Episode 1465 Scott Adams: Today I Put the Hypnosis Filter on the News So You Can Understand it For the First Time
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Certainty is a tell
Top predictor: follow the money
President Trump's been quiet lately
Hypnotist filter on China
Biden promise keeping
Governor Cuomo resigns
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Hey everybody, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of the day.
I don't know if you've noticed this, but if you start your day off right, everything seems a little bit better.
Well, I'm going to be relentlessly positive today.
It's all optimism and good news and golden age and all that stuff.
But I'm going to put the hypnosis filter on the news so you can see it the way a hypnotist sees it.
But first, but first, how about the simultaneous sip?
And 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 hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Yeah, it's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. And if this wasn't enough, and I think it was, but if it wasn't, there'll be a whiteboard later.
Yeah. Yeah, talk about having it all.
They say you can't have it all, but we're going to challenge that today.
You're going to have it all.
All right. Some reason all of my show notes just disappeared.
Huh. That's a first.
I had them actually open and was looking at them.
Well, let's look at trash.
Well, it's a tragedy, folks.
My show notes have just disappeared.
But, as luck would have them, I posted them on the Locals platform.
This is going to sound like a clever commercial, but I swear I didn't plan this.
If you're a member of the Locals community, I've started posting my show notes before the show.
And there they are.
Okay. So I'll just read them off of Locals.
So I told you I was going to give you the hypnosis filter on the news.
So it's basically the persuasion filter.
I had a look at the irrational parts of the news.
We'll get to all that.
But today in California, at least where I live, is the first day of school.
First day of school with masks.
And that means that today is the first day of mass government-sponsored child abuse.
Well, at least according to a lot of us.
We'll talk about the statistics of it.
But I'm wondering if children wearing masks in school is one TikTok meme away from going away.
And let me give you an analogy.
When I was in high school...
A million years ago, we had something called Senior Ditch Day.
And it was a day that the seniors would all collectively ditch classes and go to the lake and drink beer illegally and basically just play hooky from school.
Now, if three or four of the seniors had decided to do that, they'd probably get in trouble.
They'd be absent.
Somebody would punish them.
Maybe their parents would be mad.
But because they all do it, it's just a tradition.
So the school just says, ah, crap, what are you going to do?
And they just deal with it.
So the teachers just have a day off and the kids all go to the lake.
I recall vividly being thrown in that lake.
On a very cold day.
Very cold day. So it wasn't a good day for me if you could throw it in a frozen lake.
But it was an accident, actually, but I did end up in the frozen lake.
And it seems to me that all it would take is one TikTok meme to tell everybody to take off their masks.
I'm talking about students now.
To take off their masks at the same time.
That's probably all you need.
Now, I'm not predicting that'll happen, but I'd like to point out how thin the difference is between everybody wearing masks in school and nobody wearing masks in school.
It's probably just a little bit it would take to completely change the situation.
All it would take...
Is one meme that says do it at the same time.
And if the kids bought into it, that's all it would take.
So if Senior Ditch Day works, could it be scaled up?
Here's some indication of good news to come.
I've told you many times that we'll never be able to tax and spend our way to everybody having everything they need.
We're going to have to lower the cost of a high-quality life.
Your housing, your food, etc.
And there's something happening here that's really exciting in that world.
Do you know what ADUs are?
It's probably a term that is local.
But it refers to...
I forget what ADU stands for.
Something like... It's like an extra unit of living space.
Basically a building that you can put into your backyard that would be a standalone home for an in-law or somebody who just needed a little care.
And there's one called Boxable.
The company is called Boxable.
And it's a folding home.
They actually ship it, fold it up, and then on site the walls just fold out and the furniture is already there, or at least the built-in stuff is already there.
They claim they can give you 375 square feet of space, which would be a pretty tiny apartment, but it would have a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, little living area.
Now, if it starts at $50k, just for the unfolding box itself, and you figure that's the starting price, so the one you want's going to be more than that, then you add your land, your taxes, your permits, your plumbing, your sewer, and all that stuff.
So, I don't know, could you get the cost of a decent home down to $100,000, and then everything changes?
I think you could. I think we're heading in that way.
But it looks like the ADU industry is what's going to lead the way because they're going to do all the innovations for how to make the cheapest home.
And I think that's just going to cross over regular homes.
All right. Here's a warning to you.
Beware of your own certainty.
Do you ever wonder...
Let's say you wanted to know, are you hallucinating your opinion...
Or do you have a rational opinion?
Because wouldn't you like to know that?
You probably know that the only person who can't tell they're crazy is the crazy person, right?
The person who doesn't know they're hallucinating...
Is the one who's doing it.
But everybody else can see it.
You know, if you run into somebody who's hallucinating, you can tell.
It's easy. But they can't tell.
So wouldn't you like a little rule that you could use, just an objective little rule, to know if you're hallucinating?
All right? Well, here's one.
Now, this is not one of those 100% rules.
It's just a really good indication that you're hallucinating.
And it goes like this. You have certainty about the uncertain.
That's it. Do you have certainty about something that really can't be known?
For example, are you certain, just totally dead certain, that getting the vaccination is better than not?
Or, the other way, are you dead certain that the reverse is true?
If you're dead certain about either of those things or anything else, you're probably hallucinating.
In other words, you can be reasonably sure that your opinion is not moored to any facts or rational anything.
It could be right.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm saying that you might have arrived at your decision through an irrational process.
And certainty is really a tell for that.
If you see somebody saying, well, you know, I'm like 80% sure that vaccinations are a good idea.
Is that person hallucinating?
No. No. They could be right, and they could be wrong.
The 80% could be way off.
Or it could be right, and they made the wrong choice.
But they're at least not hallucinating.
If you're talking in terms of probability, you're probably looking at data and doing the best you can with rational thought.
We're not good at it.
But at least you're trying. If you have certainty, that's a tell.
It's a gigantic tell.
All right. That's your first tip, how to know you're hallucinating.
Is it my imagination, or has Trump been a little bit too quiet recently?
Right? Because he's fairly consistent about staying in the news.
But correct me if I'm wrong, hasn't Trump gone quiet?
And if he has...
Is something coming? Is there something coming?
Maybe he's working on legal issues because of his taxes or whatever.
I don't know. So he might be working on something.
But still, wouldn't he make sure that he issued some provocative statements to get in the news again?
Well, no, I don't think it's a storm coming, as somebody just said.
But there's something coming, right?
You feel it, don't you?
Because he's too quiet.
So that's one of the things that I like to look at, is the dog that's not barking.
And at the moment, Trump is not barking.
And you've got to ask why.
Either something big is coming, or it's a mystery.
All right. Here's some China persuasion.
Why is it that we still do business, we, the business community, in the United States and other countries, why do we still do business with China when we know that there are clear business risks and also horrible things going on?
Let's say the Uyghurs being put into camps.
Let's say the allegations that the Falun Gong people are being used for...
Unwilling donations of body parts.
You know, transplants and stuff.
I mean, they're just horrible allegations against China.
And we still do business there.
We still do business.
Why is that? Alright, here's the hypnotist filter on it.
The reason is it doesn't affect us.
Have you once had your day affected by the Uyghurs being in camps?
Well, if you have any kind of empathy for human beings, you certainly had some empathy for it.
You felt bad. You thought you should do something about it.
Maybe you doubled down on your intentions to not buy from China or something, but mostly it didn't affect you.
Maybe a little bit in your head, but it didn't affect your day.
So it doesn't matter how good an argument is.
How moral it is, how ethical it is, what's right and what's wrong.
We kind of care what affects us today, right?
That just matters more.
Because we're not really all about the morality and the principle when it comes down to it.
It's not very predictive.
But I'll tell you what is predictive.
If China gets...
Let's say we find out that the Wuhan lab was absolutely the source of a, in any way, engineered virus.
And that China is, let's say, held accountable for letting it happen.
And for maybe covering it up.
So those things both seem reasonably likely to happen.
What happens then to China as a place to do business?
Because, let's say you're Nike, right?
You're Nike and you say, gosh, I really want to keep making my sneakers there because I'm getting good quality.
I'm getting the good price.
I don't want to have to make a change.
It would be really expensive.
We've got business relationships.
I really, really, really, really, really want to just keep making my sneakers in China.
Well, they can get away with that as long as their customers say some form of, you know, I hate what China's doing, but it doesn't seem to affect me.
But what happens when it does?
What happens when the thing you think about China is the Wuhan lab causing the pandemic?
Because the pandemic affects you.
If you're wearing a mask anywhere, it's because of China.
Or it'll feel like that if the attribution goes to the Wuhan lab.
And I feel like this will be a turning point for China, that it seems likely that we're going to attribute the problem to the lab, and it seems likely that the narrative will include China covering it up.
The two worst things that you could compare.
At that point, it's personal.
Do you see the difference?
So this is the hypnotist's filter on the news.
As long as what China is doing that's bad is just a concept, yeah, they stole some intellectual property from somebody I don't know, a company I don't care about.
I don't know. They locked up some people for their religious views, the Uyghurs.
Well, but I still went to work, and my day was exactly the same.
Even fentanyl. You know, I'm activated because fentanyl touched my family.
But what if it hadn't?
What if I never knew anybody who had a fentanyl overdose?
I wouldn't feel any personal connection to China whatsoever.
But it's personal for me.
And I think that it's going to get personal for a lot of Americans when China becomes the cause of the pandemic.
More so than you already think.
I think there's another level for that.
So I think China has got...
China has enormous problems, and I don't even know if they know how big they are.
Because if you're in China, can you really read the mood of the United States?
Because their fate sort of depends on our mood, doesn't it?
I mean, literally? Literally, our mood in the United States will determine the future of China.
And our mood...
It's on the border right now between, eh, it's not my problem.
Yeah, I don't like China. It's not my problem.
And you did this to me, China.
That's a big difference.
China's in trouble. Let me give you a little inspirational lesson here.
I'm going to plop this right in the middle of my news talk.
Three experiences on learning and motivation.
I'm going to give you three just quick little anecdotes and then tie them together.
Years ago, when I was first trying to get syndicated as a cartoonist, which is the big break for a cartoonist, I sent my samples to a number of cartoon syndication companies.
They're the ones who make a deal with a cartoonist, which is your big break, and then they sell it to newspapers and license it and stuff if you're lucky.
So I submitted my stuff to the several syndicates that existed at the time.
Most of them just rejected me with just a form letter.
But one of them rejected me by telling me that my writing might have some merit, but I should find somebody else to do the drawing for me.
Just what you want to hear when you're trying to become a professional cartoonist is one of the most knowledgeable people in the industry, an editor at a top syndication company, telling you that maybe you should look into having somebody else do the hard part, the drawing.
So that wasn't so good for my cartoon ego.
But I took all of my materials and I put them in a closet and I said to myself, well, I tried.
And I felt good that I tried, but of course it was an abject failure.
A few months later I get a call from Sarah Gillespie, an editor at United Media, the biggest, I think they were the biggest, cartoon syndication company.
And I thought I'd gotten all of my rejections, but somehow I'd missed that I hadn't heard from them.
And she offered me a contract, right over the phone, to become a syndicated cartoonist, which turned out to be my big break that made Dilbert successful.
And toward the end of the conversation, you know, I'm still reeling from the fact that I got this offer at all.
I said to her, but I realized that my drawing style is not up to any professional level.
And I said, I'd be willing, you know, if you think this would make the product better, I'd be willing to work with an artist to do the actual drawing for me and maybe I could just do the writing.
And Sarah Gillespie said to me, what's wrong with your art?
It's fine just the way it is.
So she Wizard of Oz'd me.
She frickin' Wizard of Oz'd me.
Do you know what happened to my drawing quality within 24 hours of being told that I was a professional cartoonist and that my current drawing style was already professional class?
Which I didn't believe to be even close to true.
The moment a professional at the top of the industry told me that my drawing was good enough, the drawing style improved about 30% in a day, and then kept improving.
So at this point, you know, I'm certainly not an artist with a capital A, but certainly my comic is well drawn and executed, you know, just through practice.
So that's your first lesson.
That somebody literally changed my performance in one day by about 30%, I would figure, simply by telling me that I was worthy.
That's it. Now hold that story for a moment.
Here comes another one. I took the Dale Carnegie course.
You've heard this story where you learn to do public speaking and also interacting with strangers, you know, small talk and stuff.
And you learn a bunch of things about how to be comfortable In these uncomfortable social situations, especially giving a speech.
And the technique that Dale Carnegie uses, I've told this story a bunch of times, is they only give you compliments.
That's it. That's the whole technique.
They don't tell you what you did wrong.
Imagine trying to learn a skill and nobody ever tells you what you're doing wrong.
Not once did they say, stop jingling the change in your pocket.
Not once did they say, make eye contact.
Not once did the instructor tell anybody that anything was imperfect.
Not once. The whole class.
How many people in that class went from basket cases, just couldn't talk in front of people, literally couldn't even make a word.
There were people who couldn't form words in front of a crowd.
Like, they were just, uh...
I'm just frozen.
And with no specific help, no specific criticism, and only encouragement, telling you what you did right, even if it was a small thing, how many of the, I don't know, there were probably 25 people in the class that I took, how many of them do you think became really good speakers at the end of, I don't know, 10 weeks or something?
100%. I've never seen anything like it.
100%. Every single person there could stand up on a moment's notice and give a speech to a large crowd of people without dropping a bead of sweat.
Third story.
Some of you know I've been trying to learn drums.
I started with an online teacher who was very good at getting me the basics.
But ultimately, I wasn't quite making progress.
And I thought, I'll try to be an autodidact, self-teach myself, look at a lot of YouTube videos and see how far I can get.
Didn't work at all. There are a lot of things that I can teach myself.
I'm mostly self-taught in most of the things I do.
But I couldn't get there.
The drumming was beyond my ability to self-teach.
So I now have a new drum teacher.
And he's come over, I don't know, half a dozen times or more.
And we do half an hour.
And my drumming is way better.
Just with a few lessons, just way better.
And I didn't realize this until yesterday, that I've had all these lessons with this instructor.
He's never once...
He never once told me I was doing anything wrong.
Not once. He never once told me I did anything wrong.
In all those lessons.
The only thing he does is he tells me I did great and I must have been practicing during the week.
Which I wasn't.
He's actually complimenting me for things I didn't do.
Like practicing.
I mean, I practice a little bit, not enough to make a difference.
But how much better is my drumming with nothing but positive reinforcement?
Way better. Way better.
It's like suddenly the curve just went straight up.
And it has nothing to do with anything except the fact that he told me I was good and I didn't believe it.
Because I'm not. But the fact that he tells me that makes me interested.
And then I'm excited. And then I can learn it.
So suddenly the ability to learn just sort of turns on.
Now, this particular drum instructor also is a personal trainer, piano instructor.
He instructs Christina in piano as well.
And his technique is basically to make people successful.
Here's the fourth story.
I had a neighbor who was a tennis pro.
And I would ask him, how do you teach little kids...
To play tennis, when every time they swing the racket, they're not going to hit the ball back.
So how do you go from, I never hit a ball back, to being a tennis player?
Like, how could you get past the mental part of, well, it failed a billion times in a row, this is fun.
And he told me that you only teach them success.
So if he has a little kid who basically can barely hold a tennis racket, he has them walk right up to the net, and then he tosses a ball to them from two feet away and has them go, and just swing the racket in the general direction.
He hits some part of the racket and ends up on his side of the court, and then he praises them.
And that's all he does. He'll stand there for an hour, just going, whoop!
A two-foot, and the kid swings, and it hits the ground, and the kid's happy.
All he teaches is success.
And then they get interested.
And as they get older, their ability to hold their racket improves, and they just get into it entirely through being interested.
So, that's your micro lesson of the day.
It's sort of similar to the things I put on the Locals platform.
I've got a number of them queued up that I'm going to be adding there soon.
If you like that kind of stuff.
Rasmussen has a poll asking people, has Biden kept his campaign promises?
More, less, or about the same as most presidents?
30% said he's done better than most presidents.
41% said he's done less well in terms of keeping his promises.
25% about the same.
25%. But here's the interesting part.
In every poll...
Every political poll and even a lot of scientific-related polls, we expect this gigantic difference between conservatives and liberals.
And sure enough, 63% of conservatives think Biden has done less well than other presidents at keeping his promises.
But yet, a fairly similar amount of liberals think he has.
So the people who like Biden the least, the conservatives...
Think he's not keeping his promises.
Isn't that good? Wait a minute.
If the people who don't like Biden believe he's not keeping his promises, then they should be kind of happy.
But wait, 58% of the liberals think he is keeping his promises better than usual.
So they're happy too.
How weird is it that both the conservatives and the liberals got what they wanted?
As far as they can tell.
The Conservatives think they got what they wanted because he's not doing his promises.
And the Liberals think they did get what they wanted because he's keeping his promises.
They're both happy.
You know, something like 60%-ish of both groups kind of getting what they want.
I mean, indirectly, not completely.
So there's some good news.
See, I told you I was going to put the optimistic filter on everything.
That's what that was.
Yes, we're going to talk about Governor Cuomo resigning.
Why do you think Cuomo had to resign with these allegations, but Trump did not and went on to win the presidency?
In the comments, let's put the hypnosis filter on it yourself.
Tell me what was different.
Why did Trump survive allegations and Cuomo did not?
I see somebody saying the brand.
Close. And maybe that's correct.
In office when it happened?
Okay. I don't know if that makes a difference.
Damn it. I just lost my locals' feed.
28-minute cutoff.
But they're used to it now.
So, nursing home deaths?
Yeah. The nursing home deaths might have been the real reason, huh?
And people just used whatever they could.
So it could be that it's a fake because, right?
Hello, locals. You're back.
So, yeah, I'll give you the answer.
You didn't miss the answer. Here's the answer.
Trump inoculated you.
He inoculated you.
Trump... Trump gave you the vaccination, oddly enough.
You were vaccinated against accusations about Trump.
Because what did Trump tell you directly?
My favorite thing that Trump has ever said at any time, president or pre-president or ex-president, my favorite thing he ever said was, in public, I'm no angel.
His actual words, right?
I'm no angel. And was there anybody who, when he entered the race, is there anybody who thought there wouldn't be allegations of sexual something?
Nobody thought that.
Everybody who lives in the real world said, well, wait for these stories.
We're going to see some good stories here.
And sure enough, the stories were just as good as we thought they would be.
You got your porn star?
Check. You got your Playboy Playmate of the Year?
Check. You got your allegations of something horrible happening in a dressing room.
Well, I didn't see that one coming exactly, but something like that was going to come.
Check. You got it all.
Now, you could argue that, and I think I would argue this, that the allegations against Trump felt less credible.
All right? Now, I'm not going to say that none of it's true, because I wasn't there.
And I do agree with the kind of general statement that you should take people seriously when they make allegations.
But they didn't feel as true as the Cuomo ones.
Now, maybe that's my bias.
I don't know. Maybe you'd have a different view.
Maybe Democrats and Republicans have different views on that.
But it didn't seem as credible.
They felt a little manufactured, even if they were true.
They didn't feel as true.
So I would say that the biggest thing that Trump did right is he inoculated you, and you knew that his brand was consistent with being kind of that guy, like it or not.
Whereas Cuomo was sort of the lefty, support all women.
He shouldn't have been that guy.
So they had to get rid of their own guy for being too much like Trump.
All right, so here are the things that won't get you fired at CNN. Of course, the big story that we want to talk about is, you know, Chris Cuomo interviewing his brother and, you know, Being basically a cheerleader instead of asking him hard questions and, you know, it's inappropriate and, you know, Chris Cuomo was advising his brother so it's extra creepy, blah, blah, blah.
Here's my take on that.
I don't care.
Why do you care about that?
Why do you care?
Why do you care? That Chris Cuomo is the brother of Andrew Cuomo and that Chris Cuomo treated him extra, extra nice on TV. Why do you care about that?
Was there anybody there who thought that a brother was not going to talk to his brother or give advice?
Nobody. Nobody.
There's not one person in the world who thought that was reasonable, that a brother doesn't talk to another brother under any conditions.
I don't care who it is.
I don't care if it's part of the legal system.
I don't care if they've got conflict of interest.
Under Do you tell me that there's something wrong with a brother talking to a brother?
I'm sorry. That's an absolute.
There's some things that are just absolutes.
That's a fucking absolute.
Sorry. I'm trying to curse last.
That's just an absolute.
So if you're getting worked up about a brother talking to a brother, I mean, check your thinking there.
It's not a standard you want.
I mean, you don't want that applied to you.
So I can't get mad about that.
Nor can I get mad that it was such nice treatment of his brother.
Because what do you expect?
Secondly, I found it entertaining.
CNN is an entertainment network as much as a news network.
Maybe more entertainment, you could argue.
I personally enjoyed watching the brothers talk.
Because it was like an extra layer of something interesting.
But as long as you know it's an opinion program...
Who cares? If it were the news segment, I would say that's a big problem.
But if something is clearly an opinion show and somebody in an opinion show is talking to their brother, is there anybody who doesn't understand that that's supposed to be biased?
I just don't have any problem with Chris Cuomo on any of this.
So, I mean, it'd be fun if I did, right?
You'd probably enjoy it more.
It'd be more entertaining, but really?
Now, let me ask you this.
In brainwashing news...
Brainwashing news!
How is it that we have been convinced that some of the most important news in the country has to do with what Tucker Carlson says or does and Chris Cuomo says or does?
Who are basically competitors, right?
The two competing networks.
Is the time slots the same?
Somebody give me a fact check.
Is Chris Cuomo's show the same as Tucker Carlson's time slot?
I think it is, right?
Somebody tell me for sure.
Looks like I got some crackling audio over on...
Over on Locals.
Play with my cables a little bit and see if anything changes.
You'll tell me. All right.
So if you think that it's natural that we're all talking about Chris Cuomo and Tucker Carlson when they are the two opinion people on the two, I would say, the most news-making entities right now.
If Fox or CNN says something's news, then it's news, I guess.
You've been brainwashed.
You've been brainwashed.
Because these are not important things.
What Chris Cuomo says about his brother?
Totally unimportant.
What Tucker Carlson says is very entertaining and often some of the bravest stuff that's on TV. But I don't know that you should treat that as one of your top priorities, but it feels like it because they're in the news.
So just consider that what you consider to be important and worthy of your brain cycles has been assigned to you.
The thought that Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo, you know, they're the story.
As awesome as they both are, I think they're both great at their jobs individually.
You've been brainwashed.
They're not important, but great.
They're great at their jobs. I'd like to give you my impression of talking about the infrastructure bill.
Which has gone through some of the first procedural hurdles.
I'm going to try to do this while staying awake to the end of the sentence.
I haven't tried this before in public, so this could be embarrassing.
But I'm going to read a sentence about the infrastructure bill.
I'm going to try to remain awake and conscious from the beginning of the sentence to the end of the sentence.
so let's see if I can do that.
Ready.
All right.
Yeah.
A 15-hour voterama, which is a procedural move, to pass the framework of the reconciliation package for the infrastructure...
Were we talking about the infrastructure bill or something?
Something about money or something?
I don't know. I don't even remember what we were talking about.
So that's what I have to say about the infrastructure bill.
Now, I would put myself in perhaps the top...
Let's do a fact check on this.
Let's see if you agree or disagree with this following assumption.
I think I'm in the top 5% of people who follow the news.
I'm not sure that's the same as being well-informed.
But let's say I'm in the top 5% of people who follow most of the big news stories.
I have no idea what's in the infrastructure bill.
Do you? I mean, I know the headline stuff.
Oh, a bunch of socialism stuff got in there, and why are we calling this infrastructure?
And there's some stuff that's in there, but then it's taken out, and then the Republicans took it out, but then...
The Nancy Pelosi might put it in with reconciliation, and what the hell is reconciliation anyway?
Does anybody understand what's in the infrastructure bill?
Do you know why the public should oppose the infrastructure bill?
Because they can't explain it to us.
Basically, you should oppose anything that nobody will explain to you in a way that you can understand it in some easy way.
Now, I have seen, I think, the New York Times...
I've seen some graphs that show what's in and what's out, and I've looked at those graphs, and I didn't really understand them.
Somehow they made it too complicated.
I feel as if there's some way to tell this story that you'd understand, but it hasn't happened.
Yeah, it's like Obamacare.
Once something reaches a level of complication, and the public is essentially taken out of the process, because we just don't know what's in there, what should be in there, how the process works, anything...
So I think the public can't help on this one.
That's part of the reason that I think it's whatever optimism you have about this getting passed, I don't know.
I don't know. We'll see.
So here's something that really makes you question the simulation or reality itself.
Why is it that the idea that you follow the money to understand what's really happening in the world...
Why does it keep working?
Especially for prediction.
Even when it doesn't look like it should be the reason for anything, it keeps working.
So this is what I told you about prediction.
Even if you think the main reasons for why something will or will not happen in the future have nothing to do with money, watch how often the money coincidentally also predicts.
Let me give you some examples.
What were the odds that we would need booster shots for the vaccinations, which would be wildly profitable for the people who make booster shots and the vaccinations?
Now, I don't think the reason that we need booster shots is because it was all a plan to make them ineffective so they could make more money with booster shots.
I don't think that's the reason.
But why is it that if you predicted using money, you would have gotten the right answer?
Right? Let's take another one, the therapeutics.
We know that if the therapeutics were excellent and they all worked, that the vaccination makers would probably make less money.
And the pharma in general would probably make less money if it turned out that any of the cheap generics or whatever worked.
So it turns out that we're told that the therapeutics don't work well enough to make vaccinations unnecessary.
Now, is the reason they told us that because of money?
I don't think so.
I think the reason is that the therapeutics didn't pass enough scientific, you know, rigor.
I think. But why did money predict exactly what would happen?
Again. Is it a coincidence?
Watch how many times you're sure that the reason is something else, and you're really sure of it, but yet money predicted it.
Coincidence? I don't know.
It's something to watch. How about Afghanistan?
Afghanistan? Given what we were spending there, and given that we weren't really...
didn't seem like we were making any major progress in a permanent solution, could you have predicted that we would eventually move out of Afghanistan because it just cost too much?
Yes. Yes, money would predict that you couldn't stay there forever.
And what about the future of China?
Well, I think that given the reputational problem and the Wuhan lab connection that's likely to be demonstrated with some greater level of certainty in the future, I feel like China is doomed.
If you were to follow the money, the money says it's going to flow out of China.
Because they'll just be too toxic.
So I'm going to predict, as I have, that China's got some big problems.
Like, so big, they don't really have any sense of how big these problems are going to be.
That's what the money says.
All right, here's some good news.
I just saw a video on Mashable, which is a good thing to follow on Twitter.
Mashable. There's a pepper harvesting robot.
Pepper is being the, you know, the plant that makes a big pepper.
And they showed the robot.
It could identify a pepper and it would know it was ripe and it would pick it off the vine.
So here's what's coming.
Farming is pretty expensive.
And there are a bunch of risks and expensive, especially if you're doing it outdoors.
So if you're doing it outdoors, you've got to worry about weeds, bug sprays, weather damage, you know, flooding and hurricanes and every other thing, lack of water.
You've got to worry about labor costs, and then you've got to ship it from your land to wherever the city is.
So you've got all these costs.
Most of them could go away if indoor farming became more modular.
By modular, I mean that somebody makes, like the boxable example, a little indoor farm that can connect side to side with as many other little indoor farms as you want.
You can make as long as you want.
Once they get the making of the actual farm, which is basically just a glass container with some utilities, once you could make those cheaply and in mass units, and then once you've got...
Oh, shit.
All right. Problem here.
I've got to take care of it in a minute.
All right. So I think the cost of farming may go way down with...
Okay.
Somebody needs to know that I'm live streaming right now.
Sorry.
See, my personal life intrudes sometimes into my professional life.
Until... Okay.
Looks like we'll be wrapping up here pretty quickly.
All right, let's just finish a few things.
In brainwashing news, we're hearing that the Florida health care workers are exhausted and angry.
And here's the thing.
Is that good persuasion?
The people who want you to get vaccinated are doing stories about health care workers who are exhausted and angry.
Will that convince you?
That you better get vaccinated because the healthcare workers are overworked?
Nope. Nope.
Do you know what doesn't matter to anybody?
That your job is hard.
There's nothing that matters less to other people than your job is really hard.
You worked hard today. You have stress.
You might have to quit.
Very, very hard.
Long hours. Nobody cares.
Because you know who else has a hard job?
You do. Everybody thinks a job is hard.
So the persuasion we're seeing, which is mostly limited to the health care industry, Nobody cares.
You do care if you don't get to go in.
So here's what they should do.
Just like the Vietnam War was ended, I think, because of all the news coverage.
They gave you lots of video and scary stuff and blood.
I think the news people need to park outside the emergency rooms and show the ambulances backed up and every day just say, well, here's your local hospital.
Ten ambulances backed up.
If you came here, you'd have to wait five hours.
And you'd probably be transferred somewhere else.
That would get your attention, right?
Because you would put yourself in the ambulance.
You'd say, oh, shoot.
If I need to go there, that's my hospital.
So I think that would convince you.
But you don't care that the doctors are overworked.
We do care. I mean, we have empathy for human beings and stuff.
But there's nothing less persuasive than that somebody else's job is hard.
So stop that. All right.
We do have a tale of two pandemics here.
People think that there's one happening.
And I thought the most interesting thing is I asked them on scientific polls, and 18% of the people who follow me and answered the poll, so it's very unscientific, said that they knew people had died, personally, of COVID. 18% of the people who follow me know people who died, That's a lot.
All right? But here's the interesting part.
I asked the people, another poll, just the people who are not vaccinated.
How many people who are not vaccinated know somebody personally who has died?
Half as many.
Closer to 9-10%.
So there seems to be, and this is deeply unscientific polling, but my curiosity starts with this.
Is it that knowing somebody who died of COVID makes it real to you?
Because that's persuasion.
So the hypnotist says, you need to know somebody who died.
Or... Or it's not going to work.
You could digitally age somebody and put them in the hospital and that would convince them to.
Take somebody's actual photo and say, well, here's you in the hospital gasping for air.
