Episode 1478 Scott Adams: Vaccination Reasoning Viewed Through a Hypnosis Filter. And Coffee.
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Content:
Botched in the best way possible?
Vaccination persuasion games
Mechanism of vaccines creating variants
Whiteboard: Vaccines --> Variants?
Survival of the fittest...isn't science
Original antigenic sin
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Go. Oh, good.
That's good stuff. Well, in Portland, the people in charge have decided that instead of using the police, which, as you know, are overfunded in Portland, according to Portland, instead of using their limited police to break up violence between opposing political groups in the city, they decided to stand back and let them fight.
Because they were just using things like sprays and clubs and stuff like that.
It wasn't especially dangerous until the gunfire.
I guess the police got involved when there were shots fired.
But until then, they actually just stood back and observed.
And they let the two opposing sides fight it out.
To which I say, thank you.
I have never agreed with Mayor Wheeler more than right this moment.
They're letting them fight it out.
I don't know what could end it faster.
Right? Because it seems to me that if you try to break it up and you keep them from hurting each other too much or too many people getting hurt, they'll just come back.
But what happens if you let them fight it out a few times?
I think fewer people show up next time.
You know, if you've got your head broken...
Probably you don't go back.
I don't know. So we'll try that.
And I like it in the A-B testing sense of things.
So while common sense tells you, hey, put those police in there and stop that fighting on your streets, well, let's try this.
It could work.
I'm not saying it will.
I don't think you can quite predict that it'll come to a good end if you let them fight.
But we haven't tried it.
Let's give it a try.
If Portland wants to be the test case for let them fight, I say put some bleachers in there and sell tickets and let's go nuts.
I think I predicted to you that Afghanistan has some surprises coming.
I didn't know exactly what the surprises would be, but one thing you can be sure of, that whenever you've got one of these fog-of-war, chaotic situations, something is going to come out of this that you say to yourself, what?
How did that happen?
Just something completely on the left field that explains everything.
Now, I don't know what that'll be, but there's a weird thing happening now In slow motion that I don't understand.
And it goes like this.
The Americans are getting out of Afghanistan without violence.
Mostly, right?
You're hearing anecdotal stories of somebody who doesn't want to cross a checkpoint, stories of the Taliban taking away passports, something like that.
And it's probably happening, because I doubt the Taliban has such command and control that they can control every checkpoint.
But overall, am I wrong?
That the Biden administration seems to think it can get the people out on time, by the end of the month, and that it's going peacefully.
Now, here's the weird thing.
You know your unintended consequences and we're all geniuses?
Aren't we all geniuses?
We can predict exactly what will happen in every international situation, because we're so smart.
But here's something that might have accidentally happened.
The best-case scenario.
I'm not going to say it's true yet, and certainly I think all evidence suggests that the withdrawal was botched.
So my first take, if you remember, was, hold, hold.
We need to find out more information.
It looks botched, but wait.
There might be something we don't know about, because why is it we all see it botched, but the people in charge all did the thing that was obviously wrong?
There's something to explain that we don't know yet.
So I said, oh, wait. But I waited.
I waited for the administration to give us its version of the story, and it just sounds botched.
Maybe there's more to it, but it just sounds botched so far.
And I say that only from the perspective of the administration didn't really put up a fight.
They didn't give you an argument that they did it right that made any sense.
They're saying they did a good job, but they're not really supporting that argument.
So here's the...
Here's the most optimistic thing you could say.
And I'm not saying it's true.
It's just interesting that it's possible.
And in fact, maybe more possible than the alternative.
And it goes like this. The way this came down was the least loss of death possible under all scenarios.
I think that's where it's heading.
That this is accidentally, totally botched, But accidentally gave us the best outcome.
Why? Because Afghanistan fell so quickly.
What could have been the safest thing to happen in Afghanistan?
I hate to say it, but if it's inevitable the Taliban is going to take over, the safest thing is to surrender right away.
That's what happened. So we didn't see it coming.
We weren't prepared for it.
But it was the safest thing.
Just complete surrender on day one.
Because otherwise you have the fight and you still surrender.
I mean, you get to the same place, right?
But the second part, and the part we're obsessing on, is the withdrawal.
You know, that's completely botched.
Does everybody agree that we're all the experts and we would have gotten the people out...
They wanted to be evacuated.
We would have done that first before we got rid of most of the military.
Now, we did put military back in, but they're not getting people, etc.
So it's still botched, no doubt about it.
But so far, the Taliban has been playing it strategically very smart.
And the strategic smart thing for the Taliban to do would be to give us a deadline that's a little challenging, but possible.
And they did that.
Apparently, at least according to the Biden administration, that deadline is challenging, but possible.
Like, you know, we have a really good chance of getting really close to achieving it.
Now, so far that's pretty reasonable, right?
For a group that's known for its unreasonable actions.
What happens if...
I'll just put this as a hypothetical.
It's not a prediction. It's a hypothetical, and things are heading in this direction.
What happens if the hostages...
Not the hostages. Well, they might be.
What happens if the people we want to evacuate, including the Afghan interpreters and the people we want to get out, what happens if we get them all out?
Isn't this going to look like the biggest success of all times?
At the same time, it was botched.
Believe it or not, they can happen at the same time.
You can botch everything and just get lucky.
That's what it looks like.
It looks like everything was botched.
And so far, fingers crossed, you know, there's no reason to think it'll go this way all the way to the end, but fingers crossed...
They avoided a civil war by collapsing immediately, and if we get the people out, which looks like it's happening, it's the best thing that could have happened.
Am I wrong about that?
I mean, if you're just counting bodies, how could we have done better than this, assuming that we do get the evacuees out?
Now, that's a big, big assumption, right?
But so far, so far it's happening.
Now, I'm not saying you're saying it's delusional.
It's not delusional because it's put in a statistical sense, right?
It could happen. It's just unlikely.
I mean, if you had to predict, wouldn't you predict that the Taliban will not let everybody out?
Keep a bunch of hostages.
Most obvious thing, right?
And I feel like, inevitably, they're going to keep a few.
But let's say...
I'll just give you a number.
Let's say they keep 20...
I don't know, 20 Americans that didn't get out.
And... But we get everybody else out.
So suppose we lose 20 souls if they happen to be American.
What did we avoid?
Probably... 100,000 deaths?
50,000? If the Civil War happened?
So Biden may have accidentally traded 20 American lives.
This is just a speculation, not based on data.
He could have accidentally traded 20 lives to save 50,000 Afghans.
Is that immoral?
Well, it's not America First.
But I don't know if it's immoral.
You know, you could argue that one.
All right. Rasmussen poll asked if Taliban takes American hostages, should the U.S. use military to rescue them?
And 78% say yes.
Is that good news or bad news?
It's good news.
Because the Taliban needs to know that we're going to get our hostages out or there's going to be big trouble.
Hostages slash evacuees.
And having 78% of the public say yes, send the military in...
While about the same amount of the public says get out of Afghanistan, that is exactly the right situation for the Taliban to say, you know, if we don't let everybody out, we're really effed, right? So this is the best poll I've ever seen in my life because it says the American public are completely on the same side.
I mean, 78% is as good as you can get in the American public.
And then Rasmussen Pohl also asked, is the Biden administration doing enough to evacuate Americans?
And 59% said no.
And I think this is under the category of, how could you do enough?
You know, really, how could you do enough?
You know, it's always going to look like it wasn't soon enough, didn't do enough.
But it does look like it's not enough.
All right. Here's the question.
That I asked on Twitter.
And this is a...
This topic will be more about persuasion than about whether you should get a vaccination.
Can we agree that I don't care if you get vaccinated?
Everybody?
Everybody?
I don't care if you get vaccinated.
So anything I say next is going to be about vaccination persuasion, but it's not intended to work on you.
Really, it's not a trick, right?
Let me say it again.
This is not some kind of like backward psychology hypnosis trick.
I don't care if you're going to be a doctor.
I'm not going to be a doctor.
You've got to make your own decision on that.
I'll persuade you on politics.
I'd be happy to do that.
I'll persuade you on how to live your life better, how to have systems instead of goals.
I'll persuade you on all kinds of stuff.
But not your health decisions.
Not that. That's on you.
Totally. But let's talk about the persuasion game because it's happening, whether I participate or not.
And Omar Khatib alerted me to...
There's a series of tweets from Advertising Insider in which they asked some advertising professionals what the governments could do to persuade more people to get the vaccination.
Now, did the advertising executives say much the same thing I did, which is, hold on, even if we could...
Even if we could persuade people to get the vaccinations, it would be unethical.
So let me back out of this conversation right away because I'm a marketing professional and I'm not going to cross that ethical barrier.
Well, that didn't happen.
Instead, they gave you pretty good specific suggestions for doing the most unethical thing in the world...
Persuading people to get a health outcome, a particular treatment.
So here are some of their persuasion points, and I'm going to evaluate them so you can get a little lesson on persuasion at the same time.
Number one, are marketing executives good at persuasion?
Anybody? Anybody?
Who works at a big company where there are professional marketing people?
Are those professional marketing people trained in persuasion, let's say, the way I am?
I'm a hypnotist, etc.
Do you think they have the same kind of persuasion training as this cartoonist?
No. Not even close.
But they do have a lot of tools.
So they can do polls and they can do focus groups and they can A-B test things.
So they can use brute force to get to a good outcome.
Because you can just randomly try stuff, semi-randomly, and then just test it and see if it works and then do more of the stuff that works.
So that's marketing. But here's what marketers are not good at.
The first try.
Because almost nobody is, right?
The first thing you try isn't necessarily going to work.
So here are some of their first things to try.
From, let's see, this is from, these are different marketing executives.
This is from Jim Lesser.
Suggests using humor to disarm those who oppose the vaccine.
Nope. Nope.
You can use humor.
It'll maybe make a good commercial for selling your soap or your beer.
But humor isn't going to change your health care decisions.
I'm sorry. It just isn't.
Now, maybe he's right.
That's why you test it, right?
So what is the value of my opinion on the initial input, the thing that you could test?
Well... I think my opinion's pretty good, better than the average, because I study this field, but I could be wrong.
Maybe you test this and it's exactly the right thing, but I doubt it.
My instinct tells me the humor is not where you go on this.
Definitely not. In fact, I would go with fear.
The opposite of humor.
Humor is, ha, ha, ha, I'm relaxed, I'm having a good time.
That's not the head you want to put people in.
If you want somebody to do something as radical as putting a needle in their arm, you've got to scare the shit out of them.
Right? That'll work.
You've got to scare them. I don't think anything else will work.
Let's go on with these other ideas.
The same guy said that the stickiness of puns can be effective.
I don't know about that.
Now, the stickiness of puns in terms of wordplay, that does have some scientific support.
If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.
Sort of wordplay, it's a rhyme.
The rhyme does actually create some persuasion, so science supports that.
But that's not enough to get somebody vaccinated.
All right. Another guy said, a marketing professional said, let's turn it from you've got to get protected to let's effing track this thing down and kill it.
So Mike Lee, I think, said that.
Well, I'm not sure about the attribution.
But the idea is that you've got to get tough with it.
Talk tough, and then people say, yeah, let's go to war against that virus.
Terrible idea. Terrible idea.
I mean, I don't even know what to say about it.
It's just a terrible idea.
All right, so forget that one.
Another said that who originally cast a doubt on the vaccine should play the trump card and give him credit for starting the vaccine program and directing the resources.
Possibly the worst of all the ideas.
If you bring Trump into the conversation of vaccinations, do people even try to make a medical decision?
No. As soon as you add Trump to the conversation, it's a political conversation.
It doesn't matter what the data is.
You throw Trump into any conversation about health care, and it's just a Trump conversation.
So this is a horrible idea.
Like, really, really, really bad from this marketing professional.
Don't throw Trump into the conversation.
That just makes everything worse.
All right, here's another one.
An effective campaign would have to find people who are anti-vaccine and convert them.
So you'd have to find the anti-vaccine people and get them to be pro-vaccine and help sell it.
Would that convince you?
If you saw somebody who is anti-vaccine, let's say you are, and they were that anti-vaccine just like you, but unlike you, they had changed to be pro-vaccine, would that change your mind?
No. No. No, it wouldn't.
Not even for a second.
The first thing you say is, well, they bought off another.
There's another sheep.
Looks like another sheep went to slaughter.
No, it would be the least persuasive thing in the world to see what other people are doing.
Now, suppose all you did was show that smart, good-looking people were getting vaccinated and the people who were not getting vaccinated were Unhealthy-looking slobs who make lots of bad decisions in general.
Well, that might work.
That might work.
Not a specific person, because we discount celebrities' opinions completely.
But what if it was a montage of smart, beautiful-looking people getting vaccinated and, you know, obese, bad decision-makers not getting vaccinated?
That might work. Because people are tribal, and they'd say, I want to be in that tribe, not that tribe.
So, I mean, it would move some people in either direction, but I think your net would be good.
And when I say that, again, remember, you'd have to test it.
I'm not smart enough, nor is anybody, to know what will work without testing it.
Persuasion doesn't really work that way.
Even the hypnotist who's hypnotizing you in real time, just the two of you in a room, That hypnotist is still A-B testing.
Because you're trying stuff, you're looking at the reaction, try something else, look at the reaction.
So without the testing, you don't really have a system for persuasion.
They'd have to be part of the team.
All right, here's some more. You shouldn't assume everyone is motivated by politics.
Okay, that's real helpful.
Because... How does that persuade you?
I guess the point is to make it non-political, but we've tried that.
That didn't seem to make any difference.
Someone who was pregnant, and also a marketing professional, said that she was persuaded by hearing from people who are genuinely concerned for you.
Interesting. So her suggestion was that she was persuaded by hearing from people who were genuinely concerned for her.
Now we're getting closer. Now that's some real persuasion, at least good thinking, because we are persuaded by people who genuinely care for us.
Why is it that you don't think the pharmaceutical companies can be trusted?
Because they don't care for you.
Why is it that you don't think the government can be trusted?
They don't care for you. Why do you not believe the pundit you see on the news?
Don't care for you.
In fact, it might be the same pundit who wants to hunt you down.
It might be, in a lot of cases.
So no, most of the people telling you to get the vaccination are people who don't care for you.
Literally don't care about you one bit.
They don't even know you. You're a stranger.
But how persuasive would be somebody who actually does care for you?
Now... They may not be experts on vaccinations, but I'll bet it is persuasive.
So I don't know how you could ramp that up to get lots of concerned people talking to vaccinated people, and I'm not suggesting you should.
I'm just saying that at least this is genuine persuasion smartness.
It looks like something you could test.
All right, here's another one.
You should treat the campaign for the vaccination persuasion with the kind of budget and tactics you'd see a political party use to get out the vote.
I think they did, didn't they?
Wouldn't you say that the government did exactly that?
Used the same kind of mass persuasion as get out the vote?
I feel like that's sort of a non-answer.
That's a very marketing-meeting answer.
Alright, here's my take.
So I'm going to add my own persuasion suggestions.
Again, I'm not trying to persuade you.
I'm teaching you how to do persuasion.
Okay? Can we all deal with that distinction?
Not trying to persuade you.
That would be unethical.
But I'll tell you how persuasion works.
I think you need a fake because.
In other words, I think there are a bunch of people who are close to being persuaded and would like to.
But they're still stuck in their old opinion.
So they need a fake because.
Something that they can say, oh, something changed.
So now my old opinion was right, but now my new opinion is right too, because something changed.
So you need that fake because the something changed.
The FDA approval might be that.
So I think some people are going to say, even though the polls suggest it's not going to make much difference, I think it will.
I think the polls are misleading.
I think that the FDA approval is even going to make the Moderna vaccination more popular, even though it doesn't have FDA approval.
People are going to kind of expect that it will get it, because Pfizer got it.
So there's some crossover persuasion that the Pfizer thing will make the Moderna thing look safer, even though they're different things.
It's just how your brain works.
So the fake because.
I would look for other fake becauses, not just the FDA approval, but how about we've waited long enough that the odds of problems are way down because you would have seen most of them pop up.
That'd be a fake because, but there could be others too.
As I said, you need fear and visual persuasion.
Anything less is barely trying.
So you need to show people dying of COVID, like in the worst possible ways, and saying, I should have gotten the vaccination, and then dying.
And there are plenty of anecdotes like that.
CNN is promoting that kind of persuasion with their story choices.
And I think it works.
I mean, you could argue that CNN shouldn't be in the persuasion game.
But unfortunately, they are.
And I would say that those anecdotal, you know, terrible visuals where you can sort of put yourself in the bed and you say, oh, I can see myself being that guy.
Don't be that guy.
All right. Show people that you like getting vaccinated.
That's similar to showing the two groups.
One is beautiful and one is not.
I would also like to see an expert explaining risk management to people.
You've never seen that, except me, and I'm far from an expert.
If you can't show me, let's say, Nate Silver, I like to use him because a lot of you disagree with some of his opinions, so he's sort of perfect for this.
You can disagree with his opinions, but not his rationale, meaning that his thinking process is generally pretty close to flawless, because it's his field.
He knows how to think statistically.
He's good at it. Wouldn't you like to see somebody who is just flat-out good at it, maybe a few of them, so you've got a few different opinions, explaining to you the risk-benefit, thinking through all of the risks we know about and all the ones we don't, putting some kind of statistics on them and just walking you through it.
Say, okay, here's the risk of getting vaccinated.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All these potential risks.
Here's what we know about them.
Here's the risk of not getting vaccinated.
Here's what we know about it. Put some numbers on it.
I think that would be at least a fake because for some people.
Some people would say, you know, nobody had ever explained it that well.
Right? All right, let me...
Okay, here's the persuasion that would work.
You ready for this? Again, I'm not suggesting it.
This is an example of what would work.
You take Maysilver...
And you say, sit down for a couple hours with Mike Rowe.
You all know Mike Rowe.
If you're not American, you might not.
Mike Rowe's a famous personality who is sort of an everyman.
He does what's called dirty jobs.
He did a show where he would do these awful jobs where you literally get physically dirty, doing gross stuff.
So he's famous for being a level-headed, rational person who just can see how to get stuff done.
That's sort of his brand.
So you take Nate Silver, and you spend two hours with Mike Rowe teaching him how to look at the statistics, and then you have Mike Rowe explain the statistics to the public.
Why? Because if Nate Silver does it, you're not going to understand it.
Right? He's almost too good.
Because his explanation would have enough nuance in it to be accurate, but maybe a little confusing because you can't follow the nuance of statistics.
But you take that stuff and you package it up with Mike Rowe, a really, really credible voice, especially to the right, who has a lot of resistance.
Mike Rowe could sell the shit out of this.
He really could. Now, people are saying, is he a scientist?
Is he a statistician?
No. No.
He's you. That's why it works.
Do you know who would be the most persuasive person for you?
The person who would convince you specifically the best would be you.
If you could make a digital version of yourself and give it a script written by somebody who knows what they're talking about, and then that digital version talks you into getting vaccinated, it would be the most persuasive thing that could happen.
You couldn't beat that. Mike Rowe is you.
That's sort of his brand.
I hate to characterize other people because he might not want to characterize himself that way, which is unfair.
But in my view, the thing that makes him popular is you say, yeah, I think just like that.
Mike Rowe is saying the words coming out of his mouth are the ones I'm thinking, but he's saying it better than I'm thinking it.
That's the ultimate. He says what you're thinking, but he says it better than you're thinking it.
Somebody says, why a white person?
That's a good question. If you could take the same concept and replace Mike Rowe with...
I'm going to say Charles Barkley, just to pick a name, right?
I picked Charles Barkley because I don't know if anybody's been more popular with everybody.
If you don't follow basketball, that's an unfamiliar reference.
But Charles Barkley is black...
But his sort of approach to race is so commonsensical that it just appeals to left and right in a weird kind of way.
So, yeah, you take a Charles Barkley, who everybody likes, and he's famous for being a plain talker, common sense kind of guy.
Yeah, that might even be an upgrade on my idea.
I think Mike Rowe would be great.
But yeah, a Charles Barkley, absolutely.
He could do that. Somebody says Steve Harvey.
Maybe. I don't know.
I think Charles Barkley is more relatable, I feel like.
More of the everyman, talks like you do kind of thing.
And here's another idea.
It seems to me that the anti-vaxxers like to call the people who are taking the vaccination sheep.
What would Trump do if he were the recipient of a thing like that?
He'd take the gun out of their hand and he'd turn it around.
So, here's a little persuasion tip.
The things that people call you are things that they personally think are persuasive.
So if the anti-vaxxers are calling you sheep for getting vaccinated, what would be the most piercing thing you could call them?
Sheep. They've given you the answer.
You don't have to wonder what's the worst thing that you could say about them, because they told you.
It's what they're calling you.
Sheep. So if you could find a way, and again, this is persuasion.
I'm not saying you should do this.
It's just how it works. If you could find a way to make the people not getting vaccinated and label them sheep, in all likelihood, that would really hurt.
Because it's the word they use when they're insulting other people.
If you can make that stick to the person using the word, it's going to hurt a little extra.
So that would be an approach.
Also, the anti-vaxxers tend to be conspiracy theorists or the only people who are right.
Two possibilities, right?
Either they are subject to believing conspiracies...
Or they're right, and we'll all find out later.
But in terms of persuasion, if you came up with a conspiracy theory that worked in the other direction, hypothetically, it could persuade people.
So in other words, you would need a counter-conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy theory that says, for example, that China is the one telling you that the vaccinations are dangerous.
Because they probably are.
I don't know if that's true, but I would guess that China and Russia are messing with our communications about the vaccines just like they do with our social structure and our politics, right?
So it seems to me...
Let me check this.
It seems to me that you could do a counter-conspiracy theory.
All right. When I asked people to describe to me how vaccines make things worse, I got a ton of cognitive dissonance.
I'm going to give you the hypnotist's filter on how to see the world.
So the question I asked is, how could it be that so many people think that vaccinations make the variants worse?
So that's it. A very popular thought and may be true.
It might be true that the vaccinations make variants worse.
So I asked the following question.
Can you describe the mechanism for how that could possibly happen?
Because everybody's sure of it.
I mean, it seems like the entire public is sure that's true.
But I said, well, describe how exactly that works.
And what happened was...
And this is the hypnotist's filter.
So my filter on this is probably different than yours.
Your filter is probably something like this.
Some people are right, and some people are wrong.
Some people are well-informed.
They did their own research.
Some people are not.
And to you, I would think that's all there is to this vaccination makes variants worse question.
Somebody's right, somebody's wrong.
The hypnotist's filter is different.
The hypnotist filter says this.
There were a lot of people who publicly and to their friends have said, I understand this issue.
It's basic evolution.
If you put evolutionary pressure on the normal virus...
It will give an advantage to the variant.
Boom, Scott, I just explained it.
Evolution 101.
Just apply it to this situation and you're done.
Anybody can understand this.
Evolution is survival of the fittest.
The fittest variant will be the one that can get through the vaccination, right?
Pretty logical. Okay, here's my view of the world.
My view of the world is that when people realize they couldn't explain...
How a vaccination makes a variant worse?
That they spun into cognitive dissonance.
And when you look at my tweet and you see the comments, you'll see that it's all word salad.
But it'll be word salad you think makes sense.
Because the person who wrote it thinks it makes sense.
Let me give you some. I know you're skeptical.
I'm going to read you some of the explanations of people who are very smart, by the way.
So everybody who gave these explanations of how evolution would cause the variance to be dominant, they're smart people.
But they're showing all the tales of cognitive dissonance.
I'll give you some examples.
Well, so far, let's start with this whiteboard.
Let's say there are two situations.
There's a person with no vaccination and a person who's vaccinated.
Let's say the non-vaccinated person gets the regular alpha virus, but it mutates inside them, and the mutation is a new variant, and then it spreads.
Everybody agrees that can happen?
Right? Right? That it can happen that you can get the regular virus, but it mutates inside the person, and then what comes out the other end is a new variant, and then that variant could spread.
That's if you don't have a vaccination.
But what if you do have a vaccination?
Well, in that case, the alpha virus goes in, it mutates, and then a new variant comes out, and it spreads.
What was the difference between the vaccinated person and the no vaccinated person?
Nothing. Because both of them have the virus in them.
Both of them can spread it.
There's no difference.
So now, everybody who is positive there's a difference has to explain this.
And that triggers cognitive dissonance.
Now, let me say as clearly as possible...
I don't know if vaccinations cause more variance.
I don't know. I mean, I legitimately don't know, and I'm not sure I even am biased in one direction.
All I do know is that when people try to explain it, they're spinning into cognitive dissonance.
That I do know. So I can say that with great confidence.
It's something I study. So let me give you some examples.
Again, these are smart people with smart explanations.
A vaccine which targets a specific part of a virus will mean that small mutations in the virus can survive while the targeted virus cannot.
Since viruses are mutating all the time, eventually one of these mutants, aka variants, will become dominant.
How'd that happen?
How did one of them become dominant?
Just by being more viral, right?
In my example, the vaxxed or the unvaccinated person...
Which of these cases is there going to be more variants?
Well, I would say that the vaccinated person has less virus to begin with and less chance of spreading it.
So I would think there would be fewer variants if you got vaccinated.
I don't know that that's true.
I'm just saying that's where the logic takes it with the limited information I have.
So here's my question.
What would make the variant survive?
And I'm hearing things like, well, the old virus and the new variant are fighting it out, and one is compelled.
Nothing compels a virus.
If you have two viruses in you, they both would spread.
If you had the Delta, it spreads.
If you have the other one, it spreads.
So I can see why there would be more...
Well, actually, there's just no mechanism described here.
Now... Then other people use analogies.
But the analogies fall apart.
I'll give you one analogy that was used.
If you're trying to breed small dogs, let's say you kill all the big dogs and then you breed the small ones and then you do the same round again.
Whatever the largest puppies are, you kill all of them and then only small puppies grow up and then they have babies and they're small, right?
So that's the analogy.
So the virus would be like that.
No, it wouldn't, because the virus doesn't kill all puppies.
The virus doesn't kill all anything.
It just reduces it.
So the analogy would be, if you were trying to breed small puppies, you take all puppies and kill 10% of them.
How does that help?
So the analogy just falls apart, because there's always some difference in the analogy from the original, and it's a big difference.
So there's that. All right, so some of you in the comments are saying survival of the fittest.
How many of you in the comments think that survival of the fittest can explain why the big variants get out past the vaccines and the weaker ones don't?
Is it survival of the fittest?
Because that's the thing, right?
You've all studied evolution.
Survival of the fittest.
How many of you know that survival of the fittest is not science?
And that it's not evolution.
And that survival of the fittest doesn't exist.
How many of you know that?
How many of you know that the theory of evolution does not include survival of the fittest?
That's completely debunked.
How many of you knew that?
Somebody was about to say that.
And do you know who debunked it?
Stephen Jay Gould.
I think probably the top evolutionary biologist in the country.
I think he's passed away now.
But it's debunked by the top evolutionary evolution scientist and agreed by all of science.
There's nobody in the evolution field who thinks survival of the fittest is a thing.
Did you know that?
Because so many of you said, well, survival of the fittest.
You just apply it to the virus.
But it doesn't exist anywhere.
It's not a thing.
Most people think it is.
It's sort of like people believe that Trump said the Nazis were fine people.
People think that Trump said drink bleach.
It just didn't happen. None of those things happened.
And there's no such thing as survival of the fittest.
It doesn't exist.
Do you know what does exist instead?
Survival of things that didn't die.
It's a big difference.
So if you had a species that was just perfectly well-suited, but then let's say a tsunami kills everybody.
Was that group unfit?
No, they just had bad luck.
There was a tsunami. It got them all.
So there's luck, and there's survival of things that survived, but that's it.
There's just survival of things that survived.
So in the world of survival of things that survive, which is the whole explanation, just some things survive.
They get lucky. That's it.
No, it's not semantics.
It's not even close to just being semantics.
If you don't see the difference between survival of the fittest and survival of the random, you're missing a really big point.
I'm saying that the way we evolve is survival of the random.
It's not the fittest.
Sometimes it is, but it's a coincidence.
All right, um...
So it's not so much natural selection, it's just chance, would be a better way to say it.
It's just chance. So I don't see how chance can be part of the explanation.
But we are warned by Ian Martisis that there's a bigger risk called original antigenic sin.
How many of you have heard of that?
Raise your hands if you've ever heard of original antigenic sin.
I'm going to try to explain it, but forgive me because I don't understand this field well enough.
So I'll give you the dumb person's, you know, the idiot's definition.
It goes like this.
If your immune system has been trained against a particular attacker, let's say a virus, you have a kind of immunity memory.
And that immunity memory...
Could work against you as well as for you.
And the way it could work against you is that when a new virus comes in, a variant, let's say, your immune system says, oh, I know exactly what to do.
And it ramps up to fight the virus, but it's a different virus.
It's just one that's like it.
Now your immune system is all ramped up to fight the wrong thing.
It's actually working overtime on the wrong thing, because it said, I think that virus is a lot like that other one.
So it goes to work on the wrong virus...
And then the right one just has a clear channel.
Now, apparently that's a real thing which has happened in the past in different situations.
So just know that that's out there.
All right. I don't know what the size of that risk is, actually.
And that is what I wanted to talk about today.
I'm going to run and do something else.
And I hope you don't hate the persuasion lessons in the context of these boring topics like vaccinations and masks and stuff like that.
I think the persuasion stuff is interesting.
And if you don't, let me know.
But I think that you learn something when you see the persuasion element separate from the science.
