Episode 1613 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About the Elephant in the Room That Only Some People Can See
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Who's hallucinating?
NBC plugging "Winter Olympics"
Sealed records and 2009 immunity deal
Mass Formation Psychosis
J6 Political Prisoners
Dr. Malone and Dr. McCullough
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Well, I just remembered that I forgot to tweet that YouTube would be live too, so you might have a smaller audience than usual.
Smaller audience, but really better in many ways.
And congratulations on making it here, because this is the best thing that will ever happen to you in your whole damn life.
And to make it even better, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen, jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day.
Some people call it sippinosis.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. That is some good sypnosis right there.
Can you taste the persuasion?
I think you can. I think you can.
Well, are you surprised that I'm here?
Anybody? Because I did my best to get cancelled yesterday.
Here I am. Here I am.
Now, in case anybody missed it, I was essentially taking a challenge.
The challenge was that I could say things that violated the mainstream narrative about vaccinations, and I tossed in the election of 2016 just to make it extra dangerous.
So I violated the narrative, I think, maybe harder than anybody's ever violated it.
At least according to my viewers, they said I did succeed in violating the narrative.
I'm still here. Still here.
Didn't get even demonetized.
And I get demonetized for all kinds of stuff.
Didn't get demonetized.
And did not get a strike.
Did not get a warning.
Nothing. Nothing.
Now, I predicted that that would be the case, despite being a fairly high-profile pundit who talks about stuff in public.
Now, how many of you would accept that the test showed something?
You know, it's not science, so you can't make any hard conclusions about it.
But would you say the demonstration was useful?
I don't know if conclusive is a little bit too much to say.
But was it useful? Yeah, Colin, I hear you.
Not yet. Not yet.
Okay. Well, maybe I'll get cancelled later.
So, a lot of the concern that I'm getting from both the reasonable critics and the unreasonable ones is that I talk too much about COVID, and on top of that, too much about my own critics.
Would you say that's fair?
Fair criticism?
Fair. I agree with that completely.
But have you seen the news lately?
Do you know what the biggest news story is today?
It's snowed.
That's it. That's it.
That's all that's happening. The biggest news story today is snowed.
We'll talk about that in a little bit.
I would like to tell you that, unfortunately, since I talk about the headlines, I'm a little bit captive to what's going on there.
And I would talk a lot less about myself I hope, if something interesting were going on in the world.
But there isn't at the moment.
I mean, it'll heat up.
I mean, this is going to be a good year.
2022 will be lit for politics.
But let me give you one partial defense.
When I'm talking about the pandemic, I don't feel like I'm talking about the pandemic.
And apparently that's not getting through.
Do you know what I mean by that?
I think that all of my pandemic talk, you know, unless I'm just, like, telling you some new update or something, but when I'm talking about the meat of it and how we deal with it, it's not really about the pandemic at all.
It should be about how we determine who's hallucinating and And who is thinking clearly?
That's what it's supposed to be about.
If I have confused you to make you think that I am either persuading you to do or not do something in the pandemic, none of that's happening.
None of that is happening.
Or at least intentionally.
I don't have an intention or really even a motivation to give you medical advice or anything like that.
So none of that's happening.
But there is a fascinating thing that's happening at the moment that does involve me.
I'm in the middle of something that I consider fascinating.
But to be honest, I don't know if you will.
If I can be honest.
Everything's more fascinating when it affects you personally.
But I believe you will learn something as I talk about this today.
So I think you're going to see something...
That may open your eyes a little bit.
And it will look like I'm just defending against my critics.
And there's some of that, certainly.
But I'm going to go a little deeper and try to teach you something that's seriously useful.
Okay? So if you stick with me, you're going to hear some topics you're sick of.
And God, I'm sick of them.
I am so sick.
I don't even want to hear the word vaccination again for the rest of my life.
We're all sick of it.
But my promise will be, if you stick with me, I'm going to give you at least one really, really useful tip for discerning what's real and what isn't.
So just stay with me.
See if I can deliver that.
Okay? But first, some other things.
I saw a tweet from Michael Sokolow on Twitter.
He says, it's interesting how NBC is plugging the, quote, Winter Olympics.
And apparently they're not mentioning that it's in Beijing or China.
So NBC is maybe, at least allegedly, we don't know what's in their minds, but...
And Michael goes on to say, even the graphic they're showing has a big Winter Olympics with only a small Beijing in the lower corner.
Now, have we reached a point where willingly doing business with China is embarrassing?
Yes or no? Have we reached the point where an American company doing business with China is literally embarrassing?
Yeah. Yeah, we're there.
It's literally a corporate embarrassment to do business with China.
Now, I feel sorry for NBC because, you know, they make these deals years in advance, I imagine.
Probably four years ago, they knew they would handle the Olympics.
Maybe they could have seen the signs then, but this is going to be, I think, a ratings disaster.
Is that a pretty safe prediction?
Do you think we'll be surprised and the ratings will be sort of normal?
I feel like it's going to be, at least in America, I think it's going to be a disaster.
We'll see. China's got really big problems right now.
I don't know if I've ever seen a country with bigger problems.
So they've got that default to the big real estate company going on over there.
They've got a demographic bomb.
They're being blamed for the coronavirus.
They've got the Uyghurs. So now they've got a giant karma problem.
Uyghur karma. If the hashtag Uyghur karma ever gets traction...
I don't know. Even the government could fall in China.
I know that seems really, really unlikely, that the entire government could fall.
But it could. It could.
Rasmussen did a poll, and they were asking people about their opinions of the FBI. And apparently 46% either feel strongly or somewhat agreeing with Roger Stone in the following sentence.
Now, this will blow you away a little bit.
This will blow you away.
This is the United States public, and 46% of them agree with Roger Stone, quote, that a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI are using it as Biden's personal Gestapo.
So the thought that Biden uses the FBI as his personal Gestapo is agreed to somewhat, or a lot, by 46% of the public.
46% of the public thinks it's fair to liken the FBI to the Gestapo.
How many of you would agree with that?
I think all 46% of you are on my livestream right now.
Pretty wide agreement.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
You know, this is exactly the kind of accusation that I usually avoid.
Is that fair? Maybe I don't.
That may be my own self-image.
But I like to stay out of the this group is like Hitler and that group is like Hitler and who's like the Holocaust.
I don't like to get into any of that stuff.
That's sort of what you argue when you run out of argument.
But I find that characterization hyperbolic, of course, but not untrue.
It feels like a hyperbolic way to say it, hyperbole.
But it isn't too far from what I see.
To me, it does look like Biden has some control over the FBI and that they are doing some of his bidding.
And that would look very disturbing.
Now, we don't know.
We don't know. But maybe.
Elizabeth Holmes, who is on trial for Defrauding people, I guess.
Got found guilty on several of the charges and looks like she's got some serious jail time or fines coming.
And I don't know that there's much to say about this.
John Carroll says in the comments, the other 54% don't know what the Gestapo is.
You're not totally wrong there.
You know, I'm only mentioning the Elizabeth Holmes story because it's in the news.
But there's nothing interesting about it, is there?
She broke the law.
She got caught. She got prosecuted.
I think that's the whole story.
Now, there is definitely an element to this of how in the world did she convince so many people that she was legitimate?
I think that Elizabeth Holmes convinced more smart people that she was real than just about anybody.
How'd she do it? Is it because she's female?
Now, I don't think it was the sex appeal per se.
I didn't see her really selling sex.
Whenever I saw her, she was dressed conservatively, etc.
I think it's because she is a woman.
Not because of the sex part.
I don't think necessarily any sexual interest is why people believe her.
But how many investors do you think would love to have a successful female entrepreneur in their portfolio?
I think it was a portfolio decision.
That they all need a successful black person.
That they're funding so they can say they are, which is not a bad impulse, right?
You want your activities to have some correlation with the demographic of the country, on average, on average, not every person every time.
But to me, this looks like a gender preference thing.
Meaning that there were so many people who knew they hadn't invested enough in women's startups that they probably were just primed to throw money at her as soon as she looked legitimate.
Unfortunately, she wasn't totally legitimate.
So that's that whole story.
The interesting part of the Epstein-Galane-Maxwell story.
So apparently when Epstein did a settlement back in 2000-whatever...
In 2009, he paid half a million dollars to, I guess, Virginia Jeffries' accusations.
And apparently part of that agreement, because it was a civil lawsuit, is that it would basically keep everybody else quiet and they wouldn't be able to sue or something like that.
In other words, we may have a perfect...
A concealment of the truth.
So you've got Epstein, who's dead.
You've got Ghislaine Maxwell, whose records are sealed.
And now it looks like there won't even be maybe the option for civil settlements, because that may have been preempted by other agreements.
Whoever worked on this, was Dershowitz behind this 2009 thing?
Do I have that right? I know Dershowitz was involved with defending Epstein at one point.
But this is kind of brilliant.
I would say that whoever was behind, if somebody was behind it, if this is a cover-up, it's really, really good.
Because it looks like they're covering it up right in front of us, totally getting away with it.
Does anybody think they won't get away with it?
If what we're seeing is exactly what it looks like, which is it looks like a massive cover-up, it looks like it's working, right?
Wouldn't you say? And the weird thing is that they're doing it right in front of us.
I don't think there's anybody who thinks, oh, they're playing it transparently or anything.
No, they're covering it right in front of us, and there's nothing you can do about it.
And it's the kind of issue where, because it doesn't affect most of us, except in the general way that you want criminals to go to jail, but because I don't have any connection to anything in this story, I can watch the powers that be, apparently, covering up horrible activity by famous people, and I just say, huh, Well, that's suboptimal.
And then I go on with my life.
The fact that almost nobody else really, really cares about the case allows them to do this right in front of us.
And we're like, ah, suboptimal.
I got other things to worry about.
It's kind of amazing.
Usually these things at least have a little bit of a cover story that, oh, no, there's nothing like that going on.
Goodness, no, nobody's covering anything up.
Here's what's really happening.
But this doesn't even have a cover story, does it?
There's not even a cover story.
It's like, no, we're just going to cover this up.
Pelosi's probably going to step down as speaker, no matter what.
And the speculation has begun about who will replace her.
Isn't this the same problem that the Democrats have about running a candidate for president, which is they don't have any talent?
You don't really notice until they need a leader and no bench.
You don't really notice until it's like, well, who the hell are they going to run for president?
Like, name a name.
Who would even be...
Like a legitimate candidate.
And now the Speaker of the House, same thing.
And you look at the names that they're floating, and I'm thinking, do any of them look like they could do what Nancy Pelosi did?
They don't really look like they have the weight that she had, if you know what I mean.
The gravitas or something.
Newsom? Maybe.
I think Newsom's too polarizing.
But I suppose you could say that about everybody you've heard of.
All right, you saw the story about the major interstate in eastern Virginia.
So snow closed the road while people were on it.
So it snowed until people couldn't move.
And there were people who were stuck on the road for 19 hours.
They were in their car on the road.
Now, obviously, many of those cars ran out of gas.
So, you know, they were stuck, and then there was snow, and then the cars on the gas.
And so even Senator Tim Kaine was in that.
And he spent 19 hours on the road.
Now, you should read some of the threads of people.
There was one by, I think, a news person who was stuck there.
It's really scary because Now, somebody says, where do you go to the bathroom?
I have to think there was a lot of yellow snow by the end of two days.
Because it was sort of like an overnight, almost two days situation.
I don't even think it's resolved yet.
It's not resolved, right?
Some of them are still there.
But there had to be a lot of yellow snow.
Some people didn't bring food.
Some did. People ran out of gas.
It was amazing. Now, I'd like to answer a question that many of you have asked me.
Many times I've been asked the following question.
Scott, how could you live in California with all the problems there?
Well, I'll tell you the number one reason I live in California.
That generally speaking, I do not risk death by walking outdoors.
That's it. That's my reason.
I have lots of other reasons, right?
But that's the reason I moved here.
Because I once had my car break down, I've told this story before, in the middle of the winter, just about now, I think it was February-ish, in my senior year of college.
And I was miles from civilization in a snowstorm like this one, but I was the only car, and my car broke.
And there was no other cars.
And I didn't bring a jacket.
In the middle of the winter. Because I was just going to be in my car, and I was in college, right?
If you're, you know, if you're 19...
What was I? 20, I guess?
If you're 20 years old, and you're just going from your car to a building, you don't really need a jacket.
Until your car breaks down, 25 miles from civilization.
So when I read this story, I am super triggered by this, I've got to tell you, just personally.
Because if you haven't almost died from exposure, you don't quite understand how scary this was.
Really, really scary.
Do you carry a jacket or blanket in my car?
Yes, there is a spare jacket in the back of my car.
That is correct. And that's in California.
But as soon as the weather turns below 70, there's a spare jacket in the back of my car.
Yes. And always probably will be.
Well, here's the topic that you're sick of hearing about, but I'm going to try to give you some value.
So those of you who are tired of hearing about this, I'm not going to be offended if you want to do something else.
But I'm going to try to give you something you haven't seen yet.
Okay? You've all heard now about mass formation psychosis, and Dr.
Malone talked about it. He's not the creator of the idea, but he was popularizing it.
And the idea is that we're all so uncertain and confused and scared that our minds are not working correctly.
Is that good enough for a summary?
That we're all so isolated, scared, and we don't know what's true because the news is so confusing, that we're in a state of easily being persuaded, but also simply not thinking correctly, like we've lost our ability to reason.
Does that seem like what we're in?
Do you feel that we're in that?
Now, I've said to it, we're always in it, so it's not really the pandemic.
You know, we've been in it since at least the 50s.
So that's my contribution, is it's not new, but it's definitely here.
I'm certainly not questioning whether it exists.
I'm just saying it's not new.
However, I just tied two things together today that finally made sense to me.
I tweeted this morning that there are a ton of people who are really mad at me, but their anger seems not to have a reason which they are willing to offer.
And so finally, in frustration, I tweeted today, can somebody give me an idea why so many people are angry with me?
Because I actually don't even know the topic.
Is it vaccinations?
Is it I said something about the Joe Rogan interviews that were suboptimal, even while saying he's a national treasure?
And so I asked the question.
Smoking hot wife jealousy, somebody says.
Could be. Could be.
And so I asked the question, and the answers were all over the board.
They were all over the board.
Now, what have I taught you What is happening if you ask a question, and let's say you ask a question about something and everybody gives you one of two or three standard answers, what would you judge about that situation?
You would judge that maybe you have a different opinion, and that it's two people with a different opinion.
But what would be your take if you asked 100 people what they were angry about with you, and they all had different reasons?
What would be the take?
They're all angry with me, so it's the same person they're angry about, but their reasons are all different, and it all happened about the same time.
How do you explain that?
Here's how I explain it.
When you see that, it's almost a guarantee of some kind of a mental phenomenon, right?
If people had largely the same complaints about me, I'd say, oh, that's something to look at.
Maybe it's me. Or maybe it's them.
But if people are mad...
And the thing that cued me off is that all of their criticisms were generic.
So the criticisms all fell into certain categories very reliably.
So they would say, you're coping.
I don't know what that meant. Like, what was I wrong about?
They'd say, accept the L. And I would say, I didn't even know I was competing.
What is even the topic I'm accepting the L on?
All these generic things.
So, have you put together the two things I'm about to put together for you yet?
Who's ahead of me? Who's ahead of me?
It's a mass formation psychosis.
The mass formation psychosis...
That I've been talking about and Dr.
Malone talked about and is all in the news is the reason that people are mad at me.
Because if they were mad at me for a specific, let's say, a prediction or a specific anything, they would just say so.
But it is the mass formation psychosis that is exactly the reason people are mad but they don't know why.
I didn't really know why. I saw some people offer reasons that might be explanations.
One was... The best one I saw is that for a lot of the people on the right, which would include a lot of my audience, that Joe Rogan is a, quote, lifeboat for their opinion, and I put a hole in the lifeboat.
That's actually not bad.
Because there's something...
Irrational happening.
Could be that. Could be that I simply disagree with people's opinions or they think so.
Because here's the weirdest part.
Almost everybody who's mad at me doesn't disagree with me.
Now, if you don't think that's true, I could pick anybody who is my critic and just walk through what is it you think that I think that's different from you, and you wouldn't find anything we disagree on.
And yet people are still hopping mad.
Hop and mad. That is the mass formation psychosis.
Because if people had a good, solid reason, they would just tell me, and there would be a similarity to it.
Now, the best theory I got that had any meat to it was that people believe I once had a different opinion in which I trusted vaccinations and trusted the companies involved.
But that as time has gone by, people say that I've changed my opinion because I realized how wrong I was.
Did anybody see anything like that happen?
For those of you who watched me, have you seen me change my opinion on vaccinations from the start?
Now, the people on Locals watch me the most.
It's a subscription service.
And almost all of them are saying no.
But I did see a yes.
So even on locals, somebody's saying yes.
But overwhelmingly, the people who watch me the most say my opinion has never changed.
But here's where it gets really weird.
Here's your first tip for understanding when you're hallucinating and when you have a clearer view of the world.
Are you ready for this? Here's your first clip, or your first tip.
Let's take the specific accusation, one of the few that I got, that multiple people had, is that I trusted the big pharma companies too much.
So that's what people are saying about me, that I trusted the big pharma companies too much.
Now here's how you can tell if that's a hallucination.
And you could use this technique for other people in different situations.
Just for a moment, just for a moment, try to take yourself out of the fight.
And just, like, look at it like you're looking down from space.
Right? You're not in it.
It has nothing to do with it.
You're simply looking down from space at this accusation.
And the accusation is this.
That the guy who's the creator of the Dilbert comic strip...
Whose 30-year run is almost entirely based on not trusting management and about money distorting things.
My entire career is based on that principle that you can't trust management, you can't trust what anybody says, the data is all made up, right?
Anybody who follows my comic would be aware of that, that I am the single most vocal skeptic of large companies in The whole fucking world.
The whole world. You could search the entire world, and you would not find anybody, anybody, who has spent more time saying you shouldn't trust what people in power tell you.
Now, do you think that that guy, again, remember, you're going to pull yourself out, you're going to look at it like it has nothing to do with you, nothing to do with you.
Have you come to believe that the person who is most identified with not trusting big companies and indeed said it directly a thousand times since the beginning of the pandemic publicly, at least a thousand times, you think that that guy has a problem in which he trusted big pharma, literally one of the least trustable entities of all time?
Just ask yourself, does it sound reasonable if you were to take yourself out of it and just say, all right, here's the thing.
The person who is most associated with distrusting big companies is actually one of the most trusting of big companies.
Do you think that actually happened?
This is the technique, right?
To ask yourself, is that really...
Did that happen? If you can say to yourself, yeah, that sounds actually pretty reasonable, well then go with it.
But I'll tell you what it sounds like to me, and of course I'm in the middle of it, so I'm biased.
It sounds to me like somebody saying, you know, I don't think McDonald's sells hamburgers.
That's what it sounds like to me.
When you say the guy who created Dilbert is too trusting of big organizations, it sounds exactly like, I don't think McDonald's sells hamburgers.
I don't think they do.
Meat comic is 100% behind you?
Good to know. I love meat comic.
It's a good comic. So...
I decided I would do a self-audit because wouldn't you agree at this point that it's also still possible that I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance and everybody else in the world is right?
Right? So I thought I'd do a self-audit.
So I started compiling my predictions about the pandemic.
And so I started my list.
If you would like to participate in that, please remind me or message me on anything you think I got wrong.
It has to be a specific prediction.
Anything you think I got wrong, or anything you think I predicted right, just in case I don't have a full accounting.
Scott, could this be someone trying to damage you?
Well, it doesn't really look organized.
It looks like a bunch of people who have lost their minds from the mass formation psychosis.
But I do think it's fair when hundreds of people tell you that you're losing it, that you should take that seriously.
Don't you think? At the same time, I can defend myself and say, this looks like obviously a delusional thing.
At the same time, don't you think there's a responsibility on my part to take it seriously?
If so many people are saying it, right?
So I'm going to do an audit of my own, I guess, sanity, if you will.
And so help me out.
Tell me what things I predicted wrong or even right, and we'll see how I did.
Just on the pandemic. You don't have to go beyond that.
Now, one of the things that people criticized me for was a tweet made before Biden was elected.
I said, if Joe Biden got elected, there's a good chance he'll be dead in a year.
Now, how many of you think...
That a tweet that says, if Joe Biden gets elected, there's a good chance you'll be dead in a year.
How many took that as, literally, the Holocaust will be kicked off in less than a year?
How many took it that way?
Because if you did, you're not really a good reader.
Here's how you should have taken it, but I will accept that it could have been clearer.
You should have taken it this way.
Things will get a lot more dangerous, and especially for Republicans.
Does that seem fair? That the way you should have interpreted it, you know, because Twitter is all about hyperbole, so you should be mentally reducing the hyperbole before you interpret it.
If it's your first day on Twitter, you're excused.
But if you spend any time there, you know that the absolutes are never meant to be absolutes, right?
If you say, everybody does X, nobody thinks you really mean everybody.
Not everybody, everybody.
Just lots of people. It's just the way we talk.
So, I predicted that if Biden got elected, there's a good chance you'd be dead in a year.
Crime has spiked.
The number of people dead from coronavirus, way more than Trump.
We probably have a little more risk with our nuclear adversaries than under Trump, although you could argue that one.
Overdoses through the roof.
Overdoses through the roof. Am I leaving anything out?
Suicides? Through the roof.
Overdoses, suicides, coronavirus, crime.
And then you throw on top of that the political prisoners.
The January 6th political prisoners.
And I think we just have to call them political prisoners at this point.
I don't feel...
I don't feel that we should assume that they're just part of the justice system.
It doesn't look like that to me.
And I think that the government has the burden of proof that they are not screwing us.
So if you say to me, Scott, can you prove that they're political prisoners?
I would say, nope.
Nope. Nor do I need to.
Because if you're making it look exactly like they're political prisoners, that is the assumption that the citizens should operate on.
It's up to the government to tell us that's not what's happening.
And they haven't. Right?
So the government is guilty until presumed innocent.
So January 6th, those are political prisoners until the government makes an argument that they're not.
Okay? So that's the operating assumption.
Let's test another theory for...
Here's another way to sort out truth from hallucination.
You all know Robert O'Neill?
Does everybody know Robert O'Neill?
Rob, I think he goes by.
He was a little bit famous for putting a bullet into Osama bin Laden.
I think more than one, actually.
I think he had some fun with it.
But he tweeted today...
Twitter had deleted Joe Rogan's interviews with Dr.
Robert Malone and Dr.
Peter McCullough. And Rob asked this, why do you think that is?
Why do you think that is?
What would be your answer to Rob's question, which is a very good question?
Why do you think those two doctors got deleted?
Now, what are the possibilities?
Now, one possibility...
It's political, right?
Yeah. One possibility is money.
That big pharma pushed the right levers and made it happen, right?
So let's consider our possibilities.
So, one, there is a very impressive conspiracy...
In which the pharma companies can actually have stuff taken off of social media.
Maybe because they're big advertisers, something like that.
Now, does that seem reasonable?
Does it seem like a reasonable possibility that big pharma is getting their critics kicked off of social media?
Yeah. Yeah, that could happen.
And certainly within the realm of possible, right?
Possible. Okay.
Let's talk about some other possibilities.
Okay. Is it possible that the reason those two doctors were kicked off is that they can't even convince other doctors that they're right?
Because I don't think Twitter used its doctor judgment, do you?
Do you think there's a doctor who works at Twitter who said, yeah, I'm a doctor too.
I looked at this stuff and I've judged that as my doctor experience tells me, this is not right.
Do you think that happened? Or do you think Twitter got advice from experts?
What do you think? I think that you have to ask this question.
So Rob O'Neill's question is a good one.
We don't know exactly the answer, right?
Why did these two doctors get kicked off?
That's a good question, right?
But the question that also is a good question is, why is it that these two doctors can't convince other doctors that write?
But they've done a good job of convincing non-doctors that write.
Would you be concerned about doctors who could convince people who don't know anything, but could not convince people who know as much as they know?
Does that worry you?
Because if they could convince other doctors...
Then Twitter wouldn't have kicked them off, would they?
Do you think if there was a solid, even a minority, but a solid body of other doctors saying, yeah, you know, I've looked at their argument and I've got to say, that's pretty strong.
Now, you might say to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, Twitter doesn't even check with other doctors.
I don't know. But you don't know either, right?
I don't know that they do.
But you don't know that they don't.
It seems kind of obvious that they would.
Especially if somebody asks, why'd you do that?
Now, of course, they don't have full transparency, so I guess they could do anything they want.
So here's my next advice for sorting out BS from reality.
Now, keep in mind that none of the tips I give you for sorting reality from BS Hallucination will be 100%.
You got that, right?
These are all sort of rule of thumb way.
So just as you say, follow the money, it predicts almost every time, doesn't it?
But it could also be wrong.
So would you agree that the rule of follow the money is a really good rule of thumb for figuring out what's real?
But, you know, not every time.
You give me that? So I'm going to give you some more like that.
So that they're in the category of follow the money.
It doesn't work every time. But it works a lot.
And it is, if the expert can't convince other experts, and they're skipping the other experts because they can't convince them, and they're going directly to the public, there's a reason for that.
There's a reason for that.
I'm seeing a counterpoint here.
Let's see. I saw a counterpoint about Dr.
Malone having people on his side.
Where is that? I missed it.
I think there's some counterargument that Dr.
Malone has people on his side.
But you would have to limit that to the specific question, wouldn't you?
So the question is not Dr.
Malone good or bad.
That's not the question.
The question is specific claims that are not in the mainstream.
So if the doctors have convinced people that their specific claims are true, and there are lots of them, we should be talking about that, right?
We shouldn't be talking about there's this one doctor who says something, We should say, there's a whole bunch of doctors, and we'll put some more on, and they'll say the same thing.
Why do these two doctors get all the invitations?
There are no other doctors who agree with them?
Yes. You don't even know the claims disputed.
That's correct. I don't know all of them.
I do know that there is one specific case of Dr.
Malone... Tweeting information that was considered false information about the outcomes of the vaccine.
So I think that's what he got kicked off for.
My understanding is he got kicked off for tweeting data that was misinterpreted or obviously wrong.
Now, it's the obvious part that is where we're going to disagree.
Having looked at the debunkers and then looked at the data that Dr.
Malone tweeted, the debunkers look stronger to me, but could be wrong.
Could be wrong. All right, so ask yourself why you would ever agree with doctors who can't convince other doctors to agree with them.
I would never do that, by the way.
So Arthur is saying, good point, Arthur.
He says, Scott, Scott, not working for me because other doctors are afraid of being cancelled.
Bullshit. Let me call complete and total bullshit.
The other doctors are afraid of being cancelled.
Absolute, complete bullshit.
And I'm surprised that you believe that.
Let me tell you...
Let me tell you what the real world looks like.
In the real world, people are too different.
For every person you find who doesn't want to get cancelled, and there'll be lots of them, you're going to find at least one person who likes the attention.
You will. You will find at least one person who likes the attention.
Now the doctors you can trust, cannot trust, are the ones who need hospital privileges.
Do we all agree on that? If you require hospital privileges, you can't go against the mainstream hospital opinion.
You'll get kicked out.
But that still leaves a lot of people, right?
Retired people, retired doctors.
What about the other people who worked on the same team with Dr.
Malone? Have you seen all the interviews of the people who have the same experience as Dr.
Malone about mRNA technology?
Worked with them on the project, same experience.
Have you seen the interviews with them?
Why not? Do you think they're all afraid?
All of them? So this is very similar to the...
You're going to hate this, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Do you remember the fine people thing in Charlottesville?
And when you go to debunk it, people will always go down what I call the well until the last thing they have left is that...
And a big event like that, nobody could have unknowingly been there without knowing it was a neo-Nazi event.
That's like somebody who's never been born in America or never been here.
Any large group of Americans have every opinion.
Again, I'm speaking in weird absolutes.
But if you take 100 Americans just randomly and put them in a room, what do you think?
They're going to have two opinions? No.
We have like 100 opinions.
So if you're telling me that doctors are so single-minded that their fear of their career is the guiding principle that just got all of them, basically the entire industry was so high-minded that they had to do what their medical masters told them to do.
We don't live in any world like that.
In our world, people disagree with everything vigorously all the time if they believe it.
If they believe it.
Have you met any private doctors who agree with them but just don't want to say it?
There must be some of those, right?
But we don't live in a world where anybody can shut down an entire profession.
I don't think that can happen.
Just Google it, Scott.
Google what? You've got to be a little more specific than just Google it.
Now, if you say there are, in fact, many doctors who publicly agree with Dr.
Malone, I'd like to see them on interviews.
Get a few more of them.
You know what would be great? Get like three of those doctors, bring them in and say, here's some claims made, what do you think?
I'd watch that. All right.
But I believe it is not really a good understanding of the world if you believe an entire profession can be hive-minded that easily.
Pick any category of debate in this country.
Do we have any category of debate on any topic, from climate change to whatever, do we have any topic that you can get this many people on one side?
Not really. You can't get that many people on one side over anything.
And people will take wild risks that you wouldn't take.
Would any of you take the risks that I take with your careers?
I guess I'm a good test case.
You've seen how many risks I take with my career.
Would you do that? Well, I'd...
Somebody says, you're rich.
But I did it before I was rich.
I did get fired from my day job before my Dilbert job took off because I took a big risk.
Yeah, no, but even before I had the F you money, you're right about that.
Oh, here we go. Nathan says...
Now, I haven't read Nathan's whole comment, but I'm going to make a prediction.
That there's something not specific here.
Here we go. Nathan says, people are mad at you, meaning me, because you say things that are not true.
Okay, can you give me an example?
There won't be one. And give yourself outs.
Okay, that's generic. So, so far, this would be a sign of cognitive dissonance because it's that generic thing.
But let's see if he goes further.
He says, Malone is head of an organization consisting of 16,000 doctors that agree with him on COVID issues.
It's called the Unity Project.
That is a claim which could easily be checked.
So let's take, let's say, the specific data...
That Dr. Malone got kicked off of Twitter.
Would anybody like to take a bet that his 16,000 people in his Unity project disagree with the data?
How many of you think that his 16,000 people who agree with him in general also agree that the data he promoted on Twitter was accurate?
Would anybody want to take a bet with me?
I'll bet that the majority of the people that you say agree with him would say that the specific data that he got kicked off of Twitter for was not reliable, or it had been misinterpreted.
Anybody want to take the bet?
You don't have to agree with every single subject, yes.
But the only things we're talking about with Malone are what he got kicked off of social media for.
And I'm going to make a prediction That the people who are on his side don't agree with him on the stuff he got kicked off of Twitter for.
Anybody want to take the bet?
You'd only need to find one person.
Just find one other person who thinks that data was accurate.
I don't think he can. So the problem with Malone is...
And somebody also said that...
They said I was not giving Dr.
Malone the credit he deserves for his qualifications.
In other words, I was underselling his credentials.
I did the opposite of that.
I basically drooled all over his credentials as some of the most impressive credentials I've ever seen.
That's unambiguous.
Nobody, nobody is questioning his credentials.
That's the one place we're all starting with.
Okay, we all agree he has lots of credentials.
Now let's talk.
So you can see that the complaints about me are just actually crazy.
All right. But here's what happens when you separate the expert from the criticisms.
So Dr. Malone went on Joe Rogan.
Sam Harris tweeted a, let's say, a criticism of Dr.
Malone by ZDogg.
Anybody watching ZDogg?
You can see him on Locals and elsewhere.
And ZDogg was also MD. Criticized Dr.
Malone on a number of specific points and went through them.
So now you know something, right?
So now if you've seen Dr.
Malone's full interview and then you looked at ZDogg's criticism of him, which didn't happen at the same time, right?
They happened in different places and times.
You would have a pretty good idea because now you've got the pros and you've got the cons, right?
How many would agree with that?
Because now you've seen both sides.
And ZDogg, remember, ZDogg is a very good communicator and a doctor.
So he knows what he's talking about.
Well, that didn't work out at all.
Because after ZDogg did his criticisms, Twitter user Paul Collider, I mention him often, went in and criticized the criticisms.
And here's the criticisms of the criticisms.
Is that in each case, I don't know if it was every case, but in the ones noted, Z-Dogg had misinterpreted Dr.
Malone and had criticized a misinterpretation.
So in other words, if I hadn't seen Paul Collider's criticism of the criticisms...
I would have been much more persuaded that ZDogg was saying something that was an actual debunk.
Now, is Paul Collider correct that ZDogg misinterpreted Malone?
I don't know.
You would need yet another fact checker to fact check Paul Collider, who fact checked ZDogg, who fact checked Malone.
None of this is useful information.
It turns out that as soon as you separate the claim from the criticism, everything goes to shit.
So my problem with the Joe Rogan one interview is that it removes the criticism.
And once it's removed, then you're not really sure if you've been talking about the same thing anymore.
And then you get into word thinking and who said what, and it's just useless.
Yeah, fact-checking is dumb because you usually don't have a reply to the fact-check.
That's the problem with fact-checking.
So fact-checking is a bad model, better than nothing, but it's a bad model because it separates in time and space the claim from the debunk.
They have to happen at the same time.
Otherwise, you don't know anything.
You need somebody to say, oh, no, no, you're misinterpreting me.
I can't defend that because I never said it.
So get back on my point, and now what's your criticism?
So that's why it needs to happen at the same time.
You need the person who makes the claim to continuously pull the person back into the actual claim.
Because if you know anything, when people criticize, they make up their own hallucination of what you claim, and then they're off on that.
You've got to have the claimer say, nope, stop, never said that, Now let's talk about what I did say.
Right? That could work.
All right. So, and then I also tweeted one other critique of Dr.
Malone, and smart people said, but Scott, that fact check is, like, generic and off the point, and it looks like the fact check, the way it's written, is weasel words, like, with no credibility whatsoever.
And that was actually a reasonable criticism.
Now, keep in mind, I didn't tell you the fact check was right.
I told you you need to see it.
You need to see the claim, you need to see the fact check.
But I will say that the doctors who did not agree with Dr.
Malone, they did seem to be weaseling about maybe related topics, like they weren't answering as directly as you think that you wanted them to.
But here was my interpretation.
One interpretation is you can't trust the fact-checkers, and that's a fair interpretation.
The other interpretation is that the doctors were aware of all of Malone's claims, and if they thought he was saying something that was true, I think they would have addressed it, or false.
In other words, the fact that the doctors weren't seeing What Malone saw does tell you something, even if they didn't address it.
Because it's hard to be specific about that stuff.
All right.
Weird comments going on today.
Here's your next trick for determining who is hallucinating and who is not.
You've heard it before, but every time I apply it to a specific situation, it helps.
The more examples you see, the better.
Generally speaking, generally speaking, I will allow that there will be exceptions.
Addison says, "Do you suppose people are tired of you attacking experts without doing the work to understand the issues?" Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.
Yes, I believe that people believe I'm doing that, but I don't think it's happening.
In other words, I've asked for a specific claim, and then I say, well, what have I said about that claim?
And I don't have any examples.
So what you're saying would be right if we were talking about something specific.
But nobody can even tell me why they're mad.
Like, what do they disagree with?
I don't think it's only because I've dismissed any experts.
I've said, give me a specific claim and we'll look at it.
I don't think that that's...
Unreasonable. Alright, here's your tip.
General tip, but I'm going to apply it to this one.
If you have four people in a room, one of them says, there's an elephant standing right in front of us.
The other three, who are just as smart, just as capable as spotting elephants, are looking in the same room, and it's a little room, and they say, wait, what?
I don't see an elephant. There is an elephant right there.
Right there. I'm looking at it.
Look at it. And the other three people are like, we don't see the elephant.
Who's right? It's a generic situation.
We're not talking about the pandemic.
It's a generic situation.
One person sees an elephant.
Three do not.
They're all equally trained in spotting elephants.
And it's a little room.
I'm not talking about a forest or a jungle.
It's like a little room, and you're in there with it.
Who's right? Somebody says all of them.
You get extra credit for saying all of them.
I know what you're going at there.
Yeah, I always bet on the three, and here's why.
Hallucinations are additions to scenes, usually.
There could be exceptions. But a hallucination is something added to the scene.
You don't have hallucinations of somebody sitting in a room with an elephant who doesn't see it.
That hallucination just doesn't happen.
The hallucination that does happen is somebody adding something to a scene.
First of all, will you accept that as a good generalization?
If somebody sees a conspiracy theory, let's say a false one, and the other people can't see it, who's probably right?
Assuming that they can see all the same information, right?
There's no difference in information.
Who's probably right?
The ones who can't see it, right?
Because hallucinations are positive additions.
Dr. Malone may be seeing things that people with the same amount of experience and vision are not seeing.
If the other people saw it too, I would say, whoa, they're all experts.
You tell me four experts are in the room, they all saw the elephant?
There's an elephant in that room.
But if four experts walk out of the same room with the same expertise and the same experience, and three of them say, there is no elephant in that room, and one of them says, I see it clear as day, who do you bet on?
The three who don't see it, or the one who does?
Now keep in mind, the one who does is showing his work.
So there's no extra knowledge or anything like that.
He's showing his work. It's completely transparent.
And three of them don't see it.
But one of them does.
Somebody says you'd believe the one.
I do think that many of you would believe the one.
However, the reason that you might believe the one is that you have been fooled and primed by the following model of reality.
The people who are the rogue and disagree with the mainstream sometimes are right and then they become heroes.
I'm an example. For example, when I predicted that Trump would win in 2016, I was a weird, rogue outlier.
When I was right that he won in 2016, I got a lot of attention.
Did that make you think that the rogue outlier is right more than wrong?
It shouldn't. Because the reason I got a lot of attention is that the odds of the rogue person being right are really low.
That's the entire reason that I did it.
Because I knew that if I got it right, it would boost my credibility.
Now, I was pretty sure he would win for reasons.
But I have experience with this.
The rogue person is almost always wrong.
Almost always.
And you have the opposite impression, because when they are right, it's all we talk about.
The reason that you know Sully did such a good job of landing that plane in the Hudson River is because it was rare.
That's why you heard of it.
So your mind imagines that rogues are often right.
The reality is they're wrong 95% of the time.
If you just looked at your whole life and all of the rogues who made a claim, 5% of the time, not only are they right, but it changes history.
And then you can't get that in your head.
My God, that rogue was right and changed history.
Those right brothers...
There was rogue, bicycle-making Wright brothers.
They made a plane that nobody said could happen.
The rogue is always right.
Now, the rogue is almost always wrong.
So bet against it.
Should you have bet against me in 2016?
What was the smart play?
Was the smart play to bet on me?
Or was the smart play to bet on all the experts in the world?
The smart play was to bet on all the experts in the world.
Now, I had a very specific angle into it.
If you followed that, maybe that would be different.
But in general, don't bet on the rogue.
It's a bad bet.
All right. So that's your other trick.
So here are your tricks for not being an expert yourself, but deducing the quality of the experts.
First, follow the money, of course.
But I don't see any specific monetary incentive going on here.
Do you? Now, you could argue, I don't know, some doctors are raising their profile or something.
But I don't know. I don't really see the monetary incentive of the rogues, of the rogue doctors.
So I would discount that one in this case.
But I would definitely say, why can't they convince people who are...
On their side. Now, you say that they have, and I say there isn't the slightest chance that the people who are even agreeing with them on the general stuff also think that the data that they got kicked off for Twitter for was real.
Now, I could be convinced.
You just have to show me some other doctors who say, this data looks real, and Dr.
Malone got kicked off for it.
You could do that. I mean, you could convince me.
But right now, if they can't convince other doctors, and I don't see evidence of it, I could.
That could change. And I'm also not aware of anything that I'm especially disagreeing with the doctor about, except the things he tweeted about data.
I'm not through the entire interview, but I've gotten through a lot of the good stuff.
I will finish it off.
See, my problem is that...
You see the problem, right? I guess I don't have to say it again.
And I would argue that I have never disagreed with Dr.
Malone on his expertise.
Would you accept that?
I'm seeing these names.
Steve Kirsch, Brett Weinstein, Steve Kirsch, Brett Weinstein.
Why are you saying that?
Holden? Holden Liu keeps repeating these two names.
And why are you doing that?
Here's mass formation here.
So here's YoYoGamer, it just says in all caps, SCOT equals boomer, equal disconnected.
There's a good comment there.
All right, Holden, I'm going to ban you for just repeating the same thing over and over again.
You were now hidden?
I thought you had something to say, but apparently you didn't.
Oops.
I'm looking at some...
I watched it all.
Why do you compare yourself to great men?
What? That's a weird comment.
Oh, so here's my take on Malone.
I don't believe I've ever challenged him on his expertise.
Has anybody seen me do that?
Has anybody seen me challenge Dr.
Malone on his expertise?
I don't think I have. Why would I? That'd be dumb.
I've only challenged him on my expertise.
So I believe that I might be better at him at determining what data looks real from a study, based on the fact that he tweeted some stuff that looks pretty sketchy.
And I think I'm good at determining who is hallucinating and who's not.
That's my expertise. I think I'm good at determining BS. That's another part of my expertise.
So, I have, on one side, we have some, let's say, rules of thumb for determining who's hallucinating, and he falls into pretty much all of them.
Which doesn't mean I'm right and he's wrong.
What in particular did he state this in question?
The one I remember was data that showed that the vaccines were more dangerous for young people than we thought.
So give me a fact check on this, but I believe that's one of them.
But if you looked at the data, he just misread it.
Now, is that the one where he claimed a lot of myocarditis, but the only people they studied were people who had it?
Whatever it was, was like a real basic error.
So that's one of them I know about.
All right.
How many of you think that some part of the government is trying to train you through the pandemic into being easier to control?
How many of you think that was an explicit goal of somebody?
I'm seeing some yeses.
A lot of yeses. Who do you think was doing that?
Do you think there was a meeting or meetings in which people said, you know, if we can get people to do a bunch of little stuff, like wearing masks, it will be easier to get them to do more stuff?
Do you think there was anybody who ever had that conversation?
I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no.
Because I think what it is is just a collection of a whole bunch of people doing what they think is right or good for them.
I think it's just a whole bunch of self-interest averaged together.
I don't think there's any big puppet master who's manipulating us into making us more subservient.
To me, that sounds a little crazy, actually.
Because I would imagine that there's some person or persons who has that kind of power and that kind of, like, long-term plan.
I mean, if you have a name of a person or persons, consider it, but there's no evidence of anything like that.
Somebody says, not sure, but it's the end result.
Is it? Is it?
Because that's not what I see. What I see is the public getting increasingly less likely to do what they're told.
Am I wrong? To me, the entire United States is on the verge of revolution.
If you think that this caused citizens of the United States to be more compliant, I would say we're very compliant in the short run.
Because, you know, it's an emergency.
Nobody knows what to do. It's like, oh, tell me what to do.
I'll do it. In the short run, Americans and everybody else can be very compliant.
But we are a very non-compliant country.
In fact, you could argue that the entire history of the United States is about non-compliance.
We're the most non-compliant people ever.
Do you think somebody is going to...
Well, probably somebody is going to wear masks even after they're not required, because they did before.
But I'm pretty sure we're all just dying to get out of these little limitations.
All right. And then, how many of you think that my big problem is my attitude?
Or the way that I communicate?
How many would say that's my big problem?
That's the way I communicate?
No, not at all. Really?
Oh, that's interesting. I thought that was going to be all yeses.
And I'm getting more nos and yeses.
I'm surprised. Because a lot of people are saying that the problem is my arrogance.
And I'm sensitive to that criticism because it's not the first time I've heard it.
So you have to take it seriously if you hear it more than once.
But I'll tell you what it feels like on the inside.
On the inside, I think I've been telling you That nobody knows what to do.
I told you that I guessed about vaccinations.
And nobody's good at predicting.
Our leaders probably aren't even going to make a difference.
So to me, I've said the opposite of I have the answer and you don't.
To me, I said it's unknowable.
We're all guessing. Good luck.
To me, that sounds the opposite of arrogant.
But does it sound arrogant to you?
Yeah, I think it is... Here's what I think.
I think when I demolish people's arguments, because most people are not good at...
Well, let me give you a setup here.
Would you agree that debating and reasoning are learned skills?
It takes some natural ability, but do you agree with the notion that reasoning and debate are learned skills?
Mostly. You know, on top of whatever your intelligence is.
Would you agree...
That somebody who practices it a lot is going to be better than somebody who doesn't practice.
Is that fair? I think it is, because that would be just like everything else, right?
Everything you practice. Now, can you think of anybody who's practiced more than me?
In fact, one of my biggest criticisms is I can't stop practicing.
Because I'm on Twitter all the time responding to arguments and criticisms.
I don't think anybody's practiced more than me.
And not just on Twitter for my entire life.
I wrote a book on how to think clearly.
So here's my take.
I think that people who don't have the same amount of practice, when they encounter somebody who does, it's very triggering.
Because our opinions would be different, but I would argue that my opinions are sort of carved out of a lifetime of practice, but if your opinion was just something that you ginned up on the spot, but you're not really somebody who works on the technique of debate and rational thought, then it would be very off-putting.
It would be very off-putting to see somebody who's experienced at this tell you that you're wrong.
So I think some of it is that reaction.
There's a big difference between practice and talent.
Yes, but for the same amount of talent, practice will be the difference.
People don't know the difference between facts and opinions.
Weirdly, they act like they don't.
I mean, they do know the difference between facts and opinion, but we all consistently act like we don't, and I think I fall into that too.
Knowing what you're talking about helps you.
All right, interesting.
All right, I think...
The second question is, can you comment on AOC's sexual frustrations?
Well, I think you mean the comment she made that Republicans are mad at AOC because they can't date her.
So she actually tweeted something like that Republicans really secretly are frustrated because they can't date her.
And I thought that was just provocative tweeting, which she's good at.
I wouldn't take any of that too seriously.
What if the hallucination is you thought you heard elephant, but it was really chair?
Well, what do you think will be my response when you challenge the analogy?
If there's one thing I could do, like for my career, like the one accomplishment would be, I love if people stop challenging my analogies, like that's going to help.
Um... Okay, Addison has a $20 comment here.
I don't love how you seem to so often disregard individual beliefs as unimportant.
Well, I've never done that.
Or delusion. Never done that.
Just some things are delusions and some are not.
And a good example is your view of trans athletes and women's sports.
No, that's a terrible example.
That's the worst example you could ever cough with.
My view of trans athletes in sports is that sports are broken.
It doesn't even have anything to do with trans.
I just use the trans topic to make my point that sports themselves are poorly organized for modern life.
They're great. I love sports.
Just played every sport you can think of.
I love, love sports.
But in the current mode, they have a lot of problems.
So I use the trans thing only to attack the inadequacy of sports.
What I mean by that is people should be playing with people who are of similar ability.
You all agree, right?
People should play with the people of similar ability.
100% of people agree that that would be a good situation.
That's all. That's my entire opinion.
My entire opinion is people should play with the people who are similar.
It doesn't matter, gender or whatever.
So if you're telling me that the issue with trans is that they are on a team in which they're demolishing women, I say, right, right.
That's my problem.
Why would you form a team Where one person is, for whatever reason, let's say when Lew Alcindor, that was his name before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, when he was in high school, do you think they put, I'm just guessing, but do you think they put 14-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the JV team?
Or do you think he got bumped up to play with the older people because it would be ridiculous to have somebody 7'4", whatever he was, playing with, you know, 14-year-olds, right?
So we routinely balance things and say, oh, okay, this is a special case.
You know, Yao Ming, you're not with the regular people.
You go play with the tall people.
All I'm saying is we should just do more of that because it works.
We should never even be having a conversation about gender.
Now, some of you say, but wait, Scott, that would be unfair to women because they wouldn't get sports scholarships.
Exactly. Exactly.
Not because there's something wrong with women.
It's because the sports are broken.
Why the hell are we giving anybody a sports scholarship to college?
How about don't do that, whether you're male or female?
How about no men get them either?
Would that make more sense?
I went to a college in which I could tell that some of the resources that would have gone to my education had been funneled into the basketball team.
How's that good for me?
I'm not on the basketball team.
So, while I think the sports are great and entertaining and good for people, etc., the sports themselves just need to be fixed.
The other thing you need to do is get the traveling teams, just get out of that.
If there are parents who are dedicating their life to a son or daughter's softball career that isn't even going to get them into college, bad idea.
Stop doing it. Just have friendly games among people who are similarly talented and call it a day.
The best possible sport you could ever have.
Playing with people of similar talent.
It's amazing. All the other stuff, get rid of it.
Alright, so did that help you?
I know a lot of you had a problem with my trans opinions, but the truth is I don't have an opinion about trans.
I really don't. I have an opinion about sports.
You just thought it was an opinion about trans.
Somebody asked, if you're wearing the one extra coat that I keep in the car, what will my hot wife wear?
And the answer is, my hot wife will have a coat, and I will freeze to death.
Because I often bring an extra jacket to dinner, because females...
For whatever reason. Don't often dress warm enough if it doesn't look good.
So I will bring my one extra coat and then I'll freeze to death over dinner because I have to give up my coat as soon as I sit down.
So I started to...
Oh, Nick says you can be communicated poorly.
You mean the trans topic?
You are correct.
But intentionally.
In that case, I communicated it poorly because I was sort of enjoying all the pushback on the trans stuff with people not quite getting that I was never even on that topic.
I'm very pro-trans, by the way.
Very, very pro-trans.
Under the assumption that why can't anybody do what they want?
Why am I telling people what to do?
It has nothing to do with Them or their choices.
I just don't want to be in the position of telling people how to think and act.
All right.
Arguing and reasoning is...
Adam Dope, I mean, here's saying.
Arguing and reasoning is like sex.
Everyone assumes they're good at it because they like doing it.
Yeah, bingo.
Bingo.
All right.
I apologize in advance, or not in advance.
I apologize for making this too much about me.
I hoped I could deliver, which was, the topic is me, but I'm trying to teach you these rules.
You know, elephant in the room.
If you can't talk to the other experts in it, don't talk to the lay people.
Don't have one person talking to an expert.
You need a proximity.
So those are the concepts.
But I don't care.
My role in all this is trivial, but the interesting part is how people think.
Scott, you said the three doctors were not credible because they were not ID'd.
I corrected that as I said it because somebody said they were ID'd.
Right. So you said they were not credible because they were not ID'd, but in fact they were ID'd.
But the way the story was written, it was a little misleading to me.
Your biggest prediction was that someone would withhold vital information until after the election.
30 days after the election, Pfizer announced the vaccine.
Did I make that prediction? Does anybody remember that prediction?
Did I ever say that somebody would withhold vital information until after the election?
Because that doesn't feel like something I would say, because it's so obvious.
Oh, I did? So somebody says, I did say that.
Yeah, I thought I would not have predicted that because that would just be a statement of the obvious.
Right? It's barely a prediction because I think everybody said that.
Did I watch Don't Look Up?
No, I didn't. Uh...
Here's a comment. Klot.
That's my new nickname, Klot.
Your problem is people know you're smart enough to make everything you say manipulative toward a persuasion end.
That's true. One of my big problems is that if you think people could fool you, you're extra cautious.
And Dr.
Johnson, my mascot is back.
You all know Dr. Johnson, my mascot?
I used to call my trolls trolls, but once they become prominent, they become mascots.
Because at a certain level, the troll just becomes part of the entertainment.
So, Dr. Johnson, you are promoted to mascot.
He asks, why were you so afraid of COVID? How does anybody determine who is afraid of what?
How would you know that about me?
I examine my own mind to see if anybody else's impression of what I'm thinking is even close.
How often do you think it's close?
Not often. Let me tell you where my fears were.
I'll try to be as honest.
I think I can be completely honest about this.
So I told you that when the pandemic first started and I was shouting to close the borders, there were smart people telling me that civilization was about to end.
Actual civilization. And the argument wasn't that everybody would get infected, but that the psychological part of it, on top of the actual infection, would just close everything down.
And then civilization would crumble.
There would be sort of a cyclic...
It would build on itself, basically.
Now, that was a very real risk.
And it scared the enemy.
All right? Now, you'd have to know, and I'm not going to tell you, but you'd have to know what source I was relying on to know about that risk.
Let me just tell you it was a good one.
It was a good one. Let me tell you how good the source was.
You won't be able to guess.
This is how good my source was that told me that civilization might be on the brink of ending.
It was the same source that told me the leak probably came from the Wuhan lab before you ever knew there was a lab there.
Before you'd ever heard there was a lab in Wuhan, I knew privately that it was the source of the leak.
Same source, Told me civilization could be about ready to end, meaning that there would be military on the streets, basically.
And that scared the shit out of me.
I'm not going to lie.
I don't think I've ever been that afraid.
For civilization.
And for myself, of course, and the family.
So that part, yes, I was afraid of.
But the actual risk of getting the virus, I don't know, I think I was in the normal range, whatever a normal range is.
I definitely took steps to avoid it, but as I famously tweeted, by the time I'd gotten vaccinated myself, at the time I got vaccinated, Any concerns I had sort of dropped to zero.
Now, they weren't zero. Everybody has risk.
But once the risk gets down into the background noise level, like the same risk of getting into your car, same risk of a heart attack, right?
Once that risk was down with the rest, I didn't really worry about it a lot.
So I would say that I was very worried about civilization.
I was normal amount of concern about getting infected with something that could kill me.
I was sort of on the border of whether I have a comorbidity or not.
Age-wise. And so I can't say that there was ever a time I made a fear-based decision.
Well, except that I made the decision to not let civilization end.
So I wanted to see what I could do about not ending civilization.
So I'll never know if I made any difference.
But I probably was the most prominent voice saying everything would be okay.
And I do know who listens to me and who doesn't.
Somebody says arrogant.
Well, let me test that.
Is it arrogant to say that I was one of the most prominent voices to say things would be fine?
True or not true?
I don't know who else was doing it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's just a statement of fact.
So how much impact it had, I don't know.
No way to know. All right, I've gone way over my limit.
And I think it's time to go.
Yes, arrogant. Are we defining arrogant the same?
I'm not sure if we're defining that word the same.
Wouldn't arrogant suggest that I... I think your opinion is less than my own on this topic.
That's what that would mean, right?
But I don't think I'm disagreeing with anybody.
So I think it's arrogant if you disagree.
I don't think it's arrogant if you agree, is it?
Somebody says you prefer smug.
I prefer overconfident.
Will you accept overconfident as a description of my demeanor?
Some of you say yes. If you think I seem overconfident, you are accurate.
Because that's exactly what I'm trying to look like.
I recommend it, by the way.
Being a little bit overconfident is exactly the sweet spot.
What you don't want is to be exactly accurate or underconfident.
And you don't want to be too confident, then you get into crazy territory.
You want to find out what is the exact reasonable amount of confidence and then just 10% more.
So I'm trying to do that.
So I accept that as a valid criticism, but not anything I'm going to change.
And by the way, the...
What you see as my arrogance or overconfidence is part of the reason people come.
Because even things that are annoying are attractive, meaning attractive in a weird way, like a car accident, you can't look away.
So some of it's like a car accident, you can't look away.
I'm completely aware of that.
Speaking as if you are the only intelligent person here is not.
Have I done that? How many of you think that characterizes me?
Have I spoke as if I'm the only intelligent person on here?
I don't think so.
I'm saying no's and yes's.
So apparently there's a difference of agreement.
In my opinion, this is the smartest audience on the internet.
Like, literally. I'm not just buttering you up.
I believe that if you've gone through all of these live streams with me, I'm positive that you're smarter than the average.
Like, a lot. If I don't say that enough, maybe I should.
How many of you would agree with that, by the way?
I'll give you a chance to compliment yourself.
How many of you would agree with the notion That your ability to reason, or at least to detect BS, has been improved by watching my live streams.
How many of you think you got something out of it that's a life skill?
Locals, it's all yeses.
I see lots of...
Okay, let's see.
So YouTube just stalled out for a minute here.
All right, so lots of yeses on YouTube as well.
And I think that all of that training specifically about spotting illusions is one of the most useful life skills you could ever have.
So I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, regardless of what, I don't know what the education level is or whatever of the viewers, I don't have a good sense of that, but I would say in terms of just understanding how to analyze a normal situation, you're way above average.
Way above average. Top 20%, at least.
I just can't find this way to the end here.
You know what's happening is I just enjoy this interaction, and so there's no school, so I don't have a reason to leave at the moment.
