Episode 1415 Scott Adams: Learn to Spot Your Own Cognitive Dissonance While Hating me at the Same Time. Fun!
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Karen: New anti-White racist movie
Apple app identifies skin lesions
Follow the science is folly
70%-80% UK infected by mid-May?
"Fairness" is a ridiculous argument
Clear tells for cognitive dissonance
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But that's what makes it one of the best coffees with Scott Adams of all time.
And if you don't believe it, well, let me prove it to you.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank of chalice, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and boy, do I feel bad for the people who didn't make it here on time.
You're gonna have to take up your game a little bit more to come in on time.
Here it is, the Simultaneous Sip, go!
Ah, better than bleach.
Yeah. So yesterday, after being out of the country for eight days or so, I went to the grocery store.
Put on my mask.
I was walking around the grocery store, and I saw somebody without a mask, and I thought, my God, how long will it be before this poor bastard is kicked out of the grocery store?
And then I saw another person without a mask, and I thought, two people without a mask in a grocery store?
What kind of crazy life am I in?
And then I noticed...
That basically almost everybody didn't have a mask because while I was gone the rules changed and I forgot.
So I took off my mask because I'm fully vaccinated and apparently this store does not have any rules that would override the state's suggestion that you don't need a mask if you're vaccinated and for the first time The first time for me,
I know most of you have already experienced this, but for me, the first time at a grocery store in over a year without a mask, it felt really good.
Now, I know I'm way behind all of you, because not only am I in California, which is behind, but I personally was a week behind even California.
So you're already there, but I've got to tell you, it felt great.
It just felt freaking great.
I understand there are still a few places that might require one, like a healthcare organization.
I think if I go to my HMO, I need a mask still.
But I'll give them that.
You don't go to the healthcare place that often.
It is a medical place, so you can see why they would be last to make a change.
There's lots going on.
Number one, it turns out there's a new study that says coffee is good for your liver.
You thought that the simultaneous SIP was only about an introduction to this amazing content?
And no, it's more than that.
The simultaneous sip is keeping you healthy.
It is not only connecting you to all the people in the world, Probably boosting your oxytocin.
I don't have a scientific study to prove that, but it just feels like it.
But also, it's making your liver healthier, if you don't overdo it.
Three or four cups a day, and your liver will be, well, as good as new.
And that means you can drink a little extra.
No, no, that's bad medical advice.
Don't take medical advice from cartoonists.
Don't drink. Just have a nice, healthy...
Liver. And for that, a few cups of coffee might help you, allegedly.
So there's a new racist movie.
Probably the racist thing I've seen in my adult life.
So bad that it's just a head shaker.
Here it is. It's an anti-white movie.
I mean, I don't know how you can call it anything else.
With a star who is named Karen...
And she plays a Karen.
You know, the classical Karen behavior.
And the setup for this movie is that a black family moves in next to a woman named Karen.
And then this Karen person becomes a monster version of Karen and does everything she can to get the black family to move out.
Because she's a big old racist and she does every legal trick to get them in trouble and accusations and that sort of thing.
Now, I have several comments about this.
Number one, the marketing for this movie is really brilliant.
It's really brilliant.
If you could find any movie idea that would more make people want to watch it than this thing, Good luck.
Good luck. You know, it's not a superhero movie, and those do well.
But if you're trying to make somebody see a smaller budget movie, oh my god, this is clever.
Because it hits, it just hits everything.
Like, every one of your emotional buttons is like...
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
So, I hate this movie, and the people who made it should be deeply condemned.
I'll probably watch it.
Because it's brilliantly terrible.
I mean, this is really bad for society, bad for people.
It's just bad.
But really good marketing.
And honestly, I can't think of anything that's been more racist than this.
Because essentially, if you wanted to summarize the movie, it's white people are awful.
There you go. There's my movie review.
White people are awful.
So, here's a chance for black Americans to improve their brand.
Which I think everybody should think about.
Because how you're thought about...
In whatever group you are, or even as an individual, it matters, right?
If people like you and respect you, you'll have a better life.
So any chance you get to improve your brand, you should take it.
Take, for example, you've seen a number of clips of black Americans speaking out against critical race theory at, let's say, meetings of school boards and stuff.
Now, what does that do?
To the brand, if you can call it that, the reputation of black Americans.
Really good. Really good.
Because when you see black Americans being on both sides of an issue that has some racial component, you say to yourself, oh, there's some people who are thinking it through, coming to different opinions, but they're not just saying, I'm black, so I'm on this side.
You have all the nuance and the disagreement.
So when you look at that as a non-black person, how do you feel about black Americans?
Good, right?
And it doesn't matter that there are more people on one side than the other.
You're just seeing a good, healthy, I think, completely helpful disagreement among adults who have thought it through.
That's great for the brand.
I don't know if it's offensive to talk in terms of brands, but I don't think you should be.
This Karen movie is the same thing.
If all that comes out of this is people go to it and talk about it and like it, well, I think it's a missed opportunity.
Because I'd love to see some black Americans say, look, if this were reversed, it would be 100% unacceptable.
Let's just agree on that.
If all they did is reverse sort of the theme of the movie, no way this gets into the theaters.
I'd love to see some black Americans say, look, we've got plenty of real stuff to disagree with.
We don't need this.
Let's just make it stuff worse.
It doesn't make anybody better off, right?
So I'd love to see some pushback on that.
Don't know if we'll see it. You know, there's...
There's a new story, let's see, what was it?
Google App. So Google has an app.
Hat tip to David Smith, who pointed this out on Twitter.
And the app will identify a skin lesion and tell you if it's a problem.
I assume that means cancerous or non-cancerous.
And weirdly, It got approved in Europe, but not by the FDA. So in Europe they'll be able to use the app, but in the United States they will not.
Now, which one of them used science?
Because they got different answers, right?
They got different answers from exactly the same data.
So was the FDA following science, or is Europe following science?
Because you'd like to follow science, wouldn't you?
Which way do you go?
One says yes, one says no, same data.
The biggest con ever perpetrated on the public in the modern day, and I'll put the modern in there because, you know, there may have been worse ones in the past, but the biggest con is that you can follow the science.
If you could, If it were a thing, something that actual humans could do, it'd be a great idea.
Probably. Because then you'd be following the most rational path.
Wouldn't always be right.
But you'd always be rational in taking that set of odds.
But it's just not something humans can do.
Look at this. This is just a perfect example.
If you could follow the science, then both Europe and the FDA would be on the same side.
Same science. Science didn't change.
So, as soon as people say, follow the science, you should see that as manipulation.
Because it probably is. Not for everybody who says it.
But beware that when anybody in the leadership position says, follow the science, they might have control over what you think is the science.
So what they're really saying is, do what I'm telling you, but they're disguising, do what I tell you to do, because they're saying, well, it's backed by science, but is it?
When you can have different opinions about what the science is?
No, it's just an opinion supported by an interpretation of science that just happens to go your way.
It's not much different than the way religion is used.
Follow the religion.
Who gets to define where the religion is going?
The Pope? God?
I don't know. So you can't really follow science if science doesn't even know where it's going.
It's a ridiculous concept.
And at the same time, you should follow the science.
It's both ridiculous and common sense at the same time.
It's a weird thing. I don't know if there's anything quite like it.
Because I'm not going to tell you not to follow the science.
That would be stupid. I'm just telling you, you can't do it reliably.
And you should probably learn to know the difference.
I just told you earlier that coffee is good for your liver.
Because there's one study about that.
One study. Is it a good study?
Will it hold up?
If other people do studies, will it match it?
Don't know. So should you drink more coffee because this one study says it's good for your liver?
Probably not. There are other reasons to drink coffee.
But following the science just isn't something people can do.
You just have to understand that.
All right. I've got a skeptics challenge here.
There was a tweet in which there's a claim, some kind of ONS survey.
I don't think any of this is credible, by the way.
So the context in which I'm giving this to you is a Claim which I do not find credible.
But I tweeted it because I'd like you to pour through it and see if you can figure out how credible you think it is.
The claim is this, that a survey showed that 87% of adults in the UK had antibodies to the coronavirus by June 7th from vaccination or infection prior to mid-May.
So if you added prior infections plus vaccinations, 87% Given vaccination rates, this tweet goes on to say, simple math determines that 70-80% of total UK population had been infected by mid-May, which means that vaccinations and everything else were a waste, if that interpretation held up.
What do you think of that?
What's your reaction to this data?
I'm going to look into comments and I want to see what your reaction is.
I hear some say, wow.
OK. Wow, 87%.
OK. Somebody says, yeah, I think we all had it.
Somebody says, terrible data.
Somebody says, not true.
Nonsense. No way.
Sounds sketchy. Yeah.
Alright, so here's my take on this.
This outcome, this 87% thing, and then even taking it down to how much natural immunity there must have been, is so far outside expectation that the odds of this being true are really low.
Meaning that if you're learning about it in this tweet, and nobody in any industrial country I feel like the odds that this wouldn't be a story in every country and just be so obvious that everybody knew it by now,
I don't think you could believe this.
This doesn't sound It doesn't even sound in the universe of things that you should take seriously.
It's just too far out there.
And it's a little too on the nose, right?
It's what so many of you wanted to believe is exactly true.
I would rule this out based on it just being too far out the mainstream.
We would have known this way before now.
And there's another claim in here that infections dropped after January 1st.
Before there were many vaccinations.
So if the curve was already plummeting after January, before there were many vaccinations, logically this information suggests that maybe we had way more natural immunity from infections.
But don't you all know that infections always drop after January?
Because it's not the holiday season and the travel patterns change.
So we all expect it to go down after the holidays.
Everybody did. So that doesn't mean that there was herd immunity.
It just means you stopped going on holiday and infecting your aunt.
That's all it meant. Or that's all it could have meant.
So their interpretation here, I think, is ridiculous.
I would ignore that. But I put it on Twitter if somebody wants to argue that it's more credible than I think.
All right. I have a confession.
All right. I'm going to do something that's going to be painful for a lot of you.
But I need to set it up first.
You've heard me make some opinions that you don't like.
And don't turn this off yet, because this won't be the normal conversation.
We're going to get into something a little deeper.
You've heard my opinions on trans athletes, and you said, God, I hate that.
Here's a confession.
I'm not sure I told you my exact, accurate opinion on this topic.
I may have been enjoying myself stimulating cognitive dissonance in people because it teaches me how to spot it.
In other words, if you trigger it, you get to see how people respond, and then you see the pattern.
You go, oh, these are cognitive dissonance responses, and then these are good ones.
I'm going to tell you for the first time something close to my real opinion.
This will be the first time you've heard it, okay?
And I'm going to couch it in a discussion of which people who responded to my tweet today have a tell for cognitive dissonance And which ones simply have a good argument?
Okay? So let me start with the people who have a good argument.
Because I feel that they will be the ones who are on your side for the most part.
So I'm going to be pacing you.
This is a persuasion technique.
I'm going to start by agreeing with the things that I know we can agree on.
And if I get you to agree on a bunch of things, you're going to be a little bit better primed For me to take you someplace that might be a little uncomfortable.
You ready for this? So this isn't about transgender athletes.
Number one, I don't care.
So here's the first part of my opinion that you'll hear for the first time.
I don't really care about the issue.
I don't have a daughter or stepdaughter who's involved.
I don't really watch sports enough to care.
I think there are probably a million ways that you can handle it no matter what you do.
You know, ways to mitigate things, ways to fix it.
Don't much care.
Okay? So that's the first thing.
But I do love what you learn about the argument.
All right, so let me start with the good arguments for why transgender athletes should not be Allowed to play on traditional women's teams.
Okay? Now this part would agree with most of you, I think.
And here's a good argument.
Let's see. Before I get to the bad ones, the ones that are cognitive dissonance.
I have to work through all the bad ones here.
Give me a minute. Alright, here are the non-cognitive dissonance arguments for why transgender athletes should not be allowed to play on traditional women's teams.
Here's one from Zabi's Other Mower Sold?
That's the name of the Twitter account.
So Zabi's Mower says, maybe...
Maybe think of it another way.
He argues to me, he says, you've said you don't like Biden's tax plan because it's changing the rules after they were established, which is true.
I lived my life building a certain kind of life and financial situation under the old set of tax laws, and if I run into a wall and suddenly they change, well, that doesn't feel fair, because I planned my whole life on a certain basis, and then it changed.
So Zabi's saying, think of it the same way.
There are people, and then he goes on, the same may be said for the females that committed and trained for the Olympics, Only for the rules to be changed later on.
Now, do you detect any cognitive dissonance in this response?
No. No.
Now, you could agree with it, or you could disagree with it.
But, is there anything in it that signals that there's some cognitive dissonance going on?
None. This is a perfectly reasonable argument.
I'm not sure it settles it one way or another, but as a point, I have nothing to say about that.
A perfectly valid statement that the rules changed, and people don't like it.
It feels unfair. We all register that, that it feels unfair when rules change.
But let me just toss out a counter to that.
The counter is that when the topic is Bigotry and discrimination, you still change the rules, right?
If you had been born in a system in which slavery had been the expectations and you'd built your life based on owning slaves, and then somebody came along and suddenly changed the system, well, that's so unfair for you because you made your life based on benefiting from slavery.
The point is, when bigotry is the issue, as is the case with transgender athletes, when bigotry is the issue, you can change the rules the moment you can.
The moment you can change the rules, go ahead and do it.
That's the exception to the rule.
But, let me say that while I have a counter to this argument that the rules changed, it's still a good point.
The way you feel about it is it feels unfair because of this very thing.
So that's a good point. No cognitive dissonance there.
Here's another one. TankerJD, a user on Twitter, says this to me.
He says, that's not the point.
And he says, I think it's he, women's and girls' sports was something nice that men did for their daughters, wives, and sisters.
To allow biological men, this would be his description of a trans athlete, into the sport is to take away that gift.
Good point, right?
Now you could disagree with it, and you could agree with it, but there's no cognitive dissonance in this.
This is just a good point.
The good point is that it was a gift, in a sense, or let's say people thought of it that way.
And if something is given to you, no matter what it is, and that it's taken away, can that ever feel fair?
No, of course not.
It would never feel fair.
But is it fair?
Well, as I've often said, famously, fairness was invented so that idiots could participate in debates.
Fairness isn't a thing.
You can't grab a handful of fairness.
You can't measure it.
It's subjective. What's fair to you seems unfair to me.
In fact, any change to anything causes unfairness to somebody.
So we don't live in a world in which you can manage too fairness.
But yet, we have an impression of what's fair.
Is it reasonable to say, That the men who thought they wanted to build a better world for their daughters and sisters and whatever, would it be fair to say that they thought they were giving a gift and women thought they were receiving one?
They wouldn't think of it as a gift.
They would think of it as fairness.
But it doesn't feel right to have anything taken away from anybody.
I get that. And a totally legitimate variable to put in there that somebody would feel bad, especially if they'd trained their whole life.
That's a good opinion. There are counters for it, but it's a perfectly fair opinion.
No cognitive dissonance in that opinion.
Would you agree so far? So far, are most of us on the same page?
That these are actually pretty good opinions, even if you disagree with them, and that they don't signal any kind of cognitive dissonance.
I think there's another one.
Cheryl Corey on Twitter says, in a reasonable question, says, if we don't separate sports by sex, then what are the implications for women's sports?
Now this would be similar related to the points of something that we liked was in existence and we don't want to lose it.
Who wants to lose something that's working?
If you have daughters who are playing on a team and they like it and you like watching it, Why would you want to lose that or have it diminished in some way according to you?
Nobody does. So those are all good arguments.
Now let me show you the other ones.
Here's how you know if you are experiencing cognitive dissonance.
The arguments I've given you so far do not have that quality.
There's nothing about them that a trained hypnotist or a psychologist would say, oh, there's something wrong with that.
Now let me give you the alternatives.
And by the way, here was my tweet that caused people to respond.
And I'm not going to argue that this tweet makes sense, right?
So this is my confession, that I'm not trolling per se just to get a random result.
I'm kind of fascinated at how people process this topic.
And so I tweeted something that I knew would get a response.
So that's all you're going to see here.
This is just a tweet that was intended to get a response and make people think about it differently.
It wasn't just to troll.
It was to teach you something and maybe learn something myself.
All right, here is the tweet. I said this morning, it is unfair for trans athletes to compete on women's teams because of the strength difference.
Would most of you agree with that statement?
That it is unfair for trans athletes to compete on women's teams because of the strength difference.
Primarily. Now, some of you have said, oh, there are some mental differences, etc.
But primarily, it's a strength difference, wouldn't you say?
Size and strength, but more strength.
Alright? So, if we agree on that, here's the second part.
It is fair for LeBron James to compete against me For a spot on an NBA team, because the only thing that's holding me back is my poor work ethic.
But otherwise, LeBron James is a man, and I'm a man, so the fact that he gets on the team sort of denies me a spot on an NBA team, doesn't it?
Well, not really.
Right? It's just being provocative.
And I'm trying to make the point that we live in a world in which nothing is fair.
Nothing is fair. Fairness is a ridiculous standard.
Is it fair that LeBron can play in the NBA and I don't have a chance?
No. That's not fair.
Is it fair that I was born with, apparently, some kind of wiring that allows me to be a cartoonist?
But I'll bet, statistically speaking, I'll bet if LeBron tried to become a professional cartoonist, he'd have some trouble.
Is that fair? Is it fair that I was born with this talent that gives me a great life, and maybe somebody else doesn't have it?
No, it's not fair. It just is.
If the problem is somebody losing a spot, which is the argument you often hear, hey, somebody's going to lose that spot.
It would have gone to a woman who had trained all her life for it and then got knocked out of the spot.
If the problem is that somebody's losing a spot, you have to take that argument further, don't you?
And say, every smallish man is losing a spot in the NBA. To say that I'm a man and LeBron James is a man...
It's ridiculous. Yes, we're both biologically men.
I get it. But really?
So we can compete because we're both men?
Most people can't compete with a professional athlete.
It's ridiculous to say that men have it fair because we can fairly compete against LeBron James.
No, we can't.
No, we can't. I can't compete against LeBron James any more than somebody who was born biologically female can compete against a weightlifter who had been identifying male until yesterday.
So you've got to be consistent in your argument.
Anyway, so that's what would have triggered the cognitive dissonance if it worked.
In other words, I set the reader up To trigger cognitive dissonance.
That was intentional, so I'm confessing that.
And my view, and this is just speculation, is that the real problem that people have with the transgender athletes probably is an uncanny valley problem, which is, if you've heard of the uncanny valley idea, it's the idea that if you built a robot, And it didn't look anything like a human.
It just looked like a robot.
That would be cool. But if you made your robot almost look like a human, but just a little bit different so you could detect the difference, it would be creepy.
You wouldn't want to be anywhere near it.
You'd be like, ugh, it's not really human, but it's so close.
It's like a zombie or something.
So that theory is that you have revulsion about things that are almost human but not quite.
And by analogy, I'm not saying that anybody's non-human in this example, so don't take that out of it.
By analogy, if your worldview is men and women stereotypical, and then you see somebody who doesn't fit the stereotype, Your brain is going to say, that's almost like what I'm expecting people to act like, but it's not quite there because I can't resolve the gender.
And then it becomes this uncomfortable thing for the viewer.
But is that fair to the people who are triggering that in you, or is that a problem in you?
I say it's a problem in you.
Because I would say that if you look at the, let's say, the history of LGBTQ people in this country, Simple exposure to more people in that community makes whatever feelings you had about what is right and typical and stereotypical just go away.
And then if you live in California for, I don't know, a month, whatever uncomfortable feeling you had about people not fitting your model of exactly sexuality being binary, you just get over it, right?
So it's more about the viewer.
It just feels like it's about the topic.
But it's really something that's happening inside you.
It's just your experience of not being able to resolve things the way you want them to be, to be this or that.
So I think that drives a lot of the feelings, but people don't want to admit that they just have a feeling about it.
People want to argue with their data and their logic and their reasons because that looks cool, but arguing, ah, I just don't like it.
It just makes me feel uncomfortable.
Nobody says that, so they don't argue that way.
Yes, Sean, the brain is a pattern recognition machine.
That supports my point.
And I think also, as some of the commenters said, that a lot of the motivation is that a lot of men Just want to be supportive of women in their life.
They want to support their daughter, their friends, their sister, their mom, whatever.
And that if women don't like this idea, let's say the majority of women don't like the idea of their daughter missing the spot, then I think men were just sort of designed to want to support women.
I don't think anything is more basic to our biological nature as men.
Than sort of wanting to support women, you know, make them happy.
So that's part of it, which has nothing to do with logic and nothing to do with facts.
People just want to support other people sometimes, and they'll take whatever argument gets that done.
So that's the first thing.
And then I would say that you need to break the argument into two parts.
Because youth sports is really about the athletes themselves more than the entertainment value, right?
If you've got a high school or in a sport, it's more about the student.
It's not about the parents or the audience.
But if it's professional sports, it's really not about the athlete.
It's really about the audience.
So treating the student-athlete And the professional athlete, as if it's the same conversation, won't make sense because you're not pursuing even the same objective with either of those.
So given those two different objectives, one being about the athlete for the younger people and one being about the audience for the professionals, let's look at it through that lens.
And don't conflate those two things, because you'll see a lot of arguments that act like those two things are somehow the same.
All right, and remember that fairness isn't a real thing.
So here are some people that I would say are exhibiting cognitive dissonance.
So now you've heard me agree with you on what feels fair and what doesn't.
So, so far, does anybody have a grossly different opinion than mine in the comments?
Because I'd be interested if so far you're disagreeing with me.
Alright, just tell me in the comments.
We'll follow that. Alright, here's Mike Costanza says to me on Twitter.
In response to my tweet, he says, You always say we can't see our own blind spots.
So in this instance, I will help point it out to you.
Your blind spot is sports.
This is cognitive dissonance.
That's what it looks like. Cognitive dissonance is when you go after one of the tells.
It's not the only one. I'll get to the other ones.
One of the clear tells is that they go after the messenger and completely ignore the argument.
And second of all, what would make Mike think I have a blind spot for sports?
I grew up playing four to five sports a day.
I've watched every professional sport I can think of, and at various times in my life I enjoyed it.
I've had a step-kid in sports.
I've been immersed in sports as much as anybody.
So what would make Mike think I have a blind spot?
Does he think I don't understand what transgender on a woman's team would do to the audience?
Of course I do. Everybody understands that.
We all understand how that would affect the entertainment value.
Do I not understand that it would feel unfair for a woman or all the women who got knocked down a level?
Of course I understand that.
Everybody understands that, Mike.
There's nothing even slightly confusing about this situation.
So Mike's belief that the reason that he and I disagree is that I have a blind spot in sports, which is almost a ridiculous statement for any adult human.
We all understand sports.
In fact, there are very few things that you could say everybody understands so well.
It would be hard to think of any topic...
That was not so universally well understood as sports.
So this is cognitive dissonance.
Because there's no fact challenged.
There's no argument given.
And his attack on me doesn't even make sense.
It's not even a logical attack on a person.
There are plenty of things you could say about me if you wanted to go after something about me.
Maybe point out a time I was wrong in the past.
Something like that. So that's clearly cognitive dissonance.
So if you found the way that you want to respond is about the person as opposed to the argument, you are experiencing cognitive dissonance.
That's how you can tell. All right, here's another one.
So Arachno Kimono QC, that's the Twitter handle, says, my view, though genuinely unsure if it holds up, it says, it is fair for LeBron James to compete against me for a spot in the NBA team because we're both male.
But it is unfair for trans athletes to compete on women's teams because they're not female.
So this is Arachno's point of view, not mine.
So what is that?
Is that a good argument?
Or is that cognitive dissonance?
Can you spot it?
It's cognitive dissonance.
Because Arachno has confused facts for arguments.
There's no argument here.
He's acting like a fact is an argument and that he's the keeper of facts.
Both of those things are absurd.
Because he doesn't get to make something a fact just because he put a word on it.
So he's saying...
It's a fact that trans athletes are not female.
That's an opinion, right?
I get the reasoning, and if you were going to argue it, I'd come down...
Well, I don't know where I'd come down on that.
That doesn't matter. The point is that just saying it's a fact that one is a man and it's a fact that the other is a woman, that's not an argument.
Even if you agree with the fact, you get that it's not an argument.
Saying something is a fact is not an argument.
The reason is not given.
That's cognitive dissonance.
So if you can't tell the difference between a fact that might be true and it might not be, but it's irrelevant because it's not an argument either way, now look in the comments.
Brian says, sure it is.
No, it isn't. You're experiencing cognitive dissonance.
So if you agree with this, that's how you know it's cognitive dissonance.
You need a reason.
And just saying somebody's a woman, somebody's a man, that's either a fact or not a fact, but it's not a reason.
Do you get that? If that's confusing to you, you're experiencing cognitive dissonance, in all likelihood.
All right, let's do another one.
Ladyhawk on Twitter says, Society set up competitive groups of physical men and women athletics...
So that's how athletes have strategically trained to compete.
Since the changes being proposed have the biggest impact on physical women, why not defer to their opinion similar to your stance on abortion?
Is that a reason, or is that cognitive dissonance?
All right, first of all, It says that we set things up with men and women as different teams so that athletes have strategically trained to compete.
What's that mean? Do athletes strategically train to compete differently if they think a transgender athlete will be part of the mix?
How? How would they train differently if they thought someday in the future there would be It doesn't even make sense.
Everybody would train in the best way they could train, no matter who their teammate is, right?
Are you going to train differently because one is extra strong?
Well, there must be extra strong women.
Who are competing against women who are less strong, but I don't think they necessarily train differently.
So I'm not sure that holds up.
Maybe in some slight way you train differently, but I can't imagine that would be enough to move this argument.
And then the second part of the argument is an analogy.
So I've said that men, such as me, and again, this is just personal, I don't recommend it for other men, but I've said that as a man, I prefer to keep my opinions on abortion to myself.
Because of credibility.
Meaning that in abortion, you've got a decision that no matter which way it goes, no matter which way the law is, half of the country, or some number, is going to hate it.
And so in that world, in which you can't come to agreement, that just won't be possible, it'll always be disagreement, the best thing you can do is to have a decision that even the people who disagree with it say, well, at least you made it the right way.
You used the right process and the right people were involved.
It didn't go the way I wanted, but I'm not arguing with the system.
So if you can make the system credible, you can survive having deep agreement.
That's how democracy works, basically.
And I've said that having a man who doesn't have any special insight into the topic, adding an opinion to it doesn't increase the credibility of the end point.
It decreases it. Whereas, if I knew that the laws about abortion were mostly made by women who have had babies or could have babies or are confused with people who could have babies, then that's a more credible outcome.
Now, the argument about credibility in a life-or-death question of abortion has nothing to do with sports.
The analogy just doesn't fit.
Because in sports, you're just trying to figure out what works.
It has nothing to do with a life-and-death decision that people can't sort out.
So the analogy just falls apart.
And, by the way, when it comes to questions of bigotry, you don't follow the majority, right?
If the majority thought bigotry was great, should you go with the majority?
No, no. Bigotry is the one thing.
That the minority can rule, right?
That's how we got here.
It's the one thing where if 20% of the world said, I think we should get rid of slavery, and somehow we had the power to make it happen, it wouldn't matter that it wasn't popular.
In the end, you'd still be, okay, glad we did that, right?
Here's another one. Sports Boy says, it is unfair for adults to compete on children's teams because of the strength difference.
Now do you understand?
To which I say, uh, what?
What? Given that nobody is having the conversation about adults competing on children's teams, it's not really a good analogy, because it's just a hypothetical absurdity.
Shouldn't we just compare real things?
If we're trying to figure out how to make the real world work, just compare real things, for example.
Now, I know you're going to say the LeBron thing wasn't real, but I don't want to untangle that right now.
And it says, women's sports exist because otherwise women wouldn't have anywhere to play.
Well, is that true?
Women wouldn't have anywhere to play unless it were women's sports.
That's just a statement of what definitions mean.
If you didn't have women's sports, you wouldn't have women's sports.
It's not even a reason. It's sort of a nothing.
So this just looks like babble to me.
Looks like crazy talk.
All right. Which would be cognitive dissonance?
Here's another one. Slava...
Slava...
Slavix?
I don't know how to pronounce it.
On Twitter says, you're ignoring talking to me.
You're ignoring that the ceiling is what's different between men and women.
What? The ceiling.
In other words, how high they can rise in the sports.
To which I say, that's not a reason.
That's a statement of fact.
You could agree with it or disagree with it, but I think we'd all agree with it.
That men, for most sports, have a higher potential.
But so what? There's no reason here.
So do you see the pattern yet?
The people who gave reasons, you can agree or disagree, but they're not in cognitive dissonance.
And the people who went after the speaker, me, probably have cognitive dissonance.
The people who couldn't tell the difference between a fact and a reason probably have cognitive dissonance.
So those are your two tells.
Look for Attacking the Messenger and To which I say...
That's not a reason.
I'm not a sports fan, so I'm disqualified for having an opinion about something I completely understand because I've been a sports fan in my past, you know, extensively.
These aren't even reasons.
You can't even agree or disagree.
They're nothings. And that's what cognitive dissonance looks like.
Ricky says, let's talk to Ricky.
Ricky says, Scott, I usually follow your logic, but you've lost me today.
You are experiencing cognitive dissonance, in all likelihood.
Because if I asked you to say a fact where we disagree, you wouldn't have any.
And if I said, okay, if we agree on the fact part, tell me where the reasoning is wrong.
You wouldn't be able to do it.
Um... How much effort would a person put into an argument if they believe there's a low chance you'll see it?
Well, that's fair too.
Maybe people weren't trying hard enough.
But that doesn't look like what's happening.
Alright, so here's where I come out my honest, full opinion on transgender sports.
There's no such thing as fairness.
It's not a standard that you can work to.
As soon as you imagine that there is this thing called fairness, you're sort of in some weird imaginary cognitive dissonance world.
There's nothing like that. There's just stuff you prefer.
And it's true that there are tons of people who prefer that their daughters and sisters and mothers and whatnot do not compete against somebody that they clearly don't have a competitive chance against.
So, if somebody just says, you know, fairness aside, we don't know what's fair and what's not, but I just have a preference for the way things are.
I say to them, that's a good opinion.
People can disagree with it, but there's nothing wrong with it.
That's just completely honest.
I just like it the way it is.
It works for me.
Perfectly good argument. And apparently, I have to go.
