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Feb. 17, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
49:29
Episode 1657 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About All the Lies, Deceptions and BS in Today's Headlines

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Hey, everybody. Are you ready for the peak experience of your entire existence?
Well, I hope you're ready, because it's coming at you right now.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and it is renowned around the entire solar system as the best thing that's ever happened to anybody.
And if you'd like to take it up to the next level, and you're the kind of people who do that, you know who you are.
You do. And may I add, you look extra sexy today.
And if you'd like to take that up a notch too, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or gel, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it can stop a Russian invasion.
If you don't think so, watch this.
Go! All right, take the sip.
Now look around. Look around the room.
Do you see any Russians invading you?
No. No, you don't.
And that's what I promised you.
I promised you that would be the case.
Never break a promise.
Well, there's a new TV series on Amazon Prime that I didn't think you could even make a show like this.
Talk about provocative.
You've seen some provocative content lately, but wow.
Let me describe this and you tell me if you think this would...
Honestly, I didn't think you could even put something like this...
On any kind of a streaming service?
In 2022?
Because it's not like these are backward times when we were less awake and aware.
I mean, this is 2022, damn it.
And there's a streaming service who thought this would be okay to stream to the American public.
Now, let's see if you're as disgusted by this as I am.
It's called Reacher, and it involves a man...
Who plays the role of a hero.
Ugh! It's 2022, people.
You do not have this kind of a show with a man as the main character doing heroic things like beating people up who deserve it.
That, my friends, is a 90s kind of attitude.
This character should be played...
By a black woman who weighs no more than 95 pounds.
And that 95-pound black woman, if she were in the role that she was born to play, of Reacher, she would be beating up 10, 12 people simultaneously because that's what you can do when you have skills and you weigh 95 pounds.
So I'm a little shocked that there could be this...
Muscular white guy starring in a series, and that doesn't seem right.
Anyway, Rasmussen has a poll that says that 66%, roughly two-thirds of people polled in America, say Biden should take a cognitive test.
But more interesting is the percentage that say Biden is mentally and physically up to the job of president.
Anybody want to take a guess about the approximate?
You don't have to get the exact number, but approximately, just off the top of your head, how many people do you think would say, as a percentage, that Biden is mentally and physically up to the job of president?
Wow, your guessing is excellent.
May I compliment you on your guessing?
It's 27%.
Look how many of you are within 2%.
Give yourselves a pat on the back.
When I told you that you were sexier than normal, what I left out was smarter than normal.
And I think you can see it clearly in these answers.
Yes, without the benefit of any scientific polling, each of you knew that approximately a quarter of the public would say that Biden is cognitively just fine.
Speaking of cognitive things, I absolutely loved a Twitter thread.
You can find it in my feed.
From a cognitive scientist, Scott Barry Kaufman, who you should follow anyway.
He has some great content.
But Scott Barry Kaufman tells the story of...
He says he likes to do edibles.
So here's his tweet that starts it off.
He goes, I love edibles, meaning marijuana edibles, but the edibles I do are usually only about 5 to 10 milligrams of THC content.
I accidentally purchased a snickerdoodle with abnormally high THC content.
I didn't realize until a second after I ate most of it that the single cookie was at 100 milligrams...
So it was 10 to 20 times the power of what he would normally experience.
Now here's the fun part, and I won't read you the whole thread because it's worth looking at.
So he decides, before he starts losing his, let's say, powers of judgment, he realizes that in a few minutes he's just going to be tripping balls.
I mean, he's just going to be in an interesting situation.
So being a cognitive scientist, which is what makes this whole thing interesting, is he decided to sort of play it out, and I guess at some point he decided to document his experience.
So he decides to take an Uber to the emergency room so that whatever is about to happen to him, he can ride it out with professionals around in case something goes.
And I guess they took his pulse, and they're like, holy crap!
Now that's a pulse.
And so as I expected with my complete lack of medical training, it didn't look like he was actually going to die.
He was just going to have a real interesting mental experience.
Now he describes it as hallucinating, basically, like a trip.
Now you might be aware, I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but I've had experience with Yes, I have.
And I've never had an experience of anything that I would describe as hallucinating.
Has anybody else ever had that?
Now, I don't know if it's the way I do it, or maybe I'm just too acclimated to it or something.
But I've never had anything even close to that.
But I will accept that if you took ten times your normal amount, in the form of an edible in particular...
Maybe you could have something like that.
So anyway, the net of it is that this cognitive scientist got a real look behind the curtain.
Do you know what I mean? If you're a cognitive scientist and you've never had a hallucination experience, like a hallucinogen, if you've never had that experience, you're working on the other side of the curtain, you know, the part where everybody can see stuff.
But as soon as you take that trip...
You see behind the curtain all the stuff you couldn't see on the other side.
And that's what happened to, I think, Scott Barry Kaufman.
But he's got an interesting experience in front of him, I believe.
Now, I can't read his mind, so this is just me speculating.
There's no way he could go through the experience he did and ended up with a good story to tell and some insights without wanting to do a mushroom trip.
You can't come out of that not wanting to be a little curious.
What if I took it up a level?
And here's what I would say to Scott Barry Kaufman if he's thinking about that.
Whatever he experienced with this overdose of the cookie, whatever he experienced with that is not in any way roughly similar to what a mushroom experience would be.
It's just not. And I didn't experience what he experienced, but I can still say that with some confidence.
Anybody on here would agree with me, I think, if you've had that experience.
But the most important part of this question was he said he ate most of that snickerdoodle, and I sent him a message to see if I could get the rest of it for myself.
But, I don't know, that seemed like a pretty awesome cookie.
I also wonder how much of that cookie I could have eaten without feeling anything.
You know...
I'm pretty sure I could have polished off half a box before I noticed anything was amiss.
Anyway, here's a story that I didn't talk about when it was newer because I didn't believe it.
You see stuff on Twitter and you say, I'm not sure that's true.
That looks a little bit too on the nose.
But I think this is true.
That when Elon Musk was challenged by, I guess, the world food program that just $6 billion of his wealth could solve world hunger, which they later walked back a little bit and said, well, $6 billion would help a lot with the infrastructure to get people fed.
It wouldn't feed everybody.
But Elon Musk apparently took the challenge and quietly sold or donated $6 billion worth of stock.
To some kind of charities that presumably have something to do with feeding people.
So we don't know the details of where it went, but as someone else said on Twitter, is that the most baller thing you've ever heard in your life?
That somebody said, if you give $6 billion, we could cure world hunger, which was hyperbole.
Nobody believed that, literally.
But then he challenged that assumption, you know, that that math could even make sense.
And then he gave $6 billion.
How do you beat that?
I mean, seriously.
How do you beat that?
For just publicity...
I don't know.
When you can make your real moves in the real world also funny, then you're operating at a different level.
You want to know who the real operators are in this world?
I'm going to give you a hint.
I don't know if this will help you or not.
But when you see people do real things that make a real difference, such as donating $6 billion to charity, but it's also in the context of kind of funny, you have somebody operating on a whole different level.
A whole different level.
And that's sort of like a tell for somebody who is behind the curtain.
So much so that looking for the humor in people's moves can really tell you something.
All right. One of the more interesting stories, which is interesting because it shouldn't be interesting, which is interesting, which is that Ilhan Omar, Representative Omar, tweeted this, and she was talking about the Canadian government...
No, I'll actually talk about the journalists who felt the need to...
I'll just read you her tweet.
Her quote or her tweet, her twote.
She said, I fail to see why any journalist felt the need to report on a shop owner making such an insignificant donation rather than to get them harassed.
It's unconscionable and journalists need to do better.
So while it seems like much of the political right in the United States is in favor of the truck drivers and the trucking protests in Canada, Ilhan Omar, who you would expect to be always on the opposite side of wherever the right was, is coming down solidly on the side of justice.
And justice in this case, in my opinion, and hers apparently too, is that you shouldn't be doxing people for small donations to legal activities.
That's really too far.
And... You know, I saw I think over a thousand people had quote-tweeted her, and most of them were saying something to the effect of, well, when you've lost Omar, you've gone too far, or how unusual it is that she would be on this side and everything.
And I started to do one of those, too, because that just felt like the natural way to handle this.
And then I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't.
Maybe I shouldn't quote-tweet that.
Maybe that should just live by itself.
Because I feel like that's a more respectful way to treat it.
Although I suppose talking about it cancels out what I'm saying.
But I think that that deserves just a tweet.
Or a retweet. Because if you just agree with it, maybe that's the end of the story.
Maybe when somebody who sees an injustice and calls it out, maybe you don't need to say anything about that.
Maybe that's it.
Somebody saw an injustice, they called it out.
So we could be on the same side about that.
So we're on the same side a little bit, and it seems that the pandemic maybe brought us closer together in a weird way.
Somebody thinks I'm high.
I hate to inform you that I'm not.
I know. Surprise.
So what about Florida?
Man, I don't know if DeSantis leads a charmed life, or he's just the luckiest governor, or he's just that good.
It's one of those things.
Or maybe it's all three. I don't know.
But Florida set records in 2021 for tourism.
What? During the pandemic.
Florida set records for tourism.
Now, of course, some of that was helped by the fact that it was a free state.
So people didn't really have many choices.
During the pandemic, if anybody talked about traveling domestically, where did they say they were going?
If they said they were moving, it was either going to be, you know, Texas or Florida.
If they said they were going for a vacation, it was usually Florida.
So Florida actually found a way to make a profit, in a way, at least tourism-wise, on the pandemic.
Now that is a well-managed state.
That is a well-managed state.
So I'm really fascinated by the Trump versus DeSantis dance that's starting to happen.
Because it does seem like Trump probably has the weight that he could get the nomination again if he wants to.
But at the same time, I don't know that would get Trump everything he wants.
In terms of politics, DeSantis might give Trump more stuff than Trump could get for himself.
There would be Trump-like stuff, meaning the same philosophy of thought.
So that puts a little pressure on Trump, doesn't it?
Because if you're Trump, if you genuinely want the things that you say you want, what happens if you're not the best deliverer of those things?
And just because of the provocation that Trump brings with everything, I think he's surfaced all the issues in a way that only Trump can.
In other words, I wouldn't assume the stage one in which I think Trump was actually ideally suited to I think Trump was ideally suited for his first term.
Because he needed to show us that the news was fake.
He did. He needed to show us what was important.
China. He did.
So I think that in terms of priorities and even border security and stuff like that, I think that Trump showed us what works.
And then weirdly, Biden showed us what doesn't.
But the only thing that Biden did bring, and I'm going to give him credit for this, is that even though he's made some, I think, bad mistakes in terms of demonizing the unvaccinated, I think he generally has kept the provocation low.
That was one of the things he promised, to keep the division low.
And I think the division that's being sowed is mostly...
You know, baseline stuff.
It doesn't seem like he's the one who's creating it.
Whereas Trump was really the one causing the trouble, if you know what I mean.
But I think that Trump caused productive trouble.
This is where I depart from a lot of people.
I think the trouble that Trump caused was mostly productive, because it was the conversations we needed to have.
But now that everything surfaced...
You know, Trump did, I think, and I probably will always believe this, I think Trump's first term is one of the greatest presidencies and will always be looked that way.
I think once historians get some objectivity over time, I think it will look like one of the great presidencies.
And when he first ran, I said he should be a first one-term president.
Does anybody remember me saying that?
That when he first ran, I said, you know, this might make a good first-term situation, one-term president.
Because if you mix things up enough, it's just hard to get elected that second time.
In order for Trump to be as effective as he was, to bring us as much, really, truth, in a weird way, ironically, I mean, Trump is the one who told us how corrupt everything is.
In a way that makes us believe it.
Because now we can see it with our own eyes.
So it seems to me that he was uniquely perfect for the time.
He needed to take out the Bush dynasty.
He needed to take out the Clinton dynasty.
I'm not sure if they're completely taken out.
But they were things that only he could do.
Could you imagine if you reverse the order and DeSantis had been president first...
And then, you know, Trump tried to be president later, that wouldn't work nearly as well, would it?
You needed Trump to go in there and just shake the box like crazy, break everything, let us see what's in there, let us fight about it, let us scream about it, let us cry about it a little bit.
But then when we're done, when we're done screaming at each other and crying, then you've got to fix it, right?
Because shaking the box is just, you know, that's just the demolition stage.
So maybe DeSantis is an architect, and maybe Trump was a wrecking ball, and maybe you needed them in exactly the order you got them.
That's what it looks like to me.
I think that we might be blessed, maybe, with a wrecking ball followed by a top architect.
Can't get better than that.
If you're in a hole, well, let me not mix my metaphors here, but if you're in a bad place, what you want is wrecking ball first, master architect second.
We might be in line to get that, which would be really interesting.
Really interesting. Go exempt and do not file.
You don't need to block traffic to protest.
Oh, okay.
I'm not sure I understand that comment.
But in order for the wrecking ball slash master architect model to work, that would require Trump to back the concept.
And I think that Trump could not back another person for president until, and if, the Truth Social Network launches and...
Looks like it's going to work.
I think if the truth network works, you know, Trump's own social network, if that looks like it's going to work, I think that gives him the freedom to be a DeSantis enabler and still claim credit for anything good that happens during a different administration.
And I think that would be his strongest play.
I think that would be the strongest play.
And by the way, it's the one I'd want to see.
Because if I can be honest...
I think I can.
Can't I? I can be honest with you, can't I? I act like that would be a surprise.
Yes, I can be honest with you.
I don't want a president of that age.
I love Trump. Like, personally, you know, I got to meet him.
Personally, I love the guy.
Like, he could not have been more generous and kind in person.
So when you have a good personal experience with somebody, it's really hard to get past that into any other kind of consideration.
So I'm 100% biased in favor of him.
I think his first term was historic, and I think that, you know, more of Trump would be better than less.
I like what he brings, even though he brings trouble with it, right?
But I like what he brings.
I think he could bring it better outside of politics at this point.
Before, I think he was better inside of politics.
I think he was exactly the right person at the right time.
But at this point, I think the system could benefit from a George Washington kind of an approach.
And by the way, that's what it is.
George Washington, in a way, as narratives go, essentially created this country not by winning the revolution or the war, but some say he created the country by stepping away from power when he was so popular he could have turned it into a dictatorship if he wanted to.
But he didn't.
He stepped away. Trump is oddly in a similar situation because the polls are going to show he could win the nominations.
And I think the polls are going to show he could win the presidency.
And he's going to have to look at his own age, and he's going to have to look at his own ego.
This is the challenge of his life, if you think about it.
The greatest challenge of Trump's life ever, I don't think anything would be second place, the greatest challenge of his life would be to have a commanding lead and a In a hypothetical matchup, and then walk away.
That would be one of the greatest things a president ever did.
Because Washington did it.
Now, the purpose would be different.
He wouldn't be walking away from a dictatorship.
But he would be walking away from a certain amount of power, revenge, payback, winning, like all the things that his ego wants.
All the things that you would want.
As a human entity, those are all the things you want.
But I don't know.
This will be a great test.
I don't know if Trump could rise to it.
I don't know. Because it's asking a lot, really.
It's asking somebody to effectively override their most basic operating system that's driven them their entire life.
But could he do it? I think he could.
I think it would be the hardest thing he ever did.
But I think he could do it.
We'll see. Do you think Putin's going to invade?
It's looking more and more like this is a psychological operation, isn't it?
It looks more and more...
Yeah, it looks more and more like this is always just a scarum.
So the reasons that we have to think that it was not a serious invasion, you've got the Ukrainians saying that they don't have an invasion force.
It's not the kind of force you need for an invasion, full-scale invasion.
You've got the Chinese embassy that never even stopped its normal operations.
In Kiev. What does China know that we don't know?
They didn't even stop their normal operations when war was supposed to happen that day.
So they must know something.
And then the funniest part was apparently Russia...
Who was it? What entity was it?
You know the story probably. Was it their...
Some kind of foreign entity.
They announced that they'd like the United States to tell them when Russia plans to attack Ukraine so they can plan their vacations around it.
And apparently an official Russian entity actually issued that.
Like actually said, hey, can you tell us all the dates that we're going to attack Ukraine so we can plan our diplomatic vacations around that?
Now, do you think that Russia...
Now, obviously, Putin must have approved that, right?
Or they knew that he would approve it, so it was compatible with Putin, we assume.
Do you think that Putin would tease about invading if he planned to actually invade?
It doesn't really make sense, does it?
It's possible. I mean, it could be the cleverness squared where he just kids like he's not and that's really to get your guard down or something like that.
But it really does sound to my ear, it sounds like a country that doesn't plan to invade.
Now, Could I be wrong about that?
Of course. Of course.
But things are very much suggesting that they're not planning yet, or he hasn't decided to invade.
Let's put it that way. Here's what I think is happening.
I think that Russia is trying to make Ukraine and NATO and everybody think he's going to invade.
Would you agree so far that he's not trying to trick you Like, into thinking he's not invading.
He's doing the opposite.
It seems like he's giving you all the indications he plans to invade while telling you he's not going to invade.
He wants you to think he's going to invade, right?
Why would you do that?
And why would you stay in that situation so long?
Well, one of it is negotiation, right?
Apparently, there's still some negotiating going on.
But the other part that I think is equally important is the closer you are to actual kinetic war, the more you're going to see what the other side's defenses look like.
Am I right? Now...
If anybody has military experience, please override my opinion, because I don't.
But it seems to me the most obvious logical thing you do is if you know that they're going to see the invasion coming anyway, it's not really going to be a secret invasion, you want to keep them on edge as long as possible, because you should be able to figure out where all the defensive strategies are, because they would be more active.
So, for example...
If they had a type of missile system, defense, you should see them getting a little more active around it, and that would tell you where it is.
You might see assets being moved into place, and it's easier to spot something when it's on the move.
So I would expect that part of this is Putin just finding out how hard would it be to invade this country, because he probably doesn't know.
How many of you who have military experience would agree with the following statement?
Putin doesn't know what he's in for if he invades.
He doesn't know. Because I don't think it could be known.
Right? You know, is it the famous quote by Mike Tyson that when it comes to a boxing match, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face?
And then that's the end of your plan?
Um... So here, I ask the question about what kind of defensive systems might Ukraine have.
Now, I would take as a given that the public doesn't know what weapons they have.
Is that fair to say?
I feel like it should be fair to say, but maybe not.
Do we publicize every time somebody buys a weapons system?
I don't know. Because you do see publicity about weapon systems all the time.
As in, you know, this country bought this defensive weapon system, whatever.
But you would think that the good stuff they wouldn't talk about, right?
I assume. Now, I ask this question.
Is there any kind of...
Well, how long would a Russian tank last if it got on Ukraine soil?
And here's the bigger answer and then the smaller answer.
The bigger answer is, as I understand it, a squadron of tanks would have, in modern warfare, they would have all kinds of air support and ground support, and if you tried to get near them with a missile or a tank or an airplane, there would be a defensive umbrella around the tank squadron.
So far, does that sound right?
So, in modern warfare, have we ever seen that deployed?
I don't think so.
I don't think we've ever seen a tank war between modern powers using the technology that would be available today, right?
So nobody's ever seen it.
Nobody knows what would happen. My guess is that a big, identifiable metal object, such as a troop carrier or a tank...
Would disappear in the first ten minutes of a modern battle.
Like ten minutes.
That's my non-military mind, without the benefit of any experience whatsoever.
Because it's too easy to find them.
I would think that in modern warfare, the only thing that matters is you can find them.
Am I right? That identifying where something is is all it takes.
Because you have the weapons to destroy anything.
They can't stop you from destroying something you can identify.
Am I right? If you can see it, you can kill it with today's weapons.
One of the weapons that I assumed existed, and I just got a confirmation this morning from several people tweeting at me, have you ever heard of missiles called ATACMS? And variations therein.
So it would be one missile that would be aimed at, say, a squadron of tanks or a big military industrial complex.
And the missile would come down, and before it lands, it would start spinning really fast.
And while it's spinning, then it would start giving off smaller projectiles.
And the smaller projectiles would just be like rain.
They would just fill the air with basically deadly projectiles.
So by the time the missile and the projectiles hit the ground, it basically just rips through metal, walls, concrete.
It's just going to rip through everything because the kinetic energy is so high.
So you could take out an entire squad of tanks with one missile.
Now, could the Russians shoot down that one missile?
Probably. They have some kind of air, you know, defense.
But how many of them could they get?
If we shot five of them, I mean, do the Ukrainians have five of them?
If they shot five of them, could Russia get all five before they landed?
Because only one needs to land before it takes out their whole business there.
Scott, why do you accept the globalist premise that Putin initiated the Ukraine invasion hoax?
Do I do that?
I didn't know I was doing that.
So I guess if I thought I was doing that...
I am under the understanding that...
The Ukraine, the history, and Russia is all complicated, and it's not as simple as Putin wants to attack.
I get that.
So I'm not buying into the simplest explanation.
But here's my take.
I think that Putin can't take the risk of invading Ukraine and losing.
Am I right? The risk of invading Ukraine and finding out that the Russian army can't get 10 miles into Ukraine would be catastrophic.
So I feel like he can't take the risk.
On paper, it looks like, oh yeah, he could make short work of Ukraine, because, you know, he's just got all this good military stuff.
But I'll bet you that that never works in the real world.
I'll bet you in the real world there's some weapons that they don't know are coming at them, and they would just bog them down, and they would look like the weakest army.
And so they would end up being economically destroyed without getting Ukraine, And while also having their entire military credibility destroyed, and I'm not even sure Putin could survive that kind of an upheaval.
He's pretty popular in Russia.
But I don't know if he could survive it.
We'll see. Wall Street Journal was talking about how hard it is to spy on Putin because it's hard to get a human being who's willing to do it.
I imagine getting caught spying on Putin is a bad day, so they can't get people to do it.
Wall Street Journal had a bunch of interesting articles today.
One of them was how China suppressed COVID better.
Do you know what the biggest trick for suppressing COVID in China was?
Rapid testing. Apparently they had so many tests that they could do an entire city in five hours.
They could test everyone in the city.
Let me say that again.
They had enough tests that they could test everybody in the city in five hours.
Everybody in the city. What?
And also when they were doing their lockdowns, apparently they would do it by neighborhood.
They wouldn't necessarily close down the whole city.
And so far it looks like it's working, although I did see some pictures from Hong Kong that said they're getting a surge.
So we do think the surge is going to happen.
I don't know that China could keep it off forever, but they were actually effective, and I think the testing was the biggest part of it.
Now, when you think about that...
What would the United States have looked like if we had had enough tests?
And why didn't we?
Corruption. I'm almost certain of it.
Now, I don't have proof, but I am so sure that if you looked into why we didn't have tests and others did, I think you'd find corruption.
Because I don't know anything else that would explain it, really.
Even incompetence couldn't get you there.
Rasmussen also had a poll in which they asked about whether the Clinton 2016 campaign scandal is bigger than Watergate.
Is it worse than Watergate?
Now, how much do you love the fact that Rasmussen actually asked this poll question?
Is the Clinton allegedly hiring lawyers who allegedly spied on Trump's communications traffic?
So... How much do you love that they even asked the question?
But two-thirds of the American public agreed that what we're seeing in the news today, that the Clinton campaign did, is by two-thirds of the public, worse than Watergate.
Worse than Watergate.
Two-thirds of the public.
Here's a good question.
This is to me.
Did Trump order you to amass an audience of midwit, fence-sitting boomers and persuade them to the right?
I appreciate your $50.
Thank you for that comment.
If you'd like to make more comments of that nature for $50 apiece, I welcome the criticism.
All right. So I think the funniest thing about this...
Clinton campaign being worse than Watergate is that Carl Bernstein, the official CNN worse than Watergate guy, the guy they would bring on to say that whatever Trump was doing that week was worse than Watergate, I believe that Carl Bernstein is now hidden so deeply in a cave that even Jesus himself couldn't find himself out in three days.
So that's how hidden Carl Bernstein is.
We should do a GoFundMe to see if anybody can find him.
Just to see if they can find him.
Like at Starbucks or something.
Just to see if you can find him.
I'll bet he is so missing right now.
All right, over at CNN, speaking of CNN, this is, of course, a Fox News report.
Fox News just loves dumping on CNN and vice versa.
And according to an insider now, Chris Cuomo is a despised figure within CNN. Can you imagine what the conversation is like at CNN? What the hell would that be like?
Like the actual private conversations among the producers and the on-air talent?
It's got to be kind of hilarious, isn't it?
Like in a weird way.
Are you dismissing the high probability that China is lying?
I'm not dismissing the high possibility that China is lying, but the rest of the world would know if they had a massive COVID problem.
It would be too hard to lie about it.
So, anyway, CNN's a festering cesspool of hatred.
They all hate each other. But here's the question that I have after all this.
Okay, now that we know for sure that the Clinton campaign was behind all of the Russia collusion hoax stuff, now that's just a matter of fact.
How many of the on-air people at CNN knew it was bullshit all along?
And reported it anyway.
And how many of them thought it was true?
Because here's the thing. If they thought it was true, they're all stupid.
Am I right? Is that fair to say?
If you thought that was all true from the start, you're kind of not that smart, honestly.
Like, it would be one thing to say, well, wait and see.
I mean, that would be fair.
But if you believed it, if you believed it from the start...
You're not very smart, and that's not a good look.
But it could be worse.
Van Jones said when he was asked that he thought it was a nothing burger.
But I don't think he ever varied from that, did he?
I think that Van Jones was always consistent.
I don't think he made a prediction that it was not a nothing burger at any point.
So I think he was always right about that.
So the question is...
How many people at CNN knew they were lying or misleading?
And how many of them were just stupid?
Because neither of those is a good look, but it was one of those.
It was either stupid or lying.
There's no second choice or third choice, right?
And why aren't we even asking that question?
Wouldn't you like to see Don Lemon ask the question, did you know you were lying?
Or wrong? And what would they say?
Would they say, oh, yeah, you know, we did our best, but we thought it was true?
Is that what they say?
Or would they change the subject to something else that Trump did that they're accusing him of?
A Trump supporter bought CNN? I don't know that that's true, but it might be.
I don't know if he's a Trump supporter.
Um... So there's a terrific thread on how the fake news works that you should read, but first I wanted to call out this odd thing.
Can you think of any industry besides CNN and MSNBC and the news, think of any industry where you could deliver to customers the opposite of what they think they're paying for or why they go there?
And it works out.
And they still make money.
Because CNN's job is to give you the news, and instead they gave you fake news.
That's the opposite of the news.
It's literally the opposite of the product you think you're getting.
Is there any other industry that can give you literally the opposite of what you thought you were buying and stay in business?
I was thinking, what if you went to your doctor and a doctor diagnoses you and said, all right, take these pills.
And so you say to the doctor, will these pills cure me?
And the doctor says, no, no, these pills will kill you.
Well, that would be the opposite of why you went to the doctor.
Would you still pay the doctor?
Well, I guess you'd have to pay in advance.
But it's really remarkable that the industry can stay alive and vital, the news industry, by delivering exactly the opposite of what they promise you.
And you know it. That's the funny thing, is you'd know it.
If you didn't know they were giving you the opposite of what you bought, well, that makes sense, why you would keep consuming it.
But they give you the opposite, and you consume it anyway.
And there was a great thread on that about why journalists end up printing bullshit, and it's because the system requires it, basically.
So the system requires that they work faster than they know it would take to get good sources.
So the system requires them to work too fast to do a good job.
And then the system rewards them for having provocative content, because those are the ones that get clicks.
So the system guarantees that anybody who intends to be honest will eventually be turned.
Think about that.
The system as it exists, the system of gathering and making money from news dissemination, it guarantees fake news.
It guarantees it. Now, it doesn't mean every story every time, but over time, it guarantees that the news business will only be populated with people who are comfortable lying, and lying makes more money.
Am I wrong? The economic incentive to be an honest person in the news business is disappearing.
The economic incentive to be a gigantic liar and be in the news business is increasing.
It just pays really well, and it's not illegal, apparently.
Maybe it should be. All right.
That, to me, is really interesting.
Because we have a system that guarantees we get the wrong answers, and it's a system that we depend on.
One of our most vital systems is the news.
And we've designed the system that's vital.
It's actually designed in a way to guarantee it gives us the opposite of what we need.
Think about that. It's guaranteed.
It's built into the system.
The system can only do what the system does, right?
Capitalism doesn't make you lazy.
It makes you have to work to get some money.
Right? That's not a golden age element, yes.
But I do believe I'm being asked to apologize for my Trump comment.
Which one should I apologize for?
Or are you even talking to me?
What did I say about Trump that's anything but a compliment?
Yes.
So as the imitation Chen on YouTube is saying, that the independent voices are becoming more credible and more important.
I think that's true. But we still don't have any near...
Even Joe Rogan is not really trying to be political.
He just ended up that way.
Bring Naval back on.
I need a better technology for guests.
You were discounting the news from NOM and MSN. No, I'm not discounting that news.
I'm just talking about the platforms.
All right. Do you have any other questions?
Because that is about what I wanted to talk about today.
Am I going to post on Trump's new platform?
Well, it's not open yet, right?
I don't think the platform's open yet.
Scott, are you richer than Joe Rogan?
I doubt it. But the answer is, I'm sure I'll test it out, yes.
Any truth, social predictions?
Well, you know, as you know, there have been a number of alternative platforms.
Designed to allow free speech.
But they run into the same problem, that if you're doing dangerous free speech, that has to be banned everywhere.
And then you end up just with one voice on your platform, which is no fun.
But the Trump platform might attract enough people on the left...
Just to dunk on him, it could end up working.
So as soon as you throw Trump into the mix, all the rules change because he authors the simulation.
He doesn't respond to it. So who knows?
But I would say that nothing's had a better chance.
Nothing's had a better chance than something with Trump's name on it.
All right. And any other questions?
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