Episode 1540 Scott Adams: Persuasion Lessons Taken From Today's Headlines. Find Out What You've Been Doing Wrong
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Content:
Alec Baldwin shooting details emerging
The "Internet Dads"
Myths of addiction
Data visualization talent
Supply chain visual persuasion
Supply chain mystery, nobody in charge?
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My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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You made it to the best place in the universe and just in time.
What are the odds that you would have the space and the time correct?
Both of them, space and time.
Very good. Because all of you are smarter than the average person and you know that there's no such thing as time, there's only space-time.
Yeah, yeah. Remember to remind people that when they talk about time.
Say, there's no time.
Time? That's not even a thing.
Listen to some Einstein sometime.
There's space-time, sure.
But I didn't hear you talk about space-time, did I? Yeah, don't be that person.
But you can if you want to be.
Now, what would it take to make this amazing, amazing experience that we're all about to have together?
No, stop tingling.
Stop, stop. Some of you are already getting chills.
Don't peak too soon.
Stay with me. Stay with me.
This is going to get so good, so fast, you don't want to get ahead of me.
But all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or Chelsea Stein, a canteen, a jug of glass, a vessel of any kind, any kind this time.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
Unparalleled! It's called the simultaneous sip.
It's going to happen now, and it makes everything better, including your antibodies.
Watch, watch, go.
Mmm, ah, antibodies.
Yeah. Let me ask you this.
How many of you believe...
That hypnosis could improve your antibodies?
In the comments, without...
Don't Google it. No cheating.
No Googling. How many of you think that hypnosis could improve your antibodies?
Seeing some yeses?
Seeing some nos?
How about over on YouTube?
I doubt that.
100%. Here's the answer.
It can. It can.
It turns out it can.
Surprising, right? Now, the way that it does it is probably just by de-stressing you.
Okay? Now it sounds more realistic, right?
Yeah, I don't think it's a placebo.
I think it works because if you de-stress yourself, you get stronger immune response.
Is everybody on board with that simple claim of fact?
No. I think if you Google it, you'll see plenty of support for the idea that if you get rid of your stress, your immune system can be a little bit optimized, right?
There's no doubt about that, is there?
And is there any doubt that hypnosis could help you relax?
Not really. I mean, hypnosis will work better with some people than others, but there's no such thing as somebody who could sit there quietly for 45 minutes listening to a hypnotist and not come away a little bit relaxed.
I don't think in the history of hypnosis, I've never heard of an example of somebody who became more anxious because they got hypnotized.
I mean, it's a big world.
I suppose it happened somewhere, maybe once.
But yes, absolutely, hypnosis could improve your immune response just by making you more relaxed.
Now, could it do it more directly?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Because your brain and your body are kind of almost magical in the sense that we don't understand how they work.
I have a hypothesis that I've been working on for years that your intentions can change your body state.
Your intentions.
Now, I don't know that that's true.
It's one of those things that it could be false pattern recognition or something.
But it does feel...
As though people's intentions end up manifesting in some physical way.
Just an impression, not based on any science or anything like that.
But I would not rule out the possibility that some people could be directly hypnotized to increase their immune response.
I would guess maybe 20% of the public.
Because 20% is about the percentage that have extreme responses to hypnosis.
So if the mind-body connection is what we think it is, there's probably some way to turn up the antibody production part.
If there's a brain connection, I'm not even sure if there is one, beyond the relaxation component.
Anyway, I just put that out there because I was thinking of maybe doing that.
I could do a group hypnosis.
Now, it wouldn't be as effective as one person working with one subject, because if you're working with one person, you adjust as you go to how they're responding.
But probably I could do a group hypnosis someday.
I'd do a special live stream or record it.
If I worked on enough people, let's say I went a little bit viral and we got 100,000 people to watch it eventually, do you think that out of 100,000 people, I couldn't raise the antibody count on some of you?
Because I would take that bet.
I certainly wouldn't say it's going to work on everybody.
That would be kind of crazy.
But if I do 100,000 people...
And they just, you know, take the time to sit through a hypnosis induction.
And it won't be the kind of hypnosis where you forget where you were or, you know, I take control of your life and you send me money or anything like that.
It would just be relaxation.
Just pure relaxation.
I'm seeing references to...
Is it Wim Hoffman?
How do you say his first name?
Wim, right? And he's...
Yeah, Wim Hoff.
Yeah. So he's got a method of breathing, which I hear good things about all the time.
I'm pretty sure he's backed by science.
I haven't looked into it in the depth that I need to.
By the way, I always tell you that I have this weird life where it doesn't matter what story you're talking about in the news, I have some connection to it.
That's one of the reasons I think we live in a simulation, because it isn't possible I could have so many connections to so many stories.
So, you know, you're talking about Wim Hof.
Wim Hof, sorry. And I went to an event one time in San Francisco.
Before I'd heard of him or his method.
And I was introduced to him and, you know, I didn't know anybody else there at the time.
And I guess he didn't know too many people at the time or he wanted to talk to me.
And I ended up chatting with him for a pretty long time and heard about his methods in person.
Which is weird because I didn't know he was famous.
I just thought he was a guy talking about some breath control stuff.
And I thought, oh, that's good. And then it turns out he was...
He was Wim Hof.
So he turns out to be one of the most, well, not one of, the most famous person associated with his breathing technique.
But I didn't know it at the time.
So is that the simulation?
How is it that I can keep meeting people, just by coincidence, that are at the center of all these big topics?
It's really weird. Because that was a completely random encounter.
Well, maybe not totally random.
All right. So how about California and the West Coast?
Let me give you an update of how we're doing.
You know, you've heard we've got problems in California.
Has anybody heard of that? We've got your homelessness, your high taxes.
You've got your drugs and your crime.
You've got your massive forest fires, your lack of electricity.
Of course, we've got a drought and water shortage, a pandemic, and runaway inflation.
But if nothing else hits us, I think we can handle it.
I mean, we're a tough state.
California's a tough state. You can make fun of us, sure, but we're a tough state.
We can handle homelessness, taxes, drugs, crimes, forest fires, lack of energy, no water, pandemic, runway inflation, and traffic.
We can handle all that. I just hope nothing else is coming our way.
Let's check the headlines.
Okay, there's a bomb cyclone coming our way in California.
A bomb cyclone.
So I think we can conclude that California has pissed off God in some way that is not entirely evident to me.
But it's obvious we're cursed at this point.
You know, you could try to write this off as science or coincidence, but no.
I think we're cursed.
So the bomb cyclone's coming this way.
So far the weather is...
Disturbingly not bad.
So far it's just sort of a light rain where I live.
I'm in Northern California.
Just sort of a light rain.
But I feel like it's going to get a lot worse really quickly and probably today.
But we need the water.
So if the bomb cyclone washes some things away but we get a lot of water...
Probably we came out ahead.
All right, we've got to talk about the Alec Baldwin situation.
We know a little bit more.
And I will tell you that as the story emerges, you know, the fog of war starts clearing out.
Let's see if your opinion about the people involved changes.
Now, one thing we know is that the young woman who is...
or the young they, I'll say the young they, who is handling...
The guns and was in charge of the safety of the guns for the film, apparently was not very experienced.
24 years old and doesn't seem to be a member of the NRA, but that's just a guess.
And I guess the circumstances are that either that gun or ones in the group had misfired a couple times.
The crew had already complained about the safety problems.
And I guess the specific setup is that they were lining up a camera shot in which they wanted to have the camera look down the barrel of the gun, or, you know, at least that view of the actor.
And so Alec Baldwin was instructed to aim the gun in the direction of the camera-ish, and it went off.
Now, what's still missing in the story, unless somebody has heard it, was, did he pull the trigger?
How does a gun misfire in the first place?
Is there anybody who knows enough about firearms to tell me how a gun would misfire?
Somebody said it didn't, quote, go off.
Yeah, we'll talk about responsibility in a moment.
Yeah, the way the news is talking about it is just delayed ignition of the bullet.
Hmm... You've got to pull the trigger, somebody says.
It can't without the hammer striking.
But what if...
Now, is there any chance that the hammer was pulled back?
There's no evidence of that, right?
So I think there's more news we need to learn about this.
Not that that fact would necessarily change what we think.
But... So, let's say if we were based on what we know now...
Let's do a little speculating...
If it's true that Alec Baldwin was handed a gun and told that it was cold, so he believed that there was blanks, and if he was told by the director of photography, I think it was, to point in that direction, probably the director said it as well, and he believed that the gun had been checked out and it was just lighting it up for a shoot, how guilty do you think he is...
If the gun misfired?
I don't know. I don't even know what that means, to misfire.
It was a revolver, right?
Yeah. 100% guilty, everybody says.
100% guilty. 100% guilty.
Yeah, the NRA answer to that, if I could put it that way.
The gun owner answer, and I've been having this conversation with someone else, and...
Somebody was trying to suggest, I won't name names because I don't want to bring in personalities, but was suggesting that the responsibility was at least partially, at least partially, the gun armorer person, the person who was in charge of making sure it didn't have a loaded round.
And what do you who actually know about guns say to that?
You say the same thing I said.
It's 100% the responsibility of the person who has it in their hand, even if somebody else screwed up.
We're all on the same page on that, right?
It's always 100% responsibility of the person with the gun in their hand.
Always. It's never 99.
It's always 100%.
It's also 100% of the person who handed it to them.
So... If one person has 100% responsibility, the person who has it in their hand, that doesn't absolve anybody else.
They have their own kind of responsibility.
Likewise, if the person who handed it to them is 100% wrong, it doesn't change in any way the actor's own responsibility.
I certainly feel for him because the context of how it happened wasn't an ordinary gun ownership thing.
He had delegated responsibility.
He thought that was good enough. It wasn't.
It wasn't. So let me ask you this question.
How many NRA members would it have taken to be on that crew to have prevented this with a pretty high degree of confidence?
You couldn't be sure. But how many would it take?
Anywhere on the crew.
And we'll even say just the lowest member of the crew.
You know, the gaffers or whoever is the lowest member of the crew.
Yeah, everybody who understands guns says the same answer.
One. Exactly one.
What would you have done if you knew that this group of guns had misfired twice?
You would take them away.
You'd probably take them away, wouldn't you?
Like physically take them away?
Now, I guess some people walked out.
Was that the right answer?
I think walking out is what you do if you're not a member of the NRA. Now, of course, I'm I'm being a little hyperbolic.
You know, in the real world, people don't have as much power as they might want to.
Depends on personalities, etc.
But I like to think that if there had been even one NRA member there, they would have just gone nuts on that place.
Right? The amount of energy somebody who knew what they were talking about, gun-wise, would have put into that situation, it should be a lot.
Like, I don't think it would have just been talking to the director, right?
I don't think it would have been just talking to the boss.
I don't think it would have been just complaining.
I think they would have physically stood in front of the guns, right?
I think they would have stood in front of the guns and said, for safety reasons, nobody's getting near these things.
Am I wrong? You put one NRA member there, doesn't matter what their role is, they would walk and stand in front of the gun supply and say, no, we're done here.
These aren't going anywhere.
Right? Now, you would have to have a certain kind of personality to do that, you know, a certain risk profile.
But I'd like to know the answer to the question if they had one NRA member.
Just one. I'll bet the answer is no.
You can't be sure, but I'll bet.
All right. If Alec Baldwin has responsibility, obviously it would be in the sense that he didn't put the right people in charge.
He was a producer. So I do think he's going to have some...
He's probably his insurance company or he are going to be on the hook for a lot, I think.
But it will be an interesting case.
We'll probably learn a lot. All right.
I've been noticing with...
Happiness, that the internet dads are getting pretty involved in the fentanyl question.
Do you know who the internet dads are?
I use that term loosely to include people like myself.
Now, it's not my own description of me, but it's other people's description of a set of people who, somewhat accidentally, nobody set out to do this, but became kind of almost dad-like influences.
To people who maybe needed a little extra or didn't have any.
You know, I would put Mike Cernovich in that category.
Put myself in that category.
And you could name a bunch of other people who easily feel like internet dads at this point, just giving you some, or at least trying to give you some life advice.
And we see them getting more involved lately in the fentanyl question.
I saw... I saw...
Michael Schellenberger is going at it hard, especially when he's got a new book.
San Francisco. I want to get him on and do a book review, but I don't want to do that with a live stream.
I'll have to do that off live.
But, you know, the question is getting bigger and bigger, and the right people are talking about it.
And I wanted to run through, for the benefit of my audience, again, Jack Murphy, another good example, I'm going to run through this a bunch of myths and That the internet dads don't have.
This is things that the people you're calling the internet dads, this is stuff they understand, but maybe the public doesn't.
And so I just want to run through this.
And I'll start with this.
I asked this question on Twitter, and of course it's an unscientific poll.
I said, is your life deeply constrained or ruined by a drug addict or alcoholic who is close to you?
Close to you, right? How many people in my unscientific poll, which are mostly conservatives, by the way, mostly conservatives, that's the people who follow me on Twitter.
If you're new to me, I don't identify as conservative, but my audience does.
22% of them, last I checked, said yes.
22% have their lives deeply constrained or ruined.
Deeply constrained or ruined.
22%. Deeply constrained or ruined.
22%. Do you feel that?
You can't do anything to 22% of the country without a big effect on the rest of it.
There's nothing that affects that many people that doesn't affect the rest of it.
And keep in mind, this is my conservative followers.
You don't think this is a little bit worse on the left?
No. So let's say it's a quarter of the public is being influenced by somebody addicted.
Probably 10% or more are addicted to...
How many people are addicted?
Does anybody know that? What percentage of the general population are addicted?
10%? Is it more now?
I mean, it could be 50%, depending on what drugs you're including.
You know, if you throw in cigarettes and alcohol and everything else.
Yeah, I feel like it's 20-30% is what it feels like, depending on how you count it.
So that's how bad it is.
Now, let me tell you the myths that people have around there, now that you know how big it is.
A lot of people, and you'll see this on the Internet, will tell you that good parenting will save your teen.
Good parenting will keep your teen from getting into trouble with fentanyl or overdosing.
No. No.
That is a hard no.
I do believe there are some edge cases Where maybe somebody's a little bit inclined, but the best parenting in the world could keep them safe.
So yes, in the narrow, narrow sense that there are some kids and some families in some specific situations where doing all the right things parent-wise would help.
So you should definitely try to do all the right things parent-wise.
It could help, but it would depend mostly on your kid.
Do you think you could have taken my stepson?
And fixed him up?
I'm going to tell you what that would have looked like in a minute.
Because if you think you could have fixed my stepson by your good parenting, my God, you haven't met many people.
All right? So let me clear that up for you in a minute.
Here's some more myths. Counseling would help.
Get a good therapist, get a good counselor, and they can fix things.
Nope. Nope.
Do you know why the counselor doesn't help?
I'm just going to use my now deceased stepson as my example.
We're going to make you go to counseling.
I don't want to go to counseling.
We're going to make you go to counseling.
All right. But when I'm done, I'm going to go back to using.
No, we're going to make you go to counseling, and that will fix you, and then you won't use.
Okay, I'm just telling you that when I'm done with the counseling, I'm going to go back to doing drugs and drinking and stuff.
No, the counseling, counseling.
So you send him to counseling, he goes through the hours, and the moment he walks out, he uses again.
Just like he said. Exactly like he said.
Now you say to yourself, all right, dealing with you like an adult isn't going to work.
We've got to take this to the next level.
I'm going to start punishing you if you're hanging around with the people who use or we find out you're using or we discover anything in your room, right?
We're going to punish you until you stop the behavior.
Number one, you're grounded.
All right, I'm going to kill myself.
I'm going to kill myself because I'm grounded.
What if he's tried twice?
What do you do? What do you good parents do?
All you smart ones. He's tried to kill himself twice.
Like literally. Literally twice.
So you're going to lock him in his room.
He says, if you put me in here, I'm going to kill myself.
How's that? You're good parents?
You're going to do that? How's that work?
Take away his phone. He says, I'm going to kill myself.
And you know what? He means it.
He means it. He's not bluffing.
He tried it twice. How uncommon is it for your addict to say they'll kill themselves and mean it?
Not uncommon. How many of you have heard this?
It's not uncommon, and it's real, and they will try to kill themselves.
It's absolutely real.
And you know why you know that they will try to kill themselves?
Because their drug addiction is basically slow suicide.
They're already killing themselves.
You don't have to wonder if they have the mental state to kill themselves.
You're watching it happen in real time.
They are killing themselves.
It's just slow. And they're taking the chance that they'll die and they don't care.
Did he care that he might die of an overdose?
He didn't. He didn't.
Sometimes he would act like he did.
But honestly, he didn't.
And you could tell. How soon did I know I would have an addiction problem with my stepson?
How young was he when I knew I'd have the problem?
About five. About five years old, it was obvious.
You could see it coming like a train.
Because at five years old, he would tell us how much he wanted to drink to oblivion.
At six years old, still saying, yeah, I just want to drink until I pass out.
Can't wait to do drugs.
He would say it explicitly and often, and there was nothing you could do to talk him out of it.
He was born to do drugs.
I mean, I've never seen anybody who was so intent on doing everything wrong.
Secondly, his personality was such that if anything was the right thing you're supposed to do, he would do the other thing and aggressively.
It wouldn't matter what you told him.
You'd say, if you do this, you're in big trouble.
If you do this, you're not.
He would do the big trouble thing every time.
Every time. No exceptions.
What do you do with that?
All right, so you say to yourself, my God, you're going to have to take it up to the next level.
You're going to have to actually take him to some kind of facility, some kind of program where they're really like, you know, maybe it's like boot camp for kids or something.
You know, you've heard of these where they can sort of force the kid into a situation where they can't leave and, you know, they're going to really get the tough love they need and they won't have access to the drugs.
So just sign them up for one of the programs, right?
Right? Because that's all you got left.
How many of you would say, okay, because most of you are second-guessing now, I know.
So those of you who are second-guessing me, how many of you say that at this point, your only thing you can do is to sign them up for some kind of a tough program, where they basically would take away his freedom for a while, but, you know, at least it would be tough love, and they'd give...
How many think that's a good idea?
No matter what you call it.
You could call it military school or whatever you want to call it.
But how many think that's a good idea?
I have to swear at you now.
With all due respect.
I have to curse.
There's no such fucking thing.
The thing you think will fix it doesn't exist.
There is no fucking program that you can take a California teenager to.
None. Zero.
Nothing. You have no legal recourse.
You have no asset.
No money in the fucking world.
I could have taken five million fucking dollars and put it toward this problem.
It would have made zero difference.
There's no place you can take them.
No facility exists.
No medical treatment.
No path. No person.
No expert. Nothing.
You're on your fucking own as a parent.
And you don't have anything you can do except wait and watch and prepare to bury your fucking kid.
That's all you have.
You get that? Now, those of you saying, but, you know, screw the kid.
Free will. It's his own fault.
If you think that, you don't know anything about addicts, you don't know anything about human nature, you don't know anything about psychology, and you don't know anything about physics, and you don't know anything about psychology.
But a lot of you have that feeling.
No. People don't have free will to stop drugs.
It has to be done by somebody else.
Now, some people can find themselves in a situation in which they hit bottom.
And then the situation is changed.
And then sometimes they can get better on their own.
But there's nothing you can do.
You can't do that.
Sometimes it happens by accident, and even, you know, it's not good, but it happens.
But you can't make that happen.
You have no ability whatsoever.
All right? Addicts do what addicts do, and you can't change it.
That's it. All right.
Other people say, well, you can at least stay away from fentanyl.
I mean, you could at least make sure you don't do any fentanyl.
No! You cannot.
The people dying of fentanyl did not know it was in their products or did not know how much of it was in their products.
They thought they were doing cocaine, they thought they were doing Xanax, or even they thought they were doing fake Xanax, but they didn't think it was fentanyl.
They're doing other stuff and thinking they're not getting fentanyl, or if they are, their friend took it, so it must be okay, and then they die.
No. You cannot avoid fentanyl if you're an addict.
If you're an addict, you're going to take drugs, and it's going to be in the drugs.
That's the whole story.
You can say to yourself, as I said to my son a few weeks before he died, I had lunch with him and I said, promise me just one thing.
You won't take street drugs that you don't know what's in them.
That's the only thing I'm going to ask because I feel like I could get that from you.
And he said, yes, absolutely.
Because I understand that the street drugs very often have fentanyl in them and I understand that fentanyl will kill me.
So I will not take those drugs.
And then he took those drugs and died a few weeks later.
Here's the other big myth.
You had good results with your kid, so therefore you know how to parent and I don't.
I'm sorry. If you had good results with your kid, you might be a great parent.
I wouldn't take that away from you.
But it's because you had a good kid, right?
The kid is what makes the thing turn out well.
You could ruin it, but you're not really the one who's making it happen, right?
The genetics of the kid and your situation in general are going to be 80% of what happens to that kid.
You're about 20% tops.
So how about a little humility about how much you contributed, although your genes might be good.
If your genetics are the reason you got a good result, good for you.
But it wasn't your parenting.
Your parenting could break something, but it's not going to fix an addict.
All right.
That's what I want to say on that topic.
Sorry that was such a downer.
But I think it's important.
It's a downer, but important.
All right, do you remember I've given you some ways to predict things?
Some of them don't make any sense, but they're fun to watch.
One of the ways to predict that doesn't make any sense, but is very predictive, or at least it seems like it, you know, it's anecdotal, so maybe it's just confirmation bias, is that the best story usually wins.
The best story usually wins.
So if, let's say, there's a competition of some kind, let's say the best story is Tom Brady...
Getting kicked off of his football team that he's won a bunch of championships on.
He's way too old.
He goes to another team that wasn't expected to win.
And he takes them all the way to the Super Bowl and beats his old team.
I don't know if that happened exactly, but I'm giving you an example of something that if you saw it developing, you'd say, you know, the best story here, the best story here would be if this aging hero had, you know, one more win.
And then he does. And the number of times you can say, you know, the best, the coolest outcome here would be, and then you watch how often the coolest outcome happens.
So I say this because Raul Davis, Twitter user and CEO branding expert, had reminded me when, I guess, the World Series was on, or the, yeah, is that right?
I don't watch sports.
The World Series just happened, right?
I think. But before it happened, he mentioned to me, Raul did, that Major League Baseball had pulled the all-star game from Atlanta, but then it was Atlanta who was in the World Series.
And so Ravel said, you know, the best story would be that the All-Star Game gets pulled from Atlanta and then Atlanta goes and wins the World Series.
Oh, is that...
Wait, am I reading the story wrong?
No. .
Oh, they responded with their first World Series.
Does that mean that the World Series is going to be held there?
As opposed to, oh, so they're just in it.
It's the playoffs that just happened?
Oh, so it's the playoffs.
So, all right, so I got this story wrong.
That's how much of a nada sports guy I am.
So they got into the World Series.
They haven't won the World Series, right?
All right, so if you were to predict based on best story wins, you'd predict they win.
So thank you for correcting me.
So here's another example of the, you know, I just talked about this, that collectively we form sort of a brain, like an intelligence.
You know, I have some general notions and then you fix them or correct them or refine them.
It's really kind of interesting watching literally a new form of intelligence.
Has this ever existed before?
Because technologically, this couldn't have existed before, right?
At least not at this scale.
It's like, how many people are watching?
Let's see, we've got... 2,100 over there and 500 here.
So let's say we've got 2,700 people who are this collective brain at the moment.
Kind of cool. Anyway, I don't think there's any reason that the best story always wins, except I'll speculate.
If it's true, and if it were some way that you could actually...
You know, measure it to see if it's true.
I think it would be because people are story creatures.
That we're also trained by stories, maybe naturally because we evolved that way, but also because we reinforce it by reading stories and watching movies and hearing stories.
So we're just story people.
And because we're story people, we all have a sense of what a good story is.
You can tell if the movie has a good story or not.
Everybody can tell that. So I feel like we're all biased toward making the better story happen, even if it's not good for us.
Oh yeah, McGregor didn't beat the boxer.
That was a good example, although there was such a mismatch in talent that that's probably the exception to the rule kind of thing.
If there's a gigantic difference in talent, then it's not predictive.
All right. So follow the money works that way, too.
I won't give you the example, but recently there was an example where something happened that wasn't because of the money as far as I could tell, but the money would have predicted it.
So watch how many times that happens.
There's somebody who does something, and you're pretty sure it wasn't because of the money, but coincidentally, it also was where the money would have suggested things would have gone.
It's almost an unbreakable pattern.
Joe Decini's program would have fixed Scott's kids.
No, it wouldn't have. Because he wouldn't have gotten in it.
All right. All right, here's a persuasion secret I learned as a data analyst.
So I spent many years in the corporate world analyzing data and then explaining it to management and whoever needed to see it.
So my job was to take complicated things and simplify them so that somebody could make decisions.
Now, I apparently was born with some kind of aptitude for simplification because you see that in all my work.
So it seems like I have some kind of natural talent for that, I guess.
I mean, based on observation, I would think so.
So cartooning is about simplifying.
Writing well is about simplifying.
And I would say that doing this is about simplifying.
Well, knowing when to expand and when to simplify.
So it's a little more complicated.
But a good data analysis visualization puts you in charge.
Now here's something most of you have never realized, but I'll bet...
So I'm going to ask the people who have corporate experience or big organization experience.
So those of you with corporate experience, I need you to back me on this, because those of you who don't have it aren't going to believe this at all.
It's going to be obvious to corporate people, not obvious to the rest of you.
The person who makes the best chart is in control.
That's your leader. The person who makes the best visualization.
Now, when I say best, look at all the yeses.
All the people with corporate experience are agreeing.
You can see it go by.
True, true, true, true. It's one of those things people don't talk about.
But it's true. I'll give you an example.
So when I was doing data analysis, I was in charge of the data analysis to do a lease or purchase for mainframes and servers and the backend technology for the bank.
And so the technical people would say, you know, what they needed.
And then they would say, we could get it this way or that way.
We could lease it or buy it, and we could get it from IBM or somebody else.
And then I would take that information and do the analysis and figure out which one it was.
Well, as I was doing that work, I thought, God, it's too complicated to figure out what to do when.
And so I'll make a visualization that shows all of our equipment that's coming off lease or is ready to be replaced.
And you'll have a timeline that's a three-dimensional timeline where you can really, really plan when you're going to be having to retire a lot of stuff and when you don't.
Because if you had to retire a lot of stuff, you could have a capital budget That was appropriate to have much had to be replaced.
Now, this didn't exist, right?
There was no existence of a good visualization to show what to do when.
So I took it to my boss and said, hey, I'd like to show this to the senior vice president in charge of everything, and show him that there's a path to figure out how to do these upgrades in a more rational way.
My boss said, You know, nobody asked you to do that.
And so, you know, nobody asked you to do that, right?
The boss did not ask for this, so I'm not going to show him this because he didn't ask for it.
But I was persuasive.
He said, you know, but he might like it.
Maybe you could just pass it across his desk.
So she went to the meeting.
She did hand it to him, and he said...
My God, this is the first time I've understood what's going on.
This is perfect. Do more of this.
And from that moment, who was in charge of deciding what equipment in the bank got replaced?
I was. I was.
Accidentally. I mean, it wasn't my plan.
But from the moment I was the one in charge of the visualization, I was the one who determined what we did from that point on.
Because I said, well, two years from now, you'd better make your budget X, because if you don't, you won't have enough.
Right? So who was in charge?
Was the senior vice president in charge?
Well, on paper, he was.
And he certainly had an option of doing things that didn't make sense.
He would have been fired.
But he had the option, because he was in charge.
But who was really in charge?
The person who controlled the information.
And the person who put it in a form that basically told you what to do, right?
Because once you knew that you had to replace these and this date, well, you sort of had to.
His options were constrained by what I allowed him to know.
I was in charge.
Now, everybody who works in the corporate office knows this dynamic.
You know it's not the boss in charge.
They're completely captive to the data, right?
So, let's look at the question of the supply chain.
I believe that since we have a leaderless situation in particular, we don't even know who's in charge of fixing it, right?
Is it Pete Buttigieg?
I don't know. Or is he in charge of some of it, but not all of it?
The states are mostly in charge?
I don't know. Do you?
So we have basically a leaderless situation that's one of our biggest problems.
Somebody could take control of the situation with one good visualization.
Now, I have in my mind a sense of what it might be, but I'll tell you what it doesn't look like.
What it doesn't look like is the visualizations I've seen so far.
The visualizations I've seen so far are treating all of the various variables as somewhat the same, meaning here's a list of all the reasons that we have a problem.
It's just a list. A list of all the problems doesn't do anything, because you don't know which ones are the big ones.
And even if you knew which ones are the big ones, are they the ones you can fix?
Or should you fix the little ones, because they're fixable, and at least you can do that, right?
A good visualization would answer all those questions.
A good visualization would show you something like a visual presentation of the problem, you know, that it may be in a linear fashion of things go from here to here to here.
And then it would have a sizing or possibly a color indication of where the big opportunities are, and maybe different indications for both.
So it could be that There's a big problem, so that would show as a big bubble, but maybe there's nothing you can do about it because you can't attack it first.
But maybe there's a smaller problem that is easy to get at that would fix the bigger problem if you could fix the smaller one.
Maybe. That's what the visualization would tell you.
But here's the magic part.
Suppose you had the visualization with bubbles of different colors and sizes to tell you both priority and whether or not there's something you can do about it, but also each one was labeled with whose problem it is or who's in charge.
And you label the biggest one, nobody in charge.
And you publish it.
What happens? Well, if it becomes viral, because it's good, right?
If it's not a really good visualization, nothing happens.
So you have to make a distinction between a bad visualization where nothing happens and a great visualization which people are capable of doing, right?
Ian Martizis, I always pronounce your name wrong, sorry.
But Ian, if you've seen his work on here regarding COVID and stuff, if you see a professional data visualization person work, It blows your freaking mind.
Because you immediately realize how not good you are at it.
I did it for a living.
I did it for a living.
And I'm not even close to how good a really good commercial visualizer would do it.
Now, if somebody could do that and label it that the biggest problem is leaderless, what would happen?
Well, the news would say, oh, I finally understand this for the first time.
And what things do the news report?
Does the news report things that the reporters understand, or does the news report things that they can't explain?
Which one do they prefer doing?
Okay, obviously, rhetorical question.
Reporters will report things they can report and understand.
If the data visualizer hands them that, They're all going to use it.
They're all going to use it, because it'll be the first time they understand it.
If you could be the first person to explain it to a journalist, you own the journalist.
The journalist always owns the politicians, because the politicians have to do things that will sound good when they're explained in the press, or explain why they're not, right?
So, if you don't understand how power works, and by the way, I have this conversation with a lot of people, a lot of people don't understand how power works.
They really don't. They imagine that the person who's in the box that has the job CEO, they imagine they have the power, and in many ways they do, but it's such a simplified understanding of power that you can really get off track.
Here's the thing I say about the...
Everybody's annoyed about the lockdowns and everything.
And they're saying, oh, our government, damn our government for requiring this.
Nothing like that is happening.
Not in my world.
In my world, the government isn't making you do jack shit.
Nothing. Your fellow citizens are making you do that.
Do you not realize that?
It's not the government at all doing it.
It's your fellow citizens.
If they did not support the government, it just wouldn't be happening.
You have to have some solid percentage of support, or the government can't make you do anything.
If you think that convincing the government to change their mind is a productive path, you're so wrong.
You have to convince the other citizens, because they're in charge.
They're in charge. The government is not in charge of you wearing a frickin' mask.
Be serious. Wake up.
They've never been in charge of that.
They can't be in charge of that.
It's not physically possible.
Your fellow citizens are in charge of that.
They've decided by a large enough majority that you're going to wear a mask for a while in some places.
In other places, they decided not.
In Florida, apparently, they've decided They're not going to wear masks.
So stop thinking that the government's in power.
They're not. Never will be.
All right. So if we could get a good data analysis, maybe we could fix this problem with the ports.
And by the way, some of that data analysis might focus on the empty containers.
And I'm still seeing reports that it's not the empty container problem.
My belief is that the only credible person says that is the problem, that it probably is, at least in the West Coast.
Other places may be different.
All right, here's another one for you.
Dr. Anarchy on Twitter, who is very well named.
No Twitter user has ever had a more appropriate handle.
He's Dr. Anarchy, not his real name.
M.D., And the MD part is what gives you the anarchy in this.
So here's his tweet.
I'm going to let you think about it for a moment.
And be careful.
Just think about it for a moment before you react.
Here's the tweet. Horse dewormer and anti-malaria drugs have saved more lives than lockdowns and masks.
Just let it settle in.
Diabolical. Diabolical.
Here's what you might have assumed until I warned you that there was a trick coming.
Horse dewormer and anti-malaria drugs have, in fact, saved more lives because he didn't specify COVID. He didn't specify COVID. It is legitimately a fact that 100% of science would agree with that horse dewormer and anti-malaria drugs have saved more lives than lockdowns and masks.
It's probably... I mean, I assume the data would back it up.
But, you know, we can't know that for sure.
But what's diabolical about it is, first of all, you don't know for sure that that would even be true.
But second, you just leapt to the conclusion that he was only talking about COVID. But he didn't specify.
So was he? I don't know.
I don't know. I'm not sure what he intended, which is what makes it so diabolical.
But here's what you also need to know.
And I'll give you a story here.
So Michael Schellenberg was tweeting about this today, that Britain's climate policy rested on the assumption that in 2050 there would be just seven days per year when wind turbines produce less than 10% of their potential.
So the assumption is that wind turbines would be a good deal for Great Britain because the wind mostly blows there most of the time.
But in 2021, there have already been 65 such days.
And in 2016, there were 78 of them.
All right, they're hoping for seven, and they got ten times as many.
Ten times as many.
All right? So here's my persuasion lesson for the day.
Any data analysis...
It has two parts, the data and then the assumptions.
So if you've got data and you've got assumptions and you put them together, then you've got a result that you could just...
Let's say the data is 100% accurate.
And so you do the analysis with 100% accurate data.
And let's say you're also good at math and analysis.
So your math and your analysis are spot on, no mistakes.
And the data, which is weird, is 100% perfect.
So how good is your outcome?
How good is your result?
100% good data and 100% good analysis.
Anybody? Anybody?
How good is it? The correct answer is zero.
No credibility whatsoever.
Because do you know what makes your analysis come out the way it comes out?
Your assumptions.
Your assumptions. Every objective data analysis except maybe randomized controlled trials in some situation.
But as soon as you get away from that, as soon as you get away from the randomized controlled trials, it's all subjective.
It's all subjective.
Because somebody picked the assumptions.
And whoever picked the assumptions knew that if they picked them differently, they'd get a different outcome.
So whoever picks the assumptions decides what the outcome is.
Why do I know that?
Because that was my job for years.
My job was data analysis, in which some of it was data, a lot of it was estimates, and a lot of it was assumptions.
And I could make it come out any way I wanted.
It didn't matter what the analysis was, I could make it come out good or bad just by changing the assumptions.
I'm going to tell you something I did that I'm not proud of.
I don't know if I've ever said this in public before.
I'm not proud of this.
But it really happened.
So when I was working for the phone company, and I was also doing Dilbert in my spare time, my reputation as the Dilbert guy started climbing.
So people knew that I was, you know, mocking corporations at the same time I was working for one.
Well, as you can imagine, this was not popular with at least one member of senior management who learned that I was mocking big companies while working in his organization.
So he told my boss's boss to fire me immediately.
Because he heard I'd been saying some things in public about management in general.
Not my management, just about managers and management.
And to his credit, my boss's boss, who was a vice president, I guess, The vice president told me later, I didn't know about it at the time, but he told me, I don't know, a year or two later, that he had been asked to fire me, and he talked his boss out of it.
And I didn't hear the exact conversation, but I think it went like this.
He said, no, no, no, we can't fire him for having a sense of humor.
You can't fire somebody for having an opinion and being, let's say, humorously hyperbolic about it.
You don't fire people for that.
What you do is you move them onto projects and they'll quit on their own.
You just give them a really bad project, they'll quit on their own.
You don't want to fire them for that.
So I was moved...
Now, I don't know that that conversation happened.
I do know that I was, instead of fired, I was transferred to a doomed project.
Now, this is the way corporations sometimes fire people.
They'll move you to a project that has an end date.
And then when the project is over, they say, you know, we would love to put you back into some other department, but we've got a hiring freeze on.
So everybody in the project is done working at this company.
Yeah, the special assignment.
So I was put on a special assignment with at least one other person who was in the same boat.
He was also just this close to being fired, but they said, nah, we won't fire you.
You've been a good employee up till now.
So we'll put you on the doomed project.
It'll take care of itself. Guess what the doomed project was?
It was our job to do an analysis of whether the phone company should invest some billions of dollars in a new technology called ISDN. Has anybody heard of it?
Those of you who were working in tech back in those days?
How good was ISDN? I want you to watch this in the comments.
Watch this. For those of you who lived through those times, and especially those of you who were engineers or techies, how good was ISDN? And at the time, did you know it was the future?
It was absolute crap.
It was probably one of the worst technologies ever made.
But it was the only thing that the phone company had or thought they had as an option for high-speed data.
And the phone company thought they had to be in the high-speed data business, because they kind of did.
But they didn't have a good option.
They just had this bad technology.
So they put me in charge of deciding whether they should do ISDN and spend billions of dollars in making that like a critical part of the business.
Now keep in mind that they had already decided they were going to do it.
Because that's usually how it works.
So management had decided they have to be in the business of high-speed data.
They only had one option.
It was going to be ISDN. But they needed somebody, my project, to say they were making the right decision.
Well, at this point, I knew my career was pretty much over.
And I was not too happy with my employer.
How do you think the analysis went?
Well, I recall giving the presentation, and it's probably the funniest thing I've ever done that nobody laughed at.
Are you ready? The funniest thing I've ever done that nobody laughed at.
I stood in front of the senior management of, you know, it was an SVP and VP's senior management to make these billion-dollar decisions.
Billion-dollar decisions.
And I gave them my PowerPoint presentation, and I said...
This ISDN would be a great thing.
This could be great.
But I have to tell you my assumptions.
You have to understand the assumptions, because otherwise the analysis depends on that, so you have to understand them.
And one of my assumptions was that the employees of the phone company worked flawlessly, as did the developers of ISDN. And if they didn't make any mistakes...
In their implementation or their decisions.
And if ISDN, which was crap at the moment and had been crap for a long time, were to become not crap because the people made all the right decisions from that point on, ISDN would be an excellent thing to do.
Under the condition that my co-workers were capable and competent, and Mr.
Senior Vice President, you know your people better than I do, so if you trust them to be capable and competent, this is a great thing to do.
It's probably the most fucked up thing I've ever done in my life.
But in my defense, they did have it coming.
They had it coming. Now, remember, they had already made the decision, so it didn't really matter what I analyzed, but I gave them the cover they needed because I didn't care.
I just didn't care.
So if I could give some corporate advice...
Don't put the guy you're trying to fire, and he knows it, on the biggest decision in your company, because it was.
It was the biggest decision in the company.
And I gave them exactly what they asked for.
I gave them my assumption, and I said it clearly.
If you believe your people can execute flawlessly, unlike anything they've ever done before, this is a good idea.
You should jump at it.
And they did. So all of you are using ISDN now, right?
How's your ISDN connection?
Working pretty well? I guess that's everywhere.
So there's your...
Now, so that was real.
That's a real-life story.
Now, every time you see a data analysis, what do you think?
Right? You're going to ask yourself who did it and what assumptions did they make and what are they trying to accomplish?
Because people got priorities and it might not be yours.
All right. Here's a data analysis test for you.
I gave this test to people online today.
We'll see how you do. It's a data analysis test.
I'm going to give you an assumption.
So don't argue with the assumptions because these are not real assumptions.
It's just if this were true.
So don't argue that it's not true.
That's not the question.
If it were true.
Can you do the analysis?
So we're only testing your analytical ability.
We're not testing the facts.
I stipulate the facts are true.
They might not be.
But let's act like they are and then do the analysis.
Here it is. If you knew...
Now, knew is critical, right?
If you knew... There's no doubt about it because you're magic and you know.
If you knew that 98% of the people with COVID-19 who took ivermectin had a good outcome...
Would you conclude it worked?
98% of the people taking it have a good outcome.
Go. Do you conclude it works?
Well, your answers are all over the place.
I see yeses and nos.
How could that be? How could this simple question have different answers?
This is the most basic question.
98% of the people who took this drug had a good outcome.
Are you telling me that doesn't convince you?
What would it take?
If 98% is not enough, what would it take?
How many of you said yes, that's pretty good evidence that works, and are feeling a little uncertain right now?
How many of you are saying yes, but feeling maybe not as confident as you used to be in that opinion?
And I'm going to read it again, because you have to listen to all the words, right?
So remember, the part that's stipulated is true.
You can't question this because we're only looking at the analysis, not the data.
If you knew that 98% of the people with COVID who took ivermectin had a good outcome, would you conclude it worked?
Now you've thought about it for a minute and you've seen other people's answers, right?
Now show me just the yeses.
You had a moment to think about it, and you've seen other people's responses.
Now just the yeses. Plenty of yeses.
Lots of yeses. Those of you who are saying yes are going to get a little dose of humility today, and I don't mean this to be condescending.
So don't take this personally.
How many of you could design a nuclear-powered rocket without any help?
Well, I couldn't. I couldn't because I don't have any training in that.
How many of you could shoot a three-point shot from the center of the court and make them as much as Stephen Curry?
I can't. I can't.
I don't have any practice of that.
Nothing. So I don't feel bad about it, right?
I don't feel bad that I'm not a physicist.
I've never tried. Never been trained.
So... Very few of you have been trained in data analysis, I figure, realistically.
So if you've never been trained in data analysis and you have completely the wrong answer, don't feel bad about it.
Why am I telling you that?
Because I'm going to try to turn off the trigger for cognitive dissonance.
The trigger would be feeling you're wrong.
In theory, that would trigger you into hearing and thinking things that are incorrect.
So I'm going to turn it off.
If you're not an experienced expert in data analysis, there isn't any chance you'd be good at it.
So if you got this question wrong, don't feel bad about yourself.
There's nothing wrong with you.
You're a perfectly fine human.
You're going to get a little better in the moment, because I'm going to explain to you what you got wrong, but very few people know how to analyze data.
They think they do, and it's misleading.
You know, the reporters will give you data, and you think they know what they're talking about.
They don't. They don't.
All right, here's the answer for those of you who are maybe experienced in data analysis.
If ivermectin gave a good outcome to 98% of the people, it would indicate it's probably bad for you.
All right? Again, remember, if this is different than what you thought, there's nothing wrong with you.
You're still good. You're just not experienced at data analysis.
The setup I gave you should indicate under the following assumption.
If it was given to a broad spectrum of the public that represented the public, 98% is worse than nothing.
If you gave people nothing, more than 98% of them would have a good outcome if you didn't do anything.
So if ivermectin gave them a 98% good outcome and doing nothing...
Gave you slightly better than 98%, what does that tell you about ivermectin?
That would tell you it's bad for you.
Remember, I'm making up the numbers.
This is not anything real.
Nothing real. This is just an example.
Now, the second thing you should have asked is, who did you study?
Because if the only people studied had been 80-year-old people who had COVID and took no other drug, it would be a miracle drug, right?
If the 80-year-olds had taken no other drug and only ivermectin had a 98% good outcome, that would be a miracle.
A miracle drug.
But suppose the only people studied were children under 18 and 98% had a good outcome.
Don't give them any ivermectin, if that's all you know, because they were going to do better than that without the ivermectin.
So you took a 99-point-whatever percentage good outcome and you took it all the way down to 98 with your ivermectin.
So if you don't know who you gave it to, you don't know anything, right?
Somebody says, you killed several children, yeah.
So... Let me say as clearly as possible, I don't know if ivermectin works.
I don't discount it, but I don't think the data is supporting it.
Now, the only thing that I want you to learn has nothing to do with ivermectin.
So this conversation is not about ivermectin.
Please. I'm not talking about ivermectin.
It was just an example to see if people who don't have data analysis training would automatically get exactly the wrong answer.
And that's what happened.
So all I wanted to transmit is some humility that I would say, even as an experienced...
So I would label myself a commercial-grade...
Analyst. Meaning I did it for money.
Somebody was willing to pay me for my ability to analyze things.
And even I get stuff wrong all the time.
All the time I get stuff wrong.
So I've got a great deal of humility about my own ability, and I'm pretty trained.
I'm pretty well trained.
If you're not trained and you don't have a really big dose of humility about how well you can analyze this stuff, you should get it.
I'm seeing Christopher is sending me an article from Jim Hoft.
It says, election expert Seth Keschel releases national fraud numbers, finds 8.1 million excess votes in U.S. elections, affirms Trump won, etc.
What credibility do you put on that story, people?
It's from the Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, and he says that some expert has found 8.1 million excess votes, and it shows that Trump really won.
Credibility, everybody?
Credibility? Good job.
Good job.
Yeah, zero or low.
Right. Zero or low.
Now, it doesn't mean it's untrue.
Remember, when I say credibility, and I think you're all trained on this by now, credibility doesn't have anything to do with true or false.
It's just whether the source and the way it comes to you is something you should automatically believe or automatically be skeptical.
Could be true. We're not ruling it out at all.
But at the moment, on first glance, it's about a zero credibility.
If you see it in other places and you see more detail, maybe, maybe it'll go up.
So again, doesn't mean it's not true, but I wouldn't get too excited about it.
Here's some good news from Twitter user JML. He talked about ivermectin, and he said, and I quote from his tweet, I took it and got better in 46 hours.
It works incredible.
Now, that is good news, because you probably are aware that there are some randomized controlled trials going on for ivermectin, and And we can cancel those now.
Because they're expensive, they're going to take a long time.
But now that we know that this one person...
Is pretty sure that it works incredible and it wasn't just another one of the millions and millions and millions of cases of people who did have one day that they felt better a little bit more than the other days.
So it's not that.
But this one person, he's now tested it on himself and that gives us full scientific confidence.
So thank you, JML, for making it unnecessary to do randomized controlled drug trials.
We can just give it to this guy.
And I don't know how many other drugs he's willing to test for us, but imagine how much money we could save.
A randomized controlled drug style is like crazy expensive.
We're talking like tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions.
But we could save all of that by just giving these drugs to JML. 46 hours later, you're going to know if they work.
He'll just tell you. And then you just take them to market.
We could save a lot of money.
That's the best news I've heard all day.
I hope he doesn't charge too much for his services.
So that would be great.
All right. What else has happened?
Was it wrong of Joe Rogan to take ivermectin?
I will give you the correct analytical decision.
It's a risk management decision because you don't know.
If his doctor gave it to him, that means that somebody well-informed that he trusts...
Thought the risk management balance was worth it, because I guess the downside risk is kind of pretty close to zero.
Did it work? Nobody knows.
Nobody knows. But was it a good risk management decision?
It looks like it. It looks like it.
That doesn't mean you should do it.
But if your doctor backs you up, that would help.
If your doctor says no, well...
You know, take that under consideration.
Doesn't mean you have to follow the doctor's advice.
But I would certainly give us some weight.
I certainly would. Scott just called Dr.
Corey well-informed. Yes.
Yes. The rogue doctors who were claiming the opposite of the consensus, they are well-informed.
That doesn't mean they're right.
They just know a lot of stuff you don't know.
Definitely doesn't mean they're right.
Have any weed users died of COVID?
I'd really like to know that.
Because, you know, weed has been at least indicated in some non-confirmed trials.
Weed has indicated as a protective effect.
Now, I can't speak for the rest of you, but if COVID-19 can burrow through the solid layer of marijuana tar that I put on my lungs every day, well, it deserves to kill me.
I would say that's a fair fight.
I'd say if you can get through that barrier and you can take me out, good job on you, COVID. You have my respect, but you're going to have to dig pretty hard to find lung.
Now, I don't know if many of you know it, but the only studies I've seen about lung cancer and health outcomes for continuous smokers such as myself, the only health study I've seen is that they have the same life expectancy as everybody else.
Will the mask mandate stop before August 2022?
Oh, yeah, I think so.
What's happening in Florida, by the way?
Think about how confident you were about whatever you thought some other country or state did.
Did you ever have a period during the pandemic where you said, oh, Sweden, the Sweden example, now we know what's going on.
That tells me something.
I'll look at Sweden, then I'll look at what other people will do, and now I'll know what's going on.
Pretty clearly isolating the variables that matter and the ones that don't.
Now that I know what's happening in Sweden, we're good.
Any of you have that feeling?
Well, I didn't. How about when you heard that India allegedly had one region that had, like, amazing success with ivermectin?
So, did you believe that?
You shouldn't. You shouldn't, because there's no reliable information that India had success with ivermectin.
You think it is. You probably saw it in a tweet or you saw an article completely debunked.
How about the difference between Florida and California?
Florida's infection rate just dropped to sort of one of the best, meaning the lowest levels since the beginning of the pandemic.
Why? Why'd that happen?
Does anybody have any explanation for why Florida suddenly has fewer infections?
Somebody says seasonality, but that hasn't held.
Seasonality has not acted the way seasonality normally acts.
The seasonality has been violated by this virus.
Right? Sunshine, California, we've got sunshine.
So every hypothesis you have doesn't seem to stand up, does it?
I don't know what it is.
Apparently there's something pretty basic about this virus that we still don't know.
The experts still don't know.
Because we can't predict any state, can we?
Do you think any expert could predict, okay, this state is now going to make a change in their procedures, and then can the experts predict how it'll go?
Apparently not. Apparently not.
Now, the one exception to that would be Christmas, I think.
Christmas seems predictable, doesn't it?
But beyond that, I don't think you can compare a state to a state.
We just don't know what's going on.
And I'll tell you what makes me super curious...
Why is it that we get a bad variant just about when we think we got the other one under control?
Is that a coincidence?
Because if one virus was created in a lab, wouldn't they make a variant too?
Don't you think there was more than one created in a lab?
Are we sure the Delta variant is natural?
And are we sure the one after that, whatever they're talking about, the one that looks a little like it might be a problem, are we sure that's natural?
How would you know? Oh, somebody's saying maybe the vaccines caused it.
I don't think there's any evidence for that, that the vaccines caused the variant.
The evidence is the greater amount of virus there is causes the variant, not the leaky vaccines.
So everybody's saying leaky vaccines.
Do a fact check on that.
I think the leaky vaccine hypothesis...
That that actually causes variants?
I think that's completely debunked by the fact that the thing that causes mutations is more virus.
So the more virus, the worse it is, just period.
That's just the only rule you need to know.
More virus, more variants, that's all you need to know.
Now the exception would be if people got partially, let's say, immunized by the prior infection, at which point the variant wouldn't be as powerful.
If your infection If your natural immunity also worked against the variant, it could stop it that way.
Natural mutations, more patients survive to pass along mutations.
Okay. Here's another...
What time is it?
I've got time this morning. You want to hear another conspiracy theory?
Anybody? Anybody?
Another conspiracy? Yeah, of course you do.
Of course you do. It goes like this.
The supply chain problem.
Is it natural?
Or was it maybe nudged by an adversary?
Question number one.
Could you tell the difference if it was natural, the supply chain problem, or if there had been some hidden hand behind it?
Would you know the difference?
First answer, I think no.
You could. I mean, it's possible you'd see some hidden hand that wasn't so hidden.
But could an adversary do an attack like this that we would not be able to identify?
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Let me give you an example of how this could be done by an adversary over a long period of time, and you wouldn't know it.
You ready? One of the biggest problems, as I understand it, and my example might be wrong, but it'll give you an idea, right?
Even if the example detail's wrong.
So in Long Beach, and I think in L.A., they had a restriction about storing the empty containers.
At some point, that means that somebody...
Brought forth legislation or some kind of rule change to promote the rules about restricting what you can do with an empty.
Now, you probably think, oh, that was the unions.
It probably was. Or that was just ordinary safety procedures, and of course we did that.
There were some accidents, so it's just because of the accidents.
Could be. Here's the other possibility.
How much would it cost...
To bribe a local official to make some legislation that isn't really as good as you think it is for the public.
$30,000.
All right. Now, you can fact-check that, but my claim, just for conversation, for conversation purposes alone, it would cost about $30,000 to bribe one politician...
It doesn't have to be even a direct bribe.
It could be, you know, we'll fund you a campaign or something like that.
One politician, $30,000, to put some legislation in place about empty containers.
Now, do you have to bribe all the people who vote on the bill?
Do you have to bribe them all?
Nope. Because they don't care about empty containers, do they?
It's not an important topic.
So if the person who alleges he or she looked into the topic and said, look, I've looked into this deeply.
I wrote it all for you.
Made it easy. This problem of putting more than two containers on top is a big problem.
Vote for my bill.
Do you think one person could get something passed if they were the only person who understood the topic?
Yes. Yes, they could.
Now, suppose an adversary was doing this kind of thing, finding weak spots in our major systems and then influencing one politician to become an expert in it and put in place a restrictive policy that looks good when people see it at first.
Oh, you're going to improve the safety?
Yeah, I'm on board.
I'm good with safety. Oh, you're going to protect the unions?
Oh, well, we're a democratic state, and we like unions.
We'd better get them on our side, so sure.
Yeah, it could be done.
Now, you say to yourself, but that's like kind of a magic bullet, isn't it, Scott?
You really think that the Chinese government is so smart that they're looking for this weakness, and they find this one person that's exactly the right person, and they do exactly the right thing?
No. No.
That's not the play. The play would be you do that same thing, you know, bribe the politician, but you do it all over the place.
So it's not just about ports, and it's not just about the supply chain.
It's about everything.
It's about how we procure for the military.
It's about our policy for whether we should have domestic supplies of this or that valuable stuff.
It's about how quickly we could, let's say, put together a military response, maybe crippling little places of it with restrictions and rules.
So they would put in place a whole bunch of things that look like little steps and then wait for the pandemic.
Now, when I say wait for the pandemic, I mean wait for any big thing that is the extra pressure on the system.
So they could just weaken a bunch of systems over 20 years at very low cost, And then wait for some pressure on the systems that they didn't plan for, but there's always some pressure, and then that's enough to knock it over.
So it could be that an adversary didn't even know they were going to have success with a supply chain.
It's just they had weakened a bunch of stuff, and this is the one that got some extra pressure and pushed it over.
Now, when you hear it described this way, does it sound impractical?
Anybody? Does anybody think that any of that sounds impractical?
No. Unfortunately, no.
And I gave you only one very small example of something that could be very easily and practically done.
Don't you think there are more that don't involve bribing a politician?
Don't you think? Let me give you another one.
What did I hear? There was some propaganda That we all accepted.
I just heard a story about some propaganda that the citizens of the United States all accepted as true and just was made up by some propaganda source.
Do you think that an adversary could convince us of something that isn't true?
Just in general. Could an adversary use, let's say, maybe AI through just algorithms, not anything more AI than algorithms?
Or, you know, let's say changing your social media impressions so you see more of something and less of something else.
Do you think they could change your mind about anything?
Of course they could.
Now, if they're trying to change your mind about who to vote for, we can be sort of alert to that.
You're like, hey, you're a bot. The way you're talking, I can tell you're a bot.
Or, that sounds like a Chinese spy.
But, would you be just as smart if the topic was storing nuclear waste?
Whether to regulate electric cars?
Or something like that? Would you be just as smart and say, yeah, my opinion on batteries versus storing nuclear waste is based on my own research and my own knowledge of objective sources, and at least they're American, even if they're trying to bias me.
So I have an American objective opinion?
Maybe. But you don't think your foreign adversary could get 20% of you so afraid of any one of these things that that 20% would form an action group to stop it from happening, or would promote legislation that would at least have a chance of passing?
There are so many ways that a clever and patient adversary could influence, or I'll say nudge, could nudge each of the Parts of the system and just wait for something big to be the last straw.
Right? Now, when you hear me describe it this way, and then you think of the supply chain problems, are you still confident that it happened naturally?
How many of you are confident...
That it's a natural effect.
Because all the things we talk about look natural, but they're all caused by something else, which was caused by something else, which was caused by something else.
So if you say to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott, we know the problem.
The problem is just too many empty containers, and there's a regulation.
That's it. That's the whole problem.
Is it? I don't know.
Who knows? Maybe that's the problem that was caused by a problem before it, because it didn't happen on its own.
And whatever the problem before it was, that was caused by the thing that happened before it.
You have no idea what caused any of this.
There is a reason that the news is not telling you what's going on with the supply chain.
You've noticed that, right? Have you noticed that the news can't tell you exactly what's wrong?
Just that it is wrong.
Hey, there's lots of ships backed up.
You don't have your supplies.
That's all they can tell you.
It took a private citizen to go down there and look at the problem.
I'm very suspicious of a problem that has too many explanations.
Because it's not like we lack explanations.
The problem is we have too many.
We've got the trucker shortage, the truck shortage, the regulations about what trucks you can use.
You've got the There's too much demand because of the pandemic.
You've got people who don't want to get vaccinations, so they're not working.
You've got union problems.
I don't know.
I understand the concept that when the system fails, you see failures all over it.
Okay, I get that.
But my pattern recognition is picking up something else.
Do you know the book by Malcolm Gladwell, Blink?
And he talks about the idea that an expert can know something's true before they know why.
The example he gives is an art expert looking at a forgery.
The expert can look at the forgery and say, that's a fake.
But if you ask them why, they'd have to think about it.
Well, I don't know.
I guess if I thought about it, I don't know, this part looks a little different than the other.
They wouldn't know. That's the experience I'm having with the supply chain problem.
It looks like a forgery.
I don't know why.
I couldn't give you a detail.
But it doesn't look like a genuine event to me.
It looks like a forgery.
Part of it is that we don't know what the problem is, and we should.
Part of it is we know that China would have an incentive to mess with us in a variety of ways.
Part of it is I know it's practical.
It could be done. And part of it is I know that such things are done, like it's a real thing that is done in the real world.
It's not like I invented an idea and nobody thought of it.
It's something that's happening.
I'm sure we're doing it, we the United States.
You don't think we're putting a little pressure on things?
So I do not allege that anybody is behind the supply chain problem.
Let me be clear. I make no allegation that it's some kind of a foreign attack.
The argument against it is that it would affect China as well, and it's hard to imagine that they know it's going to be a good outcome.
That would be a pretty risky play.
But I can't turn off the fact that, like, my spider sense is just on full alert here.
Now, it could be that the only thing going on is that the real problem is still not surfaced.
Like we think it has, but maybe there's a deeper problem below the problem below the problem.
So it could be that all I'm reacting to is the fact that there's an obvious mystery here.
Right? Would you agree with me on that?
That there's a mystery here?
It's not explained, I don't think.
And I see people say they think it affects China the most.
In the long run, I think it would.
But they might also calculate that they could survive it better.
I don't know. Well, I'm seeing somebody say it's a comedy of errors because only seven cranes are working.
But the reason the cranes can't work is because there's no room, because there are too many empties in the port.
So it's not the crane problem.
I think we can eliminate cranes as a source of the problem.
Alright, so here's another suggestion.
Let's say you put the empties on a train with a crane.
Is there a train that goes right to...
How close can you get a train that would carry empties, containers?
How close can you get a train to one of the ports?
Do they already have close trains?
Because I'm wondering if you couldn't take one of those cranes and put it like a mile away from the port...
And wherever there's a big field or something.
And just have the train go one mile, unload it, go back one mile, load it up, go one mile, and unload it into a field.
Probably there's a distance problem.
I don't think that would work. Logging helicopters.
Logging helicopters.
Because they could lift a container.
Could they? Would they be big enough to lift a full container?
Maybe. But I think that would be...
That would be super expensive, but I don't even know how fast it would be.
Load the empties back in the ship.
I don't understand all the regulatory problems with that, but I don't think that's as easy as you think.
All right, I think that's all I have to say.
Question? Was today's...
I got a comment today on Twitter that when I asked my trick question about the ivermectin 98% thing, which I just made up, a Twitter user said people don't like to learn things that way because it was like a trick question and I trapped you into it.
How many of you had a negative reaction to that?
Did anybody have a negative reaction to the way I set that tweet up with the 98%?
Or did you...
Because what I was shooting for, I don't know if I hit it, but what I was shooting for is do you feel, for at least some of you, to feel your certainty evaporate?
That's all I wanted. I just want your certainty to evaporate.
Okay. So most of you were not bothered by it.
Good. I just wanted to check in on that.
Because if the only thing it did was irritate you, it wasn't persuasive.
All right. Good to know.
Let me ask you this. How many learned something useful?
Useful maybe just in understanding the world, not necessarily.
How many learned something useful today?
Lots of yeses over on Locals.
How about YouTube? I pissed one of you off.
Seeing lots of yeses.
Allah learned nothing.
Those of you who learned nothing, you're very smart people.
I could probably learn something from you.
Only the last 30 minutes was good.
Okay, good feedback.
A bit? All right, good.
So here's... I finally decided what my role is, if you'd like to hear it.
I think my role is to teach you to be more effective.
Persuasion would be just one way.
But I think what I've sort of accidentally stumbled on is a way to use the headlines for your personal improvement.
I don't know anybody's done that before.
And I didn't do it intentionally.
I just sort of drifted here and thought, hey, I just realized that I'm using the headlines as a honeypot.
Like, I'm trapping you in here with the headlines because that's what you were interested in.
It's like, oh, let's hear about ELEC. What's he going to say about Alec Baldwin?
And then once you're trapped in here on the headlines, which is automatically interesting, I try to talk about them specifically in a way that gives you some kind of life skill when you're done.
And I only realized this yesterday.
Isn't that weird? I mean, this is the thing about framing.
Until you frame something right, you don't really understand it.
And I had been framing this as sort of a mishmash.
I was just doing the things I liked.
I liked talking about the news, and I liked talking about self-improvement, and sometimes I'm selling a book about those things.
So I just sort of drifted here.
I didn't realize that I'd accidentally hit a model, a business model.
And the business model, completely accidentally, is draw you in with the headlines and teach you something, so you feel like you got something in it.
Now, I wonder if I could have thought of that and then executed it, or I had to drift into it.
It feels like it would have been maybe a different result if I'd gone at it a different way.
And this gets to what is this a good example of that I always talk about?
Systems over goals.
Did I have a goal of creating this business model?
Nope. I never even really thought of it this way until literally yesterday.
Literally yesterday, it's the first time I realized what we had collectively created.
Because I don't even take credit for even drifting into it, because most of you sort of nudged me into it, right?
Here's a question. Are you my creation, meaning that I've influenced you some way, large or small, or am I your creation?
Am I your creation, or are you my creation?
This gets back to the question of power, and understanding who has the power.
If you don't think you've influenced me more than I've influenced you, most of you, some of you, maybe a lot, yeah, it's a two-way street, but your control over me is extreme.
Extreme. How many times have you seen...
One comment completely changed my game.
Those of you who have been watching for a while, how many times have you seen it?
Just one comment just totally changed my game.
All the time.
All the time. So when you're analyzing how much personal power you have, consider that you have all of mine.
You have all of my power.
People every day, somebody sends me a tweet that they hope I'll retweet.
And every day I retweet some of them.
So all of those people got to use all of my power.
But it wasn't mine anyway.
It was borrowed. All of my power is borrowed.
Like, I don't even see it as real.
Like, I don't internalize it as me having power.
I internalize it as being part of a system.
And when the system is working, I'm doing my part.
But I'm not the power source.
I'm more like a conduit and a filter, maybe.
I'm a filter and a conduit.
And, you know, I add a little power, but so do all of you.
All right. So I try to model the stuff that's most useful as well.
Bring back your democratic friend.
I had to cut him off entirely.
Watch it. You babbling.
Yeah, I think we're at the babbling part of the presentation.
So, I will let you go, and let's do something else today, okay?
Bye for now. Oh, Walter says, if I log into Locals, how do I find the link to all the microlessons?
Unfortunately, I don't have a link to it, but you can find the content list, and then you can also do a search on the phrase micro list.
So just use the search bar and search for my content under micro lesson, just that phrase, and they all pop right up.
Micro lesson. There is also an index Which I probably should retweet.
But there is an index for them, but it would be better if you just search for them.