Episode 1640 Scott Adams: Joe Rogan's Video Response and How the Pandemic Changed Reality
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Pandemic induced basic personality changes?
The propaganda machinery behind headlines
Election Fraud - What you need to know
Joe Rogan's video reply to accusations
Fully vaccinated deaths and vaccine mandates
Whiteboard1: Dictator Reframe
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Chills? Anybody?
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Sublime. Let's try another word.
Carrot. See, that didn't work.
There was only one word that could...
Possibly describe that moment.
Well, today is going to be a little bit mind-blowing.
I promise you.
And we're going to build into it.
So watch how this is not just a series of little snippets.
But by the end, you will say to yourself, my God, it formed a symphony.
At first, I thought it was just going to be the oboe and then a little timpani.
But suddenly I realized it all came together into a symphony.
That's what's going to happen today.
That's how good it is.
Starting with a question that had been really on my mind lately, and I wondered if it, is it just me?
And watch what happens when I ask this question, because I did it on Twitter.
Watch what's going to happen in the comments.
Is it my imagination or have people changed because of the pandemic?
I mean basic personality changes.
Big stuff. Go.
watch the comments yes yes yes yes yes now some no's some people say no But, oh my God, did I get a lot of response to that.
And a lot of hypotheses...
About why that might be the case.
Now, hypothesis number one has to be what?
What's the top hypothesis, if I've taught you anything?
It's just in your mind.
The top hypothesis, until it's replaced by something better, which is likely to happen.
But your first thought should be, that's just in your mind.
Now, that's just healthy thinking.
I'm not telling you it's just in your mind.
I'm telling you that would be a healthy way to approach anything unusual.
It's probably in our minds.
But let's see if we can tease it out a little bit.
Here's a couple of things that smart people said, and I'm going to put them together.
One of the things that Naval said, Naval Ravikant, for those of you new to the live stream or haven't heard his name before, smartest person in the world.
Maybe. I mean, I don't know that for sure.
But if you were to just judge by things he has said and done, maybe the smartest person in the world.
All right, so you can go Google him and find out yourself.
But Naval, I'm pretty sure it was Naval.
Do me a fact check, because I'm doing this by memory.
I think he said toward the beginning of the pandemic that one of the things he predicted is that it would accelerate everything.
Can you give me a fact, Jack? He did say that, right?
He said it would accelerate everything that was going to happen anyway.
So instead of 10 years, you know, things would happen in one or two.
Now, how was his prediction?
How was that prediction?
It's a Naval Ravikant.
R-A-V-I-K-A-N-T. Creator of Angelist, etc.
So, how was this prediction?
Did the pandemic speed up everything?
It sped up vaccinations.
It sped up commuting, you know, going away.
It sped up online buying.
It sped up door dashing and food delivery.
It sped up a lot of things.
And I think there are probably various technologies that get a kickstart.
I could speak for myself.
I would say that there are things that I had put off That I brought forward just because I had time because we were locked down.
So even the upgrades I did to the live stream are things that probably would have taken longer, but I accelerated them because of the pandemic.
Now, there might be other things to slow down, like in the short run, the...
The supply chains. But in the long run, you know, inflation got worse fast.
Just the whole international relations changed fast.
Deaths were... Yeah, even death was accelerated.
It's like everything was faster.
So I would say that that was a darn good prediction.
Now, I'm going to combine this with something I heard recently...
That Brett Weinstein and I think Heather Haying were saying, and I wish...
Tell me the name of their new book, because I'm such an idiot.
I just looked at it, and then I forgot to write it down.
In the comments, just say the name of their new book.
Apparently it's pretty good. I hear good things about it.
Hunter-Gatherer's Guide.
Thank you. But I don't know if this is...
I think this might be from the book, but in an interview I heard him talk about how humans are the most adaptable of really anything that's alive at this point.
Now, and that makes sense, right?
That we adapted to all kinds of weather and all kinds of diets and all kinds of everything.
And now we're finding this, that we're adapting faster and faster than we ever had to.
Because the rate of change in the external world is so fast that we're trying to keep up with the changes that are happening in the environment.
So we've gone from the most adaptive creatures to having to super-adapt And then the pandemic hits.
And suddenly the pandemic breaks all the laws.
All the rules are different.
Like everything you took for granted is in play now.
Everything. Now you've got a super-adaptive species who's trying to figure out how to adapt, but we don't know what the hell is going on.
What are we adapting to?
Exactly. Like everything's changing.
I'll adapt to that.
Oh, that's changing. Okay, I got used to it.
Okay, that changed. So we're basically in this state of insane flux because we're so adaptive, but that doesn't work if the environment is changing faster than you can adapt.
And that's where we're at at the minute.
What would you expect to happen?
What happened...
Here's just my personal hypothesis that I'll just throw in the pile.
I think...
And a lot of you said some version of this.
I think people were revealed for who they were all along.
I think that everybody became more of what they already were.
Right? Right?
Everybody became the extreme of what they started from.
If you had a little bit of a weight problem, what happened to you?
A lot of people gained weight.
If you were a fitness person, and I would say I would be in that category, or even if your mind was oriented toward that way, what happened to you during the pandemic?
You got fitter.
I'm at my peak fitness right now.
I don't want you to have to imagine this, but naked, I look better than I've looked at any time in my life, and I'm pushing 65.
And a lot of people would say the same thing.
There are a whole bunch of you on here who would say the same thing.
Leave out the naked part, because we don't need to think about that.
But the point is that...
Let me say that lazy people became lazier, Just nod along as I say these things, because I know you're going to agree.
Lazy people became lazier.
Cheaters cheated more.
Cheaters cheated more.
People who were, let's say, achievement-oriented.
Again, that's a category I would be in.
Like, I'm always thinking about trying to make something happen.
Achievement-oriented people were even more so.
They went into hyper-mode.
Smart people became brilliant.
People who were growing a little grew a lot.
Things that were failing slowly failed fast.
You know, the little stores on Main Street in my town, it's like they got raked away like leaves during the pandemic.
But they were going to fail anyway.
It just wasn't going to be that fast.
So, here are some other things that happened which would explain in many ways why we're so different.
I think that people who were assholes became more assholes.
People who were nice became more nice.
The people who were biased toward helping people and empathy saw a crisis and they said, I was born for this.
Literally born for it.
Because if you were born as a sort of empathy kind of a person, well, a crisis is actually what you are born for.
You know, not in the literal way, but you know what I'm talking about.
You're designed perfectly for a crisis because you care about people, so you jump right in and help.
So the people who are likely to help were very helpful.
The people who are likely to be worthless probably became more worthless than ever.
Everything became more extreme.
But the other things that you have to throw in the mix is, what happened to porn consumption during the pandemic?
I don't have data, but I'm going to take a guess.
Anybody want to take a guess?
Without the benefit of any data, probably through the roof.
Through the roof. I talked about the series on HBO, I think, called Euphoria.
It's about young people and working through the culture that's too much drugs and too much porn and all that.
And one of the things that the series, which really tries to hit something close to reality for people in that age group, it talks about how it's an entire generation that only learned sex from porn.
Only. And no other source.
Because by the time your high school or your parents got around to it, you'd already consumed so much that it wasn't likely your opinion was going to get changed too much.
So apparently even two young people looking to hook up is going to look like porn.
Or it's going to look like their imitation of the best they can do to look like what they've seen because we're an imitative species.
So what's that doing to people?
Well, something. I mean, I'm not even going to give you an opinion, you know, how that's good or bad.
You know, you can make your own opinions.
But it's definitely different.
You know, if you don't think that'll change your brain, let me ask you.
You all think that porn changes your brain, right?
Like it actually rewires you.
You all get that, right?
It's only a question of how much you do.
If you don't do much, it's not much of a big deal.
If you do a lot, it will just turn you into it.
You become it.
You merge with it, basically.
So there's that.
Then there's the whole commuting thing.
What happened when people were forced to no longer be with their second family?
For a lot of people, people had two families, didn't they?
They had the work family and then they had the home family.
And then the work family went away.
What happens if you're buying stocks and you're not diversified?
Anybody? Anybody?
You're buying individual stocks and you're insufficiently diversified, meaning not enough different stocks.
You're going to get wiped out sooner or later.
Maybe not right away, but if you're not diversified, you're going to get wiped out.
You have a 90% chance.
So there are a whole bunch of people who had their social life diversified, meaning you could have a bad day with your spouse, but at least you go to work and there's your friends.
Or you could have a bad day at work, but at least you could go home and your spouse is nice to you.
What happens when you just take away all the diversification of your social life?
And then what used to be this rich social life becomes your family members.
I'm sorry to say this, but there's nobody you can get sicker of faster than your own family members.
And they're the people you love the most.
You still care about the most, love them, no change in that stuff.
That's pretty much baked in.
But, oh my God, what stress to put on marriages.
I think that in the same way that all the small businesses got wiped out by the pandemic, I think a lot of relationships got wiped out by the pandemic.
I mean, I think the pandemic just...
And I don't know that we see the full result of that.
You know, that's going to work through the system.
So... Almost everything was faster.
And here's what's happened, is I feel like...
Let me tell you my impression of what's different.
So here's what's different for me.
You know, I talk a lot about the simulation too much...
But how it feels to me is that I can see the machinery of reality in a way that I couldn't see before.
Or that, let's say maybe I knew about the machinery of reality intellectually, just sort of philosophically, but I couldn't see it.
I feel at this point I can see it.
It's almost like...
It's almost like there was a machine that had a solid front, and now it's a glass front.
The machine is exactly the same as it was, but now I can see the mechanisms.
And I believe that you're having that experience too.
And it feels as though society itself just had its software rebooted, and we all went to a higher level of awareness.
I'm going to make that case with the headlines today.
So here's the theme.
The theme that I just developed, that the headlines themselves, you can see the machinery behind them like you've never seen before.
Let me run through some examples.
Kyle Becker, who I tell you all the time you should follow him on Twitter, he's got great, sort of great reframings and lots of scoops and stuff on the news.
And he gives us this little bit of context about the January 6th situation.
He says, the Democrats contested presidential elections three times since 2001.
They even argued voting machines were suspect.
There were riots in D.C. at Trump's inauguration.
The amount of memory holding these left-wing news networks do is truly impressive.
Now... You see the machinery, right?
When I read that, you say, oh, that's a RUPAR. In other words, the entire January 6th narrative only works because, as Kyle points out, they leave out the context.
If you put the context in, if you reverse RUPAR'd it, Now, I'm not sure that all of you would see this as instantly, even a few years ago.
But now it's just automatic, isn't it?
You just see the machine. Here's some more examples.
Lindsey Graham apparently said about Trump potentially pardoning the January 6th rioters, he said, quote, I think it's inappropriate.
So Lindsey Graham thinks it would be inappropriate if Trump became president again to pardon those people.
Here's Joel Pollack giving you some context.
He says, I want to hear him explain why the guy with the buffalo horns got four years while an FBI lawyer who doctored an email to deceive a FISA court in the Russia collusion probe got community service.
Now, you probably haven't heard it so clearly and well stated before.
but you could see that machinery couldn't you?
We could already see that these were political prisoners.
It's just, you know, Joel helps us put it in context there.
But you can see the machinery behind the glass facade.
Um... And, you know, of course, we've lost all trust in our institutions, as Jewel says.
On Twitter, they have these what you need to know sections.
Every now and then, there'll be a topic that Twitter helpfully summarizes in a what you need to know.
There's usually some bullet points.
So, I sure hope I... I wrote that down.
Oh. Yes, I did.
Here it is. So what you need to know.
So there were one, two, three, four bullet points.
So these would be four things that are so obviously true they could just be put in a bullet point to straighten you out.
All right? I'm going to read them, and then tell me if you don't see the machinery behind this.
What you need to know, the Department of Justice found no evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, according to former A.G. William Barr.
That's one. Number two, election officials at the Department of Homeland Security said the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.
Number three, voter fraud of any type is extremely rare in the U.S., according to AP and Reuters.
And Reuters.
And Reuters.
Reuters might come up again today.
Remember that Reuters is one of the sources for voter fraud of any type is extremely rare in the U.S. Reuters.
Reuters. Just hold that in your mind for a while.
That'll be relevant. It's called foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing. All right.
And then the last one is 44 states already have in place some form of post-election audit.
The National Conference on State Legislature's website notes.
Now, do I even have to go through what's wrong with all of these statements?
You can see the machinery, right?
Well, I'll do it quickly, just in case you missed anything.
The first one, all right, the Department of Justice found no evidence of voter fraud.
Right, because they didn't look for it.
That's what's left out.
They didn't look for it.
They were the wrong vehicle for judging it.
They could only judge the things brought to them in too short of a time window to be useful.
That entire context is left out.
This is clearly propaganda.
So you can see the propaganda machinery just so clearly now.
Number two, election officials at the Department of Homeland Security said the election was the most secure in American history.
And they know that how?
How do they know that?
Wouldn't that be a case of them knowing the unknown?
Do they know that the election of 1940...
Was fraudulent? Well, I think what they're saying is that they have the most, I would guess, my interpretation would be, that they have the most, let's say, guardrails in place to keep us safe.
Okay. Now, that would be a reasonably good thing to know.
We have the most in history guardrails and procedures in place to keep it fair.
Here's some context I'd like to know.
Is that enough?
Doesn't it sort of matter?
It's sort of binary, isn't it?
I don't care if it's the best it's ever been.
Is it enough?
The most basic question is left out.
Is it good enough?
Are you saying we doubled it from 10% good enough to 20% good enough?
The entire context is missing.
Obviously propaganda.
Voter fraud of any type is extremely rare in the U.S. according to AP and Reuters.
Reuters. Hold that thought.
Reuters. We'll do the next one.
44 states already have in place some form of post-election audit.
Is it enough?
Yeah. Okay.
They have some form of post-election audit.
What form?
Does it include any of the digital part?
Does it include somebody looking at the code?
I don't think so.
Some form.
Now, isn't it obvious that somebody who would write a sentence like this is not meaning to inform?
It is quite, quite clear with the four of these that they are designed for propaganda, for manipulation.
And let me ask you, was it not obvious to every one of you when you read it?
Or when I read it to you?
I mean, I primed you for it, but you saw it right away, right?
At least my audience does, I think.
Now, let me be clear.
I am also not aware of any fraud in the 2020 elections.
I have to say that because, first of all, it's true.
I personally am aware of no fraud whatsoever.
I'm not even aware of any small fraud because if there were any stories like that, I wouldn't have paid attention anyway.
Somebody says, yes, you are.
No, I'm not. No, I'm aware of small irregularities, but I don't, like, remember the details because they weren't important if they were small.
But I'm aware that people have reported them, so maybe that's what you're looking for.
All right. What is true?
Let's get into what is true.
And I'll take a little example.
Do you remember the famous incident?
And, of course, you know that all the news has to go through the Joe Rogan filter now.
So it doesn't matter what you're talking about.
It's got to have a Joe Rogan reference to it, and we're going to have plenty.
All right. Do you remember one of the big blow-ups was when Joe Rogan had the Australian guy, journalist, on, and they disagreed about whether the vaccination or the virus itself would cause more myocarditis in a certain age group,
and that it looked like Maybe the journalist said something wrong, but then Joe Rogan disagreed, but then on the show it looked like Joe Rogan saw a source that agreed with the journalist, but then when we looked at it later, it looked like maybe Joe Rogan was right after all, but then I listened to another video of a cardiologist who said when he really dug into it to find out which of them was right after all, that you can't tell.
That's the bottom line.
So... Is the last cardiologist that I listened to the one who's right?
Or is Joe Rogan right?
Or was the Australian guy right?
Or two of the three of them right?
I don't know. But I will tell you, if you listen to a YouTube video of a cardiologist talking about how they decided...
You know, that risk and what data they had and the quality of the data, you will walk away from it saying, I'm pretty sure we can't tell, but it also doesn't matter.
And the doesn't matter part is that whatever the risk is, it doesn't matter even which one's bigger.
It's so small it's not part of the decision.
So even something as basic as what you thought about that story...
I don't even know if we know that.
So our understanding of what is true and what can be known is completely different after the pandemic, isn't it?
Everything you thought about the experts, everything you thought about the quality of the data, it's not the same as before the pandemic.
Now you think that even the most basic, clear story, and this one should have been one, This one should have been two people, you know, weren't sure of some data, but then after the episode aired, the experts looked at it and said, well, here's what's going on.
And then they all agreed, because we're all looking at the same data.
But things aren't that clear.
Apparently not. All right, here's...
Let's talk about Joe Rogan's video response.
So many of you have seen it, but you don't need to have seen it in order for me to talk about it.
So he did a little handheld sort of a selfie video that I saw on Instagram, and I guess it's on all the social platforms by now, in which he talked about the...
The accusations that he's spreading misinformation about COVID stuff, and the Spotify problem of blah, blah, you know, and what's his name?
Neil Young. I didn't do that intentionally, but that pretty much summed up the whole story right there.
Neil Young, wanting his music to be taken off because he thinks Joe Rogan's spreading misinformation.
Alright, so, I listened to Joe Rogan's thing, and my first take, which I tweeted, but I'm going to revise in a moment, is that it's the best response I've ever seen to a public relations problem.
That was my first response.
The best response I've ever seen to a public relations brouhaha.
I now revise that opinion.
It is the second best response I've ever seen.
And I don't think it's a coincidence, but that's just a guess.
Now, it would be fun to hear him confirm or deny this.
So I have a hypothesis.
And I'm going to tell you who number one was and see if you can draw a connection.
Number one was Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, when he had his public relations problem, it was one of the early iPhone models.
If you put your hand in a certain place on the phone, it would touch the antenna and it would cut off the call.
Imagine having a handheld device that you couldn't hold in your hand that you'd paid $1,000 for or whatever the price was.
That's like the worst thing that could ever happen to a company.
Well, we made a handheld object.
You just can't hold it in your hand.
That's the only problem. Otherwise, it's really spiffy.
Doesn't make phone calls, and it's a phone.
But otherwise, really good.
That's a big problem, right?
Here's how Steve Jobs handled it, which became the stuff of legends.
It was actually written about in his autobiography, and it was sort of a big deal.
Steve Jobs got in a call with all the journalists, and he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is the basic idea.
He said, all smartphones have problems.
We want to make our customers happy.
And then he said, here's what we're going to do.
And the next day...
Because he had reframed it as all smartphones have problems.
The press, instead of killing Apple for having a phone that had a problem, they started doing stories about all smartphones had problems.
It completely worked.
Now, I don't know if Apple helped to seed those stories, but the net effect of it was it really worked.
And here is the form that Steve Jobs used.
Number one, reframe.
He reframed iPhone has a problem to all smartphones have problems.
Good technique. Number two, he showed empathy.
We want to make our customers happy.
A very direct statement about his customers.
It wasn't about the company.
It wasn't about Steve Jobs.
He reframed it and he said, we want you to be happy.
Then he said, we're going to do this to make you happy.
And then he set his solution.
Very simple, perfect, perfect handling.
All right? So let me show you the frame again, because we're going to show you this frame a second time.
You reframe it, you show empathy, and then you give the solution.
Reframe, empathy, solution.
Now, I don't believe, I think the story is that Steve Jobs did not come up with that himself.
I believe he came up with, and I forget the name of the PR executive who was an expert at that.
Somebody will tell me in the comments.
If you've read the biography, Jobs.
Anyway, so Steve Jobs has some help from an expert, but Steve Jobs was an expert too on this.
Somebody will say the name of it.
Is it McKenzie?
McKesson. McKesson?
I don't know. It doesn't matter, but it was a professional who was good at it.
Now, let's talk about Joe Rogan's thing.
Joe Rogan basically said...
Did I actually not write that down?
I don't think that's possible.
So here's how he started.
His first reframe was...
He talked about his show being a conversation...
That grew big unexpectedly.
I'm paraphrasing now.
But he says, I'm just talking to people about stuff that's interesting to me.
And it grew into this big thing.
And so that's the context.
The context is, I'm not the news.
Right? That's pretty important.
Because the context is that, you know, allegedly misinformation.
So the first frame is, this is just a conversation of something interesting, not the news.
Now, he didn't say, I'm not the news, but that's the context.
So he reframes it.
And he said basically there's no agenda, it's just interesting stuff.
And he also talked about how the experts he's had on, some of them would have been banned, he claims, for things that in the end ended up being right.
So then he gives you further context that says how many times he has specific examples of people who said things that the mainstream would have said, no, that's dangerous, and then they turned out to be right.
So that's good context.
All right, so like Jobs, Joe Rogan reframes the situation.
Then he shows empathy.
He basically agrees with his critics.
And then he tells you what he's going to do about it.
Reframe. Empathy.
Solution. Perfect.
Perfect. Now, the solution would be, he said that he probably does need to get an expert who disagrees with, you know, some of the provocative people, get them on, you know, close to when the provocative person was.
And he said that he does his own scheduling and that he needs to do that...
I don't want to say better, but he just wants to pair the differing opinions so they're a little closer together, which is a form of what I'd been suggesting as well.
Now, I thought it's even better if they're there at the same time, but maybe that's hard to manage.
But the next best thing...
It's to show the expert and then the counter-expert as close as possible.
So he's at least acknowledged the nature of the complaints, and then he offered some solutions.
And then he also said he'd prepare better for some of the types of experts.
Now... Here's David Smith.
Scott loves sucking up to big pharma.
Sheep. Rogan is accepting a misinformation tag on his show.
Weak. All right.
The people who only see things as, like, weak or sheep, you're like binary idiots.
We'll get rid of this binary idiot.
Goodbye. All right.
You've got to handle a little bit of nuance to enjoy this live stream.
All right. So, I would say, here's my speculation.
One of the things that Joe Rogan gets right is what I'll call the Norm MacDonald theory of comics.
Comedians, that is. Norm Macdonald explained once, I saw it on a video recently, that you don't want to act smarter than your audience.
You want to act dumber than your audience, but maybe, you know, I think I'm adding this part, but maybe surprise them that your stuff hangs together better than they'd think.
Joe Rogan...
Does an insanely good job of what a good comic does.
And remember, he's got this whole talent stack working.
You know, stand-up comic, and then plus all the other skills, acting, blah, blah, blah.
So... So, I don't know how much is knowing what systems work and borrowing them.
I don't know how much is natural.
Can't read minds. But when you see one of the things that makes Joe Rogan so popular is he doesn't ever let himself look like he's smarter than you.
Right? Right? It's sort of genius, because it's a hard thing to do if you think maybe you got some of your success because you were smart.
You'd have to think that in his private moments, he might have some positive thoughts about his own intelligence.
You know, it got him where he is, right?
Now, here's my take.
If, and I'll make this conditional, my guess is that when the thing blew up with Spotify and Joe Rogan, that he's now playing at a, let's say, a corporate level.
I hate to say it, but, you know, because Spotify's involved, there's sort of a corporate element to this.
It would surprise me If Spotify did not offer to give him some professional crisis management PR advice via somebody like Steve Jobs got the advice.
So my guess is that in both cases Steve Jobs and Joe Rogan got advice from the best advice givers you could possibly get advice from.
But that's not good enough.
Because if most people got the greatest advice in the world, they, A, wouldn't recognize it.
They wouldn't recognize it as good advice.
You have to be pretty smart to even recognize it.
And then secondly, they couldn't implement it.
Because it takes a lot, a lot of communication skill and, most important, reserve.
Like, to hold back all of your normal instincts to give the perfect three-part response that both of them did.
So, here's the thing.
If Joe Rogan got advice from an expert, he did a really good job of following the advice.
Like, really good. But, if Joe Rogan came up with this spontaneously...
Which it has the look of.
It has the look of something where he'd been thinking about it for a while, picked up his phone, and then gave you ten minutes of perfection.
That could have happened.
I don't know, and I would love to know.
Because if he did that spontaneously, after thinking about it a lot, of course, but if that was one take, spontaneous, and he hit the three elements that cleanly, That is one of the smartest things you've ever seen in your life.
That would be just insanely smart.
And the amount of skill that would go into that would be hard to imagine.
So I would just love to know.
I don't know if you'll ever talk about it, but I'd be real curious if he got expert advice or if that was just spontaneous.
That would be really interesting.
I saw a little news today from Reuters.
This came from Reuters. And it reported that ivermectin was effective against Omicron in a Phase 3 trial.
Wow. Wow, that's big news.
You know, everybody's saying bad things about ivermectin, but here's Reuters today saying that ivermectin, at least in a Japanese study, that is effective, it is effective against Omicron in a Phase 3 trial.
Holy cow.
Wow. That fake news lasted, I believe, less than one minute.
It's not true.
It took me one minute to say, well, that's a pretty vague claim because you look at it and there's no link to a study.
It just looked obviously untrue because I could see the machinery.
Now, I didn't really have to, like, break it down or anything.
I just looked at it.
I just looked at the story and I said, well, that's somewhat transparently not true.
Now, I'm not talking about ivermectin, right?
This has nothing to do with ivermectin.
It's just about the truth of a story.
And then it took Andre's backhouse another, like, five seconds to completely dismantle it.
And he goes, this news fails two basic sanity checks.
One, there is no preprint or other documentation yet.
And then two, assuming they did the trial in Japan, Omicron became dominant there just one month ago.
One month isn't a realistic time frame for a whole trial.
And I'm thinking...
Yeah. Okay.
And by the time I had read that, the Reuters had already corrected the story and took out the phase three trial part, which was the ridiculous part.
Basically, they found out that ivermectin works in a lab, which we already knew.
In other words, there wasn't any news.
There wasn't any news at all.
Do you know what else works in a test tube against diseases?
Practically everything. Do you know what kills a virus?
I don't know. You could probably piss on it.
I think pretty much everything kills it.
In a lab? Yeah.
Coca-Cola? In a lab?
So basically, this is Reuters reporting something that wasn't even close to being credible or true.
But remember my original point?
The pandemic has allowed us to see the machinery.
You could just see this one.
You didn't even have to analyze it.
You were like, oh, that's not true.
All right. Pat Sajak...
Pat Sajak had this tweet.
He said, I've discovered that no matter how outlandishly over-the-top, satirical, sarcastic, or ridiculous the tweet, approximately 20% of Twitter users who comment will take it at face value.
Helps explain why there's so much anger out there.
Well, I think Pat was off by 5 percentage points.
As I've been noting, 25% or so-ish people will be wrong about anything, everything.
To the point where I got a tweet just before I came on, or was it, maybe I saw it on a local comment, I'm forgetting where I saw it, that maybe it just might be as part of the base rules of our reality.
You know, the base rule of reality is around 25% of people have to misunderstand everything.
It's a different 25%, I hope.
I hope it's not the same 25%.
But there always has to be the standard 25%, no matter what.
All right. One more thing, and then I'm going to solve the Ukraine problem.
We have to only start looking at unvaccinated people.
I'm sorry. We have to look at only fully vaccinated deaths to make our decisions on the mandates.
Fully vaccinated deaths.
We've been doing the wrong thing.
We've been looking at unvaccinated deaths, but that's the group that chose that option.
Right? If all the unvaccinated people are completely happy with their risk management decision, and they are, they are, And all of the vaccinated people, they've seen the risk drop to the point where it's now a baseline risk, not a pandemic risk.
Why are we looking at the deaths of the unvaccinated?
They're getting exactly what they want.
Not the dead ones, but the people who lived got exactly what they wanted.
And the people who died, they chose a path that they were fully informed about.
They didn't believe it, and that was their option.
So... If you looked at the total deaths, vaccinated and unvaccinated, it looks like we're out of record.
And that would be a bad argument for ending mandates.
But if you look at what people asked for and what they got, vaccinated people asked for vaccinations, they got it.
Unvaccinated people asked for a different risk profile, they got it.
As long as the hospitals can handle the load, and it looks like they can, at this point it looks like they can, We're done.
Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, and people of all types, Regis McKenna was the person who advised Steve Jobs.
I don't know if he advised him on that question I was talking about.
Thank you very much. It was Regis McKenna.
So February 1 is the date that the public takes over because our government has not.
And I believe that the argument should be that everybody got what they wanted at this point.
The vaccinated got what they wanted.
The unvaccinated got what they wanted.
We are done. I would argue that the worst way to protest at this point is with trucks.
Because don't we need the stuff in those trucks?
Anybody? Anybody?
I think we need the stuff in the trucks.
I don't think we should stop the supply chain for anything.
That's just my thinking.
But here's what we should do.
We should just take control.
Just take off your mask.
If you go in a place that requires them, make sure that they ask you to put it on.
And then the first thing you should say is, no, after February 1st, the public took control of the mandates.
And people will say, no, the government still has a mandate.
And you'll say, I know. That's why the public took control on February 1st.
Now, if they put up a fight, well, you can decide to leave or put on your mask.
That's up to you. But I'm just saying the default should be take the mask off.
Now, I probably won't, you know, just personally, I probably won't try, you know, going to Walmart or Target or anything.
But I'll just stay away from any place that I know will require a mask.
And any place I think is a soft target, I'll go in and take it off.
And we should just see it.
And though people will be more rebellious than I am, who are going to try to get on planes and everything else, but that would be a little bit dangerous at this point.
I don't think I'd mess around with an airport.
But the point is, we have to make it a big enough deal that the press starts talking about it.
If the press doesn't talk about the public taking control of the issue and make that a theme, it just wasn't going to happen, right?
So you need the press to understand this is a perfect story.
The press does not like dog bites man, because that's normal.
The press likes man bites dog.
The press doesn't care if the government tells you what to do.
That's normal. The press does care when the public tells the government what to do.
That's what makes it a story.
So somebody needs to talk about the public rebellion until the narrative catches on, and then it snowballs.
But let's kick this thing off.
Now, let's tell you how to handle the Ukraine problem.
Have you ever wondered what the hell do you do when you're dealing with a dictator?
You can never really solve a problem with a dictator, right?
It's very unlikely that democracies will fight.
You know, two democratic countries rarely get in a war, right?
So if there is a war, it's going to be two dictators or a dictator and a democracy, etc.
So wouldn't you love it if there were some way to solve the problem that there's no way to make peace with a dictator?
Because they kind of have to stay dictators to avoid getting killed.
Am I right? It's hard to be a dictator and then just retire because whoever takes over next will kill you and wipe out your entire family.
Now, what does a dictator want after a certain age?
Let's say by Putin's age, what does he want?
Probably something like a legacy.
Probably something like keeping his genetic line safe.
Do you feel that that would be a safe thing to say?
At a certain age...
They're less about acquiring stuff and more about making sure that what they have done becomes a permanent legacy, both to protect the people and their family after they're gone, but also so their name will live on.
So how can you solve this problem of giving the dictator something that protects them in that way after they're gone, but also allows you to negotiate in some productive way?
So I think this is the reframe That needs to happen.
We should talk to our dictators about the fact that if they keep with their current model, it's inevitable that their bloodline is going to get wiped out, meaning that whoever takes over after them is going to look for your relatives and make sure they get out of there because the relatives are the dangerous ones, right? So how can you keep your relatives and your legacy from being erased and cancelled?
And here's the way to do it.
Guarantee everybody who sticks within their borders as they exist today that they will be supported against all attacks forever.
In other words, give them job security instead of trying to depose them.
It's the whole deposing them that gets the problem, right?
If we're trying to depose Putin all the time, well, he's going to push back.
Like, anybody's going to push back.
So can we remove the incentive for them to be hacking us and poking us back?
I think we can.
Because I'm not terribly concerned if the Russian people have a dictator, are you?
I mean, really? Because I feel like maybe a lot of them prefer it.
I think maybe a lot of them prefer it.
And it's not our problem.
So instead of trying to turn anybody into some kind of a democracy so that we can be friends, why don't we do it the Trump way?
Trump goes to North Korea and says, you know, there's no reason we need to be enemies.
How about if you want some economic development, we should talk.
And then Kim Jong-un is like, um, I can't think of a reason I need to be your enemy.
And then for a while...
Everything was heading in the right direction.
And the thing that Trump did was he gave Kim Jong-un job security.
Think about it. That's what Trump did.
He gave Kim Jong-un job security, the most he's ever had.
And as soon as he had job security, he got friendly.
Friendlier. Now, Biden comes along, and no longer does Kim have a relationship that's like a personal one with the president.
And now suddenly he's testing a lot of rockets.
Right? It's probably not an accident.
So, could we say, here's the deal.
As long as you stay within your international borders, the entire world will make sure you don't get deposed.
The entire world.
China, U.S. We'll make sure that President Xi stays in power as long as he wants.
Putin, long as you want.
Kim Jong-un, forever.
But you have to end the poking us.
In other words, you can't invade your neighbors anymore, and you can't cyberattack us, and you can't be trying to undermine our currency and stuff like that.
You're going to just have to be a productive competitor in the world, and then you can have everything you want.
You just can't change your national borders anymore.
Now, would that work?
I don't know. But what we're doing now doesn't work.
Would you agree that what we're doing now doesn't work?
We have to do the, we're stronger than them.
Putin only knows force.
Well, Putin does only know force because it's the only option.
What other option has he been offered?
Has he ever been offered the option, you're going to have the job forever, just don't be so much of an asshole.
That's it. You can be our friend.
I don't care. Just don't be an asshole to us, and you can have your job forever.
Now, I don't know if that would work, of course, right?
And, you know, it would be different for every situation.
No two situations are the same.
But I can't see a reason that we are at some kind of war footing with Russia.
Can you? I feel like...
Infantile position. I feel as though we lost the reason.
We lost the reason.
Now, the reason is, of course, that they're going to be aggressive, so we have to keep them in.
And they're thinking, you know, U.S. is going to be aggressive, so we have to keep them in.
Well, what if we just weren't?
There's no reason. It's just two people who are locked in this model that doesn't make sense anymore.
The last people we want to have a war with is frickin' Russia.
It's last. Let's have a war with anybody else but Russia.
Anybody. Literally last on my list.
Of course, you know, they make it easy to gin up war because of the way they act, but let's figure out a way to change their incentive.
All right. That...
It's my incredible livestream program for the day.
Probably the best thing you've ever seen in your entire world.
I'd like to show you one more thing, to show you the machinery of...
Oh, stupid phone.
Stupid, stupid damn phone.
All right, I guess I'll do it the long way.
Here's a picture that the LA Times ran about the Joe Rogan and Neil Young controversy.
Look at the picture they chose for Joe Rogan, and look at the picture that they chose for Neil Young.
So Neil Young, he doesn't look like a heroin addict.
He looks like a thoughtful, possibly a brilliant man.
Joe Rogan, the picture that they picked, they picked the AOC picture with the big eyes.
And here's the headline.
This is from the LA Times.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek responded to Neil Young and others removing their music from the platform over COVID-19 misinformation spread on Joe Rogan's popular podcast.
So they say it like it's a fact that it was misinformation.
Is it a fact?
Is it a fact that it was misinformation?
Or is it experts disagreeing?
So they treat it like it's a fact, like you don't need to think anymore.
