Episode 1435 Scott Adams: Enjoy Freedom and Coffee While Discussing Idiots in the News
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Door-to-door vaccination poll
Government fact-checking private text messages?
Haiti hit squad FBI & DEA connections
Alex Berenson, masks and vaccines
California school mask mandate
Texas Democrat lawmakers insurrection
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Or as Joe Biden would say about his coffee, it's really good, it's really good.
Yeah, that's all you need to know.
So I saw a story that I'm not sure I want to believe yet, that there were some kind of Wuhan military games, some kind of athletic event in Wuhan, a few months before Wuhan was known to have the virus, and some of the athletes came down sick, and they report that the city was sort of closed down.
Now, if any of that is true, it would suggest that...
China's government knew about the virus well before they let us know.
But I think this story is sort of a wait and see.
I don't know that I would necessarily believe this one.
Because it's a little bit too on the nose.
You know what I mean?
It's a little bit too exactly what you want it to be.
So maybe it's true.
Maybe. Maybe.
Where's Locals? Locals is up and running right now, so I'm live streaming on it.
And you want to go to scottadams.locals.com and that'll take you to my feed.
So Rasmussen polled people on the door-to-door vaccination push that the Biden administration wants to do and asked people, is it a good idea?
Is it a good idea to knock on doors and ask people if they've been vaccinated?
Now, to be clear...
They're not knocking on doors and forcing people to be vaccinated.
They're just making it available and informing them and stuff.
But they're also persuading, right?
So let me talk about that after I give you the details.
So Rasmussen said that 37% of the public said that's a good idea, and 53% said that's a bad idea.
But what would make it a bad idea if it's not being forced on people?
You open the door, well, you're a little bit bothered, right?
But it is a national pandemic.
Well, it's a pandemic, so it's everywhere.
And certainly if somebody's going to knock on your door, wouldn't you want it to be about something this important?
So I would say the first part of it is an intrusion that's unreasonable.
I'd say no. Given the stakes that are employed here, people knocking on your door is not a big deal.
I'm seeing HIPAA concerns.
Somebody doesn't want their medical information known, but it's still optional, right?
So since when is your government doing a bad thing if they're simply giving you information and they're giving you opportunity to get the vaccination or not, Simply making resources available.
Is that bad? Well, here you get into the weird hypnotist dilemma.
Now, is there anybody watching this who doesn't know I'm a trained hypnotist by now?
I say it so much, it's just, like, disgusting every time I say it.
But it's important that you know that, because when I make my next point, you need some context.
And here's what I've said before in public, that once you become a trained hypnotist, and you actually understand the power of it, it's hard to use it.
Because it becomes immediately unethical when you're that good at it.
So likewise, if a professional boxer gets into a bar fight and kills somebody, that boxer's in trouble because their hands are lethal weapons, whereas the average person, not so much.
So like a boxer...
A hypnotist has to have some self-control, some moral or ethical limits to what you're willing to persuade other people into.
So, for example, I would be hesitant to do anything in sales because I'd be too good at it.
Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
That if you're simply selling something without any special kind of talent, you're just a good salesperson, let's say.
That seems ethical.
We've all agreed we know what a salesperson is.
We know they're trying to persuade us.
It's all part of the system, and maybe we get talked into things we don't like sometimes.
But we accept it within the ethical domain.
But what happens if you convince somebody to take a medical procedure, such as a vaccination?
And what if you're wrong?
And what if that person has a bad outcome?
Either way, you've convinced them to take it or not take it.
But is that moral?
Is it ethical? Because when the government knocks on your door, don't you think that's pretty persuasive?
It's the government.
How many senior citizens could say no to the government knocking on their door?
Right? Now, even if most people could, let's say 80% could say, oh, I'm not going to change my mind just because you knocked on my door.
Get out of here. But I'd say a solid 20% of any large group in the public will simply be persuaded by that setup.
It's the government. The government knocked on your door.
Makes you feel important.
Offers you resources.
Makes their case. There's nobody there to make the opposite case, right?
What if I told you about listening to one side's argument?
Worthless. One side's argument about anything.
Worthless. You should say, tell yourself you've been misled, not informed.
If you hear both sides of an argument, you might at least be approaching being informed.
But if you only hear one, it doesn't matter which side you hear.
That's just misinformation.
Or at least you should treat it that way, even if by chance it's right.
So I do have an ethical problem with the government knocking on doors and offering optional vaccinations.
Because a solid 20% of the country won't understand it being optional.
They might hear the words, and they know what the words mean, but it's going to feel coerced.
A little bit, right? To 20% of the public.
So I think people who are against that have a pretty good argument on an ethical level.
The Gateway Pundit reported today, and I want to see how good you are with reasoning and statistics, okay?
So put on your smart hat.
All right, all of you go into rational mode.
I'm going to give you some statistics here and see what you make of it.
So Gateway pointed out that there were over 1,500 COVID deaths in the United States last week.
So for the entire week last week, a little over 1,500 COVID deaths.
But according to the VAERS website, where...
Adverse reactions to vaccinations are reported.
Not very accurate, but it's the one place that we know to look.
So we don't know if these numbers are half as much or ten times as much, but it's the only place we have them.
And it says that 1,750 deaths were due to the vaccinations themselves.
So last week...
There were more deaths from vaccinations, according to the VAERS, which could be off by a bit.
But the main point will still be sort of intact, even if that number's off.
And that's more people dying from the vaccination than died from COVID itself.
Okay? More people dying from the vaccination, allegedly.
Allegedly, right?
Than the disease itself.
So, put your logical hat on.
What does that tell you?
What do you deduce from that?
Should you make a conclusion from that?
Did that tell you that the vaccines are more dangerous than the COVID itself?
Because COVID killed fewer people than the vaccination did.
All right, here's how you should think of that.
Do you know why there were only 1,500 deaths from COVID last week?
Because the vaccinations work.
The reason the COVID deaths are so low is exactly because the vaccinations are so good.
Did they also kill 1,700 people or so?
Don't know. The VAERS database really isn't good enough to tell you that, but probably.
Probably some tens of people or hundreds or maybe even low thousands may have actually died from the vaccination.
Totally possible, right?
But what you should see here is that comparing these two numbers means nothing.
That's what you should have concluded.
You should have concluded that it means nothing.
Except that the vaccinations work.
If that's what's happening.
All right. So don't make anything out of that comparison.
Here's some fake news.
There's reports that the Biden-allied groups, so this is not Biden himself, but groups allied with him, the Democratic National Committee, for example, are talking about fact-checking more aggressively the social media platforms, including Can somebody play some ominous music?
Is that ominous?
Sort of ominous.
Including your text messages.
What? They're going to start fact-checking your private text messages.
What?
Are you okay with that?
Alright, I think this is fake news.
Because the way it's being interpreted, and I think Politico reported on this first, the way it's being reported is as if your private text messages are going to be read by people, and maybe even blocked if they say the wrong thing.
I don't think that's what's happening here.
My guess...
Is that at most, maybe they would talk the social media platforms into looking for keywords, maybe links to things that they know are bad links, and simply sending a message that says, hey, here's the true story on vaccinations or whatever.
But I don't think there's any way...
Anybody is seriously talking about blocking your text message because it said the wrong thing.
So I'm going to die on this hill that says that this is fake news and that the only thing that would ever be talked about is algorithmically having the computer look for a keyword, send you a little reminder that maybe you should look at this other source before you say stuff like this.
Now, separately, you could ask, is that a good idea?
Because what if they do more of it, right?
If you tell me, oh, we're going to do this one thing in the context of a pandemic, and that's the only time it'll ever happen, I'd say, well, maybe.
You know, maybe because it's short-term.
I'm generally favorable to anything that's short-term.
You can sort of measure how it's going, so you can stop doing it any time.
I generally am okay with testing things and we'll see what happens.
But what happens if it works?
They get the result they want.
And then what happens if they want to do more of it next time?
What if there's another topic?
Let's say election integrity.
Suppose the next thing they want to say is if anybody texts you about the election being unfair, that they start putting in little warnings to say, that's not true.
This election was perfect.
What if you start talking about climate change in a skeptical tone, privately, on a text message?
Will they say, well, climate change is as important as the pandemic, if not more, so if we did this text stuff with the pandemic, why wouldn't we do it with climate change?
Why wouldn't we? Right?
So I think you have to look at this as, you know, I don't believe in the slippery slope per se, but certainly in the case this clean, where if it works in one situation that's an emergency, the pandemic, Why wouldn't it work in another one?
Such as wars and climate change and anything else.
So I'd worry about that quite a bit.
But I'm not worried that your message will be blocked.
And I'm not terribly worried that a human will read it, although that's always a risk.
I feel like all they want to do is pick up the key words and make sure that you know what the other side is saying.
I don't know. Could be terrible, could be good.
Has a lot to do with implementation.
Well, Jenna Ellis, who had been attorney to President Trump, she just quit the GOP because apparently there was this Republican National Committee chief counsel guy, Justin Reamer, who had, some email had been surfaced that he had mocked the legal team for Promoting the election lack of integrity stuff.
And so Jen Ellis says, no more of this.
No more of this.
The GOP, the party, essentially acting in ways that I imagine she thinks is against the interest of the members.
So she made some news by quitting.
Now I gotta say...
People who spend time around ex-President Trump, they pick up his tricks.
And this is a really good technique, because she became the number one headline today, and it shaped the news really well.
So from a persuasion perspective, Jenna Ellis, especially being as close as she has been to Trump, quitting the Republican Party highlights this issue.
And probably it helps Trump.
Because it's, you know, it's furthering that divide between the anti-Trumpers and the Trump supporters.
And I think the president likes that right now.
You know, get a little energy going, a little bit of conflict.
And I think he has to defeat the GOP before he defeats anybody else, right?
So in terms of persuasion, Jenna Ellis gets an A-plus for this move.
All right.
So that happened.
Meanwhile, in the least surprising news you've ever heard in your life, it turns out that members of that Haiti hit squad that executed the president, assassinated him, seems that a number of those people had DEA or FBI informant connections.
Yeah, so now we have, it looks like confirmed.
I mean, it's still fog of war, so maybe that's not true yet.
But it looks like the FBI and the CIA knew some of the people.
How well did they know them?
To be determined.
Now, the fact that they knew them, does that mean that they were behind the plot?
No, not necessarily.
But makes it a lot more likely.
If you had to put odds on it, the odds are increasing.
And what about this so-called doctor who was allegedly the person who would be installed as the new president?
Doesn't it seem to you that that doctor didn't quite know what was going on?
Almost as if the doctor was a pawn and not really intended to be the new leader, but rather maybe somebody just wanted to execute the president, And convinced this doctor that he was the leader of the gang and got the doctor to organize it so that whoever really wanted to kill the president of Haiti is sort of free.
So, what do you believe about this?
Do you believe that the United States backed these plotters and that they were just trying to get rid of the president of Haiti and they did it this way?
What odds would you put on that now?
Let's see in the comments.
Show me the odds that you think it was, let's say, a CIA-backed plot.
I'll just read off.
I'm seeing 75, 95, 85, 74, 5%.
90, 30, 85, 50, 50, 60, 75%, 25%.
That's low. 0%, somebody says.
25%. Yeah, okay, you can stop putting this down.
Somebody says the CIA killed Che Guevara.
I don't know, is that true?
I wouldn't know about any of that.
Yeah, and somebody says it's the Clinton faction that did it.
Okay. We live in a country in which the president of a neighboring country...
A nearby country, let's say, can be assassinated, and our own country believes that we're guilty of it.
How would you like to be Biden when you think there's a more than 50% chance he just murdered the president of another country?
John McAfee did it.
That would be amazing if John McAfee did it, but I don't think so.
Robert Barnes suggested that Clinton is involved.
I don't think we have evidence of that, but maybe we have something that looks like a possible motive.
So that story is going just the way we imagined it would go.
Let's talk about Hunter's emails, because we can't get enough of that.
So on Hannity, And then it was reported in Breitbart.
This fellow named Peter Schweizer, who's the president of the Government Accountability Institute, sounds important, the Government Accountability Institute, said yesterday that his organization had confirmed that President Joe Biden was the direct beneficiary of Hunter Biden's financial deals with foreign interests.
Now, apparently they have access, they say, to all of the emails on the laptop, which they have confirmed to be true, because the emails match up with where Hunter and his security were at any given time.
Now, how persuaded are you that Peter Schweizer, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, says this is confirmed?
So it's confirmed, right?
Because he's the president of the Government Accountability Institute, for God's sakes.
What exactly is the Government Accountability Institute?
How about, you don't know?
How about, I don't know.
But do you think it's part of the government?
I don't think so.
I think it's a private group that gave themselves an important sounding name.
So how persuaded are you that one person who saw the emails on a laptop thinks that there's a certain conclusion?
I don't know. Lots of people saw those emails.
And I don't think that they have other information that we know about.
So I would give that a very low credibility.
At the same time, I would say it does seem likely that Hunter Biden was making deals that would benefit the whole family.
That seems pretty likely.
But I wouldn't take this source too seriously.
I saw Ben Shapiro tweet that now that Cuba has closed the internet because there's a lot of revolting going on there, it's a revolting island, that apparently we have some technology, the United States does, that we could provide internet to the island.
Now, I don't know what that would look like exactly.
But is that true, do you think?
Do you believe that we could actually provide internet?
Let me ask this question.
What is the name of Elon Musk's company?
Is it Starlink? Is it Starlink that's going to have the satellites everywhere?
So there will be low-Earth satellites, and that's Elon Musk's company, right?
Starlink. So you can have these tiny satellites in low-Earth orbit basically everywhere when we get enough of them.
They're launching like crazy.
Once you have them everywhere, can any government turn them off?
Because then we'll see how.
Because won't it be sending the, is it Wi-Fi?
I mean, what kind of signal is it sending exactly?
If it's sending Wi-Fi, and I don't know if that's the case, but maybe it is.
Is it Wi-Fi? Can somebody tell me is that, would Starlink be sending Wi-Fi?
Or does it send its own kind of special signal, like a cell phone signal or something?
Somebody says it's not Wi-Fi.
It's radio, not Wi-Fi.
But will your regular phone be able to pick it up?
Oh, it's just cell service.
Somebody's saying it's just going to be like a regular cell phone radio signal.
That would make sense. And then it would be linked to other cell services so that it's basically just a big phone network in the sky.
Well, now somebody else says it's Wi-Fi.
Maybe it comes down as cell signal and then you can hotspot it and turn it into Wi-Fi or something.
I don't know. But here's the thing.
How can any country turn off its internet in the future?
Doesn't seem like that's...
Oh, you need a small dish, somebody says?
I don't know. But the point is, I don't think you could jam all of it, because you'd have to jam the whole country...
And I think this is a big game changer, right?
Because countries need to be able to control their own communication to have a dictator situation.
What happens when everybody in China can get all the information they need?
So I think we may, if we don't have the technology right now, we're probably pretty close, maybe a few years away.
And what do you think of the idea of turning on the internet for the Cubans?
I assume that our CIA is all over this, right?
We'd like some kind of a good outcome in Cuba.
But I don't know.
It feels like an act of war, doesn't it?
Would you say it's an act of war to provide Internet to a country that's trying to prevent its people from seeing the Internet?
Would you call that an act of war?
Because somebody might.
I mean, you're giving them free stuff.
It's going to feel like an act of war.
Similarly, if China gave us lots of free fentanyl, it would feel like an act of war, because I've called it that.
All right. Remember I said that Republicans would be hunted?
I'd like to ask once again, how many Republicans are in jail right now because of the Capitol protests?
I just like to bring that up every day.
Are there hundreds in jail?
For being part of a protest?
Is that real?
I'm like, I don't even know if that's real.
Because that sounds like not the United States.
That sounds like some other country that would do something like that.
Are they not at least out on bail?
So, I'm going to say that Republicans are hunted.
As long as those folks are in jail, I'm going to say that that's just the case.
You live in a country where you can be jailed for being Republican.
Here's some interesting statistics.
David Blake, PhD, says on Twitter, and I haven't confirmed this, but maybe you can, that reported yesterday that there were 258 COVID deaths in the United States, and over 99% of them were unvaccinated.
In other words, basically two people died yesterday of COVID in the United States who were not vaccinated.
Two. Now, do you take from that, whoa, those vaccinations are working really well?
Well, a few caveats.
Number one, yesterday was Monday, and I think the reports lag because of the weekend.
So when we say how many people were reported dead yesterday, that doesn't mean how many died yesterday.
That just means how many were reported, and maybe the weekend is a lagging report, so maybe that's behind a little bit.
So we'll see if that changes because of the weekend.
Would you be willing to say, at this point, that although infections are going up...
All right, let's take two data points.
Infections are going up everywhere that they've loosened restrictions and basking.
Would you say that the first thing is correct and that that's happening at the same time that it's summer, so this is the natural low point for the virus?
Would everybody agree with those two statements?
That the virus has a natural low point in the summer, but we can see quite clearly the effect of getting rid of masks and loosening up on travel and stuff like that, because the number of infections is starting to spike exactly like you'd expect, even in the summer.
So the summer should be the lowest, but we're still getting a spike.
Does that tell you...
That the social distancing and the masks did make a difference, and the moment we took them off, you saw exactly the spike in infections that you would expect.
So does anybody have a counter to that?
How would you counter the fact that while infections should be going down for all the natural summer reasons, they're going up anyway?
And the only thing that's changed Is the delta variant, I guess.
So that has to be in the mix.
Maybe it's just the delta variant.
Yeah, that would be a good answer.
I think that would be a good answer.
You could say, no, no, all you're seeing is the delta variant is picking up.
And you're not seeing any difference about masks or anything else.
That would be a good argument.
I would accept that as a reasonable counter-argument.
And how about...
How about vaccinations?
If the only thing you knew is that only 1% of the people who were vaccinated actually died from it yesterday, if that were true, would that convince you that vaccinations work?
You still might have issues about long-term problems, right?
But would it tell you that vaccinations work?
I'm seeing a no. Explain why not.
Give me your reasoning.
I'll accept a yes or a no, because I asked a yes-no question.
But I'd like to see your reasoning, if anybody has any.
I'm seeing yeses and nos, but give me a reason.
Somebody just give me a reason.
No, we're not talking about long-term effects.
That's important, but a separate question.
A link to a study.
Death rate was less than 1% before vaccinations.
Wait, are we looking at the same thing?
If of the people who died, only 1% of them were unvaccinated.
Now, you're not comparing the right number here.
What do you mean when you say the vaccine works?
What I mean in this case, working would be that the only people who died are people who didn't get the vaccination, for all practical purposes.
If two people got vaccinated and died, maybe they didn't die of the coronavirus, right?
Maybe there was a lot of comorbidity going on there, and maybe nobody died.
All right, well, I just put that out there to wrestle with.
Let's compare that to what Alex Berenson is saying.
So I was just reading his substack.
Now, you might know Alex Berenson as maybe the most notable, let's say, critic of science and government, specifically in the coronavirus situation.
Now, a lot of what Alex Berenson said is worth looking at and watching.
And I like the fact that there are critics.
You need some critics all the time to keep everybody sharp.
But here are some things he said, and this is a current writing.
So this is as of right now.
I believe this would be Alex Berenson's opinion.
He wrote, and I quote, No serious person thinks masks protect their wearers, for example, but we mandated those for more than a year.
So as of today...
Alex Berenson says, no serious person thinks masks protect their wearers.
Would you agree with that statement?
Now, you're not agreeing with the statement about whether masks work or not.
We're only agreeing with the statement that no serious person thinks it protects the wearer as opposed to protecting other people.
Let me look at your comments.
I see you agreeing with them.
I'm seeing yes, yes, true, true, yes.
I don't know what to do about this, people.
People? There are serious people who say masks protect the wearer.
Do you know who those serious people are?
All of the top medical people everywhere.
That's who says it.
All of the top experts everywhere say that masks do protect the wearer This is fairly new.
This is really only in the last month or so, I think.
Because it used to be that these smart people said, no, it's only for the benefit of the other people.
But as of today, I'm pretty sure that almost all of the major experts would say it also protects a little bit the wearer.
Not in every case.
Not if you're marinating in it.
But... Again, I'm not saying they work and I'm not saying they don't work.
That's a separate question. I'm saying, who says it works?
Pretty much every expert everywhere.
But Alex Berenson writes, no serious person thinks masks protect their wearers.
What do you call a serious person?
Now again, I'm not saying that Alex Berenson is right or wrong about masks.
Only the question about whether serious people disagree with him.
I don't know how you could write that sentence.
Anyway. Here's something else that Alex says.
He has debunked the following statement.
What he says about the statement I'm going to read is that it now appears provably incorrect.
So provably, very high standard, right?
So this is not maybe incorrect, according to Alex.
This is provably incorrect, the following statement.
Vaccines do not eliminate all cases, but they work very well, especially against severe disease or death.
Do you think that you can say it's provably wrong that vaccines protect against severe disease and death?
Do you know who disagrees with that statement?
Every expert in every country.
But Alex Berenson writes this, Like it's just a fact.
Like it's provably correct.
But he disagrees with every expert in every country.
And yet when you read this, if you haven't heard the counterpoints, you'd say, well, it looks pretty good to me.
So this is the problem of the one expert problem.
And it has nothing to do with Alex Berenson.
It has to do with if you listen to just Tony Heller, you will believe that climate change isn't real.
If you listen to just Al Gore, you'll believe it's real and the end of the world is coming pretty fast.
Never listen to one person.
And Alex Berenson has that issue, which is he's one person.
One person can't be more than one person.
So you hear his opinion.
He is very persuasive.
Is he persuasive?
Yeah, yeah, he's really persuasive.
But if you believe him because he's persuasive, you're making a big mistake.
And it wouldn't matter if it's Alex Berenson or anybody else.
If you believe one person because they're really persuasive, you've made an analytical mistake.
So, given that only 1% of the people who had COVID, yeah, only 1% of the people who died of COVID We're unvaccinated.
I feel like that's pretty good evidence that the vaccinations work.
The counterpoint is that, I guess, Great Britain and Israel, who are quite well vaccinated, they're sort of case studies on how to get everybody vaccinated quickly, they're also having an increase in infections.
So, does that mean that the vaccinations don't work or don't work well enough?
Well, it probably just means that everybody opened up a little bit.
We know you can get the infection even if you're vaccinated.
We've got the Delta variant, which is more spready.
I feel like what we're seeing in Israel and Great Britain are completely explained.
It's explained by opening up.
It's explained by the Delta variant.
That's why you got the spike even in the summer.
And yet the death rate is super low because the vaccinations work and the therapeutics work.
I mean, I would say everything we see is explained by the official explanations at this point.
Doesn't mean they're right, right?
Could still be completely wrong.
Ever see anyone with Gillian bars?
So yes, there's a rare-ish disease called, is it Gillian or Gillian bar?
But some number of people who are getting the vaccination, and I believe it was the J&J one, yeah.
So out of 12.8 million people vaccinated, about 100 people got this rare neurological condition, which is largely recoverable.
I don't know if largely recoverable means most people get over most of it, but it still lingers forever, or if most people get over it completely, which is a pretty big difference.
But this sounds pretty nasty, but what do you make of 100 out of 12.8 million?
If you knew that that was your risk, the risk is 100 people out of 12.8 million Would you incorporate that risk in your decision?
Let me ask this just very limited question.
If you knew that your only risk, let's say there were no other risks, of course there are other risks, but I'm just going to keep it simple.
If the only risk were 100 people out of 12.8 million getting this largely recoverable neurological condition, would you include it in your decision?
Go. Would you include it in your decision at all?
I see a yes.
I see somebody saying unnecessary risk, so that would be a yes.
I'm seeing lots of yeses.
For anybody who said yes, do you include the risk of dying in a car accident when you go to the store?
When you decide to go to the store for something, maybe you don't need as a necessity.
You know, you'd like a loaf of bread, but you're not going to starve without it.
Do you include the risk of dying in a car accident before you decide to go get that loaf of bread?
Probably not, right? And I think that the way to approach these is if the risk rounds to zero, just ignore it.
It doesn't make you go away.
But all of your life is filled with that kind of a risk.
And the only way you can navigate life with these tiny, tiny risks, but everywhere, you know, you're just surrounded by tiny risks, you've got to kind of ignore them.
That's really the only way to make the decision.
So forget about what is true or false about vaccinations.
I'm only talking about decision-making.
When it comes to decision-making, when the risk is that small, just ignore it.
All right. Now, of course, if you're the one who gets it, it makes it sound like you made a mistake, but you didn't.
All right. What's really...
Oh, let's talk some more about this.
So in California, we know that the CDC said that kids don't need masks to go back to school, but California required them.
So as of now, California says, yes, masks.
What do you think is going to happen?
So you've got a governor who's going into a recall election, Governor Newsom.
So the governor needs to stay on the right side of the people, right?
Do you think Governor Newsom is going to continue to go against the CDC and require masks when almost every parent in California would like to kill him for it?
Right? I mean...
When your government does some things, you know, it makes you really mad.
But if your government is making your kid wear a mask in school, you just want to kill that person.
Not literally, right?
But your hatred for somebody doing that to your kid is pretty high, right?
And I think you're going to see the March of the Karens.
You're going to see the white, mostly.
The white moms just ripped the fuck out of Governor Newsom, especially right around school time.
Now, already we saw a softening because hours after California public health officials posted the new school guidelines, meaning the mask requirement, they indicated they might change the rules.
So as soon as the rule came out, There was so much blowback that they're like, well, we might...
Here's the rule, but we're going to reconsider it a little bit.
Here's my prediction.
Compare the attitude.
Just read the room, right?
Just read the room. All of the parents of all those kids who are going to go back to school, how do they feel?
Pretty raw...
You know, the way they feel is pretty raw, isn't it?
And pretty strong. Now compare whatever small political advantage, if any, I don't think there's any, that Newsom might get by pushing for the masks.
I think you have to predict that the mask requirement will be dropped.
I don't know if you'll get enough parents to send their kids to school.
I've already heard parents say, well, then I won't send my kids to school if they have to wear masks.
We'll just keep doing remote learning.
How many kids would have to stay home and say, we'll just do remote learning, thank you.
We'll just keep doing what we're doing.
How many would have to do that before the schools would have to say, ah, damn it, we'll get rid of the masks?
So I predict that the mask requirement will be dropped if not before school starts in California, which is only days away.
But certainly soon after, I think it'll have to happen.
Now here's a question I asked.
For a school-age kid only, let's say under 18, is getting COVID infection the same as getting a vaccination effectively?
Why do we call it Getting COVID if you're under 18.
Do we call it that because that's what we call it when somebody older gets it?
If I get COVID, I got a disease.
Right? If a 12-year-old gets COVID, they got vaccinated.
Let me say that again.
If I get COVID, let's say I hadn't been vaccinated, if I get it, I've got a fucking disease.
If a 12-year-old gets COVID, they just got vaccinated.
Am I wrong? Why do we use the word, you know, they got a disease, if they're 12?
They didn't get a fucking disease.
They just got vaccinated.
They just got vaccinated by nature.
The fact that we're even using the same fucking word for kids is why we're not doing well.
Here's a little lesson on how the brain works.
Until you hear it the first time, well, this could blow some minds.
You think that the way you come to your decisions is some kind of logical process happening in your brain, right?
You think you look at the facts, and then you imply your rational brain, and that's how you make your decisions.
Well, not really.
Not really. Because most of our decisions are irrational, and then we layer a rational explanation after the fact.
So your decisions are pretty much all irrational, whenever there's any emotion involved anyway.
Fear, and of course the COVID stuff is all full of fear and emotion.
So those are not rational decisions.
But here's a little thing you might not have known.
That thing that you think is your rational mind is just language.
It's just words.
If you put words together in a way that forms sentences that humans understand, they feel as if there's a reason.
Grammar looks like logic to most people.
Think about that.
Simple grammar, just putting words in a way that they make sense in a sentence, looks to many people, and maybe most, maybe all, it looks like logic.
So, your choice of words becomes the pseudo-logic that people use to make decisions.
Let me give you an example.
Hey, Bob, I'd like you to drink some poison.
Here you go. Drink some poison.
Would you do it? No.
You don't drink poison.
But what if that was just the word I used?
What if what I gave you was a delicious glass of fresh water?
Your logic should have said, it doesn't matter what word you use.
This is a delicious glass of water.
I've just tested it myself.
Yum! But as soon as you call it poison, a certain part of the population will never touch it.
They'll say, well, you wouldn't call it poison unless, you know, for some reason.
So putting the wrong word on stuff becomes a logic.
It's not a real logic.
It's the crazy, irrational logic that our brains do.
So when we say that a kid who's 12 years old gets the COVID-19, and we say that kid has a disease, we have substituted words...
For thinking. Because that kid didn't have a disease.
That kid got vaccinated.
If we had used the word vaccinated as just a standard for anybody who came in contact with the virus under the age of 18, would we be deciding what to do about school?
Nope. Because you would say to yourself, Wait a minute.
My 12-year-old can get a free vaccination by just going to school and hanging around with infected people?
Sign me up. Let's get that kid vaccinated.
Get this over with.
Right? Now, you're saying to me, but Scott, Scott, Scott, the vaccination could give you a side effect and kill you.
You've got to include that, right?
Nope. Because the risk of it is too small.
The risk is so small that you should just round it to zero and act like it's not there.
But how about the risk of dying from COVID itself, Scott?
Kids are not immune from getting COVID and dying, right?
Should you consider that risk if they're not vaccinated?
No. No, you shouldn't.
Because it's too small.
All of the risks that are too small, you just treat them like they're zero.
You can't compare them.
I've heard people say, Well, you know, the risk of getting the vaccination is unknown.
So it's bigger, because it's unknown.
No, it's not.
It's just unknown.
Might be smaller, might be bigger.
Just don't know.
So... That's my statement on that.
If we started talking about these kids as getting nature's vaccination, suddenly we would just feel different about it, and all the facts would be the same.
All right. Lastly, I love this story about the Democrat lawmakers in Texas decided they don't want to be part of the vote for what...
The governor of Texas, Abbott, believes would make the election safer and more secure.
But the critics say it's really voter suppression in disguise.
And so the Democrats, because they're in the minority and they would lose the vote, a bunch of them got on a bus and decided to go to Washington, D.C. because there would not be enough lawmakers in Texas to pass anything.
There just wouldn't be a quorum.
But here's the great part.
Apparently they can be arrested when they come back to Texas.
I don't know exactly what the law is that allows them to be arrested, but I saw this reported without any pushback, so maybe it's a real thing.
Can the governor have these lawmakers arrested when they get back to Texas?
It would have to be in Texas, apparently, but what exactly are they being arrested for?
What's the name of that crime?
Taking a bus to Washington D.C. when you're supposed to be working?
Is that a crime? I hear it being called an insurrection.
I like that. I like where you're going on that.
Yes, the Democrats are literally involved in an insurrection against the government of Texas.
I feel like insurrection is the right word, right?
Is there anybody who would quibble with the use of insurrection if the lawmakers refused to do their job and leave?
There's a precedent for it, I hear.
Huh. Interesting.
Some kind of precedent for arresting them for leaving, but I still don't know what the crime is.
Interfering... Oh, interfering with the political process?
Could that be the crime?
I can see that. I can see that being exactly what they're doing because they're transparently doing that.
I don't think that they're trying to fool anybody.
They're transparently interfering with the lawmaking.
All right. That is all I have today for this fantastic episode of Coffee with Scott Adams.
One of the best things you'll have experienced all day.
