Episode 1504 Scott Adams: Come For a Provocative Discussion of What's New, and Stay For the Simultaneous Sip
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
1st baby from embryonic polygenic screening
Poorly dressed adult white men
Pelosi alleged quote to General Milley
Analyzing General Milley's call to China
Economist panel for border migrant system
Airflow to counter COVID infection?
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Now, with any luck, I've situated my two cameras here, my two platforms, so that my eye contact will be approximately where it needs to be.
And we will do something called the simultaneous sip in a moment after YouTube gets through all of its advertisements.
But let's talk about some of the things happening today.
In the irony alert department, AOC's dress designer, you remember AOC's dress for the Met Gala, said tax the rich.
Well, it turns out that the person who designed that dress has not paid their taxes.
That's right. The designer of the dress that says tax the rich...
This is behind that or taxes.
Or his taxes. I don't know who it is.
But you know that the simulation had to give us that, right?
Just had to give us that.
Thank you, simulation.
And this is why you should show your gratitude to the simulation.
Yeah, it's a recurring theme.
Hypocrisy. Well, here's a good sign of things to come in the golden age.
I keep telling you that this pandemic looks bad...
I know it looks bad.
It does.
But it was required to kick off the Golden Age because it reset everything and people rethought everything and suddenly there's a whole bunch of better thinking and new ideas coming.
Here's one. California just changed some legislation to make it easier to get approval to put a second home on your lot that's only zoned for one home.
That's a really big deal.
That's a really big deal.
Because if you're trying to get affordable housing, there's nothing more affordable than free land.
It's free. It's already there.
And if you've got a big backyard or you've got a little extra land on the side, you could add one of these little ADUs or small units.
So here are the things that you'd save.
So land would be free.
Because now you can put a second home where your one home is.
You have free land. Wouldn't cost anything...
Well, it wouldn't cost much extra to bring in utilities from the street.
The property is probably already, you know, graded and everything for a home because there's one on it.
You wouldn't need architects or engineers or contractors if you get these prefab homes.
You take all of that expense out of it.
And because they're prefab and they're built in factories, and you just sort of unfold them in some cases once you get to the site, you should be able to drop the cost of a pretty good home by, I don't know, 80% or more.
It's a pretty big deal.
So keep an eye on that trend.
All right. I believe it's time for a little thing called the simultaneous sip.
I know you've been waiting for it, and I know your life will not be complete without it.
And so, I would invite you now to grab your cup or mug or glass of tank or chalice or stye and a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now.
For the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
Everything. It's called the simultaneous sip.
It's going to happen now.
Go. I feel my immunity to COVID increasing every moment.
Because it is.
Well, more news from the golden age, or is it?
The following news comes in two forms.
One, an optimistic look at the future and what technology and the potential of humankind holds for us.
Very, very good-looking sort of a story.
But there's a second part of the story that I will announce in...
Ominous tones every now and then.
And the story goes like this.
The very first child born from polygenic screening as an embryo has just happened.
So a live human has been born who was selected for her good quality embryo, specifically her genetic components.
And the idea was that a company named Genomic Prediction...
Did the work in this case.
There are some other companies, I guess, that do this.
And they will basically make sure your artificially inseminated baby is the best quality baby you can get.
Now, that's pretty good, right?
Because you get yourself a better baby.
Baby's happy. You're happy.
Lowers the health care costs.
More productive workers.
Pretty good. Pretty good, right?
Or is it? Or is it?
Or is it one step to eugenics and a Hitler-like future?
Or is it a way to get everybody happier and healthier and have a more competitive world in which your national defense is much aided by your many inventions and innovations?
That sounds pretty good.
Or somebody's going to make a master race and the world will be destroyed in World War III. It's definitely going to be one of those two things.
But I'm an optimist.
I like to think it's the good one.
But let me ask you this question.
True or false?
Hold your ethical and moral outrage.
We will stipulate that you have it.
We stipulate that you're morally outraged by the story.
But here's the question.
Are we going to have to make super babies for national defense?
Think about it. Your economy drives your ability to defend yourself.
If your economy is good enough, you can buy all kinds of good weapons and you can bribe people and you can do everything that you need to do.
So you need a pretty good economy.
You need lots of innovation, lots of invention to stay ahead of your adversaries in military development.
What if China, let's just pick China as an example, what if they decide to make a bunch of super babies with high IQs and high ability to invent and innovate, and suddenly all the inventing and innovating moves over to China?
And their economy is screaming because they've got the super babies just starting startups and unicorns like crazy.
Yes or no, it's a homeland defense imperative to make super babies in the long run.
Not much difference this year, but in the long run, let's say the 100-year future of the republic...
Do we have to make super babies to survive?
To be competitive?
Define super. Super would be...
Let's say you could crank out an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates at will.
Because you can. Now, not necessarily their personalities, but you could hit their IQ. You could hit their IQ, and you could probably know some things about them.
Somebody says we already are.
Yeah, in a sense we're already practicing eugenics because we have more mobility.
What's the difference between a smart engineer working for Microsoft who searches for a mate and finds another smart engineer working for some other country, or company, could be another country, and then, you know, they get together? Well, it's sort of selective breeding, isn't it?
You're going to get a pretty smart kid if the two smart engineers from wherever they were in the world get together to make a baby.
Probably that kid's going to have some potential.
And so we're already practicing eugenics just because we have mobility and we have the Internet.
So it's happening on its own.
But what happens if we take it to the next level and make super babies?
I would say that we have all kinds of moral hazards here, obviously, but might be necessary.
Might be necessary.
Because without enough super babies, I don't know, can you compete in the future?
I wonder. Speaking of the future that's looking good, according to Saul of United, who alerted me to a tweet or a story, two of the four contenders to become Japan's next prime minister are so pro-nuclear that they're pushing for small modular reactors and nuclear fusion reactors, of course. You need to develop that technology.
But the small modular reactor idea, two out of four Japanese candidates for prime minister.
Now, maybe one of them won't win, but...
You'd have to think that Japan is pretty nuclear-shy, right?
If anybody had a right to be between Fukushima and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had nothing to do with nuclear power, per se, but you've got to figure it's all in the psychology somehow.
But even Japan can't come up with a reason not to do nuclear.
Think about it. Even Japan...
Doesn't really have an argument against it.
And I keep telling you that the anti-nuclear people just disappeared.
It's one of the biggest stories in the country, but because it's a story by subtraction, you just don't notice it.
Most of the stories we notice are something that gets added to the atmosphere.
Hey, that wasn't there before.
But when something just sort of drains out of the atmosphere, you don't notice it because it happens slowly.
There are no anti-nuclear energy protests.
Are there? I don't think they exist anymore.
And it's because the technology and the knowledge about the necessity of nuclear power, especially if you're worried about climate change, it's beyond debate now.
I feel like it's literally one of the few topics I've ever seen in my life that's now beyond debate.
When has that ever happened?
Think of one other example.
I don't know. Maybe you could come up with one, but I can't.
Well, there was some kind of conservative rally.
Was it yesterday? And I guess the organizing theme was about the January 6th protesters who were still in jail.
And they seemed like political prisoners to many of us.
But Insurrection 2 was a disappointing sequel.
It turns out that without...
Trump's direct involvement, there's not much energy.
There just wasn't enough energy.
So it was lightly attended because people were smart enough to know it was probably a setup in some way, or at least dangerous, without enough benefit.
And, of course, there were undercover cops, and there were photos of them looking obviously like undercover cops, and humorously so.
I mean, there... Oh, Trump, somebody says, I'm seeing on local, Trump said it don't go because it's a setup.
Is that true? Did Trump advise people not to go?
Oh, I'm seeing, yeah, fact check, true.
Well, that would also explain why there's low attendance.
And that was smart of Trump, I think.
But Trump also knows that energy is what matters.
Probably the smartest thing about Trump is his understanding that energy beats facts.
And if you can move energy where you want it, getting attention, for example, putting a focus on something, for example, then you win.
And Trump is an energy monster.
Like, he just eats energy, and then he spews it out in a different direction.
But this event didn't have any energy.
All right. And one of the things that came out of it was a lot of people online were mocking the very white-looking The people who were dressed in their supposedly undercover clothing, and they looked like every white person in warm weather.
You know, the T-shirt, khaki-like shorts.
There was one guy wearing dress socks with his sneakers.
They looked so, so white.
But I, of course, took some of this personally.
Because they were being mocked for dressing exactly the way I dress.
It took a little personally.
But I would like to defend my people.
My people being poorly dressed adult white men.
Now, it's not limited to white men, but it's the only category I can speak of with some authority.
Do you think...
Those of you who have noticed that I'm a poorly dressed adult white man, do you think that I do this intentionally?
Do you think I wake up in the morning and say, you know what would really work for me?
To be poorly dressed.
That's what I like. Do you think that when I walk past the clothing store of really sharp and stylish clothing that's made just for adult white men...
Do you think that when I walk by that store, I say to myself, you know, I could go in that store and I could afford those clothes.
If I bought some of them, I would look stylish and attractive, at least the clothing part.
I choose not to.
I'm just going to walk on by.
No, no, I don't do that.
Do you know why? Because that clothing store doesn't fucking exist.
Men? Men?
Can you back me? That clothing store I just described, the one with the stylish and really sharp clothing for men like me, doesn't fucking exist.
If it did, would I look like this?
Seriously. Would I dress like this if there were a store that I could go to to buy fucking clothes that don't make me look like A tornado in a thrift shop.
Would I? No!
No! I would not.
Give me any option to not look the way I look, I'm going to be taking it.
I'm going to be taking it. What's the best advantage of being black in the United States?
Come on, what is it?
There are disadvantages, obviously.
What's the biggest advantage of being a black man in the United States?
A black man. What's the biggest advantage?
You don't have to look like this.
Right? You don't have to look like this.
You can actually wear stylish, fashion-forward footwear.
You could wear a shirt that I could never put on.
You look great. You know, on average, everybody's different, of course, but on average, they've got options.
Where's my option?
Well... And I would like to protest because I feel that the fashion designers for my segment of the market, I feel that they're just trying to match the boringness of my lifestyle and personality with the clothing.
So I feel like the fashion designers look at me and my people and say, not too much glitz there.
We want to tone it down, give them something modest and unattractive.
Because they think that I'm boring and uninteresting.
But let me tell you, if I were boring, could I play air guitar like this?
No.
No.
Oh That is not the look of a boring person.
That's the look of somebody who should be well-dressed, stylish, to bring my clothing appearance up to the coolness, which I just demonstrated, and I think that data is incontrovertible.
Incontrovertible. According to the Wall Street Journal, in a few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man.
I think it's already 50% more women enrolled in college.
Did that sneak up on you?
I think we all knew that women were enrolling in college at a greater percentage.
But did you know women are like 60% of college now?
It's like 50% more than men.
When did that happen?
What the hell is going on?
And in a few years, it'll be two to one.
I have a hypothesis, and let's see if you agree with me on this.
Whoever society educates the most is who they value the most.
Yes or no?
Whoever society educates the most is who society values the most.
Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of people agreeing with me on locals, because it's a little faster than YouTube...
I'm seeing a no. Seeing some no's on YouTube.
Mostly yes's on locals.
Interesting. A few more no's on YouTube.
Well, I mean, you could make some exceptions.
You could say, oh, you know, what's the...
You could find some exceptions to that.
But I think as a general rule...
The people that we allow to be the most educated...
And when I say allow, I don't mean it's necessarily intentional.
It's just the organization of things causes some people to be more educated than others for a variety of good and bad reasons.
But I think the net of that is you find out who is valuable.
Right? And I don't mean valuable in my opinion...
And I don't mean valuable in some God-like judgment way.
I mean just society itself deciding who's valuable.
And I think it accidentally decided that women are twice as valuable as men, roughly speaking.
All right. Apparently the Biden administration is rounding up and sending a bunch of Haitian immigrants home that came across our southern border with the other immigrants from south of the border.
And here's my question to you.
Why are we sending all of the Haitian immigrants home?
Because I think they're going to send all of them home.
But I don't believe we do that with all of the, let's say, Mexican or Central American immigrants coming across the border.
Do we? Now, I understand that the law allows us to do this.
You know, the Trump administration had a law.
The Biden administration is using it to send them back.
But are we going to ignore the fact that they're sending the black people home and not the people who are brown?
I mean...
Uh, what's the reason?
I don't know. So, it feels to me like there's a little bit of explaining that the Biden administration needs to do, because if this, you know, she won the other foot test, you know, the Alan Dershowitz test, if this had happened under Trump, wouldn't all the conversation be about, well, why are only the black people being all sent home?
What's up with that? Right?
That's a fair question. To me, it looks like unequal treatment.
And I haven't heard the explanation.
If there is an explanation, and it has something to do with, I don't know, the country being different in some way, I'm open to that.
But are you okay that your country is treating the black people coming in differently than the other people?
You shouldn't be. You should at least be asking the question.
If they've got a reason, they have a reason, but I haven't heard it, so let's hear it.
Did you hear about this Clinton lawyer guy who got indicted, I think, for...
Do a fact check on this.
I'm not sure I got all the facts on this right.
Because all these lawyer stories are a little confusing for us non-lawyers.
But I guess we now know, based on an indictment, we can piece it all together, that Hillary Clinton did in fact start the Russian collusion fake news.
She paid a specific lawyer to go start that fake news, and he succeeded.
And... It could have made a big difference, not only to have Trump not get elected, but to maybe potentially kick him out after he got in office.
And here's my question to you.
How is that not a coup?
Because what law is it that says you have to be firing bullets for a coup?
Have we not agreed that cyber war is war?
Everybody, you all agree with that, right?
That if you do a cyber attack, and it's a big enough kind of attack, it's war.
It doesn't have to be bullets.
So if somebody tried to overthrow a government...
With a designed lie that's part of an organized plan.
And it's organized. We're not talking about a conspiracy theory that grew out of, you know, organically and people believed it and isn't that too bad.
We're not talking about, you know, entities reporting things that they thought were true but they got it wrong.
Are we? No, we're talking about an organized attempt to change the government based on a lie.
A well-developed, choreographed lie.
And that's nigh illegal?
How is that not illegal?
If it could be demonstrated that this is all true, and that Hillary was the primary architect of all of it, Shouldn't she be in jail?
I mean, actually, literally?
I'm not even talking politically at this point.
How is that not illegal?
I don't really understand.
I mean, I actually don't understand.
Does the law about treason specify bullets?
It doesn't, right?
Does it even specify violence?
Does treason require violence?
Or a coup? Does a coup require violence?
I don't know. I think they're good questions.
I don't know what the answers are.
And here's another coup attempt.
Apparently, it's now a matter of fact that Pelosi, after the election where Biden won, Pelosi was so concerned about Trump being, quote, crazy that she called General Milley.
Now, of course, this is according to Bob Woodward.
So what are the odds that Bob Woodward is reporting this correctly?
Who knows? I mean, not high, but...
But supposedly, Pelosi said that even Milley knows...
Well, here's the actual alleged quote that I doubt is a quote, but allegedly.
Said... He's crazy.
This is Pelosi to General Milley around after the election.
He's crazy. You know he's crazy.
He's been crazy for a long time.
So don't say you don't know what his state of mind is.
Now, given that this is in a transcript of a call between Pelosi and Milley, it suggests that she actually believed this.
That she actually believed that Trump is actually crazy in a literal sense.
You know, not just, hey, he's wacky, but crazy.
She actually believed it.
Did you think she believed it?
I found that a little surprising.
You know, it's possible she was lying to Millie, too, I guess.
But it sounds like a call you wouldn't make unless you actually believed it.
Fact check me on this.
It's more of an opinion.
Would Pelosi have even made this call unless she believed it?
Would she? Would you make that call unless you believed it?
Because I don't see there was an upside, really.
Because Trump had already lost the election.
Once he's lost the election, you don't have to worry about the politics of it.
I feel like she was worried about the real thing.
Right? Right? I mean, she could be lying, but what would be the point of it?
What would be the point of lying?
So given that I don't think there was a point to lie, I think she actually believed he was crazy and a risk to the country.
Now, under that context, once you knew that Milley had talked to the Chinese counterpart general and assured them that there wasn't going to be an attack, it makes more sense now, doesn't it? So if you know that Milley was aware that Pelosi was talking out loud about Trump maybe having a nuclear attack, and who else are you going to attack, really?
I mean, are you going to attack France?
Who would you aim your nukes at?
Given that China has many sources, what were the odds that China would find out through its own sources...
Either spies or other, that Pelosi literally believed there was a risk of a nuclear attack.
Literally. What if China had found that out on their own?
That's a dangerous situation, right?
If they'd found out that Pelosi was really talking about a nuclear strike risk, what would they do?
Well, I think they would have to go on some kind of alert status, wouldn't they?
Now, I don't know enough about the military to know if any of what I say next makes sense.
So give me a fact check on this.
I think they could have raised their alert.
Now, if they had, would we have noticed?
Would we notice if China went on war footing just for defensive reasons?
I feel like we would.
They'd have to move some stuff around, right?
They'd have to do something different that we'd notice.
And then what happens if we've got this chaos of the changeover in politics and somebody notices that China just went on war footing?
What was it that we were afraid of?
Right? We were paranoid that China, or some adversary, would try to take advantage of us during chaos.
Now, I don't think there was much chance that they would do that militarily, but it was on our minds.
So you could easily see how misunderstanding would escalate, can't you?
Let me ask you if you can.
Did I paint a picture in which there was at least a risk...
That the Pelosi talking about nuclear strike could have caused China to find out about it, could have caused them to respond, could have caused us to respond to the responding, and then God knows what happens next.
Did I make my case?
I'm seeing mostly no's.
If I didn't, then what part did I miss?
Let's break it down.
Do you believe that China could have found out that Pelosi was literally concerned about a nuclear strike?
Let's just start with that.
Do you believe that China could have found out on their own, with their own sources?
Okay, I'm getting yeses for that.
Do you believe that if they heard that, they would have responded in a way we could detect?
So that's the second question.
Would China have responded militarily, like just preparation, in a way we could detect?
So that's where I'm seeing the no's.
Oh, really? You think we wouldn't be able to detect a war footing?
Well, I think maybe the people have less confidence in our intelligence than I do.
I feel like our intelligence would know that right away.
I feel like it.
Because it would be too big.
Too many wheels would be put in motion for us to not catch it with one of our sensors.
Meaning human or satellite or something.
Okay. Well, I'll just put that out there.
But if it turns out that Milley knew that that was a risk and he made that call and he cut it off, I would say that's just doing his job.
And doing it well, actually.
I'll criticize him on Afghanistan all day long and wokeness, etc.
But I just don't see what's wrong with that call.
I really don't. I mean, I want to, because so many of you do see what's wrong with it.
I can't see it.
It just looked like he was doing exactly the right thing to me.
Now, some of you said, but wait, Scott.
Wait. What he did was tell an adversary we're not going to attack, which gives that adversary an advantage because now we're not unpredictable anymore.
And worse, really worse, Milley said that if we were going to attack, he would have called and warned them.
Do you think that really happened?
Do you think that Milley actually said that?
Remember, quotes in a book...
Almost always are made up.
Almost always are made up.
So I think the odds of him actually having said that, 20%, 30% tops.
So first of all, don't believe he actually said it.
Secondly, and when I say actually said it, I mean said it in those exact words.
There might have been something in that domain.
Secondly, if Millie said that if we were going to attack, I would have called you, what did that mean?
Did you take that to mean that he would call you right before the attack to get you ready?
I don't think so.
That doesn't sound like anything he would have said.
How about this, for a more reasonable interpretation, right?
You've all worked for...
Well, not all of you. Many of you have worked for big organizations.
You know how stories get morphed over time?
Um... So what if Millie was really trying to say that you would know long before we were actually going to launch an attack, you and I would have had lots of conversations about whatever it was that was the problem, To try to avoid an attack.
So since you and I have not had lots of conversations, personally, about how to avoid the escalating risk of an attack, you can be pretty sure that there's no talk about that.
Because you'd know it long...
There's no scenario in which there would be a sneak attack.
Let's put it that way.
So if the context was that when Millie said, I would call you...
It could mean not one phone call, but rather we would have been talking about this for a long time.
There's no scenario in which we're going to surprise you with an attack.
You would see it coming for a year.
Because we would be threatening you for a year to try to get you to back down from whatever it was we thought was war-worthy.
It's never going to sneak up on you.
Now, suppose he said that.
And the way it was reported was, I would have called you.
Because that's exactly the way things get misquoted.
A fairly nuanced thing just gets turned into, I would have called you.
So we don't know what happened.
Here's the second part.
Suppose Milley said exactly what was reported and said, if we were going to attack, I would call you.
Would he mean it?
Because you would have to assume that he meant that literally in order to be angered at the way he handled it.
When I read that, I said to myself, no, that means if we're not going to attack, he'd probably tell you that to avoid any misunderstanding.
But if we were going to attack, and it was going to be a sneak attack, I think he just lied.
Because he's allowed to do that.
He's allowed to lie.
In the military, you're allowed to fool your adversary.
So what if he just said that he would have called them?
So that we maintain a little bit more advantage if we surprised them.
Which we're not going to do.
We're not going to surprise China with an attack.
Yeah. Anyway, I'll just put that out there because I think we have to give Millie a whole bunch more benefit of a doubt because I think Woodward is the least credible person in the story.
I have my problems with Millie, but not compared to Woodward.
Woodward's a big problem.
Millie, I don't know. But one of them I trust a lot more than the other one.
It's not Woodward that I trust.
LAUGHTER I mean, Milley made it that far.
I mean, he had to be trusted by somebody to get that far.
All right, here's my question.
Where are the economists on this whole border immigration problem?
Where are the economists telling us that each, let's say, that immigration cost each of us X dollars?
Or benefited each of us X dollars?
Wouldn't you like to know your share?
What if the economists came out and said, you know, once you look at all the ins and outs of this immigration, we don't have enough birth rate, naturally, in this country to keep things going the way we like.
We actually need to bring in people, especially young ones that are willing to work, etc.
And that will actually come back ahead.
I don't know that that's the case, by the way.
I'm just saying that you don't either.
Do you? Do you know if we come out ahead or come out behind?
There are some things we can measure, but that doesn't mean we know the net.
We can measure, for example, the impact on health care.
Right? But we don't know what happens in 20 years when these kids grow up and become members of the workforce.
They're driving the economy, etc.
Don't know. I don't know.
Is it helping or hurting?
So the thing is that if the economists can't help us, we're just guessing.
We really are. I mean, we can measure the crime, and that alone would be enough reason not to let people in.
But here's the system that I think we should have for the border.
We should stop treating it like a goal and treat it like a system.
Here's the difference. A goal would be to only let in people we want, but also be kind and, yeah, I mean, we would be kind and, let's say, empathetic, and we would try to treat everybody with dignity and humanity.
So that would be a good goal.
To let enough people in to keep our country healthy, but also treat the people coming in with the maximum dignity and humanity that we can.
Keep everybody safe.
Those would be goals. Now, the problem is, some of them are contradictory, and it's not a system.
What we need is a system, and I would suggest that the best system...
Would be this. You get a panel of economists, you know, make it bipartisan, get some Dems, get some GOP, put them on that panel and say, all right, you economists, tell us what is the right amount of immigration that helps the economy.
And then we will let that many people in.
And then when we reach that limit, we'll say, all right, that's enough for this year, and we'll do our best to secure the border after that.
And then next year, we look at the economy again, and we make a separate decision.
Okay, this time?
Well, as bipartisan as you can be.
I mean, I would go for something like a Supreme Court model, where they're definitely partisan, even on the Supreme Court, but they're still credible.
You know, there's definitely a majority in one party, but still credible, because you do get to read the minority opinion, etc.
So the process works better than, you know, the alternatives.
So, if you had a really secure border with a door that could open and close, you would let people in based on the economists, and you would seal the border based on what the economics look like, and you would depersonalize it.
I mean, why we're talking about it's racist or not racist to allow immigration is ridiculous.
We should take all of that personal stuff out of it and just say, it's just money.
And we should say that this is not a question of fairness.
Right? Because if you try to be fair to everybody, you just can't really balance all those interests.
Because what's fair to the immigrants isn't what's fair to the citizens of the country, etc.
So... I don't think you should use fairness as your standard.
What would be a better standard than fairness?
Well, maybe a glurpin.
A glurpin. So I think it's sort of a glurpin situation.
And if you haven't heard that word, it's a new word.
And it applies to a situation that isn't fair, but it's better than it isn't.
Capitalism is a good example.
Capitalism is not intended to be fair in terms of outcomes, but we're all better off because it's not, because that's what makes people work hard and makes enough money so that everybody can get at least a taste.
So I think the border is another one of those situations where if you tried to make it fair, you really couldn't balance everybody's interests.
So instead, let's just treat it like the glerpin it is, a situation in which fairness isn't really desirable in this case.
You just want the most efficient system that keeps the United States healthy, because keeping the United States healthy is really good for a lot of other things.
Right?
It's really good for a lot of other things.
So.
Oh, hello.
Is that a fellow?
Apparently the COVID hysteria is the highest in blue states.
I saw Zuby say something about that on Twitter, and Bill Maher was talking about it.
Bill Maher was talking about how Democrats in polls are completely wrong by orders of magnitude about how dangerous the coronavirus is.
Now, given that the Democrats are the party of data...
Ike, that is entirely too generous, but thank you.
So, we've got this big difference between the Dems and the Republicans in terms of what they think is the danger of hospitalization.
And, I mean, it's really off.
Like, the Democrats are way off in understanding it.
So why is there no Republican who is making a big deal about the fact that Democrats don't understand the data?
Why are we only talking about Republicans being anti-vax and, you know, why aren't they believing the science?
The science.
When, in fact, the biggest reason that the Democrats are getting the vaccinations is that they don't understand the math.
That's the reason. They don't understand the math.
And so a lot of the mandates, et cetera, are driven by a lack of understanding, or at least the support for it, by a lack of understanding.
So I think some Republican needs to make hay with this about their lack of following the data, because it's so demonstrably true.
I mean, the polls show it overwhelmingly clearly.
It's a claim that you can't argue.
It would be really hard to argue...
The Democrats don't have a wildly incorrect idea of the risk, because we know the risk, and we know what the polling says.
It's pretty clear.
As Naval said yesterday on Twitter, the masks will come off not once everyone has been vaccinated, but once everyone has been infected.
Now, I would only add the obvious that nothing is an absolute, so it's not really everyone.
But let's say most everyone is going to have to get infected before the masks come off.
I think that does make sense.
Now, are you ready for my best idea of the day to open up everything?
I have an idea that I think could get the country back to normal even with an endemic.
It goes like this. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have a lot of engineers on here.
Is there a device that can measure airflow in a room fairly quickly?
Where you can just sort of hold it up and you can tell if there's sufficient airflow in the room that things are blowing around right.
So I'm saying yes.
Yes, that's a device.
Now, is it such an expensive device that That you couldn't get one that would be available at least to occasionally test as many rooms as possible?
I feel like you could.
Let me ask you this.
If you did a study of rooms that have airflow, now I'm not talking circulation, right?
Because you're all going to jump to circulation.
Not talking about it. We all know circulation is good.
We all know an open window is good.
So forget those things.
This is not what I'm talking about.
So I'm not going to talk about an open window, and I'm not going to talk about how well it circulates from inside to outside.
I'm only talking about whether the air is moving.
My hypothesis is this, that you don't get COVID when the air is moving.
That's my hypothesis. Now, I feel like you'd be able to test that because you could find out what spaces were getting people infected, and you could find out if they have more airflow.
Okay. Oh!
Oh! Oh!
I'm so mad right now.
I was trying everything I could for somebody not to make a comment that says circulation works, and I just saw it go by.
Please, dear God, can we all agree that opening a window works?
You don't need to tell me that.
We all know circulation is good.
Stop saying that in the comments.
We're not talking about those things.
Just airflow. That's it.
And so if you have a device where you can test it, and you can find out, in most cases, you have an idea where somebody got infected, could you not find every space that's safe and every space that's not?
And as soon as you knew which spaces were safe and which were not, okay, on locals, you're doing the same thing to me.
Please, dear God, stop telling me about how you can fix your HVAC system to filter out the coronavirus.
Not the topic.
That's not the topic.
I get it that it's good stuff and we should be doing it.
But it's completely off topic.
And here's why my hypothesis goes like this.
You've seen smokers.
You know, they exhale and the plume of smoke is, like, intense for a while and then it seems to dissipate.
Well, wouldn't you assume that somebody who was standing in the middle of an intense plume is going to get a larger viral load than somebody who happened to be standing in the same room But away from like a temporary plume that got formed.
Or even just by chance, there might be some pockets that are a little denser than others.
Maybe the virus tends to float down instead of up, so maybe the top of the room above your head doesn't have much virus.
Maybe there's a lot of virus below the waist after a while.
So the question is, if you were to take a room that had maybe some plumes or some denser areas and you were just to distribute it by just airflow, not by opening a window, not by modifying your HVAC, not by turning on the circulation, just a fan.
Just a fan. Could you spread it around more efficiently to the point where maybe there's the same amount of COVID in the room, or coronavirus in the room, but nobody can get a big enough dose?
It just got spread out too much.
So that's my hypothesis.
Hypothesis is that you could measure the airflow in spaces, because devices exist, and that you would find there would be almost a perfect correlation between how much the wind is moving, the air, and how often people get infected there.
Just a hypothesis, but all of it could be easily tested, right?
Would you agree that this is all testable and not really hard?
I see your pun, and it's pretty good.
Thank you.
All right. That concludes the best part of your day.
Well, maybe you'll have some other good parts.
I feel good about your chances today.
But until Trump gets back into the game, we have to dig a little deeper to find some interesting stories.
And I hope that you've learned that this presentation is more about keeping you company than it is even about the content.
I mean, I try to make the content interesting.
But this is more about meeting every day here and having a moment, even if it's recorded.
Maybe you consume this while you're exercising, maybe taking a walk, maybe doing some housework or something.
But I'm here just to be your virtual friend.
How many of you have noticed, either in yourself or in others, people close to you, a loneliness crisis?
How many of you? How many of you are seeing a loneliness crisis?
Wow, I'm seeing a lot of yeses there.
On locals, it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Mostly yeses. Yeah.
Yeah. Something's happened, hasn't it?
I don't know if it's just social media.
I suspect it's mostly social media.
But I feel as if almost everybody feels lonely now.
Even if they have social interaction.
I don't know how much is the pandemic.
I don't know how much is just where we are as a society.
I don't know if it's because you don't meet your neighbours.
I don't know what it is. It could be all of those things.
But the loneliness thing is just through the roof.
So, as I evolve whatever this live stream is, I mean, it just started as me turning on my phone and saying something about Trump years ago.
Ed, how do I persuade my depressed 14-year-old daughter who left liberal public school for a small Catholic school that it's good for her and it'll be okay?
Because it might not be.
We left a liberal public school for a small Catholic.
How do I convince her that it would be okay?
All right, so she's depressed because she left her friends, right?
And now she has to go somewhere where she doesn't have friends.
My understanding of kids and school is that all that matters is their friends.
Back me up, parents.
Nothing else matters, right?
For somebody in school...
A young girl in school.
How many friends they have is all that matters.
So the only thing you can do is work on that.
And you have to work on the fact that she'll have friends, she'll make friends, she'll make new friends.
So basically, help out on the making friends part of the equation.
It's all that matters. And unfortunately, she's not going to be convinced right away.
Because until she makes the new friends, it will feel like it's impossible because it's really hard to break into a new group.
Now, I would also take the opportunity to educate her on technique for making friends.
The Dale Carnegie stack, how to basically walk up to a stranger and turn them into your friend, mostly by asking questions about them and not talking about yourself too much.
That's the short version.
So if you were to teach...
Your child had to make friends.
The actual, let's say, the components of friendship.
Reciprocity, sharing a secret, being active, inviting, and making sure that you're including people.
You know, there's a number of things that you could probably throw in there.
And kids don't have that skill automatically.
If you could teach your daughter that that's a learnable skill, that she can just take into this new school and then acquire a bunch of new friends, because she can.
By the way, if you can get your daughter to listen to this part of it, which I know would be a big ask.
Parents have no credibility with their kids.
Universally true. But I might have credibility because I'm a person appearing on a screen.
So just show your daughter this and tell her that making new friends is a learnable, teachable skill.
Everybody can do it. It doesn't require any native ability, just some technique.
And once you do it, the world is yours.
You just go out and make a bunch of friends.
It just takes a little work.
But once you have that skill, you never have to worry about not having a friend.
Because you'll learn how to make new ones.
And you'll just get new ones all the time.
Old ones will fall off, and new ones will come back on.
Just make it a skill. All right, that's all I've got for you today.
