Episode 1450 Scott Adams: Who is the Most Credible Voice on the Pandemic? I Help You Sort it Out. And More Headline Fun.
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
China: Worst vaccinations but best outcome?
Vaccination persuasion
Most credible voice for pandemic info?
Vaccine mandates are coming
1/6 Partisan Sham Committee
Germany's failed green renewables
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And today will be one of the best coffees with Scott Adams ever, because we have fun topics.
Don't always. Sometimes the news does not cooperate, but today, yeah, we've got some good stuff.
It's worth staying around for, and all you need to make this a special day.
Well, I think you know. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called a simultaneous sip and it's going to happen now.
Go. Mmm.
Ah, yeah. I feel every corpuscle in my body coming alive.
Because the corpuscles were a little bit dead until now.
Well, here's some mysteries for you.
Things which are unanswered in the news.
Number one, whatever happened to Antifa?
Did they get everything they wanted?
No. Now, I know they might be doing some stuff in Portland, but didn't it go from a big deal to nothing?
And before Antifa, what happened to Occupy Wall Street and all the concern about the income inequality?
Did that get fixed?
So there was no need to protest anymore?
Or is it possible...
That these are organizations that can be dialed up and dialed down by some hidden hands behind the scenes.
It feels like they only come out when you sort of need them, politically.
Black Lives Matter?
Did they get everything they need?
Or the police? The police are doing a good job now, right?
No more targeting of black motorists and pedestrians?
I... Don't think so.
So it feels as if there's somebody behind the scenes.
Did somebody just give me a thousand of something?
That looks like some other kind of money, but I read your comment.
So is there somebody behind the scenes who can dial up Black Lives Matter to protest or not protest?
Because it feels like it.
That doesn't mean it's true, but it's kind of a mystery.
Where'd they go? Is it because the news decides everything, but the news doesn't make them march?
So we've got some mysteries here that are weirdly not being investigated by the news.
And how about the biggest mystery of all?
Why is it that China is not having a problem with the coronavirus?
Is it because they did such a good job with masks and social distancing?
Is that why? Because if that's why, I'd like to see our scientists say, yeah, definitely.
Masks and social distancing, for some reason it works really well in China, but it doesn't work in other places.
Or not as well.
I think it works everywhere, but not as well.
What would cause that?
Is it because the Chinese are so scared that they stay inside?
But correct me if I'm wrong, the Delta variant, it's going to get you no matter where you are, right?
How does China escape the Delta variable?
Kind of a mystery, isn't it?
Ian Bremmer mentioned on Twitter...
That the Chinese vaccination is especially not effective against the Delta variant because other smaller countries use the Chinese vaccination and they're not doing too well with their vaccination.
So, on top of China not having a problem with the coronavirus, they also don't have an effective vaccination.
Now, I can understand why Israel is doing well.
They got vaccinated.
Although I think they're having a little setback at the moment.
So how is it that China has the worst vaccinations but the best outcomes?
Do we have anything like a press that could look into that?
Because if the answer is they're really, really good at social distancing, shouldn't we be studying that every day to find out what they did?
Because if they can social distance better...
We should do whatever they're doing.
Seems to work there. So I've got a feeling that there are a lot of mysteries that the news seems to be deeply uninterested in.
Boy, do they care about January 6th.
We'll get to that. But first, I'd like to give you an update on the Olympics.
The Olympics update is that it's still irrelevant and anachronistic and sexist.
That's the update. Simone Biles injured her foot, so she's out.
So the very important sport of jumping up and down and hanging from stuff and flipping around, sort of an important human activity.
We won't be able to see the best in the world doing that, and that's a tragedy.
And one more reason why the Olympics should be discontinued.
All right, my favorite Twitter exchange was Joe Lockhart trying to dunk on Jesse Waters.
Now, here's what Jesse Waters said that was the subject of a tweet.
He said, if you want to stop climate change...
This is what Jesse Waters said, I guess, on his show, one of his shows.
If you want to stop climate change, you don't fight climate change.
If it's getting warmer, you adapt to it.
So the point here being that, you know, humans can adapt to a lot of stuff.
Joe Lockhart decides to mock Jesse for that by saying, Jesse will be interviewing a dinosaur today to see how well they adapted to climate change.
You have to work hard to be this dumb.
That's right. Joe Lockhart, who might be the dumbest person in all of politics, just decided to tweet in public that Jesse Waters was dumb for saying that humans could adapt to climate changes.
Now, in this analysis from Joe Lockhart, I believe he has compared the technology prowess of human beings and their ability to analyze and test and adapt with all their high technology and science.
He is comparing this to the high-tech science of dinosaurs and saying, well, if the dinosaurs with all their high-tech abilities couldn't adapt...
How in the world can you expect a human to do it, Jesse?
You fool!
Gotcha! I got you, Jesse!
If the dinosaurs couldn't do it, how can a human do it?
I mean, common sense.
Just use your noggin, Jesse!
Come on! Come on!
Think a little harder. If the dinosaurs couldn't pull it off...
How can humans? I mean, really.
Same thing. Humans, dinosaurs.
Now, I think that Jesse did make a mistake in his analysis because he's overlooking the dinosaur technology.
But I've looked into dinosaur technology, and if you've ever looked at dinosaur Twitter, terrible user interface.
Yeah, the dinosaurs were terrible at the user experience.
And if you've ever seen a dinosaur iPhone, it was hard for them to assemble them because their hands are just like tree trunks.
And so they're trying to assemble iPhones, and really, it's more like a flat rock.
I mean, you could call it an iPhone, but it's a dinosaur iPhone, it's a flat rock.
And you could try calling people on it, but it's not going to work.
It's not going to work. So dinosaur technology, very bad.
Just thought I'd let you know.
Here's a good follow on Twitter.
I like to recommend people who are especially interesting consistently.
Raoul Davis, CEO branding expert.
You can find him at CEO underscore branding on Twitter.
But he tweeted this.
He said Harvard study shows up to 25% of people fear needles.
If vaccine were a gummy vitamin, would more people get it?
Now, have you heard even one person say to you that they wouldn't get the vaccine because they're afraid of needles?
In the comments, has anybody either made that decision themselves, or have you heard anybody?
Oh, I see one yes.
I see a yes.
Yes, a friend. Wow.
Holy cow. Maybe more than I thought.
So people would put their fear of the needle above their fear of the coronavirus.
Okay, well, three friends and a dad?
Wow. Interesting.
Now, these would be the same people who do get vaccinations, right?
They get the standard vaccinations for being in school and whatever.
So they must have a way to get past the needles, if they have to, But apparently if it's optional, they're not going to do it.
So I love this question.
And this is why you should follow Raul Davis, because he gets to the persuasion, the persuasion and marketing and branding stuff.
He's real good at drilling down on that stuff.
So here's my question.
And I'm going to talk about persuasion technique.
You're going to read into this more than I intend.
I'm not trying to persuade you to get vaccinated.
Remember, I think that would be unethical because I could do it.
I could persuade people to get vaccinated.
I do have that skill and I do have a voice, right?
So I could convince some people if I wanted to do that, but I definitely don't want to do that.
I see other people doing it.
It makes me very uncomfortable.
I get why they're doing it. They're well-intentioned.
But it just feels so unethical.
I'm not a doctor. Talk to your doctor.
I don't know what your risk is.
Anyway, I say that too often.
But I do like to talk about the persuasion dimension of how would you...
Just for the intellectual experiment, how would you convince people who are hesitant?
The first thing you would have to know is that...
People are hesitant for completely different reasons, and therefore your persuasion game would have to be crafted for each of those segments.
And I would say that the people who are worried about the vaccinations and they're worried about the needle, you would need something targeted for them.
I'll just throw out an idea, because you would have to test a bunch of ideas against people to find out what actually worked.
So the best you can do as a persuader It's usually just try something, see what the response is, and then try something else if that didn't work.
It's usually trial and error kind of a process.
But here's one thing I would ask.
How many needles do you think you'll get if you get hospitalized?
And I don't know what the answer to that is.
Can somebody give me an estimate?
Maybe some of you have been hospitalized for COVID. Has anybody here been hospitalized for COVID? There would be a few needles, right?
At least the IVs.
I'm seeing some. Nope.
No, but depends if you get the IV, I guess.
Yeah. Yep, no needles.
Chance of dying.
Yes, but...
So you would multiply your chance of dying times how bad it is to get an expected value.
And... Well, that didn't make sense, but forget about that point.
All right. So...
Because people are irrational, you know, fear is largely irrational, wouldn't you say?
Fear of a physical needle, would we all agree that's 100% irrational?
Because the needle's never hurt anybody.
Like the actual needle itself, the physical needle, I believe it's never hurt anybody.
Oh, interesting. Somebody said hypnosis to get people past needle fear.
Hmm. You know what?
Let me give you an interesting hypothetical.
Suppose I could come up with a reframing or a way to talk people out of fear of needles.
Would that be ethical?
Because I could do it generically, just to make you not afraid of needles, should you need one for your own reasons.
So it would be a general thing, but it would have the effect of getting more people vaccinated, wouldn't it?
I'm saying a yes, please.
Yeah. Okay.
So... Let me work on that.
I've never really put any thought in it, but it's entirely possible that a reframe or even some bit of exercise or something could get you past the needle thing.
You know, maybe I'll make a video on that.
Because I feel like...
The only way to make that work is to make it a single-point video in which somebody who's got that fear and wants to lose it can just watch that video.
I'll think about that.
All right. Here's a question.
Given that a lot of the reasons for not getting vaccinated would be irrational, and I think fear of needles would be an irrational reason, other people have rational reasons, and I don't deny that.
But some of them are irrational.
And here's a question.
Would a monetary incentive work for people who are not yet vaccinated?
What's your first reaction to that?
If I said, suppose you just offered money.
You just said, I'll just pay you to get vaccinated.
How many...
Well, you haven't heard of the amount, have you?
I'll say $300.
I'm just going to pick a number.
$300 to get vaccinated.
Would anybody take it?
Oh, I say a couple of yeses.
So I'm going to ask only the people who are unvaccinated and maybe were planning to stay that way.
If you're unvaccinated and you plan to stay that way, would $300 change your mind?
Anybody? Right?
Now I'd expect mostly no, right?
Right? I'm seeing just a wall of no.
No amount. No amount.
Because you're saying to yourself, the reason I didn't do it, the reason I didn't do it is because I've got this deadly risk, possibly.
Don't know how big it is.
Could be tiny. But it's an unknown.
I see somebody who would say yes for a thousand.
I doubt we could get to a thousand.
Right? All right.
Here's a little persuasion tip for you.
All of you are answering rationally, I believe, which is to say, in public, if somebody says, would you give up your, I don't know, your belief about vaccines for $300, almost nobody will say yes to that in public, predictably, right?
Because nobody's going to sell themselves out for such a small amount.
But suppose nobody's watching.
Here's one of these things that you realize about human brains that you don't want to be true.
The next thing I say, you don't want to be true, but it's true.
Privately, if nobody was going to know what you did, and you could get $300 for getting vaccinated, some percentage of the people would do it.
They would. Because money influences everything all the time.
There's never an exception to it.
You could take almost any topic and offer almost any amount of money.
Somebody is going to take it.
Every time. Now, it might be a small percentage, but remember, if you're trying to influence people toward vaccinations, if you're trying to influence them, everybody's a different reason.
Maybe somebody can be bought.
1%, maybe.
But that helps, right?
Maybe some have a needle of fear, right?
Maybe you can shave a little of that off?
You know, it's going to be a...
I think the reason it's going to be hard to get anybody else vaccinated is that it's a whole bunch of different reasons.
It's not really one reason.
So you've got to hit them all.
All right. Let me ask you this.
Would it be illegal or even impractical for health insurance companies to start charging more for the unvaccinated?
I'm not recommending it.
It's not a recommendation.
Just a question. Would that make a difference?
Suppose your insurance...
And why wouldn't they, really? Now, somebody says it's illegal, and I would point out that the government makes the laws, right?
So let's say it's illegal.
Congress can change that, right?
They're mostly private entities.
Can't they set their prices based on their expenses?
If they know that it's going to cost them more, why not?
Now, some of you are going to say, oh, but if you start doing that, you have to charge more for people who are overweight, you have to charge more for people who don't exercise, what about the smokers, blah, blah, the drinkers, blah, blah, blah.
Here's the difference. You can't track that other stuff reliably.
You can't really track if somebody's drinking, you can't really track if they're eating right, because that would have to be some kind of self-reporting, etc., But the vaccination system, I believe, is all in a central database, is it not?
Isn't that something you get a card and you can kind of prove it?
So it's different than almost anything else because if the insurance companies have access to that database, they just match you to the database.
I think you gave your Social Security number when you got vaccinated.
Did you do that? I know you gave your driver's license, right?
Just the driver's license, I think.
So you probably could just match people and just give them a higher price if they're unvaccinated, if that corresponds to your actual expenses.
Now, who would complain about that if it was based on data?
If you wanted to remain unvaccinated, but you also believed that private companies can set their prices based on risk...
Would you have a problem with them setting their price based on what they perceive to be the risk if it costs you a little more?
You still get your preference, which is you're unvaccinated.
But you'd pay for it because it's a little more expensive overall.
Not for you specifically.
Yeah. All right.
I did a... I did a very unscientific poll, a series of them, a competition with brackets to see who you trust the most for pandemic opinions.
Because who you trust the most is therefore the person who could persuade the most effectively.
Sort of a hypothesis.
The hypothesis is that whoever you trust the most is also the most persuasive.
So here are the names that I put in my highly unscientific poll, and I'll tell you why it's just completely polluted with polling errors.
But I first asked people just to tell me who they were getting their information from, and that seeded the actual poll itself.
So the names that came up the most were Governor DeSantis, Tucker Carlson, Brett Weinstein, Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Fauci, Alex Berenson, Trump, Steve Bannon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, I threw him in there so we'd have a CNN doctor, Peter Navarro, Nassim Taleb, and then I put myself there.
Because I talk about this a lot.
So in the early rounds, I actually did pretty well.
I think I won my bracket in the quarterfinals, which is funny.
But here was the biggest surprise.
Trump doesn't do well for pandemic opinions, which means that even his supporters understand that That you're not going to get your medical opinions from Trump.
He is an unrepentant hyperbole machine.
And you don't get your medical advice from a salesman.
Right? You can love Trump and love his way, you know, and his sort of perpetual optimism and win at all costs and everything.
You can like that, but it's not free.
Right? It's not free.
What comes with it is that he's not the best voice for medical decisions.
You can love Trump and still say, he's just not where I'm going to get my medical advice.
It's just the wrong place.
So I think that's consistent.
And I was surprised that politics and just maybe some loyalty for Trump, because a lot of Trump supporters are in my Twitter, but he didn't do well at all.
And I think that's a good thing.
I think that's a good thing. People understand politics versus medicine.
But the winners, as of last time I checked, were Governor DeSantis, who seemed to have swept through his categories and dominated against Tucker Carlson, who was the other semi-finalist.
And 63%, last I checked anyway, were voting for the governor.
Now, Alex Berenson...
Didn't do so well. I think he came down maybe the lower half in the end, something like that, maybe in the middle somewhere.
And there didn't seem to be much of a correlation between experience and credibility.
The people who had doctor in front of their names didn't do so well.
Not Dr.
Fauci, but also not Dr.
Scott Atlas. Not Dr.
Sanjay Gupta. Now, in reality, in reality, I think you would probably take their advice over a journalist, right?
Wouldn't you? If you were standing in a room next to an actual doctor, like MD, and the other one was Tucker Carlson, would you really take Tucker's advice over the doctor?
Like, if you're in the room...
I don't think so. I suppose it would depend.
Maybe on something like masks, you might go with Tucker.
So first of all, this unscientific poll has no validity unless there's some overwhelming kind of thing that comes out of it.
I would say the overwhelming thing that comes out of it is that Ron DeSantis is a real strong contender for president.
Because if you can look to a politician, think about this.
He's a governor, and he was on the list with three doctors and Nassim Taleb, who's famous for his rationality.
Alex Berenson, who obviously digs into this pretty deeply.
Brett Weinstein, again, brilliant guy, digs into it pretty deeply.
And still, and still, a governor just swept the field.
Now, I think it's people sort of maybe also favoring him for president.
I think that's what's happening here.
So I would say at this point, if Trump does not decide to run for president, and I think there's some chance he won't.
My guess is he's leaning toward running.
But if he doesn't, I think DeSantis is just going to walk at least into the primaries.
And how he does will depend entirely on how Florida does with the coronavirus.
So if Florida does okay with the coronavirus, or at least you can make that case, he would be president.
And if it's easy to make the case that Florida didn't work, the Democrats will certainly try to make that case, then he's going to have a tough road.
Because it's all going to come down to the coronavirus.
But DeSantis is really...
He's really separated from the crowd right now.
Who would you...
If it's not Trump running as a Republican in 2024, who else is even close to DeSantis right now in popularity?
I don't think anybody. All right.
Vaccine mandates, looks like they're coming.
The VA is going to do it and 50 medical groups requiring it of the employees and California state employees and New York City municipal workers and even the San Francisco bar owners were thinking about doing it for the bars.
So this is one of the reasons that I got vaccinated.
Again, not trying to convince you to do it.
But it was obvious early on that you were going to need to show that you were vaccinated for a variety of things.
Now, is that a good enough reason to get vaccinated?
No, no.
Don't get vaccinated just so you can have some extra access.
That's not the reason.
But it's our reason.
And in my case, which doesn't need to be your case, again, not trying to talk you into anything, It mattered, because I was sort of desperate to get back to something that looked like real life.
I wanted to live my life with as many lack of restrictions as I could.
If that doesn't mean as much to you, then, by all means, choose differently.
Oh, back to DeSantis.
Here's his problem. Florida accounts for one in five new infections at the moment, and...
I think it's like second only to Louisiana in a number of cases.
And so they're having a real problem there, and DeSantis is hanging tough with no masks in schools when schools reopen.
And I feel like he can't win either way.
Sort of a trap. Because if the infections are high, which they're going to be, and he doesn't clamp down, Then all the moderates are going to say, you know, he should have clamped down.
He's just being political, holding out as long as he can for Republicans.
But now it's so bad, maybe he should have clamped down.
Now, I'm not saying those people would be right or wrong, but they might not vote for him if they think he's not doing his job.
So almost no matter what he does, if he requires masks, Republicans won't like him.
If he doesn't require masks in the face of...
Having one of the worst infection rates, which is where he's heading, or is, he's losing other people.
So he's got two ways to lose on this, and the only way he could win is if the virus itself went into remission.
I don't think he's going to get enough vaccinations for that to happen.
All right, let's talk about the so-called House Select Committee.
Sounds pretty important, doesn't it?
This is the people looking into the January 6th thing, which the Republicans describe as a partisan sham.
So is it the House Select Committee or is it the partisan sham committee?
I think we should brand this, the partisan sham committee.
Two Republicans that Nancy Pelosi put on it are the two most anti-Republican Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Guaranteeing that whatever result will not be credible.
Now, why would you put together such a high visibility thing?
The Pelosi Select Committee, yes, that's what it is, Pelosi Select Committee.
How can you do such a high visibility thing that's just guaranteed to be a bullshit partisan sham?
How does that help Democrats?
The answer is a lot.
Because the more they can make the news about their partisan sham, which is they're going to focus on the violence of the Republicans, etc., it's great for politics.
So it has nothing to do with the good of the country, I think, at this point, but great for politics.
So I would say persuasion-wise, Pelosi gets an A-plus for persuasion.
She just has to keep it in the news.
That's all. And she's doing it.
Is it ethical?
No. No, not even close.
It's nowhere near an ethical, but it's effective.
So if you want to be an unethical persuader, there's a good example how to do it.
Here's the dog that wasn't barking, and I thought it was interesting.
At the same time that the partisan sham committee is looking into January 6th, there was an article about the same topic on CNN. What word do you expect them to use when they're talking about the January 6th events?
Insurrection, right?
Can you imagine that there would ever be a lengthy article about January 6th on CNN with CNN contributors that would never mention the word insurrection?
It happened.
It happened today.
Zachary Cohen and Marshall Cohen...
They wrote an article on CNN, and it's a lengthy article talking about a number of issues, and never once did they call it an insurrection.
Why? Well, I think the fact that nobody got charged with anything related to insurrection may have something to do with it.
Maybe the fact that no court has found any insurrection, just the way no court has found any massive voter frauds, No court has found any insurrection.
I don't think anybody's been charged with insurrection.
So I think at some point CNN had to drop that, and maybe these two writers are, to their credit, credible and ethical.
I mean, I don't know them, but I would just judge based on the fact that they wrote an article on CNN without using the word insurrection.
I would give them some credibility for that.
I would say that that's probably an ethical stand.
And I would be really curious if the CNN editors ever asked them to use it.
Do you think? Do you think there was ever a conversation?
They turned in their piece.
Do you think the editor who decides whether it goes on to the site or not, do you think the editor read it and said, you know, you know what would make this better?
One word. Can you just slip that in there?
I don't know if that happened, of course.
But if it did happen, these two writers must have held out.
So I'm guessing they deserve some credit, but I don't know that for sure.
So pop star Pink made a great persuasion play today.
So there's this Olympic controversy because there was, I guess, one of the beach volleyball teams wanted to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms.
And I guess the Olympics was rejecting that and wanted them to wear the traditional bikini bottoms because I think you all know that the sport of beach volleyball isn't nearly as good unless you can see as much of the female participants' buttocks as possible.
I think that's the argument the Olympics is making, that you have to see as much buttocks as possible or the sport doesn't work.
Is that their argument? Because they don't have a good argument.
Let's put it that way. And Pink, pop star Pink, has offered to pay the fines handed to the Norwegian women's beach team for not wearing the bikini bottoms.
Now, I don't know how much the fines will be.
It can't be that much, I would imagine.
But what a smart play for Pink.
Puts her in the news...
In a positive light.
She's not just bitching about it.
She's, like, doing something.
You know, pay the fine.
Which is actually a very practical thing to do because it allows other people to do the same thing.
Gives them freedom to do that.
So, good play. Pink, I give you an A-plus for persuasion.
She saw an opening and she took it.
Now, let's talk about the topic.
Has anybody ever had this experience?
Do any of you have...
Daughters who participated in volleyball in high school.
Have any of you gone to a volleyball tournament of young girls?
And were you as uncomfortable there as I was?
Because I've been through that experience.
It's really uncomfortable because the girls there are very young, you know, 14 to 17 or whatever is the tournaments, and they wear these...
Inexplicably tight shorts that volleyball players wear for no functional reason.
It's not like they need extra wind resistance or something.
There's just no reason. And it looks totally sexualized.
And it's just really creepy.
And the volleyball thing in the Olympics is exactly the same thing.
Beach volleyball... It was a TV sport because the women were scantily dressed.
I mean, that was certainly part of the sport.
60%. Let's be honest.
Beach volleyball is only a sport because the players look good in bikinis, right?
I mean, that was the sport, basically.
It's a spectator sport.
So I agree with Pink, and I think it should change.
I think that athletes should dress like athletes.
I don't think athletes should dress like strippers.
Like, what the hell?
Somebody says men's swimmers' suits.
Swimming is the one thing, and maybe running, if there's a speed element, skiing, you know, you can see that they need tight clothes because they've got some wind resistance and stuff.
But I don't know that your whole body needs to be hanging out, does it?
Now, I'm far from a prude...
But, you know, especially in the case of high school, you're talking about young girls.
So, all right, different topic.
Famous critic of COVID-related policies, Alex Berenson.
Tweeted today a question.
I don't know if it makes any sense.
I'll just run it by you. He said, hold on here, folks.
What if they're not vaccines?
I don't mean in the conspiracy sense.
I mean legally. If they're therapeutics, no one can be forced to take them, not without an individual court order and finding of incompetency.
Is that true? That doesn't really connect to anything I'm aware of.
But the problem might be just what I'm aware of.
I don't know that it doesn't make sense.
I just don't understand it.
Is there some kind of law that says the government can force you to take something called a vaccination, but they can't force you to take something called a therapeutic?
Is there anything to that?
And would it matter?
Because, you know, Congress can change the law and the courts can interpret it to be anything they want.
So I would think that a court could just say, I see your point, but I'm just going to call it a vaccine because it gives you some lasting immunity.
Not complete. So I'll just put a question mark on this because I don't think it'll matter in the long run.
We'll just redefine them as vaccines if they're not, if there's a practical reason to do that.
So I got into a little conversation on Twitter with Paul Graham.
You might know Paul Graham, a famous venture capitalist, co-founder of Y Combinator, writer, one of the more productive thinkers, I would say, in the country, and always has good opinions, I would say. So we got into a little bit of an opinion disagreement here.
I think I tweeted something about how people don't trust scientists and politicians and social media, etc., and that's why they don't get vaccines.
They don't trust the scientists or don't trust science.
And Paul Graham tweeted this.
He says, if you think you don't trust scientists, you're mistaken.
You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane or, for that matter, turn on your tap or open a can of beans.
The fact that you're unaware of this doesn't mean it's not so.
So do he and I really have a disagreement?
Not really. We're sort of into word thinking here.
But I said I trust engineers.
Because an engineer needs to keep that airplane in the air Every time, right?
The engineer has to get it right every time.
And so they don't do anything unless it's been tested to death.
That's what engineers do.
So by the time an engineer tells you something works, it works.
I mean, not every time, but pretty close.
And that's what engineering is.
But scientists, by their nature, are flailing around with hypotheses and testing things, and 50% of the peer-reviewed studies end up to be bullshit, right?
So science is working in the speculative, just guessing, hey, this looks like a good trial, let's try this kind of realm.
Of course they're going to make more mistakes.
And even when they've done something like create a vaccine, They still don't agree on everything, right?
There are always going to be some scientists on the other side.
I would say there's more likelihood of a vaccine having a side effect than there is of an engineer building a bridge that falls down.
So I tend to trust engineers, but not so much science or scientists, although science as a process is the best one we have, right?
You don't have to trust something.
You can still say it's the best you have, if it's the best you have, and science is the best we have.
It just has lots of, you know, inefficiencies, like lots of things.
So Claire Lehman weighed in on the side of, well, I don't know, maybe just making her own point, and said that science, technology, and engineering and mathematics, STEM, are grouped together for a reason.
To which I said, the reason is not based on their similar levels of credibility.
Yeah, there's a reason, but it's not relevant to the discussion.
Anyway, I think this was just word thinking.
I don't think any of us would disagree if we're standing in the same room talking about it.
Michael Schellenberger points out, there's a Forbes article, that Germany's renewable experiment is over, he says in a tweet.
So Michael says that by 2025, Germany will have spent $580 billion to make electricity nearly two times more expensive and ten times more carbon-intensive than France's.
We're not so good.
Now, I would say that Germany has one gigantic management problem.
I don't think Germans are irrational.
But they're kind of caught in this whole Holocaust legacy, where if you're Germany, I think you have to be better than good people.
Like, I think you have to be the greenest of the green, the most anti-racist of any anti-racist, the most progressive in whatever ways make sense.
I feel as if they got trapped by their own history.
That they can't tiptoe into renewables.
They've got to be like, oh, we're so green.
We're the greenest of green.
We'll save the world. Yeah, we tried to destroy the world, but we're saving the world now.
We're going to save the world. And I feel like that skews their decision-making.
And if you say to me, hey, I want Germany to have a bunch of nuclear power plants...
It just sounds a little scary, doesn't it?
If you've got the, you know, the specter of World War II is still in your mind.
I don't know how much nuclear anything I want them to have.
I assume they have nuclear power.
But, yeah, there's a guilt issue that I think is affecting their decision-making.
Don't know for sure, but I would speculate that to be the case.
Seems reasonable. All right.
Have I covered everything?
Why did the Germans import Muslims by the millions if they care about anti-Semitism?
Obviously, they don't want to be racist.
Was that a hard question?
I think you overpaid for that.
Okay. Oops.
Wow, these comments are flinging by.
Yeah, Germany does have nuclear power.
But they're going as green as they can go.
I think they were looking to close their nuclear plants if they could do it.
Like Bill Nye, the engineer guy.
Need to call it new generation nuclear or something that improves the framing.
Yeah, I still like generation four.
All right. How the hell is Merkel still in charge?
Good question. There's nothing green about wind turbines and solar panels.
They are a problem in a number of ways, yes.
Your response to anti-Semitism and Muslims did not make sense.
Could you clarify?
In what way do importing racists into your society...
Well, Muslims are not presumed to be racist.
That's it. Why would you presume anybody's racist?
Just because some members of a group are clearly racist, that's every group.
So... And here I'm being devil's advocate.
I'm taking Germany's point of view.
If you're Germany, you have to be the...
The wokest you can be.
Which means that you don't judge anybody based on the fact that some of them might be bad.
But if you're telling me statistically, is it a good play?
We don't use statistics to make those decisions.
C. Farina says, I still love you, but the Muslims hate the Jews and their Bible.
Love you. Well, there are certainly...
Reason to believe that many Muslims have bad feelings about many Jews.
So nobody's arguing that.
But the point is, if you make decisions like that, you're a racist.
And Germany doesn't want to be a racist.
So they have two bad choices.
And they pick the one that looks the least bad to them.
It's the best you can do. I'm not defending it.
I'm just saying that they're in a position where they have to be the least racist-looking they could possibly be, and they decided that's what looks the least racist, they've decided.
You could argue that, I think.
All right.
Is there doctrine...
Well, here's the thing.
I get the idea that, especially in other countries, Muslims have an attitude about Jews that's just not going to go away, and it's not good.
But unless they all have it, you're being a racist if you don't let them in for that reason.
All right. It's a slippery slope.
I'm not saying it's not dangerous.
There's a certain risk that you take on with any mass immigration, and they've decided to take that risk.
