Episode 1703 Scott Adams: Elon Musk Buys 10% of Twitter, Everything Is Going To Get Interesting Now
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The evolving Hunter's laptop narrative
56% have negative view of VP Harris
Do slippery slopes predict?
Ukraine War Update
Elon Musk purchased 9% of Twitter
Thoughts on Truth Social App
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And can we take a moment to just delight in the beauty of my shirt?
Now, it's just a t-shirt, I know.
But sometimes when you get exactly the right color...
That fits your eyes?
Well, you know, that just tells you it's all going to work today.
And believe it or not, not only is this a peak day for me, with my good shirt and everything, but you too.
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And it's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you begin with a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask.
What kind of vessel? Any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
Turn on that dopamine faucet.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now, all over the world.
Go. Now, if you're watching this live in a different time zone, just wait an hour.
Oh, no, it doesn't work like that.
All right, well, there are some things happening today you might want me to mention.
Somebody thinks my cup is empty.
Does anybody want to audit my coffee cup?
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You called for an audit? Here it is.
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We will adjust our cameras for auditing.
It's coffee.
It's the real stuff.
Oh, it's a little watered down.
Ah.
What you're seeing now is...
One of my broadcasting tricks, I have to put a towel on my desk, otherwise the lavalier things will be clacking around.
Yes, that's a little bit behind the scenes.
If you're listening to this on a podcast, you're saying, can you please change the subject from your shirt and your desk towel?
Because those things I cannot see when I'm listening.
Now, I've told you before, the way you should listen to this live stream is not like others.
So you're not a passive participant.
You're in a conversation with somebody who won't stop talking, but that's okay, because you have things to think about and do anyway.
You're working out.
You don't need to be part of the conversation.
You can just listen to me babble.
Let's talk about Biden and the laptop.
Have I ever told you the story about the cat is on the roof?
Yes, I have. I'm not going to repeat it.
But the idea is that you say the cat is on the roof to soften the blow because you know the cat's already dead.
So you say, well, it's on the roof.
And then the next day you say, well, it fell off the roof.
We're seeing how it is.
And then you sort of slowly break somebody into bad news.
So that's called the cat is on the roof.
Let's talk about Biden and the laptop story.
That started out with, laptop?
I don't even know what you're talking about.
What laptop?
Haven't even heard about such a thing.
And that turned into, oh, that laptop.
Well, you're talking about the laptop that's the Russian disinformation.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there is a laptop.
It turns out there's a laptop.
It's a Russian disinformation laptop.
That's what it is. Okay, it's a real laptop.
It's not so... Maybe it's not so much Russian...
Completely real.
The laptop is.
I don't know about the contents, but that laptop is real.
That belonged to Hunter...
Okay, the emails are real.
Yeah, obviously they're real because they can be...
Lots of them have been validated.
So, yes, they're real emails.
But the thing you have to understand...
Is that there's no kind of crime suggested there.
Well, okay, there's plenty of crime suggested there in the emails themselves, if you were to read them.
Plenty. But the important thing is, as of today, that they only involve potentially Hunter Biden and maybe Joe Biden's brother, but there's nothing on there that would implicate the big guy.
Oh wait, the big guy.
The big guy is actually Joe Biden, who is actually implicated on the emails.
Alright, so the laptop is real, and the emails are real, and they do implicate President Biden, but I'm sure he's implicated in nothing that's going to matter.
And by the way, have I mentioned, he hasn't been convicted of anything.
That's right. Sure.
It's a real laptop, and it's real emails, and it really does implicate Hunter, and it really does implicate Hunter's uncle.
And it does mention Joe Biden in the very same plots for which those others are implicated.
But it's nothing to worry about because he hasn't been indicted.
No court has ruled that Biden has done anything wrong, am I right?
Am I right? I mean, let's be honest.
No court has ruled that Biden has done anything wrong.
Yet. That's how CNN handles any good news about Trump.
Whenever they talk about Trump's so-called legal problems, and they say, well, Trump hasn't been found guilty of any of those legal problems yet.
They always throw in the yet.
So Joe Biden is completely clear of all legal problems related to the laptop, and he has not been indicted.
Yet! All right.
And there's a great article in The Hill by Jonathan Turley who is pointing out how the narrative has changed from, you know, that's not a real laptop to, yeah, it's real, but...
But it's not really so much a problem.
All right. And even the Washington Post now, you know, everybody's sort of trying to get ahead of the story a little bit.
So it does look as if they're going to clip the cord and let Hunter and maybe Joe Biden's brother let them dangle so they can save Biden long enough to get something good going.
Do you have any idea what the hell the Democrats are planning?
I mean, seriously, what do those meetings sound like?
I mean, that's the oddest question.
You know, whoever is the, you know, we imagine to be the big powers in the Democratic Party, what exactly do those meetings look like now?
Do they say, I think we can ride this Joe Biden thing out?
All right, it looks bad now.
But trust me, it's going to be a Putin situation.
Yeah, it looks bad at the moment, but he's going to ride it out.
It'll be fine. Does anybody say that?
Is there anybody on the side of, let's just ride this out?
I think we can get through four years and maybe even get another Democrat elected?
Probably not, right?
So if they're talking about not that, what are they talking about?
Is there anybody who's saying, you know, I think what would really work...
Why don't we replace Biden with the least capable and least popular vice president of all time?
Well, I don't know if that's true, but let's just say she's not among the top.
I don't know. Maybe Dan Quayle was worse.
Somebody would have to give me a fact check on that.
Speaking of Kamala Harris, Rasmussen has a poll.
About Kamala Harris' popularity, and 56% say they have an unfavorable view of some kind.
Only 40% have a favorable view.
And 54% of the voting public in the United States believes that the vice president of the United States is unqualified to be president.
Wait. Isn't that the one thing we should all feel fairly comfortable with?
Now, I completely get the idea...
That you wouldn't like the politics of the vice president.
So you might say, oh, that's not the politics I would want in office.
But did we really?
Really? Really?
Did we just elect a president who is 1,000 years old with a package with a vice president that 54% don't even think she can handle the basics of the job?
Like she'd get lost commuting or something.
They'd have to remind her what her job is every day or something.
I don't know. You're right, commenter.
I do look good in this color blue shirt.
See? It wasn't just me.
It's a fact. So seriously, what the hell are the Democrats saying?
I mean, honestly, this is just a completely legitimate question.
What do they say privately to each other?
Do they just say, well, we're just screwed, we're going to have to shake the box and live with some Republicans for four to six years?
Or are they saying, we can't change our minds in public, but we need the Republicans to save the country?
Like, are there any Democrats who don't want to publicly change their opinion of anything, but privately they're thinking, I really hope we lose this time because the winning isn't working out.
Do you remember when Trump said that we'd get tired of winning?
I'll bet you thought he was talking about Republicans, didn't you?
Do you know who's tired of winning?
I'll bet the Democrats are pretty tired of winning right now.
Because they won that whole presidential thing.
They got the Congress.
Winning. Winning.
It's looking good. Everybody?
Do you think they're tired of all the winning?
I think they're tired of winning and they'd like to lose one for a change.
Am I right? Honest to God, I think Democrats are hoping to lose.
Some of them. I mean, everybody's individual, but don't you think there are some Democrats saying, I hope we lose this next one?
Some? All right.
And then the news is also about the news, as it often is.
The news is about the news.
Oh, and let me ask you this.
I did a little poll on Twitter, and I said, which of these two incidents...
Seem more indicative of a crime committed by a president.
So which situation involves the most evidence, so it's the most evidence, of a U.S. president involved in a crime?
Is there more evidence about Joe Biden and the laptop situation?
Or is there more evidence that President Trump did something illegal relative to January 6th?
Which one has currently, so we're not talking about where it might go, because anything might happen, but at the moment, is there more solid public information of crime on the laptop or the January 6th event?
Can anybody correct me if I'm wrong?
So far there's zero evidence of a Trump crime.
Am I wrong?
Because, you know, you always worry that you're in your own news bubble.
But if there's anybody who's seen outside the bubble, I'm not sure if I do, I read CNN every day.
And I haven't seen anybody.
I do sample MSNBC and CNN. I sample Axios all the time.
I don't remember seeing any of them saying there's a specific crime, even alleged.
Am I right? Is there even an allegation of a crime?
Well, there's an allegation that something happened, but not based on any specific fact pattern, right?
I don't believe there's an allegation of a fact that would support the idea that Trump committed a crime.
Am I wrong?
And I'm making a weird distinction between an allegation of a crime, which does exist, because every side blames the other of a crime, which means nothing in politics, right?
So it doesn't mean anything that you say the other side is a criminal.
But if you have a specific fact that, if it were true, would pretty much say that somebody did something bad...
I don't know.
All right, now... So a lot of you were pretty confident in my poll.
This reflects my audience.
It doesn't really reflect reality.
But 94% said that...
Wait.
I think I may have this backwards.
I think most people said the laptop was the one that looked like a serious crime.
And let me ask you this.
What crime does the laptop suggest?
Can you name one?
What would be the crime, the actual crime, that Joe Biden would be guilty of if all of it were true?
Let's say the worst allegations based on your, really, speculation at this point.
I don't think we have enough from the emails to know 100% of anything, but it looks like a 95% likelihood.
Yeah, I mean, I'm seeing lots of suggested possible crimes, but I'm not sure that there really is one.
Because I think it's completely legal, isn't it?
Isn't influence peddling completely legal?
Now, there's the furrow thing, right?
But nobody ever gets convicted of that.
I don't know. It seems to me that you've got this slight lobbying problem, the foreign lobbying thing, but almost nobody goes to jail for that because it's so common.
Is that the worst?
Is that it? That's the worst?
Yeah. I know.
So you have to be careful of the fact that you think your team didn't commit any crimes, but the other team did.
The most likely outcome is that nobody did.
Because everybody accuses everybody of a crime in the political context.
Have you heard the phone calls yet?
Phone calls of who to what?
So probably no, because I don't know what that question is.
All right. What do you think about slippery slopes?
I'm going to see if I can add something to this.
I always talk about it, and you're sick of it.
Do you think that you can identify a slippery slope and then use that idea to predict the future?
It's like, oh, this just started.
It's a slippery slope, so it's just going to slide in that direction.
How many think those slippery slopes predict?
All right, now, as far as I know, there's no science to back your opinion or anybody else's about whether they predict.
But let's walk through this a little bit.
Now, would you say that a straight-line prediction is a slippery slope?
In other words, let's say climate change says that...
We're going to keep going in the direction of more and more CO2 and the climate will warm.
How often is a prediction that says things will keep going the way they're going?
How often is that right?
Well, it depends what your time frame is, right?
If your time frame is really short, then it's usually right.
Things usually go tomorrow, literally tomorrow, like 24 hours from today.
Things usually are the same as they were yesterday-ish.
But if you go out 100 years, it's almost never the same.
So it has to do with your timeline.
So when you say there's a slippery slope, what are you leaving out?
For how long, right?
If it's a slippery slope between today and tomorrow, I'm going to say, yeah, you know, probably if somebody did something today and it worked out, they might do a little more tomorrow.
That is correct.
But if you said, is this a slippery slope for 10 years?
I'd say, well, first of all, it depends on the topic, I suppose.
Is it something that changes quickly or doesn't?
But probably 10 years, you can't predict anything.
Do you know who says that?
Everybody. Nobody disagrees with that.
There's nobody in the world who predicts anything about anything who believes that anybody can predict 10 years in the future.
That's not a thing. So if there's no predicting of 10 years, this slippery slope...
Probably has at least a limit in terms of time, would you not say?
So my view is even more harsh on the slippery slope.
I believe that people start with a conclusion and they reason backwards.
And the reason I think that is because that's the only way we think.
It's not special to this topic.
And unfortunately, it's something that hypnotists learn on day one, that people think backwards.
We decide and then we reason backwards to why we decided.
We don't think of reasons and then decide.
That's purely an illusion.
There are probably some exceptions.
Like in the scientific process, for example.
But the way you normally just navigate your life is you make decisions and then you come up with some bullshit idea of why you did it.
Yeah, it's totally against my philosophy for my entire life, but the reason I did it this time is because I had a bed cold and I wasn't thinking straight.
We just have dumb reasons for everything we do.
So here's what I think the slippery slope is.
It's a backwards rationalization.
We just say to ourselves, uh-oh, I'm afraid that X will happen.
And now I need a reason to support why I'm afraid of something irrationally.
Uh-oh, there's a slippery slope.
There we go. I've reasoned backwards that the thing I'm irrationally afraid of has some kind of logical path to it, and I'll call it a slippery slope.
Isn't Slippery Slope thinking past the sail?
Let me think about that.
Yeah, I guess it is.
Good point. If you say something's a slippery slope, you're making people argue about how slippery it is and not whether it's going to happen at all.
Yeah, in a sense, I guess it is.
Not as direct as most things.
Um... I'm being asked, will Russians continue to love Putin?
Let's change the topic.
And I say, the Putin situation is a perfect example of the difference between wanting something and deciding.
And I talk about that distinction in terms of personal growth and success.
Wanting success doesn't give you much of anything.
But deciding to get it probably gives you everything.
And until you learn that distinction, it's hard to get off the couch.
Sitting around wanting things buys you just about nothing.
But deciding you're going to do it means that you're going to eat whatever...
Garbage, you have to.
You're going to take as little sleep, endure as much pain.
You've just decided, right?
For example, I didn't want to go to college.
I didn't want to go.
I frickin' decided.
Sure, there were obstacles and reasons to drop out at different points.
But I decided.
So once you decide, it just simplifies everything.
This is really going to hurt if you keep doing this.
Yep. Yes, it is.
If you do this, there's a risk you'll die.
Yes, there is. A decision just simplifies everything.
And the question about Russia comes down to, has Putin decided, or does he just want whatever it is he wants that we're not exactly sure about?
Does he want it, or has he decided?
Because if he's decided, well, then he'll get it.
Because he'll get it at any cost.
And he certainly seems to be in the realm of somebody who could absorb large costs and make it work for him, at least.
And maybe even make it work for Russia.
I hate to say it, but he may be sacrificing a lot in the short run for what could turn out to be like the You know, like some kind of Thomas Jefferson land deal, you know, Louisiana Purchase.
You know, when we look at it 100 years from now, you might be looking at this big, prosperous Russia that Putin built, and you forget about how brutal he was, and you say, well, he sure was successful, sort of like you do with Genghis Khan.
Like when we talk about, you know, is it Genghis or Genghis?
Genghis Khan. We sort of talk about how awesome he was, right?
How much territory he conquered and how many children he sired through his many concubines and whatever.
We don't really talk about how amazingly awful he was, like beyond probably anything we can imagine.
And Putin could have the same thing.
So if Putin has decided, I'm pretty sure he'll survive...
And he'll end up with more territory.
And somebody says it's Genghis or Chinggis.
I don't know. Maybe.
Yeah. So if I had to guess, and let's do the armchair thing where we try to imagine that we know what's in Putin's head.
You know, good luck with that.
If I had to guess, I think he's decided.
What do you think?
Has Putin decided to take Ukraine, or does he just want it, which would suggest he'll take something or less than what he wants?
Looking at your...
I think it's going to be mostly yeses.
All right. Looping back to the slippery slope.
I mean, the slippery slope isn't everything, right?
If Putin takes Ukraine, it's a slippery slope until he takes the Balkans.
Am I right? That's the argument, is that if he can get away with it, why wouldn't he keep going?
So here is my counter to the slippery slope, besides the fact that it's backwards thinking.
There's a better frame.
Even if you imagine that the slippery slope is telling you something and it is predictive, and let's say for the moment that I'll acknowledge that, I think in some cases it's kind of predictive.
Just not all of them.
So let me just say, yeah, there could be a domino effect or follow the leader or it gets into people's minds, etc.
But here's the better frame.
Follow the money.
That's it. If you have two frames that both predict...
But one does a 60% of the time good prediction, which would be very useful.
If you had a way to predict the future that was right 60% of the time, I think you'd become a billionaire, right?
I mean, if you could do that...
I don't know that anybody could do that.
Has anybody ever predicted the future 60% of the time accurately?
I don't know. That'd be a lot.
But if you have a different frame that could do way better than that, which is follow the money...
I assert that follow the money works 80% of the time.
And that the 20% you don't know about usually is because there's a time lag.
So follow the money is still going to work, it just hasn't worked yet, right?
Like there might be an intermediate step that looks like it's not working, but it's going to work.
If you just wait, follow the money works basically 80% of the time.
Maybe all the time. So that's my argument against the slippery slope.
It's just not as good as other arguments, even if it kind of works.
Or other frames.
All right. What do you think about the question of whether Russia is winning or losing, or Ukraine is winning or losing?
Based on the propaganda that you've seen, is Russia winning or...
Tell me who's winning, Russia or Ukraine.
Who's winning? Now, this is just based on what you see in the news, because you're not there.
All right, so there are two frames while you're watching your answers there.
One frame is that the plucky Ukrainians have driven the Russians away from Kiev, which certainly had to be their main objective.
And since the main objective...
Of taking over the capital and getting Zelensky seems to be pushed away.
That would suggest that Russia is losing.
And maybe they're trying to just hold on to the territories that they already have.
So that's one narrative.
The other narrative is that military always tries to, quote, shape the battlefield.
This is sort of the Scott Ritter narrative.
And an army that shapes the battlefield would do things such as try to distract the other army, try to make them think that your motive is over here, but it's really over there, trying to bog down their military, trying to basically change the landscape by inserting variables that just make things difficult for the other team.
Yeah, I'm seeing in the comments that shaping is military doctrine.
Apparently it's just ordinary military way.
So the more ordinary way to look at what Russia is doing is that by threatening Kiev, which would have been too expensive to take...
Which we all thought was the case, right?
Or at least a lot of us did.
That taking Kiev would be such a bloodbath that there's no way that Putin could do it and make everything work.
I mean, it would just be too much.
So instead, it looks like what they may have done, and we don't know, but it looks like what they may have done, okay, Kiev, whatever you want to call it, what they may have done, Is surround Kiev in order to keep the Ukrainians busy there so that they could consolidate things in the south and the east.
And then once they were done there, they would consolidate their armies and then, you know, really...
Completely own the parts that they already control, and then move toward taking whatever else they need.
So they could basically force Keeve to submit without directly attacking it, which would be the best way to do it.
Now, suppose you said to yourself, All these military experts in Russia, they've heard of this, right?
It's not like you and I are making up military doctrine.
It seems like it's fairly standard stuff.
So this would be supportive of the theory that if Putin has decided to take Ukraine, he always had a long-term...
That he always had a long-term view of it.
And that the idea that he could take Kiev, the capital, the idea that he could take that in 48 hours might have been Russian disinformation.
Maybe Russia is the one who started the idea that they could take over in two days so that everybody was looking for the blitzkrieg that wasn't going to work.
But they never planned to do that in any way.
They always planned to do it the slow, slow way.
Now, I saw an estimate on Twitter that I don't believe, that only 1,000 non-military people have died in Ukraine.
I'm talking about just the citizens, the population.
That's not right, is it?
Only 1,000 casualties among non-military people in Ukraine?
We're not talking about the Russian side.
Yeah, that doesn't sound right.
But what if it is?
What if it is right? Are you sure?
I don't know if there's any way to know at this point, right?
Yeah, I mean, let's put in the obligatory a thousand is too many.
You know, it's a tragedy.
All right, now let's talk about the...
How many of you saw the clips of what looked like massive war crimes in, what was it, Bukha or Bucha or something?
That one town that the Russians have left, and you saw video that we have not verified...
We meaning anybody. Unverified video of what looked like handcuffed prisoners who had been executed and dumped all over the road.
How many of you believe that that was a real video and not propaganda?
And how many of you had an initial reaction which morphed a little bit as you heard other people weigh in?
Now, what I've been doing recently, and I'm not sure that I'm doing a good service here, is that when I see one of these videos that looks to me like it's at least possible or even probable propaganda, if it's being promoted by any kind of legitimate source, I'll usually start out by just tweeting it or retweeting it.
Because it's news, which is not endorsing it necessarily.
But... After sort of digesting things for a few hours, sometimes maybe the next day, I'll tell myself, you know, I'm not sure that we have sources for any of that.
That would be easy to fake, and everything else is fake, so why would you believe this?
And so slowly I kind of talk myself out of everything that's my first reaction.
So my first reaction was probably like everybody else's, which was, oh my God, that looks like the worst war crime we've seen since World War II. I doubt it's the worst one, but in terms of our consciousness, it feels like that.
And then what happened was a number of voices on Twitter, in particular, started doubting the accuracy of that video.
And a number of people pointed out incongruencies.
I don't know if those were true.
I'm not even sure if they, I don't know if the critics were accurate in what they pointed out either.
But you saw the narrative sort to give up, didn't you?
I feel as if the media did say they couldn't verify it, but they still ran it and made you think it was real.
As war propaganda, it probably worked really well.
So whether it was real or not, I mean, it was packaged as propaganda by the Ukrainians.
So here's what is interesting.
So the narrative comes out in the fog of war that there's this gigantic war crime.
It's very suspicious because of the source and the situation.
I believe that the wave of belief was turned back by what I call the internet dads.
Now... To be a little less sexist, I'm not saying it's all male, okay?
And I'm not saying it's people who have, you know, children.
I'm using just a general phrase here.
So, the internet dads, to include internet moms and, you know, everybody else.
But there are, yeah, you could call it the adults in the room, but people have been calling it the dads, so I'll just use that.
Yeah, Mike Cernovich, I would say chief among that group.
And that group has enough influence now that I feel that the major media had to pay attention, that the internet dads, people with credibility and big followings, were saying it looked like bullshit to them.
Have any of you watched it closely enough to feel like that's what happened?
Or was it going to happen anyway?
Because I feel like...
I feel as though the balance of power is really starting to change.
And at the same time that this other force is sort of developing, I'll call them independent voices, You know, they're podcasters, they're tweeters, they're people with big audiences.
I feel like the counterbalance was really productive this time.
Don't you? Did you see the same thing I saw?
Now, in the context of the internet dads balancing out the major media, what's the biggest obstacle that the internet dads have working against them?
In the comments, see if you can get ahead of me here.
What's the biggest limiter or limitation that the Internet dads have?
Possibly the algorithm, right?
I don't want to say censorship, because if you say censorship, it reads intention into something that's not demonstrated to have intention yet.
It has effect on I mean, we can see what we think is the effect, as alleged effect, I guess.
So in the context where we worry that the only thing limiting the sensible counter-voices to the unsensible news, Elon Musk just bought the biggest share of Twitter that anybody owns, including Jack Dorsey.
It's like several times more shares than Jack Dorsey currently owns.
Elon Musk, who was asking about censorship and about the big platforms and asked if he should start one, put his money where his mouth is, bought 9.2% of Twitter this morning-ish, and now he's the largest shareholder.
I should give you a disclosure here.
I do own Twitter stock, and I do own Tesla stock.
And I tried to sign up for Truth Social, but I couldn't get in.
And there's a related story to all these stories that Truth Social, I think they lost one of their people who was managing that thing.
And it doesn't look as though the launch was successful.
So far. Alright, it looks like it's late and it's not on Android and it's not on a web browser yet.
So it doesn't look like it's successful.
And it's not going to help one bit that Elon Musk just bought into Twitter.
Because Truth Social should be a solution to what people believe is censorship.
But if Elon Musk...
Becomes the most influential voice.
And I don't know that that can happen, but we'll see.
If Elon Musk becomes the most influential insider at Twitter, what's the first thing he's likely to do?
What's the first change he's likely to promote, if you had to guess?
And here's the weird part.
Here's my guess.
I think the first change that Elon Musk is going to make, just a guess...
Is Jack Dorsey's plan.
How weird is that?
Because Jack Dorsey's been saying for how many years?
That he thinks the platform should have your choice of algorithms.
So if you just want to see everything, that would just be your choice.
And if you wanted to see it filtered by somebody else's filter, you'd see how they filter, and you'd just choose it.
Now, I always wondered, why is Jack Dorsey...
Saying that the platform should be like that, but I saw nothing coming in on Twitter that was going to do that thing.
Did I miss something?
Like, why was the most important voice at Twitter saying we should do this, but it wasn't happening?
And for years?
Or did it happen and it was in some small way that I didn't notice?
All right. So then Jack Dorsey leaves...
Who knows what the story was behind that, right?
Shareholders, blah, blah, blah, blah, personal reasons, who knows?
But then, Elon Musk comes in.
I can't think of anybody more likely to implement Jack Dorsey's plan.
Maybe Jack Dorsey didn't own enough stock to get it done, right?
Maybe. I mean, if you stay anywhere long enough, you're going to develop competing interests and other shareholders and stuff like that.
So Elon Musk comes in with probably nothing except a social agenda.
I doubt he bought this as a pure investment, right?
Can we all agree with that?
I think we would agree that Elon Musk did not buy Twitter as a pure investment.
Do you know why? I don't think he invests in stuff like that.
It's not really...
I don't think it's his wheelhouse, really.
I think he did it for purely social reasons, and he broadcast it as cleanly as you could broadcast any message.
He asked in public, should I start a social media network?
Do you think that censorship is being handled right, or however he asked it?
So he's being as transparent as anything could ever be.
And then he's probably going to take that same level of transparency that he's taking into this transaction.
I think he'll take it into the product itself.
Because remember what Elon Musk is more than anything?
He's a product guy.
He's the ultimate product guy.
In fact, maybe Steve Jobs, you could say.
But it's hard to think of somebody who's more product-oriented versus marketing, let's say.
In fact, Elon Musk does the product so well that he doesn't need marketing.
He just does it himself, tweeting from the toilet, as I like to say.
And so the only explanation is that he's doing it to make Twitter more transparent, and it would be kind of embarrassing if it works.
Meaning it would be embarrassing to any other platform that doesn't.
But I would not want to be owning Getter or any competitor to Twitter because the only problem Twitter has, in my opinion, is the one thing that Jack Dorsey said it should do and hasn't done yet.
But Elon Musk knows how to make a product work.
And there's one thing that's wrong with Twitter.
It's just broken.
Am I right? It's a product that just has a glaring flaw.
And the guy who fixes glaring flaws, it probably makes him crazy.
Can you imagine being somebody who has the engineering, physics...
You know, product design, knowledge of an Elon Musk, and then looking at this product, Twitter, and seeing it's just massively broken in this most critical way, the transparency of the algorithm and the censorship element.
And knowing you can just fix it.
Just buy the damn thing.
Just fix it. Now, my guess is that he's tiptoeing in and seeing what he can get done with 9.2%.
Probably a lot.
But that's not full control, right?
Now, I would also guess that there will be some large number of other Twitter shareholders likely to throw in, in a proxy sense, behind Elon.
Well, I'm one.
Okay, I'll use myself as an example.
So I own stock in Twitter, and if Elon Musk said, hey, we're going to have this, I don't know, Vote.
I'm going to push for a vote.
Can you make sure that you sign your proxy vote?
If Elon Musk asked me to sign it because he said this is how you fix censorship, I'd sign the fucking thing.
And I never sign those.
I never do that.
Because I always think, I have somebody else to sign it.
They'll get enough people signing their proxy.
I don't have to do it.
I never do it. But given Elon Musk credibility, especially in this specific domain, censorship, I mean, he's very consistent.
And I think most people, almost everybody, would think he's on the right track if he opens up to transparency.
So I think Elon Musk is correct.
In his first assumption, and again, this is all just speculation.
I can't see inside his mind.
As I often say, if I could see inside Elon Musk's mind, I would have started Tesla.
Why would I wait for him to do it?
I would have built myself a rocket ship to Mars if I could do what he could do.
But I can't see inside his mind, and neither can you.
But it seems to me from an outsider's perspective, if you wanted to limit your risk while getting the most leverage, you would buy 9.2% of Twitter.
That's enough to get everybody's attention and say, OK, I'm the lion king of shareholders.
And then just organize the other shareholders.
It's easier to organize the others than to buy their shares.
Because I think he could.
Uniquely, he could. Not many people could do that.
Or who else could, really?
It'd be hard to think of somebody else who could.
All right, so Twitter stock was up like 21% last time I looked.
And as I said, I own both Tesla stock and Twitter stock, so...
So discount everything I say by my bias.
How many of you think that truth social is going to work?
Because it will attract basically nobody on the left who disagrees, right?
And what would be the point of it?
Right?
The reason I'm on Twitter is because that's where the mainstream media is.
That's where all the energy is.
If the mainstream media decides to choke Truth Social, and they will.
I'm not even sure that the right-wing, or I like to say right-leaning, I don't even think the right-leaning press is likely to go big on Truth.
Do you know why? It's competition.
Truth Social is just a news network, just packaged as a social media network.
So if you're in the news business, I'm not so sure you want them to succeed, do you?
So, I don't know how truth will solve the problem of not having enough energy because there's not enough conflict.
If you take out the thing that makes it work, the conflict, why would it work?
All right. Okay.
We have 30 times the followers on Truth Social.
So you think shadow banning is real?
Well, it could have to do with the fact that there's nobody except people who agree with you on there.
Yeah, right. The problem is everyone agrees.
Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen.
That is the amazing, amazing...
Meat of the show.
We're now in bonus territory.
Right? It's bonus territory.
This is the part where you tell me what I forgot to mention.
Yeah, it's the best show ever.
You're right. Stop it.
I'm embarrassed now.
You know, locals, somebody's making a comparison between truth and locals.
So locals, as I'm on the subscription network, that's different because I don't think people are there for the fight.
On locals, I think people are there because there's a...
Usually the sensual person has a point of view that they, you know, enjoy.
It's more of an entertainment, I think.
So when I put material on locals, I think of it as just entertainment.
And also it's the edgy stuff.
So I can put the stuff there.
Now, does anybody know Snoop Dogg?
I'm going to do a Kevin Bacon thing here.
Anybody? Does anybody know Snoop Dogg?
All right. Didn't Carmen Diaz go to high school with him?
And here's why. I want to invite Snoop Dogg to my man cave.
And I want to interview him and see which of us will last the longest, if you know what I mean.
Perfect example of something that I can say more clearly on the Locals platform.
Wink, wink. But here on YouTube, it's a more family-friendly environment.
And let me just say that Snoop Dogg and I could have a conversation and maybe compete, possibly fix all the problems in the world.
And you might say to yourself, what are the odds a Snoop Dogg would come to my garage?
I would say the odds are really, really small.
But it would be amazing, wouldn't it?
Come on, it would be amazing.
So one of the things I'm thinking of doing is doing man cave interviews, but I only want to do it if somebody can come to the man cave.
I don't want to do it remotely.
So there you go. Yeah, you'd watch.
You know you'd watch. Alright, let me ask you this question.
Aside from Snoop Dogg, aside from him, Who would be the most interesting thing I could interview?
And think about not just that it's an interesting person, but somebody that you think I uniquely would be the right person to interview, either because it's entertaining or I'd ask the right questions or something.
So who would be...
You think Trump?
All right, let me tell you something that I could guarantee you.
Here's something I guarantee you.
That me interviewing Trump would be the best Trump interview you ever saw.
I guarantee it.
I guarantee it.
I don't know how I could miss.
I really don't. Because I think everybody does it wrong.
Do you know what they do wrong?
Let's see if you know. How does everybody do it wrong?
And by the way, I'm going to make one exception.
I've seen one person do it exactly right, and I think I could do something in that vein as well.
Yeah, Greg Goffeld.
I think Goffeld did the best job because he humanized him.
You could tell that they just liked each other.
And so he got a little human look out of him.
So I think that's the thing I could do better than...
Better than somebody who does interviews for a living.
Because I think when you do interviews for a living, especially depending on what platform you're on, you're sort of driven toward a certain level of professionalism that I think distracts from a good entertainment.
And that's what Greg Gutfeld gets right.
He never lets the professionalism ruin the job.
You know what I mean? As soon as the professionalism is more important than the product, then the product suffers.
But he does product first, professionalism second.
And that's why he has two shows.
Interview Ben Shapiro.
Yeah, I don't know that me interviewing Ben Shapiro would produce any headlines.
I think I would just agree with what he said.
And then there would be no spark there.
Yeah, Jordan Peterson.
That would be interesting.
And I'm especially interested in his religious interpretations of reason, which I want to look into a little bit.
I want to hear it in his own words because I'm considering that one of the most...
Let's say, unpredictable evolutions that I've seen.
I would not have predicted Jordan Peterson's...
Is it a change?
I don't even know if it's a change, really.
Maybe it's just something we're hearing more about.
But I think it's an evolution, right?
To a more religious frame.
And I'm going to say frame because I think he puts it in...
I think he puts it in terms of living as if it's real.
Is that true? I hate to try to paraphrase other people.
He says he doesn't believe it literally, he likes the utility of it.
Is that it? Because that wouldn't be far from my own view.
My own view is, if you don't know my view on religion, is that personally I'm not a believer, but I'm very pro-religion, because it's just so obvious it works.
I mean, why would I be against something that works?
Now, I don't know that there's any science behind that, but the only studies I've seen are that people have a faith-based view of the world seem to be happier.
Seem to be more prosperous.
Seem to do fewer drugs.
There's something about thinking that somebody's watching you all the time and loves you and is judging you, I guess, that probably has some guardrail effect on your behavior.
And as long as people have a choice, they can enter a religion, they can leave it, which is the beauty of America.
As long as I have a choice, if they're picking a frame that works, that works for me.
Now, in the old days, when I was younger and dumber, I used to say, whatever it is I'm thinking today is right, and all those other people, how dumb could they be?
And the older you get, if you do it right, your humility should increase, not decrease.
So I started out with no humility, meaning I was pretty, pretty sure I had the whole God situation figured out, and other people didn't, and there was something wrong with them.
But the longer you live, you realize that more and more things you thought were clearly true, they just evaporate.
If I could tell you how many things I believed were absolutely true five years ago, And I'm talking about a lifetime of having truths evaporate.
Like every year, something that was true disappears.
Again. I mean, like really big stuff.
I'm talking about really basic things about even who you are.
Like a belief about what happened to you in the last five years.
Just really basic stuff.
And so the longer I live, the more humility I get.
Because everything I think I believe, now I have a little message that says, yeah, yeah, you're pretty sure this time, aren't you?
Do you know how many times you've been sure before?
Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
You do know. You do know.
Don't change the subject, Scott.
You know how many times you were sure before and then found out you were totally wrong.
Do you remember that?
I'm not trying to think about it.
Think about it. Think about it, Scott.
Don't not think about it.
That's how you get cognitive dissonance.
Think about it. So that's something you can do as you get older.
If you do it right, right?
If you do it right, you will remember how many times you were wrong.
And that was one of the motivations behind that book behind you, behind me, where I'm pointing, that I had failed almost everything and still went big.
By cataloging all the things that I'd failed at, it was both a reminder to myself, How many things I was sure about that didn't work out.
But also a way to tell other people that even people for whom life worked out fairly well, that we're wrong all the time.
I mean, the number of times we're certain and wrong is just shocking, no matter how successful you end up.
And that helps people understand that their own certainty is worth questioning.
How sad to take the substance of God out and just embrace the utilitarian aspect.
How sad to take the substance of God out and just embrace the utilitarian aspect.
Well, I don't know.
Is it sad or is it just a frame that works for some people and not for others?
Now, for me, the simulation hypothesis is the most predictive.
So here's another prediction.
There will never be anything true about our reality, whatever you would call this thing, that is not also true for a simulated world.
Meaning that a simulated world would have resource constraints.
It wouldn't have infinite memory.
It would be a bunch of things that would be true for software.
So my prediction is there will never be anything true In our so-called real world that isn't just as true for software.
Because we can never get out of that model.
Very specific prediction.
So we'll see. Somebody says God is utilitarian.
Interview Sam Harris again.
Yeah, you know, I'd love to.
It'll be good. Kanye would be good.
Maybe Kanye would actually do it.
I mean, it would be more of a resource question.
He can't be everywhere and do everything.
All right, that's all I've got for today.
Oh, Bill Maher. Oh, wow.
That would be interesting.
Imagine me having Bill Maher on...
And having a video prepared to debunk the fine people hoax and the bleach drinking hoax.
And just say, just two things I want to talk to you about.
And that's it.
I just want to show you the full video and then show you what you saw...
And I'll tell you, I literally, personally interviewed people who attended the Charlottesville thing and found several of them who claimed that they disavow all racism.
And they were just there about the statues and the historical element of it.
And just see what he says.
Because here's the thing.
The thing that I keep saying about Bill Maher about why he's so dangerous is that he's a shapeshifter.
Well, that sounds negative.
I mean this to be positive. He is capable of entering your bubble and looking around.
Who can do that?
I mean, really, who can do that?
Not many people. It's a really small list of people who can just walk outside their bubble if they choose to.
It's the choosing to.
That is where that little challenge is.
But if they want to, and they have a reason to, and somebody alerts them to a good reason to do it, they have the ability to open their little door and walk out of their little bubble and knock on the other bubble and go inside and see what's happening.
There's only a few people who can do that.
And he's won. So a conversation with him, if I could, you know, invite him into the other bubble just to look around, you know, just to check out the furniture, it would be pretty interesting, wouldn't it?
That would be really interesting.
All right. And if there were anybody I thought I had a shot of getting to the man cave, I would think the odds would be pretty good in his case.
Russell Brand will become more productive with your persuasion frame.
Yeah, you know, Russell Brand is fun, isn't he?
Is it my imagination, or is he also able to...
I think that's the context you're mentioning.
He does seem to be able to check everybody's bubble, doesn't he?
Am I right about that, those of you who have been watching before?
Yeah. Joe Rogan, same thing.
Joe Rogan is bubble-free.
People will try to characterize him in one bubble or the other, but I don't think he sticks.
I think he's bubble-free. Yeah, I think Russell Brand found his exact place.
Don't you? I like him as a stand-up.
I've liked him as an actor.
But when you look at his talent stack...
If you look at his verbal skills...
See, what's the point of doing scripted material when you have his capacity?
Like, that's a complete waste.
And he should be in an unscripted, you know, semi-scripted, bounded but unscripted scenario, and that's what he's doing.
And then he also doesn't have, like, constraints, right?
There's nobody writing lines for him and telling him, do this, more of that.
So he's really the...
Yeah, somebody says, Carl says, Brand's awareness as in MDT mushrooms is off the chart.
That is correct.
He is off the chart. So, now he'd be an example of somebody that I don't know if he and I would have any reason to talk.
Because we'd end up just agreeing, I think.
Chris Rock. Yeah.
He'd be the hardest interview in the world.
Matt Damon. Why Matt Damon?
I like Matt Damon, but why?
Dave Chappelle. Oh, that'd be interesting.
I don't think I could get him to come.
Well, I probably couldn't get anybody to come, but...
All right, that's all for now.
And I will talk to you on YouTube tomorrow.
Oh, and before I go...
I don't know if anybody's noticed this, but Madonna has slowly evolved into Jar Jar Binks, and I didn't want to be the first one to mention it, but it's important.
