Episode 1593 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About the Funny Stuff in the News Today
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Sulfites and asthma
Elon Musk's hilarious takedown of Elizabeth Warren
J6 committee furiously finds nothing
Alternate therapeutics in the news
Omicron hype and propaganda
Michael Shellenberger's SF success
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you.
Yep, I say that every day because it's true every single day.
We're going nowhere but up.
We're like the Omicron variant of podcasts.
You can't stop us, but we're mild.
We're mild and we won't hurt you, but you can't stop us.
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When I look at you, I see people who are smarter, better, sexier than everyone else who's not watching this.
And so I know you'd like to take it up to the next level, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flax, a vessel of any kind, filling with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It's better than a vaccination.
It's better than ivermectin.
It's better than lots of things.
Go. Sublime.
Savor it. Savor it.
Stop and smell the coffee beans.
Or whatever you got going there.
Alright, so I have to ask this.
At the end of yesterday's live stream, I gave you a tip for removing foods from your diet and sulfites in particular.
Has anybody else discovered that they do have an allergy to sulfides or sulfites?
I'm seeing some more people here.
I've got a feeling it might be massive.
Could it be that...
Have you noticed that there's an asthma...
I need an update on this, but the last I knew, there was this huge uptick in asthma in adults in the United States.
Can somebody fact check that for me?
I know that was true a while ago, you know, years ago, that there was this giant unexplained uptick in asthma.
And it took me decades to find out it was that additive that was getting me.
What if it's just the additive?
What if that explains everything?
Because most asthma is either triggered by exercise or allergies.
And if there's a food additive that got to some percentage of the public and caused them to have allergies, that would trigger your asthma.
So could it be a food allergy is the reason that the asthma spiked?
I'm going to say maybe. Just a guess.
But speculatively, maybe.
Let me tell you something that a system I've been using on Twitter that's one of the best things that I ever came up with.
You've heard it before, but I just want to reinforce it so you can use it yourself.
If somebody comes after you personally on Twitter, you know, they're not criticizing the argument, they're calling you stupid or, you know, just some personal insult.
Before you respond...
Before you respond, because you're going to want to insult them back right away, check the profile and see if it's somebody who works in the arts.
Because ever since I started doing that and then sharing it with you, you'll find that people who work in the arts go for the ad hominem.
I don't know exactly why.
It could be a combination of things.
One, it could be they don't have the analytical skills to go at it a different way.
But two, it could be they don't have the same distinction between reality and fantasy.
In other words, it might not matter to them so much if you're right.
It just matters that they're mad at you because you disagree.
And so I think there's also a performance element to it.
That people are insulting, especially somebody who's, you know, in the public eye.
When people insult me, I think there's always a performance element to it that has nothing to do with me specifically.
And so as soon as I see that it's somebody in the arts, I completely discount it.
Because I just say, oh, that's just them.
That's just them. That's just them being them.
Because the moment you think it's about you, you're going to be mad.
It's not about you. It's about them.
It's about the performance they want to put on.
It's about them dealing with their own feelings and emotion.
And the number of times that I get insulted and then I check and, oh, it's an artist.
It's a writer or it's a visual artist of some kind.
Often they work in Hollywood.
I'll tell you, the Hollywood writers...
Are absolutely the worst.
They're the ones who come after me the most.
Because they hate me also because I make money writing.
And if you're a writer, you really hate people who make money writing.
98% of them do, because 98% of writers don't make much money writing.
So, that's my advice to you.
Now, did you all see the Elon Musk response to Elizabeth Warren on Twitter?
If you haven't seen it, it's one for the ages.
So on the same day that Elon Musk becomes Time Person of the Year, Elon Musk proved to us why he is the best choice they've ever made for the Time Person of the Year.
If he wasn't already Time Person of the Year, you'd have to give him some consideration just based on this tweet response.
That alone, if he'd never fired a rocket into space or become the richest person in the world.
Or the country, I guess.
So Elizabeth Warren decides to use Elon Musk as her...
I don't know...
There's some word for it.
If you just use somebody as your example, I guess, but I'm looking for a smarter-sounding word.
And she says, let's change the rigged tax code so the person of the year, meaning Elon Musk, will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
What? What?
What? Freeloading?
Elon Musk?
He's like single-handedly solving the biggest problems in the world for our country.
I mean, between...
Elon Musk, I would say...
It is the reason that battery technology is advancing so much.
I mean, Tesla's got to be the big driver of showing that that market exists, etc.
And, of course, battery storage will be one of the key technologies of the future.
He's taking us to space, better than NASA was doing, the most important strategic thing in the history of, well, the entire history of the United States.
Controlling space and having space competence first, nothing's more important than that.
So Elon Musk is doing the work that even our government can't do.
It's so important. And she's calling him a freeloader.
So Elon Musk, who also is the only marketing for Tesla...
Which is also a wonderful fact.
That he's so good at getting attention that he doesn't need to do marketing.
There's nobody who doesn't know him.
Everybody's following him.
He's the person of the year.
Italian person of the year. So it's the best marketing I've ever seen.
I've never seen anybody do marketing better than this.
Have you? I mean, Apple was pretty great, but they spent money on it.
He spends no money, and he gets the same bang for the buck as Apple does.
I think he's the best marketer of all time.
I mean, is that too much?
There's nobody else who spends zero and gets this consistently, right?
So I think you could make an argument he's the best marketer who ever lived, if you're just looking at the numbers.
Anyway, so after Elizabeth Warren tries to dunk on Elon Musk, which is literally the worst idea anybody ever had in the world, Elon, his first reaction tweet was just this, stop projecting.
Now, of course, that one's You know, it doesn't really hit the mark.
It's just, you know, just sort of like a warning shot.
He followed it up soon after with another tweet.
He said, you remind me of when I was a kid with my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.
Oh, my God.
Now, it's not that...
It's not that he wrote it like a joke, per se, but it's the combination of who he is and who she is and what she did that makes this so wonderful.
Because as soon as he says it, you can see it.
That's what makes it so powerful.
Because Elizabeth Warren does have sort of an angry mom persona.
Yeah. When you hear the richest man in the world call it out, like the topic is taxes.
So instead of talking about tax rates, he calls her out for being like his friend's angry mom, and you can't stop seeing it.
The trouble is, this is a Trump-like attack.
As soon as you hear that she looks like your friend's angry mom, good luck ever seeing her another way again.
This is pure low-energy Jeb-level quality stuff.
So I'll never see her as anything but Elon Musk's friend's angry mom.
But then he's not done.
He's got one more tweet in him.
He's not done. The next tweet, his follow-up is...
Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen.
And I'm like...
Oh, God.
The fact that...
Oh...
Somebody who must have been a Democrat tweeted in that Elon Musk, he has all this money, he should hire a professional to write his tweets for him.
And I thought to myself, I don't know any professional who could write a tweet this well, except for Trump, but I don't think he's for hire.
This is like the best set of tweets I've ever seen.
I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you can do better than this.
You can't do better than this.
This is peak tweeting right here.
He's the richest man in the world, the number one best marketer of all time, and damn it, he can tweet better than everybody.
It's probably not a coincidence.
He might be smart or something.
Rumor has it. Anyway, I don't know.
This could not be more...
I've never seen a more complete takedown of a politician.
He basically ended her.
Seriously, this is Bush-level takedown, you know, with Trump taking out Jeb Bush.
This is just wonderful.
And then later he followed it up.
I didn't copy that tweet, but he noted that in all likelihood that Elon Musk will pay more taxes this year than any human has ever paid.
LAUGHTER This year, at least in the United States.
He's going to pay more taxes just this year than any human has ever paid.
Now, I assume that's related to his selling his stock, because he agreed that he would sell 10% of his stock or something in that range.
So that creates an enormous, I think something like, I don't know, what, a $3 or $4 billion tax bill?
Does anybody know what his taxes would look like?
Just based on what stock he sold.
Somewhere in that range, right?
A few billion. So when you go to pay your taxes, just realize that he's paying a few billion.
Yeah, it would be capital gains, so it would probably be 25% of whatever he sells, 2.5 billion maybe.
Something in that range.
Anyway, that was fun.
So the January 6th committee, they have so much nothing that they're trying to turn nothing into something.
So yesterday, I kept reading the headlines.
They were trying to make something out of the nothing that, I guess, three Fox News hosts had texted Mark Meadows on January 6th and asked him to ask the president to call off the protests.
But the way that the stories were written, it was as if they'd found a bombshell.
As if this was a big breaking story.
If they finally found the smoking gun.
What? There's literally nothing there.
What are we supposed to take from it?
That some Fox News hosts knew how to text Mark Meadows?
No surprise there, right?
Are we supposed to take from it...
That Hannity and Laura Ingram were in on the plot?
Because their texts say the opposite.
It's pretty clear from the text that nobody at Fox News had been aware that there was some kind of an insurrection planned.
Now let me ask you this.
So most of my viewers are, you know, you lean at least a little bit right.
And this is one of those blind spots on the left.
Let me ask you this. If there had been an actual planned, at any level, insurrection, in which Trump was part of the planning, which would mean some constellation of AIDS were part of the planning, do you think that Hannity would not know that?
Right? Seriously.
If you know anything about the world...
Or certainly anything about the conservative ecosystem.
You know, who knows who's connected to who.
Tell me the odds that Hannity and Laura Ingraham would be unaware of an insurrection plot, if there was an insurrection plot.
I mean, seriously.
Hannity? Hannity would talk to the president like every day.
Do you think the president would have even attempted...
Wait for it. Do you think Trump, given who he is, his knowledge of the media, how things work, do you think that Trump would have planned an actual insurrection without talking to Hannity to find out how Hannity would handle it?
Nope. Because there's no way an insurrection works if Fox News doesn't go along with it, right?
Am I right? Everybody on the right knows that.
The president knows that.
If Fox News just turned hard against the president, let's say there was an insurrection, Fox would have turned on him, and the whole thing would fall apart.
The right would turn on him, just not Fox, but the whole right would turn on him.
And you don't think that the president was smart enough to check that out first?
Say, hey, Sean...
I'm just noodling with this idea.
How would you take it if I did that?
Now, if Hannity said, I'm all in, let's overthrow the Constitution, well, that would be a different story, but obviously the opposite happened.
He was not in on anything, and as soon as he saw something developing, he panicked.
Not panicked. I hate when people say that about anybody.
He immediately acted.
No panic. He acted.
As he should. As a patriot.
As a citizen. And he did what he could do to try to make it stop.
Here's what the story should have been.
Fox News hosts highly responsible patriots act immediately to stop trouble.
Now, they were saying things like, it looks bad for our side, and that was obvious.
But still, they acted as patriots.
Am I wrong? I mean, you could dislike...
Then for whatever opinions you disagree with, blah, blah, blah.
But in this instance, the Fox News hosts were just pure patriots, in my opinion.
I think they just said they saw trouble and they tried to stop it.
So that's the story.
And somehow the news was trying to present it like there was some big breaking thing that was negative for the right.
It was really exactly the opposite.
It was very complementary to the right within this context.
And it was self-preservation.
Of course it was self-preservation.
But what is the situation in which a patriot is preserving themselves and it's not the same as the country?
I mean, the country's interests and their own were matched.
So, you know, if you say it's self-interest, that's true.
But do you think they wanted a riot at the Capitol?
I don't think they wanted that either.
You can want two things.
It's okay to want two things.
All right. So this whole ivermectin thing won't go away.
And here's just a couple of things that people said about it.
Anatoly Lubarsky was pointing out that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin both were widely used in Peru since the beginning of the pandemic.
He said this in a tweet.
And then he showed some data that says now Peru is leading the world in deaths per million and excess deaths.
So I had asked, is there any country that just went wild with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine and got a good result?
Well, we know there's one that used it heavily and got a bad result.
Doesn't mean because of it.
We could have also bad information or something.
And then another doctor was pointing out that, and I only heard this yesterday, but it sounds about right, There's some trials showing at least ivermectin's positive effects for COVID were either frauds, so we do know that some of the ivermectin studies were frauds, not all of them, but apparently some of the biggest benefit ones were frauds, and that skews the rest of them.
If you're doing a meta-analysis, it skews the average.
But also, it turns out that some of the benefits of ivermectin could be explained by co-infection with worms.
In other words, it's a bad deal to have worms in you at the same time you get infected with COVID because you got a double whammy.
So it makes perfect sense that if you treated the worms with ivermectin, And that made a difference, that that would seem to have an effect on the COVID recovery because you go from two big problems to one.
So that could be blinding us to the actual effects of ivermectin on COVID. Now, I know that you don't believe this.
You have somebody saying Japan, lowest case in the world.
Do you know that there's no bad cases in any Asian country?
Can somebody confirm that?
Can I get a confirmation? There's no bad case in any Asian country.
So if you're looking at any Western country, I'm not going to count India, so I'm going to count...
I'm going to count...
Yeah, India is part of the region.
But of, let's say, of Asiatic people, where they have a...
Let's say... What's the best thing?
Ethnically Asian, because that would not be the case for Indians, right?
And part of the speculation is, and by the way, India would be a counterexample to this.
Some of the speculation is there might have been some prior infection that was more Asian-centric, and so a lot of people have some prior infection in a related cousin coronavirus that gives them some protection.
So that's one possible.
Because a lot of the Asian countries are handling it differently.
And if they're handling it differently and all getting a pretty good result...
There must be something else going on, right?
But Japan is not a story of ivermectin.
That's just not true.
As far as I know, I could be wrong.
But here's my take on it.
So would you agree with me that no matter how many smart people...
No matter how many smart people are telling me that ivermectin works, I can't say for sure it doesn't.
Would you say that's fair?
If I were to tell you I am positive this doesn't work, I think you could call me an idiot and that should stick.
Fair? If I were to tell you that definitely doesn't work, I think you could call me an idiot for being certain.
Just for being certain. But suppose I told you this.
See if this is fair.
The longer we go without a confirmation, the kind that even the top experts say, oh yeah, that's confirmation.
The longer we go without that confirmation, the less likely there's something there.
That's just my general feeling about it.
Same with hydroxychloroquine.
We've gone long enough now that if something was there, I would be super, super surprised.
Not 100%.
I'm not even 100% on hydroxychloroquine, and I think that's been more disproved than just about anything by time.
So here's my take on this.
There's the belief, the people following Dr.
McCullough especially, that there might have been some early treatments that the big medicine machine kind of used some fake news and Some shenanigans to make us think that the alternatives to vaccinations don't work.
Okay? So do you believe that big medicine, whatever that means, or the big medicine machine, which might include, you know, I don't know, the news and the government somewhat, do you think that the big medicine machine suppressed ivermectin just because they didn't want competition?
Okay? Maybe.
Here's my take on it.
I don't think that's the case, but let me get on your side for a moment, if I may.
If it ever came out, if it ever came out that anybody in a professional field intentionally, and the key word here is intentionally, with data, if it ever came out that somebody intentionally killed a treatment person, That we knew to work or had a high likelihood to work, I would say that's got to be the death sentence.
I think that we have to treat big pharma misdeeds as mass murder, if it's done intentionally.
If it's negligence, that's something else.
But if we could ever show that somebody knew...
They were doing something to manipulate public opinion, or even medical opinion, or government opinion.
If we could confirm that somebody did that in a way that was just to make money, and we knew that it cost people their lives, what's the penalty for that?
It should be death.
Does anybody disagree?
Because it should be about the same as terrorism.
And I think that should be a death sentence.
Because it's mass murder and it's intentional under the hypothetical, right?
Now, let me tell you that I don't have any information anything like that has ever happened.
Here's what I think does happen.
Now, here's a view of the world that I suspect is annoyingly accurate, which is that people only know what they decide they want to know, right?
Right? So let's say you were a vaccine executive, and you were trying to make billions of dollars, a trillion dollars on vaccines.
And somebody came to you and said, well, what are we saying about ivermectin?
There's all these meta-studies that show that it works, and a lot of serious people say it works.
Yeah, OxyContin's a good cautionary tale, you're right.
So what's the more likely thing that an executive of a drug company would say?
Well, if it were me and I were a weasel, I'd say, don't show me any ivermectin data, ever.
Until somebody official says it's proven and it works, which hasn't happened, I'm going to say it's not proven and it doesn't work, so we better get these vaccinations.
Now, is that a crime?
Because they're just willfully keeping themselves away from a certain kind of information because they feel that they have enough.
Not exactly.
So I think that you can get a situation where a lot of people would be making choices that coincidentally are good for their financial futures and may be bad for the world.
I'm just going to say that I don't think if you look like you're going to make billions of dollars from vaccinations, you're not going to dig too hard to find an alternative to it.
And you're not going to say anything good about it.
And if you're talking to a politician, you're going to say, look, vaccines will probably work, because that's who you work for.
But ivermectin, that's not your product.
So you say, you know, a lot of people are warning against it.
A lot of people are calling it horse medicine.
You could just talk it down without saying anything untrue.
My suspicion is that the, you know, big medicine machine did try to kill these things, these competing things, but that they also thought they probably didn't work.
So I can't take the side that says they knew they worked and they tried to suppress them anyway.
I haven't seen anything like that.
Or the one that says they definitely don't work, blah, blah.
Because I don't know. So I'm on the side that says probably the people who were trying to suppress it suspected it might have worked, but they were using the fact that it wasn't proven to further their financial gain.
Which is not illegal.
I don't think it's illegal.
It's more like marketing, unfortunately.
Now, there's also the belief, which I see a lot, that the real reason that the cheaper alternatives to vaccinations were not pursued is that if they existed, the vaccines could not get their emergency authorization.
How many of you believe that that's true?
Do you believe it's true that alternatives were suppressed because the medical community wanted vaccinations to be the thing?
Here's a perfectly good study.
No, there's no such thing as a perfectly good study.
Spectre? Yeah, showing me a study on ivermectin isn't going to have any impact on me.
Because the studies we know are so often fraudulent, I just wouldn't know what I'm looking at.
Wouldn't know if it was a good study or not.
All right, so here's my take on the belief that we couldn't get an emergency authorization for vaccines if we found that there was an alternative.
Who do you think was making that decision?
Do you think the Trump administration was presented with this alternative?
Hey, Mr. Trump, we could not only get vaccinations...
But we could be treating the heck out of this with these therapeutics until the vaccinations get there.
And the only problem is if they work, we can't get the emergency authorization.
Mr. President Trump, so what do we do?
Does Trump say, oh, damn, I guess we'll have to suppress all those excellent treatments to wait for the vaccination?
Do you imagine that's how that conversation went?
Do you think that Trump was presented with the choice of totally good therapeutics and that he said, no, don't push those because then the emergency authorization won't work?
Does that sound like something Trump would do?
Have you ever fucking met Trump?
No. No.
Now, hold on.
Whoever's... I'm going to get rid of you for being an asshole.
Top naivety today.
See, that's the kind of comment that you're either new to me or you're just an asshole.
All right. I believe it is impossible, literally impossible to imagine...
That President Trump would say, oh, there's nothing I could do when he's handing out executive orders like candy.
In the middle of the pandemic, Trump would have said, and I can't read minds, but I'm pretty confident about this one, because anybody would have done this.
Literally anybody would have said, wait a minute, the only thing that's keeping this from not happening is that there's some rule that Oh, give me an executive order.
We'll get rid of that by this afternoon.
Now, suppose it wasn't Trump himself.
Suppose Trump never heard that proposition, but rather members of staff heard it.
Was there a member of the staff who said, well, I could take this idea to the president and it would solve the pandemic, but I don't think I want to because I want those vaccinations.
Do you think that happened?
Now, so the part of the story that's clearly missing is the part where somebody in the administration actually made that decision.
Nobody would make that decision.
The pharma companies might make that decision, but they're not in the government.
You're telling me that Trump and his whole administration were all bribed by big pharma?
To ignore the other treatments when obviously the other treatments would have made Trump president for a second term?
You're telling me Trump would give up a second term just so the vaccinations would be the only thing?
It's not good for Trump.
Wouldn't be good for anybody on his team.
So you'd have to assume that Trump and his entire team acted against their own interests for that theory to make sense.
And layers of censorship and threats of losing one's life?
No, because every citizen knew about this trade-off.
It's not reasonable to assume that his staff working on this issue weren't also aware of the rumors, at least, that the emergency authorization was holding things up.
They would have known that.
We all knew it. If the public knew it, they obviously knew it.
Deep stayed in bed with pharma?
Doesn't work that way.
It doesn't work that way. If you're an underling, you might take a bribe or be influenced by Big Pharma.
If there's something that doesn't matter to your political future, Even if you're a top politician, well, you might be influenced by Big Pharma.
But if there's a direct choice between getting re-elected or doing what Big Pharma wants, you tell me that Trump chose to do what Big Pharma wanted instead of getting re-elected for a second term?
In no world did that happen.
In no world did that happen.
Trump is as close as you can get to incorruptible on a question limited to that.
Any other question, you're on your own.
But on the very limited question of did he want to get re-elected?
No, there wasn't any bribe that was big enough.
There's no bribe big enough that would have kept him from wanting to get re-elected.
I feel very confident about that.
Can't read minds. Could be surprised.
Nothing's 100%.
But really...
If you believe the emergency authorization held things up, you've got a lot of assumptions that you need to wrap around that to hold it together.
I just don't see how it can be done.
But I could be wrong.
There could be some twist to this that I don't see.
Could be wrong. All right.
But I do think if we find anybody in Big Pharma who is doing that sort of thing, the death sentence is not too strong.
It should be the death sentence.
And by the way, we should put that out there.
It should be actually... I think we should put it into law.
We should say that if Big Pharma hides information that causes mass casualties, that that should be a death sentence.
Because you need to put that fear into them.
Because, you know, I think a career criminal might not care about the death sentence.
But if you're an executive and you're just doing stuff for money, you might care about the death sentence.
You might care about that a lot.
All right, so Omicron is outcompeting Delta, we hear today.
And that one death in Great Britain, or the UK, that we heard about, there was somebody who died with Omicron.
CNN has now converted dying with Omicron to dying of Omicron.
So it made that a subtle shift of dying with it that could have been a coincidence to dying of it.
I don't know that that was supported by the facts.
Could be. It could be that they have better information about what that one patient experienced.
But I doubt it. I doubt it.
All right. And we are still being told that even if Omicron is mild, we should not get too complacent because the sheer volume of this mildness might crash the hospitals.
Wait. Wait, what?
We should not be complacent, even if it's mild, because there would be so much mildness, it would crash our healthcare.
Do you think somebody's trying to brainwash you into getting vaccinated?
Because this doesn't even make sense.
Here's how it would make sense if they were not trying to brainwash you.
There are a couple different ways this Omicron could go.
It could be the thing that solves all of our problems and turns out to be more of a vaccination than a virus.
Or, and this is a real possibility, we could be underestimating it and it could be a big problem.
Wouldn't that be fair? Did I say something that was unreasonable?
Given that we don't know, It could be a vaccination, and it could be more of a problem than we think.
But to say one person died of it, which probably we can't even confirm, and it's so mild there could be a lot of this mildness, isn't that exactly what we want?
Lots of mild virus.
What could be better than a super-fast, mild coronavirus that is vaccinating us from the Delta?
Because I think that's what it does.
Yeah, when you see the news treated this way, I mean, this is so not an objective look at the news.
All right. Talk about timing.
Who has the best timing in the world?
Well, sometimes me.
Sometimes me. Do you remember yesterday I was giving, I think it was yesterday, the day before I was giving you the best ofs for the year?
Was that yesterday? Yeah.
And I called out the most persuasive person was Michael Schellenberger.
And I said that he'd moved the needle on people's opinion about nuclear energy from half of the country being negative to literally everybody's on board now.
Basically, the entire country turned pro-nuclear at just about the time he was doing the most, I'll use this phrase, nuclear-powered persuasion on it.
I think he actually turned the boat.
But it gets better.
I mentioned, just as an aside, I said that he'd changed his focus recently to San Francisco.
He's got a book out called San Francisco, which is doing really well.
You should read it. And he's going after San Francisco, in particular, their management of the homelessness and the drugs and the crime.
And he had a bunch of real-world solutions, so it wasn't just complaining.
It was saying, other places have done these things, these things work, the things they're doing don't work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he was really pounding it hard.
I mean, really talking to the right people, tweeting, writing articles that were just pure fire, and showing data to back everything up.
I mean, just really persuasive stuff.
Yesterday... San Francisco Mayor London Breed just gave a press release, and she has announced a major crackdown on crime, including open-air drug dealing, which was Michael Schellenberger's, one of his biggest focuses, car break-ins and retail theft.
And as Michael points out in his own tweet about it, he says, the plan contains much of what I and my colleagues at California Peace have been advocating.
Damn! He actually got this done.
What? What?
He actually got this done.
So London Breed went on further, the mayor of San Francisco, and says, we need to change course in how we handle public safety in San Francisco.
We can't be a place where anything goes on the street.
Today I am announcing a series of new steps to address public safety in our city.
Boom. Boom.
I called that yesterday.
I called that yesterday.
Now, Bradley says it was an accident.
It wasn't. It wasn't.
I can tell you that Michael Schellenberger had burrowed deeply into all of the heads of the decision-makers because he does have that skill.
Well, Merry Christmas.
At the Venice Beach Dub Club.
Even though you don't agree with me.
Merry Christmas to you. And Merry Christmas to everybody who doesn't agree with me.
Speaking of agreeing with me, I ran this obnoxious poll.
Possibly the most obnoxious thing I've ever done.
And I've done a lot of obnoxious things.
This is the most obnoxious thing I've done recently.
This week. I ran a poll and it said this.
If you saw me, specifically me, disagreeing with the top expert in a field in which I have no experience, but I'm only disagreeing on one specific point within the field, who would you bet on if you didn't know anything else about the topic?
So no fair saying, I need to know more about the topic.
You have to bet whose side you're on without knowing anything else.
Ed, why would you bet on the expert, or why would you bet on me?
I see expert.
I see some people agree with me.
And I'm seeing on locals, they're saying my history of prediction.
All right, here's the answer.
You should bet on me.
Right? And I realize how...
Dr. Robert Johnson is saying, bet on Scott.
All right, here's the reason why the answer is me.
Number one, and here's the trick part of the question.
The important part of the question is I'm disagreeing on one specific point.
If I looked at everything the expert said, I'm not questioning it.
So the only situation in which there would ever be a disagreement between me and an expert who is a top expert in the field, the only time I would ever disagree is if I saw one little thing where my special skills of bullshit detection could just see it clearly.
So in other words, I wouldn't take a shot unless I knew I could hit it.
See what I'm saying? If you've watched my track record, you know that I don't take on every topic because I think, well, I don't know, what do I have to add to that?
Well, if the experts say so, eh.
I mean, 99% of every topic, I go with the experts.
1% of the time, or something small, I say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I have a little insight on that specific thing, just that one point, and I know that's a lie.
Let me give you an example. When Dr.
Fauci initially said, don't wear masks, they won't help...
Now, forget about the argument of whether masks help, okay?
I'm just telling you I can call that a lie.
I am the only person in the United States, a public figure, who said loudly and clearly, that's a lie.
I detect that.
Now, am I an expert on masks?
No. No.
No. Does Fauci know way more than I do about infectious diseases?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can criticize him all day long about whatever, but he's definitely a top expert in the field.
Now, who was right? Turns out that I accurately called out his lie.
Number two, when we first heard that Wuhan was having a problem...
Who was one of the two first public figures?
I think Jack Posobiec was on this fast.
Who was one of the top people who said, nope, you're wrong.
All you experts are wrong.
Close those borders. Close the borders.
I did. I was literally cursing the storm and screaming at my screen for Trump to close the border.
A week later, he closed the border.
What do the experts say now?
Should have done it sooner or more completely.
Might have made a difference.
Might have saved 100,000 lives.
May have saved 100,000 lives when we did it.
I mean, it could have been worse. So, if you see me disagreeing with Dr.
McCullough, who is, as somebody pointed out, one of the most cited people in the field, a top expert...
But I'm only picking out one thing.
I haven't done that, by the way.
By the way, I haven't found anything I disagreed with.
Only because I don't know everything he says.
But if I did that, who should you bet on?
Me. And it has to do with the fact that I would select the one special area that I could see quite clearly there was a problem.
Now, does this make me magic?
Nope. Let me give you an example.
If an experienced police officer told you that somebody was lying, but you weren't sure, who would you believe?
Well, I'd believe the police officer.
Because even though I feel pretty good about my lie detection skills, I wouldn't put it up against a 25-year police professional who only sees lies all day.
I mean, if you've been a cop for 25 years and you can't detect a perp who's lying to you with, you know, 80-90% accuracy, then you haven't been doing your job.
So you have to look at what the specific thing is and the specific question.
But I wouldn't take a shot at a top expert unless I knew I had the shot.
So that's what's different about me.
I have a track record where you can see that.
If it was just some random smart person, you wouldn't know.
There wouldn't be a track record to look at.
Okay. Surprisingly, in the poll, at least last time I checked, I was slightly ahead of the experts.
Because I think many of you were clever enough to know that when I added the one specific point part, that that gave me an advantage.
That's not representative of my knowledge.
Yeah, don't take the shot unless you know you can make it.
That's similar to a trial lawyer.
You're never supposed to ask a question if you don't already know the answer.
So it's sort of like that.
Yeah, low-hanging fruit. Yeah, that's another way to put it.
Low-hanging fruit. All right, those were my prepared remarks.
I told the people on Locals I'd take some questions.
I haven't watched Rogan McCullough, and I have a challenge for you, because Joe Rogan interviewed Dr.
McCullough. Now, here's my challenge to you.
Summarize, if you can, in one sentence.
Ideally one sentence, but I won't hold you to it.
Summarize for me, and then tweet it at me, or put it in the comments, one claim that he makes that you think I would disagree with.
Because I haven't heard anything I disagreed with yet.
I've only heard people talking about it yet.
So I want to hear something that you think I would disagree with.
Uh... The mask thing was possibly a plot to make people believe.
Oh, I don't know about that.
Okay. All right.
No asymptomatic spread.
I don't know what that means.
Oh, is he saying that it doesn't spread asymptomatically?
That sounds like word thinking to me.
That just means somebody's not aware that they have it.
I'm not sure that there's anything there I would disagree with.
That you can't catch COVID twice.
I believe the science says that at least one person has caught COVID twice, but it's rare.
So don't we agree on that?
That's the same thing he would say, right?
He says you can't get COVID twice.
I agree with that, with the exception that I know there were a few people...
Who got it twice, but I think they were immunocompromised, so it doesn't mean anything.
So in terms of the larger picture, I completely agree with him.
Okay.
I'm not sure if these are his thoughts or your thoughts.
Somebody says, no, there are many that got it twice.
I'm not aware of that.
Will I please about the interview?
Maybe. I don't think that got lost.
Can't catch the same variant twice.
I don't really have an opinion on that, so there's nothing I would disagree with.
He said hydroxychloroquine is effective.
He did? Or did he say it might be?
I'll bet he didn't say that.
I'll bet he said it might be, so that it was a good risk management.
So you're saying that he's the...
So he alone is saying that hydroxychloroquine works.
What about ivermectin?
Does he say that works? He said it worked for his patients.
Oh! That's it.
Can somebody confirm this?
I hope he didn't say this.
Are you telling me that Dr.
McCullough thinks hydroxychloroquine works because it worked for his patients?
Did that actually happen?
That didn't happen, did it? Please tell me that's not true.
Okay, I'm seeing somebody say it's not true.
No, that's not.
Okay, that didn't sound like it.
So I think here's the problem.
I'm not sure if anybody understands him well enough...
To tell me something that he said that I would disagree with.
I don't believe you on the hydroxychloroquine part.
I think you're not accurate on that.
He said hydroxychloroquine is 64% effective when used early.
Now, what's my opinion on that?
My opinion is...
That if it were effective, we would know about it.
By now. Everybody agrees with early treatment, but he's talking about a specific way to treat it.
Which is exactly why you should just watch the interview.
Well, I will watch the interview, but what I'm telling you is I'm fascinated by the fact that everybody thinks he's saying great things, and you can't describe them.
Even in layperson's terms.
Your advice to me is terrible, by the way.
So your advice is that if I watch it, I'll be convinced.
Can somebody here tell me what I always say about that?
Do you believe that if I watched Dr.
McCullough, I would be convinced that he sounds credible?
How many of you think I would be convinced?
Would I be convinced if I listened to him?
Well, I'll give you two answers.
My rational brain would say I should not be convinced because I'm not hearing the other side.
Anytime you're hearing one expert talking to a non-expert, you are being misled because you don't hear the other side.
But I also might just disagree on sort of a general statement because he's a rogue doctor.
The elephant in the room, COVID is dangerous but not at the border.
Why, Scott? Are you really confused about that?
I feel like that's just one of those political things people say.
Like, they act confused.
Like, why, if COVID is so bad, why are we opening the borders?
Is there anybody who's legitimately confused about that?
I know it's one of those things people say to make a political point, but is there anybody who actually doesn't understand it?
You actually don't understand it.
Thank you.
It's because they value the well-being of the immigrants over the well-being of the citizens.
What else would it be?
Why is there any mystery of this at all?
It's very direct.
If they valued the citizens' health over the well-being of the immigrants, it would be the opposite.
They'd just stop them from coming in But that's a decision.
It's a decision to rank the well-being of the immigrants higher than the risk to the country.
What is the mystery about that?
Where do you see the mystery?
Why is that confusing?
Now, if you say you would have chosen differently, I get that.
But it's not confusing.
You act like it's a mystery or something.
It's very direct.
Now, could I support their opinion?
Yeah, I could. Here's the argument for it.
It's not my argument. I'm America first, so this is not my argument.
But I'll show you that there is an argument for it.
It goes like this. People are people.
One life is one life.
The people coming across the border are in a desperate situation.
We try to keep them someplace for two weeks.
There's probably some mitigation that we don't know about.
Maybe not. But all things considered, we'd rather help these people in desperate situations than we would protect a few extra hundred thousand Americans.
That's the argument. The argument is it's bad for everybody, but it's worse bad for them, so that's where empathy goes.
You could argue that it's being done poorly.
That's a separate argument. Yes, you can get COVID over and over if your immune system is depressed.
That's right. Not desperate.
Yes, you are right.
I live in California, so I do have an insight into how many of the people coming are just for economic reasons and how many are desperately in trouble and just claiming that they're at risk.
And the answer is, it's for economic reasons.
But everybody knows that, right?
There's nobody confused about that.
It is for economic reasons.
Oh, interesting. Somebody's wife works with adults with special needs, and a number of them have contracted COVID twice.
Interesting. All right.
What are your thoughts on Dave Rubin leaving California?
I don't know. Do you need my opinion on that?
Isn't that between Dave and California?
Why does my opinion have anything to do with anything?
It certainly makes sense.
I mean, I'll just say the obvious thing, which is he's going from a less free state to a more free state, but You know, he also has to deal with the humidity.
If he can handle the humidity, then it was an excellent move.
I don't think I can handle the humidity, so I'm not sure it's an option for me.
Texas, maybe. All right.
Please ask locals if anyone has been able to play back the interview tips.
Well, they should also exist on YouTube.
So if you know which day I did that, go to the YouTube version and that will play for you.
Why do you continue to support California with your tax dollars?
Well, not paying taxes is a bad idea.
So the real question is why do I stay in California?
And the answer is, it's hard to move, and I haven't found someplace better.
Now, there are lots of places that are better in certain ways, but I haven't found a place that's better in all the ways that I needed to be better.
So I would. I mean, nothing would stop me if I could solve all my connections, but I can't.
All right, um...
It's sort of a network effect for you techie nerds.
So California is sort of a network effect.
You get embedded in every way.
It's just so hard.
The two-state solution would be the ultimate, but I can't have two houses.
I'm a one-house, one-car guy.
As soon as you add a second car or a second house, which I've done...
The complications just go...
It just becomes incredible.
So I need simplicity.
So one car, one house.
Ignorance is no defense.
Ignorance of what? I don't even know what you're talking about.
All right. Yeah, imagine all the water leaks.
I've had something like 12 major water leaks and none of them are related to any construction problem or material use.
They're just all coincidences.
They're just all unrelated.
Scottsdale, Arizona.
I don't like deserts.
Deserts make me feel creepy.
I've never liked being in any kind of...
Desert escape. I just feel exposed.
Here's what it is. I don't want to die because I went outdoors.
That's one of my biggest reasons for living in California, is that where I live, I could go outdoors for two hours, any time, and not die.
It could be the coldest day in the winter, but it's still going to be in the 40s.
I could go out without a coat for two hours.
I'd be very unhappy, but totally alive.
Totally alive. Very unhappy.
But I wouldn't die.
And there are tons of places where you just couldn't go outside.
If it's winter, I almost died in the snow once.
That's a long story. When will the jackhammering end?
I think never. It feels like.
Will drought kill California?
We've had, I think historically, there have been worse ones.
But it could. You said yesterday that you don't fear death.
I don't fear it. I avoid it.
Isn't that different? I don't want to go outdoors where death is a possibility.
It's not because I'm afraid of it.
It's because dying is not on my wish list.
California has banned gas-powered engines starting in 2024.
That doesn't sound right.
Are the desalinization plants going?
I don't think there are any. Dude, you don't go outside.
Oh, you'd be surprised.
I'll watch the McCullough playback today.
I guess I have to go to Spotify for that, right?
That's a Spotify thing.
It's just a small engine band in California.
That sounds more right. Oh, and generators.
That's right, gas generators.
Oh, leaf blowers.
I don't know.
Are the electric ones any better?
All right. No gas generators.
Interesting. But that's gasoline, right?
That's not gas as in the gas that runs your stove.
Does Christina ever talk about going to space?
She would go in a heartbeat. Yeah, she actually said she would go to Mars.
She likes that stuff.
All right, that's all for now.
And I would like to take my leave now and do some other things.
I think you'll agree this is the best thing you've ever done in your life.
I'm going to turn it off before I see any disagreements.
