Episode 1513 Scott Adams: Today's Show Will Be Mindbendingly Awesome
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
90 day cool down period employee protection
Nuclear power plants to find Bitcoins
Russell Brand sees a conservative truth
Whiteboard: A Country Unifying Solutions List
Public schooling: Bullies and bad behavior
New technology vaccines and side effects
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That would be the one where I turn around and take my notes off of the printer, which don't exist.
So it looks like you're going to be watching me print my notes.
I don't know what could be more fun than that, really.
But it's going to be a great show today.
I promise you. By the way, I'm working on some kind of a drum sting to open up the show.
And so you might hear that.
You're probably familiar with the Tucker Carlson opening.
He's got a little drum thing.
And I'm trying to do something like that, like five seconds of a drum, some kind of a drum thing.
But we'll see. All right, so Boo the Cat is back, and I've got ten days of feeding her through a tube and medicating her.
Let me tell you how complicated it is to be my age and have a sick cat and a full-time job.
Let me just give you a sense of the complexity.
Now, you've probably had enough medical problems yourself that you know it's just a gigantic problem to get anything solved.
There's just so many decisions and medications.
But I've got a cat with five different medications with five different schedules, and I'm counting the food as a medication because it has to be injected.
And then you add my own, right?
If you're a certain age, you've probably accumulated a number of just ordinary medications.
I've got one for acid reflux, one for blood pressure.
And so I've got something like 13 medications with different schedules between the cat and me that I have to juggle.
13 medications on different schedules every day.
Then I have to work two full-time jobs.
It's pretty ugly over here.
I haven't slept a lot. Anyway, but you know what would be great?
I think you do. What would be great?
The simultaneous sip.
Yeah. And you're here and you're ready for it.
And it's going to be great.
Probably one of the best ones ever.
I mean, I don't want to build it up too much, but I'm feeling it.
Are you feeling it? Yeah, this one's going to be good.
And all you need is a cup of margarita glass, a teker, chelos, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a 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 of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
And it really does.
If you haven't tested this yet, you've got to do a little A-B testing.
See how you feel with it. See how you feel without the simultaneous sip.
Oh, you'll be surprised.
Here it comes. You ready?
Go. Mmm.
Yeah. So good.
I pity the people who have not taken the simultaneous sip because their lives are impoverished in many ways, not just monetarily.
But impoverished, I say.
Well, Rasmussen has a poll that says the Supreme Court is not too popular these days.
Only 10% think the Supreme Court is doing an excellent job.
23% say good.
So you only have 33% approval for the Supreme Court.
Now, if you had to look for one, let's say, identifier or signal...
That the country might be in a little bit of trouble.
I would look at the popularity of the Supreme Court.
But I would add this.
I don't know if doing a good job is the right question for the Supreme Court.
Because the Supreme Court is unique.
And that their entire purpose is to make decisions that you know most of the country is going to hate, or a lot of the country is going to hate, not most.
So maybe the question should have been, if anybody's listening to this from Rasmussen, I'd love to see this question put in terms of credibility.
Credibility. Credibility. Now, that's a little bit different than coming up with the right answer according to you.
If you're willing to trust the Supreme Court, even if you don't like their decisions, then you're in good shape.
Do you think we're there?
I feel like we are.
I feel like they're credible still, even though biased.
Right? Because I don't think that they would do something that's, like, ridiculously bad.
They would do things you don't like, but a third of the country thinks is awesome.
I mean, that's not crazy.
So I feel like their credibility would be higher than their approval, because the approval is really about, do you agree with their decisions?
Do you follow, on Twitter, Balaji Srinivasan?
What? You don't?
Well, you should. So Balaji's on my very short list of people that everybody should be following.
Because there aren't that many independent thinkers in the world, and there are even fewer independent thinkers who come up with ideas that you haven't thought of yourself.
It's kind of rare.
But Bellagio does consistently.
So follow him.
I think his Twitter is just at Balaji, B as in boy, A-L-A-J-I. And he tweeted this morning, employees should start demanding a 90-day cool-down period in their contracts such that they can't be precipitously fired due to passing social media storms.
Sometimes it's a real issue.
If so, it'll still be real in 90 days.
Let cooler heads prevail.
What do you think of that?
What do you think of that idea?
It's pretty good, isn't it?
If you buy into the idea that employees should be organized, at least in some important ways, why isn't the union demanding this?
This feels like a just basic, right-down-the-middle, Union requirement.
So unions get on this.
I don't know if unions just maybe didn't think of it, but this seems like really basic employee protection, wouldn't you say?
Just really basic. Because I don't think this is...
The thing that I like about this idea is that the moment you hear it, you wonder why it's not already being done.
As soon as you hear it, you're like, really?
This is the first time we've even talked about this?
This is obvious once you hear it.
So I'll just put that out there.
Unions, maybe you could do something about that.
90-day cool-down period is a good idea.
You might remember that after Trump lost the election, I was predicting that you would see people on the left hunting Republicans, right?
Do you remember what happened to me when I said that?
People said, oh my God, Scott, you are way out in crazy town left field.
I'll tell you one thing that's not going to happen.
Nobody's going to be hunting Republicans, that's for sure.
Well, the story yesterday is breaking news.
An Antifa member, Benjamin Varela, allegedly, well not allegedly, but he was charged...
With allegedly shooting anti-mandate protester.
An anti-mandate protester.
Was the anti-mandate protester probably Republican?
Or at least would this Antifa member believe that this person was probably Republican?
Yeah. So is this a clear example of somebody on the left literally hunting a Republican?
Yeah. Looking for somebody to shoot and then shooting them because of their point of view.
It looks like that happened, allegedly.
We'll find out if it's real.
All right. The Taliban, big surprise.
They're not going to be allowing women to go to the Kabul University.
And I assume this would apply to other universities, or maybe it's the only one.
I don't know. Are there a lot of universities and...
In Afghanistan? Maybe just the one?
I don't know. But the Taliban says that women will not be allowed until they can Islamic it up.
So they will be allowed later, they say, but not until they can make the environment somehow more compatible with Islam, which they're not.
But in the meantime, they have a good solution.
And I think you'll appreciate this.
It's sort of like...
Well, I'll tell you what it's like after I tell you what it is.
They're going to use male lecturers for the women, so women will be able to attend classes in some cases, but there aren't enough female lecturers, so they're going to hire men, but since it would be apparently un-Islamic, according to the Taliban, to have the men teaching the girls directly, the men will stand behind a curtain.
So the man will be there in person, but behind a curtain.
And I thought to myself, I don't feel like I'm nearly as inclusive enough in my live stream here as I could be.
Because I realized how the women in Afghanistan would not be able to watch me.
Because, same situation, right?
You know, man. I don't know if they could.
So I wanted to give you an example of what I call Taliban Zoom.
So this is, you know, you know what Zoom is.
So the Taliban is going to do a version of remote learning, except it's a little bit of a simpler model instead of the technology and stuff.
Sort of this.
Hey. Hey, welcome to Taliban Zoom class.
I'm your instructor, Scott Adams.
And you can't see me, but trust me, I am totally behind this curtain.
I'm not sitting at home on a computer.
I'm behind this curtain giving you a Zoom class.
So Taliban ladies, pay attention.
So I think that would work pretty well.
Taliban Zoom class.
Scene. All right, here's one of my weirdest predictions that looks like it might come true.
By the way, how many of you know the inside joke of the plaid blanket?
If you know the inside joke, don't tell anybody.
Don't put it in the comments.
I mean, you could refer to it, but just don't give away the reveal.
All right. It turns out that Bitcoin miners are looking to nuclear power plants to power their Bitcoin mining.
Now, those of you who don't follow cryptocurrency, here's the quick lesson.
In order to create a new Bitcoin, which is created through a process of brute force computing, Where it follows an algorithm, a formula, if you will, and only once every, you know, who knows how long, depends on your computing power, you can discover a series of, I don't know, let's say a series of bits that Bitcoin recognizes as a coin.
Is that crude enough an explanation?
So in other words, you can kind of discover Bitcoins hidden in the math.
I'm giving you the real idiot version of this, so the crypto people are going crazy right now.
No, that's not quite accurate.
But just for the every-person explanation, bitcoins are hidden in math, and in order to tease them out and own them, You have to do something called mining, which is running a powerful computer or network of computers for long periods of time.
And the more Bitcoins are found, the harder it is to find the next one.
So every Bitcoin that you find creates a higher challenge for the next available one.
So you've got to get more and more computing power.
And it takes so much computing power to find a Bitcoin now that it's a drag on climate.
The climate is actually at risk if you accept that humans are causing climate change.
So there's so much energy that they need that they're talking to the Bitcoin miners are talking to nuclear power plants to use their excess nuclear power.
Because I guess even nuclear power plants will generate a little bit more than they need.
Makes sense, right? They don't want to have only just enough.
So power plants are going to have more power than they need on a regular basis.
But of course, it'd be easy to turn off the Bitcoin part if you ever got in trouble, right?
So it's kind of a perfect marriage.
You put the Bitcoin mine close enough to take advantage of the nuclear energy capacity, and suddenly you've got free Bitcoins.
Or not free, but, you know, way cheaper.
So I ask this question.
Can Bitcoin ever become big enough in terms of its economic potential to pay for nuclear power?
In other words, is there anybody right now who's putting on the drawing board a combination nuclear power plant, maybe Gen 3 or Gen 4, Right next to, or at least close enough, to a Bitcoin mine.
Is anybody looking to build both of those at the same time?
Because wouldn't the Bitcoin mine actually pay for the whole power plant?
Or would it? So this is my question.
If you were to do a project that had, let's say, 10 to 20 years to build a proper nuclear plant, if you knew it was going to take you, let's say you got it down to 15 years, you were doing great, which I think is a stretch.
But if you get it down to 15 years, could you make a 15-year economic prediction that if you had...
You know, relatively free energy, you could pay for the entire nuclear plant just with Bitcoins.
I'm thinking not, because I think that 15 years makes it so hard to get a new Bitcoin that even a nuclear power plant wouldn't be enough to get you a new one.
But maybe you only need one, right?
Maybe Bitcoin's worth $20 billion in 15 years.
Maybe one Bitcoin is worth $20 billion.
Right? Is there anybody who knows enough about this area to tell me that that's crazy?
Is it crazy that one Bitcoin could be worth $15 billion 20 years from now?
I think that's possible, right?
Because we're only using fractions of them anyway.
Anyway, I just put that out there as an interesting thing that might be happening.
Russell Brand made news today.
By being not crazy.
What? Did you know that you could make news?
National news. He's trending all over Twitter.
Eric, I see that comment.
He's trending all over Twitter for simply being aware of the news.
Apparently he is aware of the news that Hillary Clinton was the real person behind the Russia conspiracy.
Not Trump colluding with Russia, but rather Hillary Clinton was actually the architect of the Russia conspiracy collusion thing.
And Russell Brand did a show with Glenn Greenwald, who's, I would say, the most important voice on this topic lately.
And the big news is that Russell Brand actually accurately reported a story That the left is largely blind to, but the right largely knows.
Now, here's the question.
We know that Russell Brand identifies with the left.
He would call himself a liberal, I guess.
And why is it so unusual that he can simply see a story that's in the news?
Right? He's not making stuff up.
He's simply objectively looking at the news and he actually can see it and he can talk about it.
How many people on the left could do that?
How many people could hear that news that Hillary Clinton was always the one behind the Russia collusion stuff and just report it straight?
Just the facts. Almost nobody.
Almost nobody. And the reason is cognitive dissonance.
Because if you are so committed to a side, it's just hard to change.
You'll find some weird rationalization why it really was Trump talking to Putin after all, even though there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
So yeah, Bill Maher is another one who's awake to these things.
Now here's my question. What makes a Bill Maher or a Russell Brand...
Capable of avoiding cognitive dissonance or confirmation bias in this case.
What is it that makes them able to do that?
What have they done or what do they have that allows them to be immune?
They've actually got immunity to cognitive dissonance.
Well, I don't know, but I'll give you some speculation.
I mean, some of them might be genetic.
Their brain is just built a different way.
That could be. But I would suggest the following.
Number one, Think of these three people who all have the same quality.
They seem to be able to actually just objectively look at stuff on left or right.
Bill Maher, Russell Brand, and I'll throw Glenn Greenwald in there.
What quality do they all share?
I want to see if you can get this.
What quality do they show?
Contrarian habits. That's a good one, yeah.
So they do have enough of a history of contrarianness that they can be consistent being contrarians.
So that's actually a really good answer.
It wasn't what I was looking for, but that's maybe better than my answer.
Comedy? Well, Glenn Greenwald, sort of.
Indirectly, maybe. Fired from the mainstream?
Well, okay. Yeah, fired from the mainstream.
Was Russell Brand ever fired from the mainstream?
I don't know about that one. Craving attention.
Not bad. These are actually really good hypotheses.
Somebody says craving attention.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but would they get it that way?
I mean, they could get attention other ways.
They're fact-based, but why?
Why can they be fact-based, and why can they be honest, but other people are in cognitive dissonance?
I'll tell you the shrooms.
They all took shrooms.
Oh, you magnificent bastard.
Somebody says that they all took mushrooms.
I'll bet that's true.
I'll bet that is true.
I mean, if I had to guess from, you know, Bill Maher and Russell Brand, I'd say, you know, if I had to guess, probably more yes than no.
Glenn Greenwald? I don't know.
I don't know. I'd love to ask him that question.
I don't know. But fearless is very close to it.
So Tony is saying fearless.
Here's the answer I was looking for.
Immune from embarrassment.
Immune from embarrassment.
Now, we can't know what's in their head, right?
So that's a little bit mind-reading.
So we have to do it observationally and say, does that look right?
Because we're just guessing what they're thinking.
But if you look at Bill Maher, Glenn Greenwald, and Russell Brand, I would speculate, I don't know this for sure, that they're unusually free from worrying about being embarrassed.
It has something to do with the jobs they've chosen, right?
If you're not afraid of being embarrassed, you can say anything.
You're free. So you don't have to worry about covering up for that thing you used to say to make it all sound like your ego is intact.
And you were always smart, even if you were dumb.
They also have chosen jobs in which proving that they have been wrong is actually an asset.
Same with me. I've chosen a job, if you can call whatever this is a job, sort of.
I've chosen one in which if I am completely wrong about something in public, like really seriously wrong, that's content.
I would love that.
I would love to find out how wrong I am about something I've always thought was true.
Because that, to me, is exhilarating.
So am I likely to suffer cognitive dissonance when I'm exhilarated to find out I'm wrong?
No. It's immunity.
So I have the same immunity.
I'm speculating here, right?
So bear with me that I'm trying to teach you a concept that may not apply to any of these three individuals.
Yeah, I can't read their minds.
But I think that the things that give you immunity to cognitive dissonance is you have to learn to be excited when you're wrong in public.
Excited instead of embarrassed.
You have to be a little bit fearless and And it helps that you've been battered before.
It helps that you've survived a number of shames and embarrassments, as I have.
So I do think that there is a formula for being free of cognitive dissonance.
And whether these people did it intentionally or it's just how things turned out, you have this small group of people who literally doesn't seem to be affected as much by the things that are affecting other people.
Now, here's another one I'm going to add to this.
Joe Rogan has a video, and I couldn't tell from the video, this is on the Internet today, if it was a trailer for a movie, Or was it just a video meme?
I wasn't sure what it is, but the nature of it is Joe Rogan talking on his show, and they're taking clips from it, in which he's talking about how freedom is the basic operating system that makes everything work in the United States.
And as soon as you start taking freedom away, then everything falls apart.
Like the thing that makes us great.
Now, what makes the video strong is the way he does it.
His presentation is really impressive.
Here's my question for you, Ray.
Ready? Here's a fun question of the day.
Does it feel to you...
That there's some kind of a 1776 kind of thing forming.
You know what I'm talking about?
Remember the founders of the country?
So you had your Washingtons and your Jeffersons and your Hamiltons and your Franklins and stuff.
Who are those people today?
It's Joe Rogan, right?
If you had to map who are the founders...
Who need to reset the United States?
Because it feels like we need a tuning, doesn't it?
Like we're out of tune. We're like an instrument that was really in tune for decades.
But now it's out of tune.
Something's wrong. And it needs to get fixed, retuned.
Can you map...
Today's, let's say, the independent pundits.
And I'm going to take Alex Jones off the list.
Because as awesome as Alex Jones is in many ways, as an entertainer, etc., I don't feel like he quite fits this model that I'm talking about.
He's a little too provocative. So, I mean, he's a special case.
But could you map the current pundits, the voices that you hear, the independent voices, could you map them to the founders?
Yes. Who would be George Washington?
It might be Joe Rogan.
It might be Joe Rogan.
It might be George Washington.
Who is Benjamin Franklin?
Who is Benjamin Franklin?
Who is Jefferson?
Who is Hamilton?
You can almost see that there's a thing forming.
It's like the founders are reforming.
Now I have a last name which has some historical relevance to the revolution.
We're related, but I'm not a descendant.
I think I'm a distant cousin or something.
But... Isn't it interesting that there's something forming that seems to be the right counterbalance to whatever looks like is the tuning problem with the country?
And it's time to go to the whiteboard.
Now, those of you who are watching on YouTube right now, you didn't know there was going to be a whiteboard, did you?
Yeah, yeah, you would have been twice as excited if I told you that up front.
But there's going to be a whiteboard.
People and locals already knew it because they get a preview before you do.
But here is my hypothesis.
There is a gigantic, wide path open for a candidate...
Who wants to end the division in the country?
And to bring us to, let's say, a new level of 1776-like freedom.
And I'm going to suggest that there exists, completely by coincidence, this is completely a coincidence, that most of our divisive topics have a middle ground that both sides would agree to.
That sounds crazy, doesn't it?
If I told you that given the huge disparity and, like, the divisions in this country, you'd say to yourself, my God, we're separated, and it's getting worse.
Remember one of the things I taught you?
That sometimes you can't tell the difference between being on the edge of disaster and on the edge of the Golden Age?
They feel the same, right?
Darkest before the dawn situation, right?
We have blundered into a situation, just blundered, into a situation in which a middle-of-the-road candidate could satisfy everybody.
And I'm going to make that case.
Do you think so? A middle-of-the-road candidate, and I don't know who it would be.
I mean, I'm not talking about a Trump, obviously.
I'm not talking about Bernie Sanders, obviously.
But somebody could emerge.
And let me tell you what that would look like, all right?
Take the election.
On the left, you've got people who say the election was fine, stop complaining.
And on the right, you've got people who say it was a fraud.
But it's also history.
So how could a candidate who wants to bring the country together come up with a plan that makes the left and the right happy?
It looks like this.
Hey, there's one thing we can agree on.
The one thing we can agree on is that we didn't agree about the last election.
We can all agree that we didn't agree about the last one.
So let's fix the next one.
And I'll make it my main thing to have election reform instead of rules that guarantee the states have to do it right.
They can still do things differently, but they have to meet a certain standard of auditability.
Now, would you vote for that candidate?
The one who says, you know, whether you think that 2020 was fair or unfair, it's also over.
It's also done.
So let's fix it for next time.
You would immediately like that candidate, right?
Because they found the middle ground.
It's exactly what you wanted.
Let's do another one. How about the climate?
You've got people on the right say, hey, it's a hoax, or it's no problem at all.
People on the left, it's a crisis.
How could you possibly integrate it's a crisis with it's not a problem?
Nuclear energy. Because it's the same solution whether it's a hoax or not.
You need the energy. You want clean energy and clean air.
So you're going to do nuclear energy as hard as you can, no matter what.
You don't even have to decide if climate is real.
Just find the middle path and say, look, I'll make both of you happy.
We'll just go balls to the wall on nuclear.
The left likes it, Biden likes it, the right likes it.
Why are we even having a conversation?
We have to do the same thing whether climate change is what you think it is or not.
It's exactly the same path.
Boom. Let's do another one.
Infrastructure bill. The public just wants an infrastructure bill, according to polls.
So this one's easy. Just give the public what they ask for.
Be in favor of infrastructure only, not the big one that's going to change society overall, and satisfy the people who think it's just a giant power grab by just saying, oh, it's just infrastructure.
Would you be able to get that passed through Congress?
I don't know. But if you ran for president on trying, you would look pretty attractive.
Because the public is on the same page.
The public says, can you just give me a bill that's on this topic, and then we'll vote on it, and then we'll do the other topic?
The public's already there.
You don't have to convince anybody.
Just take the view that the public already has.
Just adopt it. How about schools?
We've got the right who likes their homeschooling and having their freedom to teach their children the way they want without all the social justice stuff.
But then on the left, you've got the people who believe in systemic racism.
That's what that says down there.
Systemic racism. So how do you integrate them?
Simple. They all agree that the teachers' unions are the problems.
So just go after the teachers' unions.
The left and the right...
Have different issues, but they both have the same solution.
Neuter the teachers' unions.
Same solution, two different worldviews, but same solution.
Easy to unify.
Like, moronically easy to unify the country.
In fact, I think it's so easy to unify the country that we're blind to it.
We're not really that far on different pages.
We have different views of what's going on, but weirdly, the solutions are the same, no matter what you think is going on.
So here's some more.
You're worried about vaccine mandates?
We're not going to talk about it.
I'm not going to talk about it.
I know you've warned me you're sick of vaccines.
I'm just saying it's an issue.
How could you bring the left and the right together on vaccine mandates?
Here's how you do it. Leave it to the insurance companies.
That's it. Just take the government out of it and just leave it to insurance.
Do you know what would happen?
Same thing that happens with everything.
Same thing that happens with every topic.
Insurance companies will decide how much risk you can take.
Or they'll charge you for it.
That's it. The obvious thing that would happen is insurance companies would charge a different premium for vaccinated versus unvaccinated people.
Now, they probably should do something for people who have natural immunity.
You know, as well. But I'm pretty sure that the government could just walk away from this question.
And the insurance industry would just say, well, you don't have to get vaccinated.
It's your body. But you do have to pay more.
Now, do you think that that's right?
Doesn't matter. They're going to do it anyway.
Insurance companies are just going to do the math the way they want to do it.
Your opinion doesn't matter.
How about my opinion that I should not have to pay more for car insurance just because I'm a male?
Because I happen to be a very safe driver.
So it's very unfair for me, right?
But I don't bitch about it too much because the insurance company did their math.
They have to provide insurance in a way that they can make money.
That's the only way they can do it.
So I kind of live with it.
So get the government out of the business and let the free market decide...
What we do. The free market works every time, doesn't it?
Well, that's an exaggeration.
But it works often. So how about another one?
Healthcare. The left would like universal healthcare.
The right would rather just have competition and do what you, you know, you're on your own.
I feel like there's definitely a middle ground in which we say our objective is to get everybody insurance.
We don't know how to do it.
In a way that makes everybody happy.
So, I think there should be a poor person's plan.
I've been saying this for years.
The government needs a poor person's plan.
What would that look like?
Mostly it would look like removing regulations.
Now you like it, don't you?
If I said to you, we're going to insure all the poor people, and you're going to pay for it, you're like, oh, I don't know.
I like poor people having insurance, but I don't want to pay for it.
But if I said to you, That poor people would have insurance just by removing regulations.
Let me give you an example. The regulation against telehealth over the phone across borders.
Just get rid of that. Then suddenly, you have all kinds of competition for doctors because they can do it over the phone.
Now, there's still a physical manipulation part.
Somebody has to give you the shot or put on the Band-Aid or set the bone or whatever it is.
So you still need people in person.
So you make one other regulatory change.
The regulatory change is that maybe nurse practitioners or nurses can do a lot of the physical stuff that's maybe a little bit more than they did before, maybe while the doctor's also still on the phone.
I mean, you could work it out.
But it seems to me that if you made use of, let's say, excess capacity, which is, let's say, getting an MRI at midnight, do you think that the demand for MRIs at midnight...
It's the same as it is during the day.
Probably not. So if you're a poorer person, maybe you've got to get the 2 a.m.
MRI. And you pay way, way less.
So the point is, a middle-of-the-road candidate has all the space in the world to create solutions that the left and the right go, hey, that's not bad.
Now, I don't know that there's any candidate who could pull this off.
I don't think that this stuff is compatible with the left or the right.
I feel like a Republican could pull it off better.
Am I wrong? I feel like this is a little bit more...
Rustic, what are you talking about?
He says, Scott, please stop.
Stop what? You've got to do better than please stop, really.
You really have to do better than that.
Just up your game a little bit. Just give me a little taste of what you don't like about it.
Just anything. Alright.
So that... California dismissed 124,000 marijuana convictions, or they will after this latest batch.
124,000 Californians had their lives ruined because they smoked some marijuana and got caught.
They probably were small dealers, too.
But this is good news.
124,000 people just got their life back.
That's really big.
So California does some things right.
CNN had a report that says that misinformation gets six times more clicks, at least on Facebook, than real information.
So misinformation gets six times more clicks.
Big problem, huh?
And then they went further and said this.
68% of far-right posts are misinformation.
And 36% of misinformation is on the left.
So two-thirds of misinformation comes from the far right.
Do you believe that?
Two-thirds of misinformation comes from the far right, according to CNN, according to some study about Facebook.
How does that...
Now, try to imagine that's true.
Assume it's true. 68% of the far-right posts are misinformation.
How does that jibe with what Bill Maher was just recently talking about, that people on the right are far better informed about the risks of COVID? How can it be true that 68% of the far-right posts are misinformation, but the far-right is far more informed, better informed?
Explain those two facts.
Somebody says probably the opposite.
Okay, maybe the data's just wrong.
That's possible. But how could this both be true?
Do you know how it could both be true?
The conservatives don't believe everything they click.
Right? So if you're talking about what they clicked, the conservatives are clicking like crazy on false information.
But apparently they're not believing it.
Because in the end they have better information after looking at way more misinformation, they still have a clearer idea of what's happening.
Does that mean that they're filtering it better?
Or is it that it's only a small number of conservatives who are doing all of the clicking?
It could be that there's like a small active group of far-right people who are just doing tons of clicking, and it doesn't really affect the average that much.
That's probably what's going on.
So a very misleading report.
Surprise from CNN. I saw a tweet from Daniel Buck.
On Twitter. And I don't know if these numbers are right, but I guess that's question number one.
Are these numbers right? It says that the average yearly homeschooling cost for homeschooling is $700 to $1,800 per student.
Now, obviously, that doesn't count the time of the parents, etc.
But average public school costs $10,000 to $15,000 per student.
So, you know, like 10 times as much for a public school.
So he says, imagine what would happen if you used that money for homeschooling.
Now, I don't think it's quite that clean, right?
You know, that comparison's kind of ugly.
But I would add this to that equation.
100% of the mental and emotional problems of children come from their classmates, right?
100% of the emotional and mental problems of kids, and they're fairly extreme, the mental problems of kids today, come from their classmates.
Their classmates.
Do you know any teenagers?
Ask them what's bothering them.
It's their classmates.
You know, sometimes a teacher, but that's like 1%.
It's like almost entirely bullies and bad behavior.
Now, the homeschool kids don't get much of that, do they?
They don't get the continuous bullying and criticism and attacks on your self-esteem and everything else.
And let me ask you this.
If I said you're going to go to an environment, you have to go there.
There's no choice. You have no freedom.
You have to go to this environment where 20% of the people will be just awful.
They'll just be bullies.
They'll be destroying you.
You're going to have PTSD when it's done.
Would you go to that environment if you knew that 20% of the people were going to just wreck you?
No. You would never do that voluntarily, but that's what school is.
School is a guarantee that 20% of your classmates are just monsters.
They're just literally just monsters.
And every kid is being destroyed by these 20%, it might be more, it could be 50%, of monsters.
Every class. Every kid in every class is being destroyed by bullies.
Because once you have social media, it's like a weapon of mass destruction.
You can bully people in a massive, pervasive way.
So I would say that the whole idea of sending people to school with their peers is broken because social media broke it.
Let me say that again.
Social media made public school...
A nightmare. And it probably needs to be just eliminated.
You probably need to get rid of public schools or get rid of social media, but that's not going to happen.
So almost certainly we have to get kids out of that environment because social media plus public school equals mental destruction of kids.
Really serious mental destruction.
I'm not talking about annoyances.
I'm not talking about, oh, little Angela is unhappy today because somebody said something bad.
I'm talking about people being destroyed.
I mean, your lives just destroyed.
Just going to school.
And it's because of social media plus school.
They just can't be impaired.
You can't put...
A weapon of mass destruction in a child's hand.
And that's what we did with social media.
It's a weapon of mass destruction, usually applied one person at a time.
But we basically are arming children with the most dangerous mental weapons you could ever have.
And we're like, oh, okay. Let's arm these children and walk away.
This should be fine. All right.
I'm going to ask a question...
Which some of you will turn off this feed.
But if you stick with me for a moment, I think you're going to find it more interesting than you thought.
So I don't like to do your standard get vaccinated, don't get vaccinated.
You can make up your own decision.
But there are questions about the statistics of it that are unanswered.
And here's the one that's bothering me.
And the reason it bothers me is my opinion.
So watch what I do now.
So I talked about people who can be free of or at least immune to cognitive dissonance.
This is how you do it.
By questioning your own opinion.
If you can question your own opinion, both privately and in public, you're a little bit more immune to cognitive dissonance.
Because then if something happens and it shows your opinion is wrong, then...
Then you say, well, I told you it might be wrong.
So you don't have any trigger for cognitive dissonance because you've allowed you could be wrong.
So here's something that I thought was true that I'm rethinking.
I think I might be wrong, and I need you to help me here, okay?
So I'm going to ask you a question.
Well, let me start with a primer.
I believe that your opinion on vaccinations and my opinion on vaccinations are both guesses, right?
We believe that we have looked at statistics and facts, and we've looked at the odds, and we've looked at our own comorbidities, and we made our decisions.
Do you think that's what happened? Because I don't.
I think we both guessed.
And here's specifically what we guessed on.
The risk of a vaccine after the first few months.
Now, historically...
If you had a vaccination that was safe for the first few months, in other words, we couldn't find a massive unidentified side effect for the first few months, you were pretty good.
You know, the odds of ever finding one then become almost zero.
Historically, historically, with different vaccinations, with different technology...
We knew that if you waited X months and you didn't see anything, you were fine.
Why does that apply to a new vaccine?
Why can I use the experience with completely different vaccinations to make a decision about this one that's brand new and hasn't been around for years?
Now, suppose it's true that every...
Let's just... I don't know if this is true, but let's say it's true, that every vaccination for the last 30 years...
We had the experience that if it didn't give you problems in the first few months, you were safe, statistically speaking.
But why would that be true of every new vaccine, especially if it's a new technology?
Why is it that our experience with other vaccines, which are other vaccines, why does that tell us what's going to happen with this one?
Just because they all went a certain way before, but this isn't those, is it?
You know, saying that your next vaccine will operate like the last one, knowing it's a completely different technology, isn't that exactly like saying that Trump would be just like other presidents?
Every president we elect is sort of the same.
Every time we get a president, they move to the middle.
They're sort of the same as every other president.
But then Trump comes along.
Didn't see that coming, did you?
Why is it that I believe that...
And this is the part I'm questioning.
Why is it that I believe that the history of other vaccines tells me I'm safe with this one?
How is that logical?
That's my opinion. I'm telling you my opinion doesn't make sense to me.
Right? Tell me I'm wrong.
That's my opinion, and it doesn't even make sense to me.
Because there's no connection between those other vaccinations and the one I got.
Right? So I would love to hear a question for Dr.
Drew, a question for any of the doctors who have more insight on this.
What logical connection can I make between this new vaccine and others, and why would I expect this experience to be the same as that?
Now, here's the other thing you don't know.
Long haul. So you don't know what the long-haul risk is, and you don't know what the long-haul risk is, if you can call it that, from the vaccination itself.
And yet you and I, having no information whatsoever about the main risks, have come to these, like, solid decisions about what to do.
If you're not questioning your decision, you should be.
Well, let me ask you this question.
Whichever way you went...
How many of you are 100% sure you made the right choice?
No matter which way you went, vaccinated or unvaccinated.
In the comments, how many of you are 100% sure?
I'm looking at the comments.
I'm saying mostly no, but there are a few who are 100% sure.
90% seems like that's where you should be, I think.
Yeah. A lot of 100%ers.
More than you'd think.
Maybe, I don't know, it's not scientific or anything, but I'm seeing a lot of 100%ers.
I don't think that's a rational opinion.
So I think that whether you're pro or anti-vaccination, the 100%ers are the ones that have the wrong opinion.
Now, let me adjust that a little bit.
If you have some strange comorbidities or you're 8 years old, maybe you're closer to 100%.
But for people in the middle...
Now, let's take me specifically.
If I were to decide to get vaccinated or not, I would have to calculate my odds.
How do I calculate my odds?
Can't do it, right?
I can't calculate my odds.
I can calculate the odds of somebody in my age group, but that's not me.
Do my odds apply to anybody in my age group?
How many people who are 64...
Are as fit as I am and have my body mass index?
Not a lot. So what is the risk for people with my body mass index who are also 64?
Who knows? I also have a comorbidity, asthma.
Asthma is on the list of the bad comorbidities.
So therefore I'd say, oh, okay, I'm in a risky situation.
But... One of the medications that seems to have a high effectiveness for COVID is one that I take for asthma.
The budesonide or whatever the hell it is.
I forget the name of it. But there's an asthma meds that seems to help against COVID. So if I have asthma, but I'm also doing those medications that may or may not help against COVID, and I'm thin but I'm old, what is my risk?
No idea. No idea.
So if you're looking at your own personal risk and say, okay, in my specific case, I've got this kind of risk, and then there's this much long-haul risk, and there's this much long-term vaccination risk, these are all unknowns.
You don't know your personal risk.
You might think you do, but you don't.
You don't know your DNA and how that affects things, etc.
You don't know your ACE2 inhibitors.
You don't know that stuff.
So, to imagine that we're making rational decisions is not...
I don't feel like we are.
So here's why.
And let me tell you where this all started.
I was accused of having contempt for my own viewers.
And I'll bet that's not...
I'll bet that wasn't just one person who thought that.
How many of you think that?
How many of you think that I've shown contempt for my audience?
I'm just looking at your comments for a moment.
Because I think some of you are going to say yes.
Sometimes. Mostly no.
But I've seen a few yeses.
And here's what I was thinking.
I can't have contempt for your guess when I know mine is a guess.
Let me say that again.
It wouldn't be rational, and I don't know how I would generate contempt...
For an opinion which is just a guess when my opinion is just a guess.
Why is my guess superior to your guess?
And by the way, my guess is just about me.
My guess isn't even about you.
I don't have an opinion about whether you should get vaccinated.
I don't have an opinion about me.
So I would say that we should all take a little helping of humility.
If you think you can calculate your personal odds, you can't, And if you think you can calculate the odds of the vaccine being a danger, you can't.
And if you think you can calculate the long-haul COVID risk, you can't.
You can't. So we're all guessing.
And, you know, I see, Jay, you're calling an educated guess.
Is it? I mean, is it?
Because how educated are you about the long-term risk of this vaccination?
You couldn't be, because nobody knows that.
All right. So definitely, I can tell you with certainty that whatever my internal process is, it doesn't feel anything like contempt.
And let me say even more clearly, there is no way I could ever generate a feeling like contempt for subscribers on Locals.
People who are literally paying their money for my content.
There's no way, under any scenario, I'm going to feel contempt about that group of people.
How would you even generate that feeling?
I know what contempt feels like, and I don't know even how you would possibly have that feeling, no matter what they said.
If somebody's paying for my association, I'm automatically on your team.
I'm good with you.
All right. But then you felt pressure to justify your decision.
Explain my decision.
Yeah, I think that's a fair comment.
It sounds like I tried to justify my decisions by explaining it.
But I think in the end, the cleanest way to express what's happening is that we're all guessing.
All right, let me tell you what you missed on locals if you are not a local subscriber.
Here are the micro-lessons that I've added.
Micro-lesson, just put this on there, on how to pay attention, how to focus if you're having focus problems, how to make yourself happier, how to teach with motivation, how to use funny words, how to find a mentor, how to wake up on time, how to give criticism, the power of praise.
There are about 150 of them.
About 150 micro-lessons.
They're all... Two to five minutes.
Each one would give you a new skill for five to seven dollars a month depending on whether you have the annual subscription.
And so what I try to do is give you more than seven dollars worth of value every month and ideally thousands of dollars worth of value in terms of what it does for your life.
