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Oct. 7, 2021 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:43
Episode 1522 Scott Adams: Today I Will Teach You How Analogies Work. You Probably Won't Like it. So Definitely Watch.

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams.
You're feeling better already, aren't you?
Did you wake up feeling a little tired this morning?
And now you notice as soon as this goes live, boom, your energy starts to pop up.
It's going to be good. Yeah, there's a whiteboard behind me.
Wait till you see the... Don't cheat.
Don't look. No, no, you're looking ahead.
Don't do that. No, no, no, no.
Before we get to the whiteboard, we've got to get to something far more important, maybe more important than climate change, more important than science.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and I know that those of you who have experienced it can vouch for its power.
Those of you who are just coming in new, or maybe finally got here on time, well, you're in for a treat.
Because the simultaneous sip will take you to a new level.
One you've never experienced before.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
Except science. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. Oh, I see a resistor.
Somebody says, skip the sip.
Oh, there are always rogues.
We have a rogue anti-sipper.
Yeah, I'm going to brand you.
I'm not even going to entertain your argument that sipping could be bad for you.
No, no, I'm going after the messenger.
We have an anti-sipper.
Science has proven...
That sipping your beverage with me makes you healthier and happier.
Science, I tell you. I don't have a link to it right now, but trust me, lots of links to it.
I just don't have one right now.
But trust me, a lot of science behind it.
So the anti-sippers, I brand you an anti-sipper.
I can't have any respect for you now.
Well, Trudeau...
Up there in Canada, or if you're watching from Canada, right where you are in Canada, he was referring to people across the country lighting candles to honor the indigenous women, girls, and it turns out that the LGBT, which added the Q, so it's now LGBTQ, just keeps adding letters.
So the difference between the LGBTQ and what I'm going to read in a moment, it feels like it's turning into some kind of a, I don't know, blockchain code or something.
But here's what Trudeau used.
2SLGBTQQIA+. And apparently that does capture...
As many people as possible.
So I might start adopting this.
Because I respect the people in the 2SLGBTQIA plus community.
Now a lot of you people are just bastards.
You're bastards. A lot of you.
A lot of you are just bastards.
And you do not respect other people as much as I do.
You should take a tip from me.
Be more respectful of your fellow human beings.
And step up.
Step up. If you can figure out how many prime numbers there are between zero and 100 million, it should not be hard for you to memorize 2SLGBTQQIA+. And I believe we should all use it from now on and nothing else.
Because if you use anything else, well, you're a bastard.
You're a bastard. Well, of course, there is yet another school shooting.
I'm not going to name the shooter or the school because I don't like to do that.
He was bullied. So a boy was bullied and he took a gun to school and shot a bunch of people.
Now, if this story had been only about him killing his bullies, I would feel different about it.
I would feel different. But I think he killed people who were not his bullies and at least shot people.
Shot his teacher. I don't think the teacher was a bully.
Although maybe the teacher could have done more.
But I don't think that deserves getting shot.
I have the following comments about this story.
Nobody cares when boys get bullied.
Except maybe the parents and the boy himself.
Nobody cares when boys get bullied.
And so, some of these boys are going to go home and get a gun, and they're going to make you care about them.
That's what he did. This kid said, you don't care about me?
I don't care about you.
Went home, got a gun.
I don't know where he got the gun. Went to school and did some horrible things.
Now, I do not condone this.
Let me be as clear as possible.
I do not condone or encourage this behavior.
It is, however, a guaranteed outcome.
It's a guaranteed outcome.
Men and boys, can you back me on this?
If boys are treated like they don't exist and they don't matter, despite being abused, they will resort to violence.
That's how we're designed.
Don't be surprised.
Don't be surprised.
I mean, you have to do everything you can to stop it.
But don't act surprised.
We've developed a system that guarantees we create more of these school shooters.
If you create a system that guarantees you have school shooters, don't act surprised.
You treat boys like they're just pieces of shit that don't matter whatsoever.
Don't be surprised if they act exactly the way you treat them.
That's how it works.
You treat somebody like a criminal, they're more likely to become one.
There's lots of science behind that, right?
The way you treat people is what you turn them into.
You abuse people, they become abusers.
You treat people like they're great, they start performing better.
Because I think, really? I didn't think I was that good, but maybe I am.
So yeah, our system turns boys into school shooters.
Don't be surprised. The optimist in me says, I wish that there were enough of these, as horrible as they are, you don't want more of them, but you wish that there would be an accidental benefit, which is that bullies would stop bullying because they'd be afraid of getting shot.
If I were bullied in school, I would start sending my bullies articles about school shootings.
I would send my bullies articles about school shootings.
I would immediately be pulled out of school and probably...
I imagine I would be in a lot of trouble for that.
And boy, would I enjoy that.
Imagine being the guy who got bullied...
And you start sending, just through social media, you start sending your bullies the school shooting articles.
Well, immediately you're going to be called into the principal's office, right?
Your parents are going to be pulled in.
They're saying, dude, you cannot be sending these dangerous messages about school shootings to your bullies.
To which I say, as a person being bullied...
God, I need to swear now.
I need to swear so badly, but I'm going to take your advice as hard as this is.
As hard as this is, you are right.
Those of you who have said, swear less, because you like to show it to your kids and stuff in some cases.
You're not going to want to show this one to your kids.
So if I'm that kid who's bullied and I've been called into the office and said, why are you sending these dangerous articles around about school shootings?
I would say... I would look the principal in the eye and I would say, the reason I'm doing this is because you're not doing your effing job.
If you could do your job, I wouldn't do this.
Your job is to keep me safe.
You're not doing your job.
And by the way, the parents of these bullies, they're not doing their job.
And of course the bullies are assholes.
So let me explain this to you, Mr.
Principal. If you don't do your job, I have to do it for you.
That's my only alternative.
Because I'm not going to be unsafe.
Do you understand, Mr.
Principal, that you're not going to give me the unsafe option?
I choose not to take it.
I realize that you'd like me to go back to this bullying situation and do nothing about it and not do your job.
I'm going to do your job until you can do it.
If you can step up, I'll stop doing this.
If you don't step up...
We're going bigger on this.
Because right now, I'm only dealing with the school.
Tomorrow, I'm going to deal with the press.
If you don't think that was me at age 15, you didn't know me at age 15.
Because I would have done that.
I would have called the principal on doing his job, and that would have been the only topic.
And I wouldn't even talk about what I was doing.
I would say, I'm not even here to talk about that.
That's not even the problem.
Somehow you thought I'm the problem.
Apparently you don't know what problems look like.
Let me explain what a problem is.
A problem is getting bullied every day and nobody doing anything about it.
That's a problem. I'm dealing with a problem.
Your problem. I'm solving it for you.
Let's see you do it. You solve the problem for me and I won't solve it.
So that's how I would have handled it.
How many of you were bullied in school?
In the comments. How many of you were bullied in school?
Lots of yeses.
Seeing some no's.
Isn't everyone? Yeah, somebody said isn't everyone.
It's pretty much universal, right?
Close to it. The people who say no were probably large or muscular or something.
Well, I got this advice from one of my Twitter friends, Mark Lobliner.
He said that the way he dealt with it as a parent was to talk to the parents of the bullies.
He would call a personal meeting with the parents of the bullies.
What do you think of that idea?
Have a personal meeting with the parents of the bullies.
I'm looking at your comments.
Some people say bad, some good.
A little mixed, a little bit mixed idea in that, right?
Well, here's some context.
Mark is a bodybuilder.
Now what do you think of the idea?
How would you like a bodybuilder showing up at your front door?
And your husband, the accountant, opens the door?
And the bodybuilder says to you, in completely non-threatening tones, well, we have a problem with your child.
Your child is bullying my child.
And we're going to make that stop.
So tell me what you're going to do to make that stop.
Now imagine you're the dad.
And the guy talking to you could rip you apart in a heartbeat.
Just could rip your body apart.
But he's polite. I mean, he's not doing any bullying.
He's just saying, we've got a problem.
What are you going to do about it?
Now, I would argue that maybe this is a terrific idea if you're Mark.
This is probably a really good strategy if you're physically intimidating.
And you don't use the intimidation.
It just exists.
But you're not using it.
That would be a good strategy, I think.
I'll tell you the strategy I used.
I brought a weapon to school.
Don't recommend it. But I had some bullying problems, so I just brought a weapon to school and took care of it.
Now, the weapon was a club, which, because I was on path to be valedictorian at my school at the time, which was sort of well-known.
People expected I would be either one or two or something like that.
And so the way I was treated was the opposite of discrimination.
So I actually walked down the hall with a weapon in my hand.
Now, what would have happened if the principal had said, hey, you can't bring a weapon to school.
You literally have a club in your hand walking down the hall.
You can't do that.
If I'd been called in, what would I have said to the principal?
I'm doing your job.
Your job is to keep me safe.
Didn't do it. Now I'm going to do it.
So I took the club and I beat my bully with it in the hallway in front of as many people as, you know, we're walking around.
It was lunchtime. It's the last time you bothered me.
Now, in the old days, that's the way we did it.
I don't recommend it in the new days.
In the new days, you'd probably go to jail for that sort of thing.
In the old days, you could be somebody half to death and you just had a good reason and you'd be fine.
Literally, if you just had a good reason.
You know, where I grew up, oh, you had a good reason?
Oh, okay. That'd be the end of it.
So I don't recommend this, by the way.
Don't do violence in 2021.
It's not going to work out.
But there are lots of ways to handle these situations.
I'd like to teach you now how analogies work.
Now, this came from a situation that I was in myself.
I'm going to start generically to teach you how analogies work, and then I'm going to tell you what trouble I got into being a dumbass and using an analogy.
All right. So we're going to start with the lesson, and then I'll make it applicable to the headlines.
All right. Let's say somebody says to you that there's a particular automobile that's very fast.
And to make that case, they say, this new Porsche, let's say it's a Porsche, it's like a cheetah.
This Porsche is like a cheetah.
Now... If you do not have cognitive dissonance, how do you interpret this car?
It's like a cheetah. If there's no cognitive dissonance, you handle that pretty well, don't you?
You say to yourself, oh, I get it.
This is a person who's saying that a car is very fast.
Maybe even one of the fastest of the cars.
Because a cheetah is the fastest of the animals.
If it's like a cheetah, it's probably one of the fastest cars.
It's simple, right? No problem.
Everybody understands a good analogy.
Right? Now, here's the problem.
It works really well if you're talking about cars, because nobody really has a different opinion about cars.
If it's fast, it's fast.
Okay, it's a fast car. But when you get into politics and social stuff, everybody has different opinions.
So if you give somebody an analogy that challenges their opinion, what happens?
Let's say it's a good analogy that makes a point that challenges their opinion.
So it actually does challenge the opinion.
What happens? Well, if you've been following me for a while, or if you've studied psychology on your own, you know that what happens is cognitive dissonance.
So if somebody disagrees with you with a good reason, and you don't want to change your mind because you're so sure you were right, but that is a good reason...
You get triggered into a hallucination, essentially.
And you start to imagine things that aren't there.
That's what the cognitive dissonance does.
And that imagination is what papers together your inconsistent world.
So it's the papering part that's the cognitive weird part.
And so what you do is say, Scott, that's a bad take.
Because you just compared...
You dumbass.
You just compared...
Oh, my God. Face palm.
Face palm. Seriously?
You just compared an animal to a car.
Where's the carburetor on the cheetah?
Seriously, Scott, find me the carburetor on the cheetah, and then I'll maybe think you're making sense.
But do you understand the animals and cars aren't the same?
I mean, my God, you fool.
Okay, that was a forehead bomb.
You... So...
Cognitive dissonance will cause you to question the details that are different between the two things in your analogy.
This is how you know it's cognitive dissonance.
Because it isn't really hard to understand that the real point is the speed.
It's actually pretty easy to understand.
And if you don't understand something that easy, and instead you're saying, but one has pause...
And one has wheels?
Stupid! How do you compare something with paws to something with wheels?
If you're talking like that, you're experiencing cognitive dissonance.
So what was my example that got me in trouble?
Was it about cheetahs and cars?
No. It was not about something harmless.
Which you all would have understand, because you certainly understand easy analogies.
I did something very dumb.
Very dumb.
Dumbass? Me.
Dumbass? Me.
All right. Are we all on board that what I'm going to talk about next is me making a mistake?
I do this for the benefit of those of you who say, Scott, you never admit when you make a mistake.
Yeah, I do. I might admit when I make a mistake literally more than any human being alive.
Public figures, anyway.
I literally wrote a book on it.
A book with all the mistakes I made.
On a regular basis...
I go in front of the whatever world is watching me and tell you exactly what I got wrong.
Fairly regularly. And I'm doing it again right now, okay?
And tomorrow somebody will say, you know, the thing I hate about you most is you never admit you're wrong.
The world we live in.
Alright? So, here's the mistake I made.
I said...
Just an offhand comment in a tweet.
It was just a tweet reply.
So I didn't put much thought into it, and I did something dumb.
I used an analogy in a political conversation.
If you put an analogy in a political conversation, what happens?
Cognitive dissonance.
And so, when I said...
When somebody was saying, hey, we don't want the government mandating these vaccines, which, by the way, I agree with...
Hold on. Stop. I agree with the point.
I don't want the government mandating vaccinations.
Okay? At least the COVID vaccinations.
But I said, hey, do you wear...
cognitive dissonance.
How would you interpret the analogy where somebody was talking about vaccine mandates and they don't want them, and I don't want them either, right?
So we're on the same page.
And I said to that other person who was complaining, I said, hey, do you wear seatbelts?
Here's the correct way to interpret that.
The seatbelts are mandated by the government, and vaccinations are mandated by the government.
And that we live in a world where the government mandates all kinds of things for your body.
They can draft you, they can put you in jail for not paying your taxes, they can shoot you for committing crimes.
The government completely controls your body already, which was the point.
Now, why do I say that?
If I agree that I don't want a mandate...
Why would I be telling somebody?
The government already mandates all kinds of things for your body.
Sounds inconsistent, doesn't it?
It's not inconsistent.
It's context.
Context is never wrong.
Context is not an argument.
Context doesn't prove a case.
It's just useful.
And it's useful to me to know that the question of whether the government can control your body is settled.
It is settled. The government can and will control your body, often in ways you don't like.
Should they do it in this specific case?
Well, that's something to talk about.
So if you're talking about this specific case, yeah, let's talk about that, and I'm on your side if you don't want to mandate.
But if you're talking about the larger question, can the government mandate something that goes right to your health and safety?
Yes. They can draft your ass and send you to another country where you get shot by a stranger.
They can do that.
They have all that power.
And they use it all the time when they think it's a good idea.
Should you push back sometimes?
Yeah, of course. Of course the public should push back.
Absolutely. But the only point of the seatbelts is there was one example out of the thousands I could have given from, you know, getting drafted to you can't drink and drive to God knows what.
So it was just one of the many examples.
The only thing you should have taken from it is that the government already controls your body.
Now... Having defended what I said, did I just tell you that I'm right after all?
Because I just defended it.
Hey, what's wrong with you for not understanding my analogy?
Nope. Nope.
No. This was my mistake.
My mistake was using an analogy, carelessly, in a political conversation.
As a communicator, I give myself an F. Because I caused a whole bunch of people who are completely in agreement with me to say on social media, I have a bad take.
People who completely agree with me, just on this minor point about mandates, completely agree with me.
But they saw the analogy and they decided that the analogy was working against their point, which it does.
But it doesn't work against their point enough to change their mind or mine.
So I'm giving you point and counterpoint because I like to show you the whole story.
But it didn't change my opinion.
The fact that this works against my own point of view, it's just context.
And there. Was that anything that was useful?
I don't know. Maybe that was just for me.
There's a...
Oh, here's an interesting news.
Apparently CNN anchor Jake Tapper was talking about President Biden's poll numbers are down to even in the Quinnipiac poll.
Down from...
He had been in the 50s in approval and is now down to 38%, which even Jake Tapper calls, quote, brutal.
Brutal. And...
So I guess everybody's noticed.
Now, I'm going to tie this into another thing I was going to talk about later, but I'm going to tie it in now, which is, don't you love it when people are talking in public and they give you their internal thought process and you're thinking to yourself, don't need that. Don't need you to tell me why you're going to talk about the next thing.
Just do it.
We won't even need to know your internal thought process.
But have you noticed that...
So Biden's poll numbers are in the toilet and a lot of things are going wrong, right?
Now, look at the news coverage of Trump today.
The news coverage of Trump today.
What does it focus on?
Which part of everything that we know about Trump are they focusing on now?
Well, they're focusing on January 6th and whatever role Trump had in that.
Now, what did January 6 have to do with Trump's, let's say, job description?
In other words...
Where does it say in the job of the president, you know, do something about the protesters going to the Capitol or something?
Sort of was outside of his general job description, right?
It's something he did, and, you know, of course, he had a role in it, and it was important.
But not really what you think of as the job of president.
Why is it that all of the focus on Trump in terms of criticism...
It's not about the four years he was president, but rather the first day he wasn't.
Think about it.
All of the criticism of Trump today is about when he wasn't president.
Why? Because if you compare him on policy, policy to policy, with Biden, he runs the table.
He runs the table on policy.
Name something that somebody in the middle of the country, not somebody on the far left or the far right, but just say a mainstream voter.
Let's say an independent.
An independent who could go either way.
What's an independent supposed to make of the fact that they're not even going to compare Biden and Trump policy to policy?
Because it doesn't work out.
You could make an argument that Trump was better on everything at this point.
I mean, if you had some specific liberal issues, some EOs that got reversed or something, maybe you like that.
But to me, it looks like Trump ran the table.
Policy to policy.
Right? Afghanistan, Trump.
Right? Um...
Now, of course, that's subject to great argument, but I would say that the left has conceded the policy argument.
It feels like the left has conceded that Trump was just better on policy.
Because if he wasn't, what the hell would they be talking about?
They'd be talking about all the mistakes he made that Biden corrected, right?
The news would be nothing but, man, that Trump sure screwed things up, but good thing Biden straightened it out.
Where's that story? It doesn't exist.
So if you don't think Trump can win in 2024, my God, it's starting to look easy.
And the only thing that the critics have now is to scare you about the January 6th thing and turn it into a, he's a dictator and waiting and stuff like that.
I don't think anything looks less dictatorish than what happened on January 6th.
I mean, that's the least dictatorish thing I've ever seen.
And it wasn't close.
It wasn't like the government almost got taken over or something like that.
All right. I would go so far as to say that the current coverage of Trump, given that he's not even in the race yet, although we expect he will be, is like a Trump vaccination.
So I feel like the news from the left is trying to vaccinate the country against Trump by talking about January 6th over and over and making that the story, because it's all they have.
So the only way they can vaccinate you is to go after the spike protein of the Trump experience, which is January 6th.
I'm just quite proud of what I just did there.
Can we take a moment?
Can we take a moment to revel...
In the clever analogy I just used.
What? He used an analogy?
He never learns.
No, he never learns. But yes, January 6th is the spike protein that they're trying to vaccinate you with.
All right. Here's the best argument that vaccinations work.
I saw this on a viral clip.
There was a nurse explaining the best evidence that the vaccinations work.
Do you think that I'm going to give you a good explanation that is going to convince you?
Let's say those of you who are sort of skeptical of the vaccinations.
Do you think that I can say in one sentence, I'll be quoting this nurse, roughly quoting her, do you think I can convince you the vaccinations are safe in one sentence that you haven't heard before?
Because I'm going to try to do it.
Here's the nurse's explanation of how you can know for sure that the vaccinations are safe.
In one sentence.
They were given to their rich white people first.
And I'm done. And I'm done.
And as the nurse says, if we weren't sure that they would work...
We would have given them to the black and brown population first, or poor people in general.
Now, I'm not serious, in case you thought I was.
That's not a real argument.
But it does raise a question, doesn't it?
You know how often I've said to you, follow the money?
It's like, well, that shouldn't be so predictive, but why is it always?
Why is it always that people have the same philosophical preference...
That just happens to match what would make them more money.
Yes, our philosophy tends to match exactly what makes us more money.
That's who we are. And then we think we're making a philosophical decision.
So I'll just put that out there.
If the elites had any question about the vaccination, they wouldn't have given it to themselves first.
I say that facetiously.
Because, sure, they might have.
But it is a funny comment.
It's a funny comment because it makes you think about the whole of how everything works.
That's what I like about it.
It's kind of brilliant that way.
All right. How about this for good news?
Talk about news that gets buried.
There's a malaria vaccine.
A vaccination for malaria.
Brand new. That could save, you know, somewhere up to 400,000 lives per year.
A malaria vaccine.
So here's the part that blew my mind.
So I read a story about a new malaria vaccination, which has been tested in trials and did well.
How long has the vaccination been around?
I don't know. It wasn't in the story.
Don't you think that would be kind of important?
You know, given that all we're talking about with the coronavirus vaccination is how long it's been, you know, tested.
So there's a major story about this malaria vaccine and it does not include how long they've been testing it.
That seems like an omission.
But I think it's more like a...
It could be more closer to the point that...
You've got to start Sunday.
And I guess the trial made them comfortable enough that they're going to go ahead.
All right. There is a dangerous, dangerous tweet on Twitter right now.
Dangerous, I say. I'm going to tell you what it is, but put your cautions up, okay?
Like, put on your skeptical helmet, right?
Right? I need you to be maximum guarded for skepticism before I tell you what this tweet was.
There is some entity, and I don't think it matters who, but they're offering a million dollars for anyone who can prove that the excess deaths in the various states and countries are caused by the COVID and not the vaccination itself.
Somebody's offering a million dollars...
If you can prove that COVID is what's killing the extra people and not the vaccination itself.
A million dollars, if you can prove that.
Now, given that that is the primary medical consensus, that the vaccination is saving millions of lives, wouldn't it be easy to get this million dollars?
Seems like it'd be pretty easy.
But that's what makes it interesting, because the individual shows a lot of data, and of course you shouldn't believe any data you see on the Internet, but plenty of data to suggest that maybe you couldn't prove it, that you wouldn't know the difference between who got killed by the vaccination and who got killed by coronavirus.
Now, remember I told you, put on your skeptical hat.
I don't believe any of this.
In other words, I don't believe any of his data is right.
Not any, but, you know, I don't think that it's right in total.
And that I don't think there's anything to it.
But it's ballsy.
It's ballsy. So I ran this by, you know, I alerted my primary skeptical people, Andres Backhouse, and Anatoly Lubarsky, and Lubarsky, and I got only Andres' comment before I came live here.
And his comment was about this fellow's analysis, the group that's offering the million dollars.
He said about the analysis in general, this is so misguided and amateurish that taking the million would feel like stealing to me.
Now, I asked him for a specific, because this is the sort of thing where you need to give an example of what you mean by what's wrong with it.
Just one good example.
What's the main thing wrong with it?
So I haven't heard that yet, but I have enough confidence in Andres that he's seeing plenty wrong with it.
He's seeing plenty that's wrong with it.
So I would say you should put a real big doubt on that.
And I also think that if there were anything to this claim, it would just be so obvious that everybody would know it.
I guess, you know, you can always have a situation where all the experts are fooled, but it's unusual to have this many experts all over the world fooled the same way.
That would be pretty unusual.
Yeah, I think the real problem here is that we don't believe any statistics and you can do anything with it.
So just keep an eye on that.
There's a Don Lemon rant on CNN. Not a rant, but an opinion.
I shouldn't call it a rant.
That would be putting too much opinion on it.
Saying that the internet should do more to regulate the misinformation.
So he's calling for more censorship on social media platforms.
That there should be consequences for that information if it's not true.
And his argument is...
Wait for it.
Here's his argument. He says that it's completely practical to do, to regulate the information on the internet.
Why? Why does Don Lemon know that it is perfectly practical to get rid of the false information on the internet?
He says it's because the legacy media did it, and they're doing it now.
So if CNN can do it, why can't the internet?
That's right. Don Lemon said that the internet should do, you know, the social media platforms, could do more work to get rid of the misinformation because CNN does.
So there might be a little bit of a lack of self-awareness there.
CNN literally synonymous with fake news.
If I said, fake news, name an entity, Just walk up to a stranger and say, fake news.
Name an organization.
They'd look at you and say, well, I don't know why you're asking this, but CNN? It's the first thing you'd say.
He doesn't understand that his network is the most famous fake news entity in the world.
Not the only ones with fake news, of course.
You know, everybody's in on it.
But they're the most famous example by far.
It seems like you need to mention that in this context.
So Jan Jekilik, whose last name I always have trouble with, did this tweet, and I thought this captured the zeitgeist pretty well.
Do you want to capture the zeitgeist?
Yeah, let's capture it.
We don't have to, because Jan did it.
He tweeted this. He said, We're witnessing in real time the spectacular accelerating failure of the, quote, governance by expert class model.
Its follies daily laid bare, even as its proponents double down on touting its benevolent inevitability.
So that's, you know, that hits you, doesn't it?
That feels exactly what's happening.
We're watching the complete destruction of the expert class.
But here's how he dresses up.
Here's how he seasons his tweet.
So he's telling you about the death of the expert class.
Most of you are watching it too.
And then he says, and it also struck me, in this lies hope.
What do you think of that? Do you think that the death of the expert class, which unfortunately means the death of using facts and logic and science for making decisions, because we don't know what are the facts and what's the science, we can't trust anything.
If we don't use that model, what's the upside?
What's the upside of not trusting any of the expert class?
I'm going to go with Jan on this.
I'm going to go with you on optimism, and here's why.
You have to understand the problem before you can fix it.
Pretty much a generic, basic, universal truth.
If you don't understand the problem, the only way you can solve it is randomly, and how likely is that?
So in order to understand the problem, well, in order to fix the problem, you have to understand it, and I believe that we're at that point.
We've reached the point where we know we can't trust our experts, our scientists, or our politicians.
So what do you do? Well, I feel like we're on the border of needing something like a new model, a new system, something that can help us solve this exact problem.
What would that look like?
Well, I think I'm modeling it right now.
I believe I am modeling the solution to that right now, but you would need a more robust version of that.
And the model would be this.
Let's say a jury, if you will, I'll use the word jury loosely, of skeptics.
A jury of skeptics.
Now, I have my own sort of informal group of skeptics who follow me on Twitter and are very, very kind to respond to lots of, you know, queries where I say, look at this, look at that.
It takes a lot of time, right?
I'm asking quite a bit of them, Andres Backhouse in particular.
The amount of time I've asked him to spend Looking at stuff for your benefit, and my benefit as well, is quite a bit.
He's putting in a lot of work for your benefit and not getting paid for it in any way.
So I think that unpaid, highly qualified people who have a track record and also the right credentials, in his case PhD in economics, if they have the right credentials, we need a jury of skeptics.
Now what would be better than a jury of skeptics?
Because you're going to not trust them, right?
The jury is going to talk.
I don't believe those guys.
All those skeptics are on the right.
Or all those skeptics are on the left or something.
Well, more than one. More than one.
You should have more than one jury of skeptics.
Maybe I'd have one.
Try to be as independent as possible.
Maybe other people have one.
Maybe every...
Oh, here's a model for you.
How about this? How about this model for the future?
Okay. Everybody who has...
And I'll just throw on a for example.
For example, everybody who has over 100,000 Twitter followers, just for conversation's sake.
Let's say that anybody who has over 100,000 should have...
Also, a jury of skeptics who sort of are part of their universe, so that when they tweet something that 100,000 people, possibly lots more, are going to see, that it would get tweeted with the context of their own experts.
So at least it would travel with the criticism as well as the point.
Now, I'm just throwing out a first idea, right?
We're just brainstorming. But do you think that there's any potential that a system could arise that would give you some confidence about the news you're seeing?
You know, just somebody who's good at looking at the news, a jury of people who are good at looking at statistics in the news, and just say, I don't know, trust that one and don't trust this one.
What do you think? Somebody says it's peer review, but I'm talking about more of an immediate peer review at a high level.
The real peer review gets into the details, and that's good, too.
I'm talking about just look at it, you know, surfacy, and is there anything obviously wrong with that?
Because there's usually something obviously wrong.
When I say obvious, I mean obvious to an expert, not necessarily obvious to us.
A live Zoom panel?
Yeah, sometimes live. Um...
Just looking at...
Oh, interesting comment.
I'm seeing that's what Gottfeld does, isn't it?
Well, in a sense, the Gottfeld show is a group of people who know a lot about politics.
In a sense, they can act as skeptics.
You're right. Yeah, in some sense, I see that.
But you'd want the...
You know, you'd want...
A few more PhDs in economics, and you can throw in your Cat Timphs and your Tyrus because they're great on TV. But you also need some people with serious credentials, I think.
Did you see the story about, I guess Biden has a stage set that looks like he's in, is it the Oval Office, the stage?
So that when he does his TV appearances, he's actually not in the Oval Office room that it looks like.
So his background is a fake stage, just made to look like he's in the White House.
Now, put on your conspiracy hats.
We're going to take a ride.
You ready? Put on the conspiracy hats.
Why would your government...
This is just for fun, by the way.
I'm not saying any of this is true.
Why would your government want to build a fake set for where the president actually is every day and where they've been doing this from routinely for years?
Why? Well...
Allow me to suggest a few possibilities.
Number one, sometimes he's not in the White House.
Right? If you get used to seeing the fake set behind him, it would be really easy to reproduce the fake set from another location.
So I'm not saying that they have any plans to do that.
I'm just saying it opened up that option.
A little bit easier than using the real background because the window, you know, the scenery in the window would change.
But suppose they train the public that the set always looks like the fake set.
Then he can go anywhere.
They just reproduce the fake set somewhere else.
Now, would that ever be useful?
Maybe. Imagine for security purposes.
Imagine for security purposes if you knew the president was giving, let's say, a live address.
Wouldn't that mean that terrorists would know where the president is?
You could imagine a situation where they want to fool bad guys about where the president's location is.
Now let's suppose there's an attack on the Capitol, a terrorist attack, and the president needs to go into hiding.
So let's say the president is in an underground bunker.
But he wants to look presidential.
Now they can just reproduce the state set in the underground bunker, and it looks like he's above ground.
He's like, I'm not afraid, but he's actually in the underground bunker.
So it opens up some options, right?
Here's the other one, and I know you're already thinking this.
It feels like if anybody was ever going to move toward creating a real digital deepfake of a president...
You would do this first.
You would do this first.
You would have to change the background first and get people used to it.
Why? Because it would be much harder to put a fake person on top of a real background.
Not only because the weather outside the window might be changing, That might be a tip-off.
But also, and maybe I need an expert to tell me this, would you be able to pick it up more easily if you had a fake image on top of a real image versus all fake?
Is there anybody who knows enough?
Machiavelli's... If my Twitter user Machiavelli is on here, I think you've got some experience with this.
Head-on monitor, no visible teleprompter.
Okay. Controlled lighting, yeah.
Controlled lighting is a very good reason to do it because you don't want to open windows.
That's a very good reason to do it.
Yeah, in fact, the main reason might be just controlling the lighting and there was some talk about getting the teleprompter out of the way.
So it might be nothing but a production thing.
Easily could be nothing but that.
Well, so here's the thing.
I think they need to have a consistent background to make it easier to put a deepfake president in front of it should we ever need to do that.
I don't think that we need to do that, and I don't think there's any media plan to do that, but you would have to do this first.
That's a little suspicious to me.
Because you wouldn't want to have to reprogram the background every time you put in a new Biden, right?
If you wanted to program Biden making a speech, a fake one, a digital Biden, you wouldn't want to have to do the extra work of changing what's in the window and also corresponding to when the cloud went over, right?
So imagine Biden is in front of a real window and a cloud goes over.
Maybe you can see it.
And then maybe somebody says, wait a minute, I looked at the timing of this, I checked the clouds, this doesn't make sense, it was a clear day.
So I think you'd have to make the background fake, and the same all the time, before you created your first deep fake and put it on that scene.
You'd have to prime people in the public first.
Now, I don't believe any of this in the conspiracy sense.
It's just interesting...
That there are two good reasons for doing this.
One, just to get a better video.
Makes perfect sense.
And the other is longer term.
Now, let me ask you this.
Do you think that our CIA, etc., has already made deep fakes of terrorists giving instructions to their people?
I don't know.
But if they haven't, they're incompetent.
Because we should have seen back in bin Laden days, there should have already been fake videos of bin Laden saying, hey, lay down your guns and surrender, or something like that.
You know, not something that much on the nose.
It'd have to be more clever than that.
But don't you think that if we could cause terrorists to not be able to communicate directly...
Because we would catch them in their communication.
One of the ways they communicate would be to put a little video on a little memory stick and then have somebody physically transport it and play it in the computer on the other end.
Well, if we can create fakes, how is anybody going to know they're getting the real video from the real leader?
They wouldn't know. So they would never know to be able to trust instructions from their own bosses.
That would be kind of good for us to do that, to create that doubt.
Anyway, that's what's coming.
Looks like we're just about to the end of our time together.
Scotty and my friend, you make Chinese Dilber products because child labour is more practical for your products.
Vet in Vegas. So every day people are trying to shame me for the fact that my publisher, who, by the way, I don't control, does their printing in China.
And I also buy Chinese products, Chinese-made products, including my iPhone.
I'm not going to apologize for that.
Because I say over and over again, we should decouple the stuff that is easy to decouple and we should take a longer time to decouple the stuff that's going to be harder because there aren't alternative sources.
So the moment there's an alternative source for printing Dilbert calendars, I will do that.
I'll push my publisher for the alternative source.
But if the alternative source is too expensive, meaning that it can't be profitable, I'm not pushing for that.
So, does that mean I'm putting profits over people?
No, I'm putting people at the top, because you need profits.
The thing that keeps people alive?
Profits. Do you know why you can have nice things, if any of you have nice things?
Do you know why you can? Profits.
Profits. Yeah, you don't want to stop profit, right?
You want to manage it and evolve it in a way that you can have the profit and also a better world.
So no, I'm not going to be a dumbass and say, you know, stop doing business instantly in every situation, no exceptions.
That would be dumb.
It wouldn't be good for people.
And if you imagine that that would be a good idea, you probably just lack an understanding of economics.
All right. Uh...
Please explain profits to AOC. What's not fake?
I'm just looking at some of your comments before I sign off.
Okay. Okay, the Boo update.
Boo was doing very badly yesterday, but probably dehydration.
So I rehydrated her, and she's looking a lot better today.
But I've got some delicate balance of meds and trying to get her appetite.
So basically I'm involved in a chess game, and the chess pieces are like a bunch of different medications with the side effects, with the illness itself, And they all have to be in the right order and in the right strategy or the cat dies.
Trust me, you do not want to be in my situation because it's really, really complicated, the scheduling of everything and the ins and outs and how to play it.
And it's hard.
It's hard, but I'm doing my best.
And she's looking good as of this morning, but she's still not eating on her own.
But we have a plan to make that happen.
All right, so we will not give up on Boo.
Yeah, John, I'm not going to respond to that.
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