Episode 1676 Scott Adams: Today I'm Going to Change Some People's Lives. One Person in Particular Who Doesn't See it Coming
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The Dilbert Filter applied to today's news
Mining the Ukraine safety corridor?
Biden wants to regulate crypto
Predictions for the Russian economy
Putin's 4 criteria for ending the war
Whiteboard: Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal
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You know, normally this is the highlight of your entire life, coming to Coffee with Scott Adams, but today, I'm going to take it up a notch.
Somebody's life will be changed today.
Is it you?
Well, I don't know.
Probably not. But somebody's life is going to be changed.
And in the process of doing that, most of you are going to become more powerful today.
Do you think I can deliver on that?
I'm going to make most of you more powerful.
Like you're actually going to learn a life skill or more.
It'll make you more effective.
But before we do that, would you like to be primed with a simultaneous sip that makes everything better?
Of course you would.
That's why you're here. Then all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen 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 that makes everything better.
And yes, that's a whiteboard behind me.
Yes, that's how good today is.
No cheating. Don't look ahead.
And now, go!
Oh yeah. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
Alright, let's do a little...
A little audit of my audience.
In the comments, please tell me if you identify as a liberal, conservative, or, let's say, neither or independent, whichever you prefer.
So in the comments, I just want to get a sense.
Conservatives and independents, libertarians, indies, conservatives.
So apparently there is no one who...
There are literally no liberal people watching this.
Or nobody who wants to label themselves as such.
All right. All right.
How many of you have ever voted Democrat?
All right. New question.
Yes or no. How many of you have ever voted Democrat?
A lot of yeses.
That's interesting. Because a lot of you said independent, so if I hadn't seen a lot of yeses, I would have been disappointed.
Although the number of no's and nevers is kind of impressive.
I don't know if that's a good way or a bad way.
All right. So that was just a little audit of who I'm talking to here.
Now, I tweeted today that it seems to me that if you prefer methods and systems that work...
That are known to work, somebody will label you conservative.
And I think that's what happened with Trump.
I think Trump's philosophy, if you will, is, well, what works?
We know what everybody wants, right?
We want to be safe and wealthy and happy, educate our kids and have freedom and all that.
So everybody's very clear about what people want.
But... We're less clear about how to get there.
I always thought that Trump was all about whatever works, and then people said, well, you must be a conservative, because they just assumed that if people are doing practical things that might work, they're probably conservatives.
And I think he embraced it and just ran with it.
But in my case, I don't label myself as conservative or liberal or anything else.
I mean, not really. I always say I'm left of Bernie, but that's just to confuse you.
I always find it's a compliment when somebody calls me conservative, although I don't label myself that way.
It seems like if somebody calls you conservative, they're saying, you're one of those people who keeps trying to do the things that work traditionally, such as building systems that take into account the competition and human motivation matter.
Okay. I'll take that hit.
Let's put the Dilbert filter on the news and see if it makes anything look different.
Now, the Dilbert filter would be if you've worked in a large organization of any kind, there's some things that you see over and over again that you wouldn't necessarily think are true unless you actually experienced it.
There's some things you think, well, is that just something people make comics about?
Or do those things really actually happen in big organizations?
And I'm here to tell you, yes, those things really happen in big organizations.
And you can't believe any of it unless you experience it.
That's why the Dilbert comic was a phenomenon in the 90s more than now.
Because... Because I kind of outed the fact that people were having incredibly weird experiences, but nobody seemed to be talking about it publicly, because I think people were under the impression it was just them.
Well, this must be just my job.
This can't possibly be happening all over the place.
And then what I outed was the fact that, yeah, it's happening all over the place.
As soon as you put a bunch of people together in any kind of an organization...
There are certain things that always emerge.
It's just really reliable.
If that were not the case, the Dilbert comic would not have taken off.
It was people saying, oh, yeah, that's me.
Nobody talks about that, but that's happening.
So let's put that same filter on the news.
One big part of the news today says that the Russians are promising humanitarian corridors...
So that the non-combatants could escape safely out of the combat areas.
But the news is that they're being attacked and or the roads are mined.
And so that the Russians are being cynical and they just say you can let your civilians out.
But really what they want to do is kill the women and children too because killing the women and children will get them like an extra quick victory.
So that's what the news says.
Here's the Dilbert filter on the news.
What are the odds that the people who are attacking the roads and or mining them are in perfect communication with the people who say, yeah, you can have your safety corridor?
Do you think there's only, like...
You know, one combatant unit?
Or do you think that they all have good communication?
Do you really think that the people who said, yes, you can have this corridor to escape, do you think they knew anything about the corridor that they had just authorized?
Do you think they even knew if their own forces were going to attack it?
Do you think they knew if it had been mined?
Maybe. Maybe.
You can't rule out that the news is right.
It's possible. But hold this thought, because I'm going to come back to it, right?
Now, in my opinion, I would say that this kind of news is notable, wouldn't you?
It's notable when somebody says, I'll let you out, and then kills you instead.
That's very notable. Remember the word notable.
Because I'm going to tell you later that the fact that that sounds notable means it's probably not true.
We'll get to that. How about another one?
Here's the Dilbert filter on what caused the war.
Now, there are a million ways to slice this and say what caused the war.
Is it because Putin is a megalomaniac?
Maybe he's declining and wants to leave a legacy.
Maybe just Russians always conquer anything they can conquer if they think it's easy.
So there are a hundred ways to say what caused the war.
Maybe NATO expansion poked the bear too many times and had to respond.
How many ways could you come up with to describe what caused the war?
A lot, right?
You know that Russians will have...
Their interpretation, Europe probably will have their own, etc.
But let me put the Dilber filter on it.
And this is based on the fact that there's this one head of the military in Russia who is known to be, let's say, a favored star of Putin.
Also, I believe he had no military experience before being head of the military.
I'll need a confirmation of that, but I don't think he'd been in the military.
And apparently he's reportedly a big suck-up.
So he's somebody who's going to tell Putin what Putin wants to hear.
Apparently one of the things he told Putin was that he had upgraded the military.
And that military, that Russian military, wow.
First rate.
So here's what I imagine is the conversation that could have happened in any large organization where there are bosses and underlings.
And it's starting to look like this might be the entire reason that Ukraine and Russia are at war.
And I'm quite serious about this.
This is based on the Dilbert filter because a Dilbert way of operating is just universal.
That's why Dilbert is well known.
Here's how I think it went.
I'm going to say the boss, you could substitute Putin in this, and when I say underling, you could substitute Sergei Shoigu, who's the head of their defense.
And the boss says to his subordinate, he says, hypothetically, could the Russian military, you told me you modernized, conquer Ukraine?
And then the underling says, two days, tops.
And that's exactly why some say you should give me a medal and maybe a raise.
Not only have I modernized the military in ways which are hard for you to confirm, but that military is the finest military in all the world.
When I took over the job, not so good.
Not so good, honestly.
The guy you executed just before me, I think he did a terrible job.
But not me. With the limited budget that you've given me and the limited time to implement it, I have completely turned around and modernized the Russian military, so much so that nobody would dare get into an actual war with us.
You know, I wish they would.
I kind of wish they would.
Because if anybody got in a war with us, my modernized new military that I did for you, Mr.
Putin, we would wipe them out.
So thank goodness, thank goodness we'll never be in an actual shooting war.
But you know what? I think it would be good for the country to show that the person you put in charge of modernizing the military did a great job.
It would be great for morale in the country.
I think it would send the message to the rest of the world as well.
So, I don't know, another medal, I'm thinking?
Something in public?
Possibly a small raise to...
or a bonus. Whatever you like.
Could be crypto, I don't care.
You know, real estate, a dacha in the country.
Anything, anything. I'm not even suggesting it.
I'm just saying this. Some are saying, some people are saying, that the way I've modernized that military...
Wow. It would be almost a crime to not recognize that sort of thing, given the benefit to the rest of the country.
I'm not even thinking of me.
It's we. It's we, not me.
And then Putin says, really?
You've modernized the military that much?
And his general says, yeah, I did.
Yeah. And he says, well, if you can conquer Ukraine in two days, go do that.
And then his general says, what?
Yeah, you heard me. Go conquer Ukraine in two days.
You just told me you could do that.
Yeah, yeah. Well, yes.
Well, that's true. In some ways, you could say that I did say that.
But in other ways, you could say that diplomacy is another tool of war.
No, you just told me you could conquer Ukraine in two days.
Conquer Ukraine in two days, or I'm going to cut off your testicles and feed them to you in front of your wife.
What? Yeah, you just told me you could conquer Ukraine in two days.
Go fucking do it.
And then a war started.
That's what I think happened.
And every day, this general is probably going back to Putin, holding his balls with one hand, and waving his other hand, trying to explain why things aren't going well.
Well, you know...
If it hadn't been for your head of propaganda, getting ahead of things, we would have surprised them.
But you had to use your...
You know, as President Xi, If President Xi had not asked you to delay for the Olympics, I swear, we would be all over Kiev by now.
All over it!
But then, that delay, gosh, that, you know, nobody could have figured that into the planning.
When I built this modernized military, it was really more of a blitzkrieg model.
Blitzkrieg. I expected to be in and out two days.
But when you made me wait a week, you know, everybody got prepared.
Everybody was prepared.
Was that on me?
I told you I was ready to go.
We were ready to go. One week, we were ready to go.
You made us wait six weeks.
Six weeks. Everybody had time to get new weapons.
You basically... Not you.
I'm not blaming you, boss.
No. Xi.
President Xi. You know, we are the victims here.
You and I, we are the victims.
Our military would be so done by now if not for President Xi.
But sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do.
So that's what I think caused World War III... Speaking of horrible things, Blaze Media is reporting.
They did a FOIA request, I guess.
And they revealed that HHS, Health and Human Services, so our government, purchased all kinds of advertising from the major networks.
About the vaccinations.
So ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Legacy Media, New York Post, LA Times, Washington Post, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, BuzzFeed, Max, NewsFacts.
So the government bought advertising on news shows or news networks to tell you, the public, that you should get vaccinated.
They use your own money to tell you what to do.
Well, I guess that's what governments do.
They use your own money to tell you what to do.
So that part's not surprising.
But when you were watching these news networks, did you think you were getting something like, oh, I don't know, the news?
Because I don't think you can really say you got the news.
I think that if somebody is paying you to say positive things, you're probably not going to say positive things on the commercial that they paid for.
I mean, that part would be recorded, of course.
And then give a news segment saying, you know, these guys are a bunch of liars and crooks.
Because how much more additional advertising dollars are you going to get if you say that your advertiser is a crook?
None. So can you trust anything that the major news networks told you about vaccinations?
Now, I think Fox News, at least the opinion people, were at least skeptical about the vaccinations.
They expressed a level of skepticism.
Not everybody, but some of the hosts.
So, you know, you can see that some of the opinion people were not affected by the advertising.
Where were they? Would they have gone harder?
Did they stop short of where their actual opinions were?
We don't know. We will never know.
They may have stopped short of where their actual opinions were.
Well, but none of that surprises you, does it?
The Biden administration announced they're going to do some kind of executive order looking into how to regulate cryptocurrency.
Well, that's all good news, isn't it?
That's all great news.
Because if there were ever two things that you wanted to put together to make synergy...
You know, people like crypto, and they like governments.
So if you like cryptocurrencies and you like governments, you know what would be great?
You put those two things together.
Sure. Some people say cryptocurrency is the antidote to government.
But it won't be soon.
As soon as they get their regulations on it.
Now, honestly, I'm not smart enough to predict where this even goes.
The most, let's see, scary future is that the government gets control of everything, privacy, crypto, just everything, you know, your bank, and then they have full control and they can just push a button and turn your life on or off if you don't cooperate.
That feels like reasonably possible or probable enough that you should worry about it.
But it's not the only way things could go.
I've often predicted that the worst place for society to be is semi-lack of privacy.
The worst place it could be would be everybody has complete privacy, because then you could be a criminal.
Complete privacy means you can just do anything and you can get away with it.
So complete privacy is what you don't want.
You want some kind of moderated, middle-ground privacy, you think.
But what happens when the citizens lose their privacy but the people in the government have not?
Well, that's the worst case.
So we're very close to the worst-case scenario where the citizens have no privacy about anything, But the people in charge still keep their privacy.
So if they punish you for no reason, it's hard to prove, because they've got their privacy.
You don't. So if you got to the point where the people in charge had no privacy, This, by the way, is something that Naval noodled about years ago.
He called it the GoPro presidency, where the president would have to wear a GoPro camera all the time, maybe except using the bathroom or something.
So you'd just see everything.
Now, that's a visual way to express a bigger idea, which is greater transparency of the leaders.
It takes away blackmail, Takes away, I mean, takes away a lot of things.
Anyway, I do not predict either doom or glory.
Uh-oh. Kind of a problem.
Oh, God.
Okay. All right, I'll deal with that later.
Rasmussen did a poll on election integrity issues.
And it looks like election integrity is going to be a pretty big issue in the upcoming elections in the U.S. So more than half of voters believe cheating affected the 2020 election.
So 52% of them, I think, said that it's very or somewhat likely that cheating affected the 2020 election.
And surprisingly, 19% of Democrats...
Agreed with the notion that cheating affected the election.
Now, are you surprised?
How do you explain that 19% of Democrats think cheating affected the election?
Now, remember, I'm talking about affected the election...
But in which way?
Yes, somebody got the right answer.
Everybody thinks that the other team cheated.
So I'm surprised that the Democrat number isn't actually higher, and my guess is that it would be higher, except that the Democrats know they don't want to say the election was stolen.
19% of Democrats are just answering the question straight.
Well, do you think there was cheating that affected it?
And 19% said, yeah, probably.
I mean, probably both ways.
Probably both ways, right?
The most reasonable assumption about this big, complicated system where different states are running it would be, yeah, probably.
And probably in both directions.
We just don't really know the extent of it or what.
Just no way to know. Now, what if Trump had won in 2020?
Would the same number of people on each side Say they thought the election had been stolen.
The percentages might be the same, but it would flip parties.
So basically, I think all we're finding out is that if the other side wins, you're pretty sure that their cheating was involved.
Does anybody disagree with that?
That independent of whether or not any cheating ever happens, if the other team unexpectedly wins...
You're pretty sure there was some cheating going on there.
Pretty sure. It doesn't matter which way it goes.
All right. Here's an interesting answer.
Well, no, that wasn't interesting.
Never mind. But let's talk about something that is.
Is photo ID a reasonable measure?
That was another question, Rasmussen.
74% of the public thinks that having a photo ID is a reasonable request to vote.
That would leave...
Let's see how many...
Or would it be against that?
Let's see. You take 100 and you subtract to 74.
So somewhere around a quarter.
Oh, a quarter.
25%. Yes, 25%.
So 25%-ish of people think that people should vote whether they're citizens or have ID or nothing, I guess.
All right? Now, let me ask you this.
Don't you think we should have some kind of rule of thumb, like it should have a name so everybody can refer to it, when there's something that over, let's say, 70% of the public supports and they can't make it into law?
What do you think of something?
Anything. It doesn't matter what the topic is.
It doesn't have to be about elections.
But any topic in the United States where over 70% of the people support it and it isn't being made into a law.
How do you explain that?
Doesn't it have to be corruption?
Now, the exception would be if you're...
Let's say credible leaders said, look, I realize that most of you want this, but I'm going to give you a good reason why you don't want this.
I'm not really seeing that.
I'm just seeing the usual lies coming from both sides, usually.
So it's either cognitive dissonance or corruption, and I don't know how you tell the difference.
It's a tough one. Because we don't know how much corruption is involved.
So that's just always a question mark.
It looks like cognitive dissonance, but it could be just corruption.
Or it could be both. Actually, the most likely is both.
All right. Are you watching the little tweet war between Representative Eric Swalwell and Richard Grinnell, Ambassador?
Ex-ambassador, I guess, to Germany.
So I guess there's a photo.
Let's do this in the order it happened.
So Swalwell tweets this.
He says, I'm old enough to remember when Richard Grinnell palled around with Nazis while serving as our ambassador in Germany.
Now, what did I tell you about notable news?
Things that really make you go, what?
What? What?
Are you telling me that the American ambassador to Germany was palling around with a Nazi while he was an ambassador to Germany?
Wow! Do you think it's true?
Of course not.
Of course not.
Do I even have to tell you why it's not true?
No. You should know it's not true just by listening to it.
Just listen to it. Just say it in your head and hear how it sounds.
Of course it's not true.
And as Richard Grinnell points out, In his response on Twitter, he said to Swalwell, did Fang Fang tell you that?
Because she got you again.
It's illegal to be a Nazi in Germany.
You can't even be one.
The person he was pictured with, so he's in a photo posing with somebody, is a member of the Bundestag representing the AFD, and he came to the Fourth of July party like every member of the Bundestag.
But I guess this guy had done something provocative years ago.
It was more of a prank or something.
But whatever it was, Swalwell turned that guy into a Nazi so that he could try to turn Grinnell into a Nazi.
But you should have seen that one coming.
As soon as Swalwell made that claim, you should have said, American ambassador to Germany, publicly hanging around with a Nazi in Germany.
Probably not.
Probably not.
I guess four of the biggest accounting firms have announced that they won't do business in Russia anymore.
And so I ask you, what's going to happen to Russia?
And here is my multi-point prediction for the Russian economy.
Are you ready? Predictions for the Russian economy.
Now, can anybody predict economics?
Not really. So when I give you a prediction, the way you should see it is, well, this is one way it could go.
But nobody can really predict economics.
It's kind of a crazy thing to do.
So use your judgment.
I'll just describe one, I think, probable future.
But it's only one of them.
One possible future.
So number one, you see the accounting firms are pulling out.
What happens when credible accounting firms are no longer willing to say that your firm is doing its accounting credibly?
Well, companies basically buy the credibility of the accounting firm, even though they often lie to the accounting firm.
So the accounting firm often does nothing but the books.
They don't really know the truth of the company.
But it gives sort of a credibility to a company that at least the accounting firm is honest.
That's the one thing you can depend on.
They may have bad data from the company, but at least they're not lying, because they have a reputation to uphold.
So when the credible ones leave, you're left saying, should I do business with this company, or can I even believe their books?
So it turns every company that was a little bit credible in Russia into not credible at all.
And remember, economies run on psychology, so that's a big deal.
If you can't trust the person you're working with, you don't.
You work with somebody else you can trust if you have options, and we do.
Then what about the insurance companies who are looking at Russia and saying, you know, we could insure you if things stayed exactly the way they are, but we can't tell if things will get worse in terms of more sanctions.
So we're not even going to touch the things that have been carved out from the sanctions.
We can't do the things that have sanctions on them, but we can't even do the things that don't have sanctions on them because they might have a sanction someday.
And we're the insurance company and we work on risk, so we can't get near that.
So if you can't get credible accounting and you can't get insurance for ordinary business activities, you're in real trouble.
And that's where they are.
Then you've got the Russian banks and the credit card system is going to use China as their bank, basically, for the processing.
So all the Chinese banks, and therefore the government of China, will have all of this private information about Russian spending.
That can't be good, because persuasion depends on knowing what people are doing.
If you know what people are doing, you can persuade them.
So that's a real security problem for Russia, to have China know that much about their citizens.
Number four, uncertainty will cause domestic spending to drop unless inflation causes them to overspend and inflation gets you.
But if you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, you're less likely to buy stuff because you think, well, I better save my money for buying food because I'll need all of it for that.
So if domestic spending drops, the economy starts to plunge.
We already see the net worth of companies in Russia is basically zero because you couldn't even buy one.
Get rid of the bad trolls who are doing a bad job.
Then you've got Western buyers of Russian energy, the people who we think have to buy Russian energy.
We don't really have to buy Russian energy, because it turns out that the rich countries aren't going to run out of energy.
They're going to pay more.
It's the poor countries.
They can't pay more, and there won't be enough if there's a limit.
So the poor countries just won't get any.
Am I wrong about that?
As long as the price of energy is very flexible, the rich countries like the United States will get as much oil as they want.
We'll just pay twice as much.
And the poor countries will just starve.
So I think that's what's happening.
But I do think that the Western countries and Europe will find ways around Russian oil, because they can.
There's lots of things you wouldn't do unless you had to, but depending on Russian oil is a little like this.
Have you ever worked in a company where you had an indispensable employee, and then they quit?
And then you found out, well, it turns out they weren't that indispensable.
It was just in your mind.
How many of you have had that experience?
Or you're in a relationship, and you think it's sort of indispensable to your life.
Like, it's got some problems, but it's indispensable.
There's no way I can change it.
And then something happens, and it goes away.
And you're sad for a while, and then a year later, you're like, well, that wasn't as indispensable as I thought.
It turns out very few things are indispensable, but we think a lot of things are.
I think Russian oil is not that indispensable to Europe.
They could find a way.
It's just kind of hard, but they could do it.
And that would, of course, make the energy from Russia basically captured by China.
So China would be the main buyer, and that would give them all kinds of power over Russia.
Because China eventually...
Won't need that power.
And they could get it from other places, too.
They're building nuclear power plants like crazy, and I assume looking for sources in other places.
So it's terrible to have one big customer, because that big customer owns you.
Have you ever heard this saying?
If you borrow a million dollars from a bank...
The bank owns you. Let's say that a million dollars is a lot in your case.
If you borrow a million from the bank, the bank owns you.
Because if you don't pay it back, they can cause a lot of trouble for your future life.
But if you borrow $10 billion from a bank, you own the bank.
Because they can't afford you to bail out on that loan.
It's bad for you, but it's way worse for them.
They can't lose that $10 billion.
When China becomes the biggest customer of Russia, China will effectively own Russia in the same way that you could own the bank by borrowing too much.
Russia's going to have inability to get new parts, inability to get new technology, so eventually you would expect the efficiency of all Russian industry to disintegrate.
If you can't get parts and you can't get new technology, Stuff's going to rot.
It's just going to fall apart over time.
Look at Venezuela.
We're down there looking at their oil, but you look at their oil industry, and because of the sanctions, they can't even produce oil.
Venezuela barely can produce oil and has tons of it, but the sanctions make it almost impossible to operate the equipment.
So that's where Russia's heading.
Then, I'm not even done.
It's getting worse.
Then the Russian military spending will exceed the economy's ability to support it because it'll be bogged down in Ukraine.
They'll have to keep their military big.
And just like Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union, once again Putin will destroy Russia because the military will suck up whatever is left of the economy that will be shrinking until the whole thing just collapses, just like the Soviet Union did.
And at that point, China, which basically would own Russia by then, would install a puppet regime.
Yes, I'm saying it.
The next leader of Russia is likely to be a Chinese puppet.
And because by then, Russia's economy would be so feeble that Chinese money could bribe anybody in Russia.
Do you see how that works?
As the Russian economy shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, and China gets bigger and bigger itself, but also is more and more of their only customer, China's money, and then their friendly connections to them, allows China to directly bribe literally everybody that matters in Russia over time.
And then they just install a puppet.
So after Putin is a puppet.
It's a Chinese puppet.
But it will be a puppet over a country that is barely there.
I don't even know if the United States will be less safe.
It's hard to say. And then Russia itself would become irrelevant over time because the only thing they had going for them was their military that China would largely control at that point.
And their energy, which was dirty energy and green energy and other suppliers, would be filling the gap by then.
So Russia would continue to just become irrelevant.
And then Putin would be remembered as the second Russian leader to destroy Russia.
By prioritizing the military over the economy.
The destruction of the Soviet Union was the prioritization of the military over the economy.
Putin's doing the same thing.
And when he does the same thing, everybody who is a historian is going to say, well, you should have seen that coming.
If you prioritize your military over your economy, you're screwed.
Did China do that?
Did you see China prioritize their military over their economy?
I don't think you did, did you?
I feel like China actually has a smallish military compared to what they could do if they wanted to go, you know, just full military.
Right? So it seems to me that China got it exactly right.
It seems like Europe is getting it exactly right, relying on U.S. firepower to a large extent.
But it looks like Russia is making the same damn mistake that the Soviet Union made, prioritizing military because we must conquer countries and strength is what matters.
Looks like that's what happened.
And so Putin is looking at the worst possible outcome for him, I think.
Now, I guess Putin has offered four conditions for ending the war.
Do we think he's serious?
Help me with the four conditions, because I'm going by memory.
Ukraine and everybody else, I guess, has to recognize that Crimea is part of Russia, which it effectively is.
We have to agree that the two independent regions are independent, I guess.
And then Ukraine has to put into its constitution...
No NATO involvement ever.
And was there a...
Oh, and then the Ukrainian army had to stop fighting.
And Putin says if you just do those four things, which on paper sound almost reasonable, almost, if you just do those four things, we'll stop fighting immediately.
Now... And demilitarized, I guess.
But that doesn't sound serious at all to me.
Does it sound serious to you?
Because, first of all, all he has to do is say the Ukrainians are continuing to fire at us.
That's it. It's exactly the same thing he says all the time.
His most common lie is you're shooting at us first.
Why would that change?
It worked every time he's used it.
If there's something that works every time you use it...
Why would you expect them to stop using it?
So if one of the conditions is we, Russia, have to claim that the other side stopped shooting at us, that's never going to happen.
How long would it take Ukraine to change their constitution while their country is at war?
Probably can't be done.
So he's asking for something that sounds easy.
Hey, just put that NATO thing in there.
Probably can't be done.
Like physically, timing-wise, just couldn't be done in the time that it would affect the war.
And then the giving recognition to Crimea and the other thing really don't change much.
Those two just sound like...
I think those are the fake ones.
Because you say to yourself, wait a minute, Russia's asking for two things that you really understand.
They want control over those regions.
And then they could credibly say...
All we did was denazify it.
I mean, that's not what they were doing.
But they could credibly say, all we wanted was these regions.
And then they would just keep consolidating Ukraine over time any way they wanted.
So that's a non-starter.
All right. Here's my promise to you.
I am going to change some of your lives.
I'm going to change one person's life in particular.
You want to play along?
Help me change one person's life in particular.
And in so doing, it will help other people in their lives.
I was looking through Twitter and I came across a Twitter thread by a gentleman I don't know anything about.
He goes by the name Gurwinder.
And I'm going to recommend him as your follow.
I'm going to tell you one of the things that he put in a 40-point thread.
And in his thread, he claimed this.
He said, in 40 tweets, I'll explain 40 useful concepts you should know.
It'll take you less than 7 minutes, and he said the value would be potentially a lifetime.
Do you think he delivered?
Now, remember, I don't know anything about him.
Right? But do you think he delivered on this claim 40 tweets...
And he would teach you 40 useful concepts that basically would have potential change your life for a lifetime.
He actually did. He actually delivered it.
Now, I'll tell you the actual name to follow in a moment.
But I'm not going to read the thread to you.
I'm just going to tell you that I looked through it and I said to myself...
And I said to myself, it does look like this is useful stuff.
And I'll give you one example which ties to this.
First of all, the individual, if you do a search on Twitter, search for a G-U-R winder, G-U-R-W-I-N-D-E-R, which I will point to with my back scratcher.
G-U-R-W-I-N-D-E-R. Or at G underscore S underscore B-H-O-G-A-L. All right, so his life we're going to change because we're going to send him a lot of followers.
Now, the reason I'm sending him a lot of followers is that I looked through some of his other tweets, and they're actually...
Really good and useful.
Here's one example.
And I would say that I recognize most of the things he was teaching, but you could get a good idea how good your awareness of the world is by how many of the 40 things you've already heard of.
If you haven't heard of all 40...
Maybe you should. Alright, here's one of the claims.
The more notable the data, the more likely it is fake.
That's what I introduced early in the live stream.
I've talked about this before.
Scott Alexander, that's a pen name, not a real person, introduced this the first time I ever saw it.
It has to do with the fact that ordinary stuff, it doesn't make news.
So something has to be incredible Such as, how about the Russian army will give you a corridor for the women and children to escape, but then they're going to bomb and mine the corridor.
That would be pretty shocking if it were true.
And so, we don't know if it's true.
By the way, it could be true.
But it's probably a 90% chance against it.
Because of this rule. If you don't understand that the more fantastic the news, the less likely it's true, you will go through life being just...
Your head will be on fire because you'll think the news is true.
It's not! But because the news likes the click model, whatever gets the most attention gets the most money, that leads to a point where eventually all news will be fake.
Not really all news, but you know what I mean.
The political news, the political news will trend toward either completely fake or at least out of context.
It has to because of these effects.
That the more notable stuff is usually fake.
That's the stuff that pays.
So in the long run, there's just no way to avoid this.
In the long run, all the news has to be fake about political stuff.
And also maybe scientific stuff, if it has a political element to it.
How do I know this is true?
Well, the Gelman amnesia concept confirms that this has already happened.
You've heard it a million times, but I'll tell it to you again.
Did I spell it wrong? Two L's in Gel.
I almost looked that up before I put it here.
I knew one of you would correct me.
Is there two N's? But whatever it is, however many L's and N's there are, the Gelman amnesia states that if it's a topic that you're an expert upon, you'll know that the news is fake.
For example, I'm an expert on Dilbert things.
Dilbert things. And so when I heard that Russia gave a corridor for escape and then bombed it, I said to myself, maybe, maybe, but in all my Dilbert expertise, that sounds exactly like somebody who's just not communicating with their own team, which is just the most normal thing in the world.
Doesn't mean I'm right, but it does give you an extra vision into things, statistically speaking.
And so, this would be one of the concepts that you'll see in this 40-tweet thing.
You can go follow Gurwinder, or you can follow...
If you follow me, you can see his tweet in my thread.
So here's what I'm going to say to you.
I believe that he came through with his promise.
I believe that in seven minutes...
And I'm going to...
For the people who subscribe on Locals...
You should treat this as just a given.
You should go read this.
You know, I teach all these micro-lessons on the subscription platform on Locals, and what I do is a little video lesson where you can learn a life skill in two or three minutes.
But Gerwinder did this with 40 things that you can learn in seven minutes, so he topped me, and I thought I was doing pretty good.
But he definitely topped me.
Now, you've seen long threads, And sometimes they're fun.
But this is actually the most useful one I think you'll ever see.
So, the first life we're going to change is the gentleman I've been talking about who deserves more followers, because if you can boost his signal, it will help useful messages such as his last thread get to more people, and you can see from his Twitter feed that he has lots of useful stuff.
So... I also saw some interesting data that at any given night, fewer than 1% of people watch the news, like the TV news, and that if you were to find out how many people in the general public are following any of this stuff, it's almost nobody.
We're living in the smallest bubble, all of you and I. Only 25% of people tweet or have Twitter.
I think it's 25%.
Yeah.
And I think people are also realizing that the news isn't real.
If there's one thing that would stop you following the news, it's the realization that it's not real anyway.
So you have to wonder what your net gain is.
Now, in my case...
Since what I talk about is fake news, for me it's a target-rich environment, but I'm not sure why other people watch the news.
How is the news media still in business?
I just explained it.
The news media is still in business because people really get a dopamine hit reading fake stories.
If it gets you going, it gives you a little treat, a little...
Little reward. You're going to do more of it.
So that's all it takes. You've been trained like a chicken working for pellets.
That's it. That's the whole news business now is chicken and pellet.
Let me explain the entire media model.
Chicken, pellet.
That's it. Yeah, Tucker has 4 million viewers and land with over 300 million.
Well... I will quibble with your number.
Yes, there are 300...
Well, 370 million or whatever.
But if you take out the kids and you take out the people, you know, who are, like, in comas and people who don't speak English and, you know, you can whittle that down quite a bit.
And then you limit it to people who pay attention and form opinions for the other people.
It turns out that I don't think there are more than...
Let's see if you agree with this.
I don't think there are more than 100,000 people who make all of our decisions.
What do you think? Now, it might be a different 100,000, depending on what the topic is, but largely the same ones.
The overlap is mostly the same ones.
And here's why. Most people are repeaters of opinions.
They're not people who formed an opinion because they did their own work.
So that 100,000 are all the influential people who did the work.
And so, you know, the few who did a lot of work, you know, the Glenn Beck's and the Hannity's and the Rachel Maddow's and Chris Hayes and everybody else.
So the people who did the deep dives...
Inform the 100,000.
And then the 100,000 become like evangelists, in a sense, because they're the ones who really, really have opinions.
So you go to a party, and there are five of you there, and four of you never heard of the topic, but one of you, like, really paid attention.
And that person influences the other four, because they're like, well, I heard that one thing.
You know, this guy said that one thing that sounded pretty good to me.
I didn't hear the other argument, but it sounded good.
My neighbor said it. So I think it's 100,000 people that affect everything.
Which means, if I ever got to a million viewers on this platform, I would probably...
You would see my influence just everywhere, probably.
So it's a good thing I don't.
I do have 100,000 subscribers, but not 100,000 viewers daily.
All right. That's all I've got for now.
Would you agree... That I have changed many of yours lives, and one person in particular.
Have I satisfied my claim?
Yes or no? Of course I did.
Of course I did. The people on Locals are happier, are more generous.
The people on YouTube.
You should see the difference.
Yeah, well, okay, some of you on YouTube are being more generous, and I appreciate you.
