Episode 1530 Scott Adams: I'll Tell You How to Solve all of Our Problems at the Same Time. And the Simultaneous Sip Too
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
CNN Fake News
Fox Fake News
President Trump's 2024 run strategy
Vax ICU statistical impossibility
Joe Rogan vs. Sanjay Gupta, who "won"?
Understanding the VAERS database
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Well, I understand it takes about 10 seconds for the YouTube feed to kick in, so I don't want you to miss anything.
Because today...
Well, let me tell you, today is one of the best days ever.
At least you made it to Coffee with Scott Adams, and that is a strong, strong start.
And what is this?
The best thing of all time, the best thing in the universe, the multiverse, and possibly every simulation to infinity.
And how do you make it even better?
Um, yeah. You, uh, you just need a cup or a mug or a glass of tank of gels, not canteen, jug, glass, best of any kind.
Fill me with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
Science has now proven that the simultaneous sip will boost your immune response.
Oh, it will. And it's going to happen right now.
Are you ready? Go!
Oh, yeah. I feel even the vaccination is being destroyed by this coffee.
Not just the coronavirus.
The vaccination itself.
Yeah, that's how powerful coffee is.
Well, let's talk about all the fake news.
I like to start with the fake news first.
We got fake news from CNN and a little more fake news from Fox News.
Let's see who's the fakest.
CNN has the following headline.
Texas School Administrator...
What? That's the headline.
There's some school where the administrator said, you know, you're going to need a second opinion on this whole Holocaust situation.
Now, does that sound like real news?
Do you think this really happened?
It's a headline. It's on CNN. Do you think it really happened?
Sort of.
Sort of, but in a fake news way it happened.
Here's what actually happened.
The administrator was discussing that you always have to have books on both points of every issue.
That's it. That's the story.
That the story is you need books that represent both sides of every issue.
Then somebody said, well, what about the Holocaust?
And the administrator had to explain the policy.
And the policy is, you need an opposing view of the Holocaust.
Now, you know, there's one issue which is, how did he answer the question, right?
There was somebody who just answered the question.
And I think he answered the question by saying they don't allow exceptions.
It's not really his fault.
The headline is writing it like there's a school administrator who's not so sure about the Holocaust.
That's not happening.
It's just somebody who didn't know how to explain to people that there weren't any exceptions.
You have to have the opposing view.
Now, I would argue that the Holocaust is one thing, there are probably a few others, in which an opposing view is Cannot be expressed.
And shouldn't be.
Probably. Because it's a psychological pillar of the Israeli nation.
Very important to Jewish people and Jewish supporters all over the world.
And I would say that the narrative of the Holocaust exactly the way it is, It has a use that goes beyond information and knowledge.
It becomes almost a physical asset because it protects Israel.
I mean, it's part of their defense.
So I don't think that you should necessarily question something that has turned from an idea into a physical reality, if that physical reality is keeping people safe.
I mean, I'm not sure you can treat an idea the same as a physical reality that came from an idea.
Now, it's dangerous.
It's dangerous to have something you can't question, just generally speaking.
But, you know, just in the same way I would argue that we should all have free speech, I would argue with that.
We should all have free speech.
No argument. But do I think you should say the N-word if you're not black?
No. No.
Because that word isn't like other words.
To imagine that every word is like every other word is just not realistic.
That word... Has translated into the physical world.
Right? It's so palpable.
It's not even really a word or a concept anymore.
It's more like a physical object.
You know, I'm being a little hyperbolic here.
But you can't treat all the words the same.
That's not the real world.
Anyway, so that's CNN's fake news, trying to make it look like this Texas administrator was anti, or, I don't know, pro-Holocaust or something.
And it was just somebody trying to explain a rule that didn't handle exceptions.
How about Fox News?
How are they doing? Well, they ran an opinion piece by Senator Marco Rubio.
Now, keep in mind, this is not Fox News' opinion.
But they put it on their website, so whatever Rubio says here, they have to take a little bit of tangential responsibility.
And this is what they say, or Senator Rubio says.
He says, for weeks, rumors have swirled in Washington about President Joe Biden's climate czar, John Kerry, and his opposition to taking concrete action against the Chinese Communist Party's use of slave labor.
Huh. So John Kerry's not going hard against China for their slave labor.
And Rubio goes on.
He says, now we may have an answer about his reluctance to take action.
According to a new report, Kerry and his wife have at least $1 million invested in a Chinese investment group called Hill House.
And I guess they have some...
And then that group has some connections to some slave labor.
But what Kerry invested in was not the company that does the slave labor, but rather a group that invests in companies in general, including at least one involved in slave labor, allegedly.
Allegedly. Now, do I have to do a Dr.
Evil impression to tell you what's wrong with this story?
Can anybody do the impression in the comments?
You know where I'm going, right?
Okay. So I just googled the net worth of John Kerry.
It's $250 million.
He has a net worth of $250 million.
Do you think he cares about $1 million?
That's one 250th of his net wealth.
Do you think he even knew?
Do you think he was even aware of That he had an investment, which would be tiny in his case, in a company that also had investments in another company that was slave labor.
I mean, you could argue he should have zero money in China, and I would argue that too.
He should have zero money in China.
But a million dollars?
You think John Kerry's going to throw the United States under the bus for a million dollars because he's a Democrat and you don't like him?
I don't think so. I mean, he might be throwing the United States under the bus.
He might be making bad decisions.
That's a separate question.
I'm just saying, if you think that a guy with $250 million is making decisions about the world because of the fate of his $1 million, that he can move any time he wants, he's not.
That's fake news.
There's no way that's influencing his decisions.
I'm not defending Kerry.
I do not think the Biden administration is exactly nailing it when it comes to China.
So I'm a critic of how they handle China.
But this criticism doesn't make sense.
This is a criticism you can only make if you've never been rich.
Let me be blunt.
I'm not even sure I would be influenced by a million dollar investment.
And I don't have $250 million.
So I don't think this is fair.
Glenn says you're completely wrong.
I'm sorry. Well, now I'm thrown.
I had this argument.
I thought it made sense.
I was just looking at the numbers and using my own personal experience.
But now Glenn says I'm wrong.
Well, now I'm rethinking everything.
Glenn, you have thrown me for a loop.
Here I thought I was making a little bit of sense, but Glenn comes in.
Nope. You're wrong.
Wow. I'm just going to quit.
Give up. I give up.
Glenn. Glenn.
QED. You win.
Well, the hashtag BearShelvesBiden is going around.
Apparently... Somebody paged bare shelves Biden at an airport.
There's a video of the page.
Paging bare shelves Biden.
Bare shelves Biden.
That's pretty funny.
Here's my problem with Trump's current approach to running for re-election, one assumes.
And it goes like this.
What would Trump have to do to win re-election?
Just show up and be quiet, right?
Just show up.
Don't make any trouble.
Just say, look at what I did on the border.
Look what I did in various places.
And then just compare it.
If you want more of what I did, vote for me.
If you want more of what Biden's giving you, vote for him.
I don't know how he could lose, right?
How could he possibly lose?
But on the other hand, asking Trump to not be Trump...
Is that fair? Is it realistic?
I don't think there's any chance he's going to change his technique.
But the technique that was 100% right for the first election I think is 100% wrong for the second one.
What do you think? Because being provocative and being more extreme than even his base really worked on the first election.
But now we can look at his track record as a president, which is completely different, right?
When he was running for president, he didn't have any track record, and he was a newbie to politics, in a sense.
But now he has a track record.
Just compare it.
Just compare your statistics to Biden and say, what do you think?
That's all he has to do to win, I think.
I mean, he has to be interesting and have good opinions and stuff, not make mistakes.
But he can do all that.
Now, I guess I'm wasting my breath because Trump's going to be Trump, and I'm not even sure you'd want that to change, would you?
I mean, I always feel silly giving advice to somebody who's more successful.
Doesn't it sound like a little bit absurd?
If I could have run for president and gotten the job like Trump did, well, maybe I should give him some advice.
But I didn't make it all the way to the presidency.
I didn't try, but I imagine I wouldn't have succeeded.
He did. So it always feels a little, I don't know, arrogant or something to give advice to somebody who clearly knows how to do stuff better than you do.
At least better than I do.
But at this point, it does look like a gigantic, glaring mistake.
We'll see if that changes.
So a report from an ICU doctor that said it was statistically impossible for this doctor to see in the ICU what the doctor is saying.
I believe it was a woman who was saying that there's just a whole bunch of people coming in with vaccination-related side effects, like really bad ones.
You know, devastatingly life-changing bad effects.
Now... The doctor says, how is it possible statistically that if the vaccinations are as safe as you say, how is it possible that my ICU is seeing all these damaged people after vaccinations?
So the doctor makes the case that statistics schmistics, schmamistics, if one doctor is seeing all these problems, it is statistically impossible for it to be coincidence.
What do you think? What do you think?
Statistically impossible that one doctor could see all these vaccination-related injuries.
Anybody? Coincidence?
Well, that would be a pretty big coincidence, says the doctor.
What? Nobody's going to agree with the doctor?
This is a doctor.
Personal experience.
It matters.
It matters. All right, you're all too smart.
You're all too smart.
Yes, in a situation in which you have many, many hospitals and many, many ICUs and many, many people getting vaccinated, what are the odds that at least one of the ICUs will get a whole bunch of people that seem to have vaccination bad side effects?
What are the odds that one ICU would have that?
Thank you. The odds are exactly 100%.
There's a 100% chance that at least one ICU would have this experience.
Now, what would be the odds that the doctors in the ICU who experience this, this very odd thing that's 100% likely to happen to somebody, what are the odds that they would think it was a coincidence?
Go ahead. What are the odds that the doctors themselves would think they were experiencing a coincidence that When they get all these people coming in with vaccination-related side effects.
Almost 100% chance they would think there was something going on.
Because they're dumb? Because they are not good at statistics?
No. No.
They should feel exactly the way they do feel, which is, I imagine.
I can't read their minds.
But I imagine if you had that experience, you'd say, whoa, whoa, whoa, red flag.
I'd better tell people. Is that the right decision?
Whoa, red flag, I better tell everybody?
Yes. Yes.
If you're in the ICU and you see person after person with huge problems for one cause, yes, go public right away.
But just remember, there's a 100% chance this had to happen by coincidence.
There's a 100% chance that some ICU would have a weird outcome and they'd want you to know.
And they should. They should.
We're going to talk about VAERS in a moment.
So there's that.
At the same time, I saw Dr.
J. Bhattacharya said there's a lot to learn from this graph, and he showed a graph that I think a lot of people with vaccinations are still getting infected.
So he says, what is the argument for mandates?
If people who are getting vaccinated are still getting infected, this doctor says, so what's the point for mandates if you're still getting infected?
Does that question even make sense?
How does that question make sense?
The question doesn't even make sense.
What does mandates have to do with this?
The mandate is disconnected from this question.
It's just a separate question.
All right. So a number of people have told me that the government has, quote, moved the goalposts on vaccinations.
How many of you think that the government has moved the goalposts First they told you, oh, these vaccinations will stop you from getting infected.
And then it turned into, whoa, maybe they won't stop you from getting infected.
Maybe it just stops you from dying.
So did they move the goalposts?
I'm seeing lots of yeses, but some noes.
That's not moving the goalposts?
I mean, they said...
The goal is to vaccinate you so you don't get the vaccination.
But now it's not.
It's a different goal.
Have they not moved the goalpost?
Yeah, I'm saying lots of yeses.
They moved the goalpost.
No, they didn't.
How did you let me goad you into agreeing to that?
Nobody moved any goalposts.
The data changed.
The data changed. What we thought we knew turned out to be wrong.
So when the new data came in, did they move the goalpost?
Or did they revise their plan as any reasonable person should when they have new data?
That's not moving the goalpost.
That's just adjusting.
To the fog of war and you had a plan.
It didn't work out. You've heard the saying that a battle plan only lasts until the first bullet is fired.
And then it's chaos and then you've got to improvise.
I want my government to improvise.
Don't you? What did you want them to do?
Get new information and then just do the same thing they were doing when they knew it wouldn't be effective?
That they couldn't do the first thing?
What did you want them to do?
I want them to change the plan, which they did.
Why are you complaining about that?
Why would you complain about them changing the plan to something more reasonable once they have better data?
Why are we bitching about that?
It's exactly what you want.
All right, here's another mind-blower.
You ready for this?
What would be the best-case scenario...
For how to manage the pandemic and get to the other side.
Given that we know vaccinations don't completely stop it, and it's going to be around for a while.
What's the best case scenario?
I would argue that the best case scenario is the one we're in.
Exactly the one we're in.
Precisely, exactly the one we're in is the best-case scenario.
Because the best-case scenario, given what we have to work with, right, it's not a perfect world, but what we have to work with are vaccinations and therapeutics that can greatly reduce the risk of serious problems and death.
But we know if you wait around long enough, pretty much everybody's going to get it, whether they're vaccinated or not, probably.
Or even if they've been infected before, apparently, you can get it again.
So if we know we're all going to get it, isn't the best-case scenario that we get vaccinated so it doesn't kill us and we just build immunity, the humans build immunity over time just by being infected?
Somebody says, stop calling them vaccines.
That's word thinking.
Word thinking. So whether I call it a vaccine or not, we are all under the same understanding that it doesn't completely stop the spread.
Would it matter if I changed the word?
How would you be happier if I changed the word, given that everybody knows what it means?
That in this case, the vaccine is more like a...
Prophylactic therapy. We all know it, right?
So now that we all know it, the word is okay.
I would argue that when we first were finding out that the vaccines were, you know, leaky or they wouldn't stop infections, when it first came out, we should have been real careful about using the word vaccine.
But now you all know what it means.
So now we can use the word.
You all know it's not perfect.
So yes, it's different than other vaccines, but we know what it means, so the word's fine.
All right. We're all brainwashed now.
Well, somebody says there might be some legal definitional thing.
That's a separate question. Yeah, you could call it a shot.
Let's not care about what we call it, okay?
All right, let's talk about...
Let's talk about...
Joe Rogan versus Sanjay Gupta.
And it's fascinating to me that this continues to be big news.
I mean, I'm very interested in it, so I love the story.
So I guess I'm happy.
But what you saw after the Joe Rogan versus Sanjay Gupta interview is you saw something very much like when Sam Harris had me on his podcast in, I don't know, 20-whatever, talking about Trump.
And I went on Sam Harris' broadcast.
I thought I did well, presenting my argument.
And the people I talked to said, wow, you just slayed him.
You just demolished Sam Harris on his own show.
Good job. You just made him look like a clown.
And then I'd check online, and I would see the people who follow Sam Harris more than they are interested in me.
And they said, man, Sam Harris just destroyed you in that interview.
And they were equally certain...
That they had watched something in which I had been dismantled, whereas the people who were more likely to like me before that thought I dismantled him.
Which really happened?
I don't know. I don't know.
Apparently there are just two movies and they're both complete.
I live in one of them, but I can't tell you the other movie's wrong.
I don't know. I just know I'm in one of the other movies.
I'm just not in the other one.
I can't see that movie.
So with the Rogan versus Sanjay Gupta, we had almost exactly the same thing.
I'm seeing lots of people say, oh man, Joe Rogan demolished Sanjay Gupta.
He just ripped him apart.
That was great. Sanjay didn't have anything he could say to response.
I didn't see that movie.
What movie was that in?
What movie did you see where Joe Rogan destroyed Sanjay Gupta?
Did any of you see that?
Was that the movie you saw?
Because I didn't see it. I'm seeing a yes.
Sanjay Hedged. I'm just looking to see.
All right. Somebody's on to the right answer here.
What I saw was Joe Rogan eviscerating CNN as a network for lying.
That's what I saw. What did that have to do with Sanjay Gupta?
I didn't see Rogan ever say that Sanjay Gupta called it horse medicine.
Dr. Gupta never called it horse medicine.
I don't think. He's not been accused of it.
So when Sanjay was sort of put on the spot to defend CNN, did he do it?
No, he didn't.
I think my respect for Dr.
Gupta went up to another level.
I already liked him. But I think he went up to another level because he didn't defend the network.
He just didn't address it directly.
Because it wasn't his problem.
It was his employer's problem.
It wasn't his. He didn't need to defend some problem he didn't cause.
So he didn't defend it.
And let Joe Rogan's criticism stand.
And that was exactly the right thing to do.
I think that was ethically and communication-wise and on every other dimension.
I think Sanjay Gupta handled that criticism of the network just right.
Just right. But when they started talking about medicine...
I'm sorry, but Sanjay Gupta showed that Joe had some big, big holes in his understanding of the odds, of what's the relative risk of one thing versus the other, and the fact that you can get reinfected if you have...
Natural immunity, too.
There were some other things that Rogan didn't understand at the level that Sanjay Gupta did, statistically, not even medically, just about the statistics of things.
So what I saw was Sanjay Gupta eviscerating Joe Rogan on the topic that Sanjay was there to talk about.
But yes, Joe Rogan eviscerated Sanjay Gupta's network.
But I don't think that was ever a debate.
I think Sanjay just let that stand.
As he should. As he should have.
If he's being objective at all, he's just going to let that stand.
All right, so that was my take.
Two movies. Let's talk about the VAERS database.
Here's something that a lot of you didn't know.
Number one... The VAERS database is not a database of verified vaccination side effects.
It is a database where people report, I think this may have been caused by the vaccination.
Seeing somebody sign off.
Don't sign off until you see the point.
How come you wouldn't want to know the point?
The people who sign off before I finish the VAERS conversation, that is cognitive dissonance.
Because they can't handle the fact that they have a pretty strong opinion and they've watched me long enough to know that there's a pretty good chance I'm going to dismantle it in the next 30 seconds.
And people are like, no!
No, I have an opinion.
Don't dismantle it. Too weak?
Can't handle it? Too weak to hear a competing opinion?
Don't be weak. Don't be weak.
Hang in here. You can handle this.
All right, so the VAERS database is just what people report.
It's not what's true.
But in the context of a pandemic, what would you expect about the reports?
So the VAERS database, you know, chugs along, gets a few reports.
You know, hardly, the public has barely even heard of it.
So it gets some reports.
But then the pandemic comes along.
Whoa! Everybody gets vaccinated and suddenly, wow, lots of reports.
What's that tell you?
Does it tell you that the vaccinations are therefore causing lots of problems?
Because there are lots, lots, like way lots of reports on VAERS. This is where you report the problems.
And it's like off the chart.
So what does that tell you? Does it tell you that there are probably a lot of problems with the vaccination?
Is that how you interpret that?
I'm watching the people on Locals commenting, and they might be a little bit more...
Maybe more trained about how to look at these things than the people coming in from YouTube who haven't been exposed to this kind of analysis.
Here's what the VAERS database is measuring.
Mass hysteria.
The VAERS database is not a database of how many people had vaccination side effects.
It's not. It is a database that tries to be one where you report them without verification.
But what it morphed into during the pandemic, and so what it is at the moment, and later it will probably not be that, but at the moment, it is only a database for capturing mass hysteria.
Because there are so many people vaccinated, and in a big country lots of people have just medical problems that they don't know where they came from.
People say, wait a minute, I just got a lump...
Last week I got vaccinated.
Put it in the VAERS database.
Does everybody get that?
That the VAERS database is only measuring mass hysteria.
People worried that whatever problem they had came from the vaccination.
Now, I want to say this as clearly as possible.
I don't know if the vaccinations are hurting more people than we think.
I don't know. How would I know?
I just know that you can't tell anything by looking at the VAERS database in a pandemic in which everybody's talking about it.
Because as soon as everybody's talking about the VAERS database and like the average person on Twitter knows exactly what it is, you didn't know that two years ago, did you?
Two years ago, had you ever heard of the VAERS database?
No. That's why not many things are reported to it.
Because you've never even heard of it.
But now everybody knows about it.
So if you have a sniffle two weeks after getting the vaccination, you're thinking, maybe I should put that in the VAERS database.
Maybe. All right.
So learn to tell a mass hysteria from data.
You'll be in better shape. Here's the podcast I want to see, and therefore never will.
I'd like to see Dr.
Sanjay Gupta speaking with Alex Berenson, Who was deplatformed on Twitter and other places, I think, because he made many claims that the experts said are a little too provocative and outside of science.
Well, that's my own judgment.
Actually, I shouldn't give my own opinion of why he was deplatformed.
So I'll just say he was.
He was deplatformed for his pandemic-related opinions and data.
I would love to see Sanjay Gupta talk to Alex Berenson, but I want it to be moderated by or fact-checked in real time by Andres.
Andreas Backhaus. I mention him all the time on my live stream.
So in my experience, he's the most productive thinker when it comes to looking at data.
He's got a PhD in economics.
And it's sort of his thing.
So whenever I get a, hey, here's this study...
And I think, I don't know, should I believe that study?
I always shoot it over to him.
About half the time, he comes back with, oh, this study is garbage, and here's the reason.
And he's almost always right.
As far as I can tell. I mean, I'm not the one who can judge it, but it seems like it.
So he usually gets the last word on a lot of these things.
Now, let me ask you this.
Have you ever seen that kind of setup for a podcast?
Because I haven't. Usually what you see is an expert, a Sanjay Gupta, talking to a regular person who's the host of the podcast, let's say a Joe Rogan.
How much can you learn when one expert talks to a non-expert on a podcast?
Nothing. Nothing.
That model just doesn't get you there.
In fact, I just told you that people watched that model and came away with completely different movies.
Completely different movies.
You have to put together a show that at least has a chance of producing one primary movie.
In other words, one interpretation of what happened.
And I think you could get there if you had two people who know what they're talking about.
In this case, Alex Berenson.
He's not a medical doctor.
But he's one of the most famous critics, and he's done a super deep dive on his position.
I'd like to see his super deep non-doctor take...
Balanced against Dr.
Sanjay Gupta or somebody of similar credibility.
But I think Gupta's got the communication skills on top of the knowledge.
It could be a Dr. Drew, but somebody who has communication skills on top of medical expertise.
And then have it moderated by somebody who does fact-checking in real time.
Because most of these conversations are going to be Alex claims X study tells him something.
And then you need Andres to sit there and say, wait, that study has the following problems.
And then you can evaluate how much weight to put on that.
So that's the podcast I want to see.
I saw an opinion today.
Was it in Epoch Times?
Good publication. You should be following Epoch.
I never know how to say that word.
E-P-O-C-H. Tell me how to pronounce that.
Epoch? Epoch?
Or epoch?
Epoch? You're not all agreeing.
You know what the word is. And they had a report that an owner-operated independent truck drivers association warns that part of the problem, I don't know how big this is in relation to the whole problem, is the required drug and alcohol testing for truck drivers is, quote, a challenge for them.
Yes, the drug and alcohol testing for truck drivers is a challenge.
You know who else it's a challenge for?
Everybody, basically. There aren't too many people who aren't on drugs or alcohol.
But I guess the testing itself probably takes time out of their effectiveness.
So it might be that they don't want to get into a profession in which they would be tested.
That's probably going to limit the number of people.
It's time to get the Amish driving trucks.
I know, I know, the Amish don't like their modern technology, but they also don't do a lot of drugs or alcohol.
If we could just get the Amish to be a little bit flexible on the vehicle part.
Or how about your Mormons?
Let's get some Mormon truck drivers in there.
You know, the ones who actually don't drink and don't do drugs.
And I wonder if you could pay more if you had somebody who was guaranteed to be alcohol and drug-free.
I feel like you could pay them more, couldn't you?
Because it seems like your insurance costs would be lower if there was some way you could demonstrate that you only hired people who were free of drugs and alcohol.
So maybe you could pass that along to the drivers.
Get a bunch of non-drug drivers, double their income.
Maybe you get enough.
Robot truck drivers, yeah, that's the future.
But it's going to take a while for the Tesla robot-driven trucks.
Eventually, I think all transportation is going to be automated trucks, right?
Wouldn't you expect that to be all transportation eventually?
I also wonder if we should build a truck-only series of highways...
Where only trucks can be on it, and it just crisscrosses the main part of the country and gets you close to everything.
Because I feel like if you had a truck-only road, and they were automated trucks, that you could really...
I saw an idiot on the comments, and I thought, who is this idiot?
It's Dr. Johnson again.
Dr. Johnson, I don't believe you're a doctor.
You seem to be a troll.
But we'll put you in.
We'll hide you on this channel.
You're hidden, Dr. Johnson.
He's the guy who comes on, and no matter what I say, he says I'm shilling for vaccinations.
No matter how many times I tell you, I don't care if you get vaccinated.
I mean, I genuinely don't care.
You know, most people think that I get accused of being afraid.
Scott, you're just afraid because of your personal risk.
That's why you're trying to talk everybody else into getting vaccinated.
Number one, not trying to talk anybody into getting vaccinated.
Number two, afraid of what?
Isn't everybody afraid of something?
You're either afraid of the vaccination itself, or you're afraid of the COVID, so you get the vaccination.
Is there anybody who's making decisions free of fear?
I mean, it might be a statistical fear where you don't feel it in your bones, but you're trying to minimize your risk, right?
So do I feel fear from COVID? Not vaccinated.
I'm not sure I felt a giant risk before, but I definitely felt it before.
But once vaccinated...
And I can't tell you that that's rational, because fear is irrational, right, usually...
So I'll just tell you I feel.
I don't feel anything that I could recognize as a fear of the virus.
Do any of you have that fear?
Actually, I'd be interested to see this.
Tell me in the comments which one scares you the most, if you're scared at all.
Is anybody afraid of the shot or afraid of the virus itself?
Most people are going to say they're not afraid.
That's what it looks like so far.
Not afraid. No fear.
No fear. Yeah.
I do think some people have some fear, but...
I don't think it's a big part of the decision-making, frankly.
All right. I fear the vaccination, somebody says.
But I think it's all fear-based.
All right. That...
Was my prepared set of notes.
I saw also that Bannon, it looks like he's resisting the subpoena or something, to testify in front of Congress.
To which I say, why does Congress even have that power?
Shouldn't testifying just be a legal thing, like if you have legal problems?
Why should you be forced to testify to Congress?
I'm not sure that even sounds like a free country, does it?
Now, I guess people are not really penalized or they don't get jailed for refusing subpoenas to Congress.
So we'll see if Bannon does.
But I hope he doesn't.
I hope he testifies.
Because I can't imagine anything that would be more entertaining than seeing Bannon having the stage in that setting.
That would be fun to watch.
So let's hope that happens.
All right, what else has happened?
Is there any stories I missed today?
Oh, McCabe, I guess he got his pension back.
You know, I don't mind that.
I don't mind that.
So for some reason, I hate it extra that people lose pensions.
That never feels like the right penalty to me.
Like, I get, you know, getting fired.
I get going to jail if he did something that bad.
But losing a pension feels like taking something from you that you earned.
And McCabe earned his pension...
It just doesn't feel like justice.
No matter what you think you did, it doesn't feel like justice to lose a pension.
Or you'd have to do something a lot worse, I suppose.
I don't know. Can you please help end the mandates?
Why? Why?
Now, I'm opposed to mandates, so you don't have to convince me why I want them to go away.
But why would you want me to do it?
Does that seem fair?
Because, you know, I've told you that I've tried to not persuade on some of this stuff because it's unethical.
The problem is I'm too persuasive.
And... I'd have to be really sure I'm right.
Or it has to be non-medical.
So there's low risk.
But I'd have to be really sure I was right to persuade people to do something medical.
And I think even the mandates basically are a medical decision, in a sense.
Can you persuade everyone to be happier and healthier?
Yes. It's called the simultaneous sip and all that comes with it.
How many of you feel that I've made you happier?
In the comments...
Yeah.
Now, on YouTube, you're not seeing this, but over on the locals, it's a subscription.
It's just a sea of yeses.
It's all yeses.
It just lit up.
The comments just lit up with yeses.
Now, you're a little bit behind, but they're all yeses.
Right? So somebody asked me if I could make you happier.
And apparently I can.
Apparently I can. Now, not every person.
Kristen says my epistemology is flawed.
Oh, man. I was having a good day.
But it turns out my epistemology is flawed.
Alexa, what's an epistemology?
Epistemology is a non-human branch of philosophy that investigates the ologies.
It investigates the limits and nature of human knowledge.
I guess mine's flawed.
So good for you with your perfectly functioning epistemologies.
mine apparently is broken.
Yes, I did cause all of your devices with the same name to go off, but you have to admit it's funny.
I did that intentionally.
So those of you who have a device next to you, it just gave you the same answer that I got.
Oh, how's Boo? So, can you believe that I'm involved in a genuine Schrodinger's cat situation?
All right, dig this.
So my cat gets a T-cell lymphoma diagnosis of cancer.
She had an operation for an unrelated thing, but they tested and said, ooh, she also has this.
But it was inconclusive.
It was an indication that you could see if there's a lot of swelling, but also if it's this kind of cancer.
Now, she just had an operation in the place that they took the sample.
So was there also swelling and inflammation?
Yes. So the indication could be cancer, or it could be, well, of course, it's just swelling here.
That's why it looks that way. So they did another test, and it came back ambiguous.
So they're going to do another test.
So then they checked her for lumps and stuff and didn't find any.
So I think we have one or two tests that indicate there's a good chance she has it, and at least a few tests that don't show it but probably should have.
But none of them are conclusive.
So if you know what Schrodinger's cat refers to, it's a famous science-slash-philosophy experiment where you put a live cat in a box, there's some kind of radioactive decaying thing that's truly random, and if it decays in one way, it'll trigger something that kills the cat, and if it goes another way, it doesn't.
And the theory is that until you can observe what's happening inside the box with the cat...
That the cat exists in a state of both, alive and dead, at the same time.
Now, apparently, physics requires that to be true, because things don't harden into a definite thing until they're measured or observed.
Why? Well, I don't know.
Because we're a simulation.
That's the only reason I can think of.
We're a simulation. That's the only reason I can think of that things don't become real until you observe them.
I mean, really? Give me the other reason that that would be true.
I don't think you can come up with one.
To me, that's the strongest evidence that we're a simulated environment.
The fact that things don't harden until they're observed or measured.
Because that's how you would build software.
Because you wouldn't want the software to build a world just in case somebody saw it.
Like the whole universe? Just in case.
No, you wouldn't do that.
You would build things just in time.
So when I dig a hole, there wouldn't actually be anything underneath the ground until I start digging, because that's the first time I can observe it.
So... I'm pretty sure I had some point I was going to make there.
Um... Don't agree.
Don't agree? It's quantum theory.
Anyway, so back to my cat.
So I literally have a Schrodinger's cat situation.
I have a cat that is either dead or alive, and I don't know, because we can't get a measurement.
We're trying to measure, but since there's no definitive measurement, it remains unmeasured.
So my cat is both alive and dead.
Dead in the sense that if she has this cancer, she only has weeks to live.
And I don't know.
I have to live in a world where it's a Schrodinger's cat.
She may be alive for a while.
She may not be. And I, of course, believe that I can manipulate my reality.
Right? You've seen me indicate that.
I believe that if we're a simulation, and the odds are very great that we are, that there may be a way for us to manipulate it from within it, to actually program the simulation.
Now, it's not a coincidence that people like Elon Musk and people like me are pro-simulation as the most likely explanation.
Because on a smaller scale than Elon Musk, we both did things that don't look possible.
Often. If I told you the full list of things that I've personally done, a lot of it you don't know about.
Because, you know, there's some good reason you shouldn't know about it.
But if I told you the things that I've personally influenced and done, you wouldn't believe any of it.
Because none of it looks real.
Even I can barely believe it.
And imagine being Elon Musk.
How does he wake up in the morning and think any of this is real?
Would you think this was real if you were Elon Musk?
I don't think you would.
You would think, whatever's happening to me...
I must be causing it to happen.
And I believe he is.
I believe he is causing it to happen.
And I believe I am too.
So here's where the cat comes in.
When I got the cancer diagnosis the first time, I said to myself, I'm going to change that.
I'm going to make it not true.
And the next time I talked to the doctor, she said, you know, we're not so sure this is cancer.
We better check. And now they're checking.
And somehow the cancer diagnosis turned into maybe cancer.
Except she doesn't have any signs of it.
I feel like I Schrodinger catted this situation.
I feel like I pushed the cat in one direction here.
Put my finger on the random generator.
Feels like it. Let me tell you another story, similarly.
Maybe I've told you this story before.
Years ago, I think it was in my 20s, and I got a lump on my neck.
It was about the size of like half of a golf ball.
It started small, but it just sort of grew over maybe a week or two.
It was like this big lump.
So I go to the doctor, Kaiser is my doctor, HMO, and the doctor looks at it and says, we better have this x-rayed.
And we better have it x-rayed by the cancer people.
And I said, oh, okay.
I realize it could be cancer, so that's why we're checking.
But what else could it be?
Like, if it's not cancer, what could it be?
A big old lump that just suddenly forms.
And the doctor said this.
The doctor said, well, if it's not cancer, then we'll probably never know what it was.
And it's, quote...
Just one of those things.
Just one of those things that comes and goes and you never know what caused it and you might not even know what made it go away.
So it's either cancer or just one of those things.
So I get x-rayed and I have to wait like a week to get in and talk to the oncologist.
So you go to the oncologist's office and I'm sitting there in a waiting room with only people who are there for the same reason.
We all had a tentative cancer diagnosis, and this doctor was going to tell us if it was or was not cancer.
So the doctor walks into the waiting room.
He says, Mrs.
Garcia? And I see Mrs.
Garcia look up all worried.
And the doctor says, good news, you don't have cancer.
Test came back clean. She's like...
And the doctor takes her in to talk with her some more.
Comes out again. Mr.
Jones. Mr. Jones is like...
Looks up.
Doctor says, Mr.
Jones, good news. You're clean.
Test came back clean. You're all good.
Come on, and we'll talk about it. Doctor comes back in the waiting room, and he says, Mr.
Adams. I look up, and I go...
He says, come in my office.
We need to talk. Yep, that actually happened.
So I go to his office and he says, you know, these x-rays are a little ambiguous.
And I said, well, if it's not cancer, what else could it be?
The doctor goes, ah, it looks like cancer, but what else could it be?
Like, what are the other possibilities?
Since you're not positive, what else could it be?
And the doctor said some version of...
I don't know, if it's not cancer, just one of those things.
Use different words.
So I have to wait more days with a tentative cancer diagnosis.
And that's a bad week.
Have you ever had a tentative cancer diagnosis?
It's a bad week.
Waiting for that to come in.
So finally they say, the only way we're going to know for sure is to take a sample of it, biopsy.
And so we're going to make an appointment.
This guy's going to stick a needle into it and draw out whatever's inside.
And then the doctor says this.
If there's a fluid in there that's clear, then it's just one of those things.
It's not cancer. It's just one of those things.
If it comes out red, meaning blood, you have cancer, and it's a pretty bad one.
Like there's a big old lump on your throat.
So I'm sitting there, and the doctor puts in the needle, and he draws it out, but I can't see it.
I forget which side it was.
I think this side. I can't see it.
I'm like...
I'm like, you bastard.
Start talking. Because he knew...
That doctor knew if I was basically alive or dead at that moment, right?
You've got to tell me that right away.
And then I say, what is it, what is it?
And he says, oh, it's clear liquid.
Just one of those things.
And I said, well, what do I do to treat it?
He had this big old lump here.
I'm thinking, well, it's going to be surgery or something.
And the guy says, oh, I'll take care of that.
He sticks the needle in a second time, goes...
Takes out the rest of the juice, puts a Band-Aid on it, and sends me home.
Cured. Cured.
Now, at the time, I thought I did have a cancer diagnosis, and I did think I needed to change reality, because I was in a Schrodinger's cat situation.
And I said to myself, if I have any control over this universe...
I'm going to put my finger on the random number generator now.
So I did. You know, sort of mentally.
Still here. So I'm going to try to save my cat the same way.
Yeah, they did say it might be cat scratch fever.
So I'm seeing your comments.
They did mention that it might be that.
And so that's my story.
Sometimes you might be able to put your finger on the random number generator.
