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Jan. 17, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:03:28
Episode 1626 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About How to Debunk the Debunkers and Fact Check the Fact Checkers

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Bernie Sanders, not good at economics Richard Grenell notes intelligence leaks stopped Brett Weinstein, Heather Heine on evolution Wearing masks, alone, outdoors? Local owned businesses and masks Debunking the debunk of the debunk 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. My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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To the best damn thing that ever happened to you.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
And not only is it the best thing that's ever happened to you, but amazingly, it gets better every time.
Yeah, that was surprising.
And if you want to take it up another level, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gels, a sign, a canteen jug of glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and watch it do its magic now.
Go! You're right.
I should have said beverage, not liquid.
Beverage. I appreciate the correction.
Well, happy MLK Day.
Is everybody celebrating Martin Luther King Day in some appropriate fashion?
Which would be...
don't really know.
Maybe sleep extra so that you too can have a dream?
I don't know exactly what is the traditional way to celebrate the holiday, but maybe you do.
Rasmussen asked this question, appropriate to the day.
Do you believe that men and women of all races have equal opportunity?
Which, of course, was Martin Luther King's dream.
How many people do you think, in the Rasmussen poll, agree that men and women at this moment have equal opportunity?
The answer is about a third.
34%. And I said to myself, what country are they living in?
How in the world do one third of the country think that we have equal opportunity?
We're not even really close, are we?
If you talk to any black person that asks the question, do you have equal opportunity?
I'm pretty sure they could give you some solid examples of no.
Don't you think? Now, there are plenty of places where things do work out and plenty of places where it's actually an advantage.
Say, a Fortune 500 company might be actively recruiting minorities, women, LGBTQ. So there are pockets of inequality pretty much everywhere.
So to imagine that there's equal opportunity, I think, is weird...
Because there are clear places where even white people are being discriminated against, specifically the Biden administration, saying that if you're white, you might go to the back of the line for therapeutics and vaccines.
Now, as I said, there would be a long list of things that every minority would say, well, here's our list.
And there would be a lot on that list that's true, and you'd agree with it.
But here's, I think, the most productive way to look at it.
Equality isn't something you can ever achieve, because nobody will agree what it looks like.
Nobody knows what equality looks like.
We just argue about it.
It's a little bit subjective.
But here's a better frame.
Do people have equality of strategies?
Opportunity feels like we both have the same opportunity for the same job, for example.
But I think equality of strategy makes more sense.
In other words, can I find this strategy...
That would leverage the fact that I'm a white guy?
Probably. I could probably find a way in the United States to take advantage of the fact that I'm a white guy.
But if I were black, could I also find a strategy, a different strategy, that would give me an edge for being black?
And the answer is yes. How about women?
Yes. LBGTQ? Yes.
Yes. So there's definitely a strategy that's available for everybody.
It's a different strategy, though.
And maybe you could argue they're not quite as awesome.
$1,000 life.
I don't even know what that means. Weird comments today.
Anyway, it's weird that people think that we have equality.
We'll never have that.
But we certainly could have equal strategies, or at least strategies that are good enough.
Now, here's a shocker.
I don't know if many of you know this.
This might be the first time you're hearing it.
But Bernie Sanders is not good at economics.
I know. I know.
I was surprised, too. But as Michael Schellenberger points out, That Bernie Sanders and Bill McKibben, separately, maybe collectively, convinced New Englanders that they didn't need nuclear or natural gas, and so now the region is getting 25% of its electricity by burning oil and desperately importing liquefied natural gas from the Caribbean by ship.
Now, the problem, of course, is they're having a cold snap.
So the problem with a lot of the green energy sources, with the exception of nuclear, which is green, is that the other ones are not consistent.
They don't tell you exactly what they're going to give you and when.
And so another example where Bernie Sanders is, amazingly, not good at economics.
I know! I thought I'd start with the shocking stuff.
Richard Grinnell had an interesting observation in the dogs-not-barking category, and he tweeted this.
He said, the intelligence leaks have stopped.
Have they? When was the last time you heard a story about an intelligence leak or a White House insider?
It completely stopped, didn't it?
I can't think of any stories like that.
And then he goes on and he says, and it actually points to the partisan credibility problem of the leakers.
It does. And their allies in the media.
He says, remember when they return, and they will return, their domestic enemies.
Well, you know, I don't like that framing of domestic enemy.
Because, you know, I get framed that way as well.
But... This observation is quite on point.
Suddenly, suddenly people don't leak.
Boy, anything you wondered about the deep state, I feel like it's answered by this alone.
Because the leaks are so damaging, and if it only happens to one party, you know, that does tell you something about who's running stuff.
All right. How many of you saw Jordan Peterson interviewing Brett Weinstein and Heather...
Was it Heather Hare?
On evolution. I would recommend it highly.
It's like one of the most fascinating...
Am I pronouncing it right?
I was doing it from memory. Give me the proper pronunciation.
Because I know I'm getting both of their names wrong.
Hying? Hying, okay.
And his first name is Heather?
Right? Hying.
Apologies to all people whose names I say wrong.
But I've got to say that when you see Jordan Peterson and Brett and...
It is Heather, right? When you see them talking at...
The level that they can talk about smart stuff, it is actually just...
It's kind of thrilling, actually.
And I don't know if you'll have exactly the same...
Yeah, I don't think...
I don't know if you'll have exactly the same experience.
But there are two things that are remarkable about all three of the participants.
One is that they have, you know, deep knowledge of their subject matter.
But the other is that you will not find better communicators.
Oh, my God!
Because, you know, you've got the university professor experience on top of the subject matter.
Oh, my God!
Can they form sentences on the fly?
To watch them put together a coherent form of sentences, let's say a coherent structure of sentences to give a complete answer to something without a wasted word, it's like amazing.
You know, just as a writer, I couldn't get over just how their verbal capability is just so stellar.
But on top of that, They were talking about a missing part in evolution.
I'm going to do a bad job of explaining what they explained.
But it does look like there might be something closer to intention.
This is my own interpretation, not theirs.
Something closer to intention that's driving evolution.
Now, one way that that intention could be expressed is in sexual preference, as in...
I'll make up my own example here, so don't blame them for anything I say about it.
But suppose you had a giraffe who wanted to get to the taller leaves, but it couldn't reach.
Would that giraffe, if it were female, would the female giraffe look for a mate with a taller neck?
Because the giraffe's intention is to get up to those leaves, but it can't do it directly.
So does that just get expressed in its sexual preference?
And then future generations could reach the leaves.
No, no. I mean, that's...
Again, this is not coming directly from the experts.
I'm putting my own sort of speculation into the mix.
But there does seem to be some mystery about what's driving things.
And I think that's...
Pretty fascinating. All right, February 1 is coming up.
Only two weeks. Feb 1, the public is done.
That's the date that we would love for everybody to be free of masks.
Now, usually when I say that, I get a bunch of people pouring in and say, Scott, Scott, Scott, I've been done for a long time.
I have not worn a mask in a long time.
And if you cowards are still wearing masks, well, that's on you.
Just don't bring me into this.
I stopped a long time ago.
To which I say, I don't think you live in my state because you're not buying groceries without your mask in my state.
You can try. But you're not going to get any groceries that way.
So I've got a feeling that all the brave people who have bucked the system live in states or locales where they didn't have any masks.
But they bravely went where they didn't need to have masks without masks.
And I salute you.
But for those of us who are still in oppressed regions and just trying to get along until it's over, let me give you a report from my idiot part of the country.
Now, I have to admit, I do normally go through life thinking that the people I live around, because I'm in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, very high education levels here, very high education levels.
And I tend to think that the people around me are just a little smarter than the average.
I guess I'm biased by the jobs they have and the kinds of educations they have.
However, I'm here to report...
That as of the middle of January in 2022, something like half of my fucking idiot community is wearing masks outdoors alone.
In 2022, in mid-January...
Outdoors, alone, masks on.
About half of the fucking idiot public.
It's just amazing.
Now, there are at least two things going on.
One is you can get used to anything.
I talk about this all the time.
Even things that are outrageous at first, you can sort of just get used to them, which is not good.
You can get used to things that are not good for you.
And I feel like a lot of people just don't even notice anymore.
They leave the store or they leave their house or whatever.
Maybe they had a reason to put it on in the first place.
I feel like people just forget.
Because I have. I've actually just forgotten.
You know, like I'll walk from the supermarket to my car, and I'll keep my mask on for another five minutes while I'm unloading the groceries.
And it's not because I'm in danger.
I literally just forgot.
Yeah, sometimes because it's cold.
If you put your mask on when it's cold, it actually really helps.
And so I've actually left my mask on if I went outdoors and it was cold.
I'm like, oh, this mask is kind of helping.
But then there's also the, I think it's the social signaling mostly.
Don't you? I think it's just social signaling.
I don't think they're really afraid, but I don't know.
Maybe the brainwashing and the fear is so bad that they're actually afraid outdoors.
I don't know. You know, I think people got spooked by the Omicron.
Like, it can go everywhere.
It'll get you. Well, here's one observation.
The local businesses are largely done with mask mandates.
Is that true where you live?
If you're a chain business, you've got to do what corporate tells you, and they're still going to enforce it.
If I go into the Safeway, they're going to enforce masks.
But if you go into a local-owned business...
Who's telling you to put a mask on?
Anybody? Because all the local-owned businesses have people not wearing masks with people who are.
But I've never seen a local business tell somebody to put a mask on.
Have you? I don't think I would.
I don't think I will ever see a local business do that.
So if you're a local gym or you're a local restaurant here, it's kind of optional at this point.
So the chains will be the hard ones.
Now, my estimate is that it would only take 10% noncompliance on masks to end it wherever there are still mandates.
Would you agree with that estimate?
If 10% of people just walked into wherever you have to have a mask without one...
And just politely said, oh, oh, okay, you're going to require me to get a mask?
But make them come and talk to you.
Just be polite. And say, oh, I'll come back another time when you don't require it.
Or, I'll say, oh, I've got a mask in my pocket, I'll put it on.
But just give them a little bit of friction.
If 10% of their customers consistently went maskless, how soon before the staff would give up?
About an hour. It'd take about an hour.
They would give up right away because they've got work to do, right?
It's the last thing they care about.
Let me ask you this.
Do you know anybody who masks at home within their own house?
Do you know anybody who does that?
I can't think of anybody who masks at home.
I mean, in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, service people would mask.
But if somebody comes to my house, that's the first thing I tell them is, you know, they're welcome to take off their mask.
And that's been for a long time.
And how about your kids?
Are your kids not mixing with other kids after school on weekends?
All those kids wearing masks at their sleepovers?
There's no masking going on unless you're being watched.
The public has completely stopped masking.
Unless they're being watched.
As soon as you get behind closed doors, the mask gets ripped right off.
At least that's the way it is here. Now, there may be some mask places that's different.
All right. Here are a couple of persuasion lessons.
Number one, debunks always sound more persuasive than the original claim.
Would you all agree with that?
If you're not an expert yourself, and so you hear somebody make a claim, but you really can't evaluate it, you're not an expert, or you don't have the information, and then you hear the debunk, doesn't the debunk usually sound better than the claim?
Yeah, not always. Right.
This is a usually situation.
But in terms of bias...
Not certainty, but just in terms of bias.
So I'm definitely not telling you to believe all the debunks.
But here's the problem.
Have you ever seen a debunk get debunked?
And I think you have, right?
What happens when the debunk gets debunked?
Does that make the first debunk actually look weaker than the new debunk?
Is it turtles all the way down?
Can you keep debunking the debunk and then debunking the debunk of the debunk forever?
And that the last thing you say will be the most convincing?
Yes. It turns out that's exactly what you can do.
And that's probably the big reason that in a jury trial...
The defense gets to go last, right?
Because it's just so well understood that whoever goes last is going to have an advantage.
In the same way that a first impression is sticky, the last thing that somebody tells you can be pretty sticky too.
So to make it fair for the defendants, the defense always gets to go last.
So when we're looking at these claims of anything in science or about the pandemic or whatever, you've got the problem that the claim sounds good, On its surface.
But then the debunk...
Well, that sounds pretty good.
But then the debunk and the debunk.
And let me give you an example. Can we agree?
I'd like to stipulate.
Would you... Well, I guess I'm going to have to make my case.
A number of people were accusing me of being in the pocket of Big Pharma.
Do you think I'm in the pocket of Big Pharma?
No. I've disclosed my investments, but I suppose I haven't done it in writing, so maybe you could doubt it.
So the only big former stock that I've owned was Regeneron, and that was just for a few months, and I took my gains and got out.
So I've never owned any of the vaccination companies, except as a component of an index fund.
So it's a passive kind of...
Well, not passive, but it's just in the soup, if you will.
So... So I don't have any kind of direct thing.
Nobody's paying me to do it, blah, blah.
And also, my business model rewards me for being wrong, as well as being right.
If I can teach you something by being wrong, it'd be good content.
So I really don't have the incentive to lie or be biased that some people would.
Now, that doesn't make me unbiased, right?
It doesn't work that way.
So everybody's got some bias.
I just don't have any of the obvious ones.
Whatever my bias is.
Maybe consistency. Everybody has a consistency bias.
Everybody has an ego bias.
We all want to be right, even though my business model would reward me either way.
So... So let me...
I'm going to talk about a topic that you love to hear about, but I don't care about the truth of it.
I'm going to talk about how we process it, right?
And the topic is ivermectin.
But let me tell you, I don't care if it works.
Like, I really care how we figure out if it works.
And I'm going to add something to what you've heard before.
But I'm not here to argue whether it works.
Because I don't think it makes any difference.
Same with masks.
I'm way past it being useful to argue whether they work.
Because they're just going to go away.
I'm not worried about dying of COVID. I don't know if you can come with me on this journey, but I don't want to talk about whether it works.
I only want to talk about how we processed it, the knowledge.
Here's my take on it.
A little background. First of all, the more skeptical you are, the more gullible you appear to those who are less skeptical.
That doesn't sound immediately obvious why that's true, right?
So my claim is that against all common sense, that the most skeptical person will appear to be the most gullible to people who are less skeptical.
Now, you'll need an example of that, right?
Because that doesn't make sense on the surface.
All right, here's an example.
I would say that you, the audience, correct me if I'm wrong, would not trust Big Pharma.
Are we same page?
I don't trust Big Pharma.
You don't trust Big Pharma.
Now, do you distrust them more than I do?
Well, I would say that Big Pharma would kill people for money, and even maybe millions of people for money.
Do you think you trust them less than that?
I think we all agree that they would kill millions of people for money.
So am I so far on the same page that on just that question, we're roughly equally skeptical?
Right? I don't believe what the big pharma tells us.
I don't believe any of the data.
I don't believe they have our interests in mind.
And I do believe that they would kill millions of people if they could make a profit.
They would persuade themselves that they weren't really doing that.
So easily it could happen.
Now, I would go one level deeper in my skepticism than that.
Do you believe that big pharma, which would be, let's say, typical of a big company...
There's no reason to believe that pharma would be more efficient or better managed than any well-managed company in any other industry.
How many of you believe that big pharma could exert so much control over messaging and reality that they could make something such as ivermectin Disappear from use, almost, completely, and coerce the entire technical community to disappear it.
Now, here's an argument on how that could easily happen.
If pharma only got to American experts, then other countries would probably fall in line, because they did take the lead from America on a lot of stuff.
So that makes sense. And it's also true that they could bribe just a few people, just a few experts.
And that would be enough to convince the other American experts who would just parrot what the first expert said.
And then that would be enough to spread everywhere.
And then they could work with their vassals in social media and then the news.
And then if somebody did say, hey, I think they're lying to us, they could get squashed down by...
they could be disappeared by the algorithms...
And then the news would just not talk about, you know, the alternative points of view.
So would we be on the same page skeptically that Big Pharma would have all of those tools available?
They could control social media.
They could control the news.
They could control enough experts to control American experts to control international experts.
Who would disagree with that?
Nobody, right? Now, am I just as skeptical as you are so far?
We're not done yet. But what we've talked about so far, are we equally skeptical?
I think we are. All right.
Let me take you a little bit deeper.
Do you believe that a big entity like that, which would no doubt have many witnesses to such a crime, a crime that would be in size roughly the size of the Holocaust?
So if Big Pharma were suppressing a cheap available cure, how big would the crime be?
I would say roughly the size of the Holocaust.
Let's say the Holocaust is six million souls.
Five million have died from COVID so far, and if you imagine that it might have taken some ramp-up if ivermectin or something else worked, but there'll still be more deaths.
Let's say something in the neighborhood of the Holocaust would be the size of the crime.
Would you agree with that so far?
Now, I'm not saying this is true.
I'm saying that if there were this global conspiracy, it would be Holocaust-sized.
Do you believe that there's nobody smart enough or dumb enough who would be aware of this evil who wouldn't try to monetize it?
Because I don't.
I'm a little more skeptical than you are about this.
I don't believe a company could be so efficient Because remember, I created the Dilbert comic based on the observation that companies are a hot mess.
They can look efficient from the outside, but not on the inside.
On the inside, every company is a hot mess.
I will confirm that by every single person who worked at any big company.
There will be no disagreement of that statement.
Every big company is a hot mess on the inside.
Now, do you believe that in that soup of different personalities, And hot mess you could not produce by now, because some time has gone by.
By now, you don't think that somebody who would be aware of this great ivermectin conspiracy, you don't think even one of them would have found a way to monetize their knowledge.
Let me tell you how.
Go to my publisher, If anybody has that secret knowledge, go to my publisher or any major publisher and say, I actually do have the inside story, and I can prove it, that we suppressed ivermectin while knowing it worked.
Book deal. Millions.
Millions. How about going on Joe Rogan's podcast?
Do you think Joe Rogan would book you as a guest?
If you had worked for one of the big vaccine companies, and you said, you know, I was actually in the room, or Merck or somebody else, I was in the room, and they did say, we're going to hide this thing, and we do know it works, but we can make more money the other way.
Do you think Joe Rogan would book that guest?
Of course. Do you think I would talk about it?
Of course. Do you think Tim Poole would talk about it?
Of course. Do you think any of the three people I mentioned are on the take?
Nope. I doubt it.
I don't think so.
I mean, I'd be real surprised.
I'm pretty sure I know myself, so that's one out of three.
And I'd be real surprised about the other two.
So you have an easy path for somebody to become a savior.
Let me ask you this.
Of course you're worried about being destroyed by Big Pharma, right?
If somebody came forward, you would be destroyed by Big Pharma.
Would you do it anyway?
I would. You wouldn't do it?
Would you be so afraid of Big Pharma that you wouldn't save millions of lives, be the hero of the pandemic, and make millions in speaking fees and book deals, Really?
Now, somebody mentioned OxyContin and how long their, let's say, their bad behavior went on.
I would argue that they got to hide because they did not have as much scrutiny.
If you're just another company with another product, you can hide pretty well because you don't have a lot of eyeballs on you.
And the deaths would be in the ones and twos, and it would be hard to sum up the deaths.
Like, it was hard to notice...
That OxyContin was killing so many people because nobody was keeping the stats.
But can you imagine a Holocaust-sized crime when everybody's looking for that exact crime?
So not only do we know exactly who the perpetrators would be, it would be the big pharma companies.
But the entire world and all the experts in it are looking at it and we're looking at their data.
Under those conditions, do you think that any company could be competent enough to hide a holocaust-sized crime when...
Well, let me ask this question.
I'll ask you directly.
In the comments, if you were in the position to be the whistleblower, but the only downside is that Big Pharma would come after you, would you blow the whistle?
Go. Would you blow the whistle, or would you...
Be afraid and let millions of people die.
You'd expect some people to say, no, I wouldn't.
And that's actually pretty reasonable.
In terms of self-interest, I wouldn't criticize that at all.
But the truth is, humans are all over the map.
And if you have enough witnesses, you get everything.
If you have enough witnesses, you get every outcome.
People who don't want to talk, people who do want to talk.
So I think enough time has gone by that I'm very skeptical any big company could be this ruthlessly efficient and imagine they could get away with it.
Because remember, the lesson of the OxyContin story is that they got caught.
The lesson isn't that you could get away with it forever.
The lesson is, best-case scenario, you can get away with it temporarily.
Don't you think that if any executives actually did what this accusation is, they would be killed?
Now, when I say they would be killed, I don't mean they would be executed by the state.
I mean they would be treated the way a Nazi Holocaust prison guard would be treated when the camp was liberated, if you know what I mean.
I don't think they went on trial, if you know what I mean.
I think the public would actually kill them.
So the risk of the big pharma executives, should they have been involved in a Holocaust-sized crime, which is exactly the accusation, that's the accusation, that they were involved in a Holocaust-sized crime, we would kill them.
Am I right? The only way they could ever not be killed by the public is if the legal system protected them first and got them into some kind of protective custody.
The moment the public found out, and we would, eventually, right?
There's no way you could hide this crime for five years, ten years, do you think?
Do you think this kind of crime could be hidden for ten years?
I mean, even though the OxyContin was because nobody was looking for that crime.
Somebody says yes. Yes in the sense that it's possible, but with so much attention on this topic, I don't think it is.
So I would say I'm more skeptical than you on the efficiency of big companies.
But it's a subjective, right?
You would say, no, no, Scott, I'm more skeptical than you because I think they're so evil, but do you believe they're so efficient?
I don't know that you do, do you?
Really? Really?
You think they're that efficient?
I believe that the people who have worked for large companies would say no.
Oh, actually, let me do a quick poll.
If I may, could we agree, just for the collective entertainment of all of us, just the people who have experience in large companies, Do large companies have the skill to pull off this size of a Holocaust crime and get away with it in perpetuity?
Just the people who work for big companies.
I see a wall of no's.
They are not capable of doing it.
So, if you don't have big company experience, look to the people who do.
Doesn't mean they're right.
I mean, that's not confirmation of anything.
But I would take them seriously because it's sort of a lot of people saying, no, they're not that competent.
And remember, the difference is that everybody's looking.
If nobody's looking for the crime, then they're all that competent.
Any big company can get away with a crime that nobody's looking for.
All right. I came up with a new way to describe this thing.
I call it binary syndrome, which is where people who have opinions that don't fit the two teams, they get snap to guide.
Have you ever used software that has a menu choice called snap to guide?
It means you take an object, you're moving on your screen, and you get it near a guideline, and it just snaps to it.
So you don't have to figure out exactly whether it's lining up.
It just snaps to the guide you put there.
Well, that's what it feels like when people see my opinions.
If they can sniff that my opinion has any kind of a sense of leaning in one direction, they snap to guide.
And then they're done.
That's their entire thinking process.
Snap to guide. And so the binaries, it creates that binary syndrome.
And so you can get this sort of thing.
At exactly the same time, while I was tweeting to debunk a debunk, somebody was online criticizing me for never debunking that debunk.
So I could actually be...
People will accuse me of not doing the thing that I'm doing at exactly the same time where they are.
Like right where they are.
I'm doing the thing. You're not doing the thing.
Well, I'm doing the thing right now.
You don't do the thing.
Well, look over here. I'm doing the thing.
And there's like a cognitive blindness.
It's just incredible. I'll give you an example of that exact thing.
But on the plus side, I noticed that Twitter has saved me a lot of time and energy.
Because do you know how much energy it takes to figure out your own priorities and come up with your own opinion?
It's hard. It's a lot of energy.
But you don't need that anymore because I can just go on Twitter and people will tell me what I'm thinking and what my priorities are.
For example, today I learned from someone else on Twitter that I'm not interested in the truth.
And honestly, I thought I was better than that.
I hoped I was interested in the truth.
But until I read this tweet from a total stranger who has access to my inner thoughts, and now I know I'm not interested in the truth, which is very disappointing.
Honestly, I lowered my opinion of myself when I learned this, because it's amazing how you can be fooled, but I just don't have any interest in the truth.
And thank you, stranger, for straightening that out for me.
It's disheartening. It is.
So here's my snap-to-grid problem.
I believe that there are two camps.
One camp says, Ivermectin works, and it's being suppressed by Big Pharma.
The other camp says, Ivermectin doesn't work, and there's no suppression going on whatsoever.
My opinion is not one of those.
My opinion is, in all likelihood, at least based on incomplete data, there's no evidence that I'm convinced ivermectin works, but Big Pharma is trying to suppress it.
So there are two reasons that Big Pharma would want to suppress ivermectin.
One reason is that it works.
The other reason is that it doesn't work.
Let's see.
Am I right?
There would be two reasons to suppress ivermectin.
One, because it worked, and they didn't want to compete with it.
And the other, because it didn't work, and they didn't want to compete with it.
Do you see that? They would have two equally very compelling reasons to kill ivermectin.
One that it worked, and one that it didn't work.
Because you'd be competing with it whether it worked or not.
And why would they want to compete with it?
So just the fact that they're squelching it doesn't tell you anything about whether it works, does it?
I don't think it does.
You could confirm that they're trying to stop it, maybe, but that wouldn't tell you whether it worked.
So that's the first thing.
And I know that's tough.
The other thing that I've been hearing a lot is the doctor who said they treated, one of them treated 500 patients, this is one I heard yesterday, with ivermectin, and out of 500 patients, nearly every one of them recovered.
Almost 100%.
So that's pretty good.
And then there was... Another doctor who treated 120 patients or so with ivermectin, and every one of them had a good result out of 120.
That's pretty convincing.
Now, that same doctor reportedly treated himself with ivermectin when he got it, and it didn't work at all for him, and it didn't work for any of his friends and his close associates when he tried it with them.
But for all the people who took it and then left his office and never reported back...
Worked perfectly. So that's what's called anecdotal science, and it's very compelling.
Now, I... I compared this to another trial.
I did a trial on my own in which I tried praying for all the people that those doctors were treating and also all of the other people in the world who had COVID. And I only did it for 24 hours.
It wasn't day after day.
So I just did one day of praying that the people who were infected with COVID would recover.
And let me tell you how I did.
And I'm proud of this.
99% of the people I prayed for, full recovery.
99%. And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking that the natural recovery rate...
It's actually 99.7%.
So there is some indication that I prayed to the wrong god, because I believe I may have killed over a million people by incorrect praying.
So I only got a 99% effectiveness rate when doing nothing at all would give you 99.7, apparently.
But still, I think you have to consider this as part of the anecdotal science.
Now... I sent around a debunk on ivermectin that was in the BBC. And then somebody sent me a debunk of the BBC's debunk.
But I also sent a fact check that debunked ivermectin.
And then somebody sent me a debunk of the fact check.
Well, what the hell am I going to do now?
Somebody said in the comments, or I could be an idiot.
I never rule out that possibility.
So how do you know if the debunk is better or not?
Well, let me tell you what the claims are and then the debunks, and I'm not going to claim that the claim is right or that the debunk is right.
If you can allow me to be divorced from what's true, because I don't think we can solve that, to just talk about how we process it, right?
And so suppose you heard that there were, I don't know, 72 studies, some say 26, but a whole bunch of studies.
There are dozens of studies that collectively, if you look at them together, they indicate that ivermectin works.
Is that convincing?
So there are some experts who have actual credentials that say it works.
There are people who use it who say it works.
And then there are dozens of studies...
They say it works. So that's the claim.
It's pretty convincing.
Would you agree?
If that's all you ever heard was those things, that'd be pretty convincing.
Now, then you say, but the big pharma says it doesn't work.
Then you say, of course they do.
Of course they say it doesn't work.
That doesn't mean anything. I'm still convinced it worked.
Because the people who say it doesn't work, they're not credible.
But then the government says it doesn't work, and you say, wait a minute, the government always lies to us.
That doesn't mean anything. Throw that out.
Still believe the claim.
But what about the other experts?
The other experts say it doesn't work.
They've been wrong. The rogues say it does work, and they've got really good credentials.
Not only that, but you've got all these studies that say it works.
You've got doctors that use it to say it works.
I believe the claim.
Is that where many of you are?
Did I describe where you are roughly in your current thinking?
Probably some yeses and some noes.
All right, so here's what the debunk looks like.
Oh, and then part of the claim is, and this is a strong part of the claim, that it actually has worked in places like Israel, in one area within India, Uttar Pradesh, and they totally crushed it.
And some other places.
So then you look at the debunk.
And let's look at this Uttar Pradesh place as a good example.
Because Dr. Malone, one of the proponents of ivermectin, just tweeted showing that there was an actual written guide and a little packet that included ivermectin for that area.
And he was asking for an apology.
Because he had made the claim that they got ivermectin in that region, and it crushed, and the data says that the deaths went down to practically nothing.
So here's what Dr.
Malone has proven. He's proven that Uttar Pradesh did, in fact, give ivermectin to its people, because there was an actual photo of the kit that they got.
That seemed pretty good evidence.
And then the data...
Shows that the death rate from COVID went to basically zero.
That's pretty convincing, wouldn't you say?
Anybody? Are you convinced yet?
I mean, it's kind of adding up.
You've got dozens of studies that say it works.
You've got lots of doctors that say they used it and it works.
You've got some credible experts who say not only does it work, you know, in theory, it's working in the real world.
Here's the region.
We proved they're using it.
And here's their data.
We proved that their data, that the death rate went to zero.
How many of you are convinced the claim is valid based on that?
If that's all you heard, that's pretty darn convincing, I'd have to say.
But here's something maybe you didn't hear.
Now, I'm not saying it's true, because this is just the debunk.
Because somebody's going to debunk the debunk, you know that, right?
Somebody will. But here's the debunk, and see if it changes your mind.
In Anar Pradesh, during the time that there were zero COVID deaths, There were zero of any kind of deaths.
In other words, during that same time that nobody died of COVID, nobody died of car accidents or heart attacks or murder or anything because there was a data problem with deaths.
And so the number one best example of ivermectin working It's very clearly not an example of it working.
Because it didn't cure auto accidents, did it?
And so the people who look at the data say, but all the other deaths are gone too.
So obviously it's just a data problem.
So that's the strongest real-world example.
But you say, wait, wait, there are other places.
You know, you've got Israel.
But actually, that's not the case.
So there are a bunch of other examples that are debunked the same way.
That somebody claimed they used it, but if you look into it, no.
No, that didn't happen. What about Japan?
Somebody sent me a tweet just yesterday.
It said that a very highly respected cardiologist said that there had been a recommendation by some medical group, and that medical group said use ivermectin, and Japan was using it with great success.
This was from an actual respected cardiologist in Japan who's telling you his own experience.
Yes, we use it.
Yes, we beat the, you know, we got the COVID deaths way down.
Totally working. Convincing, right?
Pretty convincing? Well, if that's all you heard, yeah, that would be pretty darn convincing.
Here's the part you didn't hear, but it's the debunk to it.
The death rate in Japan, it's just average.
It's just average. It's average for the region, because all the Asian countries are beating all of the Western countries.
There may be some exceptions.
But basically, they're just average.
So if Japan is using it so successfully, why don't their numbers reflect it?
They're doing just the same as everybody else.
And the other countries are not reportedly using it.
So does that tell you that the Japan thing was BS? No.
I don't know. Because there might be a debunk to the debunk.
Just haven't heard it yet.
Then the BBC did this debunk and said that of the big trials of ivermectin, that a third of them, they could identify obvious, huge problems.
One-third of the ones they checked out of 26...
I guess there are more than that, but they checked 26 and found a third of them had, like, really big problems.
And the kind of problems are data was cut and pasted.
You can see that it's not even real data.
I mean, obviously not real data.
So that's how bad some of them were.
But you say to yourself, but, Scott, there were also randomized controlled trials.
Well, apparently there was one high-quality randomized controlled trial.
There were other trials that had quality problems, but there was one really good one that said it didn't work.
Now, are you convinced?
Do you think a randomized controlled trial is convincing?
It's the highest standard in science, and according to the BBC, there was only one of them, and it said it didn't work.
And the ones that said it did work Have such, at least a random, you know, a third of them or so, were so obviously flawed, you couldn't possibly do a meta-analysis because it would just be taking an average of garbage.
Now, was there a debunk to the debunk?
Of course. So somebody sent me a video of, let's see, who is this expert?
Probably wrote his name down here somewhere.
Dr. John Campbell, he does some videos.
I think he's pro-Ivermectin.
And so he looks at the BBC article, which totally debunked Ivermectin, and then he totally debunked the BBC article.
Now, he didn't prove it was false.
He questioned the capability of the people and the sources.
Because the sources weren't mentioned in a number of cases, and the people involved were not high authorities.
So he basically said, this is journalism, it's not science.
Was he convincing?
He was.
Because the person who goes last is always convincing.
And if somebody were to debunk him, as I will right now, it might actually sound credible too.
Here's my debunk of him.
He questioned the sources and said that because he couldn't find what they found he questioned it.
Whenever you trigger somebody into cognitive dissonance they're going to come after your data but they're going to ignore the good arguments and go after you personally, aren't they?
He kind of went after them personally But he also had a good point, that their data was unfindable.
Except there was one glaring exception to that, and I didn't see his whole video yet, but I think he didn't get to it.
The article did claim that there was only one good study, a randomized controlled trial, and that it said ivermectin didn't work.
I don't know that he addressed that.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
But the debunk to him would be, I think you ignored their strongest point and went after their credibility.
Because it would be easy, I think, to determine that there was, in fact, one good randomized controlled trial.
I think he could find that.
Now, if that didn't exist, then the whole BBC article is garbage, of course.
But... Right.
Don't trust Campbell. Don't trust the BBC. Don't trust anybody.
So keep in mind that the major theme here is that the last person sounds right, and there's always a last person.
You're never done.
There's always going to be somebody responding to the response.
So if you think you can chase the turtles all the way down, good luck.
I can't. But I would tell you that you might be nearing the end When you find somebody ignoring the best argument and going after the credibility of the debunkers, that would be a sign you may have reached the final turtle.
But I don't know that you could know for sure.
Just sort of keep that in mind.
All right. So, like I said, bottom line, I don't think it even matters if ivermectin works at this point.
We're so done with everything.
We've got two weeks to get February 1.
We're done working for those of us in the horrible states like California where we still have masks and mandates and stuff.
And... You don't like my turtle analogies?
I think the turtle analogy was excellent.
And then, of course, there will be lots of people who are dunking on me for being pro-booster, and when, of course, I'm not.
So watch for how many people are criticizing me for the opposite of my personal opinion.
Or see how many people are accusing the creator of Dilbert of being too gullible and trusting of big corporations.
To me, that's the funniest thing that came out of the pandemic, is that people assumed that I trusted big corporations.
That might be the silliest thing that's happened out of all this.
The only thing that I trust is that they weren't wrong every time.
That's it. No matter how bad a big company is, sometimes they make a product that works.
It's not like every product every company made doesn't work.
So just because they're not trustworthy doesn't mean that they made a bad product.
It just means it's very likely.
It doesn't mean it happened.
All right. Andrew says, did you roll up your sleeve for big pharma, Scott?
Well, what did you do, Andrew?
What I did was wait as long as possible, because I didn't trust their vaccine, and ultimately I just did it so I could fly.
But you trusted the Chinese-engineered bioweapon?
So you would trust the virus, which maybe, don't know for sure, But it looks like it could have been designed to hurt you.
You would trust the thing that's designed to hurt you over the thing that was designed to protect you.
Knowing that we don't know for sure whether it was engineered or whether the vaccine is more good than bad in the long run.
We don't know that.
In the short run, it looks like it's more good than bad for certain people.
And by the way, on YouTube, if you didn't catch my professorial move last night when I taught you about the upgrade to science, a new form of science, sort of like the New Testament of science.
But look for that.
It's the video I did right before this one, but last night.
Oh, the fake hostage situation?
I don't think it's fake, but it's also not important.
All right. That is all I have to say today.
And go Niners and all that.
And... You suppose that there's only one bioweapon on the shelf?
No. Why did doctors...
I'm going to ignore your all caps...
Never aspire to be a lab rat.
Well, here's the thing.
If the only choice was to get vaccinated or not, I would have chose not.
Everybody get that?
Would you all agree with me?
If the only variable was a vaccine or no vaccine, I would take no vaccine.
Fair. But if you add the variable that you have a choice of two unknowns, one might be a Chinese bioweapon with long-term consequences we can't anticipate, and the other one might be a vaccine with long-term consequences we can't anticipate.
You didn't get a choice of avoiding the experimental drug.
Did you? No, you didn't.
You got a choice of which experimental drug or in which order you got them.
I chose to get the protection before the Chinese-engineered bioweapon.
If you chose to get the bioweapon first and then the protection, apparently that does have some benefits.
But I don't think it's as good.
Just my guess. Now, I don't know that for sure, but neither do you.
So we're all guessing. Alright.
There's a double chance of the unknowns.
That's true. Yep, two unknowns.
I do like the fact that if I can do anything to reduce the amount of impact the alleged Chinese-engineered bioweapon has on me, then I would do that.
That feels like the better play with A context of so many unknowns.
All right. Did you get the jab before the breakthrough cases were happening?
Yes. Yeah, long before we knew that there were breakthrough cases, which wouldn't have changed my mind, I don't think.
Because, you know, I got it so I didn't die.
At least that was the gamble we were making.
I didn't get it so I wouldn't transmit it.
I got it to stay alive.
So it still seems to work for that.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
The erasure of choice.
Um.
The erasure of choice.
Yeah, we're all bothered by that.
All right.
That's all I got to say for today.
- Okay. - Okay.
Do you feel remorse for helping Big Pharma?
Why would I feel remorse?
Now, how many of you think I helped them by telling you that I wasn't going to get vaccinated for six months because I didn't trust the vaccinations?
How many of you people know that?
How many people know that I waited for, I think, six months specifically because I didn't trust them, which I said over and over and over again, I don't trust them, I don't trust them, I don't trust them.
And then when I did, I told you I didn't know it was the right answer.
And basically, if I didn't have to fly, I might have made a different decision.
So how does that sound to you like I helped them?
I'm not sure that they would have paid me to wait six months saying that I didn't.
Jack Harrow on train wreck.
I said I felt free once I got vaccinated.
Right. That was my subjective opinion, which still holds.
Now, why would you have a problem with me telling you what I feel subjectively?
Why is that threatening to you?
I got the feeling when I got it, because I was free of worrying about really anything but an inconvenience after that.
VAX isn't mandated to fly.
It was mandated to fly to Greece, so out of the country.
I think it was mandated to get through Germany to get to Greece or something like that, but it was mandated somewhere along the way.
You did not have to fly.
That's correct. I could have gotten a divorce right away.
You're right. I did have the option of not flying.
I could have gotten a divorce.
You are correct. So thanks for pointing that out.
Alright, that's all. You got the job and defended it.
You got the job and defended it.
What do words mean to you?
If I say there's, you know, there are costs and there are benefits and in the end I just guessed, that sounds like I defended it.
That's a weird use of words.
Okay. Okay.
You know, if you keep that up, you're going to be promoted to mascot.
But that's all for now.
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