Episode 1479 Scott Adams: Let's Laugh at the Headlines and Learn Some Things About Persuasion at the Same Time
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
"Havana Syndrome" VP Harris
Biden Aug 31 deadline
China's birthrate problem
China in Afghanistan
China says COVID origin was US, Fort Detrick
Survival of the random...not survival of the fittest
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Hey everybody, good morning and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams.
Best time of the day, every single day.
And today is going to be a special one.
How special? Oh, wow.
I'm not even going to talk about masks and vaccinations until maybe, maybe the very end.
So if you love that stuff, I'm only going to talk about one point of logic.
But before then, let's enjoy the other stuff, the reason you come here.
We're talking about the funny news and the persuasion filter on it.
But all you need to make this an extra special day is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chals or stand, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid, and I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes, yeah, everything better, except the Afghanistan withdrawal.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. Ah, yeah, it's a little extra good today.
A little extra delicious.
Well, here's news.
Let's call this building block news.
Building block news.
It's news that by itself doesn't seem that big, but it's part of a larger structure.
And here's the news.
There's now the first autonomous shipping ship...
That's what they call them. It's a ship that ships things.
So that'd be a shipping ship.
You could call it a container ship if you like.
But it's electric. And it's unmanned.
Or, as we say, unpersoned.
And it's the first one.
So that you're going to monitor it remotely and this thing will use its electricity to go around in a very green way and not pollute the world.
Now, why is this a big deal?
Well, if container ships become electric and autonomous, and we're already seeing that there are plans in maybe a year or two to have the first electric commercial airliners.
So if you could get rid of carbon fuel on container ships and air travel, it's a pretty big deal.
It's a pretty big deal. So it's a little story that's part of a bigger story.
I do expect that all of our automobiles will be electric and autonomous fairly soon.
When you drive, have you noticed that the least important part of the car process is the human?
All of the error of an automobile is all built around the fact that people want to feel like they're driving.
Because you could easily get rid of that part and it would be much safer.
I mean, we're already at the place, pretty sure.
I think Elon Musk would probably agree with this statement.
Don't know. But I think we're already at the point where we could build autonomous cars that would be safer than human-driven cars.
Here's the thing that I think every time I'm driving and I'm using my navigation...
So I'm driving along and I'm thinking to myself, hey, look at me.
I'm in charge of driving my car with my free will and everything.
And then my GPS says, turn right at the next intersection.
And then I turn right because that's where I want to go.
That's why I set the GPS navigation for that.
But the car already knew it needed to take the right turn.
And the car knew where the right turn was.
In fact, the car knew where the right turn was before I did.
The only weakness in the system is me.
I have to listen to it and then execute.
If you could get me out of that, it's got to be a better system.
So I'm driving, but I'm thinking, I'm the just ridiculous part of this system.
If you looked at the whole system of buying a car, getting it on the highway, building highways, making this whole telecommun...
this whole transportation network...
The human part is the stupid part.
Like, you would never engineer that into your system.
But because we think we're special, we do.
So it's all going to be electric and autonomous soon.
Here is the best story in the news, but let's call it a sign of the times.
It's a sign of the times.
This is the actual headline on Fox News.
Woman banned from zoo after unhealthy relationship with chimp.
He loves me, she says.
And when they banned her, she was quite sad.
She says, it's all I have.
And she would visit the zoo on a very regular basis for years, and she thought that she had fallen in love with one of the chimps.
So one of the chimps would come over and they would blow kisses to each other and interact.
But the zoo thought that she was ruining the chimp.
She was making the chimp too much like a human, and it sort of ruined the chimp's interaction, and so they banned her from the zoo.
But that's not the big story.
Here's the big story.
If you're a man, don't you already have enough competition for human women?
I mean, it's hard enough.
If you're not that good looking, maybe your job isn't that good, it's really hard to get a girlfriend, get a wife.
And that's just competing against humans.
When you're competing against other human males, the bar is pretty low, right?
I mean, men kind of create...
You know, not really the highest standard in the world.
So competing against other men, I always think, well, I think I've got a shot against those other men.
But if I have to compete against chimps, too, can you imagine competing against a chimp?
You get a chimp, that thing is never going to talk back.
The woman will be like, and will the chimp say, oh, you know, the game's on?
No. No.
That chimp will just groom you and listen to your story.
You can complain all day and that chimp will just go...
or whatever chimps make.
So I'm very unhappy that I will someday have to compete possibly with chimps.
Have you ever had the experience of having an ex who changed sides after you were with him?
In other words, if you're a man, have you ever had a girlfriend who, after you dated her, she decided to become a lesbian?
I've had that experience.
In college, there was a young lady who was very inexperienced and wanted me to change that situation, and I did.
And after I changed that situation for her, she thought about it and she thought, you know...
I think I could just do women after this.
Now, I like to think it was going to happen anyway.
I'd like to think the natural arc of her life was she was born lesbian and she just needed to find out.
Once she found out, it was going to happen one way or another.
That's one explanation.
The other possibility...
Is it interacting with me was so bad?
She said to herself, I think I could go my whole life without doing this again.
So let's just say that wasn't my biggest success.
But I like to think it would have happened anyway.
Kamala Harris, her flight from Singapore was delayed because of Havana Syndrome.
Have you heard of it? Havana Syndrome.
Um... And that's where they speculate, the professionals do, that there's some kind of secret sonic weapon that some kind of rival or terrorist is shooting at embassies and making people sick.
It's hurting their brains in some horrible way.
And so now there's a report that this is happening in Singapore.
Now, what did I tell you about Havana Syndrome and the secret sonic weapon?
What was my prediction the first time we heard about this in Havana?
I told you it's not real.
That whatever it is, it's not going to be a secret sonic weapon.
I mean, it might be real damage, and it might be a real phenomenon of some sort, but I'll tell you what it's not.
A secret sonic weapon.
Now, if I'm wrong on this one, Nothing would make me more surprised.
And I like this prediction because I'm the only one.
I'm the only one with this prediction.
So how's my prediction doing that this story was always bullshit from moment one?
How's that prediction look?
Well, apparently there's another attack in Singapore.
So does that mean I'm wrong because these attacks keep happening?
Well, there's a little detail about this story that maybe you missed.
That the two people who had these anomalous health outcomes that is being called Havana Syndrome, turns out they were working at home.
That's right. The diplomats who had this secret sonic weapon attack them were in Singapore and working at home.
So apparently this terrorist who has the secret sonic weapon tracked them down at their homes just to zap them at home.
Because that's exactly what you would do if you were a terrorist and you had the wherewithal to take your secret sonic weapon and go all over the world.
It's been in Canada. It's been in Havana.
And now it's in Singapore.
So you've got the wherewithal to get into all of these countries with your secret sonic weapon...
And your best bet was to hunt people down one by one at their home office.
No. No.
It's not happening.
I don't know what's happening.
Maybe some kind of phenomenon for real.
But it's not a secret sonic weapon.
Can we just agree that we've debunked that now?
Because there's no terrorist with a secret sonic weapon who's hunting people down at their home office.
That's not happening.
All right. Somebody's saying it's a satellite.
I don't know about that. My favorite tweet of the day from Michael Malice.
If you don't follow Michael Malice on Twitter, you're missing some real good entertainment.
Those of you who follow him are probably already laughing.
The funny thing about him is that...
He doesn't take any prisoners.
He's got a point of view that's probably different from yours.
But, man, does he hold that point of view.
And he does a hilarious job of doing it.
But anyway, his tweet today was, quote, At this rate, Saddam Hussein will be back in power by Ramadan.
That's a pretty good tweet.
Pretty good tweet.
Saddam Hussein will be back in power by Ramadan.
All right. Let me surprise you by saying that Biden might be doing a really good job on persuasion with this Afghanistan thing.
Now, I'm not saying it's not botched.
It does look to me just like it looks to you and apparently everybody else in the world.
It looks like the Afghanistan withdrawal is botched, but that doesn't mean every single thing that Biden is doing is completely wrong.
Might be. We can find out every single thing he's doing is wrong.
But I'm going to point out one thing that you think is wrong.
The news is reporting it as a mistake.
But in my opinion, clearly isn't.
And it goes like this.
So I guess Biden is telling people, oh yeah, we'll get those Americans out by August 31st.
And at the same time he's saying that in public, apparently Congress was being briefed that that's not going to happen.
By Biden's own people.
So, what's happening?
Does Biden have dementia?
He's out of the loop, doesn't know what's happening.
So why is Biden saying, oh yeah, we'll get out of there by August 31st?
Well, all the people who know what they're talking about say, no, there's no way.
So is that a Biden mistake?
What do you think? Mistake?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Here's why I think he's playing it exactly right.
And I'll be even doubly offensive by saying, Trump might have done this.
Right? That's a big stretch, because we don't know what he would or would not have done.
But I feel this is very Trumpian, and I'll tell you why.
Because Biden is talking to the Taliban.
He's not talking to you.
When Biden talks to the Taliban, he says, yes, you've got a deadline.
We're absolutely going to meet that.
And what does that do to the Taliban?
Right? Makes the Taliban feel like they're getting what they want.
So are they going to be more or less flexible about letting people out between now and August 31st?
In theory, they would be more flexible because they're getting everything they want.
As soon as they stopped doing that, giving us everything they want, you'd kind of expect that Biden would have to stop being as accommodating.
So I have a feeling that Biden is talking to the Taliban, basically treating them with the respect they haven't earned, because it's going to make it easier to get our hostages out.
Hostages? Our Americans and Afghan allies.
It's easier to get them out if the Taliban thinks they're winning.
Now, as long as the news is correctly reporting, and Biden would have known this, Biden would have known that the news will tell the United States public it's not going to happen by August 31st.
It's kind of perfect.
Because you, the public, are completely informed.
There's no mystery here.
We're not going to get them out by August 31st.
Things just don't work that smoothly.
There's always going to be somebody left.
So you're getting the correct, accurate story.
And you're even getting it through the Biden administration because they briefed Congress and it wasn't secret.
So Congress immediately ran to their microphones and said, hey, the people who know what they're talking about say we can't do this.
So you got the accurate news.
That's good. You like accurate news.
And the Taliban got a different message.
They said, hey, the government of the United States is going to try to meet your deadline.
I feel like he nailed it.
I don't think this looks like a case of dementia to me.
This looks more like somebody playing two different games at the same time and winning both of them.
Now, I'm not saying that the withdrawal is a success.
It looks like it's a pretty botched situation.
But in that narrow sense, his two different messages at the same time to two different audiences, it looks spot on.
I think I might have even recommended it.
If I'd been there, I think I might have recommended he did it exactly that way.
I don't know. So we can't know for sure if that's why anything is happening, but it would be a lucky accident if they didn't do it intentionally.
The Taliban, meanwhile, is not only trying to hunt down people who helped the Americans, but...
In at least one case, and I feel there's a big risk there'll be more of this, killing the family members of the people they're looking for.
So if the family members won't give up the family member and tell you where they are, they kill the family members.
So if you're not trying hard enough to get out of Afghanistan with your whole family, maybe you ought to try harder.
And I suspect that there will be a number of Afghans, and this is just a horrible thought, There will be a number of Afghans who helped America who will either surrender and be killed, knowing that they'll be killed.
Let's get rid of Dr.
Johnson. He's just like my mascot.
Goodbye. He's like my biggest troll.
I have to ban him every day.
But I've got a feeling that you'll see Afghans either killing themselves or...
We're surrendering to be killed so that their families are not killed.
I mean, I can't imagine anything more horrible than what's going to happen after the Taliban takes complete control.
All right, in the category of Trump was right, one of my better predictions was that as days went by, Trump would look more right.
The history would give him a much better grade than the news was giving him while he was in office.
And here we go again.
The Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration in its attempt to end the Remain in Mexico program.
So Trump had that deal where the immigrants could be, the illegal immigrants could be kept in Mexico, Biden tried to end it, and the Supreme Court, I can't understand the details of this, but they basically kept it in place.
Now that doesn't mean it'll happen, does it?
Does that mean we'll actually go back to remain in place?
I feel like that's not going to happen, so I don't know if this story has any importance.
Because... I don't know.
I just don't see that you could force the government to do this if they don't want to do it.
I feel like Biden will have more options to not do it.
But... Supreme Court ruled with Trump...
And I think we can see that Trump was better on immigration, probably would have been better on Afghanistan, or we believe it.
You know, no way to know.
All right. Who predicted this?
All right, let's see how many of you years ago predicted this, that China's birth rate is so low that they've got a problem.
So you're...
Did anybody think that China would stop reproducing?
Now we know that China had that one-child policy where they were trying to stop overpopulation.
Did you ever think that China would go from trying to stop growth of population that's too much to having a crisis of too few?
Somebody says Musk predicted it.
But did he predict it 20 years ago is what I'm asking.
It's the 20 years ago that's the hard part.
I think everybody predicted it in the last five years.
Because the data showed it.
So now China is saying that you can have up to three kids and the Chinese women are saying, no thanks.
Hey, you can have three kids now.
No thanks. Now here's the thing.
Play this out to the future.
Let's say China becomes an increasingly crappy place to live and reproduce.
And let's say that the Chinese people don't have enough money in their economy that want three kids.
So let's say that China's demographic problem just keeps getting worse.
Compare that to the United States.
Now, I think the birth rate in a lot of industrialized countries is decreasing or going negative.
So if the United States did not have immigration, could it remain a top country?
I think the answer is no.
Because I think the United States would not have a birth rate that would support our dominant economic position into the future.
I'm talking 20, 30 years into the future.
And so, here's the question.
Does immigration, and the fact that the United States will always have some form of it, whereas China will probably not, is that a competitive advantage or disadvantage?
Go. Now, here I'm assuming that we control our immigration, so it's not just open borders.
I think we're going to go back to a better control.
But if the U.S. can bring in good people, or just people, just bodies, does that give us an advantage in the long run over China?
And I'd be interested.
I'm seeing advantage, disadvantage, yes.
I think China is doomed.
Unless they open their borders, and I don't see that happening.
Do you? And then here's the second part of this and the fun part.
As you know, we're in a long-term sort of a cold war with China, meaning that they're trying to persuade our public and they're trying to steal our digital assets and everything, sending us fentanyl.
So they're doing all these things.
I don't know what we're doing in return.
But I'll tell you what we could do in return...
We could persuade Chinese citizens to have fewer kids, and it would destroy China in 30 years.
Now, how hard would it be to persuade people to have fewer kids?
Not that hard.
In terms of things which you can and cannot persuade people to do...
That would be one you could.
Because we see that people are being persuaded mostly by their economic expectations.
So the reason that the Chinese women are saying no thanks on the three children is they don't think they can afford it.
They don't think the economy will allow them to easily have three children.
So could you persuade the population of China...
Through indirect means, you know, intel agencies, etc.
Could you persuade Chinese students or young Chinese people that it's a dumb idea to have three children?
Because you can't afford it.
Yeah, you could. As persuadable things, that's pretty persuadable.
Now, if you tried to tell them to have no children, good luck, right?
That would be working against their biology too hard.
You probably couldn't do that. But you could get people from three to two...
Pretty easily, right?
You just make it look like having three children is a frickin' nightmare, and having two is, yeah, you did your job.
You're a good person.
So yes, we could destroy China with persuasion about how many children they should have.
Completely doable. And we could start that today.
I mean, you know, it would be a long-term project, but you could destroy the whole economy by telling them to stop having kids.
All right. Years ago, I had the following idea for how to solve Afghanistan.
I don't remember if I ever said it publicly.
So if anybody ever heard me say it publicly, let me know.
And the idea looked like this.
You know that anybody who goes into Afghanistan is in trouble, right?
So Russia goes in, or the Soviet Union, and they get crushed.
They have to leave. The United States goes in, and it's a debacle.
Now China is looking to be the big influence.
That's what I always wanted to happen.
Will the Taliban operate as freely, let's say allowing terrorist bases and stuff, if China gets more of a grip on the country?
Because China, I don't think China's ambition is to just do business with the Taliban, is it?
I think China's ambition is to dominate Afghanistan.
So if Afghanistan is a long-range risk to the United States, what's the best way to control it?
Give it to China.
Because China will control the hell out of it.
Look at the Uyghurs.
It's not good.
I'm not suggesting this is moral or ethical.
But China...
Could exert enough control over Afghanistan with money and all of their various ways that eventually they would just be able to control whether Afghanistan had any terrorist camps.
One way or another. I mean, it might not be militarily.
They might just say, well, you know, we're going to stop supporting you financially unless you get rid of those camps, because they're a problem for us.
It's going to mess up our supply chain.
Because once China gets a supply chain from Afghanistan, let's say it's the rare minerals, they're not going to want to let go of that, and they're not going to want the Taliban to control it.
They're going to want to control it themselves.
So... John says, Scott is wrong on China.
How do you know? Can you see the future?
Did you know that China would have a population problem?
Did you know the Taliban would take over in weeks?
You didn't know any of that stuff.
You don't know I'm wrong on China.
You just know that I could be.
That's why you know. You don't know I'm wrong.
You just know I could be.
And even I think that. Even I think I could be wrong.
But... I don't see enough of a strategic advantage for China, except for the minerals, that maybe doesn't compensate for the fact that they might reduce terrorism there in a way that we couldn't or wouldn't, because they'd be more brutal about it.
So maybe we're safer if China controls them, because China is one risk, whereas China plus the Taliban breeding terrorists would be two risks.
So does it take one risk, or does it take two risks and turn it into one risk?
It could. What are the chances?
Not high. Not 100%.
But it could happen.
Rasmussen Polls asked, is the U.S. safer from terrorist attack than it was before 9-11?
What do you think? Are we safer from terrorist attack now or before 9-11?
Well, 51% say we're not any safer than before 9-11.
That's not good.
And 34% say, yes, we are safer.
I don't know that this is a question that anybody really can answer because it only takes one big terrorist attack to wipe out all the average of all the terrorist attacks for decades.
So I don't know if there's any such thing as an average risk.
I'm not sure the question makes complete sense, except in how people feel.
And half of the country feels that we're not any safer.
I don't know that they're wrong, are they?
But we've had, you know, knock on wood, an unusually good run without terrorism.
I have to think that the complete lack of personal privacy is what's stopping all the terror attacks.
Would you say that's true? Don't you think that your complete and total lack of privacy is why there have been no terror attacks?
I would love to see somebody who knows what they're talking about look into that, but it feels like there would just have to be terrorist attacks, like way more of them, unless we had so much control of information that we could see them before they start.
And I think that's where we're at.
I think... I'm seeing a little bit of disagreement on me.
What would be the other reason that there are no terrorist attacks?
I'm seeing lots of no's, especially on YouTube.
But what would be the other hypothesis?
Because you are not aware...
Oh, that there are attacks, but I'm not aware of them?
Maybe. Maybe there are more cyber attacks?
Maybe. Yeah, but the cyber attacks are different terrorists, right?
It's not like one morphed into the other.
Yeah, I don't see...
I can't think of any mechanism that would have stopped all the presumed terrorism between 9-11 and now, except for the complete lack of privacy.
And I remember during 9-11 when, you know, the privacy question became big, I always thought, there's no way it can go any other way.
You will lose all of your privacy because you'll prefer security.
Now, you didn't get a choice.
It just happened. But I feel like it might have been the right choice.
We'll never know. Because you don't know what attacks you prevented.
You only know what happened, not what didn't happen.
Have you seen the Trump video attack ad on Biden and his Afghan situation and his other problems?
Oh, my God.
Trump is back.
And it's brutal. If you haven't seen Trump's brand new video mocking Biden and attacking him for everything, it juxtaposes just horrible things about Afghanistan and bad decisions and bad predictions against every once in a while a show falling on the stairs walking up to the plane.
I mean, it's devastating.
So they'll show Biden messing up something or saying something dumb like Afghanistan will go smoothly a week before it doesn't.
And then they'll show him gaffing and they'll show him falling down on the stairs.
Oh, it's good.
It makes the case that he's not in his right mind and not capable really well.
He uses visual persuasion.
He uses humor.
It gets your attention, makes it viral.
And he uses fear.
What's better? And by the way, how do you put fear and humor in the same video?
He did it. Well, whoever made it did it, trumped into it himself.
But it's really good.
Like, just in persuasion.
So you can make your own judgment about whether it's fair or accurate.
But persuasion-wise, that's damn good.
All right. All right. Apparently there's a new report, Intel report, that says about the COVID origin.
We don't know where it came from.
Are you surprised about that?
When you heard that there was all this effort to find out the real origin of the coronavirus, or at least COVID-19, did you think they were going to find it?
Because I didn't.
I heard that and I thought, how the hell would you know where it came from?
It just doesn't seem doable, does it?
And then, sure enough, it wasn't done.
Now, I suppose if you had some kind of whistleblower, or can you do genetic testing to find out that the virus must have come from somewhere?
I don't know. To me, it just didn't seem possible when it started, and sure enough.
Apparently, China is pushing a pretty hard persuasion war, especially in their own country.
So within China, you're being told that the virus probably originated in the United States at Fort Kendrick.
And I guess there used to be some viral research there.
Not anymore. But the...
Well, I don't know if it's not anymore.
But anyway, China is using their control over their own media to tell their local population that, you know, probably derived from...
Is it Dietrich?
Yeah. Fort Dietrich.
So China is actually selling this story.
So if you live in China, the news you heard is that the coronavirus came from the United States, and specifically from that fort.
Now, if China is doing this to us, and just making up news like this, are we doing the same thing?
Can anybody tell me if our intel people are putting fake news into China?
I assume so, right?
But why don't we ever hear about that?
It's interesting. All right.
I have...
One analogy I would like to give you, this would be the point where the people who don't like hearing the persuasion or logic discussions that involve vaccinations, this is where you can turn it off.
But I'm not talking about whether you should get it or not.
The only question is, how do you explain that vaccinations might cause more variants?
And I asked that question and got all kinds of cognitive dissonance.
How do I know it's cognitive dissonance?
I don't know that every answer was cognitive dissonance.
I do know that almost all of the answers were cognitive dissonance because they were different.
And most of them made no sense.
It's really easy to see that it's cognitive dissonance.
But I try to come up with a way to make my point, and I'm going to test it out.
And I've told you many times that analogies don't replace reason, right?
So if I tried to make an argument with an analogy, you'd say to yourself, well, that's a bad argument.
You've said so yourself. So see what I'm doing here.
If I've told you analogies do not persuade, why am I going to use one?
Here it goes. If you shoot all the horses in one country...
Will it cause rabbits to evolve more quickly in a different country?
Go. What do you think?
If you shoot all the horses in one country that has no connection whatsoever to a separate country, would it make the rabbits in the second country evolve faster?
No. Because there's no causal connection whatsoever, right?
No way. But if you make a vaccination...
That works on both regular coronavirus, let's call it alpha, and the variant, delta.
It works on both of them, but it works a little better on the original.
Will that cause the delta or other variants to be more aggressive?
And is that exactly like shooting horses in one country causes rabbits to reproduce differently in a different country?
Well, here's the question.
If all the viruses were competing for resources, somebody says that's a terrible analogy.
Right. It's a terrible analogy, and here's the punchline.
It's the main reason people are arguing that the vaccinations cause more variants.
Right. That analogy is their reason.
I just changed the country and the animals.
So the argument is that if you suppress the one variant, it makes the other variant stronger.
How? How does it do that?
Now, that's the question I ask.
I'm asking, what's the mechanism?
Don't give me an analogy.
Tell me, well, the Delta variant and the Alpha variant, they have little fists.
This would be the mechanism.
They have little fists. And when they meet each other inside a body, they start punching.
And the Delta variant punches harder, so it knocks out that other variant.
And when it knocks it out, it has sex with it just before it dies and creates yet another variant.
Now, that would be a mechanism.
So that would be describing, in physical terms...
How it is that the vaccination may weaken that variant and then the other one would beat it up with its little fists and take over and have sex with it and then create another variant.
Now, that doesn't happen, but I'm looking for somebody to describe physically how a vaccination that works well on the alpha could have any impact on the delta.
Now, the best that anybody's come up with, and it's only a few people, is that the Delta wouldn't have any food because people would get infected with the other one, and then the Delta would be, oh, I can't go anywhere because everybody got infected with the other one, and that's close enough so I can't get a foothold.
But that's not the reason.
There's still... So many people can get infected, including people who are vaccinated, that...
Every variant has plenty of food and plenty of places to go.
So my horse and rabbit analogy is pretty close.
You shouldn't make decisions on analogies.
That's still true. But my analogy was to point out the absurdity of the other analogies.
When you heard my analogy, you said to yourself, well, that's stupid because it has nothing to do with viruses.
That is the point. The analogies are all stupid, and they have nothing to do with viruses.
If you're thinking in terms of an analogy, you don't know the mechanism.
Because the analogy doesn't tell you, well, they have little fists.
It just tells you something happened analogously to something else.
No mechanism noted. So, this is my current thinking.
It might be true that if...
Your vaccination works better on the original virus.
It would suppress it more.
And then the delta, there would be more of them.
Is that a case of it being caused?
Or did you just make one of them less?
Let's say you have 100 jelly beans that are red and 100 jelly beans that are blue.
And you eat all the red ones.
Did that promote the growth of blue ones?
No. No.
You just ate the red ones.
So if the vaccination eats all of the old virus, you know, the original coronavirus, did it have any effect on the Delta?
No. It was just doing other things.
As long as everybody has enough hosts and food, and that's the case, because vaccinated people still get both viruses.
So there's plenty of hosts, there's plenty of food.
Every virus should grow as fast as it wants to.
I don't see how vaccinations make any difference.
Scott is really reaching today.
So that's a cognitive dissonance.
Actually, let me read some of the cognitive dissonance in the comments.
I'll tell you how to spot it.
It lowers the number of replicating virus.
What's your reason, though?
What's the mechanism? Yes, because the vaccine allows asymptomatic to spread and people don't realize it.
That is not a reason.
Let's see if over on YouTube.
If both jelly beans are reproducing all of one color, the other color will have more of it.
Right. But it wasn't caused by anything.
It was just two independent things.
The vaccines are about profit, but that doesn't explain it.
Does anybody here see anything that looks like pushback on my point?
Because I don't.
I haven't seen it yet. The receptors are blocked by the alpha variant.
The receptors are blocked.
So you're telling me that if somebody gets the alpha, then they can't get the variant.
So basically you're saying that the original virus acts like a vaccine against the variant...
Except that that only matters if the variant doesn't have enough food.
And it does. Because the variant will spread whether you're vaccinated or not, right?
So as long as there's plenty of food, they're both going to spread.
Anyway, that's my whole point.
I saved it to the end so all of you can bail out if you don't like that kind of thinking.
Scott, we need you to recommend where we learn about Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Where to learn about it?
So let's say you have no knowledge whatsoever about cryptocurrency.
Let me give you some knowledge right now.
Well, I could give you a micro lesson on crypto, but maybe I should do that separately.
At one point I did a micro lesson on crypto, and I'll probably do another one.
That's a good idea. It's just survival of the fittest, somebody says.
Any vaccine that doesn't stop the spread entirely will allow a surviving virus to reproduce.
Now that's definitely not right.
But thank you for the $10 to say it.
Do you understand that there's no such thing as survival of the fittest?
That that's a hoax?
Not really a hoax, but...
How many people here think survival of the fittest is actually a scientific thing?
It's not. When you were a kid it was.
They thought survival of the fittest was actually how evolution works.
But now we know it's not.
Yeah, it's survival of the random.
There is no survival of the fittest in the biological animal world.
Kingdom. That's not a thing.
We used to think it was.
Yeah, Stephen Jay Gould was the top biological scientist who told us that.
So if your argument depends on survival of the fittest, just know that it depends on something that doesn't exist.
And I would say that 90% of the people who are looking at this virus question are saying, well, it's obvious.
Survival of the fittest.
Just apply it to the virus.
Except survival of the fist doesn't exist anywhere.
So applying it to the virus takes something that doesn't exist and you're substituting the thing that doesn't exist as your reasoning.
Natural selection is basically randomness.
How can we tell if we have a variant of randomness?
Apparently you can't tell if you get tested.
There has to be some genetic testing.
You're applying a statistical tool to individuals.
Okay. Random selection.
Yes, it's random selection.
Now, how many people...
So Scott's a creationist.
I'm a simulated world guy.
So I don't know that we are a simulation, that this reality is a computer simulation, but like Elon Musk, I agree that the math says it almost certainly is.
So you don't know for sure, but almost certainly, because the math and statistics of it pretty much guarantee it.
It comes close to guaranteeing it.
How many people...
Let me ask you this question. How many people who are watching this believed that they understood evolution because they knew what survival of the fittest was all about and just learned that it's not a thing?
How many people just learned that?
Will people with natural immunity be forced to get yearly jabs?
Maybe. There's a good chance.
Apparently the Pfizer booster is really good.
So the booster doesn't just take you back to where you were.
It takes you back to many times better than if you only had two in the first place.
So the booster of one of the shots, I forget which one, was a J&J. It's just really, really useful.
Scott, were you on prednisone when you got your Moderna?
No, I was off prednisone for over a year.
Yeah, which booster was a J&J? I forget.
It wasn't Moderna.
I think it was J&J. Never believed survival of the fittest, otherwise dinosaurs would still be around.
That's not true. Because there were some environmental things that killed the dinosaurs.
What are your opinions on Steve Bannon?
Well, he's obviously, you know, his program, his podcast is very successful.
He makes a big dent.
I would say he has a pretty big influence on the popular culture.
