Episode 1606 Scott Adams: How Trump Can Win in 2024 With High Ground Persuasion Persuasion
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Greta Thunberg on Biden's climate leadership
Burden of proof for election systems
Burden of proof for J6 defendants
A High Ground Maneuver for President Trump
Brilliant statistics insight, XKCD comic
Omicron is a vaccination against Delta
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole damn life.
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Some of you are going to miss it.
Oh, I pity you. I pity you.
Go! Move computer.
That feels like good advice.
Computer moved. That's called responsive to the audience.
A lot of podcasters, they don't do that.
They don't do that at all.
Alright, well, today actually will be the most exciting and awesome live stream that you have ever seen in your whole damn life.
I'm going to teach you a technique, which I mention often, but the more examples you see, the better you'll be able to do it in your own life.
It's called the High Ground Maneuver.
It's the most powerful persuasion technique.
So powerful, I've never seen it not work.
Now, when I've used it in person, I can't tell if other people use it successfully, but it kind of works every time.
And there's nothing like that in persuasion, except maybe fear.
If you ramp up to fear enough, you can make anything happen.
But for a non-fear persuasion, The high ground technique just beats everything, every time.
And almost instantly, you don't even have to wait.
It's not like the simultaneous sip, where it's a small thing that accumulates over time.
That's one way to persuade.
The high ground maneuver instantly flips people to your point of view.
And I'm going to give you some examples as we go.
But first, some fun stories.
Rasmussen has a new poll, says Biden's handling of crime and law enforcement issues.
51% say he's doing a poor job on crime and law enforcement.
How would you like to run against any Republican when you're underwater on crime and law enforcement?
Kind of tough, isn't it?
Yeah. And I was actually surprised that it's only 51%.
Somebody just said in the comments.
Rasmussen also polled people on Biden's handling of immigration.
54% say he's doing a poor job on immigration.
Again, tough to run against a Republican, any Republican, with these kinds of numbers.
I don't know if you saw this next story, but there's something going to happen.
Something's coming, according to Rose McGowan.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, she started the Me Too movement, right?
Am I right about that?
I think I am, right? And she just tweeted this.
I'm going to read you the tweet.
I'm going to read you the tweet.
And unfortunately, there's nothing you can say about it.
The tweet just will sit there as its own story.
There's nothing I can add to it.
Are you ready? This is from Rose McGowan.
I think it was this morning or last night.
Hillary Clinton, you are a shadow leader in service of evil.
You are the enemy of what is good, right, and moral.
You represent no flag, no country, no soul.
You eat hope.
You twist minds.
I've been in a hotel room with your husband, and here comes the bomb.
End of tweet. Oh, my God!
Oh, my God! Is Rose McGowan good at writing and capturing her imagination?
I'm just going to read this again, but only for the writing, okay?
So, you know, the issue itself is just red meat.
Let's bring it on. Let's find out what you know.
But just listen to the writing, okay?
Hillary Clinton, you're a shadow leader in service of evil.
You are the enemy of what is good, right, and moral.
You represent no flag, no country, no soul.
You eat hope.
You twist minds.
I've been in a hotel room with your husband, and here comes the bomb.
I don't know if anybody's ever written a better tweet than that.
Do you? That is such good writing.
Ouch! I mean, it's good writing in the context of a tweet, right?
It doesn't mean you want to read a novel that goes like this.
Man, holy, holy, holy hell!
Is Rose McGowan as smart as she looks?
Somebody do a little background check on her.
Is Rose McGowan actually very high IQ? Does she have some qualifications?
Because this writing just screams high IQ. That's an old tweet?
How old is the tweet?
Because it's being reported today.
Oh, September isn't that far away.
So sort of old September, somebody says.
Okay. Interesting.
I wonder why people were talking about it today.
Anyway, well, that ruins it all.
That makes everything less fun.
Why was it in the news today?
You know, one of the mistakes I make a lot is not checking the date on stuff.
Have you ever had that problem?
Scott Mega Boomer today.
All right. So Democrats, as you know, consider climate change their biggest priority, biggest issue in the world is climate change.
And if you were a Democrat and you thought it was your biggest issue in the world, who would you choose as your leaders to deal with the biggest issue in the world?
Well... Apparently two of the leaders in this movement are Joe Biden, of course, and then Greta Thunberg.
And Greta just dumped on Joe Biden, and she said she insulted his leadership on climate.
And I thought to myself, all right, so you've got two people who are identified as the main leaders on climate, the president who happens to be a Democrat and...
And Greta, what do these two have in common?
Well, at Joe Biden's age, I think it's fair to say that his brain has passed its sell-by date.
Fair to say? Would you say that Biden's brain is degraded?
By age, mostly.
Fair to say. Greta, will somebody give me an update?
What's her age? What is Greta's age?
21 or something?
Is she only 18?
Oh, she's only 18, 19.
Well, so she's 18, 19, right?
And your brain develops fully by the time you are...
fill in the blank.
Your brain is considered fully developed when you are 25, right?
25 years old. So the two leaders on the biggest issue for the Democrats are a man with a brain that is well past its expiration date and a young woman with a brain that has not reached...
Maturity, according to science.
So the party of science is using as their leaders to fight the biggest scientific challenge, according to them, by picking the people that science says don't have the capability to do this kind of work.
Did I make up anything?
Is there anything in this story that I just made up?
No. There's no question that Greta's brain is not developed, and I don't think there's really any question that Biden's at an age where things slow down.
I mean, Dr. Drew was saying last night that even at his age, and his age is, you know, he's a little younger than I am, but we're pretty close, but I can feel it.
Like, if I were to run for president, I ask myself, oh, you know, is age going to have an effect on that?
And I think it might. My capability is much greater than it's ever been, but definitely age is starting to have an effect.
When I was younger, I would have checked the date on that Rose McGowan story.
All right. Here's the big payoff for today's show.
I'm going to give you a reframe that you're going to love.
By the way, should I write a book on reframing?
Just how to reframe everything?
I've seen a lot of yeses for that.
I worry that it would be too repetitive of things I've done or written before in various books.
But there's something about the idea of reframing how you see things that by itself is very powerful.
It filters and frames.
Well, I'm saying nothing but yeses here.
I'm going to talk to my publishing people in January and see if that makes sense.
I really hate writing books.
If I write another book again, it's going to be for you.
It's not going to be for me.
Because I really don't like that kind of work.
It's like three years of your life that you can't get back.
I mean, writing books is exactly as hard as it looks.
Right? Right? It feels like sometimes it's easy because an author will come out with one every year and you don't see them working.
You know, they work privately.
So it looks like it's probably easier than it is.
But let me tell you, writing a book is as hard as it looks.
It's really, really hard.
But I might write one for you because I do think that the topic is just so, so useful.
It's just so useful I'm not sure that I can not write it.
You know what I mean? You almost have a moral obligation at some point.
So I'm starting to feel that pull.
And I wish I didn't.
All right, here's the big reframe.
When it comes to a citizen of the United States, and let's say that citizen is accused of a crime, do we accept the standard that that citizen is innocent until proven guilty?
How many would say that's a good standard?
Anybody? Anybody? Yes.
Not only do we universally accept that innocent until proven guilty is the best way to have a system, but we also accept as part of that, and I want you to confirm this, we accept as part of that that sometimes we'll get it wrong, meaning that a guilty person will go free, and that we take that explicitly as an acceptable trade-off.
And that we've all thought about it extensively, and we've come to the conclusion that because the government is big and powerful, and a citizen is not, it would be deeply, deeply unfair to have it any other way.
The citizen needs some advantage against the entity with all the resources.
And that is, you better damn well prove it, or else we're just going to treat you like you're innocent.
Everybody agrees with that standard, right?
It's one of the most basic pieces of code that runs in your head.
It's like a narrative that's like a piece of programming, and we all have it in the United States anyway.
All right, so here's the problem.
What happens when the citizens are judging the government?
So when the government is judging a citizen, innocent until proven guilty just has to be the standard.
We all agree. But what if it's the opposite?
What if the citizens, collectively or individually, are accusing the government of something?
Same standard?
Is the government innocent until proven guilty?
That's a terrible standard.
Let me give you some examples.
If you have an election system that can't be audited by design, meaning the electronic parts, you really can't get at them, If your election system, run by your government, by your government, if the citizens by some large number, and we're in this situation now, have questions about the fairness of the election, where is the burden of proof?
Is the burden of proof on the citizens to prove that the election was fraudulent?
I'm going to need a dispensation here.
I need to curse. Permission to curse?
Give you time to get your kids out of the room?
Permission to curse? I need permission.
Local says yes.
YouTube? Permission?
Okay, Josh says yes.
If your election system is not auditable, that burden of proof doesn't work.
If your election system can't be audited by design, the reasonable assumption is it's fraudulent.
That's a reasonable assumption.
The burden of proof is on the government to prove it's not.
See where I'm going on this?
Your government needs to prove the election was fair, not the other way around.
Every time your fucking asshole critics tell you that you didn't prove the election was fraudulent in court, fuck them.
They've got the wrong standard.
The election needs to prove it's fair to us.
We don't need to prove a fucking thing to the government.
The government needs to prove to us the election was fucking fair.
Have they done that, and can they do that?
No! They can't prove it.
They won't prove it. The assumption has to be that it was fraudulent.
Now, I don't know that that was true, because I lack any evidence that would prove it.
But the standard is backwards.
It's a backwards fucking standard.
The government needs to prove...
It's a fair fucking election.
And you haven't, you don't get the assumption of innocence.
You get the assumption of fucking guilt.
That's the assumption.
And that's the only system that can work.
Just as the only system that can work when the government is judging an individual is the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
If you're going the other direction, it's got to be opposite.
It's got to be opposite. You've got to fucking prove you're not screwing us.
You've got to prove it, and you haven't.
You want another one? A lot of you have been getting on me for being relatively quiet on the January 6th committee, and especially the people who are being held longer than we think makes sense.
I've looked at a number of the videos now, Of the event.
And having looked at the video, I have come to the following opinion.
I don't know if the FBI was complicit, or any other organization, some outside force, in promoting the violence.
I don't know that to be true.
But if you watch the video, it looks obviously true.
Has anybody watched all the videos of the unindicted co-conspirators, the Ray Epps and the people with the bullhorns and stuff?
Now, be careful.
Be very careful.
Have you ever seen video mislead you?
Yeah. Yeah.
A lot. In fact, video misleading you is the number one thing that makes our news.
Yeah, and the bad guys had matching megaphones, coincidentally, and all that.
So, here's my take.
I don't know, because I can't prove that the FBI or any other organization was behind organizing this thing, but the video makes it obvious that it is.
Like, if the videos are telling the true story, and that's a big if...
You shouldn't trust video in 2021.
That's a big if.
But remember, is it my burden to prove that this was a legit...
I won't call it legitimate.
Is it my burden to prove that it was just a bunch of MAGA supporters?
Or is it the government's burden to prove that the obvious evidence of FBI complicity is not what it looks like?
Again, same standard.
Don't tell me to fucking prove that they were not FBI agents.
Not my fucking job.
If you're the government, and it looks like you're doing something to me, you better prove you didn't.
You better fucking prove there wasn't any stuff there.
Now, of course, you have the problem that you can't prove a negative.
I saw that. Now, in many situations, you can't prove a negative.
But you can give us an interview with fucking Ray Epps.
Right? You can find those people on that video and tell us why they're not being investigated or charged.
You can do that.
Right? That's miles away from trying to prove a negative.
Just give us the information from the people on the fucking video.
How about that?
We should not be trying to prove that January 6th was an FBI operation.
With all of that video evidence, the government needs to prove it wasn't.
The burden of proof is just backwards.
Just backwards.
And we've been hypnotized into believing that the burden of proof is on us.
It's not.
It's not. The burden of proof is on the fucking government.
If they're doing something that looks sketchy as hell, they don't get to do that.
Right? Government doesn't get to be sketchy as hell.
It doesn't get to do things that half of the country says, that looks illegal to me.
It doesn't get to do that.
The people are in charge.
Flip your standard.
The government's going to need to prove that the crimes that are shown on video are not real crimes.
You're going to need to fucking prove why you've got these guys in jail for so long.
Has the government proven that they have a good reason to keep the people in jail for January 6th?
No, you haven't fucking proven that.
You better fucking prove it quickly, because our patience is about to run out.
And we don't want to have to call Dad, but you know we can, right?
I don't have to tell you who Dad is.
You know who Dad is.
Don't make us call Dad.
You want a nice, you know, maybe DeSantis presidency?
Maybe that's the best you can do if you're a Democrat.
You don't want Dad, do you?
But just keep fucking with us with this bullshit about we have to prove that your obvious crimes, or at least the inability to know if it's fair or not, don't put the burden of proof on us.
Government, you need to pretty much prove you're not screwing us because it sure looks like you are.
Sure looks like you are.
Anyway, how could...
Trump guarantee that he wins.
Let me tell you. Here's how Trump could, you know, there are no guarantees in this world, so a little bit of hyperbole here, I think you understand.
But close to proving that, or at least making the case that Trump could win for sure, let me tell you what messaging he could use to win for sure.
And this is where I'll teach you about the high ground.
What has Trump been saying so far about the 2020 election?
He's saying that it was rigged, and that he really won, and that he got cheated.
Is that the high ground?
Does that sound like a high ground position?
The election was unfair, I can't prove it, but I'm sure I got robbed.
No, it's a child's frame.
It's literally a child's frame.
That doesn't convince anybody.
Because children are not persuasive unless they're talking to their parents, I guess.
All right. Here's what he could say instead of that.
The system picked Joe Biden...
And you have to respect the system, but it is absolutely fair for citizens to demand that the election become transparent.
And if you elect me, I'm not going to complain about 2020 losing the election because, frankly, it's hard to tell.
I do strongly think it's a possibility, even a probability.
But we don't have the evidence because the system won't allow us to audit it.
So instead of complaining about the past, can we unify on this one question?
The system needs to be more transparent.
You need to be able to audit this thing right away because you don't want a repeat of 2020 and you don't want a repeat of January 6th.
See what I did there?
That's the high ground.
Who is going to complain about election transparency?
You can't. You can't complain about election transparency.
Who's going to complain about letting the past behind us?
Not the criminal activity.
You still have to prosecute criminals.
But who would complain with putting the past behind us and being productively focused on fixing the election transparency?
Nobody. Nobody would complain about that.
So that's the high ground.
If you say that in a meeting, let's leave the past behind, except for the criminal behavior, And focus on transparency of the elections for next time.
Nobody can complain.
You're done. How about...
Let's see.
I'll give you another one. How about vaccines?
So Trump has an issue with vaccines because he's pro-vaccines, but a lot of his base is not.
So they would feel that that's some kind of a, I don't know, incompatibility with them.
So at the moment, Trump is saying, you know, you should get a vaccine, and that's a problem.
But we're probably pretty close to being done with the pandemic.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
And certainly by 2024, I don't think we're going to be talking about the pandemic.
So I think Trump should handle it this way, just by saying, I liked shots, you didn't like shots, let's admit that we were all doing the best we could and guessing.
Let's just admit that nobody had all the information that they wanted about the long-term risks of the shot or the COVID, and that we were all guessing and doing the best that we could.
Can we accept that we all did the best we could and move on?
Let's not divide ourselves over vaccinations and not vaccinations, especially when it no longer matters, because I think we're pretty close to it no longer mattering.
So I think Trump can make that go away, the vaccine thing, by saying, you know, I don't know if I was right.
I don't know if I was right to promote vaccines.
But I'll tell you what, none of us had all the information we wanted, and you needed leadership.
Why you didn't need in a pandemic is somebody saying, I don't know what to do.
Is that what you wanted? That doesn't work.
You needed leadership, and we were all guessing.
I hope I guessed right.
I did my best.
How would you feel about that?
I mean, it's too wordy.
Yeah, you need the shorter version of that.
That's right. But the point is that I think Trump can just say, you know, nobody knew.
We all guessed. We did our best.
Let's accept that we all tried the hardest we could.
Because I think that's true.
So the high ground is we all did our best.
I don't think anybody put in less than a good effort.
Wouldn't you agree? If you're on the other side of this for me, whatever that looks like, I don't know.
If you're on the other side of this for me, I will accept that you did your best.
If you can do that with me.
And just move on.
We've got other things to fight about.
Alright. That's right, John.
This is the best so far, and I haven't even gotten to the best part.
I'm getting to the best part really soon.
I saw an XKCD comic.
If you've never seen XKCD, highly recommended.
They're stick figure comics, but they're very smart.
And this one was on Twitter.
Somebody tweeted it at me. And it was a statistics teacher teaching the class, and the teacher said, in panel one, if you don't control for confounding variables, they'll mask the real effect and mislead you.
Now, in other words, if you don't consider all the variables in something...
You're not going to get the right answer.
Makes sense, right? And then the teacher goes on and said, but if you control for too many variables, your choices will shape the data.
In other words, you'll be picking which variables to put in, which really makes it about you picking.
It's no longer about statistics.
But if you control for too many variables, your choices will shape the data, and you'll mislead yourself.
So you can't have too few variables, but you also can't have too many.
But here's the sweet spot, as the teacher goes on.
Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot where you do both, making you doubly wrong.
In other words, you have too many variables and not enough.
And then the punchline is, stats are a farce and truth is unknowable.
See you next week. Stats are a farce.
The truth is unknowable.
See you next week.
That's the only statistics lesson you'll ever need.
Yes, the truth is unknowable.
So, let me get to the good news.
And I'm going to paint the picture slowly so that we can enjoy it.
Alright? Savor this.
There won't be many times in history when you're in a moment just like this.
Now, I could be wrong, because, you know, I tend toward optimism.
I tend toward optimism.
But, man, am I optimistic right now.
My optimism needle is just going crazy.
Here's what we know. There's a study out of South Africa saying that the Omicron, if you're infected with it, it does give you protection against Delta.
So, in other words, the Omicron...
Is a vaccination. Now, hold on.
You're saying game over? Not yet.
Hold on. It gets better.
Biden talked to the governors yesterday.
Did anybody hear a readout of what happened with that?
For some reason, I didn't see that.
I guess I didn't look for it.
But, so you know Biden's talking to the governors, which makes me think that they're probably at least noodling with the question of when to end things.
Right? And the Centers for Disease, the CDC, shortened the recommended isolation time, you know, the quarantine time, if you have COVID symptoms from 10 days to 5 if you're asymptomatic.
Why would the CDC do that?
Why would they lower it from 10 days to 5?
Now, the reason was that you're only highly infectious for, you know, two or three days.
You think they didn't know that before?
Do you think they just figured that out?
I'll tell you what it feels like.
Have you noticed that there are not enough tests, that it's almost impossible?
It's really impossible to get a COVID test right now.
I'm giving you the variables.
Now start to assemble them in your head, all right?
No access to tests because the demand is so high.
So basically, zero access to testing.
The Omicron is a vaccination against the other things.
It's sweeping through the country faster than anything we've ever seen.
Quarantine just got reduced from 10 days to 5.
What's the real reason?
The real reason is if you can't get a COVID test and you've got a sniffle during cold season and you can't get a test and you can either upset your life for 10 days...
Without even knowing if you had COVID, or you could just go on with your life and say it's a cold.
Which one are you going to do?
You're going to go on with your life and say it's probably a cold because you can't check.
And if it isn't a cold, it's probably Omicron.
And if it is Omicron, you're lucky.
And if you give it to somebody, they should thank you because you just vaccinated them.
Now, put all the elements together.
Why did the CDC go from 10 days to 5?
Well, it could be the new data.
That's what they say. Far more likely, they know that a rebellion is coming and they know they can't make you stay 10 days if you can't get a test.
They might be optimistic, but wrong, that they can make you isolate for 5 days without a COVID test.
Raise your hands if you would...
Raise your hands if you would isolate voluntarily for five days if you couldn't get a COVID test.
How many of you would isolate if you had a sniffle?
It could be a cold.
It could be Omicron. How many of you would isolate if you can't get a test?
Look at the answers.
Do you see it yet?
In two weeks, we're going to have 30 million Americans with sniffles.
Some Omicron, some regular colds, I don't know.
Doesn't matter what the mix is.
30 million people with sniffles and no access to tests.
What happens then?
The quarantine time didn't go from 10 to 5.
It just went to zero.
Because the public won't manage that situation.
There's no fucking way the public is going to quarantine without access to tests.
Now, who was it that fucked up and gave us no access to tests?
Trump, Trump, and Biden.
Yeah, total fuck-ups.
But those total fuck-ups, really the most criminal behavior, I think, in the whole pandemic situation was the lack of rapid tests.
To me, that's obvious corruption.
And by the way, that's another situation.
The assumption is that the FDA is corrupt because of the way that the tests were handled.
The burden of proof has to be on the government to prove that it wasn't a corrupt decision.
Again, same thing, right?
I can't prove it was corrupt, but it looks like it in every possible way.
So the government needs to prove it to me.
Let me ask you this to blow your fucking head off.
Are you ready? You better hold on to the top of your head.
Just hold on. This is going to fuck you up.
Have you ever seen an interview with whoever was in charge with the FDA and the decisions about rapid testing?
Have you ever seen an interview with the motherfuckers who were responsible for the rapid test?
No, you haven't. You haven't even seen a fucking interview.
Accident? Coincidence?
Nope. That is the dog not barking so fucking loud you can't even hear yourself think.
Those motherfuckers haven't even been on an interview.
And how about your news?
Has your news been begging to talk to those people to find out what's going on?
Nope. Nope.
You don't have a news industry to protect you.
If you had any kind of a news industry that was functional...
They would be surrounding the houses of whoever made those decisions to limit the rapid tests, effectively limiting them.
It's the biggest question in the country.
Absolute no curiosity.
Absolutely no curiosity.
Yeah, not even Fox, right?
Even the press on the right.
It's just not even touching it. Can you think of a more important question than, hey, we better get these FDA people in here to tell us why they didn't do a better job on this?
All right. So, as I've told you, Feb 1, the public is done.
I would be...
I don't know if the Democrats have heard that yet.
I don't know if that's reached the White House.
You know, there's a lot of use of it, and it's starting to make the rounds on right-oriented media.
But I don't know if the left has heard it.
I kind of doubt it. However, February 1 is looking pretty good.
How many people think February 1 looks pretty good?
For being out of the pandemic in a serious way.
Yeah, it's looking better and better.
And I don't think, as I've often said, it's not the government's...
They're just the wrong tool to decide when it's over.
They need to take the lead from us.
They need to take the lead from us.
And February 1 would be a perfectly functional target.
You know, it's not a left or right thing.
It just seems like that would be about the right time.
All right. Is it my imagination, or is the January 6th committee investigating what happened on January 6th, is it the most incompetent investigation of all time?
So, apparently, Peter Navarro's book explains exactly who was behind everything and what they did.
And as Jack Posobiec pointed out on Twitter today...
Steve Bannon, every day on The War Room, his show, was explaining exactly who was doing what and why they were doing it.
So all this stuff that the January 6th Committee is trying to investigate is literally in a book, and it was the people involved want you to know.
They want you to know all of it.
Nothing's being hidden.
So here's Peter Navarro's explanation.
Let's see if I can summarize it.
Basically, they had 100 members of Congress lined up to support them when, I guess, there was going to be a push to have Pence delay the certification of the election and just have some extra time to look for fraud.
Now, the plan...
Which apparently is well documented, it was public, was to delay the certification until we could be sure there was no fraud.
And it was explicit.
It was always right out there.
And then they did it in public.
So they told you what they were going to do, they told you who was doing it, and then they did it in public.
And there's an investigation there.
Why do you need an investigation?
It was done in public by people who told you what they were going to do, and then they wrote it down really clearly so that even after the fact, you could read the book or listen to the videos and find out exactly what they did and why.
So what exactly is the January 6th committee looking for?
I've never seen so many confessions.
Like, all the people who are involved have already confessed.
Not only have they confessed, they're trying to sell you a book so you can see the details.
That's how legitimate it was.
It was so legitimate that the people who were accused are like, well, I'd like to tell you as much as you'd like to know.
I'll put it in a book if you want.
I'll do a long-form video.
How about lots of long-form videos on the war room?
It's like, they can't tell them enough information about what they did, and it's still an investigation.
It's like, no, seriously.
I swear to you, I'm guilty.
I did that. All right, we better investigate.
No, I'm guilty.
I've got documents.
I'll show you my emails.
We did all of this.
It's us. And here's why.
I don't know. I think we're going to have to investigate this.
Better investigate this.
Well, I think you can see at this point the investigation is purely political and by no means legitimate.
There is a conspiracy theory.
I want to see how many of you buy into this one.
Okay? Okay. How many of you buy into this one?
That the whole point of the pandemic, the motive, was, quote, undeniable from the beginning.
I'm reading a tweet I saw in this today.
That total digital control, like Chinese-style social credit, was the goal.
And that the pandemic was really just a vehicle for the powers that be to get us some Chinese-style social credit.
How many people think that's an accurate description of what was going on?
And would you be surprised if none of that happens?
Would you be surprised if the pandemic winds down and there's no vaccination cards after that point and nothing seems permanent?
Would that surprise you?
In other words, if you believe that it was all sort of orchestrated from some shadowy place and that the point of it was this Chinese-style social credit, if that doesn't happen...
Would that invalidate your theory?
Because remember, I told you that the best way you can tell reality is whether it predicts.
We don't really know what's real and what's not, but sometimes we know that some theories or frames will predict better than others.
My prediction is...
That we will not see anything substantial that looks like a move toward Chinese social credit or some greater digital control that wasn't going to happen anyway.
Now, keep in mind that my general assumption is that complete lack of privacy is guaranteed.
My working assumption for, you know, 20 years is that a complete lack of privacy is guaranteed.
We'll get there in a variety of ways, in a variety of trends and technology and stuff, but there isn't a way to stop it.
That's the most unstoppable force in the universe.
We're going to lose all of that.
But I probably am completely alone in believing that you won't necessarily be worse off.
Necessarily. You know, it's easy to make a story where you are, and so if you don't like that risk, that makes sense.
But I think that every time we've given up a little bit of privacy, we got something in return, such as a really good online shopping experience.
So you do get things in return.
Oh, here's another thing you get in return, which is a good credit score.
If you had complete privacy, you couldn't get a loan.
Because, well, I suppose you could out yourself, but, you know, the fact that so much of our activities are discoverable makes a lot of our system work, unfortunately.
Now, and I think that all of the, let's say, the normalizing of non-standard sexual preferences is making an entire category of things you had to keep private irrelevant.
You know, a few decades ago, if you were gay, you wouldn't want anybody to know.
Today? What if everybody knows you're gay?
You get more job offers, right?
I mean, there isn't a downside to it.
You get more job offers.
That's exactly what happens.
So don't automatically think that loss of privacy leads to a worse outcome.
It could. I mean, that's an easy story to make, that it could.
But every time it's happened...
Not every time.
I don't want to speak in an absolute about this.
But the examples I can think of, you've got something pretty good for it in return.
Now, in order for this to work, everybody has to lose their privacy about it at the same time.
The worst situation is some people have privacy and others don't.
That's untenable.
You cannot have that.
You can't have your leaders private and then you not.
That doesn't work. Now, we might drift into that situation, which would be terrible.
But if you're only talking about conceptual level, without all the humans ruining everything, at a conceptual level, if our leaders were as transparent as they want to make us, we'd probably come out ahead.
Think about it. Imagine if your leaders were as transparent, like you could just know everything about where their money is and, you know, what they're doing and stuff.
You're not going to have too much of an issue with your government abusing you because you just watch everything they do.
You would know everything they do.
The worst case is the government keeps their own personal privacy and you lose yours.
And we are heading in that direction.
We're sort of drifting in that direction.
So I'm not saying that this is all roses.
I'm just saying that if the only thing you can imagine is it will turn out bad, I think that's the least likely outcome.
But definitely a big risk.
Nothing you should ignore.
Let's see. Anything else happen here?
The latest data is that catching COVID could give you erectile dysfunction because apparently that COVID likes to cluster in your junk if you're a guy.
Now, is it a coincidence that That just at the time, the persuasion about getting vaccinated started to peter out.
In other words, we'd vaccinated everybody that was probably going to agree to it by this point, or something close to it.
And the only people left were the hard cases, the really hard cases.
You're never going to convince me to get that vaccination.
And then suddenly, right on time, just when you need it the most, A study comes out that suggests that getting COVID could make your penis not work.
That's a little bit too on the nose, isn't it?
Yeah, it petered out. That was accidental pun, petered out.
My only problem with this is that it's too convenient.
It's like, really? You know, we watch one study after another that turns out to be BS because they've done something wrong.
Is this the one that they did right?
Do you think that this one perfectly timed, on-the-nose, most persuasive thing you could ever say just happened on its own?
Pure coincidence.
Could be. Like, you can't rule out a coincidence.
Unfortunately, you can never rule it out.
That's, you know, sort of in the nature of a coincidence.
But, I don't know.
Call me skeptical on this one.
But, hey.
And also, we don't know if the vaccination would hurt your dick more than the COVID, so it's all unknowns.
That, ladies and gentlemen...
Is the best show that anybody has ever put on?
I think I've delivered.
I think that I've met my standard of the best show that's ever been put on.
How can there be any privacy in the metaverse?
Oh, that's interesting.
If your life, let's say your social life, moves to the metaverse, or even your financial life, even your professional life, I guess, could all be in the metaverse, the metaverse, by its nature, is going to know everything about you, which means meta, of the company will know everything about you if they choose to.
Erica says she needs a cigarette after today's show.
It was that good.
And I agree. Erica, I think you're right.
It was that good.
And people need to learn more about DAOs and DEXs and DeFi.
Yeah, let me give you some homework.
If you would like to be, let's say, capable of predicting the future...
One of the things you should do a quick Google search on, and just get the high-level understanding of it, is called a DAO. D-A-O. It's in the crypto world with blockchain, etc.
It's a way to organize an organization using tokens to decide who has what power to do what.
But there's tons of flexibility, things you can do with it, and they're just figuring it out.
So it's entirely possible that The Republic, democracy, everything we know about corporate governance are all just about to go out the window.
One of the biggest changes that civilization could ever experience is the DAO. D-A-O. Now, it might not...
I mean, it could be the flying car of blockchain.
It could be something we always think is coming and never does, never makes an impact possible.
But there are a lot of people who are really, really smart who are saying, uh, watch this.
This could just change everything.
You would only need a few successful projects for it to become the thing.
All right. Harmony One blockchain.
You know, I can only get about this deep into the blockchain stuff, and if I talked about it, it wouldn't mean too much to most of you.
But I would say that for your own education, you need to at least get up to speed on what a DAO is, D-A-O. Distributed Autonomous Organization.
So it's a leaderless organization that could still work.
Scott, did you see Adam Townsend claim China wants to cut one-third of its population?
I don't know anything about that.
You saw me on Dr. Drew and it was great.
Thank you. Yeah, I don't know anything about Adam Townsend's prediction about that.
I don't know what that would be about.
How do you increase your blood oxygen?
See your doctor. You might have asthma.
I feel like I just cured somebody.
There are probably people here who have measured their oxygen levels and it's a little low.
They don't know why.
You might have asthma.
You might need to get on an asthma med.
All right. I'm going to do briefing exercises.
What's that? Oh, breathing exercises you need.
Yeah, look into the Wim Hof breathing exercises.
Hof is spelled H-O-F, and his first name is just Wim, W-I-M. Blake Jameson, do I want to chat about what?
All right. Talking about...
Oh, here's a funny idea from the laser guy.
I always talk about aggressive compliance, breaking a system by complying to it too specifically.
And the suggestion is time for aggressive compliance.
If everyone quarantines for five days, the government has to end the pandemic.
He's right. If we all just said, hey, I feel like, I don't know, I got a little body ache.
I don't have a test.
I guess I better stay home for five days.
If everybody just decided to stay home for five days, the whole country would shut down.
It would take about 24 hours for the pandemic to be over.
Now, I don't think we could ever organize such a thing.
And I think it's going to happen on its own.
I think we're where we want to be.
Scott, who trained you in hypnotism?
I went to a small hypnosis school in San Francisco that no longer exists.
A school means one hypnotist was teaching a course, basically.
The flatten the curve.
I don't talk about the flatten the curve not working, because to me the whole story there is, it was worth a try, and it didn't work.
If that has any lingering impact on your understanding of what we're doing now, it shouldn't.
Because we did exactly the right thing, which was we tried something in the context of not knowing what would work and what wouldn't.
We tried something we could reverse if it didn't work.
It didn't work.
So we stopped doing it.
I don't consider that a mistake.
I consider that a good decision that didn't work out.
That's very different.
All right. Vax cards on February 1?
I don't know. I doubt it.
Many knew that flattening the curve was a bad idea.
No, they didn't. No, they didn't.
There's nobody who's more annoying than the person who guesses right and then says they knew it all along.
Nobody knew that flattening the curve wouldn't work.
You probably, you know, a lot of people thought it wouldn't or had an opinion, but nobody knew.
That's why you test it.
That's exactly why you test it.
It couldn't be knowable. All right.
Yeah, you guessed right. So good for you.
You guessed right. If I were a dictator, what government agencies would you ask?
All of them. Because I'm a dictator.
They just have to do what I tell them to do.
Scott, wait, wait.
There's a picture of you online with your shirt off.
Is it real? Well, there's more than one picture of me with my shirt off on the Internet.
And the only ones I know of are real.
I don't know if there's any fake ones.
Now, to defend myself, if I may, if you're over 60, you really shouldn't take your shirt off on the Internet.
It's not really anything anybody wants to look at.
Even if you're in good shape, nobody really wants to look at that shit.
Once you're a certain age, if we're being honest, you could be the best-looking 65-year-old ever.
Nobody wants to really look at that shit, if I'm being honest, right?
But if you write a book about how to develop systems for fitness and diet, I feel like you're obligated to take your shirt off on the Internet.
Because if you're saying, I use these systems and you should use them too, you've got to show your work, right?
Now, Geraldo was not promoting a system for being fit.
So that was, you know, just Geraldo being Geraldo.
Which, by the way, I love Geraldo.
I love that guy. I don't agree with him on all of his opinions.
Nobody does. But I just love that guy.
The fact that he took his shirt off at 70-whatever and said, hey, he's still looking pretty good, he was right, right?
For his age, he looked amazing.
And I give him full credit for that.
Now, not everybody would take their shirt off in that situation, but that's why I like him.
I like him because he did that.
He has no sense of embarrassment.
It's like a superpower. Would you rather be you, whatever you is, or would you rather have the balls to take your shirt off in your 70s and tell people, this looks pretty good, doesn't it?
That takes a lot of balls.
If there's one thing that you can't complain about Geraldo...
You can't complain about it and be afraid of shit.
He doesn't seem to be afraid of anything.
And that's one of his best features.
So you don't want to lose that.
The fact that he took his shirt off in his 70s, I'll always like him more for that.
To me, that was all positive.
But at the same time, I can say nobody wants to see an old man with their shirt off, even if they look good for their age.
So the two shirtless selfies of me are two different looks.
I did one in my late 50s in which I was trying to see how lean I could get, see if I could get a six-pack.
So that was sort of the six-pack picture.
But I got a lot of comments from people who said it was too thin and that, you know, as a man, it was not a look that people wanted to look at.
It was a little too thin. And so I took that advice and tried to, you know, add a little...
Bulk to things.
So the second more recent picture is the little bulkier picture in which the abs are de-emphasized and the shoulders and arms are emphasized.
Anyway, that's all for today.
And I'm going to go do something else.
Thank you for being here for the best damn live stream of all times.
