Episode 1547 Scott Adams: I'll Tell You About the Frightening News Today. Join Me If You Dare
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Lincoln Projects white supremacist HOAX attempt
2 CNN Fake News Headlines
NYT Fake News on FBI J6 involvement
Francis Joe Biden...F Joe Biden
Biden gets close to the Pope
Advantage to be Black on college applications?
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened in the history of the universe.
Metaverse and every other verse.
All of them. Best thing.
And you are smart enough and sexy enough to be here at the right time.
Yeah. And some of you are even prepared.
Others still working on it.
Still working on it. But if you'd like to crank it up a notch, and I think you do, don't you?
Yeah, yeah. Why not?
Because as I learned in economics class in college, my professor explained the most important thing I've ever heard in my life.
It's about money.
And I'm going to give you this important lesson, which, in a way, summarizes four years of my college education.
It goes like this.
When it comes to money, more is better.
And when it comes to the simultaneous sip, more is better, too.
And all you need for more is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stine, a canteen jug or a glass, a vessel of any kind.
No holes in the bottom.
No holes. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It's going to happen now.
Watch what it does to your antibodies.
Watch this. Watch this.
Go. Whoa!
Is it my imagination or am I regrowing hair on the top of my head?
I mean, it feels like it.
The antibodies are going nuts now.
Now, here's a question for you.
Does my repeated reference to the improvement in your antibodies actually cause anybody's antibodies to improve?
What do you think? I've taught you much about persuasion and about the human body.
Speculate, if you will.
The fact that you come here, and we have some connection because you're here, Do you think they're reminding you that the simultaneous sip will improve your antibodies?
Do you think it will increase them?
I think so.
Your mileage might vary, but I think so.
I just saw this post.
I think this was on Instagram, but originally on Twitter.
Somebody put it on Instagram. By Neil Brennan.
I think this is the tweet that sums up everything for the last six years in one tweet.
Are you ready? Remember, it's Halloween.
And he tweets, somewhere a white person is planning a costume for tonight that's going to F up their whole future.
No, he didn't. He used the whole word, not F. But...
Yep. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a white person putting on a costume.
It's going to ruin his whole life.
Or her whole life.
But I think it's probably a guy.
If I might be sexist for a moment, it's probably a guy.
Doesn't have to be. Or probably.
Probably. There's a story about Alec Baldwin.
He's finally talking to the press, and as he was talking, his wife, Hilaria, tried to interject yourself into it, and apparently it's reported that Alec Baldwin snapped at his wife.
He snapped at her. What was a word that they might have used in the past for a story like this?
Snapped at her. Something about what she did caused a reaction in him to make him snap.
There's another word for that, isn't it?
Triggered. Triggered.
Yeah. Don't they usually say triggered?
I don't know why they didn't use it this time.
Well, my favorite story of the day, and it's hard to pick a favorite today because the news is all crazy stuff, but my favorite probably...
The Lincoln Project, you know, the Lincoln Project, they're sort of the anti-Republican group.
Mostly they were anti-Trump, but anti-Republican, it seems.
And they're ex-Republicans, I guess, so that was their deal.
And they tried to influence the Virginia governor race by having five of their members dress up as white supremacists.
Now, if you didn't know how white supremacists dress...
This is one of the things that the Lincoln Project taught us.
Apparently, to dress like a white supremacist, you need a shirt, preferably white, with a collar, and you need khaki pants, long khaki pants, and maybe a baseball hat.
You put that outfit on, and you accessorize with a tiki torch, And anybody's going to think you're a white supremacist.
Anybody sees that, they're going to say, well, that's a white supremacist.
Might as well be wearing the hood.
I mean, that's the whole uniform right there.
And so five of them pretended to be actual white supremacists, and they posed in front of the Republican candidate's bus to make it seem as if he was associated with the white supremacy.
Now, I've seen this story for sort of a couple days old, or several days old, the story.
And there was one small detail in the story that I missed.
And what I understood about it was that people were wondering whether these were real white supremacists or perhaps some kind of a political theatre.
And, you know, I looked quickly at the picture and wasn't too interested.
And I thought to myself, yeah, it looks like some people pretending to be white supremacists, or maybe they are, I don't know.
But I didn't really look too closely at the picture.
Did anybody look closely at the picture?
There were only five of them.
One of them's black.
I'm not making this up.
They sent a black guy...
To pretend to be a white supremacist.
And there were only five people.
But they decided that diversity in their project was perhaps more important than authenticity.
And so they favored diversity over authenticity and sent a black guy, which represented 20% of all the people there, and one was a woman, a white woman.
And this is how well they did their prank.
Now, here's the funny part.
You're probably thinking to yourself, you know, if I were going to design a prank where I was trying to convince people that these were white supremacists, I probably would discriminate against the black candidate for that job.
I don't know. I probably would discriminate because that's just me.
I have a bad character.
But the people of the Lincoln Project have shown us the way and showed us what good character looks like and people who are...
More woke, I think.
And so 20% of their white supremacists were a black man.
You have to admire their commitment to diversity.
I think that's admirable.
CNN has some fake news.
Surprise? Are you surprised?
Are you surprised that CNN has some fake news?
Well, here's the fake headline trick, where the headline doesn't match the story.
I think this is their favorite trick because people don't read the story.
Is anybody guilty of reading the headline and thinking, well, I don't think I need to read the story because the headline is the story?
If you read a headline that says, Biden stubs his toe, do you need to read the rest of the story?
Because if he had hurt himself badly, it would say, you know, Biden hospitalized.
But you read a headline, Biden stubs his toe.
You think, well, I don't need the detail.
I don't need to know which toe it was or how he did it.
He stubbed his toe. So CNN does this where they'll give you the headline to make you think you know the story.
And this one was, their headline was, quote, a completely damning video of a Trump ally emerges.
And it showed an undercover video of conservative lawyer John Eastman.
And he was part of the conversation about, you know, not certifying the election and seeing if Pence would overturn it.
And so I decided to play the completely damning video There wasn't anything even slightly damning in it.
It was like nothing damning at all.
It was literally exactly what you already knew that he and other people thought, yeah, wouldn't it be great if Pence could overturn this thing?
It's all the stuff we do.
There's literally nothing damning in it.
It isn't just common knowledge already.
So, yes, the completely damning video that had no damning information in it.
Here's some more fake CNN news.
Where the headline doesn't match the news.
It said that Fox News is trying to distance itself from Tucker Carlson.
Fox News is trying to distance itself from Tucker Carlson.
And you say to yourself, whoa.
The implication of this is, whoa.
Even Fox News management has figured out what a monster Tucker Carlson is, so they're trying to distance themselves.
But then you listen to the story, or you read it, and is the story about Fox News distancing itself?
Nope. Nope.
It's not the story.
Here's the story that they characterized as Fox News distancing itself.
Apparently in exchange with some publicist or PR person associated with Fox News, the That person, the PR person, said, quote, can you please add, so it's clear that these new episodes, talking about the new series that Tucker Carlson is having, and he said, can you make it clear that these episodes are on Fox Nation?
Now, that's their app where you can see extra opinion stuff.
Make it clear that it's on Fox Nation, the subscription-based streaming platform that is behind a paywall.
I don't see that noted anywhere in the piece.
Tucker Carlson Originals, which is what this episode is, is not for the channel, meaning not for the regular Fox News.
Now, is that an example of Fox News distancing itself from Tucker Carlson?
I don't see it.
Here's what I see.
Fox News is really good at separating news from opinion.
That's what just happened.
Fox News said, make sure you know that we separate the news from the opinion.
Now Fox News Channel...
As opposed to Fox Nation, the app that they also are associated with.
Fox News Channel also does a good job, in my opinion, of saying this program is news and this is opinion.
Whereas CNN, what's the big criticism you hear from me about CNN? That they don't do that.
Their news slash opinion is sort of merged.
All their news is opinion-y.
And I'm not saying that's good or bad.
I'm just saying that's a different business model.
Whereas Fox News likes to let you know what's news and what's opinion.
And I think a PR person just emphasized exactly what they want you to know.
What is news and what's opinion.
If it's on Fox Nation, it's opinion.
Now, is that distancing?
Or is that clarifying?
To me, it's just clarifying.
It's clarifying a basic corporate philosophy of separating their news from their opinion.
But it's treated like CNN, like it's some kind of flaw.
All right, so I call that fake news.
Then New York Times had a little fake news themselves.
So I was reading an article just, I think it was today, It said that the FBI informants, the idea that there were FBI informants behind January 6th, that it was actually organized as like a false flag, etc., has been debunked, has been repeatedly debunked.
So that's what the New York Times says, that the idea that the FBI was behind the January 6th stuff has been repeatedly debunked.
And they linked to two articles...
One was hyperlinked repeatedly, and the other was separately debunked.
Now, if you're reading this, do you say to yourself, oh, it looks like this is pretty well debunked, because it's been debunked repeatedly and debunked.
Now, do you click on those links?
How many people click on those two links?
They say it's been repeatedly, and here you can see for yourself, debunked, and see for yourself.
Well, I click those links to see if they've been repeatedly debunked.
Here's what debunked means in the New York Times way of thinking.
First of all, it's a link to their own reporting.
Just note that.
It's their own reporting. It said that there is no evidence of this claim in June.
So in early June, they said there's no evidence for this claim.
Is that debunked?
If a major news organization says there's no evidence of a thing they looked for no evidence of, we didn't find anything when we didn't do our research, and when we didn't look for it, there was nothing there.
And that's what they call their debunk.
It's debunked because they didn't look for it and didn't find it.
Now, I happen to think it didn't happen.
Just to be clear, I want to be clear, I don't think the FBI organized...
The riots. I'm open to the argument, though.
I'm open to the argument that there was some involvement, and maybe in some way you could claim that that happened.
I'm open to it. I just, same as the New York Times, I haven't seen any argument to debunk it, or I'm sorry, I haven't seen any evidence for it.
Now, I also haven't seen the special, because it hasn't run yet.
So I think they're debunking something they haven't seen.
That has to be noted.
They've only seen the trailer, and I can't imagine the trailer gives you the context you would need.
So the FBI... So that was one link.
One link was from June.
Now, isn't the entire...
I haven't seen the special, of course, because it hasn't run.
But back me on this assumption.
We can't know for sure.
But isn't the assumption that we've learned something since June...
Am I wrong about this?
Give me a fact check on this.
Isn't the whole Tucker Carlson special based on what we've learned since June?
Am I wrong? Yeah, I think I'm right.
So when the New York Times says it's been repeatedly debunked and linked to an article from June, when the entire point of it is we've learned things recently...
That's just fake news, isn't it?
How is that not fake news?
I mean, it looks like it's intended to be misleading.
It doesn't look like an accident, does it?
And then the other link I looked at was from March.
It was from March.
Do you think we've learned anything about January 6th since March?
And the New York Times was trying to sell these two links as clearly debunking it.
And then the only debunk in it was a link to Snopes basically saying it was unfounded.
In March. So again, I actually...
My prediction would be that no matter how much you look into it and no matter what I hear on Tucker Carlson's show that I haven't seen yet because it hasn't aired...
I don't think that the speculation that the FBI caused it, I don't think that that's going to hold.
But I could be wrong.
Does everybody hear this part?
Because if it turns out I'm wrong, I want you to remember the part where I said, you know, I'm not positive about it.
But my best guess, if I had to put odds on it, 80%.
I'd say I'm 80% confident you won't find the FBI who is behind it.
But 20% is a pretty big number.
And the 20% isn't based on anything except just how I feel.
You know, experience, I guess.
All right. President Biden met with Turkey's Erdogan, and it made me wonder, is there a story that hasn't been told?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Go back into the Wayback Machine.
Reverse your time.
I take you back to a time when a president named Trump was discussing pulling American troops out of Syria, and the big conversation was, you fool, you fool, you can't do that, because the Kurds who have been our allies will be slaughtered the moment we leave.
That really happened, right?
I mean, the story happened.
And then time passes.
What happened to the Kurds?
Is there any update on the Kurds?
Because I was kind of worried about that, weren't you?
I mean, that seemed like a pretty major deal.
Not just in terms of, you know, life and death, but in terms of strategic, I don't know, branding for the United States.
If we could abandon that ally, we could abandon another.
And apparently we did in Afghanistan.
So I think it's a big part of the story.
Did the Kurds have a bad ending?
Or did they just negotiate their way to some kind of a, you know, stable situation?
Does anybody know what happened?
Yeah, were the Kurds in the way?
Somebody's asking me if I'm biased because I'm predicting that the FBI were not involved.
but I don't know. What would be the bias?
Biased by what? If you're looking at just a prediction that's just based on how I feel and my experience, it's not really based on much, then I would say, I don't know if it's bias or just we're all biased all the time, so maybe that's just built into it.
I think bias is built into every prediction, isn't it?
I don't think you can separate that.
All right, here's what I would like all of you to do.
I don't ask you for much, do I? I mean, I try to give you this best quality entertainment that's ever existed in the history of civilization and before, and what do I ask in return?
What do I ask in return?
Very little. Very little.
But today, I have an ask.
And I would like us all to join together in what I consider a very important cause, which is a prank that To see how many people we can convince that President Biden's real name, that his real legal name, is Francis Joseph Biden, also known as F. Joe Biden.
Can we do that?
Can we start calling him Francis Joseph Biden?
Just sort of throw in some references.
Don't even make a big deal about it.
Maybe just do a tweet in which you refer to him that way.
Possibly when you're talking to your friends, you say, I don't know, I'm not so sure Francis Joseph Biden is doing the job that we elected him for.
Or you might say, oh, I heard that Francis Joseph Biden was visiting the Pope.
And don't make a big deal about it.
Just throw it in as a reference.
Francis Joseph Biden.
Because if we can get this to work, then we can also tweet F.JoeBiden.
And it looks like we're just talking about his name.
So F.JoeBiden, president.
Which leads to a very important question from Twitter user WillyNilly, who asked this insightful question.
Did people hate Scott Fitzgerald?
I'm just going to let that settle for a little bit.
Did people hate Scott Fitzgerald?
Now, that's only for you who are literary in nature and know that there's a famous author named F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It's very funny if you knew that.
All right. We have a new video of Biden molesting the Pope.
And by molesting, I mean when Joe Biden grabs your hand for a handshake, that mofo doesn't let go.
And he got a little too close.
And you've got to watch the video of Joe Biden not releasing the Pope's hand, getting way too close to his personal space during a pandemic, and spitting a very long story onto his face.
LAUGHTER They say that you can still carry COVID if you're vaccinated.
Now, I know the president probably gets tested every day and every time he goes into a meeting with world leaders, but there's a non-zero chance that Francis Joseph Biden just gave the Pope COVID, which I don't wish on the Pope at all.
I don't wish on the Pope at all.
But here's another reference.
You're going to make a joke that no more than 20% of you will get.
So this is just for the 20% who get it.
When I saw the photo of Joe Biden together with the Pope, I thought to myself, huh, I'll bet both of them shit in the woods.
Anybody? Anybody.
That reference? I think both of them shit in the woods.
Anybody. Okay, I guess that one was just for me.
Maybe it was just for me.
But if you knew what I was referring to, it's kind of funny.
It's kind of funny. All right, so there's a Rupar video of their meeting.
By Rupar, I mean a deviously edited video to make Biden look...
More incapable than he actually is.
So the video, in the real thing, without the fake edit, Biden is launching into a very long story about Satchel Paige, a black baseball player who, I don't know, broke some records.
And the Rupar part is they cut out the part where Biden explains what he's talking about.
And it looks like Biden is...
It looks like...
It looks like Biden thinks he's meeting Satchel Paige.
Satchel Paige, a famous old baseball player who was black.
And the funniest part is I saw people in the comments who were like, WTF? What's going on here?
Because they actually thought it was within the realm of possibility that Biden had met the Pope and confused him with an American black baseball player.
And... And you have to ask yourself, if there are American citizens who their first encounter with that was that it was probably true.
And that's the leader we elected.
But my favorite part...
You have to see this video.
It's funny all the way through.
But the funniest part to me was...
The funniest part to me was that Biden's yoke, holding his hand and holding him too close, and he launches into this boring story, and then I guess the translator realized, uh-oh, this is more than how are you doing, so I'd better run in there and translate.
So the translator runs in there to translate his way-too-long, boring story about Satchel Paige winning, I don't know, doing a shutout at age 45 or something like that.
And as Biden gets close to the end of the story, but he hasn't reached the punchline, The translator tells the pope, you know, he's not done with the story, but the pope, I think, hoping that the story's over, he does the universal body language that says, ah, ha, ha, that's a good story, and we're done with the story now.
He does the, you know, the fake laugh, but then he realizes that wasn't the punchline, that there's more to come.
And I could just imagine the pope, like, praying to God in that moment, dear God, Please make him let go of my hand and end this story.
Get his COVID spittle out of my face!
Dear God, what have I done to you?
Have I sinned? Well, I thought I'd been a good Catholic.
No! Help me!
Help me! Help me! Now, that's what I thought the Pope was thinking.
But maybe I'm wrong about that, really.
Just speculation. Well, what else is happening?
And the other thing that's funny about that story is it was the kind of story that you really don't think there's much chance it's going to translate too well.
But Biden was not disappointed.
All right. There's an interesting little Twitter battle going on, if you can call it that, between anti-racist...
What do you call him? Ibram Kendi?
If you like him, you'd call him a warrior on the side of anti-racism.
And one of the most famous people promoting the fight against systemic racism.
Now, if you don't like him, you would say he's a racist.
So depending on whether you like him or you don't like him, he's either obviously a racist or he's an anti-racist.
So he's the greatest person or the worst person, depending on your point of view.
And he had a little Twitter exchange with Jack Posobiec.
You all know Jack from Twitter.
And the issue was about...
So Ibram Kendi, at first, some background.
I told you about this story before, but there's an update to it.
So Kendi had tweeted that there were a bunch of white people who were applying to college and lying about their ethnicity, thinking it would give them an advantage.
And I guess 75% of the kids who claimed they were Native American got accepted to college.
And... So, and then he later deleted his own tweet, and a lot of people, including me, said, well, I think there's an obvious reason he deleted the tweet, because it proves everything he said is wrong.
That systemic racism does exist, but it's against white people.
Because white people are trying to pretend to be another ethnicity to get advantages.
And so the speculation is, because we can't read Ibram Kendi's mind, and I don't think it would be fair to do that.
But the speculation was the reason he...
Let's get rid of this red-haired guy again.
Goodbye. All right.
The speculation is that he realized that his tweet debunked his entire philosophy and reason for being because it showed that white people were pretending to be people of color to get advantages.
Now, when Jack Posobiec tweeted something of that nature, Jack used the phrase, I broke him, or I broke Kendi.
So that was Jack's tweet.
And it was referring to the exchange.
And I have to agree with Jack, except if I did, if I did...
Apparently I'd be a racist.
Because what we learn from Ibram Kendi is that using the words that you broke him, if it's referring to a black man or woman, that you broke them, that is a reference to slavery.
Did you know that? Did you know that when you say you broke somebody, it's actually that historical roots are in slavery, and so really it's a reference to breaking a slave.
Did you know that?
No, you didn't know that because it's not fucking true.
Right. Now, it might be historically true that the word was used in slavery.
I don't know. But words get used in lots of different ways.
When people say they broke somebody, it is purely a Twitter reference.
It's a social media reference.
That's all it is. And...
What does it tell you when somebody makes a point and then the response to the point is to attack the messenger?
What does it mean when somebody ignores the point and attacks the messenger?
In this case, by calling Jack a racist for using the term broke.
What's that mean? Well, it could mean that you're dealing with a vulnerable narcissist.
That would be one possible explanation.
Because vulnerable narcissists use this technique.
If you counter their argument with anything effective, they will never argue their argument.
They will go right at what's wrong with you.
They attack the messenger.
So I'm not saying that Kendi is a vulnerable narcissist.
I'm just saying that's a behavior associated with people who have a personality disorder.
So whatever the issue is with Kendi, it matches the symptoms of a personality disorder as opposed to an argument.
But then Kendi said that Jack lied about Kendi's tweet, but he didn't really detail what he lied about, so I tweeted to ask for a clarification.
And what Kendi said was, That Jack was basically mischaracterizing Kendi's thinking because he referred to Jack's tweet as a tortured line of thinking that since white applicants, quote, think they get an advantage by lying, then it must be true.
Therefore, structural racism doesn't exist.
Now, this is Kendi putting a ridiculous argument into Jack's head, as if Jack said it, which is the typical Twitter way of arguing, I guess.
But here's the thing.
Is the problem that the white applicants wrongly believe they'll get an advantage?
Because the story also says 75% of the ones who used this trick got accepted to college.
But I don't know what is normal.
You know, is it wrong for 75% of the people who apply to college to get accepted to some college?
Is that even unusual?
Because I would think that the only people who apply to colleges are people who have a reasonable expectation they could get accepted.
And you usually only apply to colleges you could get into, right?
Like, I did not apply to Harvard.
Do you know why? I did not apply to Yale.
Guess why? Couldn't get in.
I mean, it was obvious I couldn't get in.
Came from a very small town.
It wouldn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered anything else.
Where I came from, I couldn't have gotten in.
So I asked for a clarification from Kendi.
So I tweeted this morning.
I don't know if he'll respond.
I doubt it. But I'm actually curious...
And I think you should be, too.
Because what have I told you about my excitement of being wrong?
It excites me.
I don't run from being wrong if I could learn something from it, and it would blow my mind to find out I'm wrong.
It would blow my mind to find out that white applicants don't have a disadvantage in applying to college.
But maybe. Maybe.
I'm going to tell you I'm open to the argument.
So if Ibram Kendi responds, and I doubt he will, but if he does, I'm open to the argument.
It's sort of a data. The data exists or it doesn't.
And can you find any data that would suggest that the discrimination in college applications, specifically college applications, can we find that they discriminate against people of color?
Or would we find that they discriminate in favor of people of color?
What do you think you would find?
What do you think? I think it's obvious that they discriminate against white applicants.
And I think all the data says that.
But if Kendi thinks the opposite, and he's sort of silent on this point.
Because I think what Kendi did was say that Jack had mischaracterized his point to make it a larger point than he was making.
And that I think Kendi's point is that white applicants were lying.
Not that it worked, but that they were lying.
So I accept his clarification.
If you reread the tweets, it does seem to indicate he's talking more about the lying and does not have an opinion about whether it worked.
So I ask, what is his opinion?
Did it work? Because I think that's important to the story, right?
And I'll give him credit...
This far. That Jack did extend his point.
In other words, Jack attributed more of a point than Kendi made, and therefore the criticism is slightly on a related, very closely related, but not quite exactly the same topic.
One is, did they lie?
And the other is, did it work?
Slightly different, but related.
And I'll give him that.
I'll give Kendi that minor detail.
But I think that he's obligated at this point, because it's a public exchange, I would feel he's obligated to clarify that in addition to the fact that the white people lied, which I think we stipulate, right?
Nobody's arguing at that point.
Does he think that there really is no advantage to being a person of color in 2021?
What do you think? To me, it looks like it's obviously an advantage.
I can't even imagine it not being.
True story, when I was, I guess, 17 or 18, I was applying for colleges for the first time.
I filled out a document on ethnicity, and because we had been told in my family that we were part Native American, not much...
But we were told we had some Native American.
It turns out it was not true.
I have as much Native American as Elizabeth Warren, which is none.
But apparently it's fairly common.
And other people have the same story.
It was fairly common in my generation that families were told that they were part Native American.
And it just wasn't true.
For some reason, that was like a common myth within families, and our family was one of them.
So I had my DNA tested.
I don't have any Native American blood.
But at the time, I thought I did, and so I thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting to fill out this application?
And it was some generic thing that lots of colleges saw, I guess.
I forget what it was. But I put my ethnicity down as Native American, And my mailbox blew up with offers for scholarships and immediate acceptance.
My ethnicity alone got me scholarship offers, full ride, and acceptance.
That's it. They just saw my ethnicity and said, yep, you're in.
And probably my high school grades or something.
Now, that was a long time ago.
Things could have changed a lot, so I'm not going to suggest things are the same.
And by the way, just to finish the story, I did not accept any of the offers that were based on that.
So I did not go to college based on a fraud, but I did fill out a document in a, let's say, cheeky way that a 17-year-old might, and it was just sort of an experiment, I guess.
And it surprised me.
I was surprised. So let's get to the bottom of that.
I would like to hear it. If it turns out that I and 100% of every white person I've ever met in my life is wrong, and that actually white people have a big advantage in getting accepted into college, if I'm wrong about that, I'd damn well want to know.
Wouldn't you? Could you imagine if you were wrong about that?
This is a good exercise.
To keep you, you know, free from...
at least a little bit free from cognitive dissonance.
Because cognitive dissonance kicks in when you find out you're wrong about something.
So it helps to protect yourself against that, to just play it through with your mind.
Like, what would it feel like to be wrong about that?
Like, something really basic that you thought was true about the world, and what if you're wrong?
It would kind of blow your mind, wouldn't it?
And I think that if you're an honest...
You know, participant in these conversations.
You should at least give the other side the courtesy of saying, you know, I could be wrong.
Let's hear what you got. And I'm going to do that in this case.
Because I don't know if you know this, but Ibram Kendi is really smart.
Did you know that? Did he win a MacArthur Award or something like that?
But I think he's genuinely, like, seriously smart.
So if he says that something is true that I think is not true, and it happens to be his domain of expertise, I could be influenced.
I could change my mind on that.
So... I'd like to hear his argument.
Sincerely. I think it'd be interesting.
Whether it's a good or bad argument, I figure he's a smart person with something to say.
I'd like to hear it. How much would you like to hear me having an interview with Ibram Kendi?
How much would you like that?
I think some of you would hate it as much as you liked it.
Because the problem would be I would give too much respect to his opinion and you don't like his opinion.
But I wouldn't interview anybody unless I gave them full respect to their opinion.
Otherwise, why would I have them on?
I'm not going to have somebody on who's just a clown, right?
I'm going to respect the opinion or I'm not going to have an interview.
Would you express your opinion of his opinion?
I just did. I just did.
I'll give you... Well, maybe I can extend that.
I'll make it larger. Here's my opinion of...
I guess the Kendi view of the world.
I think he would say that the structural or systemic racism is real, and so do I. I would say that the place that you can fix it, the place that has the biggest lever, is in the school system.
And that we should target that collectively, because basically every ethnicity benefits when you fix the bad schools.
But the black population, probably the most, just because of where people live and how bad the schools are.
So we can certainly agree on that.
I mean, that's pretty big systemic racism, I would say.
And the other arguments about systemic racism is that anybody who has a head start has an advantage.
How do you disagree with that?
Do you disagree with the notion that if you have a head start, it's an advantage?
Who disagrees with that?
And I would say that the legacy of slavery did give some white families a head start.
Not all of them. And as soon as you say it's about all white people, it's just stupid.
Right? If you were born into a poor white family, the legacy of being white didn't help you as much as it should have.
But, now, I think he would argue that even if you're born a poor white person and got no specific advantage, that the system would also give you advantages just for the color of your skin.
That part is part true and part false.
I do believe that there are situations in which being white would give you an advantage in American society.
For example, do you think that people suspect me of shoplifting As much as a black man of the same age.
You know, let's say at the same age, any age, do you think I would have been suspected of shoplifting at the same level?
Probably not. So that would be, you know, advantage Scott, right?
But if I were to apply for a job at a Fortune 500 company, who would...
Yeah, I know, I'm too old for the shoplifting example, but I'm adjusting it for my younger self.
Um... You seem pretty crafty.
I don't know what that means.
Is that good or bad? Do you sport critical race theory?
No. Critical race theory is just propaganda and brainwashing and probably 80% stupid.
Based on 20%, pretty good stuff.
So I don't disagree with the base assumptions.
Most of them. Some of them I do.
But the base assumptions that there's some inequality because of head starts, etc.
I just disagree that it's important and where you would start.
Now the important part is if the world gives everybody good advantages, then it's not important.
History doesn't matter because you can't change it.
You're here now.
If you're here now with the same opportunity as every other poor person, I feel like I'm done.
You don't need to talk any more about it as long as you gave everybody an opportunity.
But as long as the school system is garbage, for black people specifically, and others, but more so, who doesn't want to fix that?
Who doesn't want to fix that?
And that's mostly the teachers' unions are the problem there.
Stop telling people they're screwed from the get-go.
Yeah, you don't want to tell people they're going to lose because of the way they were born.
That is a bad strategy.
Did you look into the Craig Wright?
No. Why is this...
Is this just a Twitter thing?
I've not seen anything in the news about Craig Wright or Satoshi anything.
Is there... Somebody tweet me a news article on that.
I've seen nothing on that in the news.
The only place I've ever seen it is in the comments here.
Somebody's saying, most of the shop listeners I've witnessed running for stores were either young white males or white women.
In my town?
My town is...
Upscale town in California.
I would say our ethnic breakdown is probably 60% white, 30% Indian, Asian, however you want to slice that, and maybe 10% black, something like that. So that would be the town I live in.
And I would say that nearly 100% of the shoplifters are white.
Nearly 100%.
Because here, it's almost like an after-school sport.
The kids leave the school, they go to the local grocery store, and they shove stuff in their pockets, and they walk out.
Because like everywhere else, the penalty is so small or non-existent that...
Right, I don't live in Oakland, you're correct.
So I think the majority of shoplifters is whatever the majority of people in your town is.
All right.
Free range shopping.
People with trauma from neglect or abuse are more likely to steal, says somebody.
I don't know. Is there any data to back that up?
Yeah. All right.
Far more poor people are criminals.
Well, that makes sense. They should be.
CVS shut down five stores.
I don't know if that's real or they were shutting down stores in general.
That CVS story is a little murky because we don't know if they were going to shut some stores anyway.
All right. That is about what I had to talk about today.
And... Do you believe the rich slaves got to keep their money?
Well, here's the provocative way that you would analyze reparations.
I've said this before, but if somebody's new to it, if you were going to do an honest economic analysis of reparations, what would you compare the, let's say, the black experience and what they got and didn't get through slavery, etc., what would you compare it to?
If you compare it to the white people in America, which is the way it's being done, then it looks like there's a gigantic disparity and very unfair.
But if you compare it to the actual alternative, which is never being slaves, the actual comparison would be to people who stayed in Africa and just continued living their normal life in Africa.
That's the comparison for financial reasons.
Now, for abuse and the slavery part, that, of course, you could make an argument for compensation for that.
But I don't know that you could make a rational argument that black people were stolen from Except for their freedom.
I mean, that's obviously bigger than money.
But financially, I don't think it's a stealing situation because you would compare it to what their alternative was, which may be even worse.
Not worse than slavery, but once slavery was ended, if you would have to compare them through history, I don't know.
Who would do better? Would a black man in 1965 America have more or less, I don't know, Money and freedom than the African source tribe or whatever it was for wherever it came, culture. I don't know.
But obviously you could make the argument that the slavery itself requires reparations independent of any finances.
Now, I'm not saying it's a good idea, but you could make the argument, and I think it has been made, And yes, black Africans enslaved other Africans.
Yeah, slavery is a universal historical thing.
Everybody enslaved everybody.
Basically, everybody who could enslave somebody did.
That's pretty much the whole thing.
If you could, well, you did.
Yes, and as the comments are saying, it's more than slavery...
Because of the Jim Crow laws and the discrimination through life.
Yeah, I definitely empathize with the argument that they were suffering.
However, most of the people who suffered the worst abuses have already passed.
But there are plenty of people alive who went through the worst of the earlier discrimination in the last 100 years.
If Kendi is correct, why aren't minority applicants lying to say they are white?
I can answer that. I can answer it for Kendi.
If his belief is that the white applicants are wrong, and they don't get any advantage from saying they're people of colour, it means that students can be wrong about what works and what doesn't.
So that's your answer. You're saying, why aren't the students acting rationally if they could get an advantage by doing X? And I'm saying his argument is that the students are not acting rationally.
They're acting poorly, but I believe his argument would be they're not acting in their best interest.
They just don't realize it.
And that would apply to any kid.
Hello, all you clankers.
Now, do you clankers come over because there was a retweet or another podcast ended?
Oh, it's a raid from Stixenhammer?
What does that mean, a raid?
Does that mean that he tweeted something and so you all came over here?
Or does it mean that his program just ended and you're coming to another program?
I don't know what any of that means.
Just saying hi? Hi.
Oh, the clankers are liking the stream.
Sticks is live and he sends them.
Oh, okay. Well, that is very nice of him.
Tell him I said thanks.
And... All right, good.
Good to know. All right, thanks for watching.
We didn't have too much news today, maybe because it's Halloween.
So go out and have a...
I will talk about Decentraland...
I see in the comments I'm being prompted to do that.
But not today. But I will talk about that.
And did I mention the Southwest pilot?
Oh, there was a Southwest pilot for saying, let's go Brandon.
I guess he got fired.
You know, I don't disagree with that.
I don't disagree with that firing.
I don't think that firing was inappropriate.
I'm sorry. I think the employer can do anything they want in protecting their brand.
And if they thought that was bad for the brand, they might be right, they might be wrong, but it's their call.
Was that good for the brand or bad for the brand?
And I don't think putting politics on a plane is good for safety.
Think about it. What happens when you hear something obviously political from your pilot?
Do you think that gets the passengers talking to each other and arguing about whether that was right or wrong?
Then suddenly the plane figures out who's a Trump supporter and who's not.
And then you have to be on a flight together for however long.
I think it was dangerous.
I think it was literally a safety problem to interject politics in 2021 on a plane where people, you know, are in a confined space.
So I'm going to back the airlines for firing any pilot who makes a blatant one-sided political statement.
Sorry. You know, because remember, the airline has rights too.
I'm very much in favor of free speech, and of course, especially provocative free speech, but you don't get to do it everywhere, right?
You don't get to embarrass your employer or create safety problems.
I would say that a pilot interjecting, let's go Brandon, was similar, not completely the same, I know there are differences, similar to yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Because the risk of violence from that statement in an enclosed space where people can't just leave is non-zero.
It's not zero.
I mean, the fire example would be more dangerous, I think.
But it's not zero.
And I can see the airline saying, we want our safety record to be spotless.
Do you want your airplane to be casual about safety?
You don't, right? It's the same as gun...
Let me give an analogy that you can hate.
Analogies are not persuasive because you'll just argue about the analogy.
But it's too much fun.
So I'm going to do it anyway.
What did gun owners say when Alec Baldwin supporters said, well, it may not be Alec Baldwin's fault because there was this armorer who handed him the gun, so it's maybe that other person's fault.
What does every...
I'm sorry, that's an absolute.
It's an absolute. If it was in his hand, it's his responsibility.
Yes, we hear your argument, and we're not listening to it.
It's an absolute. We're not going to be rational about this.
Did you hear the part where it's an absolute?
It has to be an absolute.
Because the moment you say there's an exception, To gun safety?
Somebody gets killed.
Just like the Alec Baldwin situation.
That's why there's no exceptions.
Because the moment you make that exception, somebody dies.
Airline safety? Should you make exceptions?
Yeah, we're really big on airline safety, but, you know, we'll make an exception.
You okay with that?
No, I think airline safety and firearm safety should be absolutes, and every time you think that there should be an exception to it, you're wrong.
And the pilot situation goes into that.
Now, I think, I hate the fact that he got fired.
Like, on a human level, that just sucks, right?
He was just being interesting and fun.
It was a bad decision.
It had nothing to do with his flying ability.
I hope he gets another job and he's fine.
But I kind of back Southwest on this.
I think treating safety as an absolute is good for the brand, good for the passengers, and good for the world.
It just happened to be really bad for one pilot, and I don't think it's fair to him, but the world isn't fair.
It's not a fair world, right?
And unfortunately, this went his the wrong way.
Somebody says, I disagree with your framing as a safety issue.
That doesn't matter, really.
It doesn't matter. Because it doesn't matter if you think it's not a safety issue.
The fact that I'm a reasonable person who thinks it is a safety issue, that means that Southwest is completely reasonable in saying, you know, people are going to think it's a safety issue, even if we don't.
Because remember, safety is an absolute.
So you have to treat it Like it's an absolute.
And so they can't say, well, you know, this case.
All right. This is false.
Oh, was he not fired?
What happened to him? I'm getting a correction here on YouTube.
Was he not fired?
Yeah, and it doesn't matter if it didn't start any fights.
What matters is any reasonable person would have said this could cause trouble.
A reasonable person could say, this might cause trouble.
And that's it. That's the whole story.
If a reasonable person could say, you know, this could cause a problem, they've got to act on it.
What if he made fun of the flat earth Well, I don't know. I'm not sure that that hypothetical helps us.
The flight was on the ground.
Well, that doesn't matter, does it? The flight was on the ground, but it was going to take off, right?
Or had it already landed?
In any case, they're still confined in that space, so it's still dangerous.
Shut up and fly the plane.
Alright, that's all, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
