Episode 1542 Scott Adams: Today I Will Argue the Opposite of my Actual Opinions on the Pandemic. And More Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Separate jerks from every group to achieve world peace
Biden to nominate (R) Kim Wyman for Homeland Security
Downtime "Plinking", shooting prop guns with live ammo
Africa, Norway, Germany, UK...all giving up on green energy
Ivermectin, arguing the other side
Jason M Lewis medical data analysis: Vaccinations, infections
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
It turns out That you woke up today thinking, well, today might be a good day, it might be a bad day, but surprise, it's an amazing day, because you made it here to the simultaneous sip.
And some of you are prepared, some of you are scurrying now to grab your cup and your beverage, but while you're doing that, let me give you the introduction, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
A cup or a mug or a glass.
That's all you need. A tanker, chalice, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask.
A vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
The thing that connects us across space and time.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And it's going to take your antibodies to a whole new level.
Watch this. Go.
Go. Ah, antibodies.
Well, I know you don't like anecdotal evidence.
You like data. You like hard data.
But let me give you some hard data.
Nobody has ever died of COVID while taking the simultaneous sip.
You can fact-check me on that.
Zero people out of 7.8 billion people on this earth...
Not a single one of them has died of COVID while doing the simultaneous sip.
None. Not a single one.
Do you think that's coincidence or causation?
Clearly causation.
Clearly. Because we know how to analyze things.
Well, in the news, Elon Musk, his personal net worth is now more than ExxonMobil.
His personal net worth.
No, not the value of Tesla.
Tesla is already, you know, much more valuable than, apparently more valuable than ExxonMobil.
But Elon Musk himself, he's worth $289 billion.
And by the way, at his current age, he should be the first trillionaire.
Elon Musk will be our first trillionaire.
Pretty sure. I mean, the odds are really good.
And he surpassed the value of ExxonMobil, which is only $272 billion.
Did you know that ExxonMobil was only $272 billion?
I mean, I realize a billion is a lot of money, but I thought they'd be bigger.
Actually, I was a little surprised.
I guess I should have known.
Well, Dave Chappelle addressed the issue with the trans community and the dust-up he's having with his Netflix special.
And he had this quite clever thing to say.
He said that the...
The trans employees and the LBGQT employees at NetSafe, they say what they want is a safe working environment.
A safe working environment.
Don't we all? Don't we all and don't we want that for everyone?
Of course. We all want a safe working environment.
That's a good thing to ask for.
And we certainly want it for the trans community.
But, as Dave Chappelle cleverly points out, he's the only one who can't safely go to work at Netflix.
Now, he doesn't exactly work for Netflix anymore.
At least he's not doing any more specials that we know of.
But literally, he's the only person who isn't safe at work.
That's a pretty good comment.
But I'd like to add on to it.
Because I think it was a good social commentary.
But if I could extend it a little bit...
Dave Chappelle might, in fact, not be terribly safe if he worked at Netflix because of the anger with the trans and LGBTQ community, I guess.
But if I, as a white man, worked for Netflix...
But let's not make it about Netflix.
Let's just make it generic.
A Fortune 500 company.
Who would do better at the Fortune 500 company...
Let's say equal amount of talent and experience.
Dave Chappelle or me?
Which one of us would do better in their career?
Equal talent and equal experience.
Not even close.
Right. And who would do better than Dave Chappelle?
Who might do even better than Dave Chappelle at a Fortune 500 company?
Maybe a trans employee because there might be more pressure because it's a smaller community and it's harder to find candidates just because of the smaller pool.
I would guess that if a highly qualified black employee was up for a promotion against a highly, let's say, equally qualified trans employee in a Fortune 500 company, who wins?
Same qualifications.
I think trans wins.
And I think Dave's right about that, Dave Chappelle.
You know, you didn't say that directly, but I feel that's the implication.
So we have this weird situation where the only people who can get promoted and have a safe experience are the ones complaining.
This is not to say they don't have valid complaints, okay?
So make sure you hear this correctly.
Everybody's got valid complaints.
The trans people have tons of valid complaints.
They're valid, right?
You might not agree with them, but they're valid complaints.
You might disagree about what to do about it.
But we all have valid complaints.
And so let's remember that, you know, you're not alone if somebody's treating you poorly.
If there was one thing that we should all be able to band together and agree on, is that we're all victims of assholes.
Am I right? Let's say you were an omnipotent being and you could fix the earth and the racial strife.
Let's say you had all the power that you could somehow do whatever it took to fix racial division.
How would you do it? Would you create a melting pot, the United States model, and throw everybody together?
Or would you segregate people and say, hey, one way to get rid of all this division is just divide people.
Let them live with each other.
I don't know. I don't think either of those would work.
Here's what I would do. You ready?
Here's my solution to racial division.
Separate the assholes in all the groups.
Just put all the assholes together.
So you take all the black people who are also assholes, and you separate them out from the group of black people who are awesome.
Then you take all the Irish people who are assholes, and you separate them out, and you keep the Irish people who are not assholes, and you put them together with the black Americans who are not assholes.
How do they do? Really well.
Really well, right?
They wouldn't have a problem at all.
Nothing to do with racism.
Everything to do with who's an asshole and who's not an asshole.
So we're completely framing the problem wrong.
If you took the assholes out of the category of white people, granted, it's a pretty big percentage, but if you could take the assholes out of the average, would white people look so bad?
No! No!
We'd look pretty good.
You take the assholes out.
And likewise, do you think you could get along with somebody from whatever community?
Just pick a community. LGBTQ, you know, women, men, black, white, Asian-American, whatever.
Whatever you want. Pick any group and then remove the assholes from the group.
How do you like them? They're great.
They're great. You just remove the assholes.
Now, the fact that we've been fooled into thinking we have a race problem, think about it.
Think about any other ethnic group and then think of somebody you know personally who just happens to not be an asshole.
Do you like them? Yeah.
Would you hire them?
Yeah. Would you date them?
Probably. I mean, that's a slightly different question, but probably.
Probably. So we're all looking at the wrong question here.
Really, we're just looking at the wrong question.
All right. Kudos to the Biden administration.
Yeah, I know. Weird, huh?
I'm going to give credit to the Biden administration for something.
Now, it's conditional because I'm not sure this isn't a trick.
I don't know that this will lead to something good, but it's a good start.
And here's the setup. Apparently the Biden administration is expecting to name Kim Wyman a Republican to a high position.
So Biden is going to put a Republican in a high position in Homeland Security.
So remember, Biden said he would be, you try to unite the country, be a little more bipartisan.
Now, the one he picked happens to, it's not a coincidence, of course, was, went hard at Trump for his, what CNN calls his false claims of fraud in the election.
So it's a Republican who has criticized Republicans.
Now, I know what you're saying.
Everybody's typing rhino, rhino, rhino, not a real Republican.
I get it. I get it. Can we stipulate?
Just so you'll stop typing rhino in the comments and type something else, can we stipulate that a Republican who's criticizing other Republicans, you have a name for them?
You don't have to just keep printing it over and over again in the comments.
Just print anything else.
Just stop saying rhino.
I will stipulate that you have that opinion, okay?
Okay, can we stipulate so we don't have to just keep saying it over and over?
I get it. You don't like rhinos.
I get it. Stipulate it.
But who is more likely to criticize both Republicans and Democrats?
Do you think a rhino doesn't criticize Democrats?
Of course they do. The rhino is going to criticize Democrats, but also Republicans.
I know you don't like that.
And in some cases, you say, oh, they don't have the right views.
Man, you do not like people who go against your team, do you?
The Republicans out here are just going frickin' nuts.
Let me finish my point and see what you think, okay?
Now, if your choice was to put a pure Democrat in the job, would that be better or worse than picking a rhino?
Let me know. Better or worse?
What's better or worse?
The same. Somebody says the same.
You think that a rhino would not criticize a Democrat?
What would stop a rhino from criticizing a Democrat?
Nothing, right? I think Biden actually picked the one kind of person who's definitely not a Republican in the classic way, But someone who has a pretty good chance of at least understanding the argument on two sides.
I think that's a reasonable step.
But anyway, this person will be in charge of protecting future elections, so being a resource to the states to help them prevent being hacked, specifically.
So her job is to keep foreign interference out of the elections, and she will be a resource to the states.
Now, is that good?
All right. I'm a little disappointed in you, honestly.
I'm a little disappointed in the audience, I have to admit.
I can't hide it.
If you don't understand the point that a rhino would criticize both sides, and you really think that a rhino is really just a Democrat, I mean, maybe.
I mean, that could apply to somebody, I guess.
But I don't think that's keen insight.
I think you should be able to agree with me that a rhino could criticize both sides.
Can I get that? Can I get that a rhino would criticize both sides?
Just that. You could say you don't like it for other reasons, but just that.
All right, so some of you agree with it, and others say no.
I think some of you think a rhino is somebody who's trying to destroy the Republican Party.
Is that what you think? Do you think a rhino is somebody who's trying to destroy the party?
Because I don't see that. I see it's somebody who likes them, just wants them to be a little different than they are.
All right. So I think that whole rhino thing is just sort of a...
It's sort of a weird stimulant that just causes people to go nuts.
Oh, you know what it is? Maybe it's the uncanny valley.
That if somebody's exactly like a Republican, and you're a Republican, you say, yeah, right on.
That's exactly what I expected.
But if somebody's like a Republican, but not quite?
You know, the rhino thing?
Well, they're like one, but not quite.
Does it cause revulsion?
Like the uncanny valley.
If you've never heard of a phrase, the phrase uncanny valley, just Google it separately.
It's kind of a cool concept to know.
It's about how robots become grotesque when they get close to looking exactly like people.
But not quite exactly.
They're just close to exact.
And they become disgusting like zombies.
You know, they just, ugh. You see somebody who's almost a person, you're like, ugh, what the hell's wrong?
Yeah. Maybe that's what it is with the rhinos.
They're almost Republicans, but what is wrong with them?
It might be something like that.
Anyway, I'm going to withhold my criticism because if the job of this rhino, you call her, is to protect foreign elections or elections from foreign interference, is there any way to do that without knowing that you can...
Also fully audit the election.
So here's my stand.
Anything short of an explicit effort to make all elections instantly auditable, so you can track your vote individually all the way through, anything but that is not good enough.
Not good enough. Because you would never know if any influence happened.
Now, influence may be beyond just vote counting, right?
It could cause you to vote the way you do.
That's a separate question.
But somebody's got to be in charge of making sure the elections are instantly auditable.
And if this Kim Wyman is not that person, then this is a complete failure.
Complete failure by the Biden administration.
I mean, it's good that they have a resource to help against hacking.
But it's not even close to what the job requires.
The job requires that we have at least an explicit goal.
Now, I get that the states have control of the elections, right?
I will stipulate that the states have control of the elections.
But somebody, maybe the federal government should say, the objective is to be fully auditable and fairly instantly.
That should at least be the objective, even if the states say we can't get there or we need resources to do it or we don't want to do it for one reason or not.
At the very least, it should be the objective.
So I'm going to say it's a small step in slightly the right direction, and I'll give them credit for that.
But I don't see evidence that it's anywhere near enough.
Rhinos have no natural predators.
That's interesting. Somebody says that's not the goal.
It's my goal. It's my goal.
It should be your goal, right?
Is there anything...
A rhino criticizes the GOP for the wrong things.
But that's just an opinion that it's the wrong things.
Right? I mean, they just have a different opinion.
You don't need to argue with me that you disagree with a rhino...
I mean, there's nothing there.
I get it. You disagree with them.
There's nothing else to be said about it, really.
It's not interesting in any way.
All right. So, Saturday Night Live.
How many people saw Saturday Night Live with Jason Sudeikis roasting Biden?
Did anybody see that?
Because it felt like a change in tone, didn't it?
Did it look to you like SNL just said, oh, hell, we just can't ignore this anymore?
Biden's a train wreck?
It looked like they went at him pretty hard.
They went after his sniffing.
They went after his decline.
You know, how he used to be all energetic and now there's not much left of him.
I thought it was pretty brutal.
Now, are you surprised?
Because, you know, you've seen that CNN has started to move against them.
You've seen Biden's poll numbers are crashing.
CNN feels like one of the last holdouts, doesn't it?
Like, if you could get SNL to say, all right, you know, we had good hopes, but it didn't work out, which is...
Somebody says that they went after him very soft.
He was gentle in a sense, but they hit all the points.
It did seem like there was a gentle edge to it.
You're right. You're right about that.
But they did hit all the points.
They did get his mental decline.
They did get, you know, his craziness.
Who's a Zhou Baideng?
Who is that? Sounds like there's something good that I don't know about.
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal has also sounded the alarm.
The editorial board.
So it's not just an article.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal basically said, we have to stop ignoring the fact that Biden is incompetent.
Like, you know, mentally incompetent, not just bad at his job.
That's a pretty big deal. Now, SNL has basically just put it out there.
And now the Wall Street Journal editorial board basically just reports it like an obvious fact.
You don't even need the medical examination.
It's just sort of obvious now.
That's pretty amazing.
And I would love to ask people privately who were big supporters of Biden if they got what they wanted.
Has anybody had that conversation privately?
Has anybody had a private conversation?
Because you act differently in public.
But has anybody had a private conversation with a Democrat who is regretting their choice?
Because people tend to have cognitive dissonance and say they were right even if they were wrong.
Yeah, you don't see much of it.
Look how little there is.
You'd expect there to be a lot of it, because the poll numbers are plunging, right?
So therefore there should be a lot of people who change their minds.
But you can't find them.
Oh, here's some. So, yep, my neighbor, Lisa says.
There's still anything but Trump, yeah.
So I guess they can defend their choice because it's anything but Trump.
I guess you always have that to fall back on.
Here's my question. If we could put a Tesla automobile in space, and when I say we, I don't mean me, because I had nothing to do with it.
But humans, at least some of us, are smart enough to get together and launch an automobile into space.
And yet, we can't invent a fake gun that looks real on a movie.
Really? Really? The only way to shoot a movie, which is all make-believe, is with a real gun that could at least potentially fire real ammunition.
Nobody can make a fake gun that would be an actual prop as opposed to a real gun that they pretend is a prop.
Can't do that? Nobody's figured that out yet?
It does feel as though there is a market for that.
Now, my understanding is that there are such things as prop guns.
And a prop gun, actually you couldn't put a bullet in it if you wanted.
It would just be blocked. But I imagine the prop gun doesn't have the same action, or maybe it doesn't flash the same, or have the kick, or whatever it is that makes it look realistic in a movie.
But we couldn't figure out how to solve those problems?
I mean, that seems like a solvable problem to me, to have a gun that makes a flash without a bullet.
You couldn't make an electronic gun that just lights something that just flashes out the barrel or something?
I mean, really?
How hard is that?
Well, we're also finding out how dumb Hollywood is.
I'm going to read this story, and you're going to swear, if you haven't already heard this story, you're going to swear I'm making this up.
Anybody who owns a gun or has been around guns or knows anything about guns...
You're going to think I made this up.
This will blow your frickin' mind.
All right? I swear to God this is true.
I'm going to read it.
This is one from CNN. There's this pastime that crew members sometimes do, and this is coming from somebody who knows that world, somebody named Waxman.
It's called plinking.
So there's something that movie crew members do called plinking.
And they go out into rural areas and they shoot at beer cans.
This is with live ammunition.
In other words, they take the guns that are used for the movie, they take them to somewhere in a rural area, they replace the blanks with real bullets.
And then they shoot at targets.
And then they return the gun.
I'm not making that up.
They actually do that.
Now, everybody who's had gun training, hold on to the top of your head.
Because it's coming off.
It's coming off, isn't it?
Ah! Ah! Ah!
The top of my head! Ah!
Ah! Ah!
Honestly, can you think of anything dumber?
If you were going to teach a class in gun safety, can you imagine a better anecdote of bad behavior?
Now, I know what the movie people are going to say.
They're going to say, Scott, Scott, Scott.
There's somebody in charge of checking all the guns before they're handed to an actor.
I mean, it's not like a live round is still going to be in the chamber, Scott, you fool.
That's why we hire somebody.
We hire somebody just for that job, to make sure that gun is safe before it gets handed to an actor.
And all the people who have any gun training whatsoever say, you are the dumbest person in the world if you think that's a good idea.
Because now you've taken the failure point and you've put it on one person who's underpaid and may not be paying attention and might come in with a hangover that day.
And lives would be at stake for somebody just to skip a step or something.
You would never... Ever put a live round in a gun that's going to be used in a movie, no matter how sure you were that you were going to remove it.
This gets me to a related topic.
So I've had a side conversation with somebody who works on movie sets a lot.
You know, he's often on movie sets.
It's his job.
And is arguing on the Internet and can't understand why people don't get his argument.
And he argued that Alec Baldwin is not...
Either responsible or 100% responsible, because there was somebody whose job it was, and it's the routine way that movies are done, somebody whose job it was to make sure that gun was safe before it was given to him.
And therefore, the people who are saying that Alec Baldwin is fully responsible don't understand, because clearly it was somebody else's responsibility, and the whole point was to keep the actor just as an actor and not have to worry about this stuff.
So, Scott, don't you understand?
Don't you understand that the responsibility was, you know, sort of shared, at least, by the person whose job it was?
Here's my counter-argument.
Are you ready? There's no such thing as one kind of responsibility.
And as soon as you imagine that there's one thing called responsibility and it can be defined one way, well, you're lost because there's nothing like that.
There's legal responsibility...
Which has a standard.
There's financial responsibility, which might be different than the legal responsibility.
Could be the same, but could be different.
Then there's what I would call common sense responsibility.
It has nothing to do with the law or anything else.
It's just, what makes sense to you?
Like, as an ordinary person, what makes sense?
And then there's gun responsibility.
Back me on this, gun owners, so the rest of you who are not maybe trained in firearms, look to the comments of the people who are and see if you agree with this statement.
Gun responsibility is absolute.
It's absolute. So there's no such thing as sharing it.
It's absolute. And it's absolute for everybody who touches it.
In other words, the gun owner, or the person who has it in their hand, let's say, the person who has it in their hand is 100% responsible for what happens.
100%. Even if the person who gave it to them is also 100% responsible.
So gun ownership is the only situation in which the responsibility can add up to over 100%.
Am I right? Which is illogical, right?
Because responsibility can't add up to 100%.
But let me say it again.
It does. Because gun owners don't fuck around when it comes to safety.
There are absolutes.
And when you're trying to argue with a gun owner, but don't you get that the system was that this other person takes responsibility?
Both people had agreed.
You know, Alec Baldwin knew that.
The person responsible knew it.
They had agreed that it was her responsibility.
So therefore, no. No.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah, your reasons.
Nobody wants your reasons.
If you're a gun owner, or if you have a gun in your hand, it's your responsibility, period.
Period. And nobody's going to listen to a counter-argument.
Because the moment you allow the counter-argument in, people get killed.
The moment you allow, well, there could be an exception, bam, somebody's dead.
Because this was the exception.
This was exactly the exception.
This is why it always has to be 100%.
Because the moment you make the exception, somebody gets shot every time.
So you don't make that exception.
And it has nothing to do with legal responsibility.
It's a different standard.
Legal responsibility is nuanced, and you really have to figure out who did what, and blah, blah, blah.
But gun responsibility is irrational by design.
Right? It's rational irrationality.
It's rational to be irrational on gun safety.
And by irrational, I mean...
You don't even put your finger on it unless you're going to do something productive with it.
This is how irrational gun safety is.
If this is your gun, you don't even do this unless you're going to move it productively with a purpose.
You don't do anything with a gun.
Anything. Anything.
Unless you're doing it with purpose and safety, right?
So anyway, people are not arguing the same argument.
They're pretending it's all responsibility is one thing, or it's logical, or it's common sense.
It's none of those things, and it shouldn't be.
As soon as you make that stuff common sense, people die.
So there's a reason for it.
I'm going to tell you something, but I can't tell you why.
A lot of the big political stories you're hearing now, you are completely misled on what's really behind them.
I can't tell you which stories and I can't tell you why, but just trust me, I'm seeing in more windows than you see, and I can't even freaking believe in the stuff I'm seeing.
You're never going to hear why, I don't think.
I don't think you'll ever know what I'm talking about.
But... Oh my God, the biggest stories are just so completely wrong in important ways.
Anyway, I'll just leave that there.
CNN keeps dumping on Facebook, and I'm loving it.
CNN's attacked from the left and the right.
So CNN is attacking Facebook for not censoring enough.
And their examples would be, You know, January 6th, for example.
They didn't censor enough, so it caused people to organize and do bad stuff.
And then, of course, the right thinks they censor too much.
And you're not going to like this, but it probably means they're doing a good job.
I hate to say it. I'm not a fan of Facebook, by the way.
I don't use it. I think it should go away.
I just don't like anything about Facebook, honestly.
So I'm not a fan.
But if you see that Facebook is being criticized for being not censorious enough, at the same time they're being criticized for being too censorious, is that a word?
Censorious? Censoring too much?
I would think that's kind of where you need to be.
How could they possibly have both sides happy about that?
Does anybody think there's something they could do that would make both sides happy?
I don't know that that's even an option.
Now, I'm not saying they're doing it the way I would do it or that it's flaw-free.
Clearly, there are flaws.
But it looks to be the kind of flaws that you would expect in a free system, right?
You know, civilization has flaws, but we like to be civilized.
Capitalism has flaws, but it's still pretty good compared to the alternatives.
Democracy and the republic and all that, lots and lots of flaws, but nobody's figured out a better thing to do.
Facebook is starting to feel like democracy.
It's a terrible system that we can't figure out a better one.
Now, I'm not supporting any decision they made, and I'm not going to criticize any specific thing today.
I'm just saying that I wouldn't want one side to be happy with Facebook and the other side to be unhappy.
Would you? Tell me, would you want one side to be happy and the other side to be unhappy?
No matter which side was happy.
I wouldn't. That feels like a very unhealthy situation.
The healthiest situation is exactly what we have.
Everybody's mad at Facebook all the time.
I hate to say it, but that's literally the healthiest situation.
Everybody mad at Facebook all the time.
All right. So, what else we got going on here?
There's a reason that I follow Michael Malice on Twitter.
If you don't follow Michael Malice, and he's at Michael Malice, just his names put together.
Here's why. I'm going to read you one of his tweets, and you'll know why I follow him.
Just one tweet.
He tweeted today, or it might have been yesterday, I wonder when Alec Baldwin will resume shooting.
And that's why I follow Michael Malice.
Maybe you should, too.
Now, a little more explanation.
I've talked before how there are some humorists such as Norm MacDonald who, if you don't understand his humor, you don't realize that the joke is always on the audience.
So sometimes he's, you know, just joking.
But lots of times the joke is about how the audience is responding.
Now Dave Chappelle sometimes does the same thing.
Dave Chappelle is operating at that, you know, that high level.
So that he's telling jokes, but also it's sort of about your reaction to the jokes too, right?
And you have to understand that Michael Malice is also about your reaction, right?
So don't automatically jump to imagine he's a monster because he says things that get you wound up.
His act, if I can call it that, his approach maybe, is he finds the worst thing you can say about every topic.
Whatever's the worst thing you can say.
And then he tweets it.
And if you can't appreciate...
I guess the edge that he brings to it, you probably shouldn't follow him.
But if you get that he's doing it for the reaction, then it's just a great show.
So I recommend him highly.
And by the way, you won't like it sometimes, which is the point, right?
Sometimes it's really going to rattle your chain, too.
All right. I... I've been accused credibly, so here I'd like to agree with my critics.
Sometimes people say, Scott, Scott, Scott, you can't admit when you're wrong.
I think I do.
I think I do, actually, but maybe I'm not admitting when I'm wrong.
So I'll try to do it now.
And I'm going to agree with my critics that although I've said over and over again that, for example, that I don't care if you get vaccinations, the way I talk about the pandemic...
Lead you to believe that I'm persuading you or that I have a certainty about things I don't have certainty about.
So I think my critics are completely right that you can accidentally influence people just by what you talk about most, right?
So if I happen to talk about things that were pro-vaccine, even if I'm not telling you to get it, You would internalize that as, well, he's saying pro-vaccine things.
How can you say you're not trying to convince me to get it?
You keep saying pro-vaccine things.
So, as a public service, because I know that it annoys a lot of you, I'm going to argue the opposite of my opinion today.
The same way that I make the mistake the other direction.
So it won't be so much I'm making an argument against my opinion...
As much as I'm giving the other side of the story.
Is that fair? So I'm going to concentrate on something that's pro-ivermectin, because usually I talk about the opposite.
So I'm going to tell you some things that are pro-ivermectin, even though I'm almost always talking the opposite.
I'm not trying to convince you.
All right, nothing you hear now will be to convince you it's good or bad or anything.
I'm just going to take the other side.
Now, this is a good exercise...
It's a good exercise to see if you can argue the other point.
All right? If you can't argue the other side's point, you have to ask yourself why.
Is it because the other side is just whack?
Or because you're so cognitively biased that you can't even say the words that the other side would say.
So in the spirit of testing my own cognitive dissonance, I'm going to show you an exercise in which I speak the opposite of my opinion.
Okay? And it'll be on the vaccines and also on ivermectin.
I think one other thing. I'm going to start with a little context and we'll lead you into it.
Rasmussen has a poll about climate change and asks people, is climate change a crisis?
51% of the people said, you know, hell yes or, you know, leaning yes.
So over half of the people think climate change is a crisis and it breaks down exactly like you think, 75% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans.
And interestingly, the moderates are right in the middle.
Which tells you something disturbing, but that's another story.
And then Rasmussen also asked, and I'm paraphrasing their questions, they put the questions in better form than I'm going to paraphrase them, so just know that they know how to do questions right, even if I say them wrong.
Alright. They asked, if the country that goes the hardest at climate change and green energy stuff, will they reap the economic and jobs benefit in green energy?
In other words, do people think that going hard against climate change ends up being an economic positive?
And 56% said yes.
56% of the public thinks that going hard at climate change would be a positive economic thing.
38% disagree.
All right. Again, remember, I'm just sort of...
Giving you some views here.
So I'm going to do climate change, and then I'm going to do COVID as soon as I'm done.
And then do you agree with Biden's approach to climate?
48% supported it, but 46% do not.
And 6% are unsure.
But I think the unsure should be thrown in the do not support category.
So pretty much a tie between supporting Biden and not supporting him.
And as Michael Schellenberger is pointing out, the world's green renewable experiment is over.
So Biden's climate bill is dead.
This is in a Michael Schellenberger tweet today.
Norway affirmed oil drilling.
So Norway is basically saying, OK, green stuff isn't working.
We better drill. Let's get busy drilling for oil.
And even Uganda says that the solar and wind force and wind cause poverty in Africa.
So Africa is giving up on green energy.
Norway. In some ways, the United States, in a minor way, at least the climate bill, and Germany is having the same issue, and I think the UK is looking at nuclear and stuff.
So basically, everything you thought you knew, or people thought they knew, about green energy and its benefits seems to be wrong.
So at the same time that Rasmussen is saying, hey, look at all these people who think the climate is a crisis and Biden is doing the right thing, are looking at countries all over the world who also thought the climate was a crisis and going green was the right thing, and they've all learned that they were wrong and they're reversing their decisions.
At the same time, people are saying, yeah, Biden looks good.
Majority of people saying, that looks good.
While the rest of the world who already went there is changing their mind.
Okay? Also good.
Alright, I'm going to argue the other side quickly for ivermectin and stuff.
Here's my question. If you had a drug that you knew worked...
In a laboratory, in a test tube, and it kills the virus in a test tube.
Why doesn't it work in people?
Now, I know, I know, the reason you do the controlled trials is because it's actually rare for something that works in a test tube to also work in a human without hurting them.
Do we agree? Everybody knows that the test tube results actually rarely work in people.
So you would expect that just because it works in a test tube doesn't really mean anything to people.
But suppose you had a drug, and the reason I ask why is that?
Why can't you tell that it will work in people?
What's the mechanism that ruins it?
And we know it doesn't work, but what's the mechanism?
And I heard a number of smart people say, well, the body rapidly breaks down chemicals.
So whatever you put into a body, as soon as it interacts with your blood and your hormones and everything, it might break you down.
And so the effectiveness you saw in the test tube could get just destroyed by the body.
Makes sense. But suppose you have the special case that the drug you're testing is already known not to break down in the body.
Let's take ivermectin as my example.
Now remember, I'm not promoting ivermectin as working because I don't have any idea.
I'm just arguing the other side to see if I can do it.
Ivermectin we know doesn't break down in the body so much that it doesn't work for what it was invented for it.
So we know that the body seems to keep ivermectin intact long enough to work against its original purpose, you know, as a dewormer for horses, for example, but in humans as well, originally created for humans.
So if you know it's not going to break down, and you know it kills a virus in a test tube...
And you know what parts of the body it gets into?
Presumably, you could find out.
It wouldn't be hard, I imagine.
Take some blood from a person and say, okay, there's the coronavirus.
It's right there in the blood.
Then you give them some ivermectin and you test their blood again.
You go, okay, their blood has ivermectin and it also has coronavirus.
Do they both exist in the blood at the same time?
And are you telling me that if you put something that doesn't break down...
Because we know it doesn't break down for its other purposes.
That doesn't mean it doesn't break down for this purpose, right?
It could break down in a specific way that luckily doesn't matter to one purpose but matters to the other, right?
So there are all kinds of possibilities.
But wouldn't you expect it to work more often than not?
As long as the drug itself doesn't change too much in the body and it lasts a little while.
If your blood...
Let me ask the question this way.
If I drew your blood out and it had coronavirus in it, so I've got a little petri dish full of blood, and let's say I put a Bunsen burner under it so it stays about the right temperature as your body.
So now you've got real blood from a real person with real virus in it.
If you drop an ivermectin pill in there...
I'm simplifying, right?
It wouldn't be a pill. So put some ivermectin in there.
And you just keep it at 98.6, and you check in an hour, is it going to have the same amount of virus?
What do you think? If you tested it outside the body, but it was a real person's blood with virus and real hormones and real everything else that's in real blood, because it's real blood, and you drop the ivermectin in, would it kill the ivermectin in the blood?
Now, I don't think we test it in blood, right?
Somebody give me a fact check on this.
When they test it in the laboratory, they don't put it in anything like blood, do they?
They just put it in a dish with the virus in some kind of medium.
Am I right? But shouldn't there be a step where they drop it in human blood and see if it makes any difference or it just immediately breaks down?
So here's my question.
How in the world do we not know that ivermectin works If it doesn't break down for its other purposes, it doesn't give you side effects.
Those are the things we know. It does kill ivermectin in a laboratory.
Are you telling me nobody ever did a test where they dropped it in a little pint of blood, real blood, to see if it made a difference?
Nobody ever tested that?
Because if it did, if you could neutralize a virus in real blood, let's say in an hour...
And there was less of it.
It doesn't have to be gone, but would it be noticeably less?
How could it not work?
Now, is this a good argument?
Is my argument good?
Now, remember, I'm not giving you certainty.
There's no certainty involved here.
I'm just saying that I would love to see an explanation...
Now, if you're saying to yourself, Scott, this is why we test randomized controlled trials, exactly your problem, because you can't tell that the laboratory extends to the real world.
But are you telling me if you knew the drug, At the level given, let's say we knew that the drug was going to be administered at the same level it is for other stuff, and we know it doesn't have side effects, and we know it doesn't break down quickly because it works for something else.
It doesn't break down too fast for that.
Are you telling me that you couldn't test that in blood In a laboratory, and really, really be close to knowing if it worked?
Again, no certainty.
That's why you do the randomized controlled tests.
Now, keep in mind what I'm doing here.
I'm not promoting ivermectin or talking against it.
I'm saying that I hadn't spent enough time talking about the possibility it would work.
The possibility.
Now, many of you have pointed out ad nauseum, follow the money, and it's about the big pharma doesn't want the cheap thing to work because it's off patent, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Is it possible that big pharma could block ivermectin in every way that people are looking at it?
Because it'd be pretty massive.
Do you think big pharma...
Could influence everybody everywhere in the world, like all the governments and all the experts?
Yeah, they could. Yeah, they could.
If they can find a choke point.
Now, I doubt they could do it retail, meaning go to every person and bribe every person and get to them individually or something like that.
So you can't get to them individually.
But who controls the data?
Who controls the data?
Where's it come from? Because if they control the data, then yeah, they can control what everybody thinks of it.
Now, do the big pharma companies, do they get involved in the trials?
Who is it who's funding the trials of ivermectin?
Do you know? I don't know.
Suppose they're funded, but maybe some money went to pharma, to some middleman, to some other middleman, and then to the study.
Would you know it? I wouldn't know it.
I mean, does anybody know who funds studies?
Is that always reported?
I don't even know if it's always reported.
But it's possible.
So part of my argument had been, you know, there's no way this conspiracy theory could possibly be true because too many people would have noticed it did work.
Too many countries would have run a trial where it did work, and then it would be working in the real world and that everybody would notice.
And so I've argued that it would be impossible to conceal such a mass conspiracy that affects so many people and is such a big dollar and life and death and everything else.
Unless they control the data.
And they could. So I'm not saying they do.
I'm saying you can't rule out the possibility that the big pharma controls enough of the trials.
They wouldn't have to control all the trials.
They would only have to control the big ones.
Or put people in charge who don't know how to do trials.
There's probably a million ways you can ruin data or manage it.
So that's my pro-ivormectin argument.
And again, I'm not pro-ivormectin.
If I had to guess... I'm going to guess against it being a big deal.
Meaning maybe it makes some difference, but I doubt it would change the pandemic.
So that's where my opinion is.
But I haven't spent enough time talking the other side, so there you go.
All right, how about on vaccinations?
I tweeted out...
Earlier, I've got to run in a minute.
Graphs from, who was it?
Jason Lewis, who is a scientist, but he's a material scientist, but he apparently has experience as a medical data analyst.
So he's somebody who's good at data systems and analytics, and he's a scientist.
Not the right kind for virology.
But he does do medical data analysis.
So he knows data, and he knows where to get it, and he knows how to look at it right.
So that's sort of the right person, right?
And he did studies of vaccinations to see if vaccinations work.
And sure enough, there's like a totally solid correlation.
The more you're vaccinated, the fewer problems you have.
Correlation is unmistakable.
You can't miss it. Very, very clear correlation.
Vaccination, boom, lower problems.
But, turns out, there's a little bit of a surprise involved in the data, which is that the infections turned down before the vaccinations.
Pretty reliably.
Which means, and this is just speculation from Jason, The vaccinations might not be the cause of the decline, because the decline starts well before the vaccinations and just continues.
And he suggests to people, you've got a lot of problems, and by then you've already masked up and put on and done social isolation.
Remember, I'm not arguing my point of view, right?
If you're joining late, this is not my point of view.
I'm just trying to give the opposite point of view of what I usually do to show that I can do it, okay?
So he's got a suggestion that the vaccinations might not make any difference and the masking and the social distances might make a lot of difference.
Not concluding, that's not a conclusion, it's just somebody who's really good looking at the numbers said...
The numbers don't explain why the dip comes well before the vaccinations.
So there is at least one person who's good with data who says the data is, I think he used the word agnostic, about whether the vaccinations work.
Think about that.
Here's somebody who's really good with data, and he's using public data, so you can check his sources, I guess.
And he says, it doesn't make the case.
It doesn't not make the case, but it doesn't make the case, because the dip starts before the vaccinations.
All right? Now, again, personally, I think, if I had to guess, I think there's slightly more chance, or maybe a lot more chance, that the vaccinations work.
I got vaccinated. I don't recommend you do, because there is some doubt, right?
If I told you I'm certain I made the right decision, I'd just be an idiot.
If I told you I was certain you made the right decision, I'd be a bigger idiot.
Nobody can be certain about this stuff.
So just for balance, I show you the argument on the other side.
Now, since you also don't believe, many of you, that masks and distancing work, you probably don't buy his alternative explanation, but it does suggest that there's something in the data we don't understand.
That's probably the only thing you can conclude.
The only thing you know for sure is there's something you don't understand.
Not necessarily that vaccinations are not going to work.
All right. How many anecdotal reports have you seen of somebody who forgot to get vaccinated or didn't get vaccinated and they died?
A lot, right? CNN used to do one every day.
Every day. Didn't get vaccinated.
I'm dying. Didn't get vaccinated.
I wish I had. Didn't get vaccinated.
Where are all the anecdotal reports of people who took ivermectin early when they first got symptoms and died anyway?
Not horse dewormer and not overdosing on horse dewormer.
But where are the reports of even one person, just one, just one, Who took ivermectin early and then died anyway.
And didn't take anything else, just ivermectin, and died anyway.
Not one? Because CNN is pushing pretty hard on this anecdotal persuasion.
They can't find one person who took the ivermectin and then died anyway.
Now, again, I'll remind you if you're coming here late, I'm not pro-ivermectin.
My personal opinion is that we'll probably find out it's weak or doesn't make much difference.
But isn't it a fair question why we haven't seen one example of what the news tells us is true?
The news tells us it doesn't work.
Probably there are tens of thousands of people using it anyway.
You've got a lot of people that you can look at and ask yourself, all right, did any of them die?
Now, you can say, okay, that's what the trials are.
The trials sort of sum it up, but where's that one person?
I get that the trials show that some people died even on ivermectin.
That must be true.
But where's the anecdotal story?
Because you know they want to give it to you because they want you to hear that anecdotal story.
Where is it? I also asked the question, is it unethical to test a new therapeutic?
Because if we know Regeneron works, which we do, how can you not give it to somebody who has COVID? How can you give somebody some new therapeutic that you're testing without also giving them Regeneron?
Because if you don't give them Regeneron, they might die.
So ethically, can you do a test of another therapeutic once you have one that works?
I don't know if they can.
All right. Adam Dopamine had an interesting tweet.
Listen to this tweet all the way to the last word.
Listen to it all the way to the last word.
Adam says... The dog not barking.
It's been 10 weeks since Pfizer was fully FDA-approved to much fanfare.
Moderna still not approved, even though the emergency authorization was granted only one week apart from Pfizer.
Really raises concern that there is something wrong with the Moderna's lobbyists.
Good tweet. There's something wrong with the Moderna's lobbyists.
That is a well-constructed tweet.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is my show.
I must go now.
I hope that I have satisfied some of my critics in the limited sense that I can give you an argument for the other side.
Doesn't mean it's right, but I think I gave you an argument that at least has a little bit of weight on the other side.
