Episode 1519 Scott Adams: I Overslept, So God Knows What You're Going to See This Morning, But it Will Be Awesome
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Content:
Facebook whistleblower
Algorithm regulation?
CDC holiday regulations
Taliban destroys ISIS-K cell
China continues pressure on Taiwan
China's economic death spiral
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And welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams, the overslept version.
Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up and for some reason it's an hour later than it's supposed to be?
And it has nothing to do with what your brain decided?
Your body just decided while you're sleeping, you know what?
I'm not going to let you in.
I'm just not going to let you wake up.
So after, I don't know, something like, I think at least a week, maybe more than a week, where I haven't gotten more than three to four hours a night.
Now, I normally don't sleep a lot.
Five is usually good.
If I get five or six, I'm oversleeping.
But around four or three, I started getting a little crazy.
And I was getting a little bit crazy because I had to do the cat feedings every six hours and everything.
But this morning, my brain and my body decided, you know, your alarm's going to go off.
And you're just not going to get up today.
I'm just not going to let you.
So my body and my brain just didn't let me get up.
So I'm a little less prepared than normal.
But is it going to matter?
No. No.
Because already you're feeling better, aren't you?
Right? As soon as I was a little bit late, did you say to yourself, oh no...
Oh no! It's a little bit late.
What's going on? But don't worry.
I'm here. And that means that you are about to experience the unparalleled pleasure.
And all you need is a cover mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Now when I say stein...
Does not include Mark Stein.
Now, you have to have a vessel that you can put liquid in that you can drink out of.
If you try to put liquid into Mark Stein, well, you'll get it in.
But good luck getting it out in a form you want to drink, if you know what I mean.
So don't do that. Get the handheld kind of a Stein.
And then 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.
And you know it does.
You know it does.
You know it.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it's going to happen now.
Go. I can feel the coffee now flowing into all of my court bustles.
Yeah, every one of my court bustles.
And I got a lot of core muscles.
Well, the most fun story today is that William Shatner will be on the Jeff Bezos Blue Origin spaceship to visit space.
Is that the coolest story ever?
That William Shatner, famous of course from Star Trek, he's 90 years old and he's going to space.
He's actually going to space.
William Shatner. Everything about that story I like.
But can I take a point of personal privilege for a moment?
Can I talk about something that has nothing to do with you?
It's just about me.
If you're in my age range, you know, give or take a lot of different years, William Shatner is one of your main, I don't know, main icons from your childhood.
One of the most important people that I've ever, you know, cared about in terms of a celebrity.
And one day on Twitter, somebody tweeted something at him and he referred to me as Dilbert's dad.
And I said to myself...
What? William Shatner knows who I am?
I don't know if I've had a cooler professional moment than seeing on Twitter a reference to the fact that William Shatner somehow knew who I was.
I've never been so happy in my life.
And you've observed enough to know that I have an interesting life.
So it's not like I haven't met lots of famous people.
But for some reason... The fact that William Shatner knew my name, or knew what I did for a living anyway, just was mind-blowing to me.
So that's just about me.
I'm sorry, that wasn't about any of you.
Let's get back to you. Enough about me.
Let's talk about you some more.
So I didn't see this on 60 Minutes, but apparently there's a Facebook whistleblower who's saying some pretty damning stuff.
Pretty damning stuff.
Apparently, let's say, apparently on January 6th-ish, Facebook made a conscious decision to turn off the filters on fake news.
What? They turned it off.
So apparently, or at least the accusation is, that January 6th might not have happened.
Or at least maybe it was accelerated or worsened in some way by the fact that Facebook stopped monitoring what it was presenting.
Now, shouldn't it have been off all the time?
Why was it ever on?
If it was okay to turn it off, why was it ever on?
Right? Right? What's the difference between after the election and before the election?
Who won? That's the difference.
The difference is who won.
Isn't this telling us that Facebook rigged the election by changing the algorithm to one thing before you voted and then immediately changing it to whatever made them the most money after?
Did they...
It looks like the whistleblower is suggesting this.
Did they...
Give up some large amount of revenue, intentionally, to change the results of the election.
It looks like that's exactly what they did.
Now, they may have conceived it differently the way that they thought about it themselves.
They might have just said, hey, it's an election, we better get rid of the fake news.
I mean, maybe. If you give them the most generous interpretation, it's that the election was important, They didn't want it to be all fake news elections, so they tried to get rid of the fake news so you'd have a better reason to vote accurately.
But why does that thinking change after the vote?
Why did fake news become good for us the moment the election was over?
Shouldn't fake news either always be bad...
Or, even if it's bad, we just always get to see it anyway because of freedom of whatever.
This is pretty damning.
This is pretty damning.
You know, you've seen the Project Veritas stuff, and that can be pretty damning, but this does look worse.
You know, if these whistleblower complaints pan out, I don't know if we could ever prove them, But it's pretty bad.
And her allegation is that the Facebook executives explicitly decided to make more clicks by selling you fake news that would get you all worked up.
Intentionally. Like an actual conversation.
And then they decided to make more money.
Instead of making you happy and having a good life.
It's almost hard to believe that And what she said was specifically, her name is Haugen, I guess, H-A-U-G-E-N. She said the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.
That's pretty bad.
Now let me ask you this.
Why do we regulate medicine and drugs?
Why does the government regulate medicine and drugs?
It's to prevent harm, right?
And that's the only reason. They do it to prevent harm.
Why don't they regulate social media algorithms?
Does a social media algorithm have the potential to create harm, specifically death and revolutions and January 6 protests and everything else?
Can they do that with an algorithm?
Can an algorithm change an election?
Can an algorithm change your mind?
Can it cause a fight? Can it cause ethnic cleansing?
Can it do all those things?
An algorithm. Yeah, it can.
Yeah. Is there anybody here who thinks it can't?
If you think it can't, you haven't been paying attention.
Brainwashing. It's really sophisticated now.
I mean, it used to be...
I mean, it always existed.
There were always people trying to fool you one way or another or con you one way or another, but they weren't good at it.
You need the technical power of zillions of messages and being able to test it in real time and all that to get to a really commercial-grade AI that really affects your brain.
At least affects it in a specific way.
So... I feel like we have to have the conversation about regulating algorithms.
Right? Just for consistency.
If we regulate drugs, usually because the drugs affect your brain or body, right?
But if there were a drug that made you vote differently, would it be legal?
Suppose a pharmaceutical developed a drug...
That could turn a Republican into a Democrat.
Number one, is it technically possible?
There's a question for you.
Scientifically speaking, would it be technically possible to develop a bill that would turn a Republican into a Democrat?
Yes. Undoubtedly, yes.
No doubt about it. Now, I'm not saying it would work on every person, right?
The same way an algorithm doesn't influence every person the same way.
Same way every drug doesn't influence people the same way.
Some people just don't respond to some drugs.
But, yeah, you could do some damage.
So I think we have to look at the question of regulating algorithms because they do reprogram our brains.
And if the exact thing that an algorithm can do, which is maybe change your vote, if you had a pill that did that, and you could, pretty sure you could, it wouldn't be legal.
It wouldn't be legal.
If that's all it did. Now, let me go further and really get provocative.
Don't you think that...
Let's say Democrats sweep everything and they own the Congress and the presidency and they even take over the Supreme Court in terms of majority someday.
Could they ever tell you that being a Republican is a medical problem?
Is that possible? Is it possible that there would ever be an administration that would treat republicanism as a mental disorder that could be treated with a pill?
Totally yes.
Totally yes.
Yes with capital Y, capital E, capital Y. Absolutely.
Absolutely you could do that.
So, I'm just asking the question.
I mean, we have to look at, I think, FDA regulation of anything that can program your brain.
If something can program your brain, you need somebody to be looking at that.
You just can't let that into the wild, just randomly programming people.
All right, well, the CDC came out with some new recommendations about the holidays.
And it says, if celebrating indoors, bring in fresh air by opening windows and doors, if possible.
And you can use a window fan in one of the open windows to blow air out of the windows because it'll pull the fresh air in.
Now, this is different than what I was talking about last week.
I was talking about a fan even if the window is closed.
So my speculation was that just moving the big plumes of concentrated COVID around would probably, you know...
Distribute it in a way that might actually reduce the number of infections in the room.
Because you need a certain level before you get there.
Now, that probably only helps for short-term occupancy.
If you stay in a room long enough and you've got a bunch of COVID in the room, if the windows are closed and you have bad ventilation, I don't know that a fan would help because it would just fill up eventually with virus.
But for most situations where people are coming and going and there's a little bit of ventilation, I do wonder if just a regular fan would work.
And here's why this is important.
We're talking about Christmas.
People aren't going to open windows in winter.
People are not going to open the window in the middle of the winter.
At least in most places.
I live in California.
I don't open the window on Christmas.
I don't think one time in my life it's been warm enough outside that I would open a window, even in California.
Northern California. Southern California, yes.
I do in Florida. I get that.
So, I feel like the CDC might be getting closer to the Scott theory that just moving the air around might do something.
Now, of course, that's, as far as I know, untested.
So, I'd need to see...
Yeah, in Southern California, you open the windows for sure.
So, I'd love to see just a fan itself tested.
All right, um... There is a new book coming out, and an expert who is behind that book, who says that the Havana Syndrome, you know, the idea that our diplomats were being targeted by a secret sonic weapon.
This expert has been looking into it for a long time and says, quote, there is more evidence for Bigfoot than there is for Havana Syndrome.
The U.S. expatriate who is based...
Now, this is in the Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail had this story.
So he's based in the University of Auckland.
And so he's in Australia, so maybe he's a little more free to talk about this stuff.
He said, the evidence overwhelmingly points to mass hysteria, or, as it is commonly referred to by scientists, mass psychogenic illness.
Havana syndrome is a result of incompetent government officials and bad science, said this expert.
I would go so far as to rename it Havana syndrome delusion.
The absurd belief in the wake of persistent evidence to the contrary, that diplomats are being targeted with an energy weapon.
And he said, it is possible to use noise as a weapon, but not in the way it was used here, blah, blah, because of physics or something.
So... Are you ready?
I mean, he's an expert.
He wrote a book. He researched it.
And he said, no, this is just obviously mass suggestion.
Who... I have to brag about this.
I know you don't like it.
But since this entire episode is about...
Trying to figure out how to understand the world and predict it.
Right? Your worldview works if it predicts.
Have you ever heard me say that?
That's it. If your worldview predicts better than somebody else's worldview, That's as good as you can get.
You know, you don't know if you have the right one.
I mean, maybe your view of reality is all wrong.
But it predicts.
It predicts. So on day one of this story of the Havana Syndrome, with my...
Somebody has a picture of my original recording there.
So I said on day one, and I believe I'm the only public figure who said it.
Can anybody confirm that?
That on day one, not later, but on day one, I believe there was only one public figure who said, this is definitely mass suggestion.
I think it was me. I don't know that anybody else in the world who is a public figure, some of you privately probably said the same thing, right?
Not one person has come forward to say this, even now.
Even now, you know, so many months have gone by and people didn't find any weapon.
Even now, I don't think anybody who's in public is willing to say this until this guy wrote this book.
Now, could the guy who wrote the book be wrong?
Sure. Sure.
Am I telling you now that we have reached certainty?
No, because the world doesn't work like that.
Let me just say this generally.
Every time you think that I've achieved 100% certainty on one of these stories where I couldn't have direct information, I don't.
I don't. Maybe sometimes I give you that impression, but I couldn't have.
So never think in terms of 100% anything.
Just at this point...
I'm going to say 95% odds that I'm right.
Maybe 95. Could be higher, 98.
Something like that. That's what it feels like.
I don't have any way to measure that.
Well, one of the things I predicted-ish, I'm not sure this was a hard prediction, but that the Taliban would be pretty hard on not only ISIS, but Al-Qaeda, that they would just be enemies.
And sure enough, the Taliban completely destroyed an ISIS-K cell.
I guess ISIS attacked them, and they just sent out a search-and-kill party and just wiped them out.
How much more of that are we going to see?
I don't think you're going to see necessarily the Taliban let anybody get enough power within Afghanistan that Afghanistan would be attacked again by the United States.
My feeling is that the Taliban leadership has one very big number one priority.
Keep the United States out of Afghanistan.
That's got to be their top priority.
And so if that requires wiping out ISIS and al-Qaeda to do it, I feel like they're going to do it just for their own self-protection.
I don't think that their global ambitions for Islam are quite strong enough of the Taliban.
That they would let the people who are going to attack America have a strong foothold there if there's anything they can do about it.
I do not believe...
Of course, this is based on me having no experience whatsoever in Afghanistan, obviously.
But it seems to me that the Taliban, ironically, could be the best prevention against terrorism.
Weirdly. So that's the optimistic view.
Now, does the optimistic view work out very often when you're talking about the Taliban?
Nope. Nope.
So I'd say that whenever you get optimistic about, hey, this Taliban situation could work out pretty well, yeah, let's go, Brandon.
Everybody knows what let's go, Brandon means, right?
Is there anybody watching this right now who would say, what's that mean?
Who's Brandon? What does let's go, Brandon mean?
It's a reference to the fact that when people at stadiums are chanting F. Joe Biden, there was one news person who cheekily said it was Let's Go Brandon because she was interviewing the winner of the race named Brandon.
But now we're seeing that Let's Go Brandon as sort of the...
What happened is it evolved into the polite way to say F Biden.
So now you can say in public, let's go Brandon.
And everybody in their mind is translating it into F Joe Biden.
It's kind of perfect. Now, don't you think...
What do you think are the odds that Donald Trump will say let's go Brandon in a public event?
Has he done it yet?
I feel like he probably did it already.
Didn't he have a...
Oh, he did. He did.
Of course. Oh, he tweeted it?
No, well, Trump can't tweet.
Oh, did he do it already?
Okay. Well, that's the Trump we know.
So China is once again sending just all kinds of fighter jets and bombers over Taiwan, and they're making it real obvious at this point that they're intimidating Taiwan into basically not fighting and just giving up, I think, is the idea.
And they're really putting the pressure on Taiwan, and of course Joe Biden's doing nothing about it.
Nothing. So what should we do about it?
What should the United States do about China clearly making military moves toward Taiwan?
Well, personally, I don't see any scenario in which we should fire any bullets at China.
I hate to say it, but even if they take over Taiwan.
Personally... While Taiwan is an ally, and we don't want to let down an ally, that would be horrible, a military confrontation seems...
I just can't see it.
Now, a threatening that we might is probably good.
So yeah, we should threaten it.
We should act exactly like we're going to do it.
Maybe we could surround it with warships if China gets too aggressive, something like that.
But shouldn't we at this point put a price tag on it?
I feel like Trump would.
Don't know for sure.
But when they're getting this close to a military move, you know, like a serious military move on Taiwan, when they get this close, I think it's only fair to tell them what the price tag is.
The price tag probably isn't nuclear war.
I don't think we're going to launch a nuke over Taiwan.
Do you? We're not. That's not going to happen.
At least not unless something escalated out of control.
But would we not punish China economically?
Well, I don't know if we can.
Don't know if we can.
Right away. But I think we could say that's the last American company that will ever go to China to do business.
I think we could raise the taxes substantially.
On American companies that want to stay there.
I think we could make sure that they get sucked dry, but it's kind of a delicate dance because they have especially rare earth minerals and other things that they can control us with.
Now, if we are not trying as hard as we can to find other sources for all that stuff, and some of it's harder than other stuff, you know, pharmaceuticals, you can't just ramp up a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in a day.
But I don't know what our government is doing behind the scenes, but if they're not trying a lot harder behind the scenes to take down China economically, that's a mistake.
We know what they're doing publicly, trying to make Buy America more of a positive thing than a negative.
But we need to give them an invoice.
We need to give them a written price tag that says, look, if you take over Taiwan, independent of what we do militarily, which we're not going to say in advance because we don't say in advance what we do militarily, the cost of this is your economy.
That's the price tag. The price tag for Taiwan, if you want it, is your economy.
And we should make that completely clear.
And that it's your economy forever.
Like it's not going to change.
It's not like we're going to put sanctions on you for five years.
It's just permanent. If you cross this line, it's just permanent.
Ooh. Azalea says Greenland has rare earth minerals.
Well, as long as we have the military and Greenland's pretty close.
Sorry, Greenland.
No, we're not going to conquer Greenland, but it would be nice if we had alternate sources.
You know, Australia's an alternate source.
Canada's an alternate source for a lot of this stuff.
So we do have allies who have rare earth minerals, right?
We've got to give them a price tag.
So, as you know, if you're brand new to me, China makes fentanyl and sends it to the cartels, and then the cartels send it up here, and then it kills people.
And one of the people that fentanyl killed was my stepson.
So China and I have an issue.
We have an issue. It's personal.
And so I've been looking for ways to take China down with a persuasion kill shot.
And after A-B testing it for about three years, since 2018 is when I lost my stepson, I have the kill shot now.
So I tested a lot of things, but here's the kill shot.
So I tweeted this yesterday, and this should get it done.
The tweet goes like this.
The foundation of economics is trust.
Right? Right? You can't do any kind of a business deal without a minimum level of trust.
Now, sure, you can trust plus verify.
You can have mutually assured destruction and all those other things.
But they all get to trust.
Trust in the sense that if I give you money, you're going to give me some kind of goods or service.
You're not just going to take my money and run away.
And you have to trust that the money I give you is real money.
That I actually have money, my check won't bounce, etc.
So the economy can't move without some minimum level of trust with the customer and everybody else.
So people argued whether that's the foundation of economics because other people said, no, no, the foundation is supply and demand.
Don't get caught up with the word foundation.
There are bunches of things which are required for economics.
Your economy won't work unless you have resources and currency and oxygen.
There are all kinds of things you need.
But I'm just going to say that trust is the thing that makes everything work.
Like, it doesn't matter if you have resources, if you don't have trust, etc.
If you have trust...
You're right, Ronnie.
I'm going to read Ronnie's comment.
Trump got Scott to publicly thank President Xi for lying about stopping fentanyl.
True story. Trump made Scott look dumb.
True story. True criticism.
I know that you're surprised sometimes if I agree with a critic...
Sometimes you're just right.
I'm not even sure that that's a criticism per se.
It's an accurate description of what happened.
So what do I think of Trump's performance on China and fentanyl?
Failure. Total failure.
F. F. Let me say that as clearly as possible.
Trump failed spectacularly.
On the fentanyl China thing.
And I'm not happy about it.
Because it's personal. Biden, of course, is failing too.
I guess that's why I felt I had to do something myself.
If we had a leadership that was doing something useful, I'd let them do it.
But they're not doing it. So I kind of had to do it myself.
So here's the rest of the kill shot.
So I said the foundation for economics is trust.
Everybody who in business understands that you have to have trust for things to work.
And I said China has lost its economic foundation.
In other words, it lost its trust.
Do you trust China?
Do you trust that if your CEO visits China, that they won't be locked up on fake charges for some kind of leverage over something?
No, not really. Do you trust that they won't monitor your communication?
Nope. Do you trust they won't steal your IP? Nope.
Do you trust that they'll just play fair, even if it's bad for China?
Nope. Do you think that their data is accurate, the things they say about really everything, their economy?
If they tell you that there's enough energy to run your factory, is that true?
Do you trust them? Nope.
China, through its own actions, has destroyed its trust.
And if you do new business with China...
New business, right? If you're already in business, it's harder to wind it down.
And I understand that.
You have to be practical, too, right?
But... And then I said, you don't have to be an economist to predict how this will turn out.
The only question left is the rate of decline.
The only question left is the rate of decline.
They have entered a death spiral.
Here's another way to say the same thing.
When I said the foundation of economics is trust, closely related to that is expectations and psychology.
The thing that drives every economy is psychology.
Not only about trust, but do you think that next year will be better or worse?
If your psychology is that next year will be better, you invest.
If your psychology is that next year is going to be terrible...
Maybe you hold off. China has entered a death spiral economically.
I don't see the end of it.
Because their adventurism is going to make it harder to do business, not easier.
And their energy needs are going to be increasing, not decreasing.
Every problem they have is going to get worse.
Because they're going to start building on top of each other.
And the psychology of why anybody would do business with China if they could avoid it is completely different now.
And as we watch things like the Uyghurs in prison camps, we see all their bad behavior, two corporations stealing their IP, etc.
And when we see them sending war planes to Taiwan...
I think you have to say that the prospects for China's economy are worse in the future, not better.
And they're worse to the point where you don't even want to do business over there because you don't know what's going to happen.
Because the United States could clamp down on China so hard, and I think it's heading in that direction, that you just wouldn't be able to do business there.
It would just be too dangerous to have a factory there if you're an American.
So at this point...
The simple knowledge that China is entering an economic death spiral and that it would be insane for anybody to move business there or to start doing business if they had to, that's enough.
That's all it takes.
The future of China has now been written.
It's as clear as the Havana syndrome.
If you have this kind of talent stack, you can see it.
Let me put it another way.
The reason I can see the Havana Syndrome thing as a mass hallucination is because I'm a trained hypnotist and I deal with persuasion and mass persuasion as kind of a hobby.
So when I saw it, I said, oh, that's obvious.
Because I have a very specific skill set that can see it.
If you have that same skill set, it has nothing to do with IQ or anything else.
But if you have that specific experience, you can see it too.
It would just be obvious.
Likewise, if you had a background in economics and business, as I also do, you can see this.
Is there anybody...
Actually, I know there are plenty of economists who are watching this right now.
So if you're an economist...
Give me a shout-out.
Tell me you're an economist in the comments.
Then tell me you can see it, too.
Or can't. Either confirm or deny.
If you're an economist, in the comments, or even if you just have lots of business experience, let's say, can you see that China just entered a death spiral?
I'm seeing yeses.
Thank you.
Anybody disagree? Anybody who has experience in economics?
Econ degree? Can see it with your framing, yeah?
The way I frame it, you can see it.
Right, the foundation of economies is trust, so I agree with you on that.
I'm an economist. I do see China's death spiral if the opposition plays their part.
That's always true, right?
Reliant on domestic investment only?
Confirmed from Irwin?
Yes, yes. All right, so just keep watching the comments in case there aren't any more.
But just hold this in your mind.
Everybody who has experience in this field can see it now.
Right? That's new.
Okay, that's new.
I would say even maybe a few months ago, you could be a working economist, have a lot of experience in economics, and not necessarily think China's in trouble.
You know, you see the troubles individually, but you wouldn't think, eh, not China as a country.
But now you see it.
Now you see it pretty clearly.
If you add the energy problems, plus the climate change problems, plus the trust problems, plus the decoupling that's going on, plus...
Fentanyl plus coronavirus.
At this moment, anybody with economic training can see it.
China just entered an economic death spiral.
Now, how do we avoid going down with them?
What keeps the rest of the world from going into this death spiral at the same time?
Probably timing, which might be enough.
Timing. In other words, let's say Apple doesn't pull out of China because it'd just be too hard.
But they do start a long-term process of finding another way to manufacture.
So if they can stay in China and keep manufacturing their iPhones until they've got a proper alternative set up, maybe the impact on the United States isn't so much.
Because China's still going to want to work with American companies as long as they can.
As long as they can, they're going to keep taking our money.
So I feel like we could phase our way out of there because their incentive is to keep doing business with us even as we're leaving.
I'm seeing a disagreement in all caps.
You're wrong about China.
Disagree. May I take a moment?
May I take a moment to address the fine person who's watching who's yelling at me in all caps that I'm wrong but does not give any kind of a reason?
You might be new here.
You might be new here.
Yeah. China's response about fentanyl is that systemic racism exists.
Sure. Sure. I don't care about that for this topic.
I care about it, but not for this topic.
Scott, you could only use 50 characters.
Tell me why I'm wrong with China.
Not in detail, but give me sort of an idea.
Right? Just give me an idea of what that means.
So as I've...
I think I've trained most of you that you get blocked if you just say I'm wrong, especially in caps, if you don't give me any reason.
If you have a reason, that's great.
If you have a reason, I want to hear it.
Key assumption. You're not sure China's government cares about its people.
You know, I'm going to push back on that.
I'm going to push back on that.
The suggestion is that China doesn't care enough about its...
You know, domestic population, and that gives them flexibility that they can do bad things to other people, they can hurt their own people at the same time.
I'm going to push back on that.
Honestly, that just sounds racist.
Am I wrong? That feels like something I would have heard as a kid.
You know, we used to hear that about Japan in World War II. It's like, oh, the advantage the Japanese had is they don't care about people.
So they'll do suicide runs and they'll fight to the death and stuff because they don't care about people.
I feel like that's just racist.
I don't think there's anything to that.
Is there? I mean, every country sends its people to war knowing they're going to die.
And every country has heroes.
People who do suicide missions, sometimes they're ordered to, sometimes they volunteer.
I feel that's just plain, plain racism, to imagine that some country cares less about its own population.
Now, I know you're saying the government.
You're not saying anybody but the government.
But I don't think that Xi could get away with, even with as much power as they have over the population, I don't think he could get away with abusing the public in a way that everybody could see.
I mean, at some scale, he couldn't get away with that.
So I reject that.
I'm going to say, without having any data to support either of our views, I would say, short of data, that has to be assumed to be a racist point of view.
Does anybody disagree with that?
And by the way, I used to hold that point of view.
I would say when I was a kid, I would have agreed with it.
Yeah, it does seem to me that over in those Asian countries, they must care less about their people because of the way they act.
But as a more mature and informed adult, to me that just felt like it was racist.
Like probably there was never anything to it.
So Trump says he would beat DeSantis if they had a battle for the primary.
What do you think? Would Trump beat DeSantis in the primary?
I say yes.
I say yes.
Because what is DeSantis except boring Trump?
Right? DeSantis is just Trump without the sizzle.
Policy-wise, they're pretty aligned, and Trump says the same thing.
He likes DeSantis. So DeSantis and Trump actually get along, and they see each other a lot, down in Florida there.
And I think back in June, Trump was asked if he would consider DeSantis as a vice presidential candidate.
What do you think of that?
Now, we know that Pence is sort of out of the running, right?
What do you think of DeSantis as a vice presidential choice?
Honestly, it's the best idea I've ever heard.
It's like the best idea I've ever heard.
Right? Because what is it that you worry most about Trump?
Or you should. The thing you should worry the most about is age.
Right? Age.
And so you need somebody who can really just take over.
And you're not going to lose a beat.
Could DeSantis just walk into the president's job...
You know, after a little bit of time as vice president, just to know what people's names are in the federal government.
I mean, sure, he knows most of them already, but...
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, DeSantis would be a just walk-in to the job.
Now, the Democrats tried to do that with Kamala Harris, but they shit the bed so hard.
Somehow the Democrats not only found the most degraded biological entity that they could find to run as president, Joe Biden, but then his backup might be the least capable politician we've ever seen in our lifetime.
Kamala Harris might be the least...
Capable politician.
Now, she's smart and capable and experienced and stuff.
But in terms of how she handles herself in public as a vice president, it's the worst I've ever seen.
I mean, Dan Quayle was, you know, level above.
Yeah, she's as bad as you could be.
But if you saw Trump as a package with DeSantis, DeSantis cures...
A lot of Trump's problems, doesn't he?
Because if DeSantis was the vice president, and let's assume that they had some kind of close working relationship, wouldn't you assume that Trump would always hear at least one reasonable person's Republican ideas, right?
You would be at least assured that one strong voice that you consider reasonable, DeSantis, would be in Trump's ear.
Doesn't that make you feel better?
Because even if you love Trump, you think, well, he can take some risks.
But wouldn't you like the guy who you think is more of a solid reader of the science, which even Bill Maher pointed out that DeSantis, he does do dives.
At least that's his story.
So he is looking at the science.
So... What do you love?
I mean, it cures Trump's biggest problems.
Age cures it as a backup plan.
And the knowledge certain that Trump is getting the right advice.
That's a pretty strong package.
Pretty strong package.
And starting out an election by having such a strong and popular pick for a vice president candidate, that says a lot for you.
Now, what would this set up for after Trump has served two terms?
It would set DeSantis up as the heir apparent, which is also good if you're Republican.
So, to me, I would say the most likely outcome would be a vice presidential pick of DeSantis and Trump as the nominee.
Anything could happen. Still plenty of time.
DeSantis' wife has a breast cancer diagnosis, you're saying?
I don't know that that would stop his political march.
That would be tragic.
It would certainly throw him off his game for a little while.
But I feel like they all have problems, and they all work through them.
That's a pretty big one, but I think he would probably work through that.
All right. Here's a story that...
Tells you everything you need to know about human beings.
There was a fellow who did an analysis of Stanford students who ride bikes and found out that there were more bicycle riders who had masks but no helmets than there were helmets and no masks.
Let me say it again.
Stanford students, which if you are not aware, would be among the smartest human beings in the United States.
No, the world.
Right? If you got into Stanford, you have proven that you're one of the smartest people in the...
No, not the United States.
The world. So the smartest people in the world, among them, What's happening to us?
Well, it's the perfect story to tell you that we're not making our decisions based on data, right?
It's not based on thinking.
It's not based on common sense.
It's not based on your IQ. It's not based on science.
It's not based on your political party.
Although maybe there was some influence of political party, that's possible.
Yeah, that's how smart we are.
As a species, this is how smart we are.
The best of us.
The very best of us.
That's our best human beings right there, working through the statistics.
Well, Dr.
Fauci has warned that Christmas might have to be cancelled this year.
At least in terms of visiting your family.
So you might not be able to visit your family for Christmas, Dr.
Fauci says. As soon as he said that, his popularity went up 35%.
No, I'm just joking.
But it's kind of funny.
Because you know, somewhere in the country, there's somebody who said, please cancel.
Please cancel Christmas.
I can't do another Christmas with my family.
Somewhere, somebody's saying...
We like that, Dr. Fauci.
Now, is it a coincidence that Dr.
Fauci looks very much like somebody you would cast in the role of the Grinch?
Why is it that he is acting like the Grinch and coincidentally looks exactly like the person that you would cast as the Grinch?
Just a coincidence.
I'm seeing lots of statistics that vaccination rates are totally unrelated to infection rates in various countries and counties.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that vaccination rates are completely unrelated, no correlation to how much infections are going on?
And therefore, the implication of this, if true, are that vaccinations don't make any difference to infection rates.
Do you think that's proven because you saw graphs about it on the Internet?
Twitter had graphs about it.
Is it true? I don't think so.
I don't think it's even close to true.
But you're seeing these graphs on the internet just like, oh, here's a fact.
No, I don't think any of it's true.
Definitely there's...
So the thing you need to know is that death rates are definitely lower where there are more vaccinations.
Death rates, definitely lower.
But measuring infections, we're just so bad at measuring infections, who knows what's going on there.
Who knows? But if death rates are plunging wherever there are more vaccinations, something's working.
All right.
Well, how about that?
Looks like that was about all I needed to talk about.
So this was me sleeping late and having no time to prepare.
I think you'll notice that the quality of the product, completely unchanged.
Completely unchanged.
Let me tell you quickly a little story about something I learned that will be a valuable lesson for you.
Are you ready? Valuable lesson coming up.
When I first started cartooning, I was working a day job.
And I had to do all of my cartooning from 4.30 in the morning to roughly, you know, 6ish.
And if I didn't finish it, then there wouldn't be a cartoon that day.
Or, you know, eventually it wouldn't run.
So I had to do one a day no matter what.
Some days I would oversleep and have only 30 minutes, sometimes 15, to devise and do a first draft of a comic.
Sometimes I'd have two hours and write something pretty good.
But sometimes I'd have 15 minutes or 10 minutes, and I'd just say, damn it, I've got to make something.
So I'd just make something. Just whatever.
I'd just vomit something on the page.
Wait about two months, both the vomited 10-minute comic and the one I really was proud of, worked for hours on this one, they would run in the papers.
Which one do you think people liked more?
The one I vomited in 10 minutes...
Or the one that I'm really proud of.
Put some work into it. Yeah, you know the answer because I'm priming you for the answer.
The answer is actually no difference.
So there was no difference.
Statistically speaking, the response for the one that I vomited in 10 minutes exactly as good as the one I spent hours on.
The public couldn't tell the difference.
I thought I could tell, but it was an illusion.
The public couldn't tell at all.
Likewise, so when I woke up this morning and said, ugh, I have literally not enough time to prepare for this.
It would be impossible. And then I said to myself, oh, that's just an illusion.
It's not impossible. In fact, it's probably easy.
It's a complete illusion that I needed two hours to get ready for this.
And so in 15 minutes, put on a show.
If I hadn't told you I overslept, do you think you could have told the difference?
Now, I'm not saying this was as good as every other show or anything, right?
You all have your own opinions about that.
But do you think you would have known that I only had 15 minutes to prepare?
No. No, you can't tell the difference.
So, trust me on this.
How many of you don't want to start something because you don't think you'll do it well?
You're not prepared enough?
You're not quite ready.
You're not confident. Do it.
Surprise yourself. What if it doesn't work?
Well, then try it again later.
But if the reason you're not going yet is because you didn't have enough time, not prepared, don't think you quite have what it takes, you're not good at knowing when you're ready.
You are not good at knowing when you're prepared.
Sometimes. But as a general statement, you're not good at it.
So sometimes, just ignore your own brain saying, I'm not ready, I'm not ready...
And just do it.
You will be surprised how often that works.
And when it doesn't work, what do you do then?
You learn something. You get smarter.
You get tougher. You take another run at it, and you're smarter this time, and then you get it done.
So don't worry about not working.
Sometimes that's just part of the process to working.
