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Jan. 1, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
59:19
Episode 1610 Scott Adams: I Tell You How the Massive False Memories of the Pandemic Have Already Formed

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: False memories of the pandemic Cost of the pandemic social shutdowns Talking in absolutes FDA approved drugs How did the 2 pandemic memories form? "Immunity" means what? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that happened to you in 2022.
So far, and that's only because I haven't done any additional live streams.
Each time I do one, that will be the new highlight of your year.
Audio looks good. I've been hearing some low audio complaints about YouTube.
They gave it a little boost today.
See if it makes a difference. And how would you like to Kick up the new year into the best possible situation you could ever have.
Oh, you do. And all you need to do is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a tiny canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
And fill it with your favorite beverage.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine here, the day, the thing that makes everyone feel better.
It's better than a vaccination boost.
It's better than the Omicron.
It's better than inflation.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and watch it do its business.
Go! I just realized how I should advertise.
Because, you know, I like to do an advertisement that's like dropped into the middle of the content.
But I realized that when I lifted my cup up, this could be the reveal.
That would be like the sponsor of the show.
And that's the only time I'd show it.
It'd be like, ooh.
And you'd be like, oh, Ford.
Anyway. Speaking of Ford, one of the Ford executives locally gave some advice on Twitter yesterday, and he said that if your dealer sells you a car or orders a car for you but doesn't lock down the price at the time that you order it, then you should cancel your order and, you know, you're dealing with a bad dealership.
I am in exactly that situation.
So I tweeted back, should I cancel my Mustang order?
Because the Livermore Ford dealership told me I can't negotiate the price until the car's on the lot.
Which I always suspected was just a way for them to get an extra car on the lot, and then they wouldn't care if I bought it or somebody else.
Because they can sell 100% of that model, it's just hard to get one.
So they just did the paperwork, pretended they ordered a car for me, I think.
I think that's what happened. Yeah, I mean, there's a real order, but the car's not really, really for me.
It would only be for me, I think, if I paid the non-negotiated sticker price, because that's the estimate they gave me.
But they said, oh, yeah, we negotiate when it gets here.
Well, how much negotiating are they going to do when it gets here?
And everybody who walks in would buy that car because it would be a popular model.
It's hard to get. So I tweeted back, you know, should I cancel my Mustang order with Livermore Ford?
Now keep in mind, I'm talking to a Ford executive in public.
And the Ford executive said, yes, you should cancel your order and I'll help you find a better dealership.
I thought that was the most baller answer I've ever seen from an executive.
Yeah, you should cancel your order, and I'll find you somebody who isn't a crook, basically.
Basically, that's what he said.
I mean, those are my own words.
And I thought to myself, you know, I was getting ready to be pretty mad at Ford, but that is so transparent.
First of all, the executive said, watch out for this trick.
And then when I said, your own company is doing that trick to me right now.
Your company is doing it to me right now.
But, you know, the dealers operate somewhat independently.
And as soon as he heard it, he said, yeah, cancel that order.
I'll help you find an honest dealership within my own company.
That is a very baller answer.
I give him credit for that.
All right. Well, we're learning today that Omicron is, like, beyond dangerous in terms of...
But a doctor... I just saw a doctor on CNN's website saying that you could transmit Omicron just by taking your mask down for a moment to say something.
That's it. Whereas we used to think, you know, six feet of distance would protect you pretty well.
Basically, it sounds like if one dude with Omicron walks through your party, it's going to be a bad week for the people who went to that party.
Now, yeah, right.
I'm not saying it's bad, or is it?
Because here's the problem.
If you get too many people who have to quarantine at the same time, the economy is going to get really slow really fast.
But... You know what's really different about this one?
I feel like it's entirely possible that we'll have an organic two-week shutdown of the economy.
Now, maybe not the most critical things, but I can easily imagine that businesses just won't have enough employees.
And so it won't have anything to do with a mandate.
Businesses will just say, uh...
You know, three-quarters of our employees have infections, and they have to stay home.
So there's no mandate, but we can't stay open.
We just can't serve people at this level of staffing.
So you might have something like a two-week voluntary shutdown of a lot of places.
Not voluntary, because they wouldn't have the staff.
But the Omicron passes through so quickly that two weeks might get us to herd immunity.
Now, I don't want to be the one, believe me, I don't want to be the one, who says two weeks to flatten the curve.
But we might have two weeks to flatten the curve.
Like this time, it might be real.
And only because of the rapidity of the spread of Omicron plus being, you know, low danger, relatively.
All right. I am often criticized for talking too much about the pandemic, and that is a correct criticism.
However, I give you this one clarification.
When I'm talking about the pandemic, I'm usually talking about the mental part.
Like, how do we make decisions, and why do we have different decisions, and why do you see one thing, and why don't I see something else?
And there are some amazing false memories that are being generated right now about what has already happened.
So when historians go to write the story of the pandemic, which of these two movies are they going to write?
Are they going to write this movie that says, the vaccinations came out, originally the data made it look like it was a pretty good deal, it looked like it was stopping transmission, as well as keeping people healthier.
Both of those things.
And for the alpha version of the virus, it looked like it was effective.
But as Delta came in and, you know, sort of broke the mold, and as we found out that the vaccinations themselves unfortunately somewhat rapidly declined in efficacy, the very things that were working before stopped working.
So the vaccinations that did have initially good data, very good data, very quickly turned to negative data because of Delta and because of a fall-off of efficacy.
Now, that's one of the movies.
Don't hear that I said that's the true one, okay?
Because today I'm going to talk about what I've seen or what I think is true and what other people remember to be true.
But I thought it would be unproductive to tell you which one is true.
Because all you would do is argue that mine was the false one.
And I would say, no, no.
Somebody else's is the false one.
And we wouldn't be able to settle that.
But here's what I want to do instead.
I want to show you how the two movies formed.
So it won't be a question of who's right, because I don't think we can settle it.
But it will be like a fascinating tour, I hope, of how such a thing could happen.
Now, here's the first false memory, and I'm dealing with this every day.
It's a false memory of what I have predicted or said versus what the reality is.
And probably some of you know, there's a massive bunch of hallucinations about what I have said.
All of it false. Now, I can say that for sure, because in this one case, I know my own opinion, and I know what I've said.
So I can tell that they're hallucinating, or they have a false idea, completely false, often opposite of what I think.
Now, here's how that got formed.
So here's the first clue about how illusions get formed.
If I talk about a lot of stuff...
about the pandemic, and somebody dips in and finds a little bit of my content, it would be as if they were looking through one window of a house, and that's all they knew about the house.
So online, you hear lots of people who say, I looked into that Scott Adams' house, metaphorically, the pandemic conversation, and I looked through that one window, and his whole house is a bathroom.
And then I'll say, no, that's not true.
And they'll say, yes, it is.
I heard it myself. I saw it myself.
I looked in your damn house through one window, and there was the bathroom.
There's nothing else to say here.
That's what I saw. Then somebody else will say the opposite, because they were looking and they saw the living room or some other room.
So a huge amount of the...
Hallucinations, and they literally are hallucinations, like actual hallucinations, about my opinions are because somebody saw part of it.
Now, here's the weirdest part.
Some people are saying that, yeah, yeah, yeah, Scott, you may have mentioned all of the topics...
But you kind of focus on one thing, and let's say you focus on the vaccines, whether they work, and you don't talk about, say, the cost of the shutdown.
Would you say that's true?
That I have underestimated, or let's say, underemphasized, whenever I talk about the topic, have I underemphasized the social cost of shutting down?
On locals, I'm seeing a mix.
Some yeses and some nos.
Yes, yes, yes. So a lot of people would say, that's true.
I've underestimated, or underemphasized, not estimated, I've underemphasized the cost of the social shutdowns and the mandates.
Now here's my defense to that.
You ready? For those of you who think I've underemphasized that, here's my defense.
Why would I have to tell you any of that?
We're all on the same page.
Literally all of us are living those costs.
It's obvious. Do I have to tell you that teens don't like Zoom school?
You didn't know that until I told you?
Or did you imagine that everybody knew it but me?
Did you imagine that it was obvious to everyone But because I didn't emphasize it as much as you think, that I was the one who didn't know that Zoom school was bad for kids?
Did you think that? Because if I think that you know it, and obviously you know I know it, I'm not going to talk about it a lot, because what would you say about it?
I can't estimate it.
I don't know how big the damage is.
I've talked about, you know, the suicides, etc.
But... All right.
So there's obvious reasons why people have false memories of me.
Now, here's the interesting part.
If either my memory of events or my critics' memory of the pandemic events is correct, one of us would be triggered into cognitive dissonance.
And here, I'm not going to tell you which one it is.
I'll just tell you to look for the trigger of whoever's wrong.
But here's the pard part.
My critics think that I have been proven unambiguously wrong, and the data shows it now clearly.
And anybody can look at it.
You can just Google it, you can see what I said, you can see what's true, and you can see I'm wrong.
And then I ask for examples.
And the examples, almost entirely, are things I didn't say, or just crazy stuff.
Or people will misinterpret the question, answer the wrong question, etc.
So that's going on, too.
But we don't know who has the cognitive dissonance, but I boiled it down to one specific question to see if I could get some insight on this.
And the question was, was it ever true that vaccinations stopped the transmission or spread of the virus?
This seems to be one of the biggest issues that people have with me, Is that they say that I believed, or said, based on my belief, that the vaccinations at one point, early on, would stop the spread.
Now, when somebody says, stop the spread, how do you interpret that?
If somebody said, I think this vaccination will stop the spread...
Would you interpret that as every single person who's vaccinated could not get the virus and or spread it?
Would you ever interpret this will give you immunity as 100%?
Does anybody just automatically say, well, that means everybody?
Because you should never do that.
So here's another reason that the movies diverged.
A lot of people hear, this will give you immunity.
This will work really well.
This will stop the spread.
And what they hear is, this will 100% be effective.
And then they look at the data, and it's not 100% effective.
Right? It's not 100% effective.
So they say, well, this was a lie.
Told us it would be effective, and now it's not 100% effective, so that's a lie.
Whereas other people like me would say, You should assume that they didn't mean 100%.
Now, it's way less than 100%, so that's a big problem.
But... Joe Blow is saying that they literally said 100%.
So I saw a video compilation...
As part of this research here, if you can call it that on Twitter.
And people sent me a video compilation of people saying it would 100% stop.
And I watched the compilation of all the experts, Fauci and the CDC, saying that there would be 100% stopping of the virus, right?
How many of you saw that? How many of you saw the compilation video Of the experts actually saying something we know not to be true, which is 100% it's going to stop the virus.
I'm looking at the comments, and a lot of people saw it.
I saw it this morning.
It doesn't exist.
I saw it this morning, and it doesn't exist.
So all of you who saw it, no you didn't.
I saw it too, and there's nothing on there that would suggest 100%.
It is your interpretation of what they meant.
My interpretation as a writer, because I write myself into this trap all the time, if you're a writer, you are continuously dealing with people hearing absolutes in your writing when you didn't mean an absolute.
And the way that you didn't mean it is nobody should think this was an absolute.
Suppose I say, guns stop a crime.
Private gun ownership stops crime.
Would you interpret that as it stops all crime?
Would that be your natural interpretation?
Oh, you're saying guns stop all crime?
Would you interpret it that way?
That would be a silly interpretation, right?
But with vaccines, we do, I don't know, maybe because it's medical, our brains kind of, we're hearing 100% where nobody ever talks like that.
See what I just did?
That was accidental. I just said, nobody ever talks like that.
So I gave you an absolute, and you should have understood it could never be an absolute.
So the very trap that I said people easily fall into, because it's just easier to talk in absolutes, we all do it.
So the very thing that you saw with your own eyes, as them saying it's 100%, I watched with my own eyes just minutes ago.
I didn't see it. I saw people talking the way people talk.
They talk in absolutes, but you as the audience should of course understand they don't mean absolutes.
Of course not. Straw man, gaslight.
So some of you are going to have some difficulty with this topic.
There will be some squirming.
All right. Then I asked this question to see if I could get a percentage.
Well, actually, let me give you a little test.
Suppose... The vaccines came out, and here's the only thing you knew about the pharma industry.
This isn't true.
But suppose, just as a mental exercise, suppose you knew...
That 100% of the FDA-approved medicines that came out of Big Pharma worked in the past.
Different ones. I'm not talking about vaccines.
But every kind of medicine the FDA had approved, suppose you knew, and again, this is not true, I'm just saying, suppose you knew that they all worked.
Every one of them, for decades and decades, they all worked.
Meaning that they worked better than the cost of the side effects.
Now, let's say in that context, Big Pharma comes up with some new vaccinations.
Every single thing they've ever done has worked.
What would you think is the likelihood that the new vaccinations would work, even given that they didn't have enough time to do a long-term study?
What would be your natural guess as to whether it's likely that they worked?
Pretty high, right? If everything had worked before, even if they had a compressed schedule for testing, which they did with the vaccines, you'd think, well, yeah, this is more risky because they don't have the long-term effects.
But if you look at their track record, it's 100%.
So, that's a good bet, right?
Now, say it was the opposite.
Let's go extreme opposite.
Suppose you knew that 100% of every kind of pharmaceutical drug that had ever been created and approved by the FDA was later found to be ineffective.
And then in that context, then somebody comes up with a new drug or a new vaccine.
What would be your reasonable prediction about whether the new one would work if 100% of the old ones didn't work?
And you'd probably say, well, not so good.
So I asked this poll on Twitter, obviously very unscientific.
I said, what percentage of FDA-approved drugs of any kind Do you believe work in terms of benefit over risk?
And I gave people ranges from 0 to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 75, etc.
And it turns out that your opinions...
You being the public who answered this poll, are very evenly spread.
Surprisingly so.
So here are the number of people who answered my poll, unscientifically, who thought that the total number of FDA-approved drugs that have ever worked is below 25% of all the FDA-approved drugs.
A quarter of the people who answered, a quarter of the people...
Think that fewer than a quarter of the drugs have ever worked.
Are they wrong?
How would I know?
How would you know?
How many people thought that between 25% and 50% of those drugs never worked?
Like as high as half of all the drugs.
So 28% said...
That between 25 and 50% of the drugs have ever worked.
And then...
So that's about even, right?
24, 28. And then the number who think it's between 50 and 75 is about 31%.
And only 18%, this is the smallest number, think that the drugs work between 75 and 100% of the time.
Now, this explains our two movies.
Because would you have a different opinion of how likely...
Big Pharma lied if they were only right 25% of the time or less.
But if you thought they were right 75% of the time or more...
Okay, damn it, that's too good.
Damn it! I just got linguistically kill-shotted.
This is so good, I'm going to tell you.
I'll regret this forever.
But the crag777 just gave me a nickname.
Claw Adams. Damn you!
That's good. That is so good.
Now, of course, it's based on a hallucination, right?
The hallucination is that you believe I was pushing vaccines.
Now, none of that happened in my movie.
But in your movie, where that stuff happened, that is a really good nickname.
I've got to give you credit for that.
It'll probably ruin my whole career.
It's that good.
And I mean that. I mean that nickname could actually ruin my whole rest of my reputation in life.
And none of it would be based on anything true.
That's how powerful a good nickname is.
But damn, that's good.
Damn. I have to appreciate the technique even if I don't like the outcome.
All right. So...
Here's the...
So if you've got different assumptions about how bad Big Pharma has been in the past, how can you possibly end up with the same assumption about whether the vaccines work?
So here's the other reason that we've got two movies on one screen.
If you believe that Big Pharma almost always sells you fake drugs, you would assume that this next one was fake and that they were lying about it.
Lying about it working.
Or even lying about them being certain it worked.
But if you thought that they were right 75 out of 100 times, you'd probably think, you know, probably got this one too.
So it's not so much that any of you are dumb or smart.
You're starting with different assumptions.
And how would you ever know which of these assumptions is correct?
I mean, these are wildly different.
To imagine that the past drugs that have ever been approved, that...
75% or more of them worked versus only less than 25%.
Those are completely different worlds.
So, let's see.
I'm just, I'm trying to resist blocking a user here who's like right on the edge.
You're right on the edge. And I'm just like barely containing a string of profanities that are about to come out of my mouth.
But I'm going to do my best.
So those are some reasons for the false memories.
But I had some exchanges with some people online who have a completely different memory of the beginning of the vaccination phase.
And I thought to myself, how can we have completely different memories?
And how would I know if mine is the right one?
So I tested it on Twitter.
And here's the single question that I think a lot of this turns on.
My memory of the early rollout is this.
Now remember, I'm not claiming my memory is the correct one, right?
And you're going to say to me, Scott, why don't you just Google it?
And I'm going to tell you why that won't work in a minute.
So my memory is the following.
That when the vaccines first came out, that the early data, the early data, which later changed, that the early data showed that it improved survivability, but also reduced the spread.
And then, after the Delta came out, and after Omicron came out, that was no longer as true and maybe so untrue that it's just completely untrue at this point about the transmission part.
Still true about the survivability according to the data.
Now, that was my memory.
My memory is that there was data...
And that when Delta and Omicron came, it changed.
And also the efficacy dropped off.
And we couldn't know that until the long-term it happened.
Nobody knew the long-term efficacy because you can't study the long-term and the short-term.
So what I saw was people who were optimistic but wrong...
Optimistic, but wrong. But I didn't see a lie in terms of a direct lie that there's a specific person who told a lie.
Now, that was my view of what happened.
Now, on Twitter, I found out that there's a whole bunch of other people...
Okay, Drew, you're going to go away.
So all the people on YouTube who are mocking me about boosters, number one, it's not funny.
It's not creative.
If it were clever, like Claw Adams, I'd at least give you some credit for being clever.
But if I can mock you with a funny face, and I don't need to do anything else, then what you're saying is probably pretty stupid.
Let's test it. I'm just going to say what you said, but I'll do it with a funny, mocking face.
And see if you sound stupid using exactly what you said, but with the addition of my funny, mocking face.
Scott, when are you going to get the booster?
Are you going to get the booster? Are you going to get the booster?
How about the booster? How about the booster?
Huh? Huh? Has he mentioned the booster yet?
Ha ha ha! Are you getting your freedom booster yet?
I hope that maybe you could stop saying the same dumbass comment.
Message received.
Some people got shots and are considering the booster.
It's not a fucking point that you're making.
So you're boring us.
Stop doing it.
Criticisms are allowed.
Dumb, boring ones are not.
All right. So here's the question.
So a lot of people said, no, Scott, you have a complete false memory, and the early data never showed that transmissions could be reduced by vaccinations.
And I said to myself, seriously?
And I thought, there can't be more than one person who thinks that, because my memory was so clear that That it was based on data.
And I thought multiple studies, etc.
So I thought, do other people have the same view?
And it turns out a lot of people have the view that the data never showed at any point that the vaccines worked in any way.
Now, does that blow your mind at all?
If you're in my movie, because some of you are in my movie, but some of you are in that other movie, does it blow your mind at all that both of these memories are held by the public?
One that the vaccinations used to work, but things changed, and the other that the data never showed they worked, even in the beginning.
That's freaky, isn't it?
Because that would be the easiest thing in the world to check, wouldn't it?
So now you say to yourself, Scott, spend five seconds on DuckDuckGo and find out, did the data exist or did it not?
So do you think that was easy?
Just Google it.
Nope. Turns out that's really hard.
So even the search engine can't tell you what happened.
It's crazy. How are the historians going to write this story?
Because you can't even research it.
Now, here's why I think I have the answer.
Are you ready for this? So this is like the key to unlock how these two movies formed.
How could I have a... Many of you...
By the way, many of the comments have supported my view of what happened, and others have not.
So we know the two movies are verified, that they both exist...
Here's what happened, I believe.
And it's kind of interesting. And Ian Martiz has had the best, I think he unlocked this for me.
Apparently people were using different definitions for a lot of important stuff here.
And let me just give you an idea how bad it was.
Here are the various terms that have been used by experts as well as pundits talking about it.
Does the vaccination prevent infection or provide immunity?
Does it boost your immune response or does it provide protection?
Does it prevent serious disease or does it vaccinate against?
And apparently, we don't have the same definition of what, the same idea of what those words mean.
For example, I was informed that the definition of a vaccination has changed.
How many of you have heard that?
That the actual word vaccination suddenly magically changed to a different definition in 2021?
Yeah, you all heard that, right?
I'm saying yes, yes, yes.
And so I saw the evidence of that.
So with my own eyes...
I looked at the direct evidence, I read it with my own eyes, how the definition had changed from one thing to this brand new definition in 2021.
So I saw it with my own eyes, and it didn't happen.
I saw it with my own eyes, it didn't happen.
I mean, I didn't see it.
I looked at what you looked at, and I didn't see it.
Now, does that mean it didn't happen?
Well, it happened in your movie.
I'm just saying that I can't say it.
Anyway. Here's what happened when I asked this.
So a number of people sent me studies to confirm that my view was correct.
So I've tweeted out the links.
If you want to see them, I've got a couple of links that show that the initial data showed it was very effective against transmission.
And then very quickly, things changed, and then it wasn't.
Now, how can you not see it?
Oh, let me give you...
Yeah, let me finish the point there.
You said, how could I not see it?
And the answer is, the definition changed from something that gives you immunity to something that gives you protection.
So there it is, right? So what I read that I was directed to read was that the definition changed for vaccination from something that gives you immunity to something that gives you protection.
And there it is, right?
I don't see it. Now you're all saying, I just read it, there it is.
No, I don't see it.
Let me read it again, because I don't see it.
The definition changed from immunity to protection, two words that mean about the same thing to me.
So I see two words that mean the same thing, which means that the definition didn't change.
They used different words.
But I see the same thing.
Now, I believe this gets back to the 100% thing.
If somebody said a vaccine gives you immunity, what's that mean to you?
What would it mean if somebody says it gives you immunity?
To me, it sounds like protection.
Yeah, they changed the word, but what does immunity mean to you?
When you see immunity, do you think 100% of people won't get it or 100% of people won't get sick?
Here it is. There it is.
Okay, so somebody answered on locals.
Somebody said directly, the word immunity implies 100%.
How many of you would agree with that?
That the word immunity implies 100% nothing's getting in.
Okay, so that's why you looked right at it and you could see it.
Because when you read the word immunity, you read 100%.
When you read the word protection, you're like, ooh, that does not mean 100%, right?
Right? Immunity means 100%, but protection obviously doesn't mean 100%.
So that's what all of you saw.
Now, I am a writer by trade, and my interpretation of the words are that it means the same thing.
That's my interpretation. Because if you said to me, Scott, this will give you immunity, I would never think 100%.
In a medical context, when do you ever think 100% except maybe if somebody's dead, they're not coming back?
Well, I suppose it depends how long they've been dead.
But in the medical world, what is 100%?
Anything? Has there ever been 100%?
So if you're in the medical context...
and somebody says something gives you immunity, why would you ever think that meant 100%?
Why would you assume that?
Now, my guess is that the reason they changed it is because people misinterpreted the word immunity.
That looks like the obvious reason.
If I thought that people were misinterpreting immunity to mean 100%, because remember, even the best initial data didn't say 100%, Does everybody agree with that?
That even the initial data that all the experts were referring to, it never said 100%.
It was always 97, 95, this sort of thing, right?
So let me ask you again.
Knowing, just hearing my explanation, if you ever interpreted immunity as 100%, does it make sense now that other people didn't?
Can you see why other people would interpret immunity within a medical context to mean, yeah, it works pretty good?
For some people it might be immunity, some people might kill it.
Now, so I think mostly there's a definitional problem here.
And it's really hard to suss out which of the experts said something that really looked like a lie and which of them said something that was at one time true and then new data came out and it was different.
And... When they're just talking sloppy, they're using words that mean something a little different to you.
So I think that a lot of the people who think that we clearly were lied to have the following illusions.
So this would be supporting the theory that my worldview is correct.
Which doesn't mean it is.
It would just be a theory that would explain why one would be true.
You can't prove it. So the other worldview could be true if I'm misreading everything.
So if I'm misreading everything, which can happen, right?
That's what cognitive dissonance is.
I could absolutely be misremembering and misreading everything.
And by the way, my critics are saying, and a lot of them, and a lot of them right here, are saying I'm doing exactly that.
That I'm actually misreading basically everything.
And not just one thing.
Just everything. So here's what causes the two movies.
Number one, if you assumed that the pharma companies are almost always lying and almost always giving you fake drugs that don't work, you would assume, quite reasonably, that this was probably another one of those situations.
If you believe that they probably usually make drugs that work, but not all the time, you might be in the other movie.
If you think that these definitions are different, if you think that immunity meant 100%, which I would say would be a...
I don't want to use a word that sounds like I'm insulting you.
Let's say...
I can't think of a word that doesn't sound insulting.
Because I don't mean this to be an insult.
It's just an interpretation thing.
If you thought immunity meant 100%, you may not have maybe the writer's experience.
The people often misinterpret your statements as absolutes.
So if you have that continuing problem like I do of always being...
I did it again. See what I did?
I just said, I'm always being misinterpreted.
Should you have interpreted that statement, I'm always being misinterpreted, to mean every single person misinterprets me every time?
Of course not. You would use the context.
Of course it doesn't mean that.
Here's a comment. Both things are true.
Many facts are unchanged.
Many interpret them being fed by media.
Yeah, so it's a soup of people being wrong, people interpreting words differently, people not knowing that the data changed.
But I can send you the links that say that the vaccines did stop everything early, but then they became less effective over time.
So if you don't believe that ever happened, I can show you the links.
All right, so what else do we got going on here?
And also there's the question of whether the vaccine is, like, stopping the virus from getting a hold or is it just building up your natural immunity so it always gets a hold but it doesn't, you know, take root or something, to use common language.
So as long as we're disagreeing on all these things, we'll see two movies forever.
And as Ian said, Martesis, if we don't agree on what words mean, like at the very beginning, if we don't have common definitions, then one can later claim any history of what they said.
And that's exactly what's happening.
So because we don't agree on the assumptions of how likely a pharma company will lie to you in any given situation, we don't agree what any of the words meant, And we have, apparently, some number of us have completely false memories.
Maybe me, right?
I can't rule that out. It might be me.
But maybe you.
Complete false memories of whether the vaccines ever worked.
So... There's absolutely nothing else interesting happening.
So how many of you just heard this and it sounded to you like I was promoting vaccinations?
How many would interpret this morning's live stream as promoting vaccinations?
Thankfully, mostly no's.
Right, no. And have I given you my updated opinion on getting a booster myself?
Don't think I have. Because it's sort of subject to change.
But I'll wait as long as possible.
I think there's the extra risk that that level of boostiness can't be tested.
So it's sort of even more of a guess than the other guesses.
At the moment, I'm leaning toward waiting it out and getting some of that sweet, sweet Omicron in my system instead.
So that's where I'm leaning.
If I had to suddenly travel and there was a mandate, I might make a practical decision.
But you want a real mind teaser?
I'm going to leave you with the final mind teaser.
Suppose you were trying to decide whether to get vaccinated and you wanted as much information as possible, and let's say you knew, which you can't know, but let's say you knew the history of how accurate the vaccine...
all medications from Big Pharma had been in the past.
And let's say you knew you don't, but let's say you did.
You knew that fewer than 25% of the time the drugs even work...
Would it be rational to take the vaccination with all the other stuff that we know that you may or may not trust, but would it be rational if you knew that fewer than a quarter of the people, fewer than a quarter of any medication that ever went in the market ever worked?
The answer is, you can't tell.
Do you know why? Because none of the risks can be measured.
You can't measure the risk of side effects in the long term.
You can't. So if I told you that there's some chance that the vaccination works, you might make a calculation closer to your ivermectin calculation.
Because I've told you before that I predict ivermectin will be shown not to be terribly effective.
Maybe a little. But I think it will not be shown to be as effective as proponents show.
At the same time that I predict it doesn't work, I would give the odds of it working at less than 25%.
But would I take it if I got COVID? Yes, I would.
Assuming my doctor said yes.
I would take it.
Now, why would that be different from the vaccinations?
Now, one way it could be different is you say, well, Scott, the ivermectin is so well known, we don't have a downside.
But we also don't know anything about long COVID. So since all of the risks are completely unsizable, even if you knew that big pharma had a low track record of success, it could still be ivermectin-ish in terms of your cost-benefit if you thought that the risk was gigantic of getting COVID and you thought that the risk of the vaccine killing you itself was relatively small,
you would still take a 25% chance that it made a difference.
Or let me say it better.
You would never have the numbers to know if you were making the right decision.
We wouldn't have the right data for that.
But it wouldn't be irrational to get a shot if you knew that medicine in general only worked 25% of the time.
It wouldn't be irrational.
It could be wrong, but it wouldn't be irrational.
Because all the decisions ultimately are irrational in the sense that we don't have enough data.
Yeah, you know, those who assume the government is guilty and assume that Big Pharma is guilty, you kind of have to know how often that assumption works.
Thank you, AA. Scott is right about this.
Yeah, as soon as you compare it to ivermectin, it starts making sense.
But you have to be careful, because ivermectin has a much safer long-term...
Well, actually, let me ask you this.
Do you think ivermectin's ever been studied...
In a way that can guarantee you it's safe?
Because there's no absolutes, right?
There are no absolutes.
We have quite a few short-term trials.
We have lots of lower-quality data.
My old philosophy teacher used to say that the food in the cafeteria was bad, but at least there's a lot of it.
That's our data.
Well, all of our data about the pandemic is bad, but we got a lot of it, so that's the good news.
It's all bad, but hey, thank goodness there's not a shortage of it.
Nothing is absolute.
Damn it, Jordan. Stop it with your mind games.
Nothing is absolute. All right.
Scott, how many boosters would you be willing to go up to?
I still want to...
I just feel like answering that question is a dead end.
Because why would it matter to you how many boosters that I thought I would get?
And first of all, why would you think I could answer that question?
What would make you think I could answer that question?
How could anybody answer that question?
How many boosters?
Now, I have told you that I'm undecided between zero and one booster, but that I'm leaning heavily towards zero.
Why would you ask me how many I would get?
Wouldn't that depend on what I learn between now and then?
So if I don't learn anything new...
I would certainly...
Well, there will be something new because we'll know what happens with Omicron.
So the booster question is undecided.
Wait as long as possible.
And I haven't waited long enough yet.
So stop asking me if I'm going to get boosted.
If you've made a decision about it, you need to defend your decision.
I say there's insufficient data...
But there might be better data later.
Don't know. But there might be.
Even if the better data is only in the form of knowing more about the alternative, which is getting infected by Omicron.
All right. Have you seen Dr.
Malone? So here's my problem with Dr.
Malone on Joe Rogan.
And unfortunately, I'm trying to avoid the same problem that my critics have with me.
Which is, they see a little bit of my opinion and then form a total opinion based on, you know, looking at that one pinprick.
And I don't want to do that with Dr.
Malone, because I think I've been guilty of that same sin myself.
And I'm not going to watch a three-hour anything, even as it's sped up.
So I will never be able to penetrate what Dr.
Malone said. And I just want to tell you I'm not going to put in the work because I'm just not going to do that much homework to listen to what one guy said.
So let me say it this way.
If there is a statement he said, you know, just a clean statement of opinion or fact, I'd love to hear it if you think that that's like the important thing.
Somebody says it's a cop-out.
I think that the weakest comment on the internet is that somebody else didn't do enough research.
Because that assumes that if he did more research, it would make a difference.
And all evidence suggests that's not the case.
We just get more confirmation bias.
No, I am definitely lazy about things that don't make a difference.
I try to be not lazy about things that do make a difference.
Somebody says, just watch the last half hour.
You're so close.
But let me test it.
I know a number of you have seen it by now.
State in the comments just one sentence, could be two, that just says something he said that you think would be different from what I believe.
Go. Let's test it.
For those of you who have seen it, give me one example of something he said, and if I miss it, just repeat it, please, because there's too many things left.
Look, so here's the kind of comments.
So Norman says, Scott knows if he listens to Malone, he'll not be able to hide the cognitive dissonance.
Now that's the mind reader problem right there.
Here's what I think would happen if I listened to Dr.
Malone. I think I would agree with him.
Unless there's a difference in data interpretation, in which case I would look to others to say if his data was right or not.
Do you think I would disagree with him?
What would I disagree about?
Ballone talked about hypnosis.
But what do you think I would disagree with him about?
Right? Nothing. So you're all shooting empties.
What is it? Mass formation psychosis.
I wouldn't disagree with him about that.
That's just one window on this that's somewhat incomplete.
But all the things that form the mass hypnosis formation thing, those things do exist and they do matter.
But give me consent.
No, I'm not going to disagree about that.
You're shooting blanks, yeah, not empties.
You disagree about him saying deaths are over-counting.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No, I don't think I disagree.
So, if you can come up with any reason that you think I would disagree with him, tell me what that disagreement is, and if there's a place on the video to see the context, I'll listen to it.
But if you can't tell me anything that he says that I don't say, why are you recommending that I listen to him?
Um... I need to watch it just to say I'm post Malone.
Good one. He talks about deep knowledge of corruption in the medical industry.
Does anybody think that I'm not aware of deep corruption in the medical industry?
Does anybody think I would need to find that out for the first time?
So, as far as somebody says I'm being obtuse, Andrew...
It's a very easy test.
Tell me something he said that you believe I would disagree with.
Is that an unreasonable thing?
If I'm being asked to consume three hours of content, even sped up, it might be two hours, if I'm being asked to do a whole bunch of homework, don't you think that's fair for me to say, name one thing he says that I might disagree with?
Um... Somebody says, this is boring.
No matter what we give you, you'll just say you agree with it.
Well, that's the point. My understanding is that Dr.
Malone is well-informed.
If I'm also well-informed, would we just agree?
I see no reason.
Early treatment, what, am I going to disagree about that?
All right. So, let me ask you this.
Have I made my case...
That you can see the causes of the two movies.
Did I make that case?
I'm seeing yeses.
Mostly yeses. Now, the question of who's right or wrong, I'll leave that to you.
I'll leave that to you.
Do you think the next pandemic will be handled better?
I do. I do.
I mean, I would be really surprised if this pandemic doesn't get us in much better shape.
You said deaths are undercounted.
Yes, I said that.
But also overcounted.
So here's the thing.
Hospitals were, some people say, hospitals were incentivized to say that somebody died of COVID, you know, even if maybe it was just with COVID. So everybody's on the same page with that, right?
And that would be an example of what?
Overcounting, right?
So have you ever heard me disagree with With the notion that some people are counted as COVID deaths when probably they just had something else going on and they died.
Have I ever disagreed with that?
So in that limited context, that would be an obvious case where you should assume there's over-counting.
Everybody on the same page?
Now here's the other part of the equation.
When people die at home, who determines what they died of?
And it turns out more people than you think die at home.
So the people who died at home may have died of COVID, but if they were, let's say they were 98 years old and had a comorbidity, if your 98-year-old grandmother dies and you knew she had a bad ticker, what are you going to do?
Are you going to do a COVID test?
No, no. So the thought was, in India, of course, this would be on a much bigger effect, but the thought is there are people who are dying that because they didn't go through the hospital system, they died at home, for example, that they wouldn't be counted.
So I think that it's true that there is both over-counting and under-counting.
Would anybody disagree with that?
That in one way there's almost certainly over-counting, But in another sense, in another element of it, there would be almost certainly undercounting.
Now, my estimate has always been that, let's say we get to, what are we up to?
Deaths in the United States?
800,000? Something like that.
Give you the current number.
So my take is that if the 800,000 or so deaths was 600,000, Or maybe it was 1.2 million, that we would have acted about the same.
So I'm not sure it matters, and I would imagine that you would find hospitals that have overcounted and hospitals that have undercounted.
Don't you think? I mean, it's a big world, and you also have the different standards for determining if somebody has COVID. I can't believe everybody used even the same standard.
So I would say probably some places are under, some places are over.
If you ask me if I know what the net is, I don't.
I don't. But I don't know that it would have changed anything.
Yeah, in rural India, there are plenty of deaths that don't get counted, so they might have more deaths.
That's correct.
All right.
It's worth listening to.
All right. Is this a positive discussion?
Yeah, I think it's positive discussion only in the sense of how to make decisions and what to believe.
Yeah, I'm much less interested in the actual, you know, the medical what you do than how we process these things.
And how is it we have completely false memories of things that just happened, basically.
Anyway... Tomorrow will be a lot better than today because we'll have some actual news by then.
Today's going to be a slow news day.
And let's go forth and have some fun.
If you didn't see my special live stream yesterday that I did after my normal live stream, you don't want to miss that one.
That one's the weird one.
Weird good.
So watch that one, please. And thank you.
Some people liked that video yesterday.
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