Episode 1493 Scott Adams: I'll Tell you Who is Being Persuasive and Who is Not, In the News Today
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Content:
Ellen Barkin's CIS dis
3 things we learned in the past year
CNN on Texas new voting law
Dr. Tony Moore's epic persuasion failure
CDC: Vaccinate even if COVID recovered
Whiteboard: Decisions With Multiple Unknowns
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Again, one of the best things that's ever happened to you in your whole life.
And I will die on that hill.
And if you'd like to take it up a notch, you probably do.
Um, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, a chalice, or a steinac, ant, a jog, or a flask.
A vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Mmm, I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better except ivermectin.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go! I saw an interesting comment just moments before I went live here.
From Ian, who says, I wonder if we would be in the same situation if Trump had not become the thing that the media lied about.
So Trump not only exposed the media for being fake news, but by his existence, he probably created more of it.
Because they were after him so hard, they just started making up stuff like, oh, he says drink bleach, or...
Neo-Nazis are fine people.
Now, most of you watching this know that those never happened.
Those were hoaxes. But if the media keeps selling you hoaxes, and then a pandemic comes, and the only way that you know what to do is because the media told you what is true and what is false, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
And I wonder if the media is not killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Well, let's go to another topic.
Ellen Barkin, famous aging actress Ellen Barkin, tweeted, What is the expiration date for cis white males?
What?
What is the expiration date for a demographic group?
Shouldn't we be a little worried about that kind of language?
Is the group that I belong to have an expiration date?
As in, I'm not allowed to be a member of society?
What exactly does it mean if I expire?
Can I be shot?
Jailed? Executed?
What's it mean? Well, Glenn Greenwald was not about to let that go, and so he tweeted about her tweet.
It's utter madness that discourse like this is acceptable and even celebrated rather than resulting in instant shunning.
Now, interesting that he used shunning instead of canceling.
I don't think he's a big fan of cancellation, but, you know, individuals can shun.
And then he adds this note.
He goes, moreover, famous, straight, rich, white women...
She literally is or was married to a billionaire and was a famous actress, right?
So that's her situation.
Famous, straight, rich, white women somehow concocts a definition of the privileged class that excludes her.
How in the world did she not find herself in the privileged class that's annoying the rest of the world?
Now, here's a question for you.
How many of you know what cis, white male, even means?
C-I-S. In the comments, tell me how many of you don't even know what that means.
So, yes or no?
No means you don't know what it means.
Look at all the no's.
A lot of yes's, but a lot of no's.
Now, isn't it a word that's been in the news for quite some time?
It has been, right? Do you know when I learned what it means?
I was today years old when I learned what it means.
I looked it up just before I came on.
Now, I always knew what it meant in context.
Yeah, it was just your generic, basically a generic person who was...
The actual definition is somebody who was born the same gender that they present themselves as.
I mean, I think I'm botching the definition a little bit, but basically it's somebody who was born in the gender that they recognize as their current gender.
So I guess it's some...
I thought the CIS stood for something, but it's just some Latin derivation, I guess.
And anyway, just the fact that that word exists is kind of an eyebrow raiser.
But yeah, so there are people who can actually say on Twitter that an entire demographic group, of which I am a member, maybe needs to be expired.
And we're okay with that.
That's okay. I guess you can say that in public.
Wow. Here's three things we learned in the past year.
Number one, if you don't look for a problem, logically, it does not exist.
Now, I read this again...
On CNN's page, today, even today, literally today, an opinion piece says that the courts didn't find any fraud, therefore, logically, it doesn't exist.
Now, is it the job of a court?
Are they designed to find fraud that nobody has brought to their attention?
Nope. Number two, the things we've learned this past year, do your own research, leads to at least some people eating horse pills and snurfing bleach and then dying.
Of course, I'm being hyperbolic and all that.
But my point is that doing your own research, have we proven now that that was never a real thing?
I mean, you could try it, but haven't we proven that people can't do that?
Who was the first person you ever heard tell you that doing your own research is the dumbest fucking thing anybody ever thought of?
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't people who can't get the right answer, but they don't know they have the right answer.
It's luck. You can't do your own research.
That's not a thing.
It's not a thing even close to a thing.
It's not even in the realm of the zip code Of a universe in which that's a thing.
You can't do your own research.
You're not smart enough.
Do you know who else can't do their own research on, let's say, medical stuff?
Doctors. Because they're not coming to the same conclusion.
If they all came to the same conclusion, we'd either all like ivermectin or not like ivermectin.
But we'd be on the same page.
The fact that even doctors disagree whether ivermectin works or is proven to work or is a good risk management thing to do, if the doctors can't figure it out, what the hell are you going to do?
And you say to yourself, well, Scott, Scott, Scott, 95% of doctors are on the same side.
So clearly they can do it on average, and clearly they came to the right answer.
Oh, really? Is that what happened?
Do you think all 95% of those doctors did their own research?
No. Some probably did.
The rest of them just listened to what the other doctors were saying.
Said the same thing.
Just like every other profession.
All right. Number three, things we learned.
It's a coincidence that Total coincidence.
That every public health policy is also good for big pharma.
I don't know. It's just a coincidence.
How many boosters do you need?
Unlimited. Maybe for the rest of your life.
Is it a coincidence?
It looks like it, right?
I mean, I can't connect any dots and tell you it's not a coincidence.
But it's a pretty big one.
Pretty big one. Alright.
There's a story coming out today, I saw it in the Daily Mail, that there are anonymous Biden staffers who claim that when Biden is on TV talking, they will turn down the sound because it makes them too anxious to Thinking that Biden will say the wrong thing.
He'll either gaffe or he'll take questions when he's not supposed to take questions.
Do you think that's true?
It's in the news.
It's in the news. Anonymous staffers say they sometimes will turn off the sound because it's too cringy to watch their boss talk.
True? Not true.
All right, let's try this test.
If you saw this story about Trump...
Would you believe it? Would you believe it if you heard it about Trump?
Anonymous staffer says something behind his back.
Would you believe it?
No, you wouldn't. If it was your president, and I'm just saying that because I think most of my audience was or is Trump supporters, if you heard that about Trump, you wouldn't believe it.
So why would you apply a different standard to Biden?
Well, confirmation bias, right?
You think to yourself, well, if it's Biden, they probably do think that.
Yeah, if it's Biden, they probably do turn off the sound.
Maybe. Here's what is most likely.
Probably somebody said it.
Probably the number of people who do it is that one person who said it, or maybe the one person who said it heard about one person who did it.
And it probably wasn't a high-level staffer.
We're not talking about the chief of staff turning off the sound.
Right? That didn't happen.
So it might be, like, slightly, slightly tiny true for one person who talked to one reporter.
But no, this is bullshit.
Right? Shoe on the other foot.
If this were Trump, you wouldn't believe it for a second.
Anonymous internal sources.
Yeah, don't believe it for a second.
Could it be true? Yeah, it could be.
It could be true. It's not credible.
But it could be true. Texas passed their voting law, new voting laws.
Of course, the critics say it's trying to make it harder for minorities to vote.
But here's what we know.
Abbott, Governor Abbott of Texas, and other lawmakers, they argue that the new rules will make it easier to vote.
So they're not trying to restrict voting.
They say they're trying to make it easier.
And one of the ways they're doing that is by expanding the required early voting hours in the state.
So how can you argue with that?
Expanding the number of hours to vote, does that restrict voting?
Or does it give you more time to vote for everybody?
Oh, that's just one version of the story.
You want to hear the other version?
This is on CNN too.
So they're increasing the early voting in general.
But some places already had more early voting than that.
So the places who already had overnight voting have to reduce to get back to the standard, and all the places that didn't have early voting, or as much of it, have to increase to reach the standard.
So, is this a clever trick by the Republicans to...
because let's say that they know the populous areas are where there's more minorities, and it's making it harder to vote there...
But easier to vote in your white areas.
Is that what's happening? Because if it is, critics have a point, don't they?
Well, let me put this rule out there for you.
Nobody is ever going to make a voting change that works against their party.
Are we done? Are we done?
There's nothing else to say.
No politician will ever make any changes to the election process unless they believe it's good for their party.
Does it matter that it might also make sense in some logical way of reducing fraud?
Well, it matters.
But it's not why they do it.
Do you think if the Republicans were easily getting elected with the current system...
And they thought that that would continue.
Do you think they'd be all about fixing the system?
No. Hello, Dr.
Johnson, and goodbye.
I'll hide you on this channel.
Anyway. So when I look at how CNN has covered this, it is almost as if they don't want you to understand the topic.
Right? Let me read these two sentences again.
You tell me, does CNN want you to understand the topic or to accept uncritically That it's racist.
Which are they doing here?
Read the two sentences again.
Abbott and other lawmakers argue the new rules will make it easier to vote by expanding the required early voting hours in the state.
And then they say, but critics point to the reduction in early voting hours in some of the state's most populous areas, which will now be prohibited from allowing overnight early voting.
So those are two points of view that are opposites.
Doesn't CNN owe us a little bit of a solution?
As in, a little bit more analysis that says which of these views is correct?
All they did is simply tell us what other people think.
Is there no objective truth here?
Is it purely opinion?
And once you've said what the two opinions are, you're done.
This is a news organization.
Shouldn't a news organization say there are two opinions and let us fact check those two opinions?
Nope. No fact-checking.
Just shows you the opinions.
Why would they show you the opinions without the fact-checking?
Well, for the same reason that any political party will only make choices about changing the election that help them, CNN will also only do things that help CNN. And CNN doesn't want you to see clearly, apparently, Does not want you to clearly know what the Texas law is and is not.
They don't want you to know.
Does Fox? Does Fox News want you to know exactly what the law is and why some say it's racist and really sort of dig into that?
I doubt it. I think they want to wave their hands at it and get their audience assuming that it's a good thing.
And CNN wants to wave their hands at it and get their audience to assume it's a bad thing without anybody digging into it to say why it's good or why it's bad.
All right. So it's all illegitimate.
Here's some news on the infrastructure plan.
If you'd like, you can record this and just replay it every day.
Well, it looks like there's going to be some trouble getting the infrastructure plan passed through Congress.
Do you know what the news on this will be tomorrow?
Well, it looks like there's some trouble getting the infrastructure built through Congress.
How about the week after?
Two weeks after, three months later?
Well, looks like there's trouble getting the infrastructure built through Congress.
Just guessing. Well, Matt Walsh was trending today.
I guess we could call him conservative writer or commentator.
Would that be a fair description?
I don't like to describe people...
In words that they don't use to describe themselves, but just so you know who I'm talking about.
And he tweeted this.
I guess there's some controversy that he's following up on.
He said, yes, I said that I don't like female analysts and reporters in football.
No, I don't care if that upsets you.
No, I don't apologize.
Yes, I think women are feminizing traditionally male spaces.
Yes, I think that's bad.
Yes, I'm right.
No, your whining doesn't change any of this.
And, of course, he's trending because women said he was being terribly, terribly sexist.
And why can't women have jobs in sports, in men's sports in particular?
Now, personally, I do not watch brain damage as entertainment.
And football and boxing are basically brain damage packaged as entertainment.
It's a little bit of hyperbole, but not too much.
So I don't really watch it.
I don't care. I don't care who's broadcasting it, especially with all the kneeling and stuff.
I really don't care about football at all.
But if I were a fan, I'm pretty sure I would want the commentators to have experience playing football.
Wouldn't you? I would think.
Now, clearly there are people who...
men... Who do comment on sports with which they're not terribly familiar because they didn't play it.
That's a thing. But I would say the same thing about the men.
All things being equal...
Wouldn't it be better if the sportscasters had experience with the game they're sportscasting?
Now, they have color commentary to help them out on that, so it plugs the gap a little bit.
But I would think you'd want experienced people, people who have at least played it in high school or something.
They know how it feels.
Somebody mentioned... Bob Costa, because he's like 5'6 or something, and said, well, he probably didn't play football.
To which I say, no, if he was a boy in America, he almost certainly played football, at least during gym class and stuff.
I don't know any males in America who haven't played football, if they're that age.
I suppose things might have changed.
Is there any... Let's see in the comments.
Let's say people over 40.
If you're over 40 and male, is there anybody who's over 40 and male who has never played football?
You know, not even a pickup game?
Oh, yeah, some people say, I've never played football.
So it does exist.
But it's kind of rare, I think.
Somebody says, I'm 46 and not once.
Huh. Yeah, I would think, yeah, of course I played football.
I mean, pickup games.
Pickup games without padding.
And we played tackle when I was a kid.
We played tackle football without padding, without helmets.
I thought everybody did.
We weren't very smart.
Rasmussen Pohl says that 77% of the people polled say they would get a booster shot, which surprises me.
I would think that would be closer to 100%.
Because it seems to me that once you've committed yourself to the vaccination path, I feel like your brain would talk you into being consistent with your last decision.
So I'm actually surprised that it's only 77%.
And maybe it's, of course, could be skewed by people who did not get the vaccination answering it too, I suppose.
But Anyway, that seemed low to me.
Now, it seemed low not because of whether you should get a booster or not.
That's not the point. It seemed low because, in terms of psychology, people like to be consistent.
And 77% is pretty big, but I would have thought it would be 90-95% would have been where my best guess would have been.
Well, over in the Philippines, police have killed four Chinese nationals.
In a sting operation because the Chinese were bringing in half a ton of meth.
Do you know how much damage you can do with half a ton of meth?
Because it doesn't take much meth to get you going.
Half a ton. They brought it to the Philippines.
So the Philippine police killed them.
I don't know the details of that.
Um... But I'd like to see more killing of Chinese dealers.
And I'll say again, I think we have the moral and legal right to kill Chinese fentanyl dealers in China, like in their house.
I think we have the moral and complete legal authority to do that.
Now, you could argue, blah, blah, blah, that it's illegal.
I just don't want to hear it.
Because it's just self-defense.
There isn't really any argument against self-defense.
I'm sorry, there's no argument against self-defense.
And killing Chinese dealers whose names we know, whose addresses we know.
We know their names and addresses of the actual dealers in China.
And we should kill them right where they sleep.
It doesn't have to look like murder.
I mean, it could look like a fentanyl overdose, for example.
Right? It doesn't have to look like murder.
But they should be dropping like flies at this point.
Now, would this cause Chinese intelligence agencies to start killing Americans?
Maybe. It's still worth doing.
Because they're not going to kill 94,000 Americans to get even if we kill one dealer, or three or four.
They might kill three or four people we don't want to be killed...
But we're talking about trying to reduce tens of thousands of fentanyl deaths a year.
Now, you could argue, oh, Scott, if you stop the Chinese fentanyl, somebody else will just jump in and make it, the cartels will figure out how to make it themselves, something like that.
Yeah, maybe. But they're going to need those precursors, the command of China.
So I would say we need to normalize the idea that we should be killing Chinese citizens on Chinese soil, If they're mass murderers of Americans.
And that means they're dealers of fentanyl.
And I wouldn't worry about it one bit.
I wouldn't worry about the Chinese reaction for one second.
Because the problem is so huge that you need to kill people to stop it.
You just need to kill people.
You need to kill the dealers, specifically.
Yeah. I'm not talking about the little dealers that sell little, you know, out of high school or something.
All right, Joe Biden was talking about tornadoes the other day, and he says they don't call them that anymore.
Have you heard of the new name for tornadoes?
I haven't. I have some ideas.
We should call them windnommies.
Maybe bloicanes.
Bloicanes? About...
Yeah. All right.
So enough of that. Dr.
Tony Moore tweeted this about ivermectin.
So he's a doctor. So listen to him because he's a doctor.
But we're going to analyze his persuasiveness, right?
So, in the following discussion, I am not concerned with whether ivermectin works or does not work.
I'm only going to talk about his persuasiveness, okay?
And he says, the ivermectin nonsense must stop, okay?
Already a persuasion mistake.
What is the persuasion mistake in the first five words?
The ivermectin nonsense must stop.
He's not pacing.
The people he's trying to convince don't think it's nonsense, okay?
So if you start with calling it nonsense, you've already backed them into a corner, you've put the defensive shield up, you're done.
You don't even need to write the rest of it.
Because there's nothing that can happen well after you say the ivermectin nonsense.
As soon as you've dismissed other people's opinions as nonsense, they're going to stop listening to you.
So he goes on, he goes, it is literally killing people.
Those who have been peddling false claims...
Wait, is it literally killing people?
From the overdose? I don't know that the ivermectin is, but possibly the lack of vaccinations might be what he's referring to.
So I'm going to give him that one, if he means lack of vaccinations.
And he says, those who have been peddling false claims of its enormous benefit when the evidence is stating the complete opposite must be pressured by the media to explain their ludicrous claims.
Alright, here's the other problem.
He says that the evidence is stating the complete opposite.
Does it? In the comments.
Is that a statement? Does it ring as true to you?
Alright, this is subjective.
But does it ring true to you that the evidence on ivermectin is the complete opposite?
Meaning that the evidence completely shows it doesn't work.
Completely. How many of you agree with that statement?
None, basically. I'm looking at the comments going by.
Basically none. So pretty much none of you agree with that statement.
Okay? That is a persuasion failure of epic proportions.
Because in order to convince you, and you're the ones that need to be convinced, because there are probably more doubters here than in other places, he has to pace you.
He has to find a way to agree with you first, and then you say to yourself, oh, this is a person who agrees with me.
So far, so good.
And then, once you get them to agree with you, you might be able to nudge them somewhere.
But until they know you're on the same side, they're not going anywhere.
So if you start out with ivermectin nonsense, you just took a team, and you guaranteed that the people you're trying to persuade won't listen to you.
Guaranteed it. Right there.
Now, let me... So saying that the evidence is stating the complete opposite makes you look like a liar, even if you're right.
So remember, persuasion is not about what's true.
It's about persuading people.
And this doctor could be completely right that there's just nothing to ivermectin.
But if he's insulting people and telling them that everything they believe is wrong, he's not going to get any persuasion.
Here's what he should have done.
Let's say I wanted to persuade you to not take ivermectin.
I don't want to persuade you of that, by the way, because I'm not a doctor.
So I'm not going to persuade you to take it or not to take it.
And nothing I say here should be construed as that, right?
That's a doctor problem. Talk to your doctor, not me.
But if I wanted to persuade you, here's how I'd do it.
I would say there are lots of studies that show ivermectin works.
That's pacing. Because you believe that to be true, right?
I'm not saying it's true.
I'm talking about persuasion.
You believe it's true that there are lots of randomized, controlled trials, 31 of them, actually, that indicate ivermectin works, plus a whole bunch of observational trials that collectively say it works.
That's what you believe to be true, right?
Now, whether or not that's true, here's how you would approach somebody who believes that's true.
You go like this. There are, as you know, dozens, dozens of randomized controlled trials that indicate ivermectin works.
That's how you start.
Because everybody here just says, okay, okay, that's true.
Now, I'm not saying it's true.
I'm saying that's how I would try to persuade you.
I would tell you it's true because you think it's true.
It might be true. Might not be true, but that's not relevant here.
You think it's true, so therefore it's good persuasion.
Then I would say, once I had you on my team, yeah, we're on the same team.
We know that there's all these studies.
And then I'd say, but did you know that if you remove the low-quality studies from that group, it reverses the outcome?
How'd that feel? How'd that feel?
How'd that feel? When I agreed with you completely that these studies exist, and you said, yeah, yeah, now we're on the same page, but then I added something that maybe you didn't know, that if you remove the low-quality studies from that group, it reverses the outcome.
How many of you knew that?
Now, that would persuade you, wouldn't it?
In the comments, and forget about what's true for a moment, okay?
Again, we're only talking persuasion.
So it doesn't matter if it's true that removing those studies reverses it.
I think it's true, but it doesn't matter to the point, right?
And I think it's true that there are lots of randomized controlled trials.
I think all those things are true.
What is low quality, somebody says.
Yes, what is low quality?
Well, low quality would be, among other things, a low number of people in the trial.
Or something about the controls that weren't as perfect as they could have been.
Maybe it's not as blind as it should have been, for example.
So it would be a variety of things, but people who understand this world could fairly easily pick out the low-quality studies.
I think Andres has done that backhouse.
So it's something that an economist could do.
Somebody who knows studies and statistics could just look at them and say, yeah, I think I'd pick these ones out.
Now... Would that make it a subjective process as opposed to science?
Yes. Yes.
If you're using your judgment to decide what studies are credible, I'm not sure that's science, is it?
I mean, it's not illogical.
But it's not exactly science.
It's a little bit judgy.
Now, I'm not saying judgment is wrong.
I always support, for example, doctors using their judgment about what to prescribe, even if that judgment disagrees with the mainstream recommendations.
So, I think you can be judgy.
That's fine. You don't always have access to perfect information, so you have to make your call.
Anyway, that would be more persuasive.
Speaking of persuasion, the CDC has a video trying to persuade you to get a vaccination if you've recovered from COVID. In the comments, how many of you think it's a good idea...
Forget about the fact that you need vaccinations to travel and stuff like that.
Assume that nobody would care.
Do you think it's medically...
A good idea to get a vaccination if you've already recovered.
In the comments, you're not doctors, so it's just your opinion.
Almost all knows, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
Everybody thinks it's a bad idea.
So when the CDC says, yes, you do need it, and they say the reason is this, because we don't know how long natural immunity lasts.
Did that persuade you?
So I'm adding some new information.
You believe that natural immunity lasts, otherwise your answers would not look like this, right?
The reason that almost all of you, I think every one of you that's answering this right now, I think every one of you is saying you don't want the vaccination if you've already recovered.
But suppose it was true, and I don't know if it's true, but suppose it's true that the smartest people don't know if that immunity will last.
Would that change your mind?
Depends on the timing, but the point is that we don't know the timing.
We don't know if it's going to last a week or a month or a year.
Well, here's the problem.
You know enough to know that nobody's natural immunity has run out yet.
Right? Is there even one example of somebody whose natural immunity just expired?
Unless they had some kind of special medical problem.
I don't know. It seems to me we've gone a year or so, and people still have pretty good antibodies.
Am I wrong about that?
I'm not trying to spread misinformation, so fact-check me if that's wrong.
So here's the problem.
It's exactly the same problem as the last example.
The CDC is not pacing you first.
They're not pacing you first.
They're telling you something that you don't believe is true, and they're not really giving you a counterargument, because the uncertainty argument applies to everything.
Do you know what else the CDC doesn't know?
If you wait two years after you get vaccinated, if a problem could pop up in two years, do they know that?
No, of course not. They can't know it, because it hasn't been two years.
They wouldn't even be able to observe it.
So when they tell you that you should make a decision because there's one thing that's uncertain, but they don't mention that all of the other things are uncertain too, it's all uncertain.
You just look like a liar.
If you say one thing's uncertain when it's obvious that all the things are uncertain, you just look like a frickin' liar.
Right? You would lose all credibility if you're only treating one variable as uncertain when they're all uncertain.
Right? So it's a terrible argument.
A terrible argument. What would be the better argument?
I don't know.
Because I don't know of a good argument for this.
I guess the best argument would be extra is better.
Now, if the science shows that natural immunity plus vaccination gives you the maximum amount of antibodies, and I think it does, right?
Fact check me on that, but I think it does.
That's the argument. More antibodies is better.
That's it. All right, let's say I said to you, the higher your antibodies, the less problem you're going to have if you get the COVID, and you're definitely going to get COVID. All right?
How many of you think you're definitely going to get COVID, even if you're vaccinated?
Because it's just going to be around forever, right?
All right. Yeah.
Most of you think you're going to get COVID. I'm watching the responses now.
So the first thing you do, if you're the CDC, and I'm trying to convince you, I'd say, you're probably going to get COVID. And then what's your first reaction to that?
Oh, thank you. You're finally being honest.
I'm probably going to get COVID. That's exactly what I think.
Doesn't mean it's true. Remember, we're talking about persuasion, not truth.
So now they have you.
So now you've paced them.
You're probably going to get COVID. Now, you have two possibilities.
You can get COVID with high antibodies or COVID with low antibodies.
Those are really two choices. The CDC says you should get the highest antibodies you can to make your odds the best.
How's that argument? The higher your antibodies, the better you will do, and you're definitely going to get COVID. That's not bad, is it?
Judge my persuasion.
It doesn't mean it convinced you, but just judge it.
It's not the same antibodies, somebody says, but both are their additive.
Okay, so I see some people are great.
Now, my larger point is that the doctors and the scientists are terrible at persuasion.
Just terrible. And it's really hurting us.
I think the country is...
I think it's killing people.
I think the inability of scientists and medical people to persuade with correct form...
Correct form.
What I'm teaching you is not a natural ability...
It's form, pace, and then lead.
It's just really basic stuff.
So they need to learn that stuff.
Here's the other big problem that I think the public is dealing with, and the doctors and scientists are doing a terrible job of sorting it out.
Yes, we're going to the whiteboard.
Going to the whiteboard.
All right, so this is the part where some of you will bail out, but you're going to wish you didn't.
You're going to wish you didn't.
All right. How do you make decisions when there are so many unknowns?
What do you do? Well, it's tough.
I'm going to give you some little rules about how to make a decision with many unknowns.
This is not to persuade you.
It's how to make a decision with unknowns.
See you, Hunter. Hunter, I think you would be happier to see this one.
You should probably stay for this one.
All right, here's the idea. Let's say there's vaccination risk and there's unvaccinated risk.
If you get vaccinated, the odds of having a bad side effect is probably less than 1%.
It's probably way less than 1%.
But would everybody agree it's less than 1%?
Based on what we know.
Not based on what we don't know, because everything's possible.
But based on what we know, side effects usually happen early.
So the longer you wait, the less chance there's going to be any more of them.
But would you say less than 1%?
All right, let's just go with it for now.
The odds of getting COVID and dying, if you're vaccinated, is also way under 1%.
It's like way under 1%.
Likewise, the unvaccinated risk, what is the risk of long haul?
Don't know. I'm not even sure it's real.
Are you? I mean, the risk of long haul COVID might be zero.
But it might be 25%.
That's the range we've actually seen.
I don't know if anybody's going over 25.
I saw some 30.
But I think 25 to zero is the range of uncertainty.
I think zero is pretty unlikely.
But 25% seems unlikely to, so it's probably somewhere in the middle of that range.
Just guessing. All right, so let's say you accept this.
I'm just working through the logic of decision-making.
You can put in your own numbers later, but wait for the big reveal.
There's a point that I'm working up to, and if you haven't heard it yet, it's worth it.
What are the odds of, if you're unvaccinated, what are the odds of getting COVID and just dying?
Well, let's say it's less than 1% because you're not an old person and you don't have too many comorbidities.
All right, here's my tip.
Ignore everything under 1%.
Because we confuse group risk with individual risk.
This is the big point.
When... When the government is trying to do its job, which type of risk does it look at?
Individual risk or group risk?
It has to look at group risk.
Because if you're the president and you cause 1% of your public to die and you lose 3.6 million people that maybe didn't need to die, you're fired.
You're very fired.
But, if you individually, as just an individual, decide to take a chance, a 1 in 100 chance, you know, something will go wrong, and you decide to take that chance, and then let's say something goes wrong and you die, you're still thinking you lived the life you wanted to, and there aren't many of you.
So, here is my advice to you.
Everything under 1%, act like it doesn't exist.
For the individual risk, the one you make when you decide to wear a mask, when you decide to get vaccinated, those are your personal risks.
But understand that the government has to look at the whole, and that's a whole different calculation.
They can't lose 3.6 million people and keep their jobs, right?
So... Oh, YouTube needs a little adjustment.
There you go. Let me get away from the board for a second and straighten you both out so you can see it.
All right, so I'm not trying to convince you to get vaccinated or not vaccinated because I'm not a doctor and I don't do that.
It would be immoral and unethical for me to do that.
But the only thing I'm going to add is that every risk that's under 1% that you as an individual...
You got that?
Because if you're trying to make a decision because you think this risk is 10 times this risk, but they're both under 1%, you're not being rational.
Because you really can't tease out those differences for you specifically.
You can only tease out those differences for large groups.
You don't know what your risk is.
You just know you're in this under 1% range.
That's all you know. So just treat it all as zero.
And the only one that might be bigger is the long haul, In the long haul, it could be zero, too.
But at least the odds are it's bigger than that.
So that's the only thing you should look at are things that are greater than 1%.
Does anybody disagree with me?
Let me see in the comments if you track with this thinking.
And the only part of it that I want you to agree or disagree with, as an individual, can you ignore every risk under 1%?
Can't see the damn board.
Let me fix that for you.
I'm going to let the locals people get a clearer look at that.
All right. Well, it looks like I made my case.
So, you know, I've told you before that I rest my decision on only whether the long haul is likely to be real or not.
My guess is that it's real.
But it's not a scientific basis.
It's just a guess. And I think that my argument is unclear.
Really? Fern Law, so I assume you're a lawyer, and you think this argument is unclear?
Let me summarize it.
For a personal decision, which is different from what a government decides about the whole, but for your personal decision, you should ignore every risk under 1%.
That's it. That's the whole argument.
Right? Fern Law, do you disagree with the statement, you should ignore an individual, not the government.
Government makes different decisions.
But an individual should ignore every risk under 1%.
That's not much to argue with there.
I mean, maybe you could say it's under 0.1% or something, but 1% still seems kind of high.
Does it? 1%?
I don't know. Because remember, these things are well under 1%.
We're talking about the risk of dying driving to the store.
You're down in that range.
Personal risk can be higher if you have comorbidities.
That's right. So this would be the framework, and then you'd adjust it for your own specific situation.
All right. That is all I have to talk about today.
That's right. Your own data makes it 27.4% less risky.
I know what excellent comic you read today.
All right. And that is the show for today.
YouTube. All you watchers, thank you for joining.
I think I'm going to be on Rumble pretty soon.
I did get a response on that.
So I think I've got to tweak a few things and then I can be live streaming on Rumble as well.
