Episode 1371 Scott Adams: Politicizing Science, Bad Diet Makes Your Offspring Mentally Ill, CNN Pushes Foxitis, and More
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Content:
Democrats ignore HUMAN MOTIVATION
Task force on politics distorting science
Peter Navarro calls Fauci "Father of the Virus"
My list of people/groups for whom I have no empathy
Saying NO to authority...in a way that works
Brian Stelter's good persuasion play
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Ah, yeah.
Perfect. Just perfect.
So, I'm going to be a little ray of optimism today.
I'll tell you, I don't know what it looks like in your town, but in my town, on weekends anyway, they're continuing to close the streets so that they can have outdoor dining.
Now, where I live, closing the main street to have outdoor dining is It turns Main Street into like a festival.
Like it's a lot of people walking in the streets and the restaurant chairs are extending halfway into the street.
And I've never seen more people in my town going out to eat than I saw this weekend.
Not one time, not ever, have I seen as many people out and about in public, mostly going out to eat.
And I I'll tell you, if this is any indication of what other things are doing.
Somebody says, just like Toronto, same in my town.
I'm going to read some of your comments.
Yes, staffing issues.
Yes, the service was terrible.
Every restaurant you go to, they're apologizing because they can't get staff to work.
They can't get anybody to come in.
Yeah, so it's a big problem, but they don't have a problem with customers.
The customers are definitely coming out.
Yeah, I'm looking at some of your comments and it looks...
Yeah. I don't think I've ever wanted to eat outside more than I have this year.
And I'll tell you, this is a California thing, of course, but eating outdoors in California Even in cold weather, if you've got an outdoor heater there, it's better than eating indoors.
It's just a little bit more festive and interesting.
And so the weird thing about the pandemic is, it looks like it may have forever improved the restaurant situation where I live.
Because if it stays this way, I'm going to be really happy.
Rasmussen reports...
And this might not surprise you, that there are no groups, no liberals, no independents, no conservatives, who believe that social media can edit out bad content in an unbiased way.
So the liberals don't think they can do it.
The conservatives don't think they can do it.
Basically nobody thinks that the platforms could be unbiased.
So you would think that would be enough to get some kind of legislation or monopoly control or something on there.
But the trouble is, if you were to pass a law that you could sue the social media companies for content, they would pretty much have to kick people like me off.
Am I wrong about that?
Imagine if you would, that social media companies could be sued for letting content on there that's a little too dangerous.
Doesn't that mean they have to be more aggressive about who they get rid of?
So, somebody says they already are.
But wouldn't they have to be more aggressive about that to reduce any chance of getting sued?
I think so. Let's take an example.
I don't believe Tucker Carlson has ever been booted off of social media.
Fact check me on that, but I think he's still on there.
Do you think if the platforms had to defend against anybody claiming that they had misled them and therefore somebody got hurt, don't you think that they would have to ban Tucker Carlson on day one?
Right? I think on day one.
Because the news, at least let's say the left-leaning news, is reporting that Tucker is saying things about vaccinations, which the people on the left think is inappropriate.
So if it were their job to protect the world and to be the editors of content, I think they would have to look at Tucker's content and then look at the medical professionals and say, hmm, a lot of medical professionals...
We're saying that the way Tucker talks about this is going to make people a little less trusting of science or something.
I can't really make the argument, but you can imagine it could be made.
I feel like this is one of those cases where you should be careful what you wish for.
Because if these social media platforms have to edit your content, they will.
They will. You're just not going to like it at all.
So I don't know what the right answer is, but nobody's came up with a good answer yet.
Competition doesn't seem like it's going to work, right?
I don't see competition working because they have too much of a head start.
So if anybody comes up with a workable idea, I'd love to see it, but we don't have one right now.
I said on social media yesterday that if anyone was willing to buy the rights to Dilbert...
After my retirement, which is not any specific date yet, that they should talk to me soon.
Because I'm in the process of planning how to transition from active Dilbert cartoonist to no longer Dilbert cartoonist.
I would still do this, by the way.
The stuff that I'm doing on livestream.
I wouldn't have any reason to retire from this because I like it.
But the Dilbert stuff has weird deadlines and it's real work.
So if I could sell those rights to somebody who thought it would become a classic or someday would turn into Dilbert diners and Dilbert movies, it could be a good time to get it.
If there's some crypto billionaire out there who wants it.
So come, you know how to find me.
All right. I saw some photos of Trump.
I guess he's going to be moving north to his Bedminster site for the summer.
And maybe it was just the way the photos were taken.
But he looked about 40 pounds thinner.
Does anybody see that?
I tweeted around, and I'm wondering if it's just the photography, but I don't really know how you could photograph somebody to look that much thinner.
At least in two of the photos, he looked like, I would guess, at least 40 pounds.
So I wonder if he's doing that intentionally.
Yeah, I wonder if he's trimming down to get into fighting weight exactly.
Oh, interesting. Oh, somebody says he's not wearing a bulletproof vest.
Oh, you know, that's not a bad...
That theory's not bad, if he always had a bulletproof vest on when we saw him before.
Maybe. Could be part of it.
Dr. Nicole Sapphire has an article on Fox News site today about why waiving patent rights for the vaccines might be a big mistake.
Now, the idea is that the smaller countries can't get a hold of all the vaccines they need because the only way they can do it is if they've made their own.
But the only way to do that is if they had the formulas and they could make these vaccines without violating any laws.
So the Biden administration is looking at waiving those patent rights for those smaller countries.
As Dr. Sapphire argues, the only reason that there are any vaccines is because of intellectual property protection.
If you took away intellectual property protection in general, nobody would make anything.
So it's another situation in which it seems that Democrats continually ignore human motivation.
Now, I'm going to give you more and more examples of this as time goes by.
So I started out saying this is the main difference between the left and the right.
You think it's some kind of philosophical preference thing, but it's not.
There's just a variable that one side ignores, and it happens to be the biggest one.
The biggest variable is human motivation, always.
It's the one thing that will determine how anything goes.
And the left doesn't have just a different opinion of it.
They act like it doesn't exist.
If you act like it doesn't exist, and it's the biggest variable, you're just comical.
You're not a serious person if you ignore human motivation.
Now, that said, I think the general case that IP, intellectual property protection, is necessary is strong.
But what about a pandemic?
What about a pandemic?
Because this is the one situation in which everybody's better off if everybody gets vaccinated or enough of everybody.
At least we think.
That's the current thinking, right?
So I would say that while it's true, I agree with Dr.
Sapphire's argument, there may be a pandemic exception.
Because there's nothing like a situation where you need to get herd immunity and the only way you can do it is to get these vaccinations out there, etc.
So I feel like there's some way to slice this thing so everybody wins.
It wouldn't be hard for the pharma manufacturers of the vaccines To make billions and billions just doing what they're doing.
At the same time, maybe there's some way to make more available for the countries that need it.
I feel like we can...
I think we could finesse this one.
I don't think it should be a question of getting rid of rights or not.
Speaking of drugs, do you remember back when hydroxychloroquine was in the headlines, and there was study after study that said it did not work, and I and other people were saying, but why are you studying the wrong thing?
Because with hydroxychloroquine, they kept studying, for example, hospitalized people who were already in bad shape.
To which I would say, that won't tell you anything, since the whole point of it is to get it early, and we don't think it necessarily even works if you get it too late.
So why are you testing the only thing that doesn't matter?
It's almost like you want it not to work.
Well, now we have this same situation.
And by the way, I don't have an opinion on hydroxychloroquine.
I'm just telling that story as a setup to this story.
So now we have this ivermectin, another therapeutic.
Some people say it works.
I don't believe anything in science anymore, so I don't know if it works or not.
If you send me 10 articles that say, here are all these trials that say it works, I will give them zero credibility.
Zero. How much should you trust a study or an article about a therapeutic or something?
Really just science.
How much should you trust it in general?
None. You shouldn't trust it at all.
Zero credibility for scientific articles.
Because the person who wrote the article is not the scientist, and you don't have the ability to judge whether it's right.
So while some of the articles and studies will be correct, you can't tell.
You don't have any tools to know if these studies are accurate or not.
None. Now, time will help, but you don't have time.
We're in the pandemic now, right?
If you tell me in 20 years, will we know?
Yeah, probably. But we don't have any tools to know now.
Because science is so corrupted that you really shouldn't trust it completely.
So with ivermectin, I was just reading an article that looks like this same game plan has been run again, which is it might be that the vaccination companies, the manufacturers, are funding trials, allegedly, which are designed to fail.
Because if you thought you could get away with just this ivermectin, maybe you wouldn't get vaccinations.
So some of the tests of ivermectin are the same kind of weird situation where the nature of the trial, from its design, looks like it's designed to fail.
Here are two ways to design a test to fail.
You give it to the wrong group of people.
That's number one. So like the hydroxychloroquine, they would give it to badly sick people, and then they show it doesn't work.
Well, it wasn't supposed to, right?
That was the use that if it worked, it'd be great, but nobody was really expecting that, right?
So first you test the wrong group, and then the other thing you can test is a different kind of wrong group that's too small.
So the next thing you do is a small group of healthy people who are young.
And then all of the healthy people who are young don't die.
But maybe one does.
Because it's a group that's extra healthy.
And then you say, well, we concluded nothing because there weren't enough people and not enough people died in either the test group Or the control group.
Because it was a small group, and they're healthy people.
So of course they didn't go to the hospital.
So basically, you do the whole study and you conclude, we see no difference between the control group and the ivermectin.
Because there weren't enough people.
You could never rise to the level of statistical usefulness.
It was designed so it couldn't possibly give you an answer.
Now, the ivermectin, here's the claim...
Is that the two kinds of trials are those kinds.
The two that any reasonable person, just you and I, would know are not going to give you anything useful.
So, is it a conspiracy?
Is this happening intentionally?
Don't know. We only know it looks like it, right?
That's all we know. We know it looks exactly like it's being taken off the table with or without any information about whether it works.
So I can't tell you it works or doesn't, which is the whole point of this, I guess.
Here's another interesting study.
I don't know that this has been reproduced, but there's one study.
And before I even tell you what the study is, what are the odds that it's true if there's one study and it's peer-reviewed, and let's say it's a high-quality study, what are the odds that it's true if About 50%.
So about half of the things that are peer-reviewed and look pretty good initially, about half of them end up being debunked later.
So the fact that there's good information and maybe the study's good too, I'm not the one who can tell, doesn't really tell you anything.
But maybe 50% likelihood.
Now, when something agrees with your common sense and there's a trial...
Well, then you're far more persuaded, even if you're misled, right?
And this does agree with my common sense.
So I'll just say my common sense in at least one trial says the following.
That if parents eat junk food and then have children, the children will be less intelligent and maybe have brain disorders.
So the quality of the diet of the parents can affect forever the mental health of the child.
Are you surprised?
Why would you be surprised?
Is there anybody who should be surprised by that?
That unhealthy parents have less healthy children?
I mean, even if you remove the genetic component, I can't imagine any situation where a less healthy mother creates just as healthy children as a healthy mother.
I don't know if there's any story of that.
All right, so...
Just keep an eye on that one.
I give it a 50% likelihood of being true, but it matches my common sense.
All right, here's the most absurd thing.
So the Biden administration is putting together, or has, a 46-person federal scientific integrity task force.
That's right. It's a federal scientific integrity task force.
So you know that's good.
I mean, just listen to it.
For members from more than two dozen government agencies...
And they're going to meet to look back through 2009 to see where any decisions that should have been based on evidence and research were politicized.
So they're trying to find out where politics distorted science.
Do you think they'll find any?
What do you think? Do you think they're going to find any examples of where politics distorted science?
I'm going to say yes.
Yes, they will. Do you know why?
Because there's a task force, and they're looking for it.
If you put together a task force to look for Bigfoot in your...
In your garbage container?
They'd find it. If you put together a task force that's big enough and you make them look for something, they're going to find some, whether it's there or not.
So, yeah, they're definitely going to find some.
I would expect they'd find a lot.
But here's my question to you.
Is there any science that's not politicized?
Is that even a thing?
Can you think of any example in which an administration...
Be they Democrat or be they Republican.
Doesn't matter to my example.
Can you think of any example in which the science would come to the administration and then the administration would say, yeah, just put it out just the way it is.
Don't even put our own summary on it.
Don't change it. Just put it out just the way it is.
Yes, if it agrees with them politically.
Right? So when it agrees with the administration, yeah, they'll just put it right out there.
When it doesn't agree with the things they've been saying, what do you think would happen?
Do you think they put it right out there?
No, not in the real world.
They shade it, they interpret it, they summarize it, they put it through the news filter so that CNN will say it the way they want to say it.
Right. So there are only two possibilities when politics is involved.
Coincidentally, the science agrees with the administration.
Or it gets massaged and biased, because that's what politics does.
So my assumption is that all of it is politicized, even the stuff that went directly through without being edited.
The fact that something went through without being edited just means it agrees with the administration.
It doesn't mean it wasn't politicized.
They just got lucky that time.
So I can't imagine there's any example of anything important that wasn't ruined by politics.
Now, what are they going to do when they look at climate change?
Because my observation would be they're going to conclude that the Trump administration biased the climate change science, of course.
You don't even need to wait for the conclusion, right?
And also, it doesn't matter if they did or not.
It's irrelevant to whether the Trump administration did anything bad.
A 46-person panel?
Yeah, they're going to find something bad, even if it didn't happen.
But also, they should find that the Democrats have politicized the science of climate change probably just as much.
So, how are they going to handle that?
Here's what I think.
I think this 46 panel group is going to say that Republican administrations politicized climate change and Democrat administrations did not.
And then what are you going to do with your 46 person panel?
Ignore them, right?
Ignore them. If that's what they come up with, don't even read the rest of the report.
Don't even read the rest of the report.
But in the unlikely event, and this is possible, I just think it's less likely, but in the unlikely event...
Oh, Eddie.
Eddie just paid $10 to make me see his comment that he likes it when I ban people in real time.
Well, Eddie, I'll do that for you if I can, if somebody crosses the line.
Well, anyway, in the unlikely event that the Biden administration says that climate science was politicized by both Democrat people and Republicans, but different ways, I'm going to say to myself, whoa, let's see what else they say.
Because at that point, they have me, right?
You have me at hello. If you tell me climate science was politicized by both the left and the right, the indifferent administrations, I'm all in.
You can win me over with that argument.
And then I'll look at the other stuff.
But if you start with the Republicans politicized climate change and the Democrats did not, I'm out.
I'm out. There's nothing else in the report...
That I'm going to look at.
I won't even read it.
I'm not even going to give it the time of day if they don't come clean, at least on that.
Well, it seems that Mayor Bowser in the District of Columbia has banned dancing at weddings.
Now, without giving you an opinion on what I think of banning dancing at weddings, because you all have your own opinions and there's nothing I can add to that, I would just like to add that When this becomes Footloose 2, the movie, I don't think you need to change the name of the mayor.
Because could there be a more perfect movie mayor than Mayor Bowser?
I mean, seriously.
Mayor Bowser?
That has to be the mayor who bans dancing.
When the Footloose 2 movie, or is it 3, movie comes out.
It's just got to be. Mayer, Bowser, perfect casting.
So... I would like to suggest that if we could ever have a day when the pandemic is over, and I don't know if that's possible because all the states are doing things at their own rates based on infections, but I feel as if this pandemic needs an end date.
Don't you? Even though maybe it never really ends, ends, because there'll be, you know, trickling of viruses forever.
But don't you feel we need a national celebration?
Like, really, really badly?
But to do that, you're going to need a day.
And I don't know how you declare it's over at any day.
But I feel like dancing is the requirement.
It would be like a national day of hugging and dancing.
Oh, maybe that's the name of it.
A national day of hugging and dancing.
And you just go outside.
Maybe it's just the vaccinated people.
Maybe it's the people who have immunity or whatever.
But you just hug and dance your ass off all night long.
And we just need to get it out of our systems, don't we?
Andrew just paid a $14.99 protection payment, so he's not the guy who gets randomly banned today.
Well, that worked.
Will I take pay off?
Sure. Sure.
I can be bought.
He just bought me for $14.99, which is weirdly exactly my price.
If you had paid more than that, you would have overpaid because you got it for $14.99.
I warned you last year, and I'll say this maybe once a month until you're tired of hearing it, because I don't know how many times you can say this without people being able to hear it.
80,000 people a year die in this country just normally.
Thanks, Eddie.
So if you have 8,000 people a day dying, and those are mostly the sickly and old people, right?
Because that's who dies.
And the sickly and old are also being massively vaccinated, coincidentally at the same time.
Wouldn't you expect a whole lot of people to die right after getting a vaccination?
Yes. There's a 100% chance that just from statistical reasons alone, a whole bunch of people will die Relatively soon after getting a vaccination.
It's guaranteed.
The odds require that.
They can't not happen. So when you hear that people and, you know, all these anecdotal reports of people dying after getting the vaccination, maybe some of them are actual complications because we know that happens.
But if you're being fooled by the quantity of them, just remember that the quantity has to be big.
Okay, Justin Shaw, you're safe for today.
Apparently $14.99 is my price where I'll save all of you.
I don't think you're...
I'm not sure you're spending good money.
I don't know why anybody's paying money for this.
Alex, I'll charge $9.99 for banning protection.
All right, good luck for that.
Alright, Peter Navarro was on Bannon's war room and he said something provocative.
He said that Dr. Fauci is the father of the virus and that there's a 99.99% chance that the virus came out of the Wuhan lab.
Now what does it mean when Peter Navarro says Dr.
Fauci is the father of the virus?
Well, it can mean anything you want it to mean, right?
Which is why it's hard to say it's true or false, because it just depends how you define it.
Now, my understanding is that Fauci had something to do with funding of some things that were gain-of-function related in the lab.
Do I have that right? Do a fact check on me.
Are those facts right?
That Fauci had something to do with funding...
At the Wuhan lab, which knowingly was doing gain-of-function stuff.
Is that true? Yeah.
As Derna says, if you don't pay somebody to find something, you won't find it.
But if you do pay them to find it, they'll find it whether it's there or not.
Thanks, Josiah. Is that how you say your name?
Josiah? So, here's my take on this.
If it's true that Fauci had something to do with funding at that lab, then I can see why he'd say that he's the father of the virus, but it's a little bit of a stretch.
It's a little bit of a stretch.
Let's call it hyperbole, but that's as far as I'll go on that.
I'm adding to my list of people and groups for whom I have no sympathy.
Are you ready? Now, I believe I'm empathic.
I believe I have empathy for lots of people and groups.
And I believe I have appropriate empathy in the appropriate places.
But I no longer will have empathy for anybody who resists arrest.
Don't care about them.
I really don't care about them.
If you resist arrest and you get killed, I don't care about you at all.
Now, I feel sorry for the family because the family didn't do anything, right?
And I feel sorry for the police officer who, you know, has a tough time if they kill anybody.
David, $14.98 doesn't get you anything.
You can't get anything for that.
It's $14.99 is the price.
If someone misbehaves again, you could ban a random dozen people to encourage the others.
Some kind of group penalty.
Isn't that a war crime?
If I ban too many people because one person was bad?
I have no sympathy for resisting arrest.
I have no sympathy for anyone who dated Marilyn Manson and then was later abused.
Abuse is a terrible thing.
So I'm not saying, you know, that's good.
I'm saying I just can't generate any empathy at all.
If you date Marilyn Manson and that goes bad, don't say you didn't see it coming.
Please. I'm adding to this the Palestinians.
While I would love for their situation to be fixed, and I do have empathy for the individual Palestinians who are just trying to lead their life in the best way they can, But because their leaders are disincentive to find any solutions, I can't generate any empathy.
I can't. Because over there is just a power play.
So I'm just watching people who have power using it.
If the other group had power, they would use it.
It has nothing to do with ethics or morality or anything.
It doesn't have anything to do with who owns what or whose god protects anything.
David, well, thank you.
Now you've overpaid, but at least you're on target.
All right. I also don't have, and again, I have complete respect for the Palestinian people who are just trying to lead their life, but they're also buying into a system that can't work.
It can't work because Israel's too strong.
It's not going to be defeated by the missiles and stuff.
So if you're pursuing a strategy that can't work, I just don't have any sympathy for you.
And I would also add to this, anybody who complains about systemic racism, in this specific example, and you have to include this part, if they don't put the teachers' union near the top of their list, if you're complaining about systemic racism...
And you're ignoring the teachers' unions as the biggest cause of it, well, you're not a serious person, and I can't take any of your concerns seriously.
But if you're complaining about systemic racism everywhere, and you've correctly identified that the teachers' unions are either the number one or certainly among the top causes of perpetuating it, well, then I'm going to listen to everything you say, right? If you get the one thing right, the top priority...
I'll listen to all the rest of your arguments.
Because at least you started smart.
But if you didn't start smart, I'm not going to listen to the rest of it either.
I'm just not. Alright, so I'll add to this list of people I have no sympathy for as they make themselves known.
I saw an interesting little debate on a little corner of Twitter today trying to figure out if Jordan Peterson is...
A believer. Or an atheist.
Bring Alex back from last week and ban him again.
Yeah, I should have some people just come here to ban.
Move the teachers' unions to Palestine.
Well, I guess that would be one way to play it.
But anyway, here's why I'm fascinated about the question of Jordan Peterson's religion.
Number one, we're not mind readers.
1999. Wow.
I don't know what's happening today, but you're all being way too generous, and you don't need to do that.
But I appreciate it.
And here's why I'm fascinated about Jordan Peterson, because, first of all, I don't care, you know, whatever his religious belief is.
That's just him. But I love the fact that we don't know.
I really like that.
I love the fact that we don't know.
Think about how famous he is.
Think about how much he's talked about religion.
Think about how much he's talked about the human situation.
Zillions of hours of programming about the most important things in life, and you don't know if he's a believer.
Isn't that interesting? Now, I don't think you could play that better.
Because if he took a position, one way or the other, it would turn off a whole bunch of people who could benefit from hearing his messages.
So there's no point to it.
And privately, I would love to hear his opinion on that.
I feel like I know it, but that's mind-reading.
Allegedly, he once referred to himself as a pragmatic Christian, which is just ambiguous enough that you could read into that anything you wanted, which is also kind of brilliant.
I almost think I might use that, because my own definition of that would be somebody who's accepting the principles of Of how to live your life, but may have a different opinion about the underlying reality.
But I would like to give you the strangest story you've ever heard in your life relative to this.
Chris, you're safe.
No cancellation for you.
And you're saying that Jordan has a good biblical series.
Yeah, so this is the weird thing, is that I know he talks about religion in a positive sense, So that's why it's weird that we don't know what his religion is.
Now, I'm in the same camp, not the same as Jordan Peterson, but I'm in the same camp of talking positively about religion, but not being a believer myself.
So I'm not saying that that's what Jordan Peterson is.
This is just me. But I have great respect for it because it obviously works.
It makes people happy.
It gives them purpose for living.
It works well. And here is a story that I'll bet you'll be surprised at.
I don't know my parents' religion.
Now, my parents have both passed on.
But when they were alive, I never knew their religious belief.
Is that amazing?
And I always wonder what effect that has had on me.
Now, of course, I asked.
But I only got sort of general answers that I couldn't quite make anything of.
Well, Pascal's wager, yeah.
But we did go to what was called Sunday School.
It was a Methodist church.
My siblings and I were indoctrinated into the religious tradition.
And my parents would go to, you know, the Christmas Sunday thing when we did our little piece on stage or whatever.
But I never knew their religious beliefs.
I don't even know if either one of them believed in God.
I actually don't.
And I've often thought that that was an advantage to me because it didn't give me some programming that I had to overcome completely.
To, you know, look at all my options.
So I didn't start with a bias.
I started with that one.
And when I was 11 years old, I asked my mother if I could stop going to church.
And I gave her my thinking.
And she said, okay.
And we never talked about it again.
Just think about that.
11 years old. I had an adult conversation with my mother.
Gave her my reasons. About why I wasn't going to continue.
And I didn't say I would like to not continue doing this.
I just told her I wasn't. By the way, there's a little tip in life.
How do you send me snail mail?
Oh, please don't, Joel.
I don't let people send me anything by mail if I can avoid it.
Because my house is full.
And that's not a joke.
Every day I'm taking out truckloads of stuff that doesn't belong in my house.
Truckloads. That has just come in from various ways over the years.
So I try to discourage everybody to not send me anything that is a package or a physical thing.
All right. I don't know what I was talking about there, so let's talk about something else.
I saw Dave Chappelle say that...
What did he say? He was talking about Elon Musk's appearance on SNL. And he was saying that you can't be woke enough.
And he was just a little puzzled by Elon Musk getting some pushback on Saturday Night Live.
But then he said this.
I guess he said this on Joe Rogan's show.
Chappelle did. He said, quote, But I'm really into tactics, he added.
I'm into tactics.
Now, didn't you always have this feeling that Dave Chappelle was operating at a higher level than just most people?
If you listen to his comedy, you come away thinking, well, that wasn't just a comedian.
It was like a philosopher in there somewhere, like an important one.
Not a casual philosopher, but A substantial one.
I'm seeing no's.
Let me look at your comments for a while.
He absolutely is.
I see some no's.
Too much coke, somebody says.
Yes and no, not really.
So people are all over the board on him.
But here's what I'd like to add.
I've always said that the moment the black American community turns from victimhood to strategy...
They're just going to rule everything.
The black American public is spring-loaded for some gains that are enormous.
I feel as if that community is going to go on a run for the next 20 or 30 years in which it's just going to be breathtaking.
And I think that that change is...
It's when the Chappelle-like, let's call him a reluctant leader, because I don't feel like he's going out of his way to be a leader.
I feel like he just says things that are smart, and then people, if they're smart enough, will be influenced by it.
As soon as the black community focuses on tactics and systems and strategy, they're going to realize that they have all the advantages if they use strategy.
If they try to do things the same way every generic white person does, probably systemic racism is going to be an issue.
If they try to find their advantages and press their advantages and stay away from the places where they're disadvantaged, there's going to be some big changes ahead.
Employers are sending workers back to the office as early as June, not being forced to get the vaccination.
What should I do? Tim says, what should you do?
Good question. Let's say your employer says you have to go back to work, and then also says you don't have to get the vaccination, and let's say you haven't.
What are you going to do? Well, it's a free country.
One choice is to find a new employer.
The other choice, and this dovetails exactly into what I was going to tell you, would you like to hear how to say no in a way that works?
You know you do, right?
Saying no to things when you don't have the power and somebody else does have the power, it's really hard for people to get right.
Because if you're whiny and complainy, you might get what you want, but then you're the whiny, complainy person.
So you kind of broke even.
You got what you wanted, but now you're a whiny person.
Not so great. So how can you say no to something When somebody has the power and you don't, let's say a boss, and you want to come off with a good reputation.
Let me tell you how.
You want to say it in a way that removes the choice, or removes the option, Or removes the argument.
Alright? So let me give you this example of the boss says you need to come to the office in June, and everybody will come to the office, and let's say that you decided that that's no good for you, for whatever reason.
So you have your own reasons, and you need to say no to this, but you're worried about getting fired.
How do you do it? Well, the first thing you don't want to do is give reasons.
Doesn't that sound weird?
If you give reasons, your boss will argue with the reasons.
And then you're just the complainy person who didn't get anything.
Never give reasons if you want your no to stick.
Does that make sense?
Because that's the opposite of common sense, right?
Common sense says, if I'm going to turn somebody down, I've got to give them reasons right up front.
Nope. No.
If you give reasons, you are signaling weakness.
Reasons signal weakness, and people will sense it and then just tell you what to do.
Here's how to do it without reasons.
Scott, you need to come into the office.
Everybody needs to come into the office June 1st.
Here's Scott. Well, I won't be doing that, so I want to talk about what the options are and how we can handle that.
Let me say it again. Scott, you have to come into the office.
Everybody does. No exceptions.
I won't be doing that, so let's talk about what happens then and what my options are.
Did you hear a reason?
No. There was no reason.
Was I a jerk?
No. I didn't say it with any attitude whatsoever.
I just said, what's going to happen?
I took the decision away from my boss.
I took the decision away from my boss.
I just said, that's not happening.
Now, if I said, that's not happening, well, then I'd get fired because I'm just a jerk.
No, that's not happening. That's not happening.
You're a jerk. You're fired.
But I didn't say it that way.
Scott, you've got to come into the office.
That's not going to happen, so could we have a meeting and talk about what my options are?
And then, when you say, can we talk about what my options are, do you see what you've done?
You made your boss your problem solver.
So instead of you saying, this is what I'm going to do, which would be obnoxious, and maybe you'd get fired, you say, I'll tell you what's not going to happen is me going into the office.
And now I'm going to ask you to work with me to figure out how this is going to work.
See the difference? You can say no to your superiors, Really easily.
Now, if you say to me, Scott, I don't think you've ever tried that because I think you'd get fired.
No, I have tried that.
I have tried exactly this in new ruleable situations and it works 100% of the time.
Not once in my life has a no been challenged or turned over when I just state it like a fact and then I make people think past it to what are we going to do now?
The decision's made, right?
Now, keep this in mind.
When your boss says, you know, Scott, you're going to go into the office, I'm the only one who decides if I'm going into the office.
But in order to argue it, I also have to be legitimately ready to leave.
If you're not legitimately ready to leave, well, then maybe you just have to do what you got to do and go to the office.
But it helps to be legitimately ready to leave.
And then you just say, well, that's not going to happen.
So let's talk about what we can do about it.
Somebody says, you got to know your boss.
And I would say, nope, I disagree.
The method I just gave you should be universally applicable no matter who your boss is.
And if your boss fires you for saying it the way I just said it, good.
You don't want to work for that boss.
You do not want to work for that boss.
And I would argue also that if you turn down your boss the way I just recommended, completely professionally, you just eliminated the option, well that's not going to happen, you made him think past the sale as to what is a practical way to deal with it, you're first in line for a promotion.
Did you hear that? Saying no to your boss, but doing it expertly, It puts you first in line for a promotion.
It doesn't put you first in line to get fired.
If you can say no better than anybody else can say no around you, you'll be the boss.
Nathan says, Cialdini says to give people reasons to persuade them.
In the past, you have agreed with this.
Oh, reasons to persuade them.
I'm not sure I quite understand the question.
You may be thinking about pacing and leading, where you're agreeing with people until you lead them to a new opinion.
Maybe not. Ideally, you should have reasons, but in a situation where your no is firm, you don't need them.
And when people try to bring me reasons, I'll say, look, I've already made my decision.
Now we're talking about your decision.
Did you hear that? Yeah.
When somebody starts questioning you, you say, well, I've made my decision.
All this left is for you to make your decision.
It's very professional.
It's not obnoxious.
You're just firm and you're confident.
That's all. Alright, I saw Brian Stelter pushing a real good persuasion.
So I'm going to give credit where credit is due, persuasion-wise.
So as you know, Brian Stelter likes to be the...
He's sort of the voice of criticizing Fox News, along with Jim Acosta, I guess.
And over at Fox News, there are a few people who criticize him back, you know, Tucker, Greg Guffeld, etc., So he's sort of the punching bag for the right, but also the voice of the left criticizing Fox.
He came up with this, well he's promoting, he didn't come up with it, the idea that you could get Fox-itis.
And I guess one of the lawyers for somebody who was part of the Capitol protests, He said that his client was brainwashed by Fox News, and he had a bad case of foxitis, and that's what caused him to be part of the protest.
And Brian Stelter picked up on that and says that people who watch Fox are getting foxitis.
So it's really good.
It's really good persuasion.
Because, you know, as good as Trump derangement syndrome was, and I think that was good persuasion too, because it talked about a real thing that you felt, etc.
I think if he keeps pushing this, this foxitis, that could become a thing.
So, you know, good job on persuasion there.
And then he had this little take.
He said, instead of pushing for herd immunity, Where you've got, say, 70% of the public either has been infected or vaccinated.
He said we should be pushing for nerd immunity, which is informing people about the facts well enough that they, on their own, go get the vaccinations, according to Brian.
Nerd immunity.
Not bad. So I would just like to say that Brian Stelter has improved his persuasion game impressively.
I wonder why. Here's my big question on persuasion.
So, arguably, depending on what you feel about vaccinations, so I'll just put arguably before this, because you will argue with me.
So just understand I know you have an argument.
Arguably, the most useful thing I could do is persuade people to get vaccinated.
In the comments, go.
Because I know where this is going.
Because it might be the most unethical thing I could do.
And I'm a little bit torn.
Maybe you've noticed.
Because I'm not hammering on one side or the other.
A little bit torn. And my problem is this.
With great power comes great responsibility.
And I'm trying to square my responsibility with this topic.
What's my responsibility?
Let's take my assumption.
You don't have to agree with it, but let's just work with it here.
Take my assumption that I believe, because I'm professionally trained in persuasion, I believe that if I did a full persuasive campaign to help people get vaccinated, I think I can make a dent.
I don't know how many people would be influenced, but maybe thousands should make a difference.
Would save lives, allegedly.
So do I have a bigger ethical requirement to persuade people to get the vaccinations, or would that be the height of unethical behavior because everything has a risk?
And then I would be encouraging people to do something medical when I'm not a doctor.
Give me some advice here.
Give me some advice.
What is the most responsible thing I could do?
Now, I'll tell you where I landed.
Where I landed was telling you what I do, and then also explaining in detail the framework of how I reasoned the odds and how I got there.
I think the most ethical thing I can do is just tell you how I handled it.
Would you agree? Because if I go beyond that, I know I can convince people to get the vaccination who would not have done it on their own.
I know I can.
Let me ask you this.
Stay out of it, I'm saying.
And I think that your instinct might be right.
Let me ask you this.
In the comments, and watch this, watch this.
How many people in the comments have changed their decision to get the vaccination because of something I did or said?
It'll take a moment for the comments to catch up.
But just watch in the comments.
How many people have already...
And this scares me a little bit because I didn't...
Oh, there's a yes.
So how many people changed their opinion because of something I said or did?
Now, most of you should be a no.
So even if I were persuasive, I would expect 90% no's.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no. So, so far it's a solid wall of kinda sorta.
Yes. Somebody said yes.
Slightly. Yes.
Most of these are no's, so when I read out the yes's, these are the exceptions.
Hard yes. No, no, no, no.
All the rest are no's. So far I'll tell you if I see any more yes's come by.
Kinda sorta. I put somebody on the fence.
Slightly. Not me.
Hell no, nah, nah, nah.
Yes, you persuaded me.
All right, so my estimate was 90% would not be persuaded.
But you saw in the comments that a number of people were persuaded.
Now, you can tell that if I hit this hard...
There would be more of you.
Because I could. I'm just choosing not to.
And I feel like I'm going to stick where I am for now, unless I hear a better argument for why I should not.
It's a heck of a thing to put on me.
Because this is the height of responsibility, isn't it?
If I know that I could make more people get vaccinated, and I know that the medical scientific community is really unified saying you should, still...
Let's see what a $25 comment says.
Responsible is to explain how you reached the decision and to educate people on risk management calculation, which is what I tried to do.
Which are the system?
And you did that exactly.
Well, thank you. Because that's the balance I was trying to hit.
Alright, so I'm going to read some comments now and questions.
That came to me through the locals platforms.
That's the subscription platform in which you can subscribe to see my stuff that you can't see publicly.
So I said I'd answer some questions live from there, and I'm looking at those now.
Let's see. When is quitting okay?
When is quitting okay?
That's a good question. It depends if you're talking about business or personal.
In your personal life, arguing doesn't buy you much, so quitting soon on the arguing probably makes sense.
In a business sense, if you're trying to start a business or whatever, I would look for whether people are responding physically to the thing you're doing or making.
So I've used this standard before.
If people look at, let's say, your prototype or whatever, and they say, oh, I want to take this and modify it, and I need three of these to give to my friends and stuff.
If they're physically doing stuff with your product and modifying it, and they're putting it together in novel ways and stuff, you probably have something.
But if they're just talking about it and saying, oh, that's good, you probably have nothing.
So I would look for the physical activity...
To tell you you have something.
In the Dilbert case, people were taking my comics and making their own books out of them.
So when I decided to make my own book, I didn't have to wonder if people would buy it because they were making their own books just because they didn't have one to buy.
Would I consider interviewing Bishop Robert Barron?
No. So I might start interviewing some people who have books.
I've got a few lined up.
But other than authors, I'm probably not going to do generic people.
Would you mind explaining how teaching people to think clearly is a better strategy for a long-term health of the country versus winning a partisan debate?
Well, I think that should be clear, right?
Teaching people how to think clearly.
But the biggest part of that is teaching them that they can't.
You can't teach people to think clearly if they think they already can.
They're not going to give you the time of day.
So that's why I wrote Loser Think.
Loser Think, behind me on the shelf.
So Loser Think is that book to try to teach people what they're doing wrong and at the same time teach them how to do it right.
So other than writing books and talking about it all the time and trying to get it into the school curriculum, I don't know what you could do.
Nicholas says, is Sernovich going to make a decision soon on whether or not to run for governor?
Well, I think everybody has to decide soon.
Ish. But he might wait around and see if his poll numbers go up by themselves.
That might be a good play.
Because you don't want to go all in on something if you're polling at 3%.
But imagine if the next poll comes out and now that 3% got people talking about him, What would happen if the next poll he's at 5% without doing any campaigning?
Then it starts to look like he's almost being drafted at that point.
And I'll say it again, I can't even imagine a better governor, honestly.
I think he would be the best governor we ever had.
Have you ever tried a beard or a mustache?
No, I can't really grow that stuff.
What is the best way to detect energy suckers?
They suck your energy.
That's how. If somebody's sucking your energy, you have detected them.
If you can't tell that they're sucking your energy, then they're not.
Martha says, Is creativity a daily habit for you, or do you engage certain activities consistently that fuel your activity?
Yes, it is a system, and it's a daily habit.
And the habit is that you can't Creativity is not something you do.
It's something you remove obstacles from, which is the biggest mental reframing of it.
So I can't just sit there and be creative.
Create. So creating is not something that you make happen.
It's something that you can prevent from happening.
Or you could not prevent it from happening.
So I spend a lot of work not preventing it.
So let me give you an example.
If I don't get enough sleep, I can't be creative.
Creativity is one of those things that just doesn't work when you're tired.
You can do a lot of physical things when you're still tired.
You can power through it.
But creativity stops when you're a little extra tired.
You just can't do any of it. So I work on diet, exercise, fitness, and that's my creativity.
If I get diet, exercise, and sleep right, then I've removed the obstacles that would have stopped my creativity.
Now, if you're not a creative person...
You're just not. I can't jump 42 inches in a leap, and I never will.
Some of you will never be able to solve a Rubik's Cube.
Some of you will.
So you have to have some creativity, naturally.
But it's mostly about removing the obstacles.
Likewise, when I work, I make sure that my feet are flat on the ground, I've got the right amount of light, I've eaten, I've used the restroom, I've cleared my mind, So creativity is about negative space.
It's about getting rid of all the things that would prevent it.
You don't actively create it, except by experience.
One of the ways that you fuel it is by just exposing yourself to enough different stimulations that creativity just happens.
I listed diet, exercise, and learning as the secrets to happiness.
What about independence? People who are dependent on parents, children, etc., their employees, the state doesn't limit their happiness?
Yes. In my book, How to Fail Almost Everything and Still Win Big, I talk about how schedule flexibility is a requirement for real happiness.
Because if you can't do the things you want to do when you want to do them, you're never going to be happy.
Just the fact that you could do everything you want, but you could never do it at the right time to do those things, it just wouldn't work.
So definitely you need freedom, but when you're younger, it's hard to get, because you usually have a boss.
So you should work toward not having a boss, so you can free up your schedule.
As far as having kids and a family...
That's more of a personal decision.
Some people need it, some people don't.
But it's definitely going to cut into your happiness.
I don't know anybody...
The thing with having kids is you're glad you did it, but you're unhappy most of the time, right?
So each minute of the day might be unhappy because you're frustrated with the extra work of having kids or whatever.
But if somebody said, at the end of the night, when you're kicking back, are you happy?
They'd say, ah, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way.
So it's that weird situation where you're unhappy every minute to be happy in general.
It's weird that that works.
What are good directions or majors for college?
I have no clue what to do.
If you have any technical inclinations, go for programming and technical stuff.
That will never be wrong.
And if you don't have technical skills, I would go for either a trade or communication.
Something in communication.
So if you don't have a specific career goal in mind that you can aim at, It's either communication and writing and that stuff or technology.
Whichever one you have an aptitude for.
Have I read the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?
Matt, nobody has ever asked me that before.
I have not. How do I feel about people clipping my show and posting snippets?
Mixed. Mixed feeling about that.
It depends who's doing it.
Because lots of times a clip will be a rupar, meaning that if you take it out of context, it could be misleading.
But, on the other hand, if people were not clipping my show, I wouldn't have anything worth doing.
Remember I told you that if people are not doing something physical with your product, you don't have a product.
And in this case, people do take my show.
They take their own effort to figure out how to make a clip of it, and then they repost it.
That's everything you want.
If somebody is modifying your product and redistributing it, in this case, you know, it's more promotional than stealing, that's good.
That's everything you want. If we want to give Scott back to the hour-long show, we just need to Super Chat $200.
Well, I don't know how affected I am by the Super Chat funding, but I probably am, actually.
Because I'm like a dog who gets treats.
It doesn't matter how big the treat is.
Here's a little trick I learned in dog training school.
It's one of the most useful things you'll ever hear in your life.
That dogs can't do fractions.
And you're saying to yourself, what?
How is that relevant? Well, here's how it's relevant.
If you're training a dog, you have to give the dog a treat.
Otherwise, it's really hard to train them.
But the dog can't tell the difference between a big treat and a tiny one, like just a crumb.
Your dog will work just as hard for the crumb as for a big treat.
So the dog can't do fractions.
So you gave it 10% of the treat, and it's like, yay, yay!
Or if you give it 100%, it's still, yay, yay!
No difference. And this is why I feel myself actually being influenced by the Super Chat GIFs, even though they're not going to change my lifestyle.
But I'm just like the dog who can't do fractions.
I swear to God, every time I see one come through, it makes me happy.
Even though, like the dog, I should know the difference between fractions, but I don't.
I salivate now. Damn it, that's working.
I'm salivating. Alright.
Let's see if I got...
Steve says, are you thinking about retiring?
Yes. I've always been thinking about it.
Forever. But cartooning I don't want to do forever.
But I only want to get out of it if getting out is better than staying in.
Right now I don't have a plan that would look like that.
Because I don't want Dilbert to die after I leave, but I don't want it to go forward incompetently, and I don't know how to solve that right now.
But I won't be retiring from doing this.
In fact, if I retired from comics, it would be so I could do this better, basically.
So I enjoy this more, and it requires less of anything that I consider work.
It's still work, but I enjoy it, so it doesn't feel like it.
Somebody says, I have great ideas, but I can't draw.
That wouldn't stop you.
If you have great ideas that you can write and make them funny, thank you, John, do it.
You would be amazed how low the quality of the artwork can be and still be commercially successful so long as the writing is good.
If you get the writing good, the cartooning is easy.
