Episode 1623 Scott Adams: Let's Check Each Other's Critical Thinking and Hallucinations Today. There's Lots of Material
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
CNN Fake News attack on Joe Rogan
Binary Disorder
Calling people "Cowardly"
Dr. Malone has reframed reality for millions
Biden supporter regrets?
Biden labeled worst POTUS of all time
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever happened to you.
Maybe not yesterday.
Yesterday didn't go so well.
Yesterday, and was it the day before that I had my rant about a user on here named Shelly, and somebody wrote that up and turned it into a meme?
And I was reading the meme, so I got to actually read back my actual words that I spit out in...
Thank you, Paul.
...that I spit out in, apparently, a moment of cathartic anger.
And I'm reading it, and I think the point of it was to embarrass me, you know, to show how awful I am and the bad words I used and stuff.
And I was rereading my own words, and I thought...
It came out better than I thought.
So if you see that, go ahead and...
Go ahead and retweet it.
No, there's no prednisone.
That was probably just a lack of sleep.
You know, if you'd like to take this up a notch, and I think you would, you're going to need a little something called the Simultaneous Sip.
But all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chelsea stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, and definitely the first one of the day.
As far as you know, it's called the simultaneous sip, and it goes like this.
Go. Ah.
Well, you trolls, you can't get me today.
So I went to my local mall...
The other day.
And I had a startling discovery.
You've probably noticed that the malls are not very busy.
You know, no surprise.
But in my estimation, 95% of all the business the entire mall was doing was the Apple store.
The Apple Store was shoulder-to-shoulder people, and everything else was basically a ghost town.
It looked like a lot of stores probably had zero sales in any given day.
It looked like zero. So what do you do when 95% of all the volume in your mall is just the Apple Store?
And I thought to myself, Well, just make the whole mall an Apple store.
Go with what works.
But I think a lot of these malls are going to get turned into cool little living places where there's a center area that people mingle and all that sort of stuff.
So let's start with some CNN fake news.
There always is some. And one of their articles is on how Joe Rogan He was corrected by his guest on the question of whether young men have more myocarditis from the vaccine itself, if you're under a certain age in mail, or from getting the coronavirus.
And there was a disagreement there, and the guest fact-checked Joe Rogan.
And so CNN, of course, jumped all over this, because for CNN, I don't know if you've noticed this, But has Joe Rogan become the new Trump?
As in the thing that you talk about when there's nothing else to talk about?
Or that all you really care about is what he said about it?
Like everything is just a reaction to Joe Rogan now?
Like everything used to be just a reaction to Trump?
Why can't we just have our own opinions?
Everything's got to be a reaction to somebody who's the target.
So it looks like CNN and maybe some others are going to make Joe Rogan the person we have to react to on all the important stuff.
And so the way CNN reports the story is that Joe Rogan is embarrassed by his own guest showing him how he doesn't know anything about science or the facts or something like that.
And so that's the way CNN staged it.
What did CNN leave out?
Do you think they left anything out of the story?
Yeah. They left a part out of the story where after it ran, people fact-checked the guest and found out that Joe Rogan was right after all.
Or was he? But we do have two stories, and they both are backed by some kind of studies.
I don't know. I don't believe any data anymore.
But CNN leaves out the part that's basically the important part, that it turns out that Joe Rogan was correct.
So they ran a story about Joe Rogan being wrong, which was really a story about him being correct and his guests being wrong.
But it didn't get resolved during the episode itself.
And they used that story of Joe Rogan being correct...
That they turned into him being wrong, because it's CNN, as a lead-in to the story about people trying to get him censored on Spotify.
I mean, the boldness of the narrative-making and the brainwashing is just sort of stunning.
No matter how many times you see it, it's still like, really?
Are they doing that right in front of us?
Nobody's even tried to hide it anymore.
Well I guess it's being hidden from people who are not, let's say, sophisticated consumers of news.
The other day I said something online about if you didn't watch Fox News, you wouldn't know that the other networks are hoaxing you fairly regularly.
You wouldn't know about, you know, several of the hoaxes.
And then somebody said, oh, Scott, you're saying that Fox News has the truth and the other ones don't have the truth.
No, no, I didn't say that.
Is that what you heard? Did you hear me say that Fox News gets it all right, and the other ones get it all wrong?
No, it works the other way, too.
It's a reversible concept.
The system is, watch the news on both sides.
Because they're both calling out, you know, mistakes, intentional and unintentional, on both sides.
Now, that doesn't mean you're still going to know what's happening, but at least you'll see the other side.
If you're only watching one side, you really are confused.
And that would work for both Fox as well as CNN, if you're just watching one side.
But it is also true that the people who are Fox News consumers tend to also be exposed to the other argument.
So they tend to see it, even if they're being a little bit more persuaded by one side.
Anyway, is it my imagination, or have the traditional news sources become so discredited that podcasters, and again, every story now has got to be about Joe Rogan, right?
This is the Roganization of the news, because we used to have the Trumpization of the news.
Now it's just going to be the Roganization of the news, apparently.
Doesn't it seem to you that the traditional news is a little bit worried that influence is going to podcasters?
Right? Now, how influential is Joe Rogan at this point compared to, let's say, the network news?
Doesn't Rogan have a much bigger audience than any of the networks?
Now, collectively, they can gang up on him, like a little pack of hyenas.
So if there are enough of the little ones, they can gang up on him.
But somehow he lapped the field, both in influence as well as just size.
And this is a real new power struggle.
Now, I've asked you this before, but let me ask you this here.
How much influence do I have as a podcast on actual real-world events compared to, let's say, any particular other news entity?
Now, you'll have different appearances.
Not much. Now, look at the differences of opinions.
So I'm going to tell you something that only a hypnotist can tell you.
You ready for this?
If you knew how much influence I really have, I wouldn't have any influence.
And a hypnotist can simply hide in plain sight.
I can actually tell you what I'm doing and you still can't see it.
Because there's a cognitive blindness that most hypnotists and magicians can create.
The way magic tricks work is often just creating a cognitive blindness, so you're momentarily distracted from or just don't pay attention to where the trick is being done.
And it's the same thing happening right now.
I could do it right in front of you, and you wouldn't be able to see it.
So he said, one of the trolls said in all caps, why didn't you hypnotize your stepson?
My stepson died of an overdose.
Well, Shelley, why didn't I hypnotize my stepson?
Could it be? Because hypnosis doesn't work on addicts.
It doesn't work. You can't really hypnotize somebody to not be an addict.
Because an addict is not a...
It's not really a functioning human in the way other humans are.
It's such a fundamental change in who they are that it's more like a zombie existence.
I mean, once you reach a certain point.
So you really can't hypnotize a zombie.
You could hypnotize a person, but not a zombie.
In case you wanted to know.
All right, so I expect that there will be far more attacks on Joe Rogan to reduce his influence, and also on me, and, you know, the Tim Pools, and basically anybody who's got a larger voice.
So I've decided that we need to have a telethon for what I call binary disorder.
Binary disorder is what makes it hard for most people to see what Tim Poole is saying.
Or what Joe Rogan is saying.
Or what I'm saying.
Because there are a number of people who don't fit the extreme narratives.
And if you don't fit the extreme narratives, you're just a confusing mess in a cognitive way.
Again, it's like a cognitive blindness or a cognitive confusion.
But I don't think it applies to everyone.
For example, I'm pretty sure that just through a filtering mechanism, the people on the locals platform, I'm pretty sure that they can handle nuance outside of the two binaries better than other people.
Partly through practice, right, because we talk about it all the time, but partly because of self-selection.
It's people who can handle it or even willing to do it.
So I think we really need to recognize that there's a thing, much like Trump disorder syndrome was real, How many of you would agree with that?
Would you agree with me that TDS wasn't just a thing that you say on the internet?
It was real, right?
Does anybody disagree with that at this point?
Right, yeah, I think most of you or all of you agree that that was real.
But this binary disorder is just as real.
Have I convinced you yet?
I don't know if I have. But is it not true, and you can see it all the time, that if anybody doesn't fit into a clean narrative, that you can't tell what...
The people are just completely blind to who they are, and they force them into one of the narratives and decide they're an enemy or a friend.
So I think I'll do a telethon for binary disorder.
We'll raise money to raise awareness.
Here's a random question.
How many employees could be sick with COVID before it would really make a difference to the economy?
What's your number?
Put a number on.
So from zero to 100%.
How many employees could be out at the same time Before you really notice.
I'm looking at some numbers coming in on locals.
You're all over the place, from 5% to 80%.
20%, 30% over on YouTube.
30%. Well, as the Dilbert guy, I feel qualified to make a pronouncement on this.
10% won't hurt anybody.
10% won't hurt anybody.
Not going to make a difference. I remember the first day I learned this was when I worked in a salad cutting operation at a resort.
It was my job to prepare in bulk hundreds of salads, so I'd be chopping lettuce or vegetables or whatever.
And one of our, I think it was one of our five employees, quit.
And the boss came to us and said, here's the deal.
There were five of you.
I could hire another person and there'll still be five.
Or the four of you could just work harder and I'll give you all a raise and we'll do the same amount of work with four people.
You'll just agree to work harder and I'll agree to give you all a raise.
And all four of us just looked at each other and said...
Yeah, absolutely.
And did she get a good deal?
She did. Because the four who were left were her better employees, as it turned out.
And we just took it up 10% easily.
We got more money.
She got more productivity with one less person to worry about.
Totally worked. Now, I saw this reproduce over and over again in my corporate career.
The boss would come in and say, we have to cut 10% of the budget or the people, just 10% of anything.
And everybody would say, no, 10%, we can't.
We can't handle 10%.
And then they'd cut 10%.
Didn't even notice.
Didn't even notice.
So we're talking about COVID illnesses in that sort of 2% to 10% range.
I feel like we'll be fine.
Now, the problem is if you get a cluster that hits something that's critical, which is pretty likely, actually, isn't it?
It's pretty likely you're going to have a week where something really important just doesn't work at all because there were just too many people in that one little cluster.
Very likely. But that would also be temporary, right?
Because that would resolve itself in a week.
People would just come back to work.
So I think we're going to have some really sloppy supply chain stuff, but it's not going to take us out, right?
Yeah, we're not going to be taken out by the supply chain.
You'll be fine. If I ran for the Senate, this would be my one and only promise.
Just one promise, and that's it.
I won't vote for any bill that's mislabeled.
So, for example, I wouldn't vote for a voting rights bill if that didn't explain exactly what's happening in the bill.
And I wouldn't vote for an infrastructure bill that wasn't only infrastructure.
And that's it. Now, basically, I would vote against everything, right?
Realistically. Now, there might be a few I'd vote for.
I'd say, oh, yeah, that's exactly the name for that thing.
But I would just say...
Now, the Patriot Act I think is a special case.
Because nobody was really confused about what that was, you know?
So if nobody's confused by it, that's different.
But if the name of it is by its intention to confuse, as opposed to just persuasion, right?
It's one thing if you see somebody selling something, and you know they're selling it, and you say, oh, they're just saying it's good because they're selling it.
You're completely aware of that.
But the public is not completely aware that a voting rights bill Might not be exactly what you think it is.
Or an infrastructure bill might not be quite what you thought it was.
So I'd just vote against them all and say, the minimum, the minimum thing you have to get right is that you're explaining to the public what the hell you're doing.
If you can't do that, don't give me anything.
Like, I'm absolutely out on everything unless it's plainly stated.
Otherwise, no. All right.
Have you noticed that the word coward is the new Hitler?
Has anybody else noticed that?
It seems like three years ago, everything, and longer, everything was Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, because, you know, Trump was president.
Everything's Hitler. And now everything, especially into the pandemic, but also other topics, all we're getting is cowards.
Somebody's a coward. So one of the stories today is that YouTuber Ethan Klein, who's got a real big, very big podcast, and he said that he was going to delete his old interviews with Jordan Peterson because blah, blah, it was a gateway to the alt-right or something.
Now, I don't think Jordan Peterson is a gateway to the alt-right.
And to me, it even sounds just sort of ridiculous.
But, you know, it's not my opinion.
It's not my show. It's his show.
I mean, he could do what he wants. But the post-millennium wrote an article and said that, quote, cowardly YouTuber Ethan Klein deletes interviews with Jordan Peterson to appease woke audience.
Now, he might have been appeasing, but was he cowardly?
You don't think he believes what he's doing?
Like, why would you read his mind and decide he's cowardly?
Do you remember how much trouble Bill Maher got into when, I think it was, wasn't it 9-11, when George Bush was saying that the terrorists were cowardly and Bill Maher was just calling bullshit on it?
He was like, they literally killed themselves for their cause.
You can hate them and call them any other name you want, but the one you can't call them is cowardly.
I mean, why would you pick that?
And of all the things that are true, that you can say about terrorists that are, you know, insulting and bad, why cowardly?
That would be the weirdest thing to call anybody.
Now, of course, I'm taking this personally.
Because people are saying that my decisions about anything pandemic-related are based on fear.
To which I say, I didn't process it that way.
I mean, I think I'm a better authority of what was happening in my own brain.
But I'm also a trade hypnotist.
And so I think nobody makes a rational decision about any of this.
So I don't think my decisions were rational.
But I don't know that any of them were based on fear, and I don't know how anybody else could know.
Because... Did you read my mind?
I mean, it's the lowest level of analysis, is what I'm saying.
Basically, calling somebody Hitler because you don't agree with them is not too much different from saying they're cowardly because they made a decision that you don't agree with that looked like it was a popular decision.
You know, sometimes...
The reason that the popular decisions are popular...
Because a lot of people are on that side, even if you don't like it.
So I would say, I guess this is more of a writing tip than it is an opinion.
Let me frame it this way.
This is a writing tip, not an opinion.
If you're going to write that somebody else is cowardly, just know that it looks like you didn't do the work.
Like you didn't put enough thought into it.
Can I say that? It's sort of like a comedian who curses a lot.
It can be pretty funny, but I don't respect it because it's too easy.
Calling somebody Hiller?
Why do we have to see that again?
Just stop calling people cowards.
There's no insight there.
Well, right on schedule, when everybody was saying about...
Not everybody. But when the right was saying that January 6th hadn't produced any insurrection charges, somebody got charged with sedition.
Now, I don't know anything about the case, but do you think it's a coincidence that just when the narrative required somebody to be charged with something closer to insurrection, that we get a sedition charge?
And let me ask you this. How likely is it that whoever got charged, and again, I don't know anything about the case, and I'm still going to say this confidently, I don't think there'll be a conviction, do you?
I don't even know anything about the charge.
It's just a little bit too on the nose, if you know what I mean.
Timing's a little bit too perfect.
It looks like they need to charge somebody so that the charge itself becomes the story.
And it gets rid of the nobody's been charged for something that sounds like an insurrection problem.
I swear to God, this does not look like anything like justice.
It could be.
I mean, it could be a coincidence.
And it could be that somebody did something actually that bad.
But I so don't believe it.
We don't have a system where you can believe that anymore.
The benefit of a doubt is so removed now from our government.
And I'll say it again. If there's any doubt whether that's sketchy, you have to assume it's sketchy.
Because the government needs to prove to you that they're not fucking the public.
It's not for you to prove it.
They have to prove to you that they're not screwing you for political reasons.
And I don't feel I got that case.
I don't feel that whoever got the sedition charge, you better bring the goods.
I don't think they will.
And then I think somebody's life will be destroyed for their narrative.
If I had to guess, that's what it looks like it's happening.
Do you trust anybody who says, I've got a big old list of experts who are all on my side?
Here's my list of people who signed the document.
Look at all these experts on my side.
Does that ever persuade you?
It's becoming one of the least persuasive ways to persuade.
You know, some of you got off that ship with climate change because you said, I'm not sure all these people are saying this.
And then, of course, there's another list on the other side and people say, but look at the people on that list.
Where everybody should have lost it, the belief in the list persuasion, is when you heard that 17 intelligence agencies agreed on whatever the hell it was.
Do you remember that? 17 intelligence agencies?
Do you remember who was the first person in the world to tell you what that really meant?
It was the creator of the Dilbert comic strip.
Let me tell you what 17 intelligence agencies agree always means.
It means one of them did the work, and the other 16 said, we don't want any trouble.
Yeah, what you said, that looks good to us.
And that one who did the work, it wasn't the whole agency that did the work.
It would be, you know, maybe a team of five who did the work.
But the team of five...
Wouldn't be equally powerful, and indeed were appointed by one person who got to pick who was in the team, which already tells you what the decision is going to be.
So if you ever see 17 intelligence agencies agree, your automatic thought process should be, one person decided this.
And that's exactly what it was, or something close to it.
It was pretty much one person.
And you were sold on all these people.
All right, here are two new examples.
There are 270 doctors, apparently, who want Joe Rogan censored on Spotify.
Or some kind of treatment that would give you access to the alternative argument, I guess.
So they're a little bit open on how to do that, which is good.
At least that part's good. How much should we trust 270 doctors?
Well, Dr.
Malone has his own list of experts.
I guess the 270 weren't even doctors, were they?
Is that the story? I think some of them weren't even doctors.
Or a lot of them.
But Dr. Malone, who is the subject of the controversy because he was on Rogan's podcast, he has 16,000 doctors who agree with him.
He's got 16,000.
So who's better? The 270 who want Joe Rogan censored or at least show the other side better?
Or the 16,000 doctors who agree with Dr.
Malone that things were pretty good the way it worked out?
Well, you probably should know that Dr.
Malone happens to be the head of the organization...
Within which the 16,000 doctors are.
So basically, the head of the organization got his organization to agree with him.
I don't know how hard that was, but I'm not sure it gives it any credibility.
So don't believe any list persuasion.
One of the greatest things that Dr.
Malone is doing right now, and I mean this seriously, and it's completely on the left field that any of this is happening, that he's the one who's talking about the mass formation psychosis and making that a well-known thing.
Now, in some senses, it's what I've been talking about without using those words or quite that approach for a long time.
But because he was on Joe Rogan and it was tied to the pandemic, he's getting a lot of traction on this.
And I think it's really going to change how we think of things, like in the future, not just on these topics, but in the future.
But still, I can't figure out what's different about it because the key to it seems to be That if the people in charge scare you enough, they can get you to do anything.
Did you not know that already?
How many of you didn't know that if the people in charge scare you enough they can get you to do absolutely anything?
I thought we all knew that.
So I don't think there's absolutely anything being added by this whole mass formation thing.
There's nothing. It's absolutely empty.
And yet, it's one of the greatest things ever.
Because people don't think it's empty.
What they think is that they should pay more attention to how mass perceptions are being managed.
And that, my friends, is one of the most important things that's ever been done In the history of humanity.
Dr. Malone, I don't know how much is an accident or chance or skill, I don't know what it is.
But he has, in many ways, single-handedly, reframed reality.
For a lot of people. Now, didn't reframe it for me, because this is where I always have been, at least since I learned this stuff.
But for a lot of people, they are learning for the first time that their opinions are not real.
Think about that. He's basically the person who took the, let's say, the academic ideas of how we're all persuaded and sort of through the Joe Rogan experience, and it had really not that much to do with his main point of expertise,
but because he got so much attention and was associated with it, and he's credible in other ways, he brought this completely unexpected thing into the consciousness of the people, and in my opinion...
This is the most important mental switch that humankind has had since maybe understanding that the scientific process was important.
Something like that.
I mean, this is enormous.
And I don't think you quite realize it yet.
How much this is going to seep into our full understanding of who we are as human beings.
In the same way that Trump changed really everything about how we understand fake news and reality itself and persuasion, the importance of even having the facts right, he changed all of that.
And it looks like Malone is now putting the frosting on that cake, if you know what I mean.
It's like he's completing the baking.
You could say, Trump, it was half-baked, but he definitely got the cake started.
Anyway, in my opinion...
Well, we'll get to that in a second.
I asked a bunch of people who think that elites are destroying the country through the prosecutors that Soros is promoting or funding to the vaccinations, to the stealing our privacy, to the open borders.
So there's a whole bunch of amorphous things.
And I want to give you a little test in cognitive dissonance.
So here's the test. One of the tells, I tell you all the time, is if a lot of people have the same opinion...
But they all have a different reason for it.
What does that mean? If a lot of people have exactly the same opinion, but they all have completely different reasons for how they got there, it means, yeah, it's cognitive dissonance.
Because if a lot of people have the same opinion, but maybe they're just two or three reasons for how they got there, that might just be their opinion.
But if the opinions are just crazy shit and it's all over the board...
It's probably telling you something.
So I was asking the questions on Twitter, and I asked, why does anybody want to do what we imagine is happening?
And here are the types of answers I got.
I got that, let's see, the central banks are mutating into global dictatorship, which was always its endgame.
I got that...
The big money likes big volatility.
When you shake the box, it gives the people on top the ability to consolidate more power.
I've got to follow the money.
That didn't help me as much as you think.
They want to fundamentally transform the fabric of society.
From Western capitalism to statist socialism.
Why do they want to do that?
And then they may want to be doing these things because they believe they're doing good.
And that they can reshape American society and create a global great world.
They've been trying to remake, they, whoever they is, have been trying to remake society since the French Revolution.
So here's my problem with all of these.
First of all, they seem to be all over the board.
Number one, are the elites not competing with each other?
Is everybody trying to make Soros the king?
The other billionaires want that, you think?
That doesn't make sense.
So who exactly are the elite?
Is it the bankers?
So the first question you have to ask yourself is...
In this conspiracy, who do they think is going to be on top?
And why? Here's the other problem.
If you understand economics, you do not believe that shaking the box, sort of randomly anyway, It's going to be good for you.
Anybody who is smart enough to become a Soros-like billionaire, you'd have to understand how things work.
And one of the ways that things work is the way you get the richest is with the most capitalism.
There is no exception to that.
If they want to have more richness and power, and they're already billionaires and captains of whatever they're doing, more capitalism is the way to get more power.
There's nobody who's going to say, I made my billions with capitalism, and now to double my power, I'm going to destroy law and order, open the borders, and go to socialism.
Nobody who's smart enough to be an elite would have that opinion.
And if only one did, that wouldn't be enough, because there's got to be some kind of conspiracy going on here.
So I'm completely confused...
Yeah, Davos. I mean, people are just throwing out random words at me.
Davos, central banks.
None of it connects.
Because if you can tell me the person, I'll tell you why it can't be that person.
Somebody says control.
Let's take that. So let's say they have enough money, but what they want is control.
And maybe more money can get you more control.
But power, right?
Who? Who?
Who? Soros? Are you saying that lots of the elites are helping Soros because they want him to be in power?
The other elites?
Or are they competing?
And do all the elites think they'll be the winners if they destroy the system?
So do you think that when you get to become an elite billionaire, you suddenly believe that your best interest is to destroy the system that put you in that position?
Some others say that volatility is good.
But do you see the problem that people have different opinions than the Rothschilds?
Okay, we'll throw in the Rothschilds there, too.
The Rothschilds are bankers.
Do you know what bankers don't want?
Socialism. There's no banker who wants socialism.
I mean, if you're trying to get power.
Because what got them their power is what they'd want more of.
When people get power, they don't become more reckless.
They usually become more conservative.
So I don't know what's going on, honestly.
So I don't have a competing hypothesis to say you're wrong.
So I'm not going to say any of you are wrong.
I'm saying that something's going on here.
I don't know what it is. But to me, it doesn't look like any kind of...
Conspiracy of the kind that you think it is.
And if you did, come up with a name and how that person actually could imagine it would benefit them to get power in any way.
All right. Could be.
Maybe they're going for the materialistic utopian.
One of the ideas somebody said is it's like the knockout game and that the billionaires are just trying to knock things out because they can.
Or sometimes people just like to see things burn.
These are the actual answers I got to this.
Or also some people are thinking that we need to depopulate.
I'll bet there are no billionaires who think we need to depopulate.
I'll bet they're zero. Do you know why?
Because you can't become a billionaire.
I know, you can say Gates.
You don't get to become a Bill Gates billionaire unless you understand that more people is better for the economy.
No, Bill Gates was talking about birth rates.
Birth rates are not depopulation.
Controlling the birth rate...
You could argue the good or bad of that.
But he doesn't need fewer people total.
That's not a thing. I'm sure of it.
All right. Biden had a bad week, so bad that...
So bad that Courtney Holland joked that it was a good week for Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter is no longer the worst president in the world.
And here's my question about Biden.
Do you think that anybody who supported Biden regrets it?
I just sent in a message to...
One of the people I talked to a lot about before the election, who was quite sure that Biden would be a real solid choice and that Trump would be a disaster.
And I just wonder, has anybody's mind changed?
Because I'll bet not, right?
I'll bet there's still some way to justify that everything's fine.
You know, I'm going to probably surprise you a little bit.
That I don't think the Biden administration is as much a disaster as you do.
I mean, there's some real notable failures, but it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't have happened with a different president.
The things he's not fixing are the things that are kind of not fixable.
The exceptions would be there's something with the rapid testing that's really wrong, but it was wrong under Trump as well.
It was just as wrong under Trump.
Oh, the border would be...
Yeah, okay, I'll give you the border.
Yeah, the border would be a clear example of just a mistake.
Afghanistan is interesting because you have to assume that there was a better way to do it.
And we're all geniuses because we didn't have to do it, right?
Now, it does seem like there was a better way to do it.
I'll give you Afghanistan.
At least in the political context, that would be judged an unambiguous mistake.
Even if you don't really have something to compare it to in a scientific sense.
Politically, that's unambiguously a mistake.
But I think the other stuff will get worked on.
Yeah, okay, you're talking me into it.
I'm watching all the counter-arguments running by, the pipeline, the energy, the January 6th political prisoners.
The inflation.
I think the only difference is I have lower expectations of what a different president would have done.
So there's no argument that Biden is shitting the bed.
Can we agree on that? Yeah, mandates.
There's no argument that Biden is just doing a bad job.
I'm just saying that you don't really know that whoever else the other person is would have done a better job.
You just don't know. It's pretty funny when I see the lists go by, because he is the worst president we've ever had.
I'm trying not to experience any schadenfreude.
Has anybody had this experience yet?
So schadenfreude is when you feel good because somebody else feels bad.
And when Trump lost and Biden won...
That felt bad to a lot of you who are probably Trump supporters if you're watching this.
And I have to admit, you know, I probably felt bad And then I want it to be right.
We all want to feel right.
We want to be vindicated in the end.
And when you see Biden hitting record low approvals, and even his own team is trying to take him out so that he doesn't run again, he's that bad.
He's so bad his own side is trying to take him out.
And when you see it, if you were a Trump supporter...
I'm just going to ask you this question, confidentially, just between us.
Did it make you feel a little good to see Biden labeled as the worst president of all time?
Well, just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
Come on.
Because you know that seeing Biden labeled the worst president of all time and with, as you just noted, With reasons.
It's not even like it's just like emotional stuff.
It's with reasons.
Good reasons.
Lots of examples. You tell me that doesn't make you feel good because you're vindicated?
But on the...
But on the other hand, I don't feel good about feeling good.
You know what I mean? Because Schadenfreude is sort of the worst of us.
That's human beings showing their worst personality trait.
If you're feeling good about somebody else feeling bad, don't feel proud of it.
But it's there. Sometimes I can't stop smiling about it, but I don't feel good about it, if you know what I mean.
Alright. So I think there's more pressure for the public on ending things on February 1 in terms of the mandates.
And here, I think, is coming out in this new CDC mask guidance.
So, before I talk about it, we all agree that we all want to get rid of the masks.
If, and it's a big if, if they ever made a difference, they don't now, right?
We're all on the same page, right?
If we can start there, then I could talk about some things that are fun, and we don't have to fight about whether masks work, okay?
Okay. Because I'm not in that argument at all.
It doesn't matter if they work.
Can we agree? It doesn't matter if they work.
Like, that argument doesn't have anything to do with anything.
Okay. We all want them to go away.
But so the CDC said this.
And watch how they chose the words.
So the new guidance is to wear the most protective mask you can that, quote, fits well and that you will wear consistently.
Okay. What does that sound like?
That you can wear consistently and fits well.
That you can wear consistently.
I feel like they're giving up.
Right? Doesn't this feel like the beginning of the transfer of control?
Am I reading too much into it?
There is the foreshadowing of the transfer of control.
From you better do this to...
Consider this.
Right? It's more about use your judgment now.
Are you seeing it or am I getting too optimistic?
Because I think they can read the room and they're starting to, just as the CDC would conform to political pressure, they will conform also to public pressure.
So I feel like at this point we're actually driving the CDC, not the other way around.
So February 1st is starting to look pretty good, especially with the shortage of rapid tests.
If the masks don't make much difference with Omicron, we haven't seen any impact in the news, etc.
All right, now, I'm going to do a few other things, and then I'm going to save something for the end, because some of you will bail out for that.
No, I'm going to do this now.
If we're all on the same page that masks don't seem useful at this point in the pandemic, if they ever did, and that's a whole different question, can we agree that masks are emotional?
Emotional? Like people really have opinions about masks.
And that when things are really emotional, that's when you get cognitive dissonance, in both ways.
And I would like to confess that What I believe is behind my own decisions about masks.
Now, I've never been in favor of mask mandates.
You all know that, right? I've never been in favor of mask mandates.
But I've worn them at various times.
And I feel as though my own opinion is shaped entirely by non-rational forces.
And then I rationalize it after the fact.
Do you think you do that?
How many of you think your own decision on masks is really, if you're being honest with yourself, is completely emotional, and then you rationalize it after the fact?
Anybody do that? Now, I've been accused of using fear as my rationalization, and I've denied that in the sense that internally I don't think of it that way.
But I do have some irrational thoughts Feelings about masks, and I want to share them with you.
Number one, in my special situation as a celebrity, I kind of like the anonymity.
I kind of like that. I like being able to go to a store and there was less chance I'd be recognized, especially since I do this now.
Now, should that influence my decision?
It shouldn't, right?
Because that's like personal and it's more emotional.
It doesn't really have an impact on my health.
So that shouldn't affect me, but I'll bet it does.
You want to hear another one? I kind of like that in the grocery store the other customers are not breathing on my food, especially the vegetables.
Should that influence my decision on masks?
Hell no. Hell no.
It wouldn't be an irrational reason.
It's an irrational reason.
Do I like it when I go in a restaurant and they let me take my mask off immediately so I can enjoy my time, but the server wears a mask as they're talking directly above my food?
I kind of like the server being in a mask so that I don't have to think about the spray from their talking falling on my food.
Has that ever hurt me?
Probably not. Is it rational?
Probably not, because you're always filled with people's spray and food and shit.
It's an irrational thought.
So I do have a whole bunch of irrational feelings about masks, That probably are influencing what I've decided is my rational decision about them.
Would you agree...
We'll talk about me only.
You don't have to talk about yourself yet.
Would you agree that I have probably made a mask opinion based on my irrational forces and then rationalized it after the fact?
How many of you would agree that to be true?
A lot of you, right? Now, I don't know that that's true.
But it would conform to my own opinion of how things work.
So the weird thing is I can have a firm opinion that I'm not being rational.
At the same time, I don't know what's wrong with my thinking.
You might, but I wouldn't be able to see it.
Somebody says, now do vaccines.
We'll get to that. So we could have a really fun discussion in the next moment if you can release on the fact that I'm telling you I'm right and you're wrong.
Can you do that? Is that fair?
Can you release on the fact that I'm arrogantly telling you I'm right and you're wrong?
Because that's not my world view.
My world view is we're all making irrational decisions and we're all rationalizing after the fact.
It'll just make it easier to do what I'm going to do.
Because I wanted to do a little test on Twitter the other day to see if I could...
I've done this before, you know.
Trigger cognitive dissonance intentionally.
Now, the way you would trigger it intentionally is you get somebody to say something out loud or in public that is inconsistent.
If you force somebody to say something that's inconsistent with their own opinion...
They will be triggered into cognitive dissonance, and you'll see all the signals.
And I've taught you most of the signals.
We'll go over them again. So I asked a few questions that were designed to trigger cognitive dissonance.
The topic is masks, but I don't care about masks.
And I don't feel that my opinion on them should influence you, because mine is probably irrational, right?
Man, drowning. You are so lost.
Some of you are so lost.
All right. Here are some questions that I asked and the answers.
If you didn't have any...
Keep in mind, these questions are not meant to be, like, really scientific polls, and they are meant to be coercive, right?
So when you say, that question isn't fair, I know that.
I know that. These are not fair questions.
But I asked this on Twitter to see what kind of reactions I would get.
I said, if you didn't have any credible data to guide you, your decision, which of these risks seems larger to you?
So you don't know anything else except what I'm going to tell you now.
So don't use anything about the pandemic, only what I'm going to tell you now.
Which do you think is more dangerous, being exposed to a military-grade bioweapon We're being exposed, in other words, taking a vaccination that got fast-tracked.
I'm going to get rid of my mascot here, because he's just saying the same thing.
You are now hidden.
All right, so which do you think?
Toss-up? It would be a toss-up?
Because these are two things you don't know anything about.
You don't know if the military bioweapon was complete.
You don't know if it was meant to kill people like you.
You don't know. But the vaccination itself also has a bunch of unknowns.
But what did people say?
The most dangerous would be the vaccination plus the bioweapon.
So, now, I'm not saying that necessarily the COVID is a bioweapon.
So I'm not saying that.
I'm saying, if you believed it was, which would you think was more dangerous?
And I would say, I don't know.
But I would be definitely scared of a bioweapon that was actually designed to be unnatural.
I think some people think the virus is natural and the vaccine is unnatural.
But I think one of them was designed to kill you and one was designed to save you.
Would you rather be exposed to something that was designed to kill you or something that was designed to save you?
Now, again, you don't know anything about either one of these.
You don't know if they were designed correctly.
So if you don't know if the bioweapon actually would kill you, likewise, you don't know if the vaccine that was designed to protect you might make it worse.
You don't know. You have no other information.
Because we don't know in the long run what the coronavirus will do to you, right?
Because it hasn't been in the long run.
And you don't know what the vaccines will do to you in the long run because it hasn't been in the long run.
But people had strong opinions on it, despite having zero information.
Personally, I would have been influenced by the purpose of them.
I would be more afraid of something that was designed to kill me than something that was designed to save me, even knowing that both of them could have been designed imperfectly.
But I would have no data to back that.
that.
That's just like a feeling.
All right, here's another one.
Which would you prefer?
If you had two choices and only two choices, would you rather have somebody who is infected with COVID breathe directly into your face or to breathe out the size of a mask?
Go. I ask you the same question.
Would you prefer that people breathe COVID directly into your face or Or out the sides and tops of the masks?
So a lot of people, 51% said they would prefer to have that COVID sprayed directly into their face and not out the sides.
Does that sound like people are making a decision completely rationally?
Does it? So here's what I decided about why people have different opinions on masks.
I'll bet you haven't heard this frame before.
Everybody looks at everything through their own experience, right?
Scientists are saying, how big are the holes?
How big is the virus?
The non-scientists are just saying, do what the officials tell you.
So people are all over the place.
But I feel like I always looked at masks with an engineering perspective.
Did anybody else do that?
I know there are a lot of technical people who watch this.
But those of you who are engineers...
And only for those of you who are engineers.
I'm going to run by this argument.
And again, if you're just joining us, we don't care about masks.
We all want them to go away right away.
There's no argument for or against them.
We're only talking about cognitive dissonance.
Here's the engineering argument.
If we know that the higher the viral load, the worse, then it should be obvious to anybody with an engineering sense That blowing the virus directly into somebody's face without a face mask would give them more viral load.
There's no engineer that would disagree so far in the short run.
Talking about the short run.
But let's go to the long run where you're talking in the same room for a long time.
And now the level of COVID is building up in the room.
Now just for the engineers, if you wait long enough, it's at the same level of risk As if the entire time the COVID was going directly into the face.
It's at the same level of risk once you've reached the saturation point.
I'm seeing lots of yeses.
Now, that's not fair.
I need to see you're an engineer, and then yes.
So the only answer I want to hear is, I'm an engineer, and then yes, or I'm an engineer, and then no.
And everybody else just go silent for a moment.
We only want to talk to the engineers, just for a moment.
Engineer depends on the half-life of the virus.
Thank you. I mean, that's only one variable.
It's not the only variable. Engineer says yes.
Engineer says no.
Engineer says yes, equilibrium.
Engineer, too many variables.
Thank you. Too many variables.
That's a good answer. I'm going to give you my engineering take on this in a moment.
Engineer, yes, without disbursement.
All right. Here's what I think is the correct answer.
100% of the virus blown into somebody's face...
Versus the same amount of virus.
Remember, it's the same person talking the whole time.
So the total amount of virus is either going to be directly in the face before it goes in the room, or it's going to be more in the room before some 1% of it goes into your face.
Which would be... Which of those would infect you?
Well, if you believe that any exposure infects you, then 100% of the people get infected in all the situations.
Would you agree? Would you agree with that?
That if you could be...
If the only thing you're talking about is can you be infected, they'd be kind of similar in the long run.
Does everybody agree? Not the same, but they'd be closer to similar if any little bit of exposure, like Omicron.
If it's Omicron and you're in the room, I think you got it.
But what about the viral load?
Do you think you'd get the same viral load if your head is occupying 1% of the room?
I mean, far less than 1%.
But if your head is occupying 1% of the room, The whole time you're in there.
But the virus is spread out in the whole room versus the plume going directly in your face the entire time.
Let me ask the question again.
If viral load matters, not whether you get infected or yes or no, that's not the question.
We'll all take a yes on that.
If you wait long enough with Omicron, you all get infected.
We'll take a yes on infected.
But if viral load matters, and the experts say it does, which one gives you more viral load?
Go. Engineers. You have to say you're an engineer, and then tell me which one gives you more viral load.
Engineer in your face.
Engineer direct. Engineer in your face.
Okay. So I think I made my case.
When you talk to engineers, or people who just think like engineers, you almost always can get the same answer.
Right? I mean, correct me on that, engineers.
Right. So, for everybody who said that face masks don't work because scientists said, you know, the mask does this and the N95s are better, that's sort of the scientist's frame on things.
The engineers, and I always...
I tend to take more of an engineering frame because I spend so much time in that world.
I'm not an engineer, but I just get sort of infected by that frame.
To me...
The face mask thing was never even ambiguous.
To me, having stuff sprayed in your face has got to be worse.
Now, let me end with a joke that's unfair.
May I end with an unfair joke?
Because analogies are always unfair, right?
But sometimes they're fun.
So many people told me that it didn't matter if you were wearing a face mask because it didn't matter if you were spraying the COVID directly into my face or just spraying it into the room.
I was just going to be the same result.
I realized that before, when I was cleaning a stain on my countertop, I would take the cleaner and I would spray a concentrated spray right on the stain and then I'd clean it.
And that would help me get the right amount of the cleaner Right onto the stain.
But now that I've learned more about how COVID works, now I just sort of walk around the room and just spray the air a little bit.
And then I clean the stain.
All right. And that, ladies and gentlemen...
Was one I wanted to talk about.
And by the way, I'm completely aware that the people on my Twitter poll who said that they would prefer COVID be sprayed directly in their mouth, I understand that they were making a different set of assumptions.
Such as, you already are vaccinated, or you already were infected, or you think it's just the coup, or you'd rather have your freedom.
I get that this was not a real poll.
There was no science in that. Okay.
So we all understand that.
But I think it was fun.
If you can release on the fact that I'm sure I don't know the right answer about any of this, because I rationalize my stuff after the fact, just like you do.
But isn't it fun?
Am I the only one who enjoys seeing if the cognitive dissonance can be triggered and then just do something with it?
The people and locals are more likely to say it's fun.
More fun than Joe Biden.
And somebody said, do the same thing with vaccines.
So I've told you that I'm not going to get boosted.
And Andres Bacchus challenged me on that privately and said, are you sure about that?
Because he showed me a...
Study that said that people were boosted, had a good outcome.
To which I say, I don't think you can test the long run until the long run is here, right?
How could you possibly know that a booster is going to not increase your chance of whatever in the long run?
My understanding from Dr.
Malone... Is that there could be long-term, I don't know, clots or whatever.
So doesn't it make sense that if two shots can largely, plus the Omicron, it's two shots plus being in the Omicron world, if that basically reduces my risk of dying to zero, and it does, I mean personally, just me personally, why would I add the extra risk of a booster Something that couldn't have been tested in the future when I've already decreased my risk to zero.
What would be the point of that?
And then I also am influenced by history.
Every time you hear somebody say, the reason my product didn't work is because you didn't use enough of it, There's a little bell go off, a little alarm that goes, warning, warning, that sounds a lot like OxyContin, which was exactly what the Oxy people said.
They said, oh, it's not getting rid of your pain all night like we promised, and it was the main reason you bought it?
Try doubling it.
Oh, that didn't work?
I've got an idea for you.
Why don't you double it again?
That didn't work. Here's some out-of-the-box thinking.
Why don't we double that again?
That literally happened, at least according to the Dope Sick movie about it.
Assuming that was accurate, that's actually what happened.
The other thing I hear is that people are getting, like, sick for...
How many of you have had this thought, that the people who got vaccinations, if you added the total number of sick days of the people who got vaccinated, because you miss that day of work quite often, would it be more or less days than the total number of sick days from people who are actually infected with COVID? That's a serious question.
I don't know the answer to that.
Do you? Because if you vaccinated everybody and then multiplied everybody by an average of one day lost work, or maybe half a day if you took the average, don't you get to more lost days of productivity than all of the retired people who are 85 and died of COVID? I feel like the vaccination should have,
if everything we know about it is true, and I would, you know, Be taking the numbers that even the pro-vaccination people would give you.
Which is, yeah, there's a good chance you're going to miss a day of work.
I mean, that was what they promised us, right?
They promised us there's a good chance you're going to miss a day of work.
I mean, that was overt, right?
That there's nothing between the lines.
They said that. If you add all that up, is it more or less than what we missed with COVID? I mean, most of the people I hear of, like Joe Rogan just said, he had one bad day with COVID. He had actual COVID and he had one bad day.
Now, I don't know how bad...
It might have been the worst day.
I can't imagine it was just one bad day.
Maybe one really bad day, I guess.
All right. That is all I've got for now.
I don't know if I forgot any topics, but my technology is working today.
Linguistic kill shot. Oh, this is a good one.
Linguistic kill shot. Go tell a liberal, quote, go get your fourth Trump shot and mic drop.
That's not fair. I don't think it's fair for you to persuade people on vaccinations, and I don't think it's fair for me to do it, which is why I always tell you I'm not doing it, even though apparently some people hear it the other way.
But... This was, no doubt about it, the best experience any of us have ever had.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, the best thing that's ever happened to you, and it'll happen tomorrow, and it'll be even better.
