Episode 1619 Scott Adams: Lots of Weird and Interesting Stories Today. Let's Have Some Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Peter Schiff on Bitcoin psychology
Yuri Deigin's patent analysis of Dr. Malone
COVID deaths overcount?
Omicron wave hits China before Olympics
SPLC report on Patriot Front
Transgender swimmers dominate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
Today is going to be the best day of your whole Two days.
Yesterday wasn't so good.
Today will be awesome! And you made it to the best thing that ever happened.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
And boy, do I have a show for you today.
Because the news is serving up some goodness.
Some entertainment and some good news, too.
And all you need to enjoy this to the maximum extent, which is, that's the kind of person you are.
Would you settle for less?
No. No, you wouldn't.
You want it all. And if you want it all, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dope, mean hit of the day.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and it's going to happen now.
Go. Yeah, that was good.
Well, in the most important news of the day, an Israeli team of scientists trained a goldfish to drive.
Now, the way they did that was they built little wheels that would go on the bottom of the goldfish's fishbowl, and they had various LiDAR and detection technology so that they could look at the fish...
And they could determine which way the fish was heading.
And then they would just make the fish's little car that was a fishbowl with wheels, drive in the direction the fish seemed to be heading.
And they could actually...
This is real, by the way.
I'm being asked on locals, is this real?
Yes. I mean, it's really in the news.
I mean, I don't know if that makes it real.
So, it's a little fish tank.
Somebody says, has anyone told Gottfeld?
I'm not sure what that comment means, but it's funny.
Are you saying that he should have a little tank so he can drive around?
I'm not sure what that comment means.
Anyway... I, for one, would like this product because I always like it when my dog wants to play and she'll come find me somewhere in my office.
You know, the dog will come in like, rah, rah, rah, and you know the dog wants some attention.
But if my fish wants some attention, how am I even going to know?
But if my fish could sort of drive its little tank into my office and just sort of look at me with its big fish eyes, I think they do that, don't they?
I would know. Oh, my fish wants to play.
My fish wants to play.
Oh, Gottfeld bought a goldfish?
Is that the story? Oh, he has a pet fish on the farm.
Okay. I didn't know if you thought that Gottfeld should have one of those little cars or if he had a fish.
I wasn't sure which way you were going with that.
Speaking of Gottfeld, there's a Washington Post major feature story on him.
You want to hear something funny?
So if you watch either The Five or Gottfeld on Fox, you know that Greg Gottfeld often makes fun of Brian Stelter on CNN. And often makes fun of his, let's say, his fitness, shall we say.
And although I don't like to do body shaming, it's in the news, so I'm going to talk about it.
So I was reading the Washington Post piece, and it's very complimentary, I have to say.
So imagine, if you will, Gottfeld, who is associated with Fox News, and they do a major feature piece on him in the Washington Post, Which would be associated with sort of the other team.
And still, the nature of the story was he's a huge success.
And he's just killing it and the ratings and all that.
Now, here's the funniest part.
The person writing the story called Brian Stelter for a comment.
Brian Stelter got a comment from the Washington Post, or a call from the Washington Post, or maybe a message, I don't know, asking him to comment on the story in which his greatest critic is a huge success with two shows, one of the biggest powers in all of news and opinion and influence in the country.
That's Goffeld. And Stelter was asked, what did Stelter think about the fact that Goffeld thinks he's fat?
I'm paraphrasing, they didn't ask the question that way, but that was the nature of it.
How would you like to be the one on the struggling network that they asked for a comment about the huge success of your greatest critic and could you comment about the fact that he makes fun of you for being fat?
Stelter did not have a comment, which I think was the right way to play that.
I All right.
Yesterday I tweeted for some help to help me buy pants.
I'm down to one pair of pants.
You know how if you buy some pants, you know, some will stop fitting and some will get some stain you can't get out of it for some reason.
Next thing you know, you're down to one pair of pants.
Well, I've been down to one pair of pants for about, oh, four or five months.
So I either wear sweatpants, pajamas, or my one pair of pants.
And the reason that I don't buy another pair of pants is not because I can't afford it, but because I hate shopping and I also don't know what to buy.
So I'm at that age where I have the most impossible shopping problem.
If I see some pants that I say, well, those look like good pants.
They're not really going to be made for somebody my age and demographic, right?
So there are things that look great that would be inappropriate on me, and then there are things that would look appropriate on me that don't look great.
So I was wondering if anybody has figured out how to solve the problem of something that would look good on somebody in my demographic, because I don't think anybody ever has.
So a lot of people had some comments, and most of them were, let's say, less than useful.
Turns out that people have very different opinions on pants.
But I did get some good ideas.
However, here's my bigger point.
Don't you think that shopping is backwards?
Because right now, if I want to buy a pair of pants, I go forth into the world and I have to search for them.
Why am I doing all the work?
Shouldn't the one who wants to sell me the pants be doing the work?
Like, why am I a hunter-gatherer for pants?
I mean, figuring out what to buy and then where to buy it and finding the right size, trying it on, might have to get some tailoring on the legs.
It's a giant, giant pain in the ass.
That's why I put it off so long.
So, what I did was just tweet it, and then the information came to me.
That's how shopping should be.
When you shop, you should not have to go to a store or Google anything.
There should be a site.
By the way, I tried to create a startup that would do this years ago.
It didn't go anyplace. But the idea should be everybody who wants to buy something, if you're in the market, you should post what you're in the market for.
I'm in the market for a car.
something in this range.
Oh, shit.
Sorry, Carpe. Oh, God.
Carpe dunked him saying his 18-year-old nephew died of fentanyl overdose on New Year's Eve.
That hits close to home.
All right. But...
What was I talking about? Pants, yes.
Not just pants, but consumers should be able to post what they want to buy and then have anybody who is in that market provide them exactly the right solution.
So that's how shopping should work.
Anyway, it takes a village to put pants on me, apparently.
Rasmussen asked this poll, said should social media, and they mentioned Twitter and Facebook, should they regulate content?
What do you think Republicans said and what do you think Democrats said about Twitter and Facebook?
Who are leaning Democrat?
Do you think that Democrats think that Democrats should be able to regulate content?
It turns out they do.
Very surprisingly, Democrats believe that Democrats should be in charge of content.
So only 32% of Dems were opposed to Twitter and Facebook regulating content.
On the GOP side, 72% were against it.
Are you surprised? That the people who are not on the same team as the regulators of content don't like it.
So I think all we found out is that there is such a thing as Republicans and Democrats, and they just line up by their team, as you would expect.
Now let me ask you this.
If the social networks were right-leaning, let's say all the big ones were right-leaning, would they regulate content in the other direction?
Such that Democrats would say, no, I don't want content regulated because the conservatives are regulating my good content.
I think the answer is yes.
If you say no, I feel you're being a little too generous there.
Do you think that conservative networks would let people post pictures of, let's say, aborted babies?
I don't know. I'm just trying to think of some example.
I've got a feeling that whoever is in control thinks that what is reasonable is what agrees with them.
Am I wrong? Most people say, all right, we all like free speech...
Facebook says that.
Twitter says that. Everybody says that.
There's nobody on the other side of free speech.
It's just, where is the line that goes too far in a commercial sense?
Now, in a government sense, it's a different standard.
But if you're running a business, you probably need to draw the line, because even the right-leaning alternatives to Twitter, even they have a line.
You can't do outright Nazi racist propaganda on any network.
So I'm pretty sure that the problem is who's running it.
It's not so much the question of whether content should be regulated.
I think that's a phantom.
Bob Saget passed away unexpectedly at, unfortunately, just about exactly my age.
Do you see what I did there?
Do you see how I made Bob Saget's passing about me?
Have you looked at Twitter?
I can't believe how many people made Bob Saget's death about them, like I just did.
Somehow we can turn everybody's tragedy into something about us.
But the thing that was amazing is how many celebrities, usually in the comedy world, said they had just talked to him.
How many people does this guy talk to?
Or did he? That there were so many people who said, I just talked to him last week, or I just talked to him yesterday.
He talked to a lot of people.
But the most amazing thing about this was that almost 100% of the people said the same thing.
That he was the nicest guy ever.
I mean, exaggerating a little bit.
But did you notice that?
Almost every person said nice and generous.
Wow. Talk about sticking landing.
I've often said that my strategy for my life is to live for the best funeral, meaning the most people who care if you die.
One way to measure whether you lived a good life is how many people care when you die.
And so I've always thought that that would be my standard, to have the maximum number of people willingly go to my funeral as opposed to just have to because they're related or something.
Do you ever see the movie The Big Fish?
I'm not going to tell you what that's about, except it's related to this conversation.
Great movie. I really love that movie.
One of my all-time favorites.
It's called The Big Fish.
Don't bail out of it till the end.
That's my only advice. If you try to watch it, do not bail out before the end.
Just don't even bother if you think you're not going to watch the whole thing.
That's all I'm going to say. Anyway, I don't think you can do better as a human being than Bob Saget.
And I say that without much knowledge of his life whatsoever.
I'm looking entirely at the reaction of the people I've never seen.
You know, actually, I think I've never seen this reaction.
Have you? Have you ever seen as good a reaction?
Well, good. That's the wrong word.
But as a...
I've never seen this.
This is unusual. But the other thing that I noticed, it was hard to not notice, is that in photos, did you notice his recent photos?
His recent photos looked like he was very ill.
Yeah. And Norm MacDonald had the same, kind of the same situation.
But also, Norm Macdonald looked pretty ill before he died as well.
So if you look at both of them and you see the recent pictures on the year that they died, somebody should have known something was going on, because there was definitely something going on health-wise.
Don't know what it is.
Let's talk about those sudden athlete deaths.
You know, the athletes that are dropping like flies.
I am a skeptic that those are really telling us something, as you know.
Now, you've seen the videos of athletes just dropping like flies, it seems like, and people think it's because of the vaccinations.
That's the allegation.
But I'm a skeptic because I think that we would see people dying in all kinds of Different industries as well.
And it would just be so obvious, especially within the sports leagues, that the other players wouldn't be able to talk about anything else.
If this were true, it's all we would be talking about.
It's all we would be talking about.
So I saw a fascinating thread on Twitter in which a user named...
Rainbel Jagler decided to challenge some of the claims and looked at a long list of actual names and people who had recently dropped dead of a heart attack in professional sports or high-end sports.
And this critic noted that very many people on that list had not been vaccinated.
So it was a list of people who had been vaccinated, And then died suddenly.
Except the list of people who have been vaccinated and died suddenly included a lot of people who would not have been even eligible for the vaccination at the time of their death.
In other words, somebody who was 16 who couldn't have gotten the vaccination when he died, somebody who was 64 and retired, couldn't have been vaccinated, blah, blah, blah.
So it's easy to demonstrate that a lot of the people that are claimed to be after vaccination were actually not vaccinated at all.
So, yeah, so the question is whether that kind of information could be controlled, as the commenter just said, Do you think that professional sports or big pharma or anybody could control professional athletes dropping dead at unprecedented rates all over the world in every sport?
Remember, it's every sport.
All over the world, with different organizations controlling, could they control all of that?
Maybe. Maybe?
Temporarily? I'm going to say no, though.
I think the smarter bet is no.
So here's what I would ask you to do.
I tweeted it, so you can find it in my thread from this morning.
Look at the claims for all the deaths, and then look at just one critic tearing those claims to shreds.
That's all. That's the only thing I'll add, is that just look at the critic and look at the claims.
And you can at least see that some are not true.
That doesn't mean there's nothing there.
Somebody says NFL and NBA players are not dropping dead.
That's correct. Wouldn't you know it if an NBA player dropped dead?
Name one. Name an NBA player who dropped dead from vaccinations.
Right. All right. There is an effort going on to try to create a vaccine for addicts.
They don't have it yet, but apparently since the 50s this idea has been kicking around.
And it sounds like it might be achievable, but they're nowhere near it yet.
It's just an effort to see if they can do it.
So what they plan to do is just try to do some kind of a major trial once a year.
This is the University of Minnesota...
Wait, no, it's...
Recently, the University of Washington is doing it.
So this might be 10 years off before we see anything, but imagine that.
Imagine a vaccination for addiction.
Maybe. Maybe.
I mean, it would be one more thing to worry about, right?
Somebody says addiction is a mental illness.
No. No.
Addiction is not a mental illness.
That is really not close to reality.
Addiction is some people have the capacity to have a different response to some drugs.
And then once the drugs are in you, you become the drug.
So it doesn't matter who you are at that point.
Yeah, I would say it's more of a disease that some people have a susceptibility to more than others.
Now, do you ever have this thought?
When you see all the problems that other people have, do you ever say to yourself, I've got a lot of problems myself, but thank goodness I don't have that one.
And I'll tell you the one that I feel thankful for all the time is that I don't like alcohol that much.
I mean, I've enjoyed having drinks with friends a billion times.
I don't drink now because I think alcohol is poison.
But... Anyway...
New studies on exercise and dementia.
Did you know that studies in the past have shown that exercise can reduce your risk of dementia by 30% to 80%?
30% to 80% from exercise?
Is there anybody not exercising?
I'd like to do a little shaming right now for your benefit.
I'd only do it for your good.
How many of you don't exercise?
I just don't. In the comments, just admit it.
Do you not exercise at all?
Not even taking a walk?
Some say not enough.
I do not.
Not enough. Not enough.
Hardly at all. Not enough.
Now, I know my group skews a little bit older.
Wow. Now, if you're injured, that's a different thing, of course.
Wow. All right, let me give you some advice.
Now, this advice comes from my book, but also comes from, if you look at Atomic Habits or the book Habits.
So I'm going to give you some advice for fixing that exercise thing that will work for all of you.
It goes like this.
Start with the smallest thing you can do, which is, ah, I don't feel like exercising.
But you can walk around the block.
Right? So just do that.
Let's say you can't even walk around the block.
You're just beat. I talk about this trick in my book, How to Failed Almost Everything.
Put on your exercise footwear and your exercise maybe sweatpants or something.
Just put them on. But give yourself permission to not work out.
You're going to find yourself feeling, you know, I've got my footwear on and I've got my exercise clothes on.
At least I'll clean the house.
You know, while I'm dressed like this.
You'll find that you can trick yourself into exercising by wearing the clothes and starting small.
So let's say you say to yourself, you know, I can't do much exercise, but I can walk around the block every day.
That's it. That's all I can do.
I can't do one more thing than that.
Then walk around the block every day.
Two weeks later, you're going to say to yourself, you know, I think I can walk around this block a second time.
Don't worry about it.
Even if you think you can walk around the block a second time, don't do it unless you really want to.
So my advice on exercise is never, ever do something you don't want to, because that will train you to dislike it.
Only, only do things you like.
And then build from that.
So here's one thing I like.
I like putting on my exercise clothes and taking a walk.
Real easy. The sun feels good.
I clear my head. I listen to some music.
I usually do it about the same time of day.
It's a habit. So here are the things.
Start super, super small.
Well, let me back up.
I told you the difference between wanting and deciding, right?
Don't bother even trying to exercise if you just want to.
Just don't even bother.
It's not going to work. The only way you should decide to exercise is by deciding to exercise.
It's got to be a decision.
Then you can do it.
Don't say, you know, people exercise.
I'd like to exercise.
I wish it were easy.
I'll do some more exercise.
That's nothing. That's nothing.
Exercise has to be a base need, and you have to decide it's who you are.
So it's not just deciding to do it.
Don't just decide to do it.
Decide it's who you are now.
That's who you are. You are now a person who one way or another is going to find a way to be active today.
And that's your goal.
Your goal is to be active every day.
If you get that right, active could be cleaning the garage, could be taking a walk, could be playing a sport, could be lifting some weights.
Doesn't matter. Just be active every day and you'll get addicted to it.
Give yourself a treat.
Nice protein shake.
Something healthy. Make sure you get lots of protein, by the way.
Big mistake people make is they'll exercise and eat salad.
If you're going to exercise and eat salad, don't bother.
Just don't do either one.
Because it's not going to help you a bit.
I mean, a little bit.
But you're not going to be able to stick with it.
If you exercise, eat protein.
And say to yourself, exercise and protein, exercise and protein.
Do not say to yourself, exercise and food.
Do not say to yourself, exercise and salad.
Say, exercise, protein, exercise, protein.
Nothing else. What do you eat before you exercise?
Protein. What do you eat after you exercise?
Protein. Should you also have carbs?
Yes, yes. But you're going to get them anyway.
Hopefully, they're the good carbs, not the bad carbs.
But you're never going to have a problem getting carbs.
Carbs are everywhere. Getting the right kind of protein is hard.
So when you exercise, say, exercise, where's my protein?
Exercise, where's my protein?
Now, the way I do it is with a protein bar or a protein shake because they're easy.
If you make it hard to get protein, like you need a steak, that's not going to happen.
So you've got to get protein and exercise together.
Start really, really small.
Decide to do it.
Reward yourself when you do.
And also give yourself permission not to do it after you put your exercise clothes on.
Definitely put your exercise clothes on.
But then say, you know, it just wasn't there today.
Several times a year, back when my gym was open and I didn't need a mask and I went there, I would put on all my exercise clothes, drive five miles to the gym, walk into the gym, look at the lobby of the gym, and I would say, nope, nope, I just don't have it today.
And I would literally just turn around, walk directly out the door, get in my car and drive home, and call it a success.
Do you know why it's a success?
Because I did it every day.
Getting to the gym is a success.
If the way you had scored that was you didn't exercise that day, no, no, that's wrong.
The way you score it is you got to the gym.
If you keep that as your score, it's impossible to fail, practically.
Because just the doing it, it's the system, the routine, the habit, that's the only thing you want to nail in.
Let the exercise happen naturally.
Let the variety, the learning how to exercise correctly, you'll learn all that just by doing stuff and getting bored and exercising and trying different things.
I have to say it really bothered me to see how many of you don't exercise.
Because exercise really is just taking a walk at a certain age, right?
It's just taking a walk. And I've been doing a little experiment on myself to see how my mental state is on days when I take a long walk and on days when I don't.
Have you ever done that experiment?
Test your mental state on a day you took a long walk.
Could be some other kind of exercise.
But got outdoors.
Add the outdoors part.
The gym is great, but being outdoors and taking a walk just changes your whole mental state.
And dramatically, I would say.
It's dramatic. You can't not notice it.
It's pretty big. All right.
Farming the ocean. There's an Indian startup that's basically making a tractor for the ocean.
That's my own description.
So basically it would be a sea combine.
A combine meaning one of those big machines that you use for farming on land.
And it would automate a catamaran that simultaneously harvests and replants seaweed.
Apparently there's all kinds of stuff you can do with seaweed.
It's a good protein source.
You can turn it into lots of different, you know, food.
Food ingredients, etc.
I think it has some commercial uses.
And so, if we had this device, the sea combine, you could just farm the ocean.
As soon as you worry about running out of food, somebody invents a sea combine, and there you go.
I also think this might solve the...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have a big fertilizer shortage?
I think we have a giant fertilizer shortage for land that wouldn't apply if you farmed the ocean, I'm assuming.
All right, so that's good news.
That's coming. Do you know Peter Schiff, famous economist?
He had a tweet on Bitcoin that caught my attention.
So one of the most famous economists, whose names that people who follow this stuff have heard of, he tweets this.
He says, the real problem with Bitcoin...
Volatility means Bitcoin can't function as a currency, but it makes it very appealing to traders and speculators.
The real problem is that Bitcoin has no underlying value to support its price, making a terminal collapse inevitable.
So he says that Bitcoin is inevitably going to collapse because there's nothing that supports it, no physical asset or anything.
And here was my tweet response.
Isn't the entire economy supported on a platform of psychology?
Do you think that Bitcoin is the one part of our economy that depends entirely on psychology to exist?
I feel like that's the whole economy.
The economy is nothing but a psychology invention.
It's the psychology of knowing that if you pay for something, you'll probably get it.
The psychology of knowing that if you don't get it, you have a recourse, the courts, or other recourse.
Capitalism itself is nothing but a psychology device.
Why would you pick Bitcoin out of all that psychology and say, this is the one that doesn't have backing?
None of it has backing.
Does it? Does it?
Now, the argument for the US dollar having a real value is that you can always pay your taxes in it.
So you always have that.
You can always pay your taxes.
But all it would take is one big country that would accept Bitcoin to pay the taxes, and I think that creates a market, doesn't it?
So, more boring than COVID. Goodbye.
I will solve you of your pain.
You are hidden. Oh, he sells gold.
Schiff sells gold. Okay.
So I wouldn't buy this opinion.
I saw a tweet thread from Yuri Dagon, I think, who did a deep dive on Dr.
Malone's claim to be the inventor of the mRNA platform.
How do you think that turned out?
What do you think happened when somebody did a deep dive and looked at all the patents and what names are on them and what the dates are and how important they are?
Did it turn out to back Dr.
Malone's claim that he would be one of the inventors of the mRNA platform?
Yeah, it did.
It did. His name is indeed...
On a number of patents that are in that field.
Now, as other people have said, there were thousands of people who contributed in different ways.
But you really need to read this thread because if you don't understand how names get on patents, you need to.
How many of you have big company experience and have been through the patent process?
I have. What happens?
What happens when you're a worker?
And you have a patent idea.
And you come up with a good idea.
You're a worker at a big company.
Whose names are on the patent?
It's your idea only.
You're the only one who did anything useful.
Some other people helped in ancillary ways.
Whose name? That's right.
Your boss's name is on the patent, isn't it?
What did your boss do?
Maybe assigned you to looking into a field or something.
Maybe didn't. But it is standard procedure to put the boss's name on a patent, just because the boss can make you do it.
Hey, I'm part of this team, and my team did this, so I'm going to put my name on there.
Now, what about somebody who is just on the team?
Do you think that anybody ever got their name on a patent because they attended meetings and maybe just did what they were told?
Yes. Routinely.
It's very common for multiple names to be on the patent.
Do you think all of the multiple names on the patent did something useful?
Or were they just sort of on the team?
Well, I won't give away the details, but if you look at...
I tweeted this, so you can find it in my Twitter thread.
If you look for Yuri Dagon's take on this, he goes through a great deal of analysis.
And his bottom line, if I could characterize it this way, is that Dr.
Malone is what you call a team player, which means he was definitely on the team.
He attended the meetings, and he worked on it.
I mean, I'm not saying he did nothing.
He obviously did things that mattered enough to get him on the patent.
And in one case, the allegation is that one of his key patents was just something that the real inventor told him to do, and he just executed it.
So in one case, he may have executed something that was actually somebody else's idea.
I'm not going to allege that any of the claims of Dr.
Malone are true or those of his, let's say, I won't say a critic, but somebody who looked into it.
I can't tell you who's right.
But I will tell you that the very moment I heard that he was claiming these patents, how many of you with corporate experience said his name's on a patent?
Does that mean anything?
How many of you said that to yourself silently?
Okay, all I know is his name's on it.
That doesn't mean anything. Could have been the boss, right?
Yeah, everybody with corporate experience knew that wasn't really a thing.
But we can neither confirm nor deny that his work was important.
It's just a question. The CDC now is getting really weaselly on whether their numbers of COVID deaths are real or exaggerated, because they would include some number of people who died with COVID instead of because of.
What would be your guess of the percentage of overcount, if there is an overcount?
Even that's uncertain.
But if you had to guess...
Just knowing, based on your, I don't know, understanding of life, you've lived it for a while, you've seen things that work and things that don't.
We don't really have any information, but what's your guess of how over-counted it is?
I'm seeing lots of everything from 25 to 50.
And how over-counted would it have to be Before you would say to yourself, we did everything wrong.
Here's my take. If it turns out that we over-counted by 20%, I would say, that doesn't really matter to me.
How many of you would be concerned, and this is just hypothetical, if we found out, as if we could know that, really.
Probably never have good data.
But if it was 20% over-counted, would you be concerned?
Because I think we would have acted the same way.
If it were 50% overcounted, so that it, let's say, was half as much as they reported, then would you say we overreacted?
Then it starts to get sort of a jump ball, isn't it?
And if it's 80% overcounted, well, then we really overacted.
We really overacted.
I'm going to put out a prediction.
This is not based on anything that I could point to other than living in the world.
So this is just a living in the world, experiential, just best guess.
25% overcounted.
Now, could I be wrong?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So when you judge me for being wrong on this one, which seems likely, by the way, because we would all be guessing on this one.
When you judge me wrong, just remember that I told you that we would all have to just guess on this one.
So the predictions that I make that you should give a little more credibility is when I give a reason.
Like the Trump winning in 2016, I showed you my work.
But I'm not showing you any work here.
I'm just saying, I don't know, it just feels like we couldn't be that incompetent to be that far off.
But maybe. It's not impossible.
Now, there's also an argument that they were undercounted.
And the undercount argument says, how do you know what you don't know?
What if people were dying at home and nobody tested them?
Are there people who died at the age of 95 at home who were not tested for COVID? Probably, don't you think?
You don't think somebody died at 95 at home, you know, just suddenly, heart attack or whatever, and that they might have had COVID and it might have been the reason.
But who's going to test you if you're 95?
Because it doesn't matter, right?
You just say, well, it doesn't matter.
Then there are lots of testing at home and now reporting.
Yeah, you've got that too. Our numbers are a mess.
That's the only thing we know for sure.
Well, did you see the story about a small plane at an emergency landing in L.A.? Now, if you have a mechanical problem, I assume it was a mechanical problem, but a very small, I don't know, maybe a Piper Cub or something, a very small plane, and he had to do an emergency landing, and he pulled it off.
So imagine having to land an airplane with no engine, which is probably what happened.
But it looks like he pulled it off.
He glided into a...
must have found some roads or something.
And the trouble is that where he came to rest was on a train track.
This really happened.
A guy did a crash successful...
I'll call it a crash landing, but the plane wasn't destroyed.
He landed it well enough that the plane was intact, but it was on the train track.
And he survived.
He was kind of beat it up.
But the train was coming.
That's right. He landed his plane successfully on a train track.
And the train was coming.
The emergency crew was there quick enough, and as the train was coming, they struggled to get him out of the plane, because he was, you know, strapped in.
They got him out.
And then the train took out the plane.
The train took the plane apart like it was made of balsa wood, which they almost are, because they're made to be light.
It was a Cessna 172, was it?
It didn't look like it.
And I don't know how well the guy was doing, but he was alive when they took him out of the plane, and it looked like he would have survived.
So the fact that this was on video is just amazing.
You have to see it. Just Google that if you haven't seen it.
So, remind me, is this true?
Was there a time when people were pointing to Australia as the model of good leadership in the pandemic and that Australia was following the science better than other people?
So am I right about that?
That people were saying Australia was like a big success story or something.
And now they've turned into this dystopian nightmare police state situation.
And of course, they're not going to be able to stop Omicron.
So remember, I'm the one who told you that you wouldn't see leadership in the results.
That we'll never know why some countries did better than others.
The variables are too mixed up.
But I don't think Australia will be the model of leadership.
But how about China? China did that hard close down after Wuhan.
They being the source of the virus, you'd think they would be hit the hardest.
But indeed, reportedly, had tremendous success in locking down and blocking the Alpha and the Delta.
But it turns out that they've got a little Omicron problem.
And as you know, Omicron doesn't stop for anything.
So now, China has the beginning of an Omicron wave.
They're doing the same strategy of shutting down, which I believe couldn't possibly work.
Am I wrong? You might get a result temporarily with Delta and the Alpha version that the lockdowns might make a difference and maybe even the masks make a difference and maybe even the social distancing make a difference.
But it's not going to make a difference for Omicron.
It's going to just tear right through your vaccinations and everything else.
So the timing is that there's going to be a massive Omicron wave in China, I think.
I don't know how it could be avoided.
At the same time as what I call the Omicron Olympics.
They are so screwed.
I would not want to be China right now.
They are so screwed.
This Omicron is going to make things really sketchy.
And as people are arguing that Omicron makes arguments about vaccine mandates just irrelevant.
I feel as if the Supreme Court could just say, well, Omicron makes vaccinations irrelevant, so just forget about your mandates.
Because I think there's a legal case for that now.
That the situation before is that you could make a reasonable case that if you got vaccinated, you'd have some protection.
But if Omicron's the only thing we're worried about at scale, you know, we'd still be worried about some Delta breaking through.
But at scale, the only thing we're going to be worried about pretty soon is Omicron, and your vaccination isn't going to stop it, and it's not going to kill you in all likelihood.
So I feel like the argument for any kind of mandates is just dissolving.
Just dissolving. How many of you think that the Omicron is a natural variant?
I asked this question on Twitter, and it was roughly half.
Half of you thought it was natural, and half of you didn't.
Now here's the argument for natural.
All viruses go this way.
That eventually the way any virus dies out is that it creates its own vaccine, basically, in a sense.
So the virus will mutate until you've got one that travels fast and infects lightly.
And then herd immunity happens and everything's good.
So one argument is it happened pretty much exactly when you'd expect it to.
The variant emerged.
It has exactly the characteristics you'd expect it to have, and it's acting the way you would think it would.
So that argues for natural, right?
I would point you to the ethical skeptic.
Just Google his account.
And follow his takes on the science when they look at the nature of the Omicron variant.
And the counter-argument is if you look at it closely, there just isn't any way it could be natural.
Now, this is people who know more than I do looking at things I can't see.
So, people who know more than you looking at things you can't see might be right.
They might not be. But I think the argument looks pretty strong.
Not conclusive. I would not be at the point of concluding it's man-made.
But damn, it looks man-made to me.
I mean, it just looks a little...
It's just so on the nose, it's hard to imagine it's not.
But it could be. It could be.
The argument that it's natural is strong and still active.
But I think it's going to go the other way.
If I had to put money on it, I'd say it was made in the lab, if I had to bet.
All right. Let's talk about the Patriot Front.
So I asked how many of you thought the Patriot Front was a real group.
So they're the handsome, tall, fit, young, white men who do these very theatrical marches with flags as white nationalists, but people don't kind of know too much about them.
Well, it turns out that the Southern Poverty Law Center does know a little bit about them, or purports to, and has a report on them, and here's how they describe...
The Patriot Front.
This is from Southern Poverty Law Center.
Patriot Front is an image-obsessed organization.
An image-obsessed organization.
Keep that in mind. They're image-obsessed.
That rehabilitated the explicitly fascist agenda of vanguard America.
I guess that was some other...
Racist group. With garish patriotism, Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country.
Now, how does that fit with what you saw?
I feel as if image-obsessed is a little too convenient for Meaning, how many racist groups that have this actual ideology could be this organized and this theatrical?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Maybe. Maybe.
Anything's possible. But when you tell me that they're image-obsessed, it also looks like a Lincoln Project...
I mean, what would be the difference between somebody who's trying really hard to look like a proper racist and somebody who was faking it by trying really hard to look like a racist?
So the explanation is they're not fake racists trying to look like real racists.
They're real racists that are faking looking like real racists because they didn't look like real racists enough so they have to improve their image of racists to look really racist in a proper way, which is totally different from somebody who's not a racist who also does exactly the same things to look like, look exactly the same way, but their motives would be different.
One would be fake, and the other would be real, but trying to look more real than they actually are real, in a positive way for them.
Does that track for you?
All right, here's another hint.
Apparently the same group the Patriot Front was involved with and marched at, Charlottesville.
How about that? You know that totally organic and totally credible, exactly the way it was reported and nothing was left out story about the Charlottesville march in which there was nothing suspicious about that group whatsoever?
Turns out that part of them were this patriot front.
Yeah. So the people who pretend to look more like racists than they allege they already are were part of the Charlottesville event, which to me looked like people pretending to be racists.
And sure enough, it was people pretending to be racists.
Now, the allegation is they were pretending to be racists and actually were.
But they were, like, putting on more of a show...
than maybe they would have ordinarily.
Do you buy it?
I don't buy any of this.
So I've never believed that the Charlottesville thing was reported correctly.
I don't know what's missing, but if I had to guess, it would be an intelligence agency.
Maybe this country.
Maybe another country.
And there's the complete lack of reporting after the event, like people talking to the members who were there.
The news has completely shut out the event in terms of the participants.
Think of all the stories you've heard about the January 6th participants.
Look at all the energy that went into finding those participants on January 6th.
None of that happened.
As far as I know, because it wasn't in the news anyway, I don't think any of that happened for Charlottesville.
Why? Because I think a number of the people at Charlottesville were maybe acting.
Now, if they were part of the Patriot Front, they were acting, but were also racist.
So there's something deeply sketchy about all of this.
Because I... I've met people who are this racist, and they can't pull this off.
You know what I mean? You know, there are all forms of racism.
But the one you see, you know, the sort of, I don't know, the baseline racism that everybody has, just the normal stuff, those people could often be highly educated.
Just have abhorrent views.
Or sometimes not, depending on your point of view.
But I don't know if you could get this many racists to act this well, and then you look at their written stuff, and even their written stuff looks a little too well-written, if you know what I mean.
So... Yeah, it looks like we may be going from one false flag to another.
Now, I don't know that all the participants are false.
I would imagine that there are people who are behind the participants either funding it or encouraging it or controlling just the leaders or something like that.
But there's definitely something going on with these things because they just don't look real.
They just do not look real.
And my favorite story of the day was the pen, the college pen.
They had a trans swimmer, a woman who lost to Yale's trans swimmer.
Now, does anybody remember one of my predictions early on when we were talking about all the trans stuff?
I said that if a team starts winning with a trans athlete, that every serious team is going to get a trans athlete, because they want to win too.
So you may see, for a while anyway, I don't know that this will last, you might see this weird situation where winning is more important in the short term, where you actually see recruiting.
Do you think that there's any college that's actively recruiting trans athletes because they think it'll give them an advantage?
I'll bet there is.
I'll bet somewhere there's a college who is actively looking for trans athletes because they know they have a better chance of winning.
Why wouldn't they? I'm not saying that Penn did this or Yale did this.
I have no reason to believe that.
But somebody's going to do this.
And when somebody does, they're just going to win everything.
And then what do the other schools do?
Do you think that you would continue competing and losing when you put a lot of money into your school program and it meant a lot and stuff, but you're just getting your ass kicked by all the other schools because they have trans athletes?
I think you have to get one.
Don't you? You're almost going to have to compete.
So I say again, as I've said often, the whole trans thing is a diversion from what our real problems are.
We have two problems that I've said are huge problems forever before the trans were even involved in it.
Number one, our bathrooms are all designed wrong without the proper amount of privacy.
That's number one. Our bathrooms are all designed wrong.
There should be a way everybody who has, you know, got the shy bladder or they're trans or anything else, whatever you got going on, ideally you should be able to have a private bathroom that doesn't bother anybody else.
Secondly, sports are broken.
You should only be competing with people who are the same level of talent no matter what.
And if you can't fix that...
Don't complain about the trends.
The trends just highlighted the fact that the way we organize sports was never right in the first place.
We shouldn't be giving scholarships for sports.
If it were not a tradition to do that, and somebody came up with the idea, you wouldn't be in favor of it.
Let's say there had never been any school sports and somebody said, let's start a school sport and the best ones will get free scholarships.
And you'd be there thinking, what?
Well, I don't play that sport.
Are you telling me you're going to introduce a new thing that only people who are not me can maybe get a scholarship?
How about giving me a scholarship for what I'm good at?
How about something about academics or being on the school paper?
How about that? Like, why are we all getting excited about some small group of people who have a talent that I don't have?
I don't think that you could introduce school sports if you knew what they were, like, if you could describe them as we see them in 2022.
And then you could go back in time where they never existed and say, this is what we want to get to.
So here's my idea.
We're going to introduce sports, and then if everything works out, we'll be exactly what we see in 2022.
Nobody would approve of that. We only drifted into this weird situation and then the trans thing just uncovered the fact that we have a poorly constructed system.
That's all it was. Blaming the trans for a bad system doesn't seem fair to me.
Now, I also had this conversation the other day.
One of the reasons, and maybe the biggest reason, that I'm super pro-trans is Is that I imagine how I would have felt...
I'll just make it personal. How would I have felt if I was a person born in the 30s?
I don't know. Pick your year in the past.
And somebody said, I think black people should be able to play baseball.
And I'm something like racist from the 30s or something.
How would I feel about that?
Well, I think that was a bad idea, probably.
Because I would be a product of my time.
Product of my time.
And I'd be like, I hate that.
And how would I feel if I were similarly sometime in the past and somebody said, women want the right to vote.
And I'd be some old-timey sexist.
I'd be like, what? Women voting?
That's crazy talk.
Next thing you know, everything will be woke.
No, I wouldn't have said that.
But... But when I hear people talking about trans, to me it sounds the same.
I don't know if it is the same, because I'm the guy who tells you don't use analogies to make decisions.
But I'm very concerned that I don't want to be that guy in the 20s.
You know what I mean? So a little bit is about myself.
It's not even about the topic.
It's about who you want to be when you grow up.
And I don't want to be the one who ever looks back and says, God, I used to be, like, really had a bad feeling about trans people.
But now I realize it's like everything else.
It's like gay, black, women voting.
You just get used to stuff.
And then you realize it was never a problem in the first place.
So I feel as though we're X number of years away from trans not being a conversation.
And I just want to get ahead of it.
I don't want to be the guy who figured it out later.
That's all. Now, somebody says it's wishy-washy.
I don't think that was very wishy-washy.
That was pretty direct, I think.
Somebody says a pushover.
Wait, hold on. Oh, I see your problem.
I see your problem. You're saying that...
I'm not saying we should give trans everything they're asking for.
Did that sound like what you heard?
God, no. I don't say give anybody everything they're asking for.
I don't say just because you're gay you get what you're asking for or you're black or you're a woman or something.
I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree that they should be on the women's team.
I'm not saying that I necessarily agree they should have the same restroom privileges.
I just say it's a problem.
I wish we could fix it. But don't assume the problem is the trans.
The problem might be the system.
But I agree with you that if there's anything about how we navigate who can do what, if any of it's inconvenient for you or your family, complain.
I would. There's nothing that says trans got to get what they want.
I'm not making that argument at all.
Everybody's got to fight for what they get.
Our system is about power.
It's not about what's fair.
So if they accumulate enough power to get what they want, then they'll get it.
And if they don't, they won't. But I'm not arguing they should get what they want.
Everybody has to fight for what they want.
That's not my job. Dr.
Malone's name is on the patents.
That is correct. As are lots of people who didn't have much to do with them.
Typically with patents, there are people whose names are on them that did not have a lot to do with them.
That's an ordinary situation.
But at least one of those names probably did have a lot to do with them.
You just can't tell by looking at the pattern.
All right. Oh, that's interesting.
Somebody was talking about moving into transhumans.
Yeah, you know, when we become part machine and part people, the trans argument is just going to seem silly.
It'll feel like...
Just so trivial because we'll be half robot.
Anyway, that's all I got for today.
I'm sure this is the best show you've ever seen and ever will see.
