Episode 1543 Scott Adams: Today I Will Talk About IQ and the Correlation With Health. Because I Like Causing Trouble
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Replace VP and then POTUS resigns?
Reid Hoffman, George Soros and Good Information Inc.
Whiteboard1: I.Q. --> Health
Whiteboard2: Problem: I.Q. and Race
Kyle Rittenhouse trial
Huma Abedin and the senator
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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.
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It's time. It's time for the best part of your whole day.
Now I'm not saying the rest of your day will be not good.
It might be awesome.
But no matter how awesome it is, no matter how awesome, yes, this will be the highlight.
And are you wondering if...
This sort of thing can improve your antibodies?
Well, according to a thing called science, yes, a lot.
You've heard of a thing called placebos, right?
That's right, a placebo works quite often.
Not as well as the drug it's compared to, if you do things right.
But, placebos work.
So what does that tell you about the ability of your mind to influence your health outcomes?
Pretty good. Pretty good.
Unless it's just a statistical data problem, but I think there's something happening there.
Secondly, we know for sure that if you're more relaxed and less stressed, you'll produce less...
If you're more relaxed, you'll produce less cortisol, the stress chemical, and the stress chemical makes your immunity to everything go down.
So yes, 100% guaranteed.
The people watching this livestream will be healthier than other people because you have the benefit of all this relaxing content, things that take the edge off, things that make you feel better, things that make you feel smarter, more capable, more confident.
You put all that together, what's that do to your antibodies?
I think you know.
I think you know.
Well, there was a recent study that showed that zero people...
Watching my live stream have died of COVID. I don't think that's a coincidence, do you?
No. How would you like to take it up a notch?
I know you would. How about all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or 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 your antibodies line up and sing.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's happening now.
Go. You know, you can never tell when I'm completely serious, can you?
But I would bet a large amount of money that the people who watch this live stream have better outcomes than people who don't.
I would bet on that. Do you remember during the height of the pandemic when the public was scared to death?
But many of you joined me then and were watching my content, and when people were saying, the wheels are coming off, everything's falling apart, and I said, no, not so much.
You'll be fine. You'll be fine, and here's why.
Don't you think you had less cortisol than other people?
I think so, because actually I don't even know anybody else who was making chill-out content at the time.
Probably just me. I mean, if you can think of somebody, let me know.
But it's real.
It's real, people. You get healthier when you watch this.
Well, let's talk about all the things that are happening, shall we?
Rasmussen has a poll about Dr.
Fauci. They found that 46% of the likely voters polled want Fauci to be forced to resign.
46%. Is that good or is that bad?
Anybody? Anybody? Is that good or bad for Dr.
Fauci? 46% of them want him to resign.
46% is the percent that we want everybody to...
Basically, that's a universal number.
40% of the country wants every famous person who works for the government to resign.
How many people want AOC to resign or be forced to resign?
About 46%.
How many people think the president should be forced to resign?
I mean, there are more people who dislike him, maybe.
But how many think he should be forced to resign?
About 46%.
You know, I read this and I think to myself, after all the trouble...
That Fauci has gotten into and gotten out of and gotten into again.
All the criticism, the number of people who want him to be fired is about the same as everybody else.
Apparently, we are completely immune to any kind of data or analysis.
But boy, do we like being on a team.
We like being on a team.
So 46% is pretty much like the universal number of people who want somebody else to resign.
Somebody famous. All right.
I don't know why that's funny, but I'm going to read that comment.
In the comments on YouTube, 47% of people polled think Alec Baldwin is actually a cowboy.
That's not far off.
Let me give you my current final answer on Alec Baldwin.
And I like to say this because I would consider him a political opponent, adversary.
You know, I don't like to use those words because we're all on the same team, America.
But he would be on the other side politically from...
Whoops. What the hell's happening over here?
I've got some kind of unstable internet connection messing up my locals' feed.
That's interesting, but only one of them.
I've got two feeds. I've got two feeds.
I'm going to turn another one on.
Let's see if I can cause this to work.
Technical problem being worked out.
Oh, permission denied.
That's interesting. Well, let's see if I can reconnect this.
Might be a way to do it.
Hold on, YouTube people.
Hold on. Oh.
For some reason it looks like it's working now.
Interesting. Let's try this.
That damn rumble. Somebody's blaming rumble.
Hey, there we're back. Wasn't such a problem after all.
All right. I was in the middle of saying something so fascinating that I can't even remember it.
Does anybody else remember what I was saying before I got sidetracked?
Anything? Anything?
All right. But anyway, hypnosis and antibodies.
It's real. What was I talking about?
Tell me. Oh, Eric...
Alec Baldwin.
I guess that didn't matter.
All right. I think Locals is back, right?
I think Locals is back working.
It looks like it is. I've decided that Joe Biden is what I call the stem cell president.
The stem cell president.
You're going to like this.
If you didn't see me say it on Twitter, you're going to like it.
You ready? What is the process in the United States for replacing a vice president?
Not a president, but a vice president.
What's the process if, let's say, a vice president were to resign or to be, I don't know, impeached or maybe have a medical problem and have to leave?
What would be the process?
Well, it turns out that Biden would appoint somebody and then Congress would vote by a simple majority.
Now, we're not talking about line of succession.
So it has nothing to do with Pelosi.
Pelosi is who would take over if the first and second command were incapacitated at the same time.
We're not talking about that.
So forget about line of succession.
That's not the conversation.
We're talking about how to replace a vice president.
Just a vice president. So a vice president quits, let's say, and the president simply nominates another Democrat in this case, and then because Democrats have a majority, and also because historically the country likes to have a vice president, we don't like to go without a vice president.
So as long as the president nominates somebody who's not horrible, somebody who's an ordinary person within that party...
Generally, you can expect to get a quick agreement.
Maybe even from some Republicans who just are in favor of the idea of good continuity and keeping tradition.
So, here's our situation.
It looks like maybe even the people on Biden's team didn't really ever expect him to go four years.
Can we all agree on that?
Maybe they didn't know, one way or the other.
But they certainly weren't confident he could make all four years.
Would you give me that? That they weren't confident about it?
They might have been optimistic, but you couldn't be confident about it.
Which means that Kamala Harris was always the backup plan.
That's what the vice president is.
Not really a shocking statement there.
But I think they were surprised at how poorly she performs.
I was. I picked her to be the nominee, and I was shocked that as soon as you took her out of, let's say, a well-defined situation where she's grilling people in Congress like a lawyer, where she's quite good, actually, or a debate. She wasn't too bad in the debates.
But you put her in any kind of a free-form situation, she just falls apart.
And I think the Democrats can see it, too.
She seems to be de-emphasized at the moment.
So, yes, I was wrong about her being chosen as the top of the ticket.
That is correct. I might not be wrong about the plan to put her in power.
We'll see about that. But let's say, this is just speculative, let's say that the Democrats who are really pulling the power strings behind the scenes, they say to themselves, We can put anybody in the presidency we want now.
Because they can. All they have to do is find a reason for Kamala Harris to resign before Biden does.
You see this play?
Biden just has to pick anybody who can get through Congress, and that's probably a pretty big menu of people he could get approved.
I don't think he could get AOC or one of the squad approved.
Maybe not that.
But he could get an ordinary Democrat approved pretty easily.
And effectively, the Democrats can pick anybody they want for president for now.
Right? Now, I'm not wrong about any of this, am I? Give me a fact check.
Can a vice president resign?
Yes. Is the process to replace him that the president picks somebody new and Congress approves by a simple majority?
That's important. They don't need two-thirds.
Just a simple majority, and they have that.
And is Biden likely to make it four years?
Probably not. I don't even think his own team assumes that.
So we've created a situation where he's the stem cell president.
He can be turned into any president they want who's also a normal Democrat.
How many people have ever thought of that before?
This play is right here.
It's right in front of you. If you see any moves for Kamala Harris to leave the job...
You don't know who your next president's going to be, but it won't be based on democracy, that's for sure.
All right. So that's interesting.
There's a story about Reid Hoffman, billionaire founder of LinkedIn, and he was one of the PayPal mafia people.
Meaning one of the startup people on PayPal.
Before LinkedIn. And Reid Hoffman teamed up with George Soros.
You've heard of him, right?
Anybody? Anybody?
George Soros. Another billionaire.
And they're creating a media firm to, quote, combat disinformation.
That's right.
Two billionaires are teaming up to tell us what's true and what isn't.
Thank you.
Do you see any potential problems there?
Does anybody see any potential problem?
That looks good, right?
Hey, billionaires trying to help us with information.
Yes. It's nice that they're going to help us understand what's true.
Because, I don't know if you knew this, but you don't know.
And they do. Or the people they hire will know.
And interestingly, although apparently nobody in the world can figure out what's true, these two billionaires have figured out how to get some people who do know.
Apparently there are people who can tell what's true and they haven't been telling us.
I hate those people.
Think about it. There are people who know what's true and they haven't been telling us.
Why don't the people who know what's true tell us what's true instead of all the liars?
Well, hopefully, Reid Hoffman and George Soros will solve that problem by getting some totally credible people that I'm sure you will believe to tell you what's true and what isn't.
It's called Good Information, Inc.
And they're going to fund and scale businesses that, quote, cut through the echo chambers with fact-based information.
Fact-based. No more of this opinion crap.
No more of this conspiracy theory crap.
We're going for fact-based information now.
It even plans to invest in local news companies.
Do you see any red flags there?
Billionaires owning the news.
Huh. Well, there's a billionaire that owns the New York Times, and it's not like they're producing any fake news.
What? They are?
The New York Times produces fake news and it's owned by a billionaire?
Well, that's weird. But at least we have the Washington Post because they...
What? The Washington Post prints fake news and it's owned by a billionaire?
How could that be? How could that be?
Because billionaires don't give you bad information.
That's not what they do.
Do they? So...
Here's a...
Here's an example of why you should trust this entity.
At first, I was worried that maybe they would be biased themselves.
Please check out Rogan's podcast with Jewel.
She doesn't use these words specifically.
It's all about talent stacks.
Oh, interesting. So there's a Joe Rogan interview with Jewel that looks interesting in terms of understanding her systems for success.
Anyway, back to my point.
So one of the people who's going to run this new Good Information Inc.
points out that they're not going to be all just left-wing stuff.
It's not going to be a bunch of just left-wing stuff.
Don't worry. Don't worry.
And one of the examples given of their fact-based information process is she points to The Bulwark.
Have you heard of it? It's a publication online.
The Bulwark. As a center-right news site founded in opposition to Trumpism, as an example of the type of center-right news outlet it could fund.
So, just an example, they haven't funded it, but they could fund something like The Bulwark.
Have you ever heard of The Bulwark?
Have any of you seen an article from The Bulwark?
Because I have. Do you know which articles I've seen from The Bulwark?
Not a true one yet.
Not a true one.
Because the only time anybody sends me to read an article is when they have fake news.
Which has been often enough that the only news I've ever read in The Bulwark was obviously untrue.
Like, I'm talking about the obvious hoaxes.
You know, the Trump-called neo-Nazis-find-people hoax, you know, that sort of hoax.
The ones that you know are fake just by looking at them.
It's like, that's not true. That's what the bulwark is.
If you had said to me, name a bunch of fake news entities from this list, I would have picked them out immediately as one of the fake news sources.
So literally, a famous fake news source...
This anti-right is their example of how they won't be biased because they'll pick a fake news source that says they're on the right but also criticizes the right with fake news.
So don't worry.
They've got this bias thing taken care of.
Why should you be worried that Reid Hoffman is part of this?
Anybody? Let's see how informed you are about your billionaires.
So this would be sort of a trivia question, but useful.
Yeah, so Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn.
That's a fact.
But that's not directly related to my point that I'm going to make.
Why should you be worried specifically that Reid Hoffman is involved?
What do we know about him besides the billionaire founder of LinkedIn?
He knows how to get things done.
That's good. Yeah, he's very effective.
We know that. Connected, effective, very smart.
I don't know if you know how smart Reid Hoffman is.
But whatever you think is the smartest person you know, he's in that category.
Somebody says his ethnicity.
No, that's not what we're going for.
That's not what we're going for.
Here's what I know about Reid Hoffman.
He understands persuasion.
A lot of what you see in the stickiness of social media was invented by Reid Hoffman.
I forget what process it was specifically, but I think he was behind the idea that made things network sticky.
You know, the recommending your friends.
I think he was behind the technology that seems obvious now.
Isn't this the most obvious thing?
If you're using an application that says, you know, why don't you invite your friends?
I think he invented that.
And I would offer that he probably knows more about psychology and persuasion than any of the billionaires.
I'm not positive about that.
Elon Musk is up there, too.
Elon Musk was on the PayPal mafia with Reid Hoffman.
So, by the way, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk, their first successful startup, I guess, the big one, PayPal was together.
Reid Hoffman isn't like other people.
He has a deeper understanding of...
By the way, I've met him and talked with him briefly.
So I have a tiny amount of interaction with him personally.
But even in a tiny interaction, you talk to him for five minutes and you know you're not talking to a regular person.
You're talking to somebody who's operating at a really high level.
Sort of, yeah, Peter Thiel level.
Peter Thiel also from the PayPal mafia.
So we're talking about people who are...
Extra, extra smart.
And he's fairly anti-Trump, right?
He's extra smart.
But he's smart in a persuasion brainwashing kind of way.
The difference between persuasion and brainwashing, of course, is just your intention.
If your intention is positive, then it's just called school.
And if your intentions are bad, it's called brainwashing.
So we don't know what his intentions are, but he is anti-Trump.
So one would have to, you know, make an assumption, which we can't verify, but make an assumption that it's sort of a tool to work against Trumpism, so to speak.
And he would be one of the best brainwashers of all time.
You worried? This would be the first time I've seen somebody who would have my kind of skill...
For persuasion, on the other team, totally, totally powered up.
Because I don't think he was really as active before.
It looks like he was active, but he's taking it to another level.
He is a master persuader.
He has Trump-like skills, but he puts them to use behind the curtain instead of in front of the curtain.
You know, Trump's an in-front-of-the-curtain persuader.
People like Thiel and Musk and Hoffman are behind-the-scenes persuaders.
Some in front, but mostly behind.
I'm really afraid of this one, honestly.
I'm afraid of how powerful this could become, just because of the people involved.
All right, here's a better model for figuring out what's true.
I'm going to put that out there. Internet dads.
Internet dads.
Like me. So this is not a name I came up with myself.
People have been calling me and some other people on the independents, basically.
The independent political voices have been calling us the Internet Dads because we sort of act like, hey, I'll take care of you.
Don't worry, I got this.
Dad will take care of it.
And I feel as if we Internet Dads team up with...
Let's say an informal group of fact-checkers.
It's really powerful.
I don't know if you've watched the model that I've been sort of A-B testing here for a while, which is that whenever I see a sketchy claim, which you see every day on Twitter, I'll take the sketchy claim and I'll send it over to my two most productive, smartest...
You know, analysts who can look at pretty much any claim and tell you where the BS is.
They can spot it pretty quickly.
So one is Andres Backhaus and one is Anatoly Lubarsky.
And their responses are just insanely productive.
I don't know if it's alright.
I'm not claiming there's anybody who gets everything right.
I'm just saying that when they weigh in, you just see it differently.
The moment they weigh in, it's like, oh, this study is crap, here's the reason, here's where they got the data, it's already been debunked, that sort of thing.
Now, Where I'm a little weak, I realize today, is the legal stuff.
But I do also have a whole bunch of lawyers who follow me on Twitter, etc.
So, although I haven't formally activated that kind of a network, I could.
I could just ask a legal question.
You know, I think your Robert Barnes's, etc.
would weigh in and answer the question.
So, the internet dads have these informal, just if they have a big enough platform, they have this informal group of fact-checkers, right, who can just come in and say, yeah, that's true or not true.
And I also, you may have noticed, I have quite a few doctors who follow me.
Now, the doctors follow me for an interesting reason, which is some number of doctors have figured out that they missed...
They missed some lessons in medical school.
Persuasion, for one.
Communication, for another.
And maybe even some rationality in terms of comparing the right things and statistics, etc.
So I get a lot of doctors who are just trying to add a little to their talent and skill that's directly related to what they do.
So at this point, if you send me a...
You know, a rumor or a claim, I can fairly easily on Twitter just put it open to comments, you read the comments, and you're really going to know more about it.
I'm not going to claim we can always get the right answer.
I'm just going to claim that if you look at my Twitter questions and then the answers given, it's way better than any other source of understanding the world that I've seen.
Yeah, let me make that...
Yeah, Ron Coleman's...
Another attorney. There are a bunch of them who retweet my stuff fairly often.
So I know I have legal advice, I know I've got medical, and I've got economics and data analysis.
So any of those fields, while not an expert myself, I can find somebody who will give you a pretty good answer.
Don't you think that's a better model?
Then whatever this is going to be, the Reid Hoffman thing.
Now, I would also say that those people that you're calling your Internet dads, they might lean a certain way, but we're not wed to any philosophy, I guess.
Well, maybe we're wed to philosophies, personal philosophies, but we're not wed to any party.
Name anybody you think you'd call an Internet dad...
Whatever your definition of that is and whoever you pick.
And ask yourself if they're a slave to a party.
And the answer is usually not.
Somebody's mentioning Michael Schellenberger.
Now, there's a great example.
So I've been interacting with and tweeting and following Michael Schellenberger's stuff, read his books.
I don't know what his political bias is.
Think about that. I've had extensive contact with him, and I couldn't tell you what his bias is.
I know he used to lean left, but he found out he'd been lied to on a lot of the green technology stuff, so he's, you know, got a little turned off by that.
But I have no idea.
I don't know who he'd vote for.
Nothing. I interviewed Bjorn Lomborg, also takes a business approach to stuff.
Now he's from another country.
But... I talked to him for a long time, and I can't tell you if he leans left or right.
Not a clue. Nothing.
I just don't know.
Yeah, Tim Poole.
Who does he vote for?
I don't know. But I have a feeling he can vote for whoever made sense.
Like, I don't think he's wed to any party.
Right? How about Mike Cernovich, my universal example for every example I use?
Do you think he could vote for somebody who wasn't in a particular party?
Yeah, yeah, easily. He could go wherever it makes sense, and you see him do it all the time.
So... Look for people who you're not entirely sure what their political leaning is, and also have good advisors that they can, you know, employ.
And maybe this is a better model.
Maybe... You know, it's often true that things get invented by the public accidentally.
Now, somebody says Sernovich is anti-Trump.
Absolutely untrue.
Absolutely untrue. He's not anti-Trump.
I mean, that's the most simplistic reading of it all.
He's anti some things that Trump has done.
You could certainly be anti some things that Trump has done.
And you might even think that he's not your first choice to be president again.
I don't know where Sermich stands on any of that.
But as soon as you say somebody's anti-Trump, that's not the person I'm talking about.
Because if you're anti a person, you're not really deep into the thinking part of things.
All right.
So let me cause some trouble here.
Uh...
Here's some things we know.
Let's go to the whiteboard.
And yes, this is going to be big trouble.
I'll probably be cancelled by the end of today, if I've done it right.
Here's some things we know.
If you want to see the sources, I've tweeted some of these sources this morning so you can see them on my Twitter feed.
But here are some of the things we know.
There's this correlation between IQ and health.
And we know that smart people tend to make smart lifestyle choices.
For example, the higher your IQ and education, the less likely you'll smoke cigarettes.
Because, you know, you use the information and data and make decisions, etc.
So just making the right choices and not doing dumbass things gives you a healthier outcome.
Now, of course, I'm not talking about every smart person.
We're just talking about the average, right?
Smart people tend to be richer, and that allows them to live in lower crime neighborhoods and associate with fewer bad influences and maybe get better health care.
And maybe even if they're rich, they can get a prettier or more handsome mate.
Which is a signal for health.
The more attractive people are, on average, the healthier they are.
So you can see lots of mechanisms where smart people would end up healthier.
There's also the notion that intelligence is probably a general indicator of health.
Because if your nervous system supports high intelligence, or your neural network, I guess.
Apparently, if you have a fast neural network, you're smart, but it's also a good indicator of health in general.
So there's all this correlation.
Now, here's where it gets dicey.
What is your knowledge about whether people who are more vaccinated, are more educated people vaccinated or uneducated as a percentage?
Do you know in the comments?
Who is the most vaccinated category?
The highly educated or the less educated?
Don't know? Don't know?
The answer is the educated.
So at the moment, and by the way, this changed over time.
So I think early in the pandemic, when the vaccinations were brand new, there wasn't a lot of difference between the educated and the less educated in terms of whether they wanted it.
Because nobody had any information.
But the higher educated people have been watching for a year, whatever it's been, and now they say, okay, we have more information now, and we're persuaded by that more information.
So the educated people are far more likely to get vaccinated.
Now, it could be also access information and other things that are happening with poverty, so it's not just because people are smarter or more educated, right?
Somebody says PhDs are lower, I question that.
I just saw a statistic go by that says PhDs have a lower rate of vaccination.
I will make you a pretty big bet that that's not true.
I have seen that.
I've seen that data, by the way.
But I don't think it's true.
I'd make a really big bet against that.
Would anybody take that bet?
Anybody want to take the bet?
And this is without research.
It's just an assumption.
I don't think you want to take that bet.
Anyway... There was a new study that found out, in Scientific America, found out that people who got vaccinated with the COVID vaccination, and by the way, don't assume that this is leading toward trying to get you vaccinated.
That's not where this is going.
I'm just causing trouble here.
That's my only objective.
By trouble, I mean a fun little mental exercise.
That's the trouble I'm talking about.
So there's a study that showed that people who got vaccinated had better health outcomes in general, even unrelated to COVID. They had fewer of all kinds of health problems.
How do you explain that?
How do you explain the fact that people who got vaccinated had lower health problems in general?
Because the implication was that maybe the vaccination solves unrelated problems.
Well, it wasn't because the vaccination solved a bunch of unrelated problems.
Probably not. It's probably because the higher IQ educated people are getting vaccinated at higher rates, and they're just healthier in general.
Now, Scientific America did a funny thing to try to launder the news that high IQ people are having better outcomes.
Because you don't really want to tell a story about high IQ people doing things in society better than low IQ people.
Why? Why do you never want to write a scientific story that says high IQ people are doing better than low IQ people in any context, whether it's health or economics or anything else?
Why can't you do that?
Because it immediately turns into a racial discussion, right?
It turns into eugenics and all kinds of stuff.
So... Scientific America found a clever way to deal with that problem.
So they wrote an article in which they had to talk about IQ having an outcome.
It was different for high IQ and low IQ. But they needed to make it go away also.
So they did this little trick, the most clever thing that you'll see in a publication.
They said they laundered the correlation.
At the end of the article, they said, wait, yes, high IQ is related to good outcomes, but we also tested reaction time.
And once we tested reaction time, the IQ correlation just disappeared.
Because the people with good reaction times were the ones who had the best outcomes and the best health outcomes in general.
And so it's really about reaction time.
It's not about IQ at all.
What do you suppose is related to reaction time?
What would be something you kind of expect would be somewhat correlated with reaction time, like a quick reflex?
Maybe intelligence? Maybe general health?
Maybe people who are generally healthy, who are also generally intelligence, generally have better reaction times.
Wouldn't you expect that to be true?
So here's what Scientific America did.
They found a random, really random, I think, a random correlation with good health...
And they tried to confuse things.
No, it's not the IQ. It's the reaction time.
Stop talking about IQ. Come on, come on, come on.
You racist. It's reaction time.
They just laundered the IQ. They just took the correlation and tried to confuse you by throwing in this specious other correlation that almost certainly has, you know...
I'm sure it's correlated, but there's some causation before that, right?
So here's a better way to do it.
A better way to approach this is to focus on individuals instead of groups.
Does it really help you that much to know that Elbonians have lower IQ than, I don't know, left-handed Elbonians have lower IQ than right-handed Elbonians?
What are you going to do with that?
What are you going to do with it?
How would you act differently if you knew it were true?
If you would act differently...
Maybe you're racist.
Because you shouldn't.
The smarter way to approach it is just to say, why are we looking at averages?
Like, did you ever hire an average person?
There's no such thing as an average person.
The real world, we hire actual people.
And actual people are all over the place.
There's no such thing as an average actual person, except by weird coincidence.
So if we just...
Stop making a racist assumption.
You don't have to worry about where it comes out.
The racist assumption is that looking at it by race is useful.
It's not. It's not useful at all.
What would you do differently?
Nothing. Look out for all these weird correlations that are really...
Not causation. BlackRock Investment Company apparently is invested in China, according to some hip piece I saw on YouTube.
And I don't even know who was behind the video, but it was sort of an anti-BlackRock.
BlackRock is an enormous, what do you call them, hedge fund or investment entity?
I'm not sure what you call them.
But they're enormous, and they're investing in China, and somebody is making them pay for it by calling them out.
I think you're going to see more of this.
I think it will get increasingly hard for big entities that have to respond to shareholders, especially, to do business with China.
So the Kyle Rittenhouse situation is happening, and I don't see any chance that he is going to get convicted, do you?
Let me ask you.
I would say if you put me on the jury for the Rittenhouse thing, there's no way...
That he's getting convicted if you put me on the jury, because I would be the one person who held that, even if the rest of them wanted conviction.
Don't you think there's a 100% chance that the defense attorney can get one of me on a jury?
Because I'm an absolutist on this.
I'm a complete absolutist.
I don't want to hear any nuance or anything.
I saw him getting attacked, and I watched him shoot, and there doesn't seem to be any question about the video being accurate in this case.
If there was some question about the video being accurate, you know, but that hasn't even been alleged.
It looks like everybody says what we saw is what happened.
In that case, I don't see any case.
I don't see any way he could possibly get...
Convicted. Just doesn't seem possible.
So what's going to happen then?
There will be rioting and people will get shot.
They didn't need to get shot. So all the anti-gun people will do exactly what they don't want to happen, which is create situations where people will get shot.
So I think Kyle Rittenhouse gets off, but let's give some balance to the story.
I can't be a good internet dad unless you know I can give some balance to the story.
I also would oppose, knowing what we know now, but it could change, Alec Baldwin going to jail or having legal problems for what he did.
Now, let me be clear.
From a gun ownership perspective, he's 100% responsible.
Not 99.9%.
Not 98, 9.99, 100%.
That's just the standard.
We can't be flexible with that, right?
All gun owners, I think, are on the same page.
You just can't be flexible about that.
The person in their hand is responsible, but that's not a legal standard.
That's a gun owner absolute and needs to stay that way.
But from a legal perspective, he did reasonable things that reasonable people can do.
Not reasonable for a gun owner, but reasonable for a citizen.
And I think that the courts probably should lean toward the reasonable citizen standard and not the gun owner standard.
Because I don't think the gun owner standard is...
It's not designed for court purposes.
It's designed to create a behavior that's an absolute behavior about safety.
It's not really quite compatible with legal standards, in my opinion.
So, I don't think that L.A. Baldwin should be faulted for the actual act of pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.
Bad judgment?
Yes. Bad judgment?
Yes. From a gun owner perspective, very bad judgment.
But not beyond a legal standard, I don't think.
Because he did have processes in place to make that safe, he thought.
Now, as a producer who hired the crew, does he have some responsibility there?
I'd say yes. And it looks like somebody's insurance company is probably going to pay a lot of money.
I guess. I assume there's some insurance that covers this, either the production or his own.
So, well, see, manslaughter would require a reckless act.
And I don't think there's evidence of a reckless act except by the gun owner standard, which is way, way tighter than a legal standard it should be.
Can everybody deal with the nuance?
The nuance is that I agree with you, he's 100% responsible from a gun owner's perspective, and it has to be that way.
But at the same time, from a legal perspective, it's got to be a little bit more commonsense-y.
That's the way you'd want to be judged, I think.
So that's my opinion.
Neither Rittenhouse nor...
Nor Baldwin should go to jail for anything they did.
We got an update on the...
Somebody told me I'm pronouncing the name of this place wrong.
Loudoun? Loudoun?
Loudoun County? Loudoun?
Can anybody give me the...
But it was the story about the boy, or actually the non-binary student, I guess, gender-fluid student, who wore a skirt, allegedly, and attacked a girl in a restroom in school, a girl's restroom, and had been accused credibly of a prior assault.
Now, I had said when I heard the story, really?
Really? Really?
That everybody's concerned about some boy putting on a skirt as an excuse to go into the ladies' restroom and rape somebody.
And I thought, really? And that happened exactly the way people were worried about it.
Well, and I said, what did I predict?
What I predict is, I don't think there's a skirt involved.
I think there's probably an assault.
I never doubted the assault.
But I wasn't so sure about the skirt problem.
The current reporting is SCIRT confirmed.
SCIRT confirmed. Andrew says in all caps, Andrew, let me explain something to Andrew Richardson.
I'm telling you I was wrong.
You shouting in all caps doesn't make me more wrong, but it does make you an asshole.
So if you want to just stick with you being cool compared to me being wrong and admitting it in public, keep your higher status.
Because the moment you yelled at me in caps, you were sort of worse than me.
That's right. The whole point is you're supposed to be celebrating your victory, your intellectual victory over me.
Don't ruin it with all caps.
That's like surrendering.
Enjoy your victory.
Come on. Now, do you remember what happened when I said Kamala Harris would get the nomination for the Dems, and she didn't, and she dropped out?
Do you remember what I did?
I doubled down.
I said, I still think she's going to be the Dem nominee.
I can't say that she is yet, so I'm not going to say that that isn't accurate, but it's close to accurate.
Pretty close, isn't it?
Do you remember when the Vegas shooter...
All the smart people said, it's ISIS. I said, it's definitely not ISIS. And then ISIS claimed responsibility.
Do you remember what I did?
I said, it's not ISIS. And I was right.
So here's another one where I have been confirmed to be wrong.
That student was wearing a skirt and was in the ladies' restroom.
I'm going to double down and say that this story is going to fall apart...
In an important way.
Here's the way that I think it'll fall apart.
I think the skirt may or may not be true.
I'm willing to accept that there was a skirt involved.
But I don't think it had anything to do with the rape.
So I don't think that anybody's going to connect the two, which was more to the point.
That connecting the two was the problem.
The idea that somebody wore a skirt, maybe with the purpose of getting into a situation where they could do some raping.
I don't think we're going to find out that it was ever a master scheme to get at the girls' and the girls' restroom.
I feel like we're going to find out there's a disturbed person who's disturbed in a number of ways.
And that's it. I think it's just going to be a disturbed person who's disturbed in a variety of ways.
And something bad happened.
But I feel as though...
Yeah, I feel as though the skirt is irrelevant to the story, and that's what I'm going to stick with.
So I'll accept complete wrongness about the existence of a skirt.
Anybody like to yell at me in all caps?
This would be the time. Actually, I'll give you an exemption.
I'll give you a 60-second exemption in which you may, in fact, you're encouraged, to gloat at my wrongness in all caps.
Enjoy yourself, please.
Please enjoy yourself.
Skirt lives matter.
Wrong. All in caps.
Well done. Thank you.
Freedom! I like lamp.
Okay. Amen.
All right. So we're good on that.
Huma Abedin is coming out with a book, and apparently one of the...
One of the blockbuster things we're learning in this book is that she once was invited by a senator, this was quite a while ago, years ago, invited by a senator that she'd been in some meeting with to come up to his place for some coffee.
She was a single woman.
It sounds like the senator was single.
It's not mentioned, but let's say he was.
Well, actually, we don't know anything about the senator's status.
But she went up to the senator's place to have coffee.
The senator rolled up his sleeves, took off his blazer, made her some coffee.
And then the senator sat down on the couch, put his hands around her shoulder, and leaned in to kiss her and was pretty kind of aggressive about it.
And she said, no, no, no, sorry, I'm not here for that.
At which point the senator did what?
He apologized. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I read the signals wrong.
I'm very sorry. And then she said, and she regrets it, that she apologized to him because she was 24, I guess, and she was like, okay, you know, in retrospect, I should not have apologized to him.
It was he who did something.
What is your take on that story?
For those of you who might be female watching this now, let me...
Can I say something with one swear word?
Can you send people away for just one?
Just one? Anybody?
I need permission.
Can somebody give me permission for one well-placed F-word?
Anybody? Okay, I got one.
I've got a little pushback here.
Somebody doesn't want it. Okay, but the locals people are saying yes, so I think we're going to have to do it.
Let me give you some advice for the ladies.
Ladies. Ladies.
If a man invites you to his place, and it's just the two of you, for a beverage, be it coffee, be it alcohol, be it a very delicious, vegetarian kind of a beverage, whatever that beverage is, if a man invites you, especially an attractive single woman, to his private place for that beverage...
He has asked you if you'd like to fuck.
And you said yes, probably.
Not yes, definitely.
But when you said yes, I would like to go to your private place to have this beverage you've offered.
You, female listening to this, have told that man, I would absolutely be interested in fucking you.
Pretty much tonight.
Now, if you did not mean to send that message...
Here's why I'm informing you.
Because if you send the message, I pretty much am up to fuck, and the guy leans in to kiss you, he may be operating on bad information.
Our system doesn't make him off the hook.
The man is still required to respond to the signals as soon as they are clarified.
We all agree to that.
Yeah, if it's a hotel room, it's pretty much guaranteed.
So, I guess this is a cautionary tale.
I suppose there could be such a thing as a 24-year-old who can be in a meeting with a senator and is still too dumb to know what an invitation to come up to his place really means.
And the senator even said, oops, I read the signals wrong.
No, the senator didn't read the signals wrong.
The senator read the signals exactly as they were sent.
They were the wrong signals.
I think it was rather generous, very generous, for the senator to say he read the signals wrong.
He didn't read anything wrong.
The signals were crystal clear.
They were sent wrong.
So he read it right, it was just sent wrong.
That's my opinion.
But I don't think anybody got hurt, which is good.
Um... All right.
Here's another one.
I think we've talked about that already.
All right. I think I've got to go and do something else.
This probably wasn't my best show, but I think it relaxed you just the same.
I can feel your antibodies getting stronger even now.
Yes, and apparently she only remembered her traumatic experience recently.
How about come up to my place to listen to records?
Yep, it all means the same thing.
Oh, here we go. Here's some data on the PhD thing.
People with a master's degree had the least hesitancy, and the highest hesitancy was among those holding a PhD.
Hesitancy. Hesitancy is fine.
But I'm only going to doubt that the rate of vaccination is lower than other people.
Now, I don't think the PhD rate of vaccination would necessarily be higher than the master's degree is, but I guarantee that the PhD vaccination rate is higher than non-college educated people.
