays upright until it lands on a platform in the ocean.
That's not going to work, but it does.
So, yeah, self-driving cars are guaranteed.
It's just how long it will take.
And flying cars are guaranteed, too, but not until batteries are cost-effective and they're almost there.
Flying cars are pretty much here.
Just a little bit more in battery efficiency, which is guaranteed, and you'll have your flying car.
The laws will be the hard part.
Nothing is 100%, you say, well, okay, that's true.
I'll back that up to 98%.
You know, self-driving cars are going to change everything.
Imagine if you could just go on vacation, Anywhere you want it in the United States or, you know, wherever you are, you can just tell the car to go somewhere.
I have this rule that if I'm driving a car, I'm not on vacation.
And unfortunately, if you happen to be the The oldest adult male with whatever group you're traveling with, you're usually going to be the one driving a car.
And any time I'm driving a car, I am not on vacation.
I'm just working. That's just a job.
So that's where I draw the line.
If I have to drive a car, that's work, that's not a vacation.
