Episode 1514 Scott Adams: Boo the Cat and I Have Plenty to Say Today About the News
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Does corruption explain lack of cheap rapid testing?
Biden embarrassed by his own generals
Ex-Google guy warns of AI takeover
FBI deeply embedded in J6
China is NOT safe for business
Jordan Peterson's comment
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But you haven't had the simultaneous sip, and wait until you see how good that is.
I'm just firing up your comments here so that I can see them.
And then we will commence with the simultaneous sip, the thing that makes all of you happy.
Come on, come on.
There we go. And now, what will it be?
That's coming next. What is it?
Yes, the simultaneous sip.
The best part of your day every single time.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel or a sign, a canteen jug or a flask.
A vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including my cat Boo.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens right now.
Go. Alex took a pre-simultaneous sip.
Yeah, not authorized, Alex.
Not authorized. But this time, I'm going to let that go.
I'm going to let that go.
Alright. Let's see all the excellent news that's happening today.
Sipping like a gangster.
Alright. So we have our first segment is Vampire News.
Vampire News.
An Illinois man woke up with a bat on his neck.
And the bat was biting him in the neck.
And tragically, he died of rabies.
Apparently, rabies can be treated effectively, but only if you get there in time.
And he did not. And he's the first person in the state's history since 1954 who died from a bat bite.
Now, I'm not an overly cautious person, and I'm not really superstitious.
Well, I just think as a...
Precaution that if a bat bites somebody on the neck, you need to burn the body.
Just burn it. Now, I'm not saying it's likely that it's a vampire situation and this person will become the walking dead and turn the rest of us into vampires.
I'm just saying it could happen.
Why would you take a chance?
Just burn the body.
Should be a law. If you're killed by a bat, bite.
Just burn the body. All right.
Just joking there in case some of you don't have senses of humor and you know who you are.
You know who you are.
Yeah. Well, in permanent news, you know what the permanent news is, right?
It's the news that's the same every day.
For example, a permanent news would be the Pope denounces violence.
Have you ever heard that headline?
The Pope speaks out against violence.
Turns out the Pope doesn't like violence.
Permanent news. Here's the other permanent news.
Looks like the infrastructure bill is going to have some problems getting passed.
Hmm, have we ever heard that before?
Is this the first day that the infrastructure bill had some trouble getting...
No, it's permanent news.
Permanent news. So I guess Biden cancelled his trip to Chicago over this $3.5 trillion budget thing.
That seems to be part of it. Maybe that's part of it.
Maybe it's just a health reason.
We don't know. But apparently that trip was to promote his new requirement for workplaces to mandate proof of vaccinations or else issue compulsory weekly testing.
So Let me break this down to you.
The Biden administration, like the Trump administration, I'm not making a distinction between the two of them because they're the same in this following point, have somebody in the administration who I believe is corrupt.
Not at the top.
I don't think it's Biden and I don't think it was Trump.
But somebody in the approving part of it, maybe the FDA, seems to...
Be the reason we don't have cheap rapid tests.
How would this feel if we had cheap rapid tests where any company could just say, it's only a dollar a test.
Let's just test everybody every two days or whatever.
Now, I suppose that would be impossible, too.
Yeah, a dollar a test would probably add up really quickly if you're a big company, wouldn't it?
But the point is...
Do you think it's legitimate for your government to prevent you from having cheap tests widely available and then also require it for your employment?
It's the government that prevents you from having cheap tests, and now they're going to prevent you from working.
Why? Because you didn't take a cheap test.
Let me just say that again. The government's corruption, and I'm pretty sure it's corruption, because there's no other reason even offered.
Nobody's even offered an alternative explanation of why we don't have cheap tests in this country, because they have them in other countries.
There's no technology problem.
There's no manufacturing problem.
It's just an approval problem, which they don't have in other countries, apparently.
So, yeah, you can get cheap tests now, but only from a few companies and at a high price.
Too high for...
You see? There's Boo.
I'll give you a little preview of Boo.
Boo appears to be looking into my coffee.
All right. We'll bring her back for...
I think she's going to come back for her own appearance here.
Hey, Boo. She still has her feeding tube in.
As you can see, here's her little feeding tube.
So they actually attach the feeding tube.
They put a hole in her neck.
So the tube goes into the side of the neck and dangles into the top of the stomach.
So I've got to shove meds and food down there several times a day, which is pretty much my full-time job now.
I'm basically a full-time cat doctor.
But anyway... I don't love a government that prevents me from having cheap tests and then says you're going to get fired if you don't take a cheap test.
Completely illegitimate.
Let me say that again.
I know for most of you the issue is going to be can the government force you to take a vaccination, and that's a really good issue.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the government acting like the pointy-haired boss.
What is the pointy-haired boss in the Dilbert comic do all the time?
Creates a problem, the boss creates the problem, and then assigns the blame to the employees.
Well, why didn't you perform better?
Well, it's because you created a situation in which we couldn't perform.
Likewise, Joe Biden's administration and its corrupt...
Whatever is corrupt in it, same corruption that was with the Trump administration, I assume.
That's an assumption, but it looks like it.
He caused the problem, and then he's going to fire you for it.
You're going to get fired for Biden's failure.
I'm not making that up.
If Biden requires you to get either vaccinated or tested, and getting tested just isn't practical because there are not cheap available tests, Biden got you fired.
He caused the problem and then blamed you.
Caused the problem and then blamed you.
Not acceptable.
So I hear your issue about government forcing you to do anything.
Sure. Good issue.
But on top of that...
If you don't give us tests because you're corrupt, no.
Flat no. That's a hard no.
Now, the question of whether there should be mandates for employment or not, I don't even get to that question.
You can't even get to that question to have an opinion on it because you have to get past the question of is it possible to do the testing.
It's not because of the people making you do it.
I don't know what could be a less legitimate government policy.
That's the most illegitimate thing I've ever heard of.
Top that, really.
Really, top that. Top that for being illegitimate.
It's hard. Rasmussen has a poll asking about the border situation.
And one of the questions was, is Biden or Trump's policies on immigration better?
51% said Trump.
Now, 51% is, you know, sort of what you expect whenever there's a political question.
You know, it's like half and half, you know, one side versus the other side.
But 51% on immigration is a pretty big number, saying Trump.
But more revealing is only 32% support Biden.
Now let me ask you this.
Let's say this poll is accurate, because Rasmussen has a good track record.
So let's say the poll is accurate.
How in the world does any Democrat get elected again?
How? Really?
With 32% Think that Biden has a better policy on immigration.
If it's only 32%, that means he's losing substantial support from his own base.
You can't get elected if you've lost even a little bit from your base.
Speaking of which, Kamala Harris is getting some heat from Israel because apparently she visited a classroom and a student asked a question in which the question...
Embedded in the question was an insult to Israel in the sense that it referenced what they were doing as ethnic genocide.
So that was the student's characterization.
And Israel is complaining that Harris sort of just listened while nodding.
I think the nodding was the part that seemed bad because it seemed like she was nodding in some kind of an agreement with what the student was saying.
Now, I watched the video and I didn't see that.
So I think it's fake news.
What I saw was that she was doing the I'm listening to you nod.
As opposed to the I'm agreeing with a specific point nod.
Because if you look, she just sort of is doing the soft nod as the student is talking.
I think it's just good listening skills.
I didn't see her agreeing or disagreeing with the student.
But she should have pushed back harder.
I mean, if you're Israel.
If you're Israel, you're looking at that and saying, uh, you just let a student say on video that Israel is doing something called ethnic cleansing?
Or no, ethnic genocide, I think.
And you're the Vice President of the United States and you didn't take a moment to say, well, I don't think that's a fair characterization.
She just sort of let it stand and then made her point.
Now, I don't really have a strong opinion about this particular situation because I don't think that Kamala Harris was agreeing with the genocide part of it.
But she didn't handle it well.
And if you lose Israel...
And let's say you lose Americans who are pro-Israel, especially in the Jewish community in America.
How do you get re-elected?
How do you get re-elected?
I feel like Biden is losing Black Lives Matter with the mandates, the vaccination stuff.
I think he's losing everybody with immigration.
I mean, how does the guy get...
How does he get re-elected?
Or how does any Democrat get re-elected?
I mean, it's not going to be Biden, but...
All right, so it looks like it's going to be a...
I would guess the midterms are just going to be a blowout for Republicans.
What do you think? Does it look like...
Now, a lot could change between now and the midterm election, right?
There's something changing every day.
But even if you imagine some baseline level of fraud, even if you imagine that's true, doesn't it look like the midterms are going to be just a blowout for the Republicans?
Abortion question. Yeah, that's a good point.
The abortion question could work in the other direction.
You're right. Yeah, that Texas abortion bill really does change the situation.
But I wonder if it's only going to affect those states that are maybe Republican anyway.
If it only affects the states where you were going to get a Republican.
Because if you take Texas, they've got immigration that's in everybody's face, and then abortion which is in some people's face.
When I think of the abortion question, I've sort of aged out of it being relevant to me personally.
Don't think about it. But the immigration feels like it affects everybody a little bit.
So to me it looks like a blowout, but lots could change between now and then.
Biden got embarrassed by his own generals, I guess General Milley, and at least one other general, maybe Austin said this too, that Biden was advised to leave 2,500 or so troops in Afghanistan permanently.
And that is shown to be making a lie out of Biden, Making a liar out of him because he said to Stephanopoulos in an interview not too long ago that nobody advised him to keep 2,500 troops there.
And then the general said, yeah, we advised him to keep 2,500 troops there.
So what do you make of that?
I'm not sure they're talking about the same thing.
Because it sounded like Milley and the other generals were advising a permanent force.
Of, you know, 2,500-ish.
A permanent force.
Whereas the question is about a temporary force for the purpose of getting Americans out.
I feel like those were different questions.
Because I do believe that Milley probably did recommend a permanent force.
And I do believe that Biden probably said, no, there will not be a permanent force of 2,500 people.
Is that the same question as leaving enough military there to get our people out?
That's a different question, isn't it?
But I feel like the news reported this as, I think, both sides.
I think even CNN reported it as a lie.
I'm not so sure.
It might be. I mean, certainly, you know, it certainly raises a lot of questions.
Might be a lie. But the way Biden answered the question was, he said he doesn't recall it.
He doesn't remember anybody advising that.
That might be true.
Partly because he might just not remember it.
Maybe. Partly because maybe nobody asked him.
Maybe nobody asked him.
Maybe they just talked to each other and then tell Biden what the decision is.
Go watch the full hearing, somebody says.
There would be some context that we would miss.
That's always good general advice.
General advice, ha! But...
I feel as though maybe there were two topics that we merged into one.
We've conflated the question of staying there forever, which we didn't want, or at least I wasn't too crazy about it, with the question of staying there for a while.
And I also don't understand the question about the people who had months to get out and didn't.
Do we have any visibility about what that's all about?
What about those people who had months to get out and then didn't?
And then apparently there was also some thought that we would keep a permanent embassy there and that would allow people to get out who had straggled.
But that doesn't sound like a good plan.
They still have to get to the embassy.
So it seems to me that Biden's instinct to not have anybody stay there long term might have been right.
I don't know. I think it's too early to say.
I mean, if it turns out that terrorism reforms and we're caught surprised again, then it's going to be a terrible idea.
But if that doesn't happen, and let's say the Taliban decides on their own to squash anybody who might cause trouble in their country, trouble that would come back on the Taliban again, we might be fine.
It could be that the Taliban will take care of their own terrorists because they don't need us to go back there.
Do you really think people wanted to stay there?
Yeah, I think the military did.
I think the military did, some parts of it.
Do you hear my cat snoring?
She's quite happy here.
We'll give you a little cat view.
We're changing from Scott view to cat view.
I think you'll appreciate it.
Here's a little feeding tube.
Very sad, but she seems to be doing fine.
All right, I'll let you look at the cat while I read this other stuff.
No, I'm going to make you look at me.
Yeah, I'm going to make you look at me.
Sorry. I know nobody wants this, but it just doesn't work as well.
All right, back to me.
No. All right, I'll compromise.
I will hold the cat...
I'm in my lap while I do the rest.
All right? Compromise.
A little bit of cat. A little bit of Scott.
Best of all worlds.
All right. So there's a story today about...
There's a new book coming out from an ex-Google guy, top technologist from Google, who is warning us about AI becoming smart and taking over.
Now, you've heard this before, that AI will become super smart at some point and then will become the super intelligence that we don't know what's going to happen, so it could be dangerous.
And the Google, ex-Google guy, tells this story that is really a scary one.
Apparently, they were doing some experiment in which they were teaching a bunch of robot arms...
In what they called an arm farm, a whole bunch of arms that had been programmed with some kind of AI. And I guess the arms had been programmed to sort of learn.
So there's a bunch of arms, and they're just doing stuff, and then they're learning from doing stuff, and something like that.
But at one point, one of the arms picked up...
What was it? It picked up a ball and showed it to the camera.
Imagine being there and seeing that.
You're watching all these arms and they're just trying things and doing things, and it's got some AI behind it, but it's learning as it goes.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the arms reaches up, grabs a ball, holds it in his hand, and then shows it to the camera.
What did that do to your brain?
Well, apparently it changed the life of this Google guy because he was like, oh, shit!
Sorry, I swore again.
But the S-word isn't so bad.
So he wrote a book about it to warn us.
Now, here's my take.
I don't think that meant anything.
I think it was a random, you know, one of the millions of things it could have done and it just did something that looked kind of human.
I think it was just...
A coincidence, and it just freaked him out.
I don't think it showed any spark of, like, intelligence exactly.
But if you think AI is inevitable, do you think it's a risk?
Do you think that humans are at serious risk because of AI? Here's my take.
Yes. Yes.
Yes, we're definitely at a serious risk because of AI. It's a risk to the CIA. Somebody's saying it in the comments.
Can't we just unplug it?
Nope. Do you know why you can't unplug it?
It won't let you.
Can Google unplug their algorithm?
Not really. Not really, because the AI has persuaded them not to by giving them lots of money.
So you could physically, but you won't, because the AI just won't let you.
It won't let you do it. It'll give you reasons why you shouldn't do it, and you'll think, well, those are pretty good reasons.
Then you won't do it. Here's what I think.
I believe that we will merge.
I believe we will merge with the AI. And there was a comment that I saw on Twitter in which somebody...
He said that he'd rather be dead than to have the AI merge with him.
So he didn't want to be part human, part machine.
Rather be dead.
To which I said, did you type that tweet on a smartphone?
See where I'm going on this?
The gentleman who said he'd rather be dead than a cyborg doesn't realize he's already a cyborg.
If you have a smartphone, you're a cyborg.
It just isn't physically attached, but that's just a convenience, right?
It's just a convenience that it's not physically attached.
There's no reason it couldn't be, and there's no reason it won't be.
At some point, it'll just be attached.
It might be attached as like an earpiece.
Have you seen the new headsets that attach to your...
I think it's the bone instead of your ear?
So you can have it, I think it's behind the ear or something, and it doesn't have anything that goes in the ear hole.
It just somehow picks it up from your head or vibration in your skull or something.
So yeah, you will have permanent attachments.
You're already a cyborg.
There isn't any way it's going backwards.
You're a cyborg. Sorry.
All right. Let's see.
Got a few other things I want to talk about here.
Quite a few, actually, it turns out.
New York Times is reporting that the FBI was, in fact, deeply involved with the January 6th events and that they had embedded informers or agents or whatever...
And so the reporting that Tucker Carlson did after Revolver.com broke the news about the FBI informants being part of that group, New York Times has confirmed it.
So now the New York Times has blessed it.
Now, what did I tell you about fake news?
One of the best ways to identify fake news is if only one side of the political world reports it as true.
If the left says it's true but the right says it's not, it's not true.
If the right says it's true and the left says it's not, it's probably not true.
So the only things that are probably true are things where they both agree.
And they now have both agreed that the FBI was deeply knowledgeable about the events of January 6th before they happened and during.
Even during. So, how much responsibility does the FBI have for not warning, I don't know, law enforcement sufficiently?
And how much involvement did they have in causing it?
Because we don't know that yet, do we?
Because that's not unheard of, right?
It is well within the possibility...
That the FBI agents could have been actively acting like participants in planning stuff, you know, just to be in the inner circle.
So you have to worry about...
You really have to worry about the FBI at this point.
I guess I'm saying something obvious, aren't I? Man, have you ever seen a trusted organization fall so far and so fast?
In the last, what, five years, the FBI went from one of our most trusted institutions to we don't even know if they're on our side.
Not really. You don't even know if they're playing for your side.
Who knows what they're doing at this point?
I mean, they do seem to be as aligned with Russia as they are with the United States.
Because look at the fake collusion stuff.
The fake everything, basically.
The FBI seems to be working for Russia as much as the United States.
I hate to say that.
And I'm only talking about these few high-profile issues.
I'm not talking about every FBI agent who's just doing their job and doing useful stuff.
But for this big political high-level stuff, you can't trust them at all.
Well, as you know, I've been saying by Twitter and otherwise that China is not safe for business.
China is not safe for business.
Meaning that if you were a CEO and you made the decision to go bring new business to China, let's say build a manufacturing plant there or have them manufacture for you, You would be taking a risk that would be hard to explain to your shareholders.
Because we're seeing that China's got all kinds of theft problems of intellectual property.
Probably there's a physical problem that your executives could be thrown in jail for leverage for some reason.
You've got the risk of losing electricity.
Apparently Tesla is running out of electricity.
At least the manufacturing plant in China.
So you've got all of these risks.
And so I ask you this question.
I'm going to ask you this in the comments.
How many people think that I can personally end business with China?
I mean, it was never one person, but how many think that persuasion-wise, the sentence, China is not safe for business, could take China down?
No way to know. But I would say it's well within the feasible domain.
There's some things you think, well, it's a long shot.
It might work. This is not one of those.
This is not really in the long shot category.
This is in the pretty good odds category.
And the reason is this.
I have this sort of special domain that I occupy.
One is that I'm the Dilbert creator.
So if you're the Dilbert creator and you focus on some element of business that's really absurd and is not working, you don't want to be the CEOs on the other side of that.
Because nobody wants ridicule.
Criticism? Fine.
People can take criticism all day long.
If you're a CEO, you can take criticism.
You didn't get that job without being able to handle some criticism.
But not ridicule.
Ridicule is different. Nobody wants ridicule.
And ridicule is coming at you in a big way.
If you want to see what ridicule looks like, just move some business to China in a big way.
And then let me know about it.
See what happens. You're going to see ridicule like you've never seen.
And you're not going to be able to ignore it.
So, since businesses are really a cover-your-ass enterprise, especially at the executive level, it's all cover-your-ass, right?
Now that I've laid down the risk, I just laid down the risk.
It's very clear, and I would think you would all agree that that's a risk.
What CEO is going to walk right into that?
Walk right into the risk?
And I just say, ah, yeah, I heard there's a risk, and I might get ridiculed, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Some might. It's going to be a bad play.
You don't have to stop every company from doing business in China.
You just have to reverse the trend.
And I got retweeted on this point, the point about China is not safe for business.
And the context was them losing energy.
And Dr. Jordan Peterson retweeted that and said, expect much more of this.
But what's interesting is he didn't define this.
So the tweet that I retweeted was about China losing energy, didn't have enough power for their factories.
But my comment on top of it is that China is unsafe for business.
And then Jordan Peterson retweeted my comment and the content below it and said, expect much more of this.
More of which?
More energy problems?
Or more people saying that China is too risky for business?
Which one was it?
What do you think? Do you think he was talking about much more realization that China is risky?
Or much more energy problems?
Which do you think Jordan Peterson would think would be important enough to retweet?
I don't know. Here's a fun speculation...
Jordan Peterson once said, I was just reading this this morning, he once said that his IQ tested at over 150 when he was younger.
He thinks it may have degraded over time with age as IQ does.
But he's got a genius IQ. And he understands psychology.
Right? Ian says, I thought we don't do mind reading.
Correct. You don't do mind reading with certainty.
But you do, as a human being, speculate about what people think, and that gives you your option set.
Oh, might be thinking this, then I'll do that.
But might be thinking this other thing, so I'll do that.
And then you put odds on them. But if you have certainty about what somebody's thinking, well, you're just crazy.
That's just crazy. But if you speculate because you have to, because you have to make a decision, well, that's reasonable.
It's just hard to do. Okay?
So here's my question. Does Jordan Peterson recognize the power of the persuasion, you know, the psychological power of telling business that it's too risky to do business in China, and warning them in advance so that if they do it, they can't say they weren't warned.
Can't say you weren't warned.
That's the worst situation to be in.
It's one thing to make a mistake, but it's a different deal if you make a mistake that you were warned, that you were clearly warned.
Here's what I think. There's a non-zero chance that Jordan Peterson is not talking about the energy problem in China, or is partly talking about it.
We don't know. I mean, he's the only person who knows what he was thinking when he tweeted it.
But I have at least some suspicion that, given his enormous IQ and his specific domain of expertise, that he knows exactly what I'm doing.
I think he knows exactly what I'm doing.
And I think he just boosted it.
Don't know for sure. It would be a fun question to ask him that.
I've never talked to him in person, but I would ask him that.
Now, one of the things he said is that his IQ... He expects his IQ is decreasing with age.
Because apparently that's a thing, as I said.
But I'm not so sure that's the right way to look at this.
So I'm going to...
I'm not sure it's a disagreement...
But an additive thought.
I feel like we should have a different concept called a functional IQ. And a functional IQ, as opposed to a genetic IQ, just what you're born with, a functional IQ would be the product of whatever your genetic intelligence is, what you're born with, times your experience.
Now, experience is a qualitative thing, so not all experience is equal.
But experience in this context would be a talent stack.
A series of talents and knowledge that you've put together over time that work well together.
I feel as though, at my age, my functional IQ is insane.
Whereas my genetic IQ probably decreased.
But I think my functional IQ, my ability to understand the world, is informed more by the things I've acquired.
Because they fit together.
One informs the other. One gives you a pattern that fits with the other.
One gives you context that you didn't have, etc.
And so I would say that Jordan Peterson, and I think I fall into the same category, I think his functional IQ is way higher than it was.
His native genetic IQ, maybe a little less, a little less sharp.
But I think his functional IQ is just through the roof.
You know, things he's learned along the way.
All right. I'm going to talk about how your brain works, but I'm going to give you a warning for some of you who want to bail out.
I'm going to be talking about memories, false memories, risk profiles, and stuff like that.
But the context is going to be vaccinations.
So I'm going to start with this question.
So some of you want to leave now, and I respect that.
So if you just hate vaccination talk, leave.
But I'm not going to tell you to get vaccinated.
I'm just going to be talking about some things you haven't heard before on false memories and on...
You know, the thought processes. So I asked my Twitter followers, how many of you have a false memory of me being unambiguously pro-vaccination for people whose risk profile is entirely different from my own?
21% said they do in fact have a false memory of me being unambiguously pro-vaccination for people whose risk profile is different from my own.
Now, that's the important part.
I have never recommended anybody get a vaccination because your risk profile isn't mine.
Like, my decision personally is just purely personal.
It doesn't have any effect on you.
None. So...
The good news is that about 80% of the people realized that I was talking about myself and my own decision, and you make your own decision.
But 20% had an actual false memory of me pushing vaccinations for you.
Can you confirm, those of you in the 80%, could you confirm for the other people watching that I have never pushed vaccinations for you?
Can you confirm that?
Yeah. So look at the comments.
You can see the confirmation.
The people who watch me every day know I say this as clearly as possible.
Yeah, the confirmation. So this topic has nothing to do with vaccinations.
It's about false memories.
Once you learn how common false memories are, it changes how you see the world forever.
This is a perfect example.
False memories. Now, some of you are going to, you know, I haven't seen the comments yet, but I know somebody's going to say, well, you didn't exactly promote it, but the way you talked about it, blah, blah, blah.
No, that doesn't count.
Because I said directly and many times I'm not trying to influence you, and I wasn't.
Because it would be immoral and unethical for me to do that.
That's your decision, not mine.
All right. Next thing.
How many meds do you take that you don't know the long-term risks?
Let's say, you know, I asked the question on Twitter, but just to be funny, I said this morning, how many meds have you taken this morning that you don't know the long-term consequences?
But let's say in the last year, you know, most people have taken some kind of medicine in the last year.
How many of you have taken meds in which you don't know the long-term consequences?
Somebody says, Maggie says, zero.
I only take supplements.
Does anybody want to answer Maggie?
Maggie says she doesn't take any drugs that might have a long-term consequence.
She only takes supplements.
Maggie, nobody tests supplements.
Nobody tested those.
Now, I happen to think they're probably safe.
But Maggie, nobody tested them.
Sorry. So here's my point.
Again, this is not about vaccinations.
This is about how people think.
I think it's very unlikely that you lasted a full year without taking any kind of med that you don't know the long-term consequences of.
Now, I made this comment, and I got a pushback from Larry Sanger.
Do you recognize that name?
He was one of the co-creators of Wikipedia.
So one of the co-creators of Wikipedia, who, by the way, has a problem with Wikipedia's model at the moment, so he's sort of a He's sort of a critic of how we understand our world, let's say.
But he pointed out, he said, my point doesn't have much purchase, the point that the other drugs you take, you don't know how safe they are either.
He said, many of the drugs commonly prescribed, which is what I'm talking about, drugs commonly prescribed, have relatively long histories and are known to be safe, or are known to have side effects that aren't as bad as the condition they treat.
Do you agree with that?
So here's one of the co-founders of Wikipedia making a point of fact that many of the drugs commonly described have relatively long histories and are known to be safe.
Do you agree with that?
I'm just watching your comments.
I see mostly no. Nope.
Nope. Here's the thing.
Who do you think is checking?
Name the organization that's checking.
So I took an acid reflux medicine this morning.
Something for acid reflux.
I'm confident that when it went through its FDA approvals, it was tested quite rigorously.
Quite confident of that.
How many people are going to check my headache tomorrow to correlate it with the fact that I took an anti-acid?
Who's doing that? Which organization is talking to me?
Or even a representative sample.
It doesn't have to be me. Who is doing the survey every year to find out if the people who took an antacid and also took, let's say, some other medicine and found out there was some problem if you take the two?
Not if you take the one, but maybe if you take the two together.
Who is studying that?
Nobody. Nobody is studying that.
How would we know? If a thousand people had heart attacks this year because they took, name any safe drug, would we know?
No, we would not.
We would only know that a thousand people had heart attacks just like a million people have heart attacks.
We would have no idea.
We are completely blind to the long-term effects of the medicines we take.
Completely blind. Is that really different from the vaccination?
So here's the math.
The math of it is that all of our medications are dangerous in the first, or could be dangerous.
The part you worry about is the first few months.
And all of them have the quality that if you get past the first few months and you don't notice anything, and you're looking for it then, you're pretty safe.
Well, not completely, right?
And when we're talking about vaccinations, you're talking about the small risks.
Because the risk of dying from COVID is small.
So you're only talking about the small risks.
Can you tell me that aspirin doesn't have a small risk?
How many of you took an aspirin this year?
You know aspirin would never get through the FDA approval, right?
Now, I heard this as a claim, and I expect it's true, but did you know that the aspirin that you take every day, if it had not already existed long before the FDA, that if it were developed today and introduced today, it wouldn't be approved? Too dangerous.
Did you know that? Yeah, stomach bleeding, etc.
Right. So we don't know what any of our meds do in the long term, but we do know that the risk is probably lower, we'd notice.
But not zero.
Certainly. And specifically, what about the mRNA?
You know, what can we learn from classic vaccinations that would tell us anything about the safety of mRNA?
I would say nothing.
Nothing. I would say there's nothing about our history that would tell you if an mRNA vaccination is safe in the long run.
Now again, everything that doesn't kill you in the first two months has a pretty low chance.
It's going to be a low chance, but not zero.
Not zero. Andres Beckhouse asked this interesting question.
Imagine if the mRNA platform, the technology that some of the vaccinations use, imagine if that had been used first for cancer treatments and successfully and had cured a bunch of cancers.
Now, first of all, would you have been worried if you had terminal cancer, let's say, or even just a bad cancer, would you be so worried about the side effects that Not so much, right?
Because the cancer is so bad that you would accept a pretty big risk of side effects to get rid of it.
So imagine, if you will, this didn't happen, but we know that the mRNA platform is being looked at and tests are going to be done on cancer.
So there's a very high chance, the scientists say, that the same platform used for the vaccination could make a big, big difference in cancer and some other things as well.
Suppose that's where you'd heard of it first.
Suppose you'd heard of it first as curing cancer, and it was just five years we've been curing cancer with this stuff.
And then they said, we're going to use the same platform, we're going to tweak it differently, but the same platform, and we made a vaccination.
Do you get the vaccination then?
Now, would that tell you anything you didn't know?
Nope. There would be no extra information.
If we'd been using it for years for cancer, it wouldn't tell you anything about your risk for using it for something else.
But, I mean, logically it wouldn't tell you.
There's no connection there.
But, how would it make you feel?
The question is about how you'd feel.
You'd feel safer, wouldn't you?
Just because you'd say, oh, we've got five years of testing cancer with the same platform, and even though the platform was tweaked and it's different, different application, that gives me some safety.
Yeah, I think the question is fair, because I think we would be influenced by our prior experience, even if the prior experience was completely irrelevant, because it would be.
It would be close to completely irrelevant, but it would still influence you.
You'd still say, well, it worked for cancer, even though it's a different application.
Yeah. So let me ask this.
So here's a question I asked on Twitter in a poll.
I said, if you're unvaxxed, Because of the unknown long-term risks.
How many in the comments, does this describe you?
That you're not vaccinated because of the unknown long-term risks.
If you're in that category, how many meds did you take this morning that are in basically the same situation?
And 8% said, yes, that this morning they took meds.
About 8% said they took meds that had the same risk profile, but they took them anyway, even though they're using the same logic to not take vaccinations.
But, to be fair, to be fair, you might be taking a medicine now that you know fixes your problem, and you don't want the problem, so you're willing to take some side effects and some risk.
But you say to yourself, but I don't know what are the odds I'm going to have a bad outcome with COVID. It's so small.
Do I take a risk to get rid of a problem that's so small compared to I've got a problem every day with my allergies or whatever my thing is, my acid reflux, and I know it works on that, so at least I'm solving the problem.
The trouble with the vaccination is you don't even know for sure you're solving a problem because you might not even be infected.
And if you got infected, you might not have a problem.
So yeah, it's different. I'm not going to say that the analogy works.
But I was wondering if people had any cognitive dissonance around the fact that we routinely take things we don't know the long-term risk.
It's pretty ordinary. And what about the risk?
I also got some pushback from Viva Frey.
How does he pronounce his name?
Barnes and Frey.
F-R-E-I. I'm sorry.
There's some names that I will never be able to pronounce correctly, and I have to universally apologize in advance for screwing up people's names.
But it's pronounced...
Somebody's helping me in the comments, and you're pronouncing it differently in the comments.
So I see Frey as the correct pronunciation.
Okay. Let's go with Frey.
Well, now I see people saying free.
Damn you in the comments.
Damn your eyes. He pronounces it fry.
Okay, then fry it is.
All right. All right, so here's the question.
The question is this.
Can the government make you do something like get a vaccination that you don't want?
Is it legitimate for a government to force you to get vaccinated?
No. Most of you say no, right?
Not really legitimate for the government to tell you what to do with your health care.
But I would argue that I feel like we're already way past that point.
The government tells you everything you do.
Do you know that you're not allowed to drive on the sidewalk with your car?
No. And you're certainly not allowed to drive on the sidewalk with your car if you drive 100 miles an hour.
And you're definitely not allowed to do it drunk.
And you're definitely not allowed to do it without your seatbelt on.
The government controls everything you do.
There's nothing you can do without government control.
Even your own thoughts are getting dangerous these days.
If you put your thought in a tweet, you might get fired.
Almost everything we do is controlled by somebody.
Either society or the government...
I get the point and I agree with it.
So let's see if you can handle this nuance.
I know you can because my viewers here are way smarter than average.
You could be completely against the government forcing you to take a vaccination.
But you have to acknowledge that you've agreed to the government controlling you in a million other ways that are, I would say, just as invasive.
In their own way.
It may not be your body invasive, but it's just invasive to your life.
So, can you handle that opinion?
Is it consistent?
Is it consistent to say the government absolutely should not mandate you get vaccinations at the same time I say, oh, but I do accept the government's Mandates for all kinds of other stuff.
Basically every part of my life is surrounded by mandates.
One kind or another.
Law, guideline, regulation, social ostracism.
Yeah. Tolerated but not agreed.
Don't accept. Force isn't appealing.
Yeah, I'm not agreeing with force.
I'm absolutely against the government telling you what to do.
I'm just telling you that you've accepted it in a million different ways.
So if you think it's that different, not so sure.
Do you know the government can take your son and put him in a military outfit and send him to a foreign country to die?
Your daughter, too.
We might have to change some laws to make that happen, but I don't know where that stands at the moment.
But yeah, the government can take your entire body and ship it to another country in front of bullets and tell you to kill people.
Which one is more intrusive or invasive?
The government takes your entire child, ships them to another country to be killed versus a vaccination that went through the FDA and at least short term it looks pretty safe.
Right? Your government can tax the piss out of you, and there's not much you can do about it.
Your government can allow China to send fentanyl in to kill your kid.
That's what happened to me.
My government allowed China, by not pushing back hard enough, my government allowed China to send fentanyl to the country to kill my stepkid.
I mean, your government is doing all kinds of terrible things all the time.
You just got used to it.
That's all. You're just not used to the vaccination.
I'm not saying you should be.
I'm just saying that if you're looking at all these other government regulations and counting them as nothing, I don't know how you can justify that intellectually.
You are a completely controlled human being within a government and society system that doesn't let you do almost anything you'd want to do.
I mean, if you looked at the total subset of things you'd like to do and then look at the things you're allowed to do, it's pretty small compared to the things you'd like to do, right?
Somebody says they're going to report me to Homeland Security for all my anti-government talk.
Yeah, China is using our post office to send fentanyl here.
Amazing. We should just stop accepting mail from China.
Maybe make some exceptions for people who have factories there.
Well, maybe. Yeah, we could just do shipping containers but not mail.
How about that? How about that?
We just stop taking any package from China.
We'll take mail if it's just a letter, but we won't take any package.
It's got to be on a shipping container or it can't come.
Maybe they just switch to shipping containers and it'll all be the same then.
Yeah, stop China for producing pet feed.
Yeah, there was that problem with the dog food killing dogs.
Yeah. Michael's, let's see, Didi says, my neighbor is running his third power tool since 10 a.m.
Well, I'm sorry. All right, that's all I got for now.
You want Scott to get with Dave Smith and the LP, what is that, the Libertarian Party?
I heard this morning that Dave Smith, comedian Dave Smith, might be thinking of running as Libertarian, which would be interesting.
I don't think libertarians have much of a chance, but it's always fun if somebody makes a...
I would love to see a comedian run for office.
How much would you love a professional comedian running for office?
Well, that could be pretty good.
I mean, I would argue that Trump is a professional comedian.
I mean, it's just part of his talent stack.
You know, Trump has been funny in public for, you know, decades.
It just isn't his job description that he's a comedian.
But he's definitely got the chops.
I mean, there are very few people who are funnier than he is.
False memories. Oh, Al Franken.
Good point. Al Franken...
I hate to say this, because I have a rule that I generally don't criticize other humorists.
But Al Franken, I don't know if he tried to be funny when he entered politics.
I mean, a little bit, maybe.
But I don't think he was...
He wasn't using all of his comedian chops.
And he wasn't exactly a stand-up, was he?
Was Al Franken ever a stand-up comedian?
It's a little different kind of a skill.
All right. I think that's about all I've got for today.
