Episode 1607 Scott Adams: Most of the News is Good Today. Hello Golden Age
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
2022, a test of your political theory
Rapid testing to exit quarantine
Jennifer Rubin and approved messaging
Fluvoxamine to treat COVID?
Human brain cells confirm The Simulation
Serial HOAX promoter Anderson Cooper
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Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the best thing that ever happened to you.
Possibly the best thing that ever happened to anybody.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and today, mostly good news.
It's a weird day. Now, it could be that I'm just in the mood to hear some good news, so I'm filtering it differently, but I'm going to put you in a good mood, too, so that you can filter it the way I do.
Everything's looking good. It really is.
And all you need to come to this higher level of happiness and awareness is a copper mugger, a glass of pecker tails, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
And it's working. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. Ah, yes, coffee.
Well, I saw a tweet just before I got on that rapper-actor Ice Cube says that they offered Chris Tucker $10 to $12 million to be in their next movie, Friday something, a sequel.
And Chris Tucker turned down $10 to $12 million because of religious reasons.
And he apparently objected to being in another movie in which he was smoking weed and cussing.
So Chris Tucker is out of the role.
$10 to $12 million because he didn't want to be involved with weed and cussing.
So I tweeted back to Ice Cube and asked if auditions are still open because if ever there was a role made for me...
I don't want to say born for the role.
That's going too far.
But... lock, key, perfect fit, perfect fit.
Now, there was a day where a person who looked like me would not be cast in an all-black movie, but we don't live in backwards times anymore.
In the dark ages, no pun intended, They would have been able to just cast their movie and completely ignore other people saying, hey, let me in that movie, but not now.
In our woke environment, I believe, I can pull off that role.
And a lot of it is acting.
You know, sometimes if you don't have the perfect look for a role, The audience won't matter if your acting is so good.
So I think I could get my acting up to a level where I could take over this Chris Tucker role, smoke some weed, cuss on camera.
I might even practice a little of that today.
You don't know. Because I don't like to go into an audition unless I've got a lot of practice.
Well, did you see the picture of Romney's family?
I guess they took a holiday family picture.
And I've got to say...
It's jaw-dropping.
You know, I've never seen a family picture that had that much impact on me, because it's the last thing that interests most of us.
Okay, that's your family.
I don't even know your family.
But you should see the size of Mitt Romney's family.
I think they're all, you know, kids and grandkids and stuff, it looks like it.
Now, they are shockingly white.
No big surprise, right?
It's the biggest group of white people I've ever seen in one place.
Because in America, you couldn't assemble that many white people to take a picture.
I mean, we just don't live in a country where that many white people are in the same place.
But in Utah, and in the Romney family...
Now, I'm not criticizing Romneys.
In fact, I would like to give them a holiday compliment.
Which is, do you ever wonder what it is like, or what does it mean to win at life?
Like, what would that look like?
To be a winner at life.
Because we think of Romney as, you know, a loser in the sense that he lost the presidency.
But, you know, he was very successful in his career and all that.
But when you see a picture of how he has spread his genes, that looks like the winningest thing I've ever seen.
It's just, it's amazing.
He's got like a Genghis Khan light kind of mode there where this mofo is spreading his genes like nobody's business.
So I would think that from an evolutionary standpoint, the more you spread your genes, the more winning you are.
So I've never seen anybody win that hard before.
He created a lot of clones.
Anyway, in more tragic news, John Madden died.
Most of you have heard that name, John Madden.
Famous football coach, but also famous for living in my town.
So, the entire time that John Madden has lived where I live, and by the way, this is the second time I've lived in his town.
I used to live in another town that he lived in.
And then he moved.
And then I moved when I got married and, you know, moved to the town where my wife lives with the kids.
And I ended up in his town twice.
Now, the weird thing about this is it made me the second most famous person in town twice.
In both cases, it was because of him.
There's nothing wrong with being the second most famous person in your town, but I've got to tell you, being the most famous person in your town is a little bit better.
Now, of course, I don't want to detract from the fact that it's a tragedy that John Madden died, but he did make it to 85, and from what I know from him, just from his public persona, if you make it to 85 and you're going strong and you go out on top, I don't know. I don't even think John Madden would be sad about John Madden dying.
He did it so well.
So he lived his life well.
Went out in style.
Timing was good. But like so many stories in the news, they have a weird connection to me.
Like personally. Like this will have an effect on me personally.
It's weird. All right.
There was an article in Medscape...
Suggesting that maybe the health benefits of moderate alcohol look increasingly doubtful.
That's right. So some in the medical scientific community now believe that the common thing we used to believe, that moderate drinking might actually be good for your health.
As if. Yes, as if drinking just a little bit of poison will be good for you.
But it looks like science is starting to bend the other way.
It's increasingly doubtful that it's good for you.
And how many of you remember me making the prediction that someday we would learn that the most common thing that we hear all the time, moderate drinking is good for you, that it was never true?
That's one of my predictions for years, that eventually we would learn that was never true.
I'm not going to claim victory yet.
So I'll keep my prediction alive and just say it's unresolved at this point, but it's going this way.
In the end, someday, we are not going to say that moderate drinking was good for you.
There's nothing in my life experience that suggests that could even happen.
I mean, anything could happen, I suppose.
But everything pushes the other direction about this.
If you're predicting it goes the other way, I'd like to take that bet.
2022 is looking interesting, but also will be a way to test our world theories, which is very interesting to me.
Remember I tell you that your worldview is probably subjective just like everybody else's, but the only thing you can tell about it that is useful is whether it predicts.
So if your view of the world predicts accurately, well, or better than other people's, well...
You have a pretty good worldview, even if it's not true in some sense.
So we're going to get a test here.
It's coming up. Here's what the test looks like.
In 2022, when we do the elections for Congress, we know now that 23 Democrats are retiring or bidding from another office.
So basically, 23 Democrats will be leaving the field When the Republicans are only five down.
So Republicans only need to win five more seats to take control.
And there are already 23 Democrats who are leaving the job.
Now, on top of that, you've got the polling that would suggest that the Republicans are going to sweep.
You've got Biden not fixing the problems he promised to fix.
You've got a lot going on that would all...
Let's see if you agree with the starting assumption.
Is the starting assumption that literally every expert is saying, oh, the Republicans are just going to sweep?
Give me a fact check.
Is it true that every expert says the Republicans are going to sweep?
Right? Every one.
Even the Democrats say it.
Now, except for the politicians, but the people who are, you know, because they have to say it.
But the people and experts on both sides just say, yeah, Republicans are going to sweep.
So, here's how you get to test your worldview.
If your worldview is that there is some shadowy group of Democrats that can change the elections to anything they want, the Democrats will hold Congress, if you're right.
Would you agree? That if the elections are in fact corrupt in ways that we can't easily audit, and if they robbed Trump right in front of the public, meaning that everyone who looked at it said, you know, it really kind of looked like Trump was going to win this, and then surprisingly he didn't.
And then what happened?
Well, there was a little event at the Capitol, Which there is a strong argument that suggests that it was not an organic event, at least the most dangerous parts about it when they breached the actual trespassing territory and got violent.
And it would seem as if the country has been set up...
To make it unlikely that there would be an insurrection because the insurrectionists, quote, insurrectionists who weren't really insurrectionists, have been punished so severely.
Or it looks like they will be.
Many of them still in jail.
And so we have a situation where if the worst-case scenario is correct and the elections are rigged...
I'm not saying this is true, by the way.
I'm saying we'll get to test that worldview versus the worldview that everything was fine.
But if the worldview that things are rigged is true, we do have a situation where they could steal the election right in front of you in a way that everybody would sort of think maybe it happened, because it didn't go the way everybody thought, and nothing would happen.
Because there wouldn't be a second insurrection.
They've already pre-stopped a revolution in the future by making it seem like one already happened and then stopping the one that was fake to make it really clear you don't want to try marching on the Capitol.
So, obviously this would not be 100% proof, but I'll make...
I'm not even sure which way I would predict.
Uh... You know, I think I have to do a split prediction for this one, which was very unsatisfying.
I'd like to do something like this.
Republicans will sweep in 2022.
Right? Nice, clean, consistent prediction.
But we can only depend on the votes.
We can't really depend on the vote count.
Now, let me say my view of the election integrity.
I am aware of no evidence of massive fraud in 2020.
I want to say that as clearly as possible.
I'm personally, just personally, not aware of anything that would look like massive fraud that has been determined.
It is also true that we can't fully audit our system, so if, in fact, massive fraud happened, it's unclear that we could know that.
Number three, if you have a system that can't be audited, there will always be massive fraud.
You just don't know if it's happened yet.
Could be next time.
Could be the time after.
But there's no way it doesn't happen.
It would be like dropping a ball and expecting that sometimes the gravity won't work.
No, the gravity will work every time.
If you create a system that's not transparent, And the advantage of being able to control that non-transparent system is essentially controlling the planet.
The greatest payoff you could ever have.
I think if I change this software, I'm in charge of the planet.
Biggest stakes you could ever have in a non-transparent system.
100% of the time you get massive fraud.
Not sometimes. It's not like, oh, we're surprised there was some massive fraud.
No, it's just like gravity.
If you make it that easy for massive fraud, you'll get it every time.
You just have to wait.
That's all it is. Just a matter of time.
So, I certainly would not be one who can say to you, because we don't have an auditable election system, I can't say to you that this won't be a rigged election in 2022.
I can't say that with any confidence.
It's like a coin flip.
50-50, maybe.
And only 50-50 because I don't have information.
If I had information, maybe I'd change that a lot.
Yeah, the COVID elections are always going to add some sketchiness to the outcome.
That's true. But if your worldview is that some shadowy figures aligned with Democrats can steal everything and get away with it, Let's see if they do the midterms.
If they don't steal the midterms, you're going to have to rethink if they stole the Trump versus Biden election.
Unless we found there was some loophole there that got closed in the meantime.
I don't know what that would be.
All right. I know a lot of Republican-managed states are trying to tighten things up, so we'll see.
Here's an interesting little positive thing.
Came out of Sandia National Laboratories.
One of the Sandia labs is bicycle distance from me, just down the road, because everything is about me.
And one of the things that California gets right...
I'm going to defend my state slightly.
California gets a lot of grief, and I give it a lot of grief too.
But there is one thing that California does right, is it puts a lot of smart people in the same place.
And a lot of good things happen when you put your smartest people in the same place and say, ah...
This is a little piece of territory.
We're going to put all the smartest people.
You just start companies and do whatever you're doing.
Well, here's what some smart people at Sandia National Labs do.
I don't know if this came out of the local one or there's an Albuquerque version of this.
But they found out how to turn coal ash into rare earth metals.
What? So the, you know, one of the biggest waste problems from coal is the coal ash.
But apparently now they can take that coal ash and change it into rare earth minerals.
But you say to yourself, well, that sounds expensive.
Except here's how you do it.
They use a harmless food-grade solvent.
In other words, some of you basically buy it off the shelf, I think.
And that's it. You just mix it with some chemicals that are sort of available, you know, everywhere.
And it turns it into rare earth materials if you wait a day.
And I don't know what kind of rare earth materials you get out of this, but this seems like a pretty big deal that we weren't expecting.
Now the pushback on this is that apparently there is already some technique for recovering rare earth minerals from coal ash.
And some think that the existing technique gets a higher percentage of it and might be more economical.
But it's hard for me to imagine that anything would be more economical than pouring some over-the-counter juice on it and waiting a day.
Even if you get a lower percentage of gain from that, I feel as if...
It's so easy that it's still going to be economical relative to the ultra news.
So I don't know if every pile of coal ash is going through the existing process, but I doubt it, or else this would be a story.
So there must be some economical advantages to this.
However, we should always be aware that every story of good news is fake when it comes to science.
Right? Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit.
A little bit. But wouldn't you say, based on your life experience, 99% of what you hear about great news coming out of science?
And that's not true. About 99% of the time.
So I'm not going to say this is an exception, but it's fun to read about.
Michael Mina, who is famous for being, at least on Twitter and elsewhere and with the government, the most notable and He's the loudest, most effective voice on rapid testing.
Apparently he's been so successful, or events have changed people's minds as well, he tweeted this.
He says, you know things have come full circle when people are starting to tell me...
Remember, he's the king of promoting rapid testing.
He said, when people are starting to tell me...
That PCR tests take a long time to turn negative, and we should be using rapid antigen tests to test out of isolation.
So in other words, if what you're trying to do is get out of isolation, what matters most is if you're still infected.
And the rapid tests that are less sensitive do a better job.
Now, I think I'm saying this right, but let me explain that.
If the rapid test is very effective at finding out if you have a lot of viral load, and it can do it quickly and cheaply, then you can get out of quarantine a little faster, not with perfect certainty, but really, really good.
Whereas if you wait for the PCR test, which might be longer to get an appointment, then you've got to wait a day to get a result, you probably have to leave home to do it, right?
So that the right answer always was the rapid tests.
That was always the right answer for getting out of quarantine.
Not necessarily the right answer for maybe testing ahead of a trip, perhaps.
I don't know. There might be some differences there.
But for getting out of quarantine, Where less than 100% effectiveness is pretty much guaranteed.
I think Michael Mina's claims have been validated at this point.
History has moved in his direction, just as you would like, I'm sure.
All right. Here's your test of the press.
In the Jerusalem Post this week, there's a story that Iran is very close, just months away, From a breakout ability to create a nuclear weapon.
So that's today.
Iran is two months away from a nuclear weapon.
That's 2021.
Reuters reported the same thing in 2012.
LA Times reported the same thing in 2003.
And the New York Times reported the same thing in 1995.
And here's the fun part.
The public is now so well trained that when I saw the tweet about, you know, there was a story that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon, you should see the comments.
The comments are just vicious.
Yep, just like every year since I was born.
And the problem is that With technology, it's like the flying car.
Yes, it's true we don't have a flying car.
But I'm not going to bet against a flying car 100 years from now, are you?
I mean, some things are guaranteed to happen.
You just have to wait a little bit longer.
So I would say it's largely guaranteed that Iran will get nuclear bomb capabilities.
Because it'll be just easier in the future and, you know, they have lots of time and capability and it's a high priority.
So it seems like if you wait long enough, one of these stories will be true.
So you've got the little boy crying wolf problem that the press has been crying wolf since 1995 and the public is just sort of tired of it.
It just doesn't feel real anymore.
Even though it probably is.
It probably is real. Israel...
Israel? That's interesting.
This is the first time I've ever thought that the country of Israel is spelled Israel.
How did I not notice that before?
Am I like the last person on earth to make that connection?
That's weird. Huh.
Simulation is winking at us.
All right. Now, those of you who think that this is all Israel influencing the U.S. press to get what they want, well, this story came from the Jerusalem Post, so, I mean, this is Israel influencing itself.
But, of course, these articles do get picked up.
Now, can Israel influence the press in the United States?
What do you think? Can Israel the country...
Influence stories that appear in the United States.
Oh, you anti-Semitic bastards.
They're so anti-Semitic.
Would you say that about some other group if they weren't Jewish?
Would you say that they could control the media?
Yeah, you would, because they can.
Almost everybody can control the media.
It's actually pretty easy.
So does Israel control the media or at least plant stories that are beneficial to Israel?
Do they do that in America Press?
I don't know. But everybody else does.
Don't you assume they do? Why wouldn't they?
Literally everybody does.
How hard is it to get a journalist in a major publication to write your story?
Really easily. As we've seen.
Russia collusion hoax.
Really easy to get people to write that.
You can get people to write things that are obviously hoaxes.
Fine people hoax, drinking bleach hoax.
There's no shortage of journalists who will write anything you want in major publications.
So it used to be that I think that if you said, oh, there's a Jewish conspiracy theory to control the news, you'd sound like a crazy person.
But now it's just every group can do that.
Israel just happens to be on the list of groups.
The only thing about Israel is that it's a group, because every group can do it.
It's easy. Rasmussen Nezapol asked this question, which might sound familiar to you.
I didn't have anything to do with this, but asked, is Russia more like an ally or an enemy of the U.S.? How do you think it came out?
Just guess before I tell you the answer.
What percentage of people, of likely voters, that's who they usually poll, of U.S. likely voters, what percentage of them would say that Russia is an ally?
What percent? I'm saying 25, 25.
Okay, you're being funny.
40, 50.
Yeah, the real answer, according to the poll, is that...
43% said that we're somewhere in between an ally and enemy.
And 5% said outright ally.
So if you add the ones who said we're sort of allies, 43%, to the ones who say we are allies, you get up to 48% say, yeah, we're sort of ally-ish.
And then you've got another 8% that aren't sure.
But I feel like you'd be sure if they were an enemy.
So I feel like I'd throw them in with the, you know, must be somewhere in between.
So I've been telling you forever that the arc of history is bending undeniably toward the U.S. and Russia being allies in the future.
Maybe not this year, maybe in 10 years, but it's going to happen.
It's because of space.
We have to be allies in space because there's just no way we want to be fighting Russia in space.
We've got China to deal with, and so does Russia.
We're going to want to have at least the US and Russia on the same side, because I doubt we'll be on the same side with China.
So the public is not terribly disagreeable with that idea.
45% do say that Russia is an enemy, but that's less than half.
So less than half of the country considers Russia an enemy.
Now, if you changed it to something like a competitor or something, then I think you'd get more people agreeing.
If you use the word enemy, it's...
I don't know. I'm not sure that's justified by what's happening.
It looks like just countries pursuing their own interests.
It's like they're a competitor. It doesn't feel like it's personal.
Does it? You know, there are things that feel personal.
Like terrorism, you know...
Osama bin Laden, that felt personal.
But whatever problems we have with Russia, they don't really feel personal.
It just feels like government versus government.
So there's a story about monoclonal antibodies being...
Florida having less access to them, and they're blaming the federal government for that.
And apparently there's a big shortage of these...
But it seems to be a real shortage.
It's not clear if Florida is being punished by the federal government for being Republican-led versus Democrat-led.
I don't know about that.
But it's kind of important because at the same time that the federal government said they're going to restrict these antibodies, The CDC revised their Omicron estimate down from 73% of the new cases to 59.
So remember when I was telling you Omicron was, you know, almost three-quarters of our cases in the United States?
It turns out that CDC says, no, when they check it again or some different way, it's 59% of cases.
Now, wait. Hold on.
Wait. Omicron is 59.
Wait. Wait.
That's reduced from 73.
Hold on, hold on.
Okay, it's up to 73 again.
Because you see, the Omicron spreads fast.
Am I wrong that in the time it takes them to do this study and tell us about it, there's no way that that 59 hasn't already gone to 73?
Am I right? Because it doesn't take long to go from 59 to 73.
It takes about the time it takes them to do a study.
So they should have said, we studied it at 59, so it probably is 73 by now.
Or something like that.
Alright. Interesting story in the Wall Street Journal.
Hmm. Now, the fact that this is in the Wall Street Journal...
On top of the fact that we saw Jennifer Rubin seeming to do a turn on the lockdowns or the mandates.
So even Jennifer Rubin, who is famously associated with the Democrats, but even more famously associated with being sort of the person that the people in power go to to be their messenger.
Now, so I don't get sued.
I'll say, I don't know if any of that's true.
Allegedly. But people would look to see her change of opinion as being not her opinion per se, but an approved opinion.
So she is signaling whether or not this is true.
This is just speculation.
But the change in her, let's say...
mode of attack when talking about the pandemic has conspicuously changed closer to the let us free model, which suggests that the powers behind the power, whoever they may be, are also in that frame of mind.
Meaning that both sides seem to be moving toward the same place, but the right is already there, and the left has to have a reason to be there.
In other words, they want to be there too, but they need a because.
It could be a fake because, but you need some reason to give why you changed.
So the Jennifer Rubin signal seems to be a signal that the left wants to get there and is trying to get there.
But at the same time, in the Wall Street Journal, an article that I found surprising.
And it's surprising because we had the hydroxychloroquine experience and we had the ivermectin experience, meaning things that many smart people thought totally, definitely work, but the powers that be said, totally, definitely unproven,
don't use them. And now we've got a new one, fluvoxamine, existing medication used for things such as OCD, which is interesting because it modulates inflammation.
I think that's the same as reducing inflammation, but maybe modulate has a little more nuance to it.
And so this drug, which works for OCD, modulates inflammation, which makes me wonder, is OCD... Actually, inflammation of the brain?
Is that what causes it?
And then I googled that, and sure enough, there are smart people who think that inflammation in the brain is what causes OCD. And then I thought to myself...
Is inflammation everything?
Like, is everything inflammation?
If we could find a way to manage our inflammation, or even find out what's causing us to be so much more easily inflamed, I think it's chemicals and pollution in the environment, or our diet.
I feel like there's something environmental that humans have created for themselves That is making us be inflamed all the time.
Because you feel people are being just consistently having problems with inflammation.
It doesn't matter what your problem is, you also have inflammation.
Now, I get that inflammation is a sign of a problem, so that I might just be thinking backwards.
Oh, if you have a problem that causes inflammation or associated with it, it's not that the inflammation causes the condition.
Or does it? Or does it?
Because it's easy to imagine that OCD is a brain that's not functioning as smoothly as it should, and inflammation, one would imagine, would be a reason that would cause that.
Somebody says Jack Challum called it decades ago.
Somebody says sugar is everything.
That could be. Could sugar be the thing that's causing us to experience more inflammation?
Anyway, these are just speculations and questions.
But this drug that exists, doctors could recommend this off-label because initial trials with it that are not randomized control trials, so they don't have the gold standard test for this.
Surprise. But the ones that they do have, which are a lower-quality kind of evidence, are really strong.
Really strong. But so was ivermectin.
So was hydroxychloroquine.
But apparently the Wall Street Journal, and they call that out as a problem, so listen to this.
So although it's generally legal to do off-label prescriptions, so doctors could...
Legally, prescribe it for anything they wanted, as long as it made sense.
As long as their medical judgment, they had a reason for it, totally legal, even if it's not approved for that use.
But what happened to the doctors who prescribed ivermectin?
Was that good for their careers?
Forget about whether ivermectin worked or didn't work.
Separate question. Was it good for the careers of the doctors to recommend it and then get demonized?
Not so much.
Not so much. And here we have a problem where the national...
What is it? NIH? Doesn't recommend it.
So you've put doctors in a position where they would be giving something that is specifically...
Not forbidden, but unrecommended.
I don't know if there's a better way to say that.
It would be one thing to use something for off-label use if everyone else in the world had been silent about it.
That's just you and your doctor making a good judgment, you hope.
But if the National Institute of Health is saying don't do this because it's unproven, then the doctor's in a little bit more...
I know you've been telling me about fluvoxamine.
But there's a lot of these drugs that I guess I could have talked about more.
But the fact that the Wall Street Journal is certainly presenting this as a solution, and here's the payoff.
It would cost you like $4 for your entire 10-day course of fluvoxamine.
$4. So there is now basically a $4 pill, you know, you get a number of them, but $4, that smashes COVID if you take it early.
Compare that to the new pills that are being approved that will be thousands of dollars.
Compare it to monoclonal antibodies, which apparently monoclonal antibodies are becoming less useful than Because the new variants aren't responding as well.
So I think Omicron doesn't care so much about your monoclonal antibodies.
That's one of the reasons the government was using for reducing their use.
Which may have been a lie.
You don't know. So...
Do you think that fluvoxamine could ever break through...
Assuming it works, in the face of the pharma companies would lose, let's say if fluvoxamine works the way these unreliable tests say it would, the big pharma would lose, give me a number, how much money would big pharma lose in vaccinations and COVID pills if this existing little, I imagine it's I don't know.
Is it generic by now?
Fluvoxamine? It's so cheap, it looks like it must be generic, but I could be wrong about that.
$3 trillion? I don't think it's billions.
I think we're into trillions, aren't we?
I think we're talking about the pharma companies having $3 trillion over years of potential loss.
Do you think the pharma companies would allow a $4 trillion I don't know if you can trust any of this.
Apparently there was a study Of a whole bunch of people who got it at one of the local racetracks here near me, because everything's about me.
And the people who took the fluvoxamine had zero problems in terms of death and major hospitalization.
And the control group, although it's not a randomized control group, the control group had a number of problems.
So every time it's tested, they get the same result, which is the fluvoxamine is nearly 100% effective, and the control group has trouble.
But again... I'm sorry, Shecky reminds me it's not about me, it's about Shecky.
I think you're right, Shecky.
Scott said last week that Big Pharma is not trying to stop ivermectin.
Nope, never said that.
Dr. Johnson will hide you again.
He comes back every day.
I don't know if it's a new account or what.
Never said that. Here's my thing that's bothering me lately.
At the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people made predictions and said, hey, let's just ignore this pandemic and it'll go away and it's just a cold.
Other people said it's the worst thing in the world and millions are dying.
They can't both be right.
But we're at this point now where we're saying that our experts were lying to us about vaccines.
Who was lying?
I want to see your opinions, because I know a lot of you have this opinion.
Who exactly was lying about vaccines?
Pharma? Fauci, I'm saying.
Fauci, Trump.
And media...
I don't know. Do you think that the data that came out of the big vaccine trials showed that the vaccine wears off?
Do we have a smoking gun?
Because I haven't seen it yet.
So I'm going to push the innocent until proven guilty standard, because I think somebody needs to, for the pharma companies as well.
Now, I'm not pro-pharma in the sense that it's unambiguously clear that the industry is criminal lots of the time.
I think we'd all agree with that.
But it doesn't mean it's all criminal all the time, right?
There's got to be, like, real scientists doing real work somewhere there, I think.
I don't think it's a complete criminal organization making mock treatments that they're trying to convince you worked.
Some of the time, but not most of the time.
And so my question is this.
Where's the smoking gun?
Where is the data that says they knew that these would wear off or that their effectiveness would wane?
Because I feel like it probably exists.
Don't you? Do you remember at the beginning of the pandemic, the experts who worked in this field said we've been trying to get a vaccine for coronavirus for decades and we're not even close?
Because there's something about it that we haven't figured out how to do it.
And then suddenly we had vaccines.
After decades of the experts working there saying, we're not even close.
So, were the experts who said, we don't know how to make a vaccine and we're not even close, did they know that if you tried, the effectiveness would wear off?
Or did they not even know how to make the vaccines that we ended up making in less than a year?
Were those experts aware that Of the, let's say, mRNA technique and whatever J&J used.
Were they aware of those techniques and did they know from their own experiences that if somebody made a vaccine, its efficacy would trail off too quickly?
Show me that document.
Or show me any investigative journalist who's looking for it.
Here's where I'd start.
Find the people who said in the beginning...
It should be just a Google search, because I saw it publicly.
Just do a Google search.
Find the experts who said in the beginning there's no way to do it.
It can't be done this quickly.
Find those experts and ask them this one question.
Were you aware, from all of your experience, that you could make something that would make a difference, like our current vaccines do, but that it wouldn't necessarily stop transmission, and that it wouldn't necessarily have the efficacy that makes it a good vaccine?
Were the experts aware of that at the very beginning?
Then, you'd have to find one at, say, Pfizer or...
What is it, the other company?
That you'd have to find some document that says, yeah, we can't do this, but we're going to put out a vaccine anyway.
Because the vaccine will do something, it just won't do what people expect it to do.
Do you think such a data trail exists?
Because here's the problem, and Dr.
Drew was reminding me of this in a different context the other day.
That people are true believers of things that aren't true.
And you can easily become a true believer because all of the incentive is for you to believe something.
Imagine you work for a big pharma company.
And the experts said you can't make this vaccine, but you try anyway.
It's sort of a patriotic as well as commercial thing that makes sense.
You try anyway. How easy would it be to convince yourself that you had succeeded when you hadn't?
In other words, even if you were looking at your own data...
Would you be lying, necessarily, or would you actually see it as working, even if the data didn't quite say that as clearly as you are saying?
You know, there's this weird gray area where people actually talk themselves into the lie.
And then you have to ask yourself, well, wait, is it a lie if they believe it?
Because if they believe it, it's just being wrong, or, you know, being brainwashed themselves.
So it's a weird gray area, and I think it's unproductive to imagine that all of it is an intentional lie.
Because I suspect the people who knew it wouldn't work, that knowledge may have died between the people who have been trying for years and the people who actually developed these vaccines, that there may have been a...
Like a communication gap, or far more likely, because I imagine the industry talks to each other a lot, far more likely there was a cognitive thing that happens with the scientists to think that they had, you know, done the thing.
You even see it on Twitter.
People will say, I have the answer that saves the world.
Here it is. It's vitamin D. Even I've done that.
So the draw to be the savior...
The one who came up with the thing that saved the world is so strong.
It just bends your brain.
Maybe not everybody.
You have to have a certain personality type, which I have.
So I'm especially susceptible to illusions of my own success.
I want you to hear that clearly.
That my personality type is extra sensitive to this mistake, which is to think that I figured out the solution to the world.
Because I want to believe that.
My personality is so wired toward I want to be useful and make a difference, especially a big difference, that if I thought I were close to it, my brain would say I got it.
I know that. I know that about myself, because I've, like, I've experienced it.
I know my brain will push me from, hey, this looks like a good thing to work, into, oh, yeah, this is going to save the world.
I think it happened to lots of people with hydroxychloroquine.
They wanted it to work, but they also wanted it to be the one who said it works.
Right? It happened with ivermectin.
People definitely wanted it to work, but they also wanted it to be the one who said it would work.
And I'm more susceptible than any of you, I think, to that cognitive error.
So if you're keeping me honest, that's where you should look especially hard.
Because if I'm deluded, this is an area I know in advance I could easily be deluded in.
So just keep me honest.
That's your job.
Keep me honest on that.
All right. So I'm not so sure people lied to us.
I think there's something else deeper going on.
Here are some basic things about the pandemic that are going to be so frustrating when it's over.
We have these two movies, right?
One movie that there wasn't much of anything that happened.
If we'd ignored it, we would have been fine.
And then the other movie is that we saved millions of lives.
They can't both be true.
We either saved millions of lives or we didn't.
And here's a question that also is in this category.
Did flattening the curve work?
Now let me give you some context before you answer.
Just hold the question but don't answer it yet.
Because I know you have an answer.
But wait until I give you new information.
Because the new information might modify what you think.
Okay? As Ian Bremmer was tweeting yesterday, we have nearly 450,000 known COVID cases in the U.S. It's a new record by a long margin.
So the number of new COVID cases, just new record.
That is in the context of having no availability of tests.
So we reached a record number of infections...
But the real record is, I don't know, some multiple.
Because how many people have it and they couldn't test, so it's not confirmed?
Or how many people tested at home do have it but didn't report it to anybody?
Now, I guess they can do this from some kind of statistical way, but I can't imagine that we're capturing all the infected people.
It doesn't seem possible to me.
But... As Ian Bremmer points out, if Omicron had hit a year ago, because a lot of this spike is Omicron, it would be apocalyptic.
How many of you would agree that if we had this rate of infection, like through-the-roof infections, but it had been at the beginning of the pandemic with the worse variant, that things would have been much worse?
That seems fair, right?
Now, here's the question.
Did we delay long enough to get us to Omicron While keeping the number of deaths lower than it would have been.
Because if we did, I would say flattening the curve, not in two weeks, of course, but that the idea of flattening the curve actually worked.
But I don't know if you can really conclude that, can you?
Because you don't know what the other situation would look like exactly.
There's no control. But my feeling is that flattening the curve worked.
Because it bought us time to get to the better understanding of therapeutics.
I'll call the vaccines a therapeutic so you don't argue with me.
And it got us to the point where we had another variant.
But the counter-argument would be the variant would have come sooner if we just let it spread through the population.
So if we'd taken our million deaths early...
You know, maybe we'd be done instead of spreading out our million deaths.
But if what we did was spread out the deaths that were going to happen anyway and kept our hospitals somewhat functioning, I feel like flattening the curve sort of worked.
How many of you would push back against that?
Now, I'm not talking about the two weeks to flatten the curve.
I'm talking about the idea of flattening it until you had new tools.
Didn't we succeed flattening it until we had better tools?
It looks like that, but I don't think you can conclude it.
The people say, no, I respect that opinion.
Because I don't think there's any way to prove it.
It's sort of like you have to take your life experience and put that filter on it and say, well, I feel like it worked.
Now, to be fair, you have to throw in all of the deaths that happened because of the restrictions.
And all the mental health problems.
And that's not nothing. That's a lot.
So if you're doing a real cost-benefit analysis, I don't know if you could ever untangle this.
But let me go this far.
I would say you can't tell if the flattening the curve thing worked entirely.
It looks like it did to me, but I'm open to the possibility that just looking at shit doesn't really tell you a lot.
That's why you have randomized controlled trials.
You can easily be fooled.
But I do think that it's ambiguous enough that I would give the leaders at least a little bit of credit for having tried.
Because we don't know if it worked, but it looks like it was a good try.
You know, even though it was deeply expensive.
That's what leadership is, doing stuff that you wouldn't have done on your own and talking you into it.
So I like to point out that leaders talk in certainty, whereas experts can have the comfort of talking in probability.
So your scientists could say, well, we're 90% sure that this is a good path.
But if your leader said 90%, Then people would say, oh, 10% is a lot.
I'm not going to go that direction.
You want your leaders to say, this is the way to go.
Well, shouldn't we consider, nope, this is the way to go.
But you know, there's still some risks.
Nope, this is the way to go.
But you know, the scientists are saying maybe, nope, this is the way to go.
Now, is that lying?
Would the leaders be lying by giving you certainty where there is no certainty?
And the answer is yes. That would be definitely a lie.
It also is the foundation of all leadership.
The foundation of leadership is acting confident more than you are.
Because if you don't act confident, people aren't going to follow you.
And the fact is that the leaders are guessing and estimating and predicting and stuff, so they're not going to be right all the time.
But they need to convince you that they are right all the time.
You're not going to follow them into battle with a 50% chance of winning.
You want them to lie to you? Yeah, we're winning this thing.
We got this. So, if you can't get comfortable with the fact that leaders have to talk uncertainty, and it's a lie, it's a lie, anytime they talk uncertainty, but they have to.
If you can't handle that If you can't handle those two things simultaneously, then nothing makes sense.
You'll be confused by the world.
Machiavelli's Underbelly, one of my favorite follows on Twitter, points out a story in The New Scientist.
So they took some human brain cells and put them in a petri dish and taught those human brain cells how to play pong.
What? What?
They took human brain cells that didn't know anything...
And trained it to play Pong.
And then they put it into competition against AI, and they found out that although AI can Pong faster, the human brain cells were quicker to learn on their own.
So the human brain cells organized and learned how to play Pong better than artificial intelligence.
But once artificial intelligence got there, it could operate faster.
Now, here's Machiavelli's underbelly's comment on this.
And I want you to, like, just let this settle in for a minute.
I'm going to tell you something that won't maybe instantly make sense.
Just let us settle in.
And it goes like this.
Based on this experiment, this is what the tweet was, we now know with 100% certainty that at least one brain...
He's talking about the brain, essentially the brain cells in the Petri dish.
He's calling that one brain.
We now know with 100% certainty that at least one brain is trapped in a simulation.
All but guaranteeing that we too are living in a simulation.
I let that sink in.
The brain cells in the Petri dish, effectively since they're operating in a coordinated manner, are a form of human brain...
That believes it lives in the universe in which the only thing that exists is Pong.
And this brain cell does not know that there's a universe that created this situation and taught it to play Pong.
The brain cell thinks Pong is reality and knows nothing else, and it's a human brain.
Now, and then...
Do you like the second part of this?
All but guaranteeing that we, too, are living in a simulation.
Now, the way it guarantees that is simply if you can prove that it's true in one case, then you've removed the biggest obstacle to understanding that there's a trillion to one chance that we are a simulation.
Because you first have to believe it's possible.
It's possible that a brain could be in a simulation and not know it.
We have one. We actually have a brain in a simulation that doesn't know it.
So once it's possible, then you're just looking at the odds.
Okay, well, it's possible, but what are the odds?
That's where Elon Musk comes in to help you with the odds.
I don't know if you know this, but he's good at calculating the odds of things.
And he's especially good when he gets them wrong, because he calculated the odds of succeeding at Tesla as very low, and then he did it anyway.
And the odds of SpaceX succeeding he thought were very low.
And then he did it anyway.
So he's really good at calculating odds and then ignoring them.
And succeeding anyway.
So I don't know what that means.
But his argument is that if any simulation could be created, people would create them.
And here we did.
It could be done, and there we did it.
So those are the two biggest conditions that get you to a vastly greater likelihood that we're a simulation.
It's possible, and if possible, humans will do it.
Proven. It was possible.
Humans did it. Do you think we'll do more of these?
Do you think that ever again anybody will do an experiment in which there is brain cells trying to do something in a petri dish?
Of course. And then once you have the second experiment, you would have two human-ish brains living in a, let's say, just for simplicity, a Pong reality compared to one original species.
So if we're the original species and we created two simulations, if you were to transport into the center of any of the simulations that exist, There's a two-to-one chance you're in a fake one.
By the time you create the second one, there's a two-to-one chance that if you are randomly assigned to a simulation, a two-to-one chance you're in a simulation.
And that's just with the second experiment.
After the millionth experiment, you can be pretty sure you're a simulation.
And that's where we're heading.
Kind of a mind-bender there.
Well, Anderson Cooper was getting some internet hate because he did an interview with Bill Gates, and in the context of asking about what kind of, let's say, penalties could be put on the public to make them get vaccinated, Anderson floated the suggestion, which I doubt was his own suggestion.
I think it was on... You know, the list of things that maybe people are talking about.
He asked Bill Gates about withholding people's Social Security should they refuse vaccinations.
Now, part of the story is that Gates laughed nervously at that, and then people interpreted his nervous, evil-looking laugh as being in favor of something.
I would like to defend Bill Gates first, as I often do.
By saying, I'm sort of the king of the inappropriate laugh.
When something is awful or just non-standard, I laugh at it.
And I shouldn't, but I always do.
And so if I had been in this interview and Anderson Cooper had asked me if it was feasible or I thought it was a good idea to take away people's social security, in other words, their own money, You know, ish.
That's not quite true, but been paying into Social Security all your life, and then they take it away from you because you don't get a vaccination?
If somebody suggested that to me on national TV, I don't know if I could not smile at that.
Could you? I think I would giggle at that because it's so outrageous.
And what I saw in Gates' reaction was sort of a reaction to the...
Maybe the extremism of it.
Like, it's just kind of funny, it's so extreme.
I didn't recognize that as Bill Gates saying, oh yeah, let's do some of that.
I mean, I could be wrong.
Maybe later he will say that.
But I didn't interpret it that way.
And only because, you know, everybody generalizes from themselves.
So if you said to yourself, if I were in that situation, I wouldn't have laughed...
Probably true. You know yourself, right?
And if you know you wouldn't have giggled or smiled in that situation, you're probably right.
But I'm telling you that if I were in that situation, I would have giggled and smiled, and it wouldn't have meant anything.
It just would have meant it's an awkward concept.
It just would trigger me.
So just be careful about generalizing from yourself.
I won't assume that I can read Bill Gates' mind, but I'll only ask you to do the same.
All you know is that he had a reaction you didn't understand.
That's all you know. I wouldn't assume anything beyond that.
But let's get to Anderson Cooper.
It was suggested by people that Anderson Cooper might be in favor of this idea of withholding Social Security if you don't get vaccinated.
But indeed, there is no evidence of that.
And so the AP did a fact check and said, no, he was just saying, you know, what do you think of the idea?
He wasn't saying he thought it was a good idea.
And I accept that fact check, however, as I was about to tweet it and defend Anderson Cooper, because I like to defend...
Everybody from fake news.
It doesn't matter what team you're on.
If you're a victim of fake news, I think it's useful to point it out.
Only so you can learn it, you know, see the examples and build a bigger library in your head of where all this fake news comes from and how they do it.
And so I was about to jump in and defend Anderson Cooper's against this fake attack against him when I realized He's the one who spreads the fine people hoax, the drinking bleak hoax, the Russia collusion hoax, and you could name a few others.
And I thought to myself, you know, sometimes when the universe demands justice, you have to get out of the way.
And I felt like I don't want to be fighting the universe.
If the universe has decided that he's spread so many dangerous hoaxes that the universe is going to take him out with a hoax, I thought, well...
Who am I to fight the universe?
And so I decided...
And so I decided that I would remove myself from that fight, at least on Twitter, but I'm explaining it to you here.
Most people I would have defended.
I think I would have defended Jake Tapper.
I know I would have defended Smirkanish.
I know I would have offended Sanjay Gupta.
In the same situation.
And a few others. You know, I'm leaving out a few.
But I wouldn't have defended Don Lemon, and I wouldn't defend Anderson Cooper, because they're hoax spreaders.
So if they get taken out by hoax, well, maybe the universe has some kind of a compensating quality we don't know about.
You could call it karma, if you wish.
Speaking of karma...
Have I ever told you that being free of the sense of embarrassment and shame is a superpower?
I tell you that all the time.
And it's a superpower which I have.
Who would be texting me at this time of the day?
Let's see if something's blowing up.
Nope. But Jim Cramer, I think, has this superpower.
The ability to be wrong in public and not let it crush you.
How many times have you seen me being wrong in public?
A lot, right? But I keep coming back.
In order to do this kind of job, one of the talents in your talent stack has to be a thick skin, which seems ironic, I know, because I'm always fighting on Twitter.
But that has more to do with managing the brand, and some of it's just for fun.
But I probably handle embarrassment and shame better than 99% of the public because I practice.
It's one of those skills that you could practice, believe it or not.
It's a weird skill. But if you get shamed and embarrassed enough, yeah, you just get over it.
Because none of it kills you.
The shame and embarrassment is largely an illusion.
And the illusion is that the thoughts you have of shame and embarrassment are going to translate into the real world and actually affect something.
They hardly ever do.
And once you've been shamed and embarrassed enough and you wake up in the morning and your bagel tastes the same, you're like, well, that's weird.
I got all shamed and embarrassed yesterday and today I woke up and nothing's different.
If you do that enough, then you can learn to bring that feeling into the present.
So you get shamed and embarrassed and it just seems funny.
Chris Fields says, yes, our simulation could have started millions of years ago and we're just catching up.
That is true. So anyway, back to Jim Cramer.
He tweeted a photo of empty shelves at a store.
And the implication was, he just said suboptimal, meaning that it looks like a supply chain problem.
But internet sleuths were quick to notice that every one of the shelves that was empty was labeled for Valentine's product.
Meaning that it was the shelves where they took off the Christmas stuff after Christmas, and they had not yet put the Valentine's stuff on.
In other words, there was no supply chain problem whatsoever, at least in evidence.
It was just they were changing out the shelves.
So Jim Cramer, imagining that those empty shelves were telling him something about supply chain, I guess, tweeted that.
And then he just got shat upon.
The entire Internet opened up and started just peeing on him.
Now, here's my question. Did that ruin Jim Cramer's day?
We don't know. What do you think?
I'm going to say, nah.
Nope. Nope.
Would it have ruined my day if I had done that?
Because when I saw it, I said, oh, God, that's exactly the sort of thing I would have done.
In fact, I did something like this the other day by tweeting something that was actually an old story.
So, you know, tweeting old stories or, you know, taking a picture of an empty shelf and thinking it was meaningful when it wasn't, that's exactly what I do.
I do that all the time.
And, you know, I get over it and every day my bagel tastes the same.
So, my only lesson on this is be Jim Cramer.
You know, when I see all these people dumping on Jim Cramer and then I know he's just going to go to work the next day and still be Jim Cramer, be Jim Cramer.
Let the whole world piss on your head and then just get up and go to work.
You'll be amazed how much it doesn't matter.
Other people's opinions are just things that happen inside their heads.
It's just electrical signals in the heads of strangers.
That's what you're worried about.
Think about it. Just think about it right now.
Let's do a little experiment.
There's a public hypnosis experiment.
But don't worry, there's nothing bad or strange going on.
It'll all be transparent.
Just go through this imaginary situation.
Every one of you probably right now is thinking about somebody else's opinion of you, directly or indirectly.
Other people's opinion of whether you're good or bad or right or wrong or awesome or not awesome is always in our heads.
But imagine those heads.
Just think of all the people who are thinking something about you that you don't like, that's bad.
Those are electrical currents firing inside a piece of organic matter in the skull of somebody that you don't see and they're at some distance from you.
None of that matters to you.
The electrical impulses firing in the stranger's head just don't matter.
And if you think that, like, their thoughts are, like, right on you, their thoughts are getting in you, and it's like an infection, like, oh, the shame, the embarrassment, it's like in my body, like I can feel it.
Just remember, the only place it's happening is in the electrical signals somewhere else.
You could just ignore it.
And it's not easy to do, but if you think of it in those terms as just something happening in another person's head, it's easier.
So that's a reframe.
So reframe it from something that's, like, attacking your body to just something that's happening at a distance.
It's not even touching you.
There's no physical connection.
So you'll find that that's a useful reframe.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is all I had to talk about.
Another terrific show.
One of the best ever. No, no.
Best ever. Best ever.
And I'd like to think that I made all your worlds a little bit better today.
I'm going to get serious about writing a book about how to reframe things because there are so many examples where this is good.
One example with a simulation.
It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Yeah. Scott, how many electrical signals go off in your pants when you hear anything about Bill Gates?
Well, here's my take on Bill Gates.
From the moment he started getting rich, he said, someday I'm going to use all of my money for philanthropic purposes.
And that he did. Like, there's no doubt about it.
He's putting his vast wealth, as well as his time and energies, into making the world a better place.
Now, does he have evil intentions?
I've never seen any evidence of it.
Now, I've seen lots of rumors that are out of context and all that, but I've never seen anything that looked credible.
Now, should there be, someday, something credible, do you think I wouldn't tell you?
If there were a credible report that was just really bad about Bill Gates, do you think I wouldn't tell you?
Of course I would.
Why wouldn't I? Because I'm defending innocent until proven guilty.
I'm not defending Bill Gates.
If you think I'm defending Bill Gates, you're missing the larger point.
I told you I almost defended Anderson Cooper.
But he was a special case because he's a hoax person.
But I will defend Joe Biden, even though I think he's a poor president.
But if something is a fake attack, or he does something well, and I think he did something well with court packing, for example, I'm going to say it.
Remember, my entire context is saying both sides of every argument.
So if you've imagined that I have a pure love for Bill Gates that cannot be shaken by data or any kind of new information, well, that's completely wrong.
I'm just talking about what we know right now, and I'm leaving out what we don't know.
That's not fair? Does that mean I want to kiss him?
You need to take your analysis out of grade school.
If I say something nice about a public figure, it doesn't mean I want to marry them.
