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Nov. 6, 2021 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:11
Episode 1553 Scott Adams: Looks As If All Our Problems Have Been Solved Except Celebrities Killing People

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Is "body language" real? Intelligence agencies and our media Rachel Maddow Alfa Bank email claim Pfizer COVID pill reduces death 89% Ryan Petersen's supply chain visualization Europe now center of pandemic ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever happened to you and maybe anybody else.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's a little thing called the simultaneous sip that's coming up in a moment.
But I have to set the stage.
Have I ever told you how much I hate sleeping?
I'm the only person I know.
I'm sure there are others. But I hate sleeping.
And so I wake up just naturally quite early.
I start work at 4 a.m.
usually would be my ideal time to start work.
So last night, I woke up in bed and I thought to myself, you know, I think I'm just going to get up because I was awake.
And I didn't really check the clock because my internal clock's pretty accurate.
I thought, that's pretty close to 4 a.m., give or take.
So I got up.
It turned out to be 1.45.
1.45 is when I woke up this morning.
And I was already up and around and patting the dog and I thought, you too?
Is that Vegas? So, let's just say that the quality of this live stream might be a little bit lower than what you used to.
I'm just trying to set the expectations.
But still, despite all of that, how terrific is it going to be to do the simultaneous sip?
It's going to be amazing. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tanker gels.
It's not in 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 of the dopamine each other day, the thing that makes everything better, especially your antibodies.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. I don't know about you, but sometimes if you're leaning, when you have the simultaneous sip, it'll stimulate the antibodies only on the lower side of your body.
So if you made the mistake I did, which was leaning while you did it, try this.
Lean the other way. There we go.
There we go. Antibodies stimulated...
And evenly distribute it.
Now we're in good shape.
All right. Question for all of you.
I was just chatting with the local subscribers before I fired up YouTube.
And I'm going to ask you the same question on YouTube.
Is body language real?
In other words, is it a skill which you can learn?
And apply. Or maybe you've already learned it.
And then you apply it.
Is body language real?
Go. Yes, yes, yes.
Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes. Okay.
Looks like we have universal agreement that body language is real.
Question number two.
How do you know you're good at reading it?
Yeah, you're not so certain now, are you?
Here's my observation.
It doesn't matter if body language is real or not.
For most purposes.
It doesn't matter.
Because you don't know if you're good at reading it.
That's the problem.
The problem is not whether body language is real.
The problem is you think you can read it And you can't.
You're terrible at it.
It's the same problem with pattern recognition, right?
Our brains are pattern recognition machines.
And we see patterns and we think they mean something even when they don't.
That's why we have science to essentially get around our own illusions about patterns.
Well, don't you think that your pattern recognition is what's driving your interpretation of body language?
Alright, so now you all think that body language is a real thing.
You got real quiet.
Here's my next question.
You ready to have your brain blown off?
You ready? You ready?
How many of you listening or watching right now have been accused of feeling something you did not feel because somebody you know misread your body language?
How many this week?
This week, I'll read your messages.
All the time, most of the time, me, me, me, yep, often, yep, yep, yep, yes, true, true, true, yes, true.
Now read here.
Every day, a few no's.
Every day, every day, yes, yes, yes, every day.
All right? Now, you see where I'm going here?
If body language reading were a real thing, Don't you think they'd read your body language right?
Don't you think that the people who accuse you of being, let's say, angry when you weren't angry or not interested when you were interested, whatever it was they were blaming you of, don't you think that the person who did that thought that they were good at reading body language?
Wouldn't you say it? Probably every person who falsely accused you because they read your body language wrong, I'll bet every one of them thought they did it well.
Right? It's sort of like do your own research.
How many of you think that it's wise and notable to do your own research?
There's a big story, most of you have seen it, about quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Who is getting a lot of attention because he was fairly eloquent in describing his process of deciding whether to get vaccinated or not.
He decided apparently not to.
He thought there were some risks of allergic reactions in his case that might be unique to him.
I don't know if that's a thing.
Do you? Is that a thing?
I don't know. I mean, I looked it up and I couldn't find that it's a thing.
But he thinks it's a thing.
Now, if I asked you, should you do your own research and talk to your doctor to decide what to do, most of you would say, what?
Should you do your own research on, let's say, anything, vaccinations, and then talk to your doctor?
That's the way you should handle it, right?
Do your own research and talk to your doctor.
How many of you think you should only do one of those?
Only your own research, or only talk to your own doctor.
Nobody, right? You would all agree 100% that you should do your own research and then talk to your doctor.
You know doctors are saying different things, right?
They're not all saying the same thing.
So how do you know you got the right doctor?
You're basically imagining that you were good at picking a doctor.
You probably didn't pick your doctor.
Most of you just sort of took the doctor that was there because you don't know how to pick a good doctor from a bad doctor.
So, similar to getting a financial advisor.
There are more financial advisors than there are stocks.
How do you know you've got a good financial advisor?
They don't beat the market more than a monkey with a dartboard.
They usually do worse than a monkey with a dartboard.
Let's say compared to index funds.
So here's the problem that we run into all the time.
Body language is totally real, but you can't do it.
You just think you can.
Financial analysis, in which you look at the pros and cons of companies and study their balance sheets and look at their business model and study the management quality, that's very real.
You can't do it.
But you think you can.
You think you can.
Likewise, doing your own research to decide what you should do about vaccinations, you think you can do that.
But you can't. You can't.
Likewise, almost everything that you see on Twitter that's a graph or a chart or is proving something, you think you can read that and come to a decision that's pretty good.
But you can't. You don't have those skills.
Nobody does. Basically, nobody does.
You know, the reason that I continually promote people like Andres Backhouse and Anatoly Labarsky is that they seem to be very close to having those skills, but of course nobody's right all the time.
So you don't know how bad you are at something until you see somebody who's good at it.
Would you agree with that? Would you agree that, generally speaking, it's impossible to know how bad you are at something until you meet somebody who's good at it?
Take singing, for example.
Suppose you had never met a good singer.
You probably thought you could do it.
And then you meet Mariah Carey and you say, oh, okay, I don't know what I was doing, but that wasn't singing.
That's singing. Whatever I was doing, I don't even know what that was anymore.
So the problem is you'll never meet somebody who's good at body language, because there aren't many of them.
I don't know if there are any of them, really.
But I'm assuming that the people who study it professionally probably are pretty good at it.
Pretty good. But you're never going to meet him.
And it's not you.
So all I would encourage you to do is have some humility about the assumption that you can do your own research.
Now, let me give you my macro opinion of Aaron Rodgers.
A bunch of people sent me his video and said, hey, this is really persuasive.
This guy gets it.
And here's where he lost me.
He lost me when he called himself a critical thinker.
So far, so good, right?
Called himself a critical thinker.
And then he demonstrated it by saying that he did his own research.
That's where he lost me.
Because if you're a critical thinker, you know you can't.
If he were a critical thinker, he would know that he can't do his own research.
Not in any reliable way.
I mean, even if he were a top researcher, he probably couldn't.
Let me give you another example.
The director of the CDC, I guess, recently claimed that face masks are 80% effective.
Really? Really?
Is there anybody who believes that face masks are 80% effective?
80%? Even the people who are in favor of them are giving numbers that are, like, sub-20%, and we're not even entirely sure about that, right?
Right? So, of course, this caused somebody in the comments to that, there was a tweet about it, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, that must be a typo.
Didn't you think that?
If you saw that the head, the director of the CDC, the director, if you read something that said she thought masks were 80% effective, wouldn't you think that was a typo?
Or just didn't really happen?
But apparently it did. It did.
And apparently, and I didn't know this, there are a whole bunch of studies that show that masks are 70-80% effective in certain situations that are basically not this one.
How long did it take for somebody to reply to the tweet that showed a whole bunch of studies that show masks totally work?
How long did it take somebody to paste a whole bunch of studies that show masks totally don't work?
About a second.
So right next to each other on Twitter is a link to an article that mentions a whole bunch of studies, masks totally work, and then another one, a whole bunch of studies, masks totally don't work.
So when Aaron Rodgers goes to do his own research, how does he sort that out?
Now, he was talking about vaccinations, not masks, but it's a perfect example.
Do you think Aaron Rodgers, with whatever skill stack he brings to this, could be a critical thinker, And then sort out whether maths work or not with two completely different sets of answers.
I can't.
Could you? How many of you could do that?
So he did his own research, but it's absurd.
Because he never knows what he doesn't know.
Right? If you're from the outside of an area of expertise...
Unless you're unusually smart, unless you're Elon Musk smart, you can't enter somebody else's field and figure it out.
That's not a thing.
It's a thing for the smartest among us, but it's not a thing, generally speaking.
And it's certainly not a thing that Aaron Rodgers did.
So when he calls himself a critical thinker, I challenge that.
Because a critical thinker would know that you can't do what he claims to have done.
It's not doable with the brains we have and the information that's available to us.
It's just not doable in any rational way.
All right, let's talk about this.
I am so interested in this Steele dossier story update because something's happening, right?
And I don't know exactly what it is.
Because... Some parts of the media are treating it like it's not even a story.
But it looks like it's the biggest story.
And so we have these two movies running at the same time, that it's the biggest thing I've seen in years, or it's nothing.
Or, you know, just some weasels did some lying.
That's about it. So it's either some weasels did some lying...
Or Hillary Clinton was behind, or her campaign was behind, a legitimate plan to overthrow the...
basically to cheat in the major election and or overthrow a sitting president once Trump was elected.
What is it? Is it the worst thing in the world or is it nothing?
Do your own research.
Go look at the media.
Do you think you could figure it out?
If it's nothing or it's a whole bunch?
Well, I think this story is telling you how deeply the intelligence assets in this country are embedded in the media.
That's all this is telling us, right?
You know, as Glenn Greenwald often tweets and writes, that the public isn't fully aware that major parts of our media are just controlled by the CIA or CIA assets or some damn intelligence units in the government.
And this isn't conspiracy theory stuff.
This is really well-documented stuff.
I don't know if anybody even...
I don't think there's anybody serious who even doubts it, right?
That our intelligence agencies directly influence the news.
And so when you see that this story has sort of semi-disappeared, it's definitely covered...
And the opinion people are talking about it, but it should be the main story, I think, and yet sort of downplayed everywhere.
Now, actually, that's an exaggeration.
The Washington Post covered it, so I'll give them that.
Jonathan Swan, I think he's Axios, tweeted that, tweeted the Washington Post coverage, So I looked on Axios to see the coverage, and there wasn't anything today, but I'm sure they covered it originally.
And so Jonathan Swan summarizes the Washington Post coverage of it this way.
He says, the charges are not only did Clinton-slash-Democrats fund the dossier, but a longtime Clinton-slash-Dem operative was one of the sources for the rumors about Trump.
And then he summarizes that by saying it doesn't get much worse.
Right. Right.
As in it's the biggest story.
It doesn't get much worse.
But it's not the biggest story.
Do you see now that there's somebody deciding what a story is?
You get that, right?
Right. There's somebody, and it probably varies depending on what the story is, but somebody controls whether or not the world thinks it matters.
And amazingly, whoever that is, or those people, or entities, or a series of forces, whatever it is, has decided that this won't get attention.
It's really freaky, isn't it?
When you see it in real time.
When you see that the news is just not even close to real.
It's just a brainwashing operation.
You can't see who's pulling the strings all the time.
But sometimes you can see the strings.
This is one of those times when you can see the strings.
You're like, hey, hey, hey.
I can actually see those strings.
And it won't matter.
What are you going to do about it?
So let's say you and I see how bad this story is.
What are you going to do about it? Nothing, right?
What am I going to do about it?
I can't think of anything I can do about it.
Wait? I don't know. So it's a weird story.
It's the biggest story ever.
Treat it like it's nothing.
To be even more amazed, it turns out that Rachel Maddow is running a report...
That Durham, the very same person who's coming out with this new information, and Barr, ex-A.G. Barr, intentionally ignored emails that, quote, prove Trump was in direct communications with the Russian Alpha Bank.
A covert communication channel existed during the 2016 campaign that Barr and Durham knew was real, but they covered up.
Boomerang, says Rachel Maddow.
Gotcha. So, are any of the other major media covering that story?
Where's that story on CNN? I didn't see it.
Where's that story on Fox News?
I don't know. I didn't see it.
Did she just make this up?
Is this just totally made up?
And don't you think there's a little context missing?
So she claims that there are emails that Durham and Barr saw but ignored...
What is the missing context?
They saw it, and they ignored it.
The missing context is, why did they ignore it?
Probably because it was BS, or unimportant, or some trivial email.
Probably. There's nothing here, and Rachel Maddow has decided to turn it into something.
Who controls MSNBC? Depends who you ask.
Some would say intelligence agencies.
I can't confirm that, but that's a common claim.
If you were an intelligence agency, wouldn't you want to create the counter-narrative that, oh no, it really was Trump who was colluding with Russia after all?
This is so heavy-handed.
This is like really obvious heavy-handed manipulation of the public.
It's kind of crazy.
And here's the thing. It's totally working.
No matter how easily you can see the puppet strings and say, hey, hey, this is clearly manipulation and a trick, it still works.
Because again, what the hell are you going to do about it?
Take your story to the media?
Hey, I see what's going on here.
I think I'll call my contacts at CNN and report it.
Seriously, what the hell are you going to do about it?
As long as the media is going to cover it the way they're covering it, that's sort of the end of it.
There's nothing you can do.
What are you going to do? Call Tim Pool?
If he recovers from his COVID? I mean, the independents are so small relative to the major media that there's nothing you can do.
All right. That story just fascinates the hell out of me, that you can make something like that disappear.
So Pfizer announced that they've got a COVID pill that, at least in the test, they had zero deaths from people who took the COVID pill soon after having symptoms, and reduces deaths 89% or something like that.
Now, if you've got a pill, and I imagine this will get approved pretty quickly, that reduces it by 89%, Aren't you done?
Isn't this pill the get-back-to-work pill?
Because if you've got the vaccinations themselves, and of course not everyone will take them, but they reduce the risk by some enormous amount.
Then you've got this pill, and that reduces it by an enormous amount.
You've got the monoclonal antibodies.
We know that works. We know the vitamin D drip works.
At least a few other things we know work.
So each of these takes a big percentage out of the total risk.
Once the Pfizer pill is here, and one's like it, who is it?
I forget the other company that has a pill.
But I feel like we're done when we have those.
Don't you? I mean, I've felt like this before, so maybe this is false optimism.
But how...
How much better would it be if you've got these pills that work so long as you take them early?
How much better would things be if we had rapid tests that are so cheap you could just do one every day?
Suppose you could for $1 test yourself every day.
And, you know, not everybody would spend $365 per person in their household, but a lot of people would.
A lot of people would. And you would get at least the super spreaders.
But if you were catching a fast and taking the pill fast, I feel like we're done.
Right? I mean, I don't know when we'll all have availability of these pills.
And then the real question is, do you just buy these pills and keep them around?
You know, I'm sure they're prescription.
But wouldn't it be great if you could just get some and keep them?
Because you don't want to have that time lag between a dry cough and getting the prescription.
Because that could be eight hours, right?
By the time you... If you wake up in the middle of the night with a dry cough, it could be hours and hours.
So wouldn't you like to test yourself, grab a pill, you're done.
You've already treated yourself.
Go back to bed. Alone.
Quarantine. All right.
So apparently there was a claim that the UK version of the drug that got approved was really just ivermectin.
Oh, I'm sorry.
There was some thought that maybe the Pfizer one or somebody else's.
Anyway, the claim is false.
And the claim was that one of these companies was just repurposing ivermectin.
And here's a little tip for you.
You can always assume that fraud is hiding in any complicated environment.
A complicated environment would be finance.
Definitely fraud there.
Science. Definitely fraud there.
And we hear about it all the time.
It's obvious, right?
And so the more confusing it is, the more likely it's fraud.
But the first time you heard this rumor...
That one of these big companies was just going to try to slip ivermectin into a different name of a pill?
You should have known that wasn't a thing.
Because it would be too easy to catch them.
Right? How hard would it be for somebody who knows how to do it to take a look at it and say, this is just ivermectin?
You guys have been screwing us.
It would be so easy to find it out, it would be ridiculous for them to try that.
Zunar says, wrong. What are you going to do?
Well, what you're going to do is start taking ivermectin.
That's what you're going to do.
And again, the rumor is false, so there's no persuasive evidence that ivermectin works as far as I know.
But I also wouldn't know.
All right. Good comment, though, Zunar.
So I would just say that the only reason anybody would believe this ivermectin rumor that it's really the drug that's in these other pills, rebranded, is because we'll believe anything now.
Like nothing seems off the table, does it?
When you hear this story about the Steele dossier, the real way it was created, doesn't it almost feel to you as if there's just nothing that's off the table anymore?
Just anything's possible.
Am I right? So you can make up any rumor and somebody's going to believe it because people will say, well, that's not any worse than the five things I heard on the news that might be true.
Yeah, we've lost all trust.
That is true. How would you like me to fix the supply chain problem?
You ready? Now, remember, I'm never totally serious when I say stuff like that.
But I think it's fun to talk about it.
I'll give you a little background.
I tweeted and talked to you the other day, and I said...
That one of the secrets of persuasion is that whoever makes the best visual graph of whatever the problem or solution is, whoever does the best job of the visualization part ends up being in charge.
Because the visualization tells people what to do for the first time.
Because if it's a complicated situation, people can't read through it and decide what they want to do.
But if you give them a nice, clean chart or pie chart or visualization, and it's accurate...
People suddenly will line up behind it and say, oh, okay, now we know what to do, we know what the problem is, etc.
The power of being good at creating visualizations is way underrated.
Because I used to do that for my corporate jobs.
And I discovered that basically I was running the department because I could make the visualization compelling or not for whatever I wanted.
And it felt like the chart-making person was running stuff.
It certainly felt like that when I was making the charts.
Because I could make them good or bad if I wanted.
So... Hearing my explanation of the power of charts, Ryan Peterson, CEO of Flexport, who you already know because he did a terrific thread in which he went to actually visited the ports.
He works in this industry, so he knows what questions to ask and where to look for problems.
And he came up with a pretty good analysis, a very good analysis, actually.
So good that the governor of California called him to see what was going on and see if he could help.
So it was that good. And then he followed up with building a presentation that's really good.
Really good. So you can see it on my Twitter feed, or just look for Ryan Peterson.
The sen part on the end is S-E-N, Peterson, CEO of Flexport.
And you can see his stuff there, and I recommend it.
Because I think it's really fun, actually, weirdly, because I'm a total nerd about business models.
Does anybody else have that?
Yeah, I went to business school, and so I just got hooked on business models.
Like, what is it that makes some company have a process that makes money that's different than some others?
Yeah, I see some other people saying the same thing.
That business models are just endlessly fascinating to me.
So anyway, seeing this flowchart of what the problem is, and let me quickly summarize the problem.
You think the problem was truck drivers, right?
How many of you have been told the problem is not enough truck drivers?
Well, that is a problem-ish, but it's not the immediate problem.
It's not the reason stuff is backed up.
Because there are drivers sitting in trucks with an empty container on the back, and they don't have any place to put the empty container.
So you have drivers all over the place with just an empty on the back and no place to put it.
So they can't pick up a new one, so they can't do any work because they can't get rid of the one that's on the back.
Now, why can't they get rid of the one on the back?
Well, the ports got slammed with the pandemic traffic because people bought more goods than they consumed services.
So people's spending patterns radically changed.
And they started buying stuff because they were stuck at home instead of going on a vacation and buying gas and stuff.
So that momentary shock of the system caused a buildup that rippled.
And the ripple was that they didn't have a place to put the empty containers, and then that slows everything down because they're in the way.
Now, part of the solution was getting approval to stack some of the containers in places that they couldn't stack them or in ways that they couldn't stack them before.
And I think that Ryan Peterson was instrumental in getting that happening quickly.
So it made a little bit of a difference.
It's not the solution.
But the big problem...
Is that you need a special kind of chassis.
In other words, the part that's behind the big rig truck has to be a special kind for an empty or any kind of container to be carried on it.
And there aren't enough of those To carry the new traffic because they're all used up with an empty on it.
They can't go anywhere. Now you say to yourself, Scott, this is the easiest problem in the world to solve.
Just take all those trucks with the empties.
The government just say, okay, temporarily, here's a farmer's field.
It's an emergency. Farmer says it's okay.
We'll give him some money. Just drive to this empty field and just put all your empty containers there, right?
How do you get them off the truck?
How do you get the container off the truck?
You need that crane that's back at the port.
You can't get them off the truck except at the port.
And do you know why you can't get them off the truck at the port?
Because it's already filled with empty containers.
So the cranes and the trucks can't get near each other.
Even the cranes are not being used.
Because there's nothing but trucks with empties and empties all over the place.
And that's your problem. Oh, you're ahead of me.
So here's my question.
All right. Suppose you took the best engineers in the world and you put them in the metaverse so they could have a meeting in Zuckerberg's virtual world.
So it feels like they're there.
And you take your Elon Musk's...
I like to use him for every example.
He just fits every example, it seems like.
You take your Elon Musk, you take your best...
If you have engineers from a few different places and you just put them in one place, you say, here's the problem.
The normal way that empties are taken off is with the same crane, I think, fact check me on this, the same crane that they use at the ports to do everything else that the cranes do.
So the cranes, as they're built, are sort of multi-purpose for the ports.
But suppose you wanted to very quickly develop an engineering solution that would simply take and empty off.
The first advantage is that you're only dealing with empties.
So if you were to build a crane or a forklift-type device, whatever it would take, You wouldn't have to make it very strong compared to the ones at the port.
Because the port has to take full containers as well as empties.
So that has to be way, way, way stronger.
But if you're only dealing with the empties and it's an emergency and you just want to get empties off chassis, could you modify a forklift?
Could you build one of those magnet things that just picks it off as long as you've, I don't know, disconnected it somehow from the chassis?
Could you do it with a giant magnet?
How long would it take a caterpillar, for example, to modify anything that they have existing that can very quickly just grab empties and toss them off?
Right? So suppose you did a, you know, it's an overused concept, but basically a Manhattan project to find a temporary engineering solution for removing empties from chassis not at the port.
So, you know, is there such a thing?
Is there anybody who knows, is there such a thing as like just a badass forklift that's big enough to take an entire empty container off a truck?
Is there such a thing?
And could you modify some other piece of equipment or equipments that could do that?
Oh, there it is. Somebody gave me the actual picture of a forklift that's meant for exactly that.
So how hard would it be to get a few forklifts in some big farmer fields?
So I'm saying, yes, they already exist.
So you don't really need to move the crane anywhere, do you?
Maybe just these forklifts?
Yeah. So I guess there's more questions, right?
Remember I told you every time you think you can do your own research, you just find out that that's not something you can do?
So here's a perfect example.
So here I am trying to do my own research, but, you know, it's not my full-time job, just like it isn't most people's full-time job to research anything.
And I don't know what's going on.
Still. Because if there exist, and I can see that they do exist, these giant forklifts, probably they're all being used at the ports themselves, but it seems like maybe for a day or two you could at least get a few of them and just outsource them to the farmer's field or wherever.
Yeah, redesign the trucks to be self-emptying.
So I just tweeted, there is such a device.
So there are trucks that are self-unloading.
So it looks like they've got some kind of a roller thing.
So they just dip it down and let the...
And then they drive away slowly and the container just...
But I don't think they make those for too many chassis.
Forklifts can't run on soft ground.
Good point. Good point.
So you need some kind of paved situation.
That's a really good point.
But they could...
If it's packed down, they could...
If it's packed down dirt, they could probably...
Maybe not. Too heavy.
All right. Did you hear about Travis Scott?
He has this festival called the Astroworld in Houston.
And apparently the crowd...
Surged. It's not clear why.
And eight people died and hundreds were injured and stuff.
And... Is it my imagination or is the fourth leading cause of death in this country being killed by celebrities?
So you got your Alec Baldwin slaying one person this week.
You got your NFL players killing people with their automobiles.
You've got Travis Scott gives a concert and kills eight people.
Then you've got all your celebrities who are so thin that it's causing a generation of kids to have body image problems and die of eating disorders and suicide.
And here's a question I ask you.
So there are several examples of celebrities who have killed people.
Just this week.
There are three examples of celebrities killing people within the week, or two weeks, I guess.
Now, think about your profession.
So those of you who are working, think about your job.
How many people in your job killed anybody in the last two weeks?
Let's say you're an accountant.
Let's say you scoop ice cream at the Baskin Robbins.
How many ice cream scoopers killed anybody in the last two weeks?
Very low number.
Very low number. But how many celebrities killed people?
A lot. A lot, right?
And it's funny.
Well, it's not funny.
It's tragic, of course.
But it's gotten to the point where it might be the fourth leading cause for anybody over under 30.
You know, just stay away from any celebrity-related thing.
Now, I'm not even... Just think about how much you could pump up the number killed by celebrities.
Think of all the things that celebrities have promoted in public that you should do or not do that probably killed people.
Probably a few, right?
Depending on your political leanings, if you're of the camp that says abortion is murder...
Then you've got the celebrities supporting abortion.
So depending on your point of view, you'd say, well, let's chalk up some more to the celebrities.
I don't know, celebrities seem very, very dangerous, is what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying. All right.
Pretty sure that's all I wanted to talk about today.
Oh, no. I would like to remind you, at the beginning of the pandemic...
One of my predictions was that you can't tell how any country would do in the first few innings.
Anybody remember me saying that?
Just so we can verify that I said that.
Right from the beginning. I said you won't be able to tell what countries are making the right decisions and that leadership won't even be a variable you can isolate.
Everybody thought that you could do that.
I think I'm the only person who said from the start...
You'll never be able to do it.
So what's the news today?
Well, it's the opposite of what it used to be, and yet leadership hasn't changed.
So there's probably not that much difference in leadership in Europe versus the United States, but suddenly Europe's having problems that we're not having.
So Europe's now the epicenter of the pandemic as of today.
Germany reported its highest number of new coronavirus infections in one day since the pandemic began.
And new cases across Europe have risen 56% and everything.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that the United States did better than Europe.
What I will tell you is we don't know why anything is working.
We still don't.
Even the most basic thing, which is, well, the most vaccinated country should be in the best shape, that doesn't even seem to hold.
At this point. But the one thing I'm pretty sure is true is that there wasn't enough of difference in leadership changing in the United States, really in terms of the pandemic.
Even Biden isn't that much different than Trump would have been.
I don't think Europe changed that much, leadership-wise.
So leadership just doesn't predict.
Is there anybody who's willing to agree with me at this point that leadership...
Did not predict outcomes.
Anybody? Is anybody willing to agree with me that leadership did not predict outcomes?
Oh, I got some agreement.
Okay. Nope.
All right. So we got some agreement there.
That's all I can ask for.
All right. Here's a little thing from...
Twitter. You know, Twitter does this cool thing where if there's a big story and lots of tweeting on it, they'll put their own editorial summary of what's going on with all the tweeting on that topic.
And I always like that because it's a real good, fast way to learn what's going on.
So I like the feature a lot.
But here's one way that they describe something.
And you tell me if this is biased or not, right?
I'll just read the summary.
It's a bullet point. One of three bullets under what you need to know that I assume Twitter editorial wrote.
And I quote, public health officials warn against taking ivermectin, a drug often prescribed for animals that can be dangerous for people to treat COVID-19.
Now, does that sound a little bit biased?
Do you think there was a better way to phrase this so you didn't suggest that people taking it were taking horse medicine?
Which, of course, is horse shit.
This is just mind-boggling that somebody could write this sentence.
Here would be an honest version of this.
Public health officials warn against taking ivermectin, especially the animal version of it, because...
It hasn't shown to be effective, according to them.
This is not me talking. And the animal version especially could be dangerous to humans.
Now, it takes a little bit longer, but at least it's clear, right?
I would like to know that there's an animal in a human version, and I would like to know that if you took the animal version, you might have some problems.
But if you took the human version, not so much.
I mean, that's the story, right?
Shaki is still saying ivermectin saved lives all over Africa.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
And I know you've seen the information that would suggest that.
I don't think that's going to stand up.
I would make a very large bet that ivermectin is not saving Africa.
I mean, I don't know what's going on there.
And I'd like to say also, whenever I make a statement like that, I can never be 100% sure.
Can you accept that even when I talk with confidence, you can't really be 100% sure of anything.
We don't live in a world where anybody can do that.
Not me, not you, not anybody.
So when I say things that sound like absolutes, just in your mind, translate that into not quite an absolute.
All right. And now...
I believe I've done my tiny bit of duty to help the supply chain because I feel like the supply chain problem is one of those things where there are enough brains and resources in existence but hasn't quite...
Hasn't quite been focused in the right places at the right time by the right people.
And Ryan Peterson, I would say, is the most productive person on this.
And if I could give him a boost to boost his signal, then I think that collectively we've done something good.
Because, you know, it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway.
You know, people always say, after they say it goes without saying, they always say it anyway.
That my ability to boost Ryan Peterson's signal, which I think has been productive, and it may have been part of what got the governor to call him.
We don't know for sure. But you can only do that because there are a lot of people paying attention.
So that is all your power.
If I helped you focus it in a productive way, that would be great.
Yeah, infrastructure bill got passed.
So boring. So that's the part that a lot of people agreed on, just the pure infrastructure, the real infrastructure part.
And how would you know if that's a good idea?
How would any of you know if the infrastructure bill...
And by the way, they've separated out the social programs, and now that's going to be part of the Build Back Better separate bill.
But the one that really was infrastructure, which would have taken three years to get an infrastructure bill, so you can't be too happy about that.
But how would you know it's not all just pork and bullshit?
How do you know it's in that thing?
I don't. I don't know.
I mean, I like the idea of infrastructure.
Now, here's another question.
We started this infrastructure bill thing in 2018 when the economy was a very different economy.
It was pre-pandemic, you know, pre-massive run-up of the debt, at least as much as it did run up.
And here's my question, and I don't know the answer to it, so it's not a fake question.
It's a real question. Should we be stimulating the economy right now?
Is there anybody here who is good enough in economics?
I mean, I have a degree in economics, and I don't know the answer to this question.
Is this the right time to be stimulating the economy?
Because it feels like the wrong time, doesn't it?
Because, you know, our jobs are coming back strongly.
We're ordering more things than our capacity to deliver.
And inflation is high.
Now, I don't know what the supply chain is going to do to inflation, should drive it up, blah, blah, blah.
But is anybody reporting that the infrastructure bill might be a huge disaster only because of its timing, not because it's a good or bad idea in and of itself?
Is anybody writing that? Is that a story even?
Or are all the smart people saying, oh, don't worry about that?
Because you need... I mean, we need the infrastructure, right?
So it might be that we don't have a choice.
You just gotta...
You have to have good roads.
You need more broadband.
You just need this stuff. Yeah, I don't know how much of it is junk and pork and stuff like that.
Get rid of the vaccine mandates.
Well, I would say that...
If these Pfizer and the other pill, if they get approved and they really stop it in its tracks and you can really do rapid testing, I feel like we've got to open up at that point.
You know, I've told you before, somebody says, I work for the CIA. All right?
Did they assign you to watch me today?
All right. A while back I learned how intelligence agencies approach citizens and try to influence them.
And once you know how they do it, you can spot it pretty easily.
And I've got one now that's trying to approach me.
And I would say they act very different from normal people.
I'm not going to tell you what they do.
I don't want to tell you that.
But it's easy to spot.
I can't tell you. All right.
Russia collusion was an insurrection.
I think so. And that would also explain, oh, here's some more...
Over on Locals, people are posting all kinds of pictures of large devices that move containers.
And so there are portable ones.
They don't have to be cranes.
All right.
National Guard has some container movers.
Yeah, I imagine they would. All right.
That is all I have to talk about today.
If my energy was low, that's because of that three hours of sleep.
But I hope we made the world a better place.
And I hope you're all a little bit more cautious about imagining what you can do with your own research.
Yes, I know I am.
If there's one place that you can guarantee I will be humble, because I know some of you have a problem with me being right too much.
But where I guarantee you I'll always be humble is that I can't do my own research on any of this.
I mean, I can talk myself into thinking I did it, but I can't.
So, I mean, if you're substantially smarter than me in this particular way, maybe you can.
But I know I can't.
So unless you're pretty sure you're way smarter than I am about how to analyze stuff, I don't think you can either.
Not with confidence, anyway.
Not with any confidence. What kept me awake?
I hate sleep.
So when I woke up, I just didn't want to be asleep again, and then it doesn't happen.
I feel like sleep is just wasted.
Wasted life. But I will tell you, I've been thinking more and more about the state of what a dream is.
Have you ever said to yourself, the one way that you know this is not a simulation is that the stuff is solid?
Do you ever think that to yourself?
Well, I know that whatever this is that I'm experiencing, my reality, I know it can't be just code or program because they're solids.
It doesn't go through it.
If I ever made a software or some imaginary thing, none of this could happen, right?
It wouldn't be solid.
But what about dreams?
In your dreams, everything's solid, isn't it?
In your dreams, things have weight, don't they?
In your dreams, there's still gravity.
So apparently, we absolutely, routinely, pretty much most of us every night, have an illusion in which there is full weight and gravity and all the rules of physics.
Sometimes you can fly in your dreams.
Sometimes. But the question of whether you can imagine solids when there are no solids has been answered.
Yeah, you can. It's called a dream.
That's just one way you can do it.
All right. Which is different than virtual reality, because when you've got a virtual reality goggles on, you can't actually feel any of the objects.
So that's less than a dream.
A dream, you have the sensation that objects have weight.
Dreams are software updates.
Could be. Or defragmenting.
It feels like defragging to me.
So Scott doesn't have spirituality, I guess.
It's all just a waste.
Is it? I have no physical sensation in your dreams.
Well, but the rules of physics apply in your dreams, is what I'm saying.
Um... I learned your lesson about doing your own research, trying to figure out how to do a live broadcast.
Yeah, that's a pretty humbling thing.
Now, some of you are going to say, but Scott, what about that situation you gave us with the spasmodic dysphonia and googling your own voice problem?
That's an exception. And one of the things that makes it an exception is that once I found it, I can verify it.
So having found it on my own, then I could easily take it to an expert.
I could find an expert once I had a name for it.
And then the expert could say, oh yeah, you're right.
And then my research just ends up being the same as science.
I end up in the same place.
So that's really a special case.
And I do think that a motivated person can do a slice, but I don't think we can evaluate studies very well.
Most of us. All right.
That is all I have for today.
I believe I'm babbling, and I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube.
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