Episode 1704 Scott Adams: What Elon Musk Will Do At Twitter, Russian Atrocities, And Other Stuff
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Content:
Michael Shellenberger has done his homework
Biden wants Putin tried as a war criminal?
Name a war without war crimes
Elon Musk and Twitter
Jon Stewart on systemic racism
A dog at the dog park
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One moment. It looks like my printer might work after all.
Hold on.
This will be exciting.
Well, I have to tell you that like a technical stud that I am, I changed my mesh network yesterday, I changed my mesh network yesterday, which means that all my devices don't know what my network is.
but they're learning. So, today we'll be going for the backup plan, but not until the simultaneous sip.
And all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a gel, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's called the dopamine the other day, and it's called the simultaneous sip.
It's going to happen now. Go.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Let's take a vote.
How many of you would like to see me raise my printer above my head and throw it vigorously onto the ground on the tile floor, breaking into a million shards, which I will then have to walk through with my bare feet?
No? I'm seeing lots of no's.
This actually tells a lot about my audience.
Half of you want me to destroy an expensive piece of equipment in front of your eyes, and half of you say, no, we don't want to start the morning that way.
Well, let's see.
Let's leave it to fate.
Oh, good. My backup plan actually works, so the printer has one more chance.
Now, I'm not going to blame the printer this time, because it could be user error.
Normally, you have to teach the technology how to behave, because that really sets the lesson for the other technology.
You know, a lot of you believe that if you break one piece of technology in front of the other devices, it has no effect.
Because you think to yourself, well, those other devices, they're not as sentient.
They have no idea that you've just destroyed another piece of equipment.
How is that going to affect them?
Well, you don't understand how the simulation works.
The simulation will rewrite itself if you make it.
All right. Here's a story that I think is interesting.
So Michael Schellenberger, as you know, is running for governor.
And interestingly, he's running as an independent.
Now, the first thing you should say to yourself is, independents never win.
Am I right? I mean, they have, Jesse Ventura.
But it's very unusual. Now, have you ever noticed that there's a theme or a commonality to independent candidates?
What is it that independent candidates generally have in common with each other?
In the comments, what do you know?
What do they usually have in common with each other?
They're not very good candidates.
Can you tell me one, give me an example of one independent candidate who had the full stack?
Well, Jesse Ventura came pretty close, and he got elected.
And, yeah, Trump.
Well, you could say that Trump was sort of an outlier.
So here's the pattern you should look at.
If you're looking at the pattern that independents don't win, that's the wrong pattern.
The pattern you should look at is that good candidates always win.
That's the pattern. The best candidate almost always wins.
Or at least they're, you know, knack and knack.
They might lose by 1%.
But the best candidate doesn't come in last.
It doesn't matter what party they run in.
The best candidate is going to make a big show.
So I think what's different about Schellenberger is he's the first full-stack political candidate I've ever seen.
Now, do you know what I mean by a full stack?
It comes from programming language.
There are programmers who know not just one programming language, but they might know everything from, you know, the hardware to user interfaces.
Just every component of development If somebody has all of those skills, which is sort of rare, finding a, quote, full stack developer is sort of like finding a unicorn.
But if you find one, they're worth their weight in gold because they're so rare.
Now, in the political world, what would a full stack candidate look like?
Not Ross Perot.
Ross Perot has the problem that he sounds like...
I don't know. He sounds like a small rodent who's been caught in some kind of a deadly trap.
Right? He was short.
He was unattractive.
And he had a weird voice.
He wasn't really a full-stack candidate.
He was just a candidate who had some solidly good ideas.
In retrospect, they were good ideas.
And now take Schellenberger.
Good-looking. Perfect hair.
And he's the only person I know, candidate-wise, who's coming into the process, having never been a political official, he's coming into the process with books full of specific solutions for the biggest problems in California.
He's actually looked at all the things you can do and figured out what are the good ones.
Who the hell else has ever done that?
I mean, seriously.
Who else can communicate so well that they can write best-selling books all day long, can understand the technology and the complexity of very complicated things, and simplify it to the point where the public can understand it perfectly, knows the most important policies or issues.
He's not spending his time...
I don't think I've heard him speak.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Give me a fact check.
Have you ever heard Michael Schellenberger weigh in on any wokeness stuff?
Not pro or con, right?
I mean, I'm sure he'll have to answer it because he's a candidate.
But I feel like it's his lowest priority because it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the top of anything he talks about.
Can you make...
If you were going to design a perfect candidate on paper, this is the first...
I'm going to say this, and I don't know that it's true...
But if anybody has a better example of it, I'd love to hear it.
My contention is that Schellenberger is the first full-stack candidate.
The first one.
He's even a full-stack in terms of a little bit Democrat and a little bit Republican, meaning that he was a registered Democrat for years, decided that some of their solutions didn't kind of work, Wasn't really willing to be a Republican, but clearly understands that some of the Republican opinions make sense, nuclear energy being chief among them.
So where else have you ever gotten a candidate...
Who had everything from full detailed policy understanding, ability to communicate it, the physicality of a candidate, because people are influenced by just how tall you are and how your hair looks.
It's just true. I mean, I'm not saying it's a good thing.
It's just true. Yeah, so the only thing he lacks is maybe finances, because that's the problem being independent.
But who are we talking about?
Who's the other person running for governor?
Name the other person running for governor.
Any other person. Name one other person running for governor in California.
Am I right? Does he need money?
Does he need money if you don't even know the name of the person he's running against or names of people?
Is it Newsom? You don't know that, do you?
Are you sure Newsom's going to run for governor and not president?
I don't think we know any of that.
But if it came down to, let's say, Newsom versus Schellenberger, would he need money?
Because the publicity alone would be insane.
I mean, it's the perfect matchup of the sort of empty suit governor versus the full-stack candidate.
Don't you want to see the empty suit versus the full stack?
Everybody wants to see that.
That's like the best show ever.
I would watch their debates like I would watch entertainment.
To me, that would just be like an entertaining show.
All right, Biden says now he wants to try Putin as a war criminal, taking it to the next level.
Not just saying he is one, sort of, but getting serious about it.
Now, I saw Joel Pollack's opinion that that could be making things worse if you ever hope to have a negotiated outcome.
It's pretty hard to have a negotiated outcome with somebody you've labeled as a war criminal that you plan to put on trial.
Now, there's no real risk that Putin will be on trial, because I don't think Russia buys into the process any more than the United States does.
But, yeah, it's good...
There's no persuasion unless it causes Putin to dig in.
But here's the real question.
Isn't Putin already all in?
Is there any more in he could be?
I mean, he's fighting for his life in a sense.
And I think Putin's all in.
I think he's just going to do whatever it takes.
And as long as it takes and however many people it kills...
And I don't think that anything will happen to him, war crime-wise.
So this is the sort of thing you could imagine would move the needle and make us a lot more dangerous.
But my personal view is that Putin's already a 10 out of 10 for danger.
I don't think he's going to go to nuclear because that doesn't work for him.
And he's still winning.
Winning in this sense.
I think that Putin will still be in charge of Russia when this is all done.
Russia's economy might be quite degraded by then, but I'll bet his popularity will be high.
His personal life will be great.
He'll be seen as a hero eventually, if not right away, because he can control the media.
So, to me, it looks like he's nowhere near losing.
So I'm not too worried about the war crimes thing because, you know, all that really does is says it's going to be hard for him to travel, I guess, and get any respect in the world.
I do think that Putin is done as a respected leader, if he ever was.
I suppose that's a matter of opinion.
But don't you think that he will no longer be invited to anything unless they need his energy, in which case, if they need his energy, then he'll go right back to normal as soon as they can.
Yeah, yeah, we'll buy your energy.
Well, speaking of Russian atrocities, so it does appear there's more and more evidence that the Russians are committing war crimes.
But let me ask you this.
Name the war that didn't have any war crimes on both sides.
Do you think there's ever been one?
Do you believe there's ever been a war, like a serious war, where there weren't war crimes on both sides?
No. Do you remember all the war crimes that the Americans committed in World War II? You don't, do you?
I can tell you that I personally spoke to someone who's no longer with us.
He's passed away. But I personally spoke to someone who was involved in a war crime, a big one, where they lined up the Germans and just killed them all out of revenge.
They were mad. That really happened.
Now, I'm not going to give you the details because I don't want you to know who it was, but a real person who was really there during the crush across Europe to end Germany's run.
So he was there. He was in the middle of the action, and he was personally involved in a massacre of captured German soldiers at the end of the war.
It was the end of the war, and they killed him anyway.
Now, did you ever hear about that war crime?
No. Because do you know why?
Do you know why the Americans murdered the Germans?
Because they discovered that the Germans had committed a war crime.
They found literally hot evidence, meaning the bodies were still warm.
So the Germans had just massacred a bunch of captured prisoners.
And then the Americans captured the people who had just murdered the captured American prisoners.
How do you think that went? The bodies were still fresh.
They had just been murdered.
And that's when the Americans, you know, captured the situation and captured all the Germans.
Do you know what the most chilling sentence I've ever heard?
It came from this individual.
And I asked him one time, in World War II, did you take prisoners?
Because to me it seemed unlikely.
To me, it seemed that taking prisoners when you're marching across Europe would slow you down, wouldn't it?
And why would they want to be slowed down?
My assumption was they just murdered all their prisoners.
I don't know that, but I'm just thinking from a practical perspective, they probably murdered their prisoners.
And so I asked him about his experience and he said, you know, did you actually capture Germans and then take care of them and like everything was fine?
And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he told a story about capturing one particular German soldier.
And the German soldier was friendly, basically, because he was caught.
And, you know, the war was winding down.
And he wasn't posing any danger.
And they just had sort of a friendly interaction with him.
Right? I think he was an officer.
But they had a somewhat professional interaction with him.
Just took him prisoner? He said, yeah.
Yeah, no problem. We just took him prisoner.
It was nothing. Then I kept asking him, because I was a little skeptical that they really took prisoners.
And then he told me this story about liberating a German prisoner of war camp.
And they looked for the prisoners, and they couldn't find them.
And they said, where are all the prisoners?
And finally somebody pointed to a train.
I guess there was a train that went through or next to the camp.
They opened up the doors of the train, and all of the dead, recently machine-gunned prisoners fell out dead.
They had put them in the trains to take them away because the American forces were coming.
They were going to remove them, but they didn't have time.
So instead, they machine-gunned it.
And so, as the person I was talking to described this, he said, and we opened up, you know, the train cars and the bodies of the Americans just fell out.
They'd been machine gunned.
And then I heard the most chilling sentence I've ever heard.
And he looked at me and he said, that day, we didn't take prisoners.
That day, we didn't take prisoners.
That was World War II. You know, the good one, where everybody was awesome and there was good and evil, and we were the good guys and they were the bad guys.
It's war! It's fucking war!
Right? There's no such thing as an atrocity in a war, because it's all atrocity.
Here's something that really fucking pisses me off.
You can watch scenes of adult men ripped apart by shrapnel and God knows what, and you go, oh, that's just war.
That's just war. But then you see a civilian dead on the street.
That's an atrocity.
That's an atrocity.
No, it's all fucking atrocity.
It's atrocity from top to bottom.
There's no non-fucking atrocities in war.
We just have people that we don't give a shit about.
It's called adult men.
We don't give a shit about adult men.
No matter how many of them die, we say, well, that was a war.
How'd the war turn out? Who won the war?
But as soon as somebody who's not an adult fucking man dies, gets a goddamn splinter, it's a fucking war crime.
Not cool. Not cool.
It's either all war crimes or there's no war crimes.
Fuck you if you think that some of them are good deaths and some of them are bad ones.
Fuck all of you who think that.
Like, I don't even care about the fucking bodies piling up because they're just an example of a larger evil.
The reason I don't care is not because I don't have empathy.
The opposite. It's the opposite.
My empathy is much greater than that because I have an empathy for the fucking soldiers.
What about the soldiers?
We don't care about the fucking soldiers, right?
We talk about, oh, there were a thousand civilian deaths.
A tragedy. A tragedy.
Probably undercounted.
But we're talking about tens of thousands of adult men getting ripped apart.
Even the ones who don't die are never going to be the same.
The ones who don't even get wounded are never going to be the same.
Every fucking man in that battle is destroyed.
They're all wounded.
All of them. They're all wounded.
They're not coming back.
They're not coming back the same.
And there are millions of them.
Fucking millions of them.
Yeah, let's talk about the picture of the little toddler who died on the beach.
Tragedy. Not minimizing it.
But why do we pick and choose?
Like, oh, that's an atrocity.
That's a war crime. Oh, that's just a battle.
It's just a fucking battle.
All right, here's what the Soviets have done and the Russians have done, according to Peter Bergen and CNN. These are just some of the things they've done.
And the Soviet Union killed over a million Afghan civilians.
A million. The Soviet Union killed a million civilians in Afghanistan.
Russia's first war in Chechnya in 1994, 25,000 civilians died in just two months of fighting in Grozny, the capital.
During the second Russian war in Chechnya, Russian soldiers summarily executed at least 38 civilians in Grozny.
On February 5, 2000, Russian soldiers summarily executed at least 60 civilians.
Now, this, of course, is according to various human rights groups, so I really don't know how to assess the validity of them.
But Peter Bergen thinks they're real.
It's on CNN. The International Federation of Human Rights found that Russians in Cheshia engaged in summary executions, murders, physical abuse, tortures, etc., To which I say, it was a war.
It was a war.
Do you know who's left out?
How about the adult fucking men who died?
It's not even a fucking statistic.
Not even a statistic.
It's not even in the fucking story.
Don't even care.
Oh, adult men? Yeah, just go die.
And we'll make news out of it.
We'll get some content out of it.
I didn't expect to be so angry this morning, but I think it was my printer.
I think my printer got me off to a bad start.
So the U.S., all these financial sanctions stories get a little complicated.
Let's see if I can make this simple.
But Russia has lots of rubles that is its own currency, but it also has to hold on to a reserve of American dollars because some things need to be paid for in American dollars.
One of those things is a whole bunch of debt that...
Russia has. And America somehow, with their financial engineering, made it impossible for them to repay their debt with dollars.
Because I guess we somehow blocked their access to the dollars that they owned.
Don't know how we did that.
Through the banking system, presumably.
And so that's going to push Moscow into either default on their loans...
Which is a pretty good problem.
Or, given that their US dollars are limited, apparently that's how they buy weapons.
So Russia can't fund its war.
Not weapons so much.
I guess they make their own weapons.
But in terms of funding their war, they need US dollars.
Is that weird? Do you believe that Russia can't fund their own war when they're a weapons manufacturing country and they've got their own currency, that they can't do it without the dollar?
I don't know. I'd like to hear some details on that, but there must be something that they buy internationally that is required to keep the army running.
What is that? And who's selling it to them?
And why do they only take dollars?
I don't know. I have some questions about that.
Alright, the most important thing that's happening today is, as you know, Elon Musk bought over 9% of Twitter, which makes him by far the biggest stockholder.
And today he was granted a seat on the Twitter board.
Now, let's look at some context.
I always thought it was smart when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.
Because if you're a billionaire, you want to be able to control the narrative.
Because big news affects you because you're a big player in the world.
And so it just makes sense that if a billionaire can buy a financial organ, they should do it.
They should do it. Because it gives them some control over the narrative.
And the Washington Post, like the New York Times, are the papers of record, so to speak.
So if it's in one of those papers, then it's real.
If it's in some smaller publication, well, it might be real, it might not be, but yeah.
So, and I also love the competition between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
So they both got rocket companies, both trying to be the richest person.
And so far Elon's rockets are better than, is it Blue Horizon?
Is better than Bezos rockets.
But I think Musk just topped him on media control as well.
Because Bezos bought the Washington Post, which is sort of a dying industry in a way, whereas I would argue that having some kind of influence on Twitter, and I think Musk will have a lot, is a bigger play.
It's a better play.
So I think that in the battle of the billionaires, I think Elon Musk has got a better play.
Because if you're going to try to control the consciousness of the world, Twitter is how you get to all the reporters.
All the journalists are on Twitter, but not everybody reads the Washington Post.
So I feel like he found the right lever, the right choke point for influence.
Now, given that Elon Musk is not so much about his own message versus free speech, he seems pretty consistent about that, I think that you're going to see a free speech model coming here.
It'll be interesting, now that he has a board seat, What do we expect?
Well, first of all, if I worked in the marketing department of Twitter, I would be very worried right now.
Because Elon Musk is now replacing everything that the marketing department does for Twitter.
Am I right? The Twitter stock went up 27% or something?
Well, that's what marketing's supposed to do, right?
They're supposed to get that excitement up.
And so I think Elon just tweeting and being on the board and buying stock and doing whatever he's going to do next, which will also be interesting, I'm sure, you don't even need marketing anymore.
You just fire the whole marketing department.
Here's what I want to see more than anything, and we might actually see this.
If Elon Musk gets enough influence at Twitter, and a board member is pretty influential, especially if you're the biggest shareholder too, do you think that Elon Musk could get a meeting with the top engineer in charge of the algorithm at Twitter?
Of course he could.
Of course he could. How much would you like to see that broadcast or live streamed?
A lot, right?
Because here's the thing that's different about Elon Musk.
Imagine any ordinary board member talking to an engineer about the algorithm.
It would go like this.
Hey, engineer, can you tell me what's in that algorithm?
Then the engineer says, blah, blah, blah, something technical.
And then the board member says, well, I'm not getting that.
Can you simplify that? Blah, blah, blah, something even more technical.
And eventually the board member goes, ah, I can't understand it.
I guess I give up. Right?
That's probably the only way it could go.
Because nobody can really get under the hood unless the engineer wants them to.
Otherwise, you're just going to hear some blah, blah, blah and go away not knowing what happened.
But imagine Elon Musk talking to the top engineer and the engineer gives him some bullshit.
How does that go? I mean, really.
Really, imagine Elon Musk talking to the person who understands best Twitter's algorithm and asking him to explain, you know, how it works, etc.
And then imagine that engineer trying to bullshit him.
How long is that going to last?
He's like the only person who couldn't bullshit on this question.
Well, there are others, but there are not others who would actually buy the company and get a board seat and start digging into it.
But the scariest thing about Elon is how much he understands.
That's the scary part.
It's not even the billions.
It's the fact that if they let him under the hood, he can see what's going on.
Maybe you and I couldn't.
We don't necessarily have those skills.
But the skill that Musk brings to this, I think he can look at the algorithm and figure out what's going on.
Now I do think, here's my prediction, that the algorithm's too complicated for anybody to understand.
But I'll bet that's going to change.
And I think that Musk is likely to implement Jack Dorsey's plan.
That for whatever reason, Jack Dorsey didn't get done.
I imagine there was internal dissent.
But I think that Musk could probably push it through.
And that would be to have a user choice on which filter or algorithm you use.
You choose the one that gives you everything, you got everything.
So I think that's where it's gonna go, because that's really the most rational way to go.
And I would expect Elon to go a rational direction.
Now what about the question of Twitter amnesty?
What do you think of that?
Do you think that Twitter should consider some process for bringing back people who have been banned for life?
I think so.
I think so. Now I'm not opposed to banning.
I just think there needs to be a time limit.
Because if you do something mildly naughty, maybe you get 48 hours time out or something.
Just enough to get your attention.
Doesn't really have any effect on your business.
No effect on your brand.
Nothing. It just gets your attention.
48 hours. But then there are things that are just worse, right?
You know, calling for violence in some credible way, something like that.
But those people, too, I think, should have access to social media eventually.
But maybe you give them a five-year timeout or a three-year, whatever is the right number, and just say, all right, you've got three years.
If you come back, we're going to watch you because we're going to watch you carefully because you had trouble.
If you're fine for the next few months, you know, we'll stop watching you.
Something like that. Now, don't you think they could have some kind of an amnesty policy that just had some kind of clarity on it that you could get into jail eventually?
I think so. What's that?
When you're convicted because what you posted was actually illegal.
Was that true? All right.
So, maybe that'll happen.
Alright, the Shanghai situation is getting pretty bad.
25 million people in lockdown.
Some are tweeting that they have no access to food or water, in some cases.
Because the distribution to 25 million people locked up is pretty challenging, even for China, who's pretty good at stuff.
And I saw a tweet that usually there are 100 ships backed up in Shanghai at the ports, but now there are 300.
Uh-oh. The two biggest problems in the world are probably China locking down and affecting the supply chain, and secondly, fertilizer.
I think fertilizer is going to be the big problem, because apparently you need petrochemicals to make fertilizer.
And if you don't have petrochemicals, you can't do anything.
You can't make plastic, fertilizers.
Civilization will start to decline.
So those are the things I worry about.
I worry about supply chain and fertilizer.
I worry less about availability of energy.
I think we could work that out.
But the cost of it is going to be crazy.
So maybe what will come out of this is some maybe alternative way to fertilize.
Maybe. Maybe indoor growing is how you get away with less fertilizer.
Is that one way to do it?
I don't know. Well, you could get away with less pesticides, I guess.
Fewer pesticides. Jon Stewart, as you know, has come back in the scene and he's doing sort of a serious show about the big problems in the world.
But he went hard at the question of systemic racism with, I guess, Cory Booker.
He couldn't even get Cory Booker to go as far as he was going and hating white people for their racism.
So here's the thing.
I agree with Jon Stewart that systemic racism exists.
But unless he's talking about what to do about it, Why do we need to hear it?
What's the point? There are lots of problems that exist that you just can't do a damn thing about.
We don't talk about them to death because there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
But if Jon Stewart is not suggesting specific fixes for stuff, all he's doing is insulting us for a paycheck, I think.
I mean, I need some solutions.
And I don't know what he's...
What exactly has he...
Has he recommended for fixing systemic racism?
Wall Street Journal has an article that the rate of depression of middle-aged women is through the roof, but part of it might be sexism.
That's my own interpretation.
Their interpretation is that some of the people who are getting antidepressants, the women, might actually be suffering from hormone fluctuations That are somewhat normal as they approach menopause.
So we might be giving antidepressants to women who just have temporary problems with their, and normal, natural problems with their hormones as they reach a certain age.
That's pretty scary shit.
That's pretty scary.
And the sexism part is that I imagine that women are being treated like men, basically.
If men get an antidepressant, it's probably because they're depressed.
If women act sad, it could be because they're depressed in the same way as men.
But also, it could be a hormone thing.
And if they just get treated like men, they're just going to get antidepressants no matter what they're complaining about, as long as it's depression-related.
So I think my instinct is that this is right.
And if you've ever talked to anybody who had hormone replacement, they're pretty happy with it.
Let me see in the comments.
Maybe my experience is unique.
But the only time I've heard of people getting hormone replacement, they were delighted.
And I understand that the risk, if you're over 50, is actually low.
Yeah, so I am seeing...
I'm not seeing anybody disagree.
be.
Oh, somebody else? That is not true.
I believe the cancer risk is under 50, but over 50, I just read this today, over 50, it actually makes it safer, not less safe.
So if you think the cancer risk is the issue, do an update on that, because I think they found out it is an issue under a certain age, but over an age, it's actually a benefit.
But do a fact check on that, because I'm not so sure about that.
Here's the ratio.
So for women between the ages of 40 and 59, one in five women are on antidepressants.
Does that sound right to you?
Do you know any women between the ages of 40 and 59?
And would you say that only 20% of them are on antidepressants?
20%? That doesn't sound real to me, does it?
I feel like it's higher.
I'm not sure, but maybe it's a California thing, but it feels like it's higher.
But let me add something to this.
So the Wall Street Journal says one in five women in that age range are on antidepressants.
In my opinion, it's 100%, but not antidepressants per se.
In my experience, 100% of adults are self-medicating.
They're just doing it differently.
Some are drinking, some are smoking, some are doing weeds, mushrooms, God knows what.
But I don't know any adults who aren't self-medicating, one way or another.
So I think this is super misleading when you say one in five are using antidepressants.
The other four out of five just don't use those words.
Do you think they're drinking and doing drugs because they're so happy all the time without them?
No. They're doing drugs and drinking and smoking cigarettes because they're happier with those things.
Otherwise, they wouldn't do it.
Or at least they think they are.
All right. What else is going on?
I've come to the opinion that we need to reframe the climate change question.
Because it used to be there were climate change believers who were following the science, and then there were climate change deniers who were not following the science.
What is it now?
I think everybody agrees on the science now.
Not everybody, of course.
But... At this point, I think the question of climate change is completely transformed into the following categories.
No longer do we have people who believe and people who deny.
Now we have people who understand economics and people who don't.
And people haven't realized the shift yet.
And I think the nuclear energy shift really highlights that.
Anybody who understood both nuclear energy and economics was in favor of nuclear power for a long time.
But it's only recently that Democrats are starting to be a little bit more vocal about the same thing.
So we now have bipartisanship on nuclear energy.
And that's almost the whole game, right?
Because nobody likes pollution.
Everybody likes nuclear energy.
I'm exaggerating, but on the left and the right, we have plenty of support for it now, where we didn't before.
And I think at this point, we just have to understand that the people who are for, let's say, aggressive climate change mitigation are not climate change believers.
They're also that, but that's not the important part.
The important part is that they're not good at economics.
So what you have is really just two groups, people who understand economics and people who don't.
We don't have climate deniers and climate believers.
I mean, we sort of do.
But you can see the shift has really moved from believing versus not believing the science to do you even know how to do economics?
Because how many of the climate change people thought that we would run out of food?
If we stopped using petrochemicals, do you think if I talked to Greta and I said, Greta, did you know that we'd run out of food if we get too aggressive on climate change and that that's worse than even whatever catastrophe we get from warmer or unstable climate?
Yeah. So I don't think she understood that.
How many of you knew that petrochemicals were actually a raw ingredient to make fertilizer?
And there's not really a better way to do it.
How many knew you had to have petrochemicals to make fertilizer?
Yeah, I mean, I knew you needed it to transport it and to mine it, but I didn't know that...
I actually didn't know until today that you'd directly, chemically change the petrochemicals, gas in particular, natural gas, into fertilizer components.
So, and then when you add in the fact that the developing countries can't develop, you add in the fact that we'll probably only be saved by high tech, you know, and...
Some high-tech solution.
And you don't get too much high-tech if you don't have a good economy, if you don't have a good economy unless you've got cheap energy.
I don't think that the people who wanted climate change understood what it would cost.
Had no idea what it would cost.
So I think we just have to stop talking about climate denial and climate follow the science and just say, some people understand economics and some people don't.
And that's it. Let me ask you this.
When was the last time you saw an economist on MSNBC or CNN saying, you know, from an economic perspective, it would be a good idea to get rid of fossil fuels as quickly as possible?
Have you ever seen it?
No, you see scientists, right?
You always see a scientist.
And the science is a little bit closer to settled than it ever has been.
Because remember, there are tons of Republicans now who are willing to say, yeah, it looks like there's some climate change, but the real question is what you do about it.
How aggressive? What do you do?
And I think once everybody's on the page that, yeah, something's happening, it's really just a what you do about it, then you have to move it to the economists.
So we've got to get climate change away from the scientists because they did a good job.
You don't want to hear that, right?
But the entire basis of what I'm saying is that because the scientists did a good job.
They figure down a problem and they communicate it until enough Democrats and Republicans believe that the climate is getting warmer and that humans are part of it.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who don't believe it on my audience, but within the professional, you know, the politicians, the politicians, I think the Republicans largely believe in climate change now.
Wouldn't you say? Give me a fact check of, let's say, Republicans in the government.
Let's just say Congress.
What percentage of Republicans in Congress believe that humans are causing the climate to warm?
What percentage of Republicans would you say?
I'm saying 25%, 60%, 30%.
I would say 60% to 70%.
That's my guess. Somebody says 90 and I don't know if you're wrong.
I wouldn't disagree with 90, actually.
I wouldn't disagree with 90.
I don't know that it's right.
I'd say at least 60%.
I think a solid majority.
Now, if you still disagree, just remember you're disagreeing with your own side now.
Your own side has made a move fairly dramatically in the last few years.
And I think some of it has to do with the fact that if nuclear energy can be seen as a solution, then I think a lot of Republicans are willing to say there was a problem.
You know what I mean? If everybody's willing to go nuclear, then I think the Republicans are going to say, all right, well, maybe there's a little bit of a problem.
Because at least we're doing something smart.
At least that's something. Yeah, so I think that among Republicans, they've decided climate change is a real thing.
All right, what else we got going on today?
Not much. I think we're into bonus territory.
What's your side, Scott?
I don't know. Podcast on racism?
I'm kind of tired of racism.
Aren't you? One of the topics you may notice that I'm avoiding like the plague is the Disney thing.
And don't say gay and everything.
I don't know. There's something about that topic that's...
First of all, it's too easy to talk about it.
So everybody is.
And I don't have anything to add.
It's just pure opinion. And if your opinion is different than my opinion, well, what can I do about that?
So the Disney thing is...
The Disney thing just doesn't have any traction for me.
I guess it matters, but it just doesn't matter to me.
Now, have you been to Disney lately?
I can't figure out how they survive.
Is it just because there are new stupid children born every day who don't know that Disney is lame?
Because the last time I went to Disney, I was struck by how old it looks.
Like, it just looks like pre-internet.
Like, it all just looks pre-internet.
And I'm thinking, how is this going to last in the long run, a pre-internet business, where it's just like physical rides and, you know, it's a small world after...
I mean, there's like one of the famous things that's just like puppets singing it's a small world while you ride a boat past it.
That's not exactly cutting edge, is it?
I'm not sure if I'm talking about Disneyland or Disney World or what, but I think they both have the same situation.
For very young children, yeah, makes sense.
But I still see lots of adults who can't wait to go.
All the time I hear adults say, oh, can't wait to go to Disney.
And they use their kids as an excuse.
Nostalgia? Yeah.
Epcot is better? Probably.
All right. Is there anything I haven't mentioned that you desperately want me to?
Are there any topics?
Oh, let me just...
Put a bow on the atrocity thing.
I don't believe the video of the atrocities from BUCA, the people who were left on the street with their hands tied.
So I don't believe that's real.
I also don't think it makes any difference.
Because what I think is happening is that fake atrocities are being faked because the real ones don't have any video.
That's what I think. I think the reason for faking atrocities is, number one, to get an advantage, right?
Political advantage. But number two, there probably, almost certainly, are real atrocities, but nobody has a picture of it.
So if you can't get a picture of the real ones, is it really unethical to fake one?
What do you think? Suppose they knew for sure there were real atrocities, but they can't prove it.
So they fake one that's, you know, video-ready, and then the world can see it.
Is that unethical?
I mean, it's a war.
I'm going to say no.
I'm going to say no. It's a lie.
If you want to say all lies are unethical, then okay.
I mean, I would accept that point of view.
But in my personal opinion, it's war.
It's war. It's war.
It's all atrocity.
It's all inappropriate.
All of it. So I think it is ethical.
It's ethical within the context of war.
Because it is true, you have to use a lie to convey the truth.
That's what hyperbole is sometimes too, right?
Hyperbole is a lie that if you do it right and you're doing it in a somewhat ethical way, the lie is convincing the public of something that's useful to them and they should know and, you know, the world's better off.
So I'm actually...
I'm sort of in favor of the faked atrocities so long as we know that there are real ones.
And I think we do know that.
Because it's war. Now, do you remember all the video you saw of the Ukrainian military atrocities?
Did you see any?
I saw one video of some Russians claiming that the Ukrainians shelled something, like a residential building.
But no evidence.
It didn't look real to me.
Yeah. So what are the chances that the Ukrainians...
Oh, the leg shooting, that's right.
Yes, there was the leg shooting video, you're right.
So that looked pretty darn real.
I don't know how you could have faked that one.
That looked really real.
But I also imagine that that sort of thing is because they've seen some bad stuff on the other side.
There's a little bit of that.
The raped and murdered woman with a swastika painted in her own blood.
That doesn't sound real.
I mean, that's a little bit too on the nose.
That doesn't sound real.
And I'm not doubting that there are Ukrainian Nazis.
The Azov are shooting them in the nuts.
Is that something that's happened?
Yeah. I don't know what I would do if I were in actual war and I captured somebody who had been trying to kill me.
I don't know that I could take a prisoner.
I don't know. And apparently there's some effort by the Ukrainians to do massive phone callings, you know, cold calling into Russia to try to convince them.
Convince them to quit the war.
So, your mind changes in war, yeah?
Hoaxing war crimes is pure manipulation.
It's manipulation, for sure.
But it also might be weirdly honest.
How to handle dog owners whose dogs bark and snarl at your dog.
God.
Well, I could tell you once at the dog park, there was a bigger dog that once attacked my dog.
And it took me about half a second to go primitive.
And you don't want to get in a fight with a dog, but I did.
I got in a fight with a dog.
The dog lost.
And then the owner came over.
And I thought I was going to have to fight the owner next.
But it turns out if you beat up an owner's dog in front of him, he doesn't want to fuck with you.
Because he was next.
If that guy had made one move toward me for taking his dog out...
I mean, the dog survived.
It'll be fine. But I did kick the shit out of his dog to get it off my dog.
So I did go...
I just went primitive on it.
And the owner comes over, and I'm still kicking the shit out of his dog.
And I just turned and looked at the owner with the year-next look.
Do you know what the year-next look is, right?
You're kicking the shit out of the guy's dog.
And the dog was trying to kill my dog, right?
So, I mean, it was self-defense.
But if you're in the middle of taking a guy's dog out and you turn and look at him in the eyes, he's not going to move.
He's not going to make a move against you.
He's going to take care of his dog, which he did.
So, no, it wasn't a pit bull.
It was just bigger than my dog.
Sometimes being a psycho is justified.
True enough. And by the way, I love dogs, so I would never hurt a dog except in self-defense.
Would you bring a dog like that to the dog park?
Well, that might be part of the conversation I had with the owner.
You might not be surprised that the question of should this dog be in the dog park, it came up.
It came up. I believe, if I recall, I told him never to come back.
I believe I banned him from the dog park.
I don't know if he ever came back, but I'm pretty sure I banned him.
I didn't have the power to ban him from the dog park, but I don't think he'd want to have a second round with me.
Keep your dog out of my effing mouth.
Keep your dog's name out of your mouth.
Dog burrow actually caused a volcanic eruption in real life.
Was there a volcanic eruption somewhere?
I did a comic about a dogbird trying to create one.
The Philippines' second most active volcano, Tal, erupted on Thursday.
And then somebody tweeted it, tweeted that volcano with my comic.
I'll read you the comic.
It was Dog Bird talking to Dilbert.
He says, Dog Bird says, you didn't believe me when I said I hacked reality and acquired godlike powers.
So I will demonstrate my powers by making a long dormant volcano erupt in Elbonia's biggest city.
And then Dilbert says, couldn't you use your powers to do something good instead?
And Dog Bird says, too late.
This is on you. So it wasn't Elbonia, but...
All right.
Do I get royalties when Harvard Business Review uses Dilbert in its magazines?
Probably yes. So the process is that a publication would contact my syndication company and they would make a deal.
It wouldn't involve me. So they would say yes or no without my direct involvement.
But an organization like the Harvard Business Review would be fairly careful about copyrights.
So while I can't answer the question specifically, I would say the odds of it not being licensed are low.
Because that's the kind of publication that would make sure they did it right.
How much have you made with Dilbert?
What, you want a dollar amount?
Twitter's at 52? Um...
Ten and two-year rates.
Yeah, it's not looking good.
All right. I think we've said everything we need to say here.
And did you see my Madonna joke?
Apparently, my Madonna tweet made it into the Daily Wire.
There was an article in the Daily Wire about people's reactions to Madonna.
And she did the TikTok video where she gets close to this camera and her big ol' lips around like a kiss.
And I tweeted that Madonna is turning into Jar Jar Binks and nobody's talking about it.
Now, I tried that joke out with some people who didn't know who Jar Jar Binks is.
This joke only goes two ways.
Number one, if you don't know who Jar Jar Binks is, nothing.
Nothing. If you do know who Jar Jar Binks is, it's pretty funny if you've seen the TikTok video.
Trust me, trust me, if you've seen the Madonna video and you know who Jar Jar Binks is, you're going to be laughing.
If you don't, not so much.
All right. Scott, are you a libertarian?
I'm not, no. I used to say that I was a libertarian, but without the crazy parts.
And then people would say, well, what are the crazy parts?
And I'd have to admit it was all of it.
That's what I used to say before I used to say I'm left to Bernie.
Because I keep trying to make a space for myself that doesn't exist.
So then nobody knows what I am.
I mean, I do it intentionally.
So when I say I'm a libertarian but without the crazy parts, it's similar to when I say I'm left to Bernie but better at math.
It literally doesn't mean anything.
That's what it's supposed to mean.
It's supposed to just make you say, I don't know.
What does he believe? That's exactly where I want to be.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who inhabit a space that doesn't exist politically, but they don't do what I do in public.
All right.
And YouTube, thanks for joining.
And hit that subscribe button if you haven't.
I probably should say that more often.
I feel bad that...
What's his name?
Russell Brand has like millions of subscribers.
Don't I deserve at least a million?
YouTube, come on.
I deserve at least a million.
Yeah, Russell Brand has 4.5 million subscribers.
At least a million. Just one million, that's all I ask.
Because I believe my content is better than Russell Brand's, except his is more entertaining.
He does have that over me.
But I think mine is smarter.
According to me. Alright, that's all for now.
Yeah, he is better than me.
I'll give him that. Yep.
I hate to admit it. I hate it when somebody does the same job I do, and I just have to admit they're better.
It's like Bill Watterson, cartoonist for Calvin and Hobbes.
I want to be able to argue that I am or was a better cartoonist, but I'm not, and I won't be.
He's just better. So sometimes you just have to accept it.
That's right, Erica, I'm just different.
I'm different, I'm not worse.
I'm just different. He described Larry Flint as be-heeled, be-wheeled.
