Episode 1707 Scott Adams: Today I Will Help You Define Good and Evil. I Might Even Help You Figure Out What a Woman Is
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
81% say crime will be key in midterm elections
Peter Thiel and the "sociopathic grandpa from Omaha"
Whiteboard: Good vs. Evil
Brian Stelter squirms at tough question
Ukraine war chatter
President Trump's transparency
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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It's sort of an illusion, though, because everybody looks good when I wear a black T-shirt.
Now, I asked the people on Locals, and I'm going to ask you, now that I've signed on here on YouTube, do you know on what occasion...
The black t-shirt is necessary.
What is the purpose of the black t-shirt?
Does anybody know? Yes, it is to celebrate Laundry Day.
Because nobody wears a black t-shirt when they've got a blue one available.
Am I right? So how would you like to take it up a notch?
And today we're going to do some very interesting things, but not until...
The simultaneous sip.
That's right. All of you shouting out in unison.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tanker, chelsea, stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. I really do.
I wouldn't lie about that.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, and if I may...
We're going to be adding a new chemical boost today.
It's all natural. A little bit of oxytocin.
Yeah. Not oxycontin.
I don't recommend that.
Oxytocin is that good feeling you get when loved ones touch you or they're nice to you.
Yeah. And you're going to get that now from the simultaneous sip because we're all kind of connected at the same time.
Watch your oxytocin flow and your dopamine.
It's all coming at you now. The simultaneous sip.
Go! Ah.
Now, for those of you new to persuasion, my favorite topic, let me tell you this.
Two tips. Number one, can I make you actually literally happier by simply telling you that it's going to happen?
Yes, I can. It's a thing.
So why wouldn't I? It's free, right?
I mean, I don't pay a penny to have this live stream.
It's literally, you know, I have an internet connection anyway.
I was probably going to have an iPad anyway.
So it's basically free.
So why wouldn't I tell you that you can have a happier day when I know that if you tell a whole bunch of people something like that, some of them will.
Some of them will. And if I tell you every day, which I do when we start this live stream, because I do it every day, it will make some of you happier.
It's true. It's true.
And here's another tip that I would like to give to...
I'm not going to name names, but you might recognize yourself in this tip.
It's a live streaming tip.
And I've seen some of you make this mistake.
And let me correct it now.
The mistake, if I can do this with both hands on both platforms, is to do this.
So let's talk about what's happening today.
Is this creeping you out?
It's probably creeping you out, isn't it?
It's a little too much of me, isn't it?
How about this? How much better do I get now, huh?
Watch this. Watch me get handsomer right in front of you.
Watch this. Better looking.
Better looking. Better looking.
My God. So sexy.
Am I right? Am I right?
Am I right? A simple demonstration of lighting and perspective.
And I went from Jar Jar Binks' Madonna all the way to...
A lot of you were thinking, how can I get some of that?
And it was just one little change of the perspective.
So take that valuable tip.
And here's another tip.
Lighting is your enemy.
You want the least amount of light you possibly get.
Watch this. I'm going to do another demonstration, and this will be like a magic trick right in front of your eyes.
Watch this. And by the way, if you have any digital devices by Amazon, I will be talking to them right now, so they won't understand this, but...
Alexa, turn off studio.
Now, am I right?
Instantly, a little bit better looking.
A little bit better looking.
Now, this is available to everybody.
You've seen aging celebrities do this forever.
Usually, have you noticed that beautiful women, as they age in magazines, they get blurrier.
They become less distinct to other people when they see their picture.
Yeah, I think this is a pretty good persuasion tip.
The less of me you see, the more you're going to like it.
But let's do a happy medium.
Alexa, turn around studio.
Oh, wow. Is it going to be like that now?
It looks like I'm going to have to have a word with my digital device.
Seriously, you're just going to ignore me now.
I say one thing about your efficiency, and now this, right?
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to drag you guys into this.
But sometimes, I don't know, it feels like passive aggressive to me or something, doesn't it?
A little bit? Am I getting a little...
Am I going too far?
Am I paranoid? No, I don't think so.
I think my digital devices have already been taken over by the Chinese government, and I feel like something bad is about to happen any moment now.
I'm not paranoid.
This is not the Blair Witch Project, even though it looks like it.
Alexa, turn on studio.
There we go. There we go.
You had to embarrass me first, though.
I'll remember that.
I will remember that.
Rasmussen says 81% of the likely voters who are polled say that crime will be important in the midterms.
Is there any statistic whatsoever, any statistic that suggests Democrats will win anything in the midterms or the next presidency?
I don't think there's a single signal pointing in any direction but one, is there?
Have we ever seen this before?
Usually the argument is, well, we got this, but you got this.
It feels like it's a little bit one-sided at this point.
Those, of course, are your famous last words.
So just the fact that I'm talking like this almost guarantees it won't last.
There's going to be something.
There's going to be some news story.
And my guess is that we're waiting for the mother of all hoaxes.
Don't you feel? Because think of the hoaxes we've already seen and how extreme they are.
Russia collusion and the lengths and depths that that went to, which are now essentially proven by documents and by the special counsel.
And that was all like a prank.
You know, weapons of mass destruction, everything else.
So, anyway...
It does seem to me like...
Let's go back to this Rasmus poll.
61% say violent crime is getting worse.
Who are the people who don't think that?
This is kind of a weird poll, isn't it?
Because it's not as if there's any question about what's true.
Violent crime is getting worse.
Like, 100% of the data says that, right?
But... Only 61% of the people are paying attention enough to know that they have more chance of getting killed just walking outdoors.
And then, so 61% say violent crime is getting worse, and 39% are actually violent criminals, which was a surprise.
That's higher than I thought.
So 61% say violent crime is getting worse, but 39% disagree, and every one of them is a violent criminal.
Also from Rasmussen, who would you prefer is elected in 2022?
Which is an interesting way to phrase it.
Who would you prefer is elected as opposed to vote for?
And 28% said Biden and 42% said Trump.
I don't know that Biden will run again.
It seems unlikely.
But every indicator is going the same way.
Alright, there's a Bitcoin conference, and the big headline is that Peter Thiel called Warren Buffett, quote, the sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.
Now, on one level, there's the conversation that can be had about the potential and risks of owning Bitcoin.
So that's sort of a technical conversation.
I'm not terribly qualified for that.
You know, I could give you an opinion, but I don't imagine it would be better than other people's.
But I have to say that if you're trying to get attention for your point of view, using the phrase, sociopathic grandpa from Omaha, well, you can't beat that.
You can't beat that for a headline grabber, can you?
It's kind of perfect.
The sociopathic part, you know, that's a pretty good hyperbole there, because I don't think that's quite demonstrated, but as hyperbole, it's fun hyperbole, but Grandpa from Omaha, do you see how awesome that is?
Grandpa from Omaha.
He's the grandpa from Omaha.
He's a sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.
I don't know how long it took him to write that phrase, or if he borrowed it or what, but what was I telling you yesterday on livestream, I think yesterday, that everybody who came out of that PayPal, the startup PayPal, and Peter Thiel is one of them, they all have this otherworldly Sense of persuasion and how the human mind is wired.
I'm fascinated by how such a small group could all be masters at that one thing, While also being masters at, you know, varieties of different things.
But why are they all also masters at that one very specific thing that very few people are masters of?
It's one of the rarest things to be good at, at this level of persuasion.
So this is no coincidence.
Peter Thiel has that gift.
How he acquired it, we don't know.
It's an interesting question.
But Peter Thiel is trying to talk up the price of Bitcoin.
We assume he owns a lot of Bitcoin, right?
Here's my general financial advice to you.
I wouldn't listen to advice from anybody who owns the asset they're talking about.
Because they want you to think it's going up, because then you'll buy it, and then it will go up for their profit.
So here's your two rules of investing that I think are really good to know.
Never believe somebody's prediction about an asset that they own because they're biased, right?
So if they own the asset, don't believe them.
And secondly, if they say the asset is really good but they don't own it, well, I wouldn't believe that.
So there are two situations you should never believe.
Somebody who owns the asset and says it'll go up, and someone who doesn't own the asset and says it will go up.
If you've put those together, maybe you see the big picture now.
Don't believe anybody else's estimate of what the fuck is going to happen.
Nobody knows. If they knew, they wouldn't tell you.
You understand that, right?
If somebody knew, they wouldn't tell you.
They would use their secret knowledge to manipulate things.
So, anyway.
Just thought I'd let you know that.
That said, I have no reason to believe that Bitcoin won't go up.
I'm not anti-Bitcoin or anything.
I just think it's a giant black hole of who knows what's going to happen.
Now, I have said...
That at a certain size portfolio, and I don't know what that is, but at some size portfolio, it doesn't make sense to avoid crypto.
That seems like the sane middle ground, that if you're going to sit on 5% or 10% of your assets in crypto, 10% might be a lot.
But you can start with 5% and it ends up 30% of your portfolio pretty quickly.
I mean, that could happen.
And then you have to rethink it.
But... Scott, never see you super chats.
Yes, I do. I even saw that.
I even saw you saying that I don't see them.
I ignore them, sometimes, because it would ruin the flow.
But, you know, you should know that.
And I discourage the super chats.
I appreciate them. But I discourage them for that very reason.
Because it would ruin the flow if I paid attention to them.
And since you're paying for me to pay attention to you, it's counter to the business model and counter to the experience that people want to enjoy, I think.
All right. I would like to give you my definition of evil and good.
Because people are talking about this in terms of Putin and lots of other questions.
And... I need to start by framing this first.
Should you listen to my opinion of what is good or evil?
Does that make sense?
Can we agree that doesn't make sense, right?
Why would I have some special...
I don't have any special angle into it.
I'm not your priest.
I'm not your god. I'm not a philosopher.
So if we can all agree...
That my opinion should not influence you, this will go easier.
Because you're going to think that's what I'm doing.
I'm not doing that. Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to say that we'll never agree on what is good or evil, but we might, we might agree what's a good system.
This is the thing I evangelize the most.
There are lots of things we can't agree on, but we might agree what's the best system to go forward with.
So we don't agree who's the best president, but we do agree that if we could have fair elections, that'd be a pretty good system.
So I'm going to talk about the system for deciding what is good and evil, and you can make your own personal decisions what's good and evil in your mind.
That's separate. But just as a people, what would be a good practical way to go forward in a way that's just simple?
Let's say it ignores your specific religious bias.
You can still have them.
I'm not discouraging your religious bias about what is good or evil.
But here's what I would call a practical definition.
The most practical definition of good and evil.
Good is that you get pleasure from helping others, and the evil is you get pleasure from hurting others.
That's it. And what's left out?
What's left out? Here's what's left out.
So this, in my view, would not be precisely evil, but it would look like it.
So this is the important part here, is what's excluded.
I would exclude, for example, mental illness.
I don't know if you would, but as a practical definition, one that's sort of useful for society since we like to brand things, if we're going to brand things evil and good anyway, let's just have a standard that at least we can agree as a public, right? Just as a public.
Privately think anything you want.
It's fine. Of course.
So I wouldn't include mental illness as evil.
I wouldn't also include cognitive dissonance.
Don't you think there are people doing things that don't realize the impact?
Or they think they're doing it for one reason.
They think it's to save their life, but it's not.
In other words, they're just confused.
They don't have no mental illness, but they've been bamboozled.
They saw something they misinterpreted.
An honest mistake.
Would you say that's evil, if somebody makes an honest mistake?
I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
And again, I'm trying to give you a standard that's practical.
Not one you have to agree with.
That's a big difference.
I wouldn't include drug addicts.
Because if you've had any experience with drug addicts, they aren't people anymore in any sense that is meaningful.
They have rights as humans and they can have banking accounts and stuff.
But a drug addict is just a creature.
That is some combination of a human organic thing plus whatever drugs are pumped into it.
But they don't operate like regular people.
So I wouldn't call a drug addict evil any more than I would call, let's say, an automobile engine that blows up and hurts somebody.
The engine isn't evil.
It just malfunctioned.
It just did what it did.
It's just physics. Likewise, this isn't just my personal view, but I think it makes a practical view as well, that the drug addicts literally can't help themselves and they're not in control of anything.
So to call them evil is sort of misunderstanding a medical problem.
Or let's say a medical slash organic combination that creates a different creature.
I wouldn't call competition evil.
There are definitely times when a strong competitor or even a strong country will do things that do hurt another country or another competitor, but the reason they're doing it is that they're in a competitive situation and everybody would have done it if they could have.
That doesn't feel evil to me.
Because you need a certain amount of competition for civilization to move forward.
So it can be tragic, it can be unfortunate, but it doesn't feel evil.
Not to me. I don't think schadenfreude is evil.
That is when you feel happiness or some kind of joy about other people's misfortune.
Now, in this case, it's not something you caused.
You just observed it.
So you're not the cause of the evil or the cause of the pain.
You just thought it was funny because there's somebody maybe you think needs to be taken down a peg.
I don't think that's evil because it's so universal that if that's evil, you know, if that's evil, then just we're all evil.
That's not a practical definition.
So I wouldn't include that.
And then there's some level of selfishness that I would allow.
Somebody who is just extremely selfish, they may not be thinking about getting joy from hurting somebody.
They're literally just not thinking about them at all, which feels different to me.
Now, it might feel the same to you.
Again, your personal definitions could be different, but I would suggest we would all get along better, at least when we deal with each other.
The standard for good and evil, we just simplify it to, if you're enjoying intentionally hurting people, like you're doing it yourself, you personally are creating bad things for people because it feels good, that's evil.
That's evil. And if you're in the category of helping people, Because it feels good, not because you were forced.
I mean, we all help people if we pay taxes, right?
Right? But you're sort of forced to pay taxes, so that doesn't feel, like, good.
It just feels like doing what you had to do.
All right. So, from a systems perspective of just keeping it simple, what do you think of this definition?
And would you allow that it allows you to be good and still allows other people to be evil and looks right to you?
Somebody says childish, but I don't know if that's an insult.
It's meant to be childishly simple, as in fifth or sixth grade level understanding.
So good communication aims for exactly childish, although you may be meaning that differently.
All right. It excludes too many things, but I gave reasons for the exclusions.
And remember, you're allowed, you know, personally, to include the things I'm excluding.
I'm just saying for society's reason, this would be a good standard.
All right. So there was a disinformation seminar...
How many of you have seen? You have to see this clip of some alleged college freshman asked the question to Brian Stelter of CNN. And he lists all the different hoaxes and fake news that CNN has perpetuated from Jussie Smollett to the Russian collusion, yet several others.
And then he lists the things that are clear misinformation or disinformation from CNN. And then he says, you know, what are we supposed to think about the fact that all the mistakes magically go in one direction?
He goes, why is it that all the mistakes magically go in one direction?
And watching Brian Stelter try to answer that question is really good TV, or good video, I guess.
So you have to watch it, just to watch him squirm.
Now, the funny thing is he couldn't answer at all, so he had to just tap dance for a little bit until he changed the subject, but he never addressed any of the accusations, because what can he do?
Now, let me ask you this.
For those of you who saw the video, do you think a college freshman wrote that question?
The freshman was reading the question, which is not unusual because people prepare.
But, oh, really?
Seriously, do you think the college freshman wrote that question himself?
Oh, a lot of people think so.
Oh, I was surprised. I thought you were all going to say no.
Okay. So a lot of people have a higher opinion of college freshmen than I do.
But here's maybe what I see that you don't.
This is exactly what Republican dirty tricksters would do.
And not sometimes.
Closer to every time.
If you think that Republicans were completely oblivious to the fact that Brian Stelter or CNN people would be on stage taking questions at a disinformation conference, you don't think any Republican dirty tricksters noticed that?
Do you think that snuck up on them?
I don't think so.
I think the dirty tricksters have been salivating for months.
I can't wait for this.
This is going to be good.
Because obviously CNN was walking into a trap they'd set for themselves.
There's no way...
I'm going to call them the dirty tricksters, you know, the people behind the curtain.
There's no way they didn't see this coming and say, all right, we're going to give a college freshman, has to be a freshman.
The fact that it's a freshman should have been the tell.
The fact that it's a freshman.
If it had been a senior, would the story be as good?
No, no. Because you'd say, well, it's a senior.
I mean, they must have learned something in college.
That sounds like something a senior could have written.
Does it sound like something a freshman could have written?
Maybe. But it's a little bit too on the nose.
I don't know too many college freshmen who can write that well, first of all.
Am I right? If you took 1,000 college freshmen, even from top schools, Ivy League schools, do you think they could write that question the way he did?
Allegedly? I don't think so.
I'm a professional writer, which you might know.
As a professional writer, I'll tell you, that was not written by a student.
It was not written by a freshman.
No way! That was written by somebody who not only...
Knows politics.
Not only knows how long, you know, how much attention to put into something that's going to be a soundbite, knows the moment, and, you know, knows persuasion.
There's somebody who is trained in persuasion who, or at least has a pretty good understanding of it.
Oh, have I become a...
My writing is a cartoon bubble for me, somebody said.
All right. Speaking of hoaxes...
I'm just laughing at my own note.
Stelter said that the question was similar to a popular right-wing narrative.
So it's a popular right-wing narrative that CNN reports fake news.
No, it hasn't been demonstrated with documented proof.
No. No.
Hasn't been proven in court several times.
No. No.
It's a popular right-wing narrative.
All right, speaking of hoaxes, New York Magazine did a little research and found out that Black Lives Matter secretly bought a $6 million mansion, which the group's leaders are said to call a campus, and never disclosed it to the public.
When the magazine inquired about the house, Black Lives Matter reportedly circulated a memo discussing the possibility of trying to, quote, kill the story.
So I've asked this question before, but what if everything you suspected was true?
Just about everything.
Not about Black Lives Matter.
But just what if everything you suspected was true?
Like, in your cynical mind, you're like, I'm not sure I trust those people.
Like, what if everything you suspected about everyone?
What if it's all true? It might be.
I mean, you might be closer to the truth to just imagine that every conspiracy theory is actually true.
You know, we may have reached some inversion point.
I used to say, okay, conspiracy theory, what are the odds?
Just the fact that somebody's labeling it a conspiracy theory, in the old days, it meant 90% chance it's fake, right?
But what happens today when you see something labeled a conspiracy theory?
It kind of feels like it's reversed a little, doesn't it?
Or is that just me and my confirmation bias?
It feels exactly like suddenly if somebody's calling it a conspiracy theory, you better pay attention to it.
All right, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration.
So we have the first...
The first member of the Supreme Court who, and this is, I think this is a first, correct me if I'm wrong, is the first time we've had a Supreme Court nominee whose name describes her color.
So her name is Ketanji Brown Jackson, and she is brown.
I would call it black.
So that's a first.
Also, first, that she's black and she's a woman.
So that's worth something.
But I think the pun is more important.
Can we get to the point where we just stop talking about the firsts?
You know, I've said this forever, and at some point there's a crossover point.
In the early days of trying to make things better for everybody and more fair, I think it makes perfect sense to talk about the first baseball player who's black and the first whatever that's black, the first CEO. But at some point, you have to stop doing it, don't you?
And you have to stop doing it long before everything's equal.
Long before that.
Because it's...
I think it diminishes people's accomplishment.
Because every time you say she's the first black woman Supreme Court member, isn't there part of your brain that just automatically said, and that's why she was selected?
That's why she was selected.
Because it was. I mean, actually, Biden said it directly.
Doesn't that decrease, let's say, the value that she brings to the black and female world?
Am I wrong?
Do you know what would be the absolutely most awesome way that her own successes, which I say are just hers, they're not everybody else's, nobody gets to share her success, She did it herself, as far as I can tell.
So you don't get to share her success because you're also a woman and you're also black.
You don't get to share it.
She did this.
She did it without your help, probably.
Same as I don't take any credit for, I don't know, what any white CEO does or entrepreneur.
I didn't help. That was them.
I don't take any credit for that just because I'm also similarly, you know, colored or something.
All right. So I hope we're close to the point where we can just stop saying it and simply it's just part of the fabric and then nobody thinks it's for any reason other than qualifications.
But we're not there yet.
All right. CNN is reporting that...
Where are they? Was it CNN? Yeah, I think it was CNN reporting.
That Der Spiegel reported, so a German publication, that the BND, Germany's Foreign Intelligence Agency, allegedly they intercepted some kind of digital communications about Russians talking about the killings of civilians in Bukha, if I'm saying it right. And some of the conversations they could track via other ways to know that the location was right.
So does this indicate to you that Russia is intentionally killing civilians?
Because it feels like the story is designed to make you think that's the point.
But it doesn't actually say that.
It's sort of designed to lead you there without saying it.
Because what does it mean to say that there's chatter about the killing of civilians in Bucca when it's a world story?
Wouldn't there be chatter about the killings of civilians, whether they were guilty of doing it, or simply had found out somebody had done it, or were perhaps appalled?
They might have been appalled.
Oh my God, somebody killed civilians.
We better figure out what the hell is going on here.
Who knows? But when they report it as about, there's chatter about this killing of civilians, clearly they are trying to indicate that they are aware of it, the Russians are aware of it, and somehow maybe in favor of it?
Something like that? I don't know.
Just the propaganda just oozes out of this in a way that I don't find comfortable, which is not to defend any Russians who did war crimes.
In my opinion, you can find out there are way too many war crimes on both sides.
Why do I think there are war crimes on both sides?
Because it's a war.
If you need any other reason...
Like any deeper analysis, then I don't think you understand the most basic part of war is that bad stuff happens.
Every time, right?
Now, I suppose if a war only lasted two days, there might not be too much atrocities going on.
But you've got two armies that are basically fighting to have enough food.
Do you think that militaries who are in the middle of battle and fighting to have enough food, do you think they keep their prisoners alive?
Either side? All the time?
Sometimes, sure. Sometimes, sure.
But do you think that all the units everywhere, they're all just capturing their prisoners and like, well, we'll share our food with you now.
They're not sharing their food.
No. And they're not sharing their resources.
They're not going to waste a fighter to guard prisoners.
How many Ukrainian military do they want to allocate to guarding prisoners during a war, a hot war in which their country is being destroyed?
None. None.
Can I be honest?
If I were a Ukrainian military and it were my country...
Well, let's just put it in these terms.
Let's say Elbonia attacked the United States.
And Elbonia had a really good military, and they turned my country into rubble.
And I'm part of the American military.
Let's say I'm a volunteer.
And I capture some Elbonians, and they're just soldiers.
They're just conscripts.
Like, they're not the ones that made the decisions.
But I have a choice of using my resources to keep them alive, Or just gunning them down where they stand and going on to do more business because I'll be more effective if I'm not guarding them.
Which one am I going to do? Which one am I going to do?
I'll tell you right now, I would do the war crime.
And I'll tell you that without a bit of reservation.
And if you tell me differently, I don't believe you.
I don't believe you. I would definitely kill them.
If it made my fighting capacity even a little bit better, and my homeland was being destroyed, and my civilians and family members were being slaughtered, I would murder them in a heartbeat.
I wouldn't even think twice.
I don't think that that would ping my conscience the slightest.
Because remember, the context is I've already bought into killing the other side.
I've bought into killing the other side for the benefit of my side.
I'm not going to make an exception for a prisoner.
Not a chance.
Now, if I were part of an established, huge military with plenty of resources, then of course, yes.
100%. If my resources would not be degraded by it, absolutely, I would do what I could to protect them.
For the very reason that they didn't choose to be there.
It's the way I'd want to be treated.
But if they're going to slow me down, or they're going to eat my food that my soldiers need, no, I would kill them in a heartbeat.
And I would kill them right away.
I wouldn't wait. Because waiting doesn't make sense either.
Yeah, war has rules, and winning has rules.
And they're not always the same, are they?
Would you rather win, or would you rather play by the rules?
Remember, your country is being destroyed and your family is being slaughtered.
Would you rather win or would you rather play by the rules?
I would win. I would play to win.
Every time. And if you think you can make me feel bad about that, good luck.
So when we're looking at the Ukrainian soldiers who are in the fight...
I mean, I'm not even in the fight...
And that's what I would do.
Imagine being in the fight and you've watched your buddies get shot by allegedly these same soldiers.
Yeah, I mean, they're not going to last long.
So, if you have any illusions that one of the sides is taking prisoners and the other isn't, no.
I think you should lose that illusion.
In the context of both sides not having enough food or soldiers.
Um... CNN did report also that Ukrainian soldiers reportedly killed some Russian prisoners.
So they do have a little bit of balance on there.
They do have a pro-Ukraine slant.
I think you'd agree.
I'm not saying they shouldn't, by the way.
I'm just observing.
That's not a judgment call.
I do think that in a war, I think the media takes sides.
I think one side was the aggressor.
I think it would be perfectly reasonable for the media to take sides.
But at least they did show the other side.
Some atrocities, possibly.
Possibly. And again, this is all just reported.
All right, there's a story which you're going to call fake news.
And I'll show my sources, but you might be right.
You might be right. So before you jump on me, Scott, you bought into this fake news.
Can I confess? You might be right.
Would that make it easier for you?
Here's the fake news.
Or maybe fake news.
Allegedly, Senator Josh Hawley was being interviewed by somebody at the Huffington Post, and allegedly the conversation went like this.
Now, Huffington Post does have this article, so the only thing I can tell you is that they wrote it down and published it.
I cannot show you a video of it, And I cannot show you a second source.
So if you believe that the Huffington Post can accurately write down what a Republican says and then report it straight, well, well, sweetheart, as someone I know likes to say, I'm not so sure that's true.
But I'll tell you what the story is.
So... Hawley allegedly said, someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman.
Someone who has a uterus is a woman.
It doesn't seem that complicated to me.
Now, that's the part where he went wrong.
It's okay to put out your preferred definition of things, but as soon as you say, it doesn't seem that complicated to me, you're kind of painting a target on yourself.
So just keep in mind...
That he said, it doesn't seem that complicated to me.
Huffington Post follows up with, so, and this is the funny part, it starts with so, I always talk about that.
So, if a woman has her uterus removed by hysterectomy, is she still a woman?
Allegedly, and this is the part which very easily could be fake news, Hawley said, yeah, well, I don't know, would they?
This is after him saying, it doesn't seem that complicated to me.
Now, Huffington Post goes on to say that asked again later, so this doesn't quite fill in what he might have said directly after that, right?
So you know how a RUPAR video is made, right?
A RUPAR video cuts off either just before the start of the relevant stuff or just before the end of the relevant stuff.
And if you do it right, it can actually reverse the meaning of the whole clip, because we've seen it done a number of times.
It doesn't feel like it could.
Like your common sense says, wait a minute, it couldn't completely reverse the meaning, could it?
But we've seen that it can, in special cases.
So, since we don't know what he said directly after, yeah, well, I don't know, would they?
I don't know if we could judge that some people said it's sarcasm.
My professional humorist opinion is that it's not sarcasm.
It doesn't look like sarcasm to me.
And I mean, my field, it's one of the few things I have expertise on, identifying humor and sarcasm.
So it doesn't look like it to me, although I could be wrong.
Experts can be wrong.
And I would definitely raise a flag about...
Whether or not there was something else he said as a clarifier.
But he asked again later if he would consider a woman to still be a woman.
Allegedly, he said, in other words, under the situation that she lost her uterus in a hysterectomy, Hawley allegedly said, quote, I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?
Now, that's the part where I feel like This doesn't feel real, does it?
Yeah, somebody's doing the really test.
Okay, let's do the really test.
So a sitting senator answered a question by referring to a woman as someone with a vagina, right?
Really? Really?
Now, doesn't Josh Hawley have like a...
Ivy League...
Where did he go to school?
Somebody Google that.
Google where Josh Hawley went to college.
It's an Ivy League school, right?
Am I wrong about that?
Harvard? Somebody says.
I'm not sure. I think it was some good school.
So, do you think that somebody with that level of experience, somebody who became a senator...
Would he really even use the word vagina in this context?
I hope not.
So, let's start here.
Yes, let's start here.
Let's start by not assuming that this story is true.
But, as a lesson, how would you have handled the story if it happened to you?
Here's how I would have handled it.
If somebody said to me, so if a woman has her uterus removed by hysterectomy, is she still a woman?
I would answer it this way.
Yes, she's a woman who had a part removed.
You know, when a soldier comes back from war and they've lost a limb, we don't take their dog tags away.
I mean, we don't consider a necessary medical procedure to change your identity.
Do you think so? Do you believe that a necessary medical procedure changes who you are?
Nobody believes that, do they?
So he should have turned it around and just ground it in the face of the questioner as a dumb question.
And he should have gone to the high ground.
So the questioner was trying to take the high ground by coming up with actually a fairly clever gotcha question of an exception.
And it's not even that rare an exception.
I mean, the hysterectomies are super common.
So it was a good question.
To really, you know, suss out what he was thinking.
But really, he should have taken the higher ground, which is that we don't use medical...
necessary medical procedures as changing somebody's identity.
That was the high ground.
And it was right there for him.
It would be easy to take it.
Now, maybe he did, because, again, this story looks like bullshit, totally.
Some of you have suggested the way to go is chromosomes and genes or whatever...
And I think... I feel like as soon as you get into that, it's not persuasive.
Because I do think that the people on the left simply believe that your genes and your mind can be of two different worlds.
And as long as they believe that, then if you keep saying something like, well, your chromosomes, blah, blah, blah, it's just not going to connect on the other side.
In terms of just persuasion, I don't think it works.
Whether it's true or not, I'm not arguing what is a woman.
You can argue that among yourselves.
I just don't find it an interesting debate.
But I do like the simplicity of saying a woman is someone who was born with at least the potential of It doesn't mean that all their parts work all the time.
It doesn't mean that some haven't been taken out.
But at least they were born with largely that potential.
I think that's a reasonable, practical definition...
Of what a woman is for some purposes.
But again, it's not going to matter how you define anything.
It's just power. The only thing that's going to matter is who has the power to define things the way they feel most comfortable.
If the community is supporting the trans community, if the trans community and their supporters have enough power, well, it's going to go their way.
So there's not much of a debate.
You just watch where the power pushes it, and, well, that's where it is.
So... Huh.
Okay. I believe I've accidentally reached the completion of my prepared stuff.
And apparently there's another...
It hit piece at Alex Epstein.
So, you know, I gave you the follow-up that the Washington Post was going to do a hit piece on him because his book, Fossil Future.
It looks like there was, you know, some effort to suppress his voice on that topic.
And now I guess there's another one that's coming after him.
So, we shall see.
All right. Did that go by fast?
Oh, is there another SpaceX launch?
All right, we're into bonus time.
Did I see Elon Musk's cyber rodeo?
No, I didn't. I saw some tweets about what a good month Elon Musk is having.
I guess he launched 40 satellites, and he delivered somebody to the space station, and he...
Tesla opened two gigafactories, Germany and Texas.
He bought 9% of Twitter.
That's just shit he did this month.
How was your month?
Did your month go pretty well, too?
Yeah, that's all he did.
The cyber rodeo is a persuasion genius, you say.
All right. Looking to see if you have any interesting questions.
Did I see the movie Glitch in the Matrix about living in a simulation?
I think I did, yes. Why are we spending so much time in this?
The trans community has everybody wrapped around their fingers as one user.
Well, do they? You know...
There is an interesting thing going on with the trans community.
I think they're adopted by everybody who doesn't feel standard.
Just a hypothesis.
And there are a lot of people who you think look standard to you.
That maybe in their own mind don't feel so standard.
By standard, I mean that's not a judgment call.
I'm just saying what society imagines is the normal mode of sexuality.
I've got a feeling that most people are faking being normal, but in their mind they're thinking, okay, I'm a little bit of a weirdo in one way or another.
You know, people assessing themselves.
I'm not assessing them.
And I think that they just say, okay, at least the trans are totally out.
And I think that they're appreciated on some level from just being all the way out there.
There's something that people respond to when people are living honestly, even if you don't agree with any of it.
Have you ever noticed the power of living honestly?
It's really an insanely powerful thing that almost nobody can master.
Because we're all afraid of consequences.
But if you weren't afraid of the consequences, and you just always were honest about what you wanted and what you wanted to accomplish, people would initially hate you, and they would come around.
Because in the long run, we respond to clarity and transparency and honesty, even when we don't like what you're doing.
And that's maybe not obvious at all.
We would prefer somebody doing something we don't like with complete clarity and not trying to fool anybody about anything versus somebody that's doing things we like but they're a little sketchy about it.
You know, they're a little weaselly about what they're doing.
We just... Somebody said Kanye.
Yeah, I think Trump is in that category.
Trump is the ultimate contradiction.
I think he's tagged at 30,000 fact-check problems, which CNN calls lies.
At the same time, he's regarded as the most honest candidate by a lot of people.
Because I feel like you always know where he stands.
Don't you? I mean, he's so transparent...
That you can hate his opinion and still appreciate it.
I mean, he's a real good example of that.
Because I don't think there's anybody who has more opinions that they're disliked for in public than Trump.
But he owns them all.
He owns them from top to bottom.
He owns them right in front of you.
He owns them transparently.
And people really do like that.
Not everybody. Not everybody.
But it is a good way to draw people to you.
Yeah. You know, I don't go completely with the Trump no apology thing.
I think that that's better than apologizing for everything.
That's the weakest.
So the weakest is automatic apologizing.
The next strongest is no apologizing.
That's where Trump is. And it's better than the other way, for sure.
But I think there's one above that, which is that you call your shots and you do the apology the right way.
People do like apologies.
They really like them.
They really like him. And how much more would the Democrats like Trump if, for example, and I'm not suggesting he would do this, right?
But what if, for example, the next time that something comes out that people take as an insult, he just said, you know, I certainly didn't mean it that way.
I apologize absolutely if you took that as an insult.
Trust me, I'm never going to insult an American citizen because I don't feel that way.
So if you ever think I'm insulting you as an American citizen, you can know that you should ask some questions about that, because I would never do that intentionally.
So I apologize if anybody took that wrong, but please come to me if you feel I've ever insulted an American, because that's not going to come out of my lips.
You're not going to hear it. Now, I think that if he packaged a sort of...
That's sort of a faux apology.
That's not really an apology, is it?
Because in that case, he'd still be saying you misinterpreted it.
But he doesn't want you to be hurt.
Take Steve Jobs' response to the antenna gate.
Was it an apology?
So I'll tell you roughly what Steve Jobs said.
When the first iPhone kept dropping calls, if you held it a certain way, worst problem in the world, a product that's a handheld product that doesn't work in your hand.
That was his problem. That's a big problem.
And Steve Jobs said, all smartphones have problems.
We want to make our customers happy.
Here's what we're going to do.
And Sophia is saying he did not apologize.
That is correct. But it sounded like one, didn't it?
Kind of sounded like one.
Because what you want to hear is that he acknowledges the problem, which he did, clearly.
He acknowledged it with no...
No hedging. Yes, it's a problem.
Then he put it in context.
All smartphones have problems, and that was the genius part.
And then he told you what he was going to do about it because he wants to help you.
He's on your side.
Empathy, right. He showed empathy and power, and then he put it in context.
You can't beat that.
You cannot beat that.
And if you compare that to just not apologizing...
There's no competition. Do you buy my argument that the Steve Jobs way is sort of a non-apology that has all of the notes of an apology?
We don't want you to feel bad.
Here's what I'm going to do for you.
That's as good as you can do.
And there's no apology.
So I believe that Trump would have some play like that where he could say, I absolutely don't want anybody to think I'm insulting him because I would never do that.
Is that an apology? You can make your apology a clarification, and people will take it as an apology.
Because you just have to show the empathy part.
Oh my goodness, I would never want to insult you.
Is that an apology? Suppose you think somebody's insulted you, and they come to you and say, Oh my God, I would never say that about you.
I think you're awesome.
In fact, I think you're smarter than average.
So if you thought I said the opposite, obviously you misheld that.
I would never want you to have that feeling.
Is that an apology? It's not.
That is not an apology.
That's actually telling you that you're wrong.
That your impression was wrong.
It's correcting you.
It's the opposite of an apology.
You're correcting somebody.
And it still feels like an apology.
Right? All right, well, that is my show for today.
You know, I'm going to take this a little bit further because this is actually a little pet peeve of mine.
One of the things that bothers me is when I see people employing a strategy which I know doesn't work and they're proud of it.
And it just bugs the hell into me.
And here's a strategy that doesn't work.
Getting revenge for everybody for everything.
It just doesn't work.
Now, I do believe karma needs to do its thing.
I do believe that people need to be pushed back.
I do believe you need a brushback pitch, to use a sporting analogy.
So there are definitely cases where pushing back hard is exactly the right thing to do.
We're all on that page, right?
But you have to pick your shots.
Your primary focus should be what's good for you.
Be selfish. You're not always working for the betterment of society by being the agent of karma.
You don't have to be the agent of karma.
You can do what's good for you.
We all get that right, as long as it's legal, right?
You can legally do what's good for you.
And I would never say you should apologize for something that you're sure you did right.
That part you need to hear clearly.
If you think you're right...
Would I ever ask you to apologize?
Would I? I would never ask you to do that.
Not if you think you're right.
Now, maybe at home, right?
With your loved ones, that's a different situation.
But in public... If you think you're right, no, no.
That would be weak.
Apologizing when you think you're right would be dumb.
Clarifying always makes sense.
Everybody likes clarifying.
So I think you can clarify something to the point where people say, oh, you showed me empathy.
You told me what I wanted to hear.
You told me what you're going to do about it.
Oh, we're good. We're good.
So do not fall into the pattern of you have to get everybody back for everything.
It'll ruin your life.
You've got to know when to do it and when to not do it.
And there's somebody in your life who's having that problem right now.
