Episode 1637 Scott Adams: Watch Me Fix Most of the World's Problems While Being Insulted. Bring a Beverage
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Elon Musk tweets support for Canadian truckers
SCOTUS candidate must be Black woman?
Puzzling US actions in Ukraine/Russia
Male societal college crisis
Stress strategy
Tips for fixing it all
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to probably the best experience you'll ever have in your life.
If you wait until I get through the newsy stuff, I'm going to tell you stuff that will change the world, change your life for sure, make you happier and less anxious.
How would you like to be less anxious?
Or do you have any kids who are less, who are anxious, would like to be less?
Well, I'm going to fix all that after we sort out the world affairs.
Should we, I don't know, I just feel a responsibility.
We should take care of all the big problems in the world first, and then we'll work on you.
Okay? But first, let's take it up a notch.
Let's take it up. Let's go up a level.
We're going to level up, and all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chelsea, a canteen jug or glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite beverage.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
You can feel your pulse quickening.
Your breathing is getting faster.
It's coming. It's the simultaneous sip.
Go! I can barely explain the euphoria I'm feeling right now.
Speaking of euphoria, I'm going to make an entertainment recommendation, a non-recommendation.
I don't know if I've ever done one of these before.
There is a series called Euphoria.
I don't even know what to say about it.
I watched two episodes, and...
First of all, it's kind of a masterpiece, I've got to say.
Because it looks like what they did was they took some high school...
The plot is about high school kids.
And what they did was say, what would happen if we showed you what it really looks like?
And then they show you what it really looks like.
And you're just horrified the whole time.
You spend the whole time just thinking, really?
What? Is this what happens when they walk out the door?
Now, not your children, right?
So it's a certain subculture.
But it is just jaw-dropping.
Anyway, it's scary, and if you don't want to be exposed to that kind of stuff, that's why I say it's a recommendation, non-recommendation.
You might just not want to have it in your head.
You just might want to avoid that kind of entertainment.
But it's a masterpiece.
It's really well done. Well, who loves Canadian truckers?
Who does? Who loves Canadian truckers?
You do. I do.
Yes, we all do.
Except for Trudeau. Well, I don't know how any single industry has ever become more popular more quickly...
But there's nothing I love more than a Canadian trucker.
Right? It's funny, just because they're doing this protest, which apparently is getting fairly massive.
In Canada, over the mandates up there, Elon Musk has tweeted his support.
How much difference does an Elon Musk tweet of support mean in today's world?
Probably a lot.
Probably a lot. And I don't know how many other people you could put in his category.
I can't think of another one, frankly.
Think of anybody else who would have enough credibility, frankly, credibility is the thing, to be able to tweet support and then people would think that's a good thing.
There aren't many people.
There's a great video of a Canadian small business owner who was putting up a sticker on his business.
He tore down the mask signs, I guess, or the mandate signs.
I'm not sure what they said. And he put up his own sticker of a Canadian truck.
And as soon as I saw that, I thought, well, I want one of those.
I want a Canadian trucker sticker.
No, you? I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a bumper sticker that I craved before, but if you could give me a bumper sticker of just a Canadian trucker, I'd put that in my car tomorrow.
I like it. So I love what those guys are doing, and I love the idea of putting up a sticker on your business, the point of which is that he's defying mandates, basically.
Now, locally...
Most of you are probably in non-band-aid states.
Would that be true?
How many people watching are already past the mandates?
A lot of you, right? So, good for you.
Wish us luck, those of us who are still behind the concentration camp doors here in California.
So I crave your lifestyle, but I've got to tell you, I'm starting to feel it.
Locally, let me just say this out loud.
I didn't want to say this out loud right away, but locally, the mandates have dropped for small businesses.
Meaning that if you went into, I don't know, maybe if you went into the Cheesecake Factory or something that's a chain, they might tell you to put on a mask.
I don't know. Target store, they might.
But if you go into any local business, it's done.
The local businesses are all done.
Am I right? Now, all I mean is that I'm not saying there are no masks.
I'm saying that they're not going to ask you to put one on.
There's no local business that'll do that anymore.
Here. I don't know about your town.
Because, number one, there's nobody afraid of consequences.
What exactly would be the consequences for your local whatever if they don't require masks on February 1st?
Nothing, right?
There's no consequences. So they just have to decide they don't want it anymore.
And a lot of them have. So, on February 1st, I'm going to do my damnedest to not go anywhere where they still require that.
Now, I don't know how long I can hold out, right?
If the mandates hold out, I just might need to go to Target.
I just might need to.
But I'm going to do what I can to just for as long as I can, you know, not fly.
I'm just going to avoid flying until the masks are gone.
Because by February 1st, I'm pretty sure I can say, all right, I can hold out for however long that's going to take.
If it takes a week or if it takes three months, I can hold out.
I don't have to fly for three months.
But I'm not going to support any industry that's still sporting the masks, for sure.
But I'll do my best. I can't promise you I'll be consistent on that, but I'll do my best on that.
I hope others do, just to put a little pressure on it.
Now, I was trying to think of what kind of symbol could small businesses or even big ones put on their building to say that they're done with mandates.
What would be the most appropriate symbol, besides the Canadian truckers, which I like a lot, the American flag?
I would think that if you wanted to show that you were done with the mandates on February 1st, just put on a flag.
You don't have to say anything else, I don't think.
I think anybody who is aware of the February 1st date who saw an American flag on a business, or even a residence...
Actually, if you have an American flag and you have a flagpole, maybe you put it out on the patriotic holidays...
Maybe think about it.
Just think about putting it out.
Because if you think about it, there is no more universal signal for revolution than the American flag.
If you want a real insurrection, the American flag is a good symbol for it.
All right, there's a report.
Jack Posobiec is saying that the White House had no idea about Breyer retiring from the Supreme Court, and now they're scrambling.
They asked Kamala, and she said no, per a White House staffer.
Do you believe...
Well, first of all, some context.
Jack Posobiec has good sources.
So he has good sources.
That's the first part of the contact.
But do you believe this?
That doesn't mean every source is correct, right?
But do you believe that Kamala was asked if she wanted it and said no?
I believe it. I believe it.
And here's why I believe it.
Because asking doesn't mean they wanted her to have it.
Asking sounds like, within a political context, they just wanted to check.
Because what if she said yes?
It would be kind of a disaster if she had secretly craved that position and nobody asked.
So I think you just have to ask.
But I think they also knew that they probably knew what she would say by then, right?
So don't you think the asking was more of a political formality just to make sure she didn't have an issue?
So if you ask me, that sounds like a completely accurate, what would you call it, scoop?
Yeah, I think Jack got this one right, as he often does.
So that doesn't mean anything about Kamala.
It just means they probably asked her.
Now, what are you thinking about this Supreme Court having to be a black woman?
I think the Rasmussen poll said 61% of the public thinks you shouldn't pick a Supreme Court nominee based on race or gender.
61% is a pretty big majority in American politics.
It's hard to get 61% for anything.
But I'll tell you I'm a little bit of two minds on this.
I'm a little bit of two minds.
I've told you before that when it comes to the republic and protecting the republic and the system versus getting my way on a specific policy, I'll usually pick the system over the specific policy.
There might be some exceptions, but generally speaking, I would do that.
Now, what does it do to the system?
When the Supreme Court, who would be the very entity that says a business can't do this, the same entity that has ruled that a private business can't do this, you can't hire people based on race or gender, is going to be the subject of this very treatment.
I mean, it's the president doing it, not the Supreme Court.
But they would be subject to the same treatment.
Does that look like a gigantic mistake?
Let me give you the best argument to support Biden's position.
Because I think if you can't do that, you're not really an honest broker, if you know what I mean.
If you can't tell the other side's argument in a coherent way, and then still say your side is the better one, you just feel like a propagandist, basically.
So I'm going to give Biden his due, and here's the argument.
We need to protect the system first.
The entire system is having a credibility crisis, I think you'd agree.
Congress, the government, experts, fake news, there's a credibility crisis of unprecedented proportion.
The Supreme Court is sort of our last defense against all of that.
You know, as long as we keep the Supreme Court relatively coherent and credible, The other stuff has time to work itself out in a variety of ways.
But you can't lose the Supreme Court.
I feel like that would just take the whole system out.
So if you imagine that the Supreme Court is the ultimate thing that keeps the country together, I would say that having a Supreme Court that better represents the public...
Remember, this is a perceptual thing.
It's not a data thing.
It's just a perceptual thing.
Would the credibility of the court be better if you had at least one black conservative man, which we have, and one black conservative woman in the mix?
Now, you might say to yourself, no, it makes it worse because it looks like a diversity hire.
But nobody's really saying any of these people are unqualified, are they?
Is there anybody in the Supreme Court that we think is unqualified?
They're just people that we hate their decisions in some cases, right?
I don't think any of them are unqualified.
Yeah, I see the names.
There's some names going by, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, is it a coincidence that the unqualified ones are always on the other team?
Seriously? Just a coincidence that all the unqualified people disagree with your opinion?
I mean, maybe. I mean, you could be right, and it's exactly that.
But I wouldn't automatically assume that that's what's going on.
It sounds a little bit more like a little bit team play situation going on.
So if I were to support Biden's argument, I'd say you do want the Supreme Court to look at least a little bit like the country.
Because then whatever it comes up with is going to have that little 5% extra, well, we got a lot of opinions from different kinds of people.
Now, if the net of that is that you end up with a worse...
Well, then, that's a step backwards.
Would we agree with that?
If having this...
I hope it's temporary.
Silly diversity hire thing on there.
If having this temporary little thing caused us to get a worse justice, that wouldn't be good.
But there's no evidence that that's the case.
Is anybody saying that the dozen or so black women who are being mentioned Is anybody saying they're unqualified?
I don't think that's in the argument, is it?
So, on one hand, I reject anything that seems like discrimination, and this certainly smacks of racial discrimination.
On the other hand, it does favor the system over the policies, and I generally don't take a stand when that's the case.
So in other words, I'm not even going to say which is a better way to go.
I'm just going to be silent whenever the system is supported over the decision.
I'm not sure if that's fair or not.
Let's talk about Russia and Ukraine.
So, are you a little bit puzzled, as I am, about the way the United States is handling all of this?
As in, there's something we don't know?
Does it feel like that to you?
And I'll give you some more context about this.
You know, the few times that I've been allowed behind the curtain to see how things really run, as opposed to the public impression of how anything works, you always get such a different view.
You know, from behind the curtain, nothing's the same.
And basically, nothing is the same behind the curtain.
So why would this be different?
It's sort of like the Gelman amnesia thing.
If every time I peek behind the curtain, I see that everything we know or thought we knew is wrong, like every time, why would this be different?
Do you really think we have enough information about this whole Russia-Ukraine thing that you and I can say, hmm, let me assemble the variables as they've been reported and judge the actions of our government based on these totally accurate variables that leave nothing out?
Probably nothing like that can happen.
Probably there's something gigantic or several gigantic things or forceful people or some money interest or something that's going on that's big enough that's distorting this thing.
But let me tell you what it looks like.
This is not a claim that this is what's happening.
I'm going to say that missing that variable or variables, this is what it looks like.
Which is different than what it is.
What it looks like is that we're intentionally suckering Putin into a limited attack.
Because you know how Biden sort of let it out?
You know, we don't know what we'd do if it was some kind of limited incursion.
That kind of opened the door for a limited incursion, didn't it?
Sort of. At least put that thought in your mind.
It seems they would treat a limited incursion slightly differently than a massive incursion.
So is it possible, and again, I'm just considering all the possibilities, that there's anybody in this world who has influence over our government, whether it's Biden's staff or somebody influencing them, who thinks that a limited incursion by Russia would have some benefit...
To them or to the United States.
For example, if Russia did a limited incursion, it might not change the security situation of the world much, but at the same time, it would allow us to close down their energy markets, totally cripple their country, and probably some American energy companies would benefit.
But can somebody do a fact check on that?
Are there any large entities, doesn't have to be American, actually, American or European, let's say, large entities, energy companies, that would definitely benefit by Russia being shut down as an energy exporter?
Can you give me a fact check?
Some of you know the answer to this, right?
China? Somebody says China?
I don't know about that.
So... So what I'm wondering is, do we know for sure that Russia is not going to fall for this trap?
I'm calling it a trap, like, hypothetically.
I don't know that it's a trap.
And then here's the final clue, and this is from CNN. Now, hold what I've said so far, and now I'm going to add a clue.
This is CNN's reporting.
It says a call between Zelensky, head of Ukraine, and Biden on Thursday should have been used to get on the same page.
But the Ukrainians made it known ahead of time they would ask the U.S. president to tone down his rhetoric.
Interesting. And after the leader spoke, a senior Ukrainian official told CNN's Matthew Chance in Kiev that the call, quote, did not go well, and that Zelensky had asked his U.S. counterpart to, quote, calm down the messaging while arguing the Russian threat was still ambiguous.
Still ambiguous.
In other words, it seems as if the United States is selling a higher certainty of invasion than the Ukrainians believe is realistic.
What does that tell you?
Does that tell you that somebody who is maybe more of a friend to the United States or to their pocketbooks is influencing the United States to be not on the same page as Ukraine?
And can you give me a good idea Why we would not be taking Ukraine's, let's say, opinion of risk as fairly definitive?
Why would our assessment of risk trump Ukraine's assessment of their own risk?
I feel like they're pretty tapped into whatever the risk is here, more so than we would be.
Or do we know more than they know?
It's possible we know more than Ukraine knows and we can't tell them because of sources and methods and Corrupt, corrupt governments and whatnot.
So it's really...
Burisma comes up in every conversation.
Yeah. And what does it mean that Ukraine and the United States are not on the same page?
Would that suggest that Ukraine does not have any blackmail on Hunter Biden?
Or will you see Biden immediately...
Conform to Ukraine's preferred communication on this, which would suggest that Ukraine does have a pretty big influence on them.
So there are a number of scenarios here that are alarming.
When I tweeted about whether or not we were trying to sucker Russia into something minor so we could grab their energy markets, Ian Bremmer...
Who I look to as the sane voice on issues like this, assures me that we definitely don't want Russia to attack.
We definitely don't.
Now, we definitely don't want a major war.
I would agree with that.
And I would agree that if we means most people, I would agree with that too.
And if we means most of the government, I would definitely agree with that too.
But I'm not sure we extends to everybody who has billions of dollars to spend on this project.
And I'm not sure we extends to every influencer within the Biden administration.
It wouldn't take many people to be on the side of war to make it happen.
Unfortunately. Like, they would just have to be the right people.
You would only have to get a few opinions changed before Biden would probably go long.
So, you remember those 17 intelligence agencies that said blah, blah, blah, and it turned out it was really one, but it wasn't even the whole agency, it was just a few people, and then it turned out that the few people were handpicked by one person.
So the 17 intelligence agencies were really one person.
One person could do a lot of damage.
Do you know how many things have been done by one person recently?
I mean, look what Greta Thunberg has done.
She's one person. Look what Michael Mina did with rapid testing.
There was probably one person who prevented it.
Look what Fauci does, one person.
Yeah, DeSantis, one person.
Joe Rogan, one person.
There's a lot of one-person stuff going on here.
Malone, one person.
No matter what you think of him, big influence.
Soros, one person.
So, you know, although one person can't control everything that there is to control, one person can definitely control one topic.
And it doesn't have to be the richest.
You just need George Floyd, one person.
Yeah, good example. All right.
So I'd say that there's a missing variable in this Russia stuff, but I'm not going to rule out yet, despite the smarter and more well-informed Ian Bremer saying that nobody wants it.
I'm not sure that nobody wants it.
I'm not sure. I think there might be a play here where we're just trying to bluff them into doing something that's bad enough that we can crush them financially and take their markets.
I feel like that's the play.
I don't know. Nobody thinks Russia's going to go nuclear over Ukraine.
I don't think. I don't think anybody thinks that.
All right. There's new numbers that suggest a growing crisis of men.
So men now comprise only 40.5% of college students.
What? There are 50% more women in college than men.
50% more.
That's not close.
And apparently one of the problems of this is that women are less likely to go to college if there aren't enough men there.
I hate to say it.
I didn't make that up, by the way.
Innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent.
As soon as you think I made that up, I'm in trouble.
I'll get cancelled. Nope, nope, nope.
I'm not saying that some women go to college to get married.
I'm saying I just read an article and that was one of the claims.
That women say they don't want to go to college if finding a boyfriend is going to be like a struggle.
I would like to admit that I chose my undergraduate college based on the male-female ratio.
I thought I needed an edge.
So I chose a nursing school.
It wasn't just a nursing school.
It had a lot of majors. But it was famous as a nursing school, so it had a high percentage of nursing students.
And I thought, what could be better than having a college that has not only extra women, but their nursing students?
I mean, I figured I needed every advantage I could get.
I need the ones with lots of empathy.
The ones who say, oh, you're not that sexy, but you do look a little sick.
Can we spend some time together?
So that was my strategy, and I think it worked brilliantly.
So anyway, men are failing everywhere.
And of course, the big question is, is the problem with men, or is the problem that college and schools have been designed for women?
What do you say? Have schools been designed for both men and women?
Let's stipulate that men have still a sports advantage, meaning that sports seem to be still more dominated toward men in lots of places.
So besides sports, which we stipulate to be the case, besides sports, is college and high school designed for men or for women?
Or let's say optimized.
Is it optimized for men or for women?
Well, I think that because we're a woke society, you optimize for the comfort of the greatest number of people, wouldn't you say?
You optimize for comfort because you don't want women to be in a situation with a bad situation, basically, an uncomfortable situation.
And if you optimize for comfort, is there anything that might be de-emphasized?
Yeah. For example, maybe attracting men.
Because maybe the curriculum and the way it's being taught and the extra stuff that comes with it, maybe it's not ideally suited for men.
So maybe men are just opting out because it doesn't make sense, but also because it doesn't teach, in many cases, the kinds of skills that a lot of men are looking for.
Maybe they're not looking for a Russian literature degree Maybe they just want to be a plumber or something.
So, what can we do to fix it?
I told you I was going to fix everything, and I thought I would do that right now.
I've said this before, but I think I've got a little more meat on the bones.
I just tweeted, I said, suppose you were designing an open source, not-for-profit, Virtual college in which people could independently assemble useful life strategy skills.
Life strategy skills.
Just things that would help anybody.
You know, things like how to communicate better, how to persuade, how to work on your fitness.
You know, just basic life strategies.
How to build a skill stack.
How to use systems versus goals.
You know, that sort of thing. And I said, what books would be on that list if you were going to have a credentialed type of thing?
And so a number of people suggest books.
I hope some of my books make that list.
I think I saw that they were on there.
But then I asked myself, do you know what a DAO is?
D-A-O? We've talked about this before.
A DAO is a decentralized, autonomous organization In which you use the blockchain, part of the crypto universe, use the blockchain to create trust and build an organization for a single purpose.
Could you And I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, so somebody who knows more about these DAOs can maybe inform me.
Could you build a DAO to build a life strategies credentialed course in which people who are simply interested enough and qualified enough say, yeah, I'll be on that project.
We'll just put together a list...
And we'll maintain it somehow.
And it'll say, if you read these books, blah, blah, blah.
Now, I think it also needs some testing.
Could you create a way to do a quick enough test that you would say you would know that somebody read my book?
I'm not talking about testing you read everything in the book and you understood it.
But did you read the book?
Enough of a test that you could be sure somebody did.
And a way not to cheat.
Now, could the blockchain allow you to know you didn't cheat on the test, you did read the book, and you did get a credentialed degree?
And then could you form a different DAO for different, let's say, flavors of life strategy degrees?
And all of them could be credentialed, but maybe they'd be different.
So one might, say, emphasize more physical skills.
One might emphasize more, you know, mental office-y type of skills, something like that.
But you can imagine some different flavors that would all be credentialed.
So here's my point.
It seems obvious at this point that the embedded educational system doesn't want to change as fast as we need it to.
Would everybody agree with that?
If you wait for the colleges and the teachers' unions to change themselves, you'd just be waiting forever.
So you're going to need some kind of outside disrupting force.
Could you create a situation where somebody comes in for a job and you say, let's see your resume.
Whoa! It looks like you were smart enough not to rack up $200,000 in college debt For a Russian literature degree.
I like that. Let's see what you did do.
Oh, okay. You got one of these life strategies credentials.
Can I see your certificate?
Oh, okay. Yeah, I can check that on the blockchain.
Yep, there it is. Our HR can check that, and sure enough, you do have a degree in life strategies.
Well, I mean, is that good for us?
You know, we train you in the actual job, So we're going to train you how to do this specific job, but let's see if you're trainable.
Let's see. You've learned communication.
You've learned public speaking.
You've learned persuasion.
You've learned how to build a skill stack, systems over goals.
You've learned...
And then I just go on.
Who do you want to hire?
Yeah, who do you want to hire?
This is a trainable, curious...
Somebody who has the skills to learn a skill.
Do you have the skill to learn a skill?
That's all I care about. I'll train you the specifics.
Keep in mind that unless you're something like, let's say, lawyer, doctor, engineer, a few other fields, a lot of your stuff becomes obsolete in a year anyway.
Even having experience isn't what it used to be.
Because, you know, who's experienced in the newest field?
All right, so that's my first idea, is to fix all of education by some kind of open source.
I'm not sure if crypto needs to be part of it, but maybe somebody smarter can say, yeah, that would be a good component.
Number two. Here is my single biggest happiness tip.
Which will be followed by a few more.
The best way to be happy is to match your energy to your schedule.
And here's what I mean by that.
And by the way, some of this comes from my book.
I had it filled almost everything. It still went big.
Suppose I said, how would you like some delicious food?
And I'd say, I love delicious food.
Yay! And then you say, all right, we're going to do it right now.
And I say, oh, I actually just ate.
So how much value would delicious food be to me if I just ate and I'm full?
Well, none. So my energy, I'm using that generically, in this case my hunger, was not matched to this excellent thing that I like, eating good food.
Likewise, exercising when you're in the right mood for it is actually kind of fun.
Exercising when you really don't want to is just pain.
It's just torture.
So my one whole life arc happiness tip that's the best tip you'll ever hear is work toward a situation, and it won't happen instantly, but work toward a situation where you can control your schedule as much as possible.
Because then you can say to yourself, I'm hungry.
Eat food.
Two o'clock in the afternoon.
Nobody's going to stop you.
I'm anxious.
I'm going to go exercise.
Right now. I'm going to stand up and walk out the door.
Right now. The moment you can match your exact energy and need to the thing that satisfies it, your happiness level is going to go through the roof.
I reminded myself of that yesterday.
By taking, and this is uncharacteristic for me, I don't usually take a block out of my day and just say, this is just for me.
Like, I'm always doing something for somebody or something I committed to or something.
So typically I'm going from one thing I have to do to one thing I have to do.
And even with my schedule, and I have a lot of flexibility, but even with my schedule, there's a limit to the flexibility.
But in that two hours or so, In which I just said, I'm just going to do whatever my energy wants me to do, and then I did that.
I can't tell you how good that felt.
Just matching my exact schedule to my exact energy, just through the roof.
Now, just make sure you do that.
Don't save all of your leisure for a vacation.
Don't save it all for a vacation.
Sometimes you just got to carve out a time to do the thing that you want to do during that exact time.
See how it feels. Alright, next thing.
It has been said of me many times, and I believe it's true, that I'm unusually good at handling pressure.
Has anybody noticed that about me?
I'm not sure if you can tell from a distance.
But do I seem like I'm good at handling pressure?
I would be interested in your subjective evaluation.
Now, you do see me blow up and stuff, and if anybody doesn't know it, If I allow myself to lose control on the live stream, it's because it's part of the show.
You all get that, right?
You all get that if I were not doing the live stream, I wouldn't be cursing at somebody and shouting and being a madman.
It's just part of the entertainment.
If you didn't like it, I wouldn't do it.
The moment the audience no longer wanted to see it, I'd be like, oh, okay.
It would be easy to control.
All right, so here's my point.
In my own opinion, I think that I'm unusually not susceptible to pressure.
Indeed, I actually have always performed better in competition when things are tight.
And I'm not sure how much of that is organic.
But I will tell you this.
I have spent most of my life working on that like it's a life skill of maximum importance.
Let's say if you were to compare my nervousness level to yours at age 11.
At age 11, pretty much a nervous mess.
And it made me unhappy pretty much all the time.
Nervous mess. And so I realized at that point that if I didn't make it my full-time job to figure out how not to be stressed as shit, I would just be stressed forever, and it wouldn't matter what else was happening.
Even if everything else went well, I was still going to feel like crap if I didn't figure out how to get out of my own head.
So I'm going to teach you How to get out of your own head.
And I'm going to tell you why everybody in this generation has an anxiety problem.
You've noticed, right?
Everybody has an anxiety problem.
Mostly younger people.
And if you're above a certain age, you probably don't.
Have you noticed that?
Above a certain age, you probably don't have an anxiety problem.
Below a certain age, oh, you have one.
Oh, you got one. Yeah.
So let me tell you what's different.
About, you know, when I was young versus when somebody's young right now.
You know what's different? Everything that affects your anxiety.
Everything. Everything that affects your anxiety is worse, like way worse.
Let me give you an example.
Let's see...
Do you think that kids get outdoors as much as we used to?
We meaning anybody in my age group.
No. No. There's no way in hell the kids get outdoors.
Is getting outdoors correlated with your anxiety?
Yes! Yes!
It's super correlated.
Like really, really strongly.
If you don't get outside, you're not going to feel as well.
Right? And there's a big difference.
How about complexity?
When you're around a lot of complexity, does it make you anxious?
It does. It does, because it's like too much work.
Is life more complex?
Yes. By what?
Order of magnitude?
It's not even close. So of course they have more of a challenge.
How about, is it easier now to compare yourself to others?
Oh my God, yes.
You know, when I was a kid, the only person I could compare myself to was somebody on the one channel of television that came in well and the 25 people I knew personally.
That's it. Now you're comparing yourself to the whole world and filters and, of course, all that.
How about family cohesion?
Less, right?
There's less. How about addiction?
More. Right?
So even if you're not the one who's addicted, how many people have an addict in the family?
Mother, father, sibling? A lot!
How many people had an addict in the family when I was a kid?
Still too many, but I don't think it was close to what it is now.
If you have one addict in the house, how's everybody's anxiety doing?
Am I right? Everybody who has somebody who's addicted to alcohol or substance, if you have one of them in the house, how's the energy level in the house?
Everybody calm? No.
Now, one addict can ruin five people's lives minimum.
I think that's actually a reasonable ratio.
It's probably higher. But here's my number.
One addict ruins five lives minimum.
Somebody's saying ten, and I think you're closer to it.
I think ten is closer.
One addict ruins five lives, minimum.
Minimum. So, that's different.
How about more fake news scaring the shit out of you?
Yes, that's different.
How about climate change scaring the shit out of you?
Well, that is different, but I will say, to balance it out, in my generation, we had the nuclear war risk all the time.
And that felt similar.
Like, you know, life as we know it could end any moment.
So maybe that part's similar but different.
How about are we eating the wrong foods and getting fatter?
And yes. Are we less confident about the future?
Of course, because everything's changing faster.
Right? When I grew up, I could be confident about the future because I knew if I went to college, got good grades, I'd get a good job in any variety of places.
So I didn't really have any lack of confidence because everybody had the same path.
Study, go to school, get a good job.
It was pretty much straightforward.
But now, who knows?
Could be robots and AI in five years.
How about being less self-sufficient?
I would argue that a 14-year-old in my generation could successfully run a small business.
Is there anybody my age or older who would disagree with me?
In my generation, a 14-year-old could successfully, and did, and in fact I know people who did exactly that, I know somebody well who ran an entire bowling alley at 14.
It was something his father built and owned, but then his father had his career went somewhere else.
And so he just said, well, I can either sell this thing or you can be in charge of it.
He was 14 years old.
He said, okay, I'll run it. And then he ran his business at 14.
Later started his own large business, sold it for millions.
Do you think that running a business at 14 helped him become an entrepreneur later?
Yeah. That kind of builds your confidence, doesn't it?
Now, here, just for a joke, imagine a 14-year-old today running a business.
I'm sure there's still some, but it's almost like a joke.
Right? It's a complete difference in how self-sufficient you are.
A 14-year-old back then would not know how to do things, but would know how to figure it out.
We'd just ask somebody to figure it out.
But we'd have the confidence that we could figure it out.
So all of those things are wrong, and here's my tip for fixing it all.
Do you remember, have you ever been taught that happiness comes from within?
Have you ever heard that saying? Happiness comes from within.
Were you taught that when you were young?
Yeah, if you...
If you just seek within, find out who you really are, follow your dreams, follow your passions, sort of an internal process, that you could find happiness.
That might be the worst advice ever given.
It's the worst advice.
There's no happiness within.
It's not in there. Don't look for it.
It's not in there.
Your brain is just a recipient of inputs.
You just change the inputs.
Happiness is without.
Happiness will come to you by doing the right things externally with your body.
Take your body outdoors.
Don't look within your skull.
Go outside in the sun.
Walk around. Happiness is not in your head.
It's in your fucking stomach.
Don't eat shit and then tell me you're unhappy.
Maybe it's because you ate shit all day.
Maybe that made you unhappy.
I don't know. I just did a little experiment in the last month where I tried to really clean up my eating.
My allergies went away.
I mean, seriously.
I mean, I have pretty much permanent allergies all the time.
All I did was say, oh, for a month, I'm just going to really eat really clean.
I mean, as much as you can in the modern world.
My allergies went away.
And yes, I do have allergies in the winter and all year round, normally.
So, did I find happiness within?
No, it was on my plate.
Happiness is on your plate.
It's out there. Did I find happiness within, or did you have some good sex?
Did you meditate?
Did you do some yoga? Did you get some exercise?
Did you put your phone down at 9pm instead of playing with it at 2pm and do all the wrong things to sleep?
Have you spent 10 minutes googling what it takes to have good sleep habits?
Number one, go to bed about the same time every night and wake up about the same time.
Actually, the waking up is more important.
Right? When I was 11 and I realized that my anxiety level, somewhat biologically, was through the roof, I said to myself, my number one job is that.
Every day I'm going to work on figuring out how the fuck to stop worrying about everything.
And I did. I exercised in every way you can, sports.
I learned meditation when I was in high school.
I became a hypnotist, in part to use self-hypnosis, which is very effective, in the same way meditation is.
And I've spent all of my adult life studying every skill that could give me any angle on how to make my anxiety less, which is related to your entire health, right?
The whole thing is wrapped up in your whole health.
And so... Do not shortchange yourself.
If you want to know what your priorities ought to be, and I say ought in terms of best outcome for all people.
Usually, best outcome is usually for one person at other people's expense.
But here's the best outcome for all people.
Take care of your anxiety first.
Which means taking care of your health, right?
I could have said, take care of your health first, but your health isn't like the concept that's bothering you.
It's your anxiety that's bothering you.
Make it your full-time job to figure out anything you can do to make that go down, and do it without drugs if you can.
The exception is weed.
Weed works for some people, and it's just a positive.
In my life, it's just a positive.
That doesn't mean it would be for you.
I think maybe one in five people could say that for sure, at most.
So you have to find your way.
Like, there's no one thing that I'm going to tell you that's going to work for you.
You've got to find the system that gets you outside.
You've got to find the system that lets you eat right.
By the way, my book teaches you how to do that.
How to fail almost everything and still win big.
But do not allow yourself to think it's something happening inside your head.
It is not. Alright, so that is your lesson on happiness, making it your full-time job.
Now, how do you know when somebody's having cognitive dissonance, and how do you know it isn't you?
I've told you before, so I'm going to add something to things I've said before.
I've told you before, the first way is to look for the trigger.
Because somebody needs to do something or be in a situation in which their self-image is challenged or they've been proven wrong in public.
Those are the triggers.
Now, suppose you're not sure who had the trigger.
Maybe you think, oh, I think you had the trigger.
And then the person you're pointing at says, I'm not so sure.
I think you're the one with the trigger.
How could you further figure it out if the trigger doesn't answer the question?
Well, I would say that one of the ways, and not 100%, is how people have prepared for the trigger.
How prepared were you to be wrong?
Because that will really tell you something.
And let me give you my example.
One of the reframes that I do, that I think keeps my mind healthier, is that I find that being wrong, even in public, is thrilling.
How many of you could say, and honestly, that being wrong and other people seeing it would actually give you kind of a charge?
Not many, right?
So it's a learned ability.
I don't think you're born of that.
I think that everybody has a natural sense of shame and embarrassment.
And I had plenty of it.
I mean, I had lots of it. But I do think you can practice it away, that there's a skill set about that.
Now, in my case, I've also monetized being wronged.
Since what I talk about here is cognitive illusions, if there were a really good cognitive illusion and I got one seriously wrong, my business model would make me more money.
Because if I do a title of these live streams that says, oh, I got everything wrong, or here's how I have to apologize for this, my traffic goes up 30%.
You've seen it.
But if I tell you that I'm right about everything and you got it wrong, what happens to my money?
It goes down 30%.
My live stream traffic is probably down 25% or so from its peak for no other reason than because I'm not telling you I'm wrong.
So if you're going to follow the money, I guarantee you that admitting I'm wrong is more profitable for me.
Do you accept that?
You can see it yourself, right?
I mean, you can just check my numbers.
They're public. They're listed right there.
Just look, and you see that when I'm eating crow, people love to watch it.
So people like to watch other people squirm.
But for me, it would be actually sort of an exciting learning experience.
Now, keep in mind that one of my frames of life Is that I'm living in a simulation and that reality is slowly revealing itself to me.
So anytime reality feels like it comes from behind a curtain and then reveals itself to me, and I find out how blind I was to something, I kind of like it.
I kind of like it.
So, while nobody likes to be proven wrong, I do have a business model that supports it.
And I can think of lots of examples where I thought, whoa, I was so wrong about that, and said it in public, and I was fine.
I also know that I survive it just fine, being wrong.
How many times have you seen me be wrong, and here I am.
I'm still here. There's no difference.
I have trained myself by being wrong enough in public, embarrassing myself enough in public, and finding out that I wake up the next day and breakfast tastes exactly the same.
I'm like, well, let me test this theory.
A lot of people think I'm wrong, and they hate me right now.
Okay, let me taste my coffee.
Same. It's the same.
You think something's going to be different because you're embarrassed or because somebody has a lower opinion of you, but it's really not.
It's really not.
Things are just the same.
And once you realize that, that other people's opinions...
Here's another reframe for you.
I'm starting to work on a book on this topic, which is why I'm thinking about it a lot.
One of the reframes for you to avoid criticism or the impact of criticism is to remember that somebody else's opinion of you is a chemical reaction happening in the brain and the skull, I like to say, inside the skull of a stranger who's not even in the room.
It's a microscopic chemical attraction, or a chemical reaction, and electrical, I guess, happening in the skull of somebody who's nowhere around.
Like, I don't even know where that is.
And even if I were there, the chemical little reaction would be so small, I couldn't even detect it.
And that's the thing you're worrying about.
Tomorrow, your coffee will taste the same.
When you're on your deathbed, here's another reframe.
Here's another reframe.
Every time something like that bothers you and you know it's small ball, you're saying to yourself, I know that's small.
Man, that bothers me.
Oh, God. It's small, I get it, but man, that's bothering me.
Just think about your last breath.
You're on your deathbed.
Are you going to be thinking about that?
Is that going to be in the top million of things you're going to think about on your last day on Earth?
Nope. Nope.
So don't worry about it now.
Let it go. So, those are your reframes for the day.
I believe that we've solved or put into motion a solution to education, the high cost of college.
I believe that we'll also get rid of systemic racism, as it is mostly present in the public schooling system and the teachers' unions supporting it.
Once we have everybody trained and no longer trained to be racist, we will have the strongest Most powerful country that ever existed.
I'll tell you what China doesn't see coming.
They don't see talent stacks and systems over goals.
Something that has swept America and made people who used to be pretty good at doing things into people who are great at doing things.
Do you think that this reframing stuff and the systems over goals doesn't work?
I'm going to prove it to you right now.
In the comments, both locals and YouTube, tell me how many of you have recently quit drinking.
Go. I'm not going to say anything.
If you're listening to this, I'm not going to say what's happening right now.
Look at the comments.
Now, YouTube, you're a little bit slower, but let me just say that the local people are incredible.
Oh, my God. I've never seen so many people say they quit alcohol.
Here comes YouTube.
Coming online. YouTube.
Now, let me ask you this.
Do you think that the representative sample of other live streams would have this many people who quit alcohol recently?
Ask yourself. Do you think any other live streams would have this many people immediately saying, I quit alcohol?
Yeah, this reframing stuff is powerful.
When I told you that alcohol is poison, and I repeat it all the time, That's the reframe.
If you think alcohol is a beverage, you're fucked.
Let me be clear about that.
If your idea of alcohol is that it's a beverage, you're fucked.
You're just fucked.
It's poison. Now, it is poison that feels really good, and I've greatly enjoyed the times that I've used it.
Greatly enjoyed it. Had terrific times.
But it's poison.
Let's not kid ourselves. So if you want to drink less, just think you're taking poison.
It's just you've decided you won't take that much of it.
So you think you'll survive.
But that little bit of a reframe, it'll work on you over time.
And over time, you'll find that it's easier to quit if you want to.