Episode 1712 Scott Adams: Unverified Chemical Attacks, Twitter Censorship, More Red Meat, Mmmmm
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Content:
Cenk Uygur's tweet about conservatives
Doc Anarchy's tweet on human brains
Scott Ritter's Twitter suspension
Ukraine war musing
NATO expansion...now Sweden?
Unverified chemical attack accusation
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, and anything else you would like to label yourself, which is fine with me, you have made it to what I call the highlight of civilization.
The best thing that's ever happened to you, and for many of you, some of this will even extend into your families and the people you talk to today.
Yeah, that's how good it is.
Not only will you be delighted in the next 40 minutes or so, but think about the people you will touch, the people you meet along the way.
Yes, and I hope they enjoy the simultaneous sip just as much as you're about to.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
You know, I kind of like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine here of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. Story number one.
Can somebody remind me how to pronounce C-E-N-K? First name of...
Help me pronounce the last name, too.
Is it Cenk? Cenk, right?
Cenk? Cenk Weger?
Iger? How the hell do you say his name?
That's such a disadvantage if you have a name that the great majority of your potential audience has trouble pronouncing.
So, Cenk Uweger.
Alright, so you all know who he is.
If you're watching this, you probably know of him.
He tweeted today, he goes, the new trend among conservatives, like Matt Gaetz and Representative MTG and Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, wait, what?
Hold on. The new trend among conservatives, like Matt Gaetz, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, That's a list of conservatives.
Well, he goes on.
Their trend is to make fun of overweight people while feigning concern about their health.
They're blaming COVID deaths on them and mocking them as the real problem in America.
Classy, as always.
Now, I guess we could talk about the content of it, which is whether or not they were mocking people who have weight problems.
I didn't see it, but I understand they were mocking body positivity, which would be different than mocking people who have weight problems.
It would be people's opinions about their weight problems, because we mock people's opinions.
That's still fair, right?
Can we still mock opinions?
I think that's still fair, right?
So I'm not sure that he characterized what happened there, but I didn't see it, so I'll be neutral on the point of the thing.
But have you noticed the following trend?
Have you noticed the following trend?
That when somebody is willing to consider arguments, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right, or at least to look to the other side to see what they're thinking and make a decision about, on a topic-by-topic basis, which one makes sense.
Why do you call people like that?
Well, they seem to get called conservatives and rhinos, right?
Am I right? So if somebody considers things on both sides, sometimes you say conservative, and other times you might say they're a rhino because they looked at some stuff on the other side.
But in both cases, they're being called people on the right.
At what point do the people on the left notice the pattern?
Yeah, and as somebody is pointing out here, the same happens to me.
If you see an article about me...
I'm called sometimes far-right or conservative, which is pretty far from what I am.
I label myself left of Bernie, except better at math, so I don't have crazy ideas like he does.
So at what point does the left notice that whenever anybody can consider arguments on both sides, they're never called liberals?
Let me say it again. Whenever you see somebody who will consider an argument on both sides...
they're never called liberals.
When are they going to see the pattern?
Am I right? That should become alarming at some point.
Wait a minute. The ability to consider an argument that I don't hold...
well, that's not a liberal...
That must be some kind of crazy conservative, or if you're a Republican, it's a rhino.
Okay. Here's a little...
I saw a tweet from Doc Anarchy, who you should follow.
Twitter is at DrAnarchist, one word.
And he notes today, and I've noted something similar, but I like his framing.
He says, human brains are not ready for virtual reality gaming and pornography.
Now, how big a deal is that?
Is that like a witty little observation about a small little corner of gaming has no impact on you or me or anything important?
Or... Or is it the end of civilization as we know it?
I think it's closer to that second thing.
Now, when I say end of civilization, it could be an improvement, but it's going to change.
If you think anything's going to be the same after virtual reality nails pornography, and that's really, really close.
If you think anything will be the same after that, You've never tried a virtual reality headset.
You just have to try one and see how, let's say, how engaging it is even in its current terrible form.
If you were to rate how good is a virtual reality right today compared to how good it will be, say, in 10 years almost for sure, I'd say it's about a 2 out of 10 today.
And there's nothing that's going to stop it.
Because even as a 2 out of 10, it's so compelling, even when you can see the seams and stuff and you know it's fake, still it's so compelling that when that thing gets to like an 8 out of 10, nobody is going to want to spend time in the real world.
It will not be competitive.
Imagine putting your headset on, sitting in your chair, you've got a limited budget, But all you have to do is put on the glasses and you go anywhere.
What's that going to do to you?
And what happens when there's a 3D printer that can make smells?
That feels like something that could happen, right?
Don't you think somebody will have a 3D printer that can, like, print a little ocean smell?
You know, so it goes along with the virtual reality?
Imagine if you sense a smell started syncing up with the vision.
Do you know how strong those two things are?
You know, the audio part is easy.
They can already do audio that'll sound like it's the real thing.
But once you've got visual and smell...
Somebody says smells won't be a thing.
But I think whenever you bet against something like that, you're wrong.
It's just how long it takes.
Now, I don't know that it would be a 3D printer, per se.
Could be a little tabletop chemistry set that just drops a drop of something into something else.
I don't know. Could be something like that.
But you don't know how this is going to change things.
Now, when I say this could end reproduction, I'm not joking about that.
Does anybody think I'm joking when I say that virtual reality, when it gets to a certain point of quality, will make human reproduction look gross?
It will. It'll just sort of look gross to do it with a real person.
Because the real person is just going to be somebody who sat in a chair with VR goggles eating potato chips, same as you, for the last six months.
When you take the glasses off from your perfect world, Are you going to want to go get some of that?
How about I hook up with the other person who hasn't exercised in six months because exercise is no fun compared to sitting in a chair and eating potato chips?
Humans having sex is almost...
It's almost obsolete.
You're only a couple of tweaks of technology away from complete obsolescence.
Because your brain doesn't know how to make that adjustment.
That's the point of Doc Anarchy's tweet.
You don't realize that your brain can't handle this.
What's coming? There is no way your brain can handle this, and there's no way it's going to stop because somebody's going to make a ton of money.
Anything addictive that's also legal is just a money faucet, right?
If it's legal and completely addictive, like Twitter, it's going to make a lot of money for somebody.
So, of course...
This will actually just grab civilization by the neck.
And I was thinking that in the short run, the only thing that's going to keep countries viable is tons of immigration from places that don't have good technology yet.
You're going to have to bring in humans from countries where they don't have virtual reality in any mass way, because otherwise nobody will do anything.
Do you think you're going to be able to get somebody to, say, do some handyman work on your house if they could watch virtual reality and collect a universal basic income?
You know, the virtual reality could replace all of your entertainment needs.
And then all you need is a universal basic income and a roof and a toilet, basically, and you're good to go.
So I don't see this like driving productivity in a good way.
On the plus side, our biggest problem up to now has been drug addiction, and I do think that mushrooms are going to be medicinally used, you know, used in a correct way.
I think that's actually going to change addiction, which up until now is our biggest problem, in my opinion.
We don't talk about it as much.
So there's a story that in Israel, the Chinese embassy gave their, I guess, their counterparts or something in Israel, the Israeli government, some thermal mugs, some mugs to keep your coffee warm.
And when they were taken apart, they had some mysterious, let's say, technology in them that didn't belong there.
So they're thinking it's either tracking or a bug.
To which I say, how is it in the news already, and yet they haven't figured out if it's a tracking device or a listening device?
Like, did somebody go to the news a little bit early?
Like, as soon as they peeled the cover off it and they saw there was something electronic in there, did somebody run out of the room and call the press and say, we found a thing.
It's an unidentified thing.
We don't know if it's a bug or a tracking device, but put this in the news.
Or do you think...
It's more likely that if that happened, somebody would have torn it apart and they would have said, let's have our tech guys look at this, because they're sexist, so they'd say guys, right?
Because unlike us, they're not very woke, but they'd say guys, I'm sure, because they're like that.
And then their tech people, if we could be more inclusive, would look at it and they'd say, hey, this is either a bug or a tracking device.
But how hard would it be to figure that out?
Wouldn't you know if something had a microphone?
Wouldn't you? I mean, if you were in that kind of technology, I think you could find out if it transmits.
Couldn't you tell if it had a GPS on it or something?
I don't know. And somebody's saying it's just part of the heating device.
They didn't say if it's the kind that heats when you put it on a warmer, or if it's the...
Oh, that would have been clever, wouldn't it?
Imagine if it didn't activate until you put it on the warmer and then the warmer is plugged in.
That'd be kind of cool. But here's my warning to you.
Don't accept any Chinese thermal mugs.
And also, true story, I bought some...
I can't say it out loud because of my digital assistant that's listening.
But my A-M-A-Z-O-N plugs...
Oh, I can say that word, Amazon.
That's the other word I can't say.
A-L-E-X-A. So I bought some plugs for lamps.
And I think because of the supply chain or something, or because I'm bad at shopping, I didn't see the normal ones that Amazon does that has their name on it.
So I bought some that I thought were lookalikes.
But they required their own app, which already sort of made me angry, because I don't want to add an app to do anything.
So I added an app, and the app is clearly labeled as a Chinese product.
Now, the physical plug had some American-looking name that you couldn't tell where it was made.
But as soon as I opened the app, the app was clearly labeled something made in China.
Now, do you think that I put these devices with the app clearly labeled Made in China into my Wi-Fi system?
Nope. Shit-canned them.
I didn't even want to return them because somebody else might get them.
I just threw them right in the trash and waited to get the real ones.
Now, were the real ones made in China?
I don't know. I don't know.
But I have to think there's slightly more chance...
That Amazon, the company, checks their product that has their name on it to make sure it doesn't have anything suspicious in there.
But I'm not so sure that Amazon, the company, would check somebody else's branded product to make sure there isn't something suspicious inside of it.
It's something they might do with maybe their own hardware, I hope.
So I'm not sure I'm protected.
By using the Amazon brand versus the one that is just compatible.
But I was creeped out.
I mean, that's pretty creepy to put any kind of Chinese hardware and software in your Wi-Fi.
Would you do it? And I'm not even sure we have a choice, because there's probably always some Chinese-made product that's in the mix somewhere.
But would you do it?
Most of you are saying no.
Yeah. Alright.
Well, here's another example of Trump was right.
Some of you saw this video. Apparently, there was a video back in 2018 that showed German officials sort of rolling their eyes and laughing at Trump when he predicted that Germany would become dependent on Russian oil.
I'm sorry, Russian energy.
And he said that Germany is totally controlled by and, quote, captive to Russia.
And people just laughed.
Oh, they rolled their eyes.
You silly old orange menace you.
And then they captioned it this.
So it was a lefty organization that had this video.
And their caption for it back in 2018 was, Trump made some outrageous claims about German energy at the UN. And the German delegation's reaction was priceless.
It was priceless. Boy, did they make him look dumb.
It was priceless, those smart old Germans.
So I remind you of, again, one of the predictions of which I am most proud, that the longer Trump was out of office, the better he would look.
Because you couldn't see the good things he was doing because of all the noise around him.
It was just invisible. And then if you actually could wipe the fog away and just see sort of the substance, you'd actually be kind of surprised.
You'd be kind of surprised how good he was at a variety of things.
Which is not to say...
He's good at everything, just like everybody, right?
So I'm not saying everything he does turns to gold, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You have your own examples of stuff you don't like.
But to deny that he has special talent is, I think, just denying the obvious.
He does have special talent.
And I would say that the place that you should trust him the most is, you know, if he's talking about human nature, negotiating...
Because this is sort of in that domain.
Business. And how some asshole could get over on you.
Wouldn't you believe him?
Who are you going to ask?
Right? I mean, this could not be more perfectly in his domain.
Like, reading Putin's intentions.
I don't think anybody could be better at reading Putin's intentions.
Because don't you think that they both have a little bit in common in terms of, let's say, thinking about their role in the world?
They probably have something in common where Trump can say, you know, if I were a brutal dictator, this is what I'd be doing.
And if you were a brutal dictator, you know what Trump would have been doing?
Apparently, Trump would have used his energy control over Germany to give some leverage.
That's what John pointed down.
Had he been a brutal dictator of...
Sorry, I just...
So somebody's reading my book, God's Debris.
That book has had a lot of impact over the 20 or so some years.
It's the one people mention to me the most.
It's called God's Debris.
You can even get a free copy if you want, if you Google it.
There's a free... I think somebody's got a...
PDF of it, which I allowed, actually.
So if you see one that looks illegal, like an illegal electronic copy of it, it's not illegal.
That book is allowed to be passed around in digital form.
All right. So I digress.
Trump looks better than usual.
Okay, the big story is the big shooting at the subway in New York City.
Are you all okay with me not really talking about any mass shootings?
Is everybody okay with that?
Because I like to talk about the headlines.
But number one, these get talked to death.
Number two, we only say the same things.
The only thing that's interesting about this, and it's only barely, is the Fox News, CNN framing.
If you go to Fox News, it's a racist shooting because the alleged probable person of interest, maybe perpetrator, who knows, alleged, is black.
And he had some rants that made him look racist.
So Fox News is saying it's a racist thing and CNN is saying it's a violence thing.
And a gun thing. So there, of course, is being framed differently, but that's, I don't know, you always expect that, right?
So that's all I'm going to say about that.
Are any of you following the Scott Ritter being suspended for things he said about Ukraine and Russia?
And I always get in trouble in this topic, but it doesn't stop me from doing it.
So let me start by saying, I don't think people should be banned from social media for being wrong.
Does everybody agree?
We're all on the same page, right?
You shouldn't be banned for being wrong, because then everybody would get banned eventually.
So there's no way you could have that as a standard.
But does it matter what you're wrong about?
So let's say you're wrong about something that is health-related, and if other people believed your wrongness, they would die.
Should that be bad?
Well, I mean, that's where the question gets tough.
In general, I'd say no.
Because there should be a better way to deal with it, which is to put the counterpoint closer to the potentially banned material.
So there's probably just a better way to handle it.
So I'm not on the page of banning speech.
But the next thing I say about it is going to make you think maybe I am.
But I'm not. There's just something that's important that needs to be said, and I'm the only one dumb enough to try to slice this fine enough to say this.
And that is that it's really hard to get kicked off of social media, unless you're trying, almost like you're trying.
And people think it's because of what you say.
And I don't think it is, exactly.
I think it's more about the way you say it.
I think it's about the way you say it.
I don't believe people are getting kicked off Exactly for content.
For example, if you said, I believe a bad thing is happening, would you ever be kicked off?
I think, I don't have evidence, but I think a bad thing's happening.
I don't know. Has anybody been kicked off for saying they have a hunch or a belief?
I don't know. Can you give me an example?
Now, suppose you said, I know something's happening and it's verifiably untrue.
And that it would be dangerous.
So people are getting kicked off of that.
And I think that the Scott Ritter example, depending on your point of view and what you believe is true or not true, could fall into the category of things that you wouldn't get kicked off for saying if you said it right.
So I tested it by trying to say it right.
And if I get kicked off before we're done, well, we'll know.
So the issue that Ritter got suspended for, I believe, are two tweets in which both he alluded to Ukraine being sort of a false flag committer of the murders in Bukha.
Now the news is reporting that they're probable or almost certainly Russian atrocities.
So that's the narrative.
The official narrative is it's Russian atrocities.
But Scott Ritter is claiming Not as a speculation, but he's treating it like it's a fact, that it's a false flag, and that the Ukrainians actually were guilty of murder, mass murder. Now, the tweets that allegedly caused the problem, and I think there's good evidence they're the ones, he doesn't show his work.
But there's indication that he's talked about it in more depth.
But if you tweet it without showing it work, and it's against the narrative, And it could have an impact.
I mean, it's a life and death.
It is life and death how the mainstream media in the United States sees Ukraine.
Would you give me that?
It's a life and death question.
Because if our popular opinion about Ukraine and the United States shifts, so too would our support in one direction or another.
It is life and death. So, given that it's life and death, very high stakes...
If Scott Ritter said something that was against the mainstream, could get people killed, could, potentially, should he be banned for saying something that could get people killed, but the tweet itself doesn't show any support for it?
And the people doing the banning or censoring would believe it's definitely false.
It's a really tough one.
But I would go with not banning him.
Anybody agree? Disagree?
So I would say don't ban him even though it's life and death and even though it's going to kill people.
Maybe. I can't even say it will.
It just might. Because the problem is as soon as you say it might kill somebody, where do you end up?
Totalitarian government? You know, I'm not a big believer in the slippery slope, but there's no slope there at all.
If somebody can say, you said something that'll get somebody killed, and that gets banned, as soon as you say that, then there's an argument for banning everything.
Well, that would degrade the reputation of the country, and in the long run, if you've degraded the reputation of the country, somebody could get killed.
It's the universal reason to ban everything.
Somebody will get hurt. Yeah, so you can't really do that.
But it looks like that was done.
So I want to say as clearly as possible, I don't know anything that would support his opinion.
And I doubt he's right.
Just an opinion. So here's what I tweeted to see if I get banned because I think I'm saying it right.
So I tweeted that in my opinion...
So I said, in my opinion, so nobody's looking for a source, in my opinion, Ukraine has committed war crimes.
And my reasoning is that I also put in a tweet, so I showed my work.
My reasoning is that in a war of this scale, there are always war crimes on both sides.
Do you think I'll be censored?
So I just called our team, you know, the Ukrainians, it feels like they're our team, right?
The United States is backing the Ukrainians.
So I just said our team almost certainly is committing war crimes.
And I said it on social media, and it's basically the same thing Scott Ritter said, but he used a specific example without pointing to his work around that specific example.
So I think I said it correctly.
And I don't think I'll be banned.
And could I get somebody killed?
Yeah, yeah. Did I just tweet something that literally could get somebody killed?
You could argue it.
Because if you imagine that that point of view became, let's say, more persuasive, so more people adopted it because I said it, I don't think that's going to happen.
But suppose it did. Well, you could make an argument that I had talked sort of trash against Ukraine, caused Ukraine to get less support, and caused some kind of a genocide, using the provocative word, because we hadn't supported them enough.
Because I'd said that there were war criminals too, so people said, ah, you know, why would we support any war criminals?
So you could make an argument for everything.
Everything kills somebody.
Yeah, you just can't use that as standard.
But I will also acknowledge that any private company, such as Twitter, is in a tough spot because they have to satisfy their stockholders, they have to satisfy their employees, or else they're not a business, and they're not the government.
So you could completely understand how Twitter would take a different approach because they're satisfying different gods, right?
Their god is not free speech.
Everybody likes free speech, but their god is the stockholders.
And you can't satisfy the stockholders unless you can retain your employees.
And you can't retain your employees unless you do some stuff that maybe you weren't inclined to do otherwise.
So this is why Elon Musk is so important to the system.
Because the system was at a stalemate.
You know, the government could only do what the government does.
Private companies have to do what they have to do to make money and attract audience and keep shareholders and all that.
And they were kind of trapped.
So we didn't have free speech and we didn't have a solution.
And then Elon Musk comes along and he just grabs the whole damn box and just shakes it.
And then you look at it again and you say, okay, is Elon Musk on the board of directors?
Did that fix anything?
No, that doesn't look like that would be enough.
In fact, it might limit his ability.
Shake the box. Okay, Elon Musk says he's not going to be on the board of directors.
Maybe we should consider some ideas that nobody's ever taken seriously before, but why would we?
I mean, why would we suddenly take these ideas seriously when we've never before?
Uh-oh, Elon Musk just tweeted, shake the box, shake the box, shake the box.
Now what do you have? Sooner or later...
And who have I said this about before?
Trump, right? Trump is a box shaker.
If you can't make a deal with the variables you have, you have to add variables or change variables.
Just shake the box. And you see Elon Musk doing that with Twitter like it's a pair of pants.
He's just grabbing the laundry and shaking it.
How does that look? Nope.
Shake it a little more.
Got anything yet? Anything yet?
Any variables? Nope.
Shake, shake, shake. And watching him do this right in front of the world, the box shaking until the engineer can see the parts.
Because remember, I don't think he's technically an engineer, but he's an engineer at least by mindset.
And I think he's just waiting for the variables to lock in and he'll be able to see the field once he shakes enough.
There's more shaking coming.
So here's the thing.
If everybody does everything right according to who they're serving, sometimes the system doesn't work.
And you just need somebody who's bigger than the system.
And there are only a few of them, right?
Trump is just bigger than any system.
Elon Musk is bigger than any system.
So you need somebody outside the system and bigger than it to shake the box.
I feel like I just said the same thing too many times here.
And I was challenged by Gregory Makles on Twitter, a Twitter user I interact with a lot.
And I was saying that one of the reasons I can get away with things like the fine people hoax is it was pointed out that I've tweeted about the fine people hoax without always showing my work.
I don't always link to the sources.
And that that was an example of me saying something that was against the mainstream narrative, but I didn't get cancelled, so why should Scott Ritter be cancelled?
So it must be about the content, right?
That would be the argument. But I would say, you can't really make that out.
That's not exactly a good analogy.
Because all it takes to prove that the fine people hoax is a hoax is to look at it.
Just look at the video.
That's it. And you could Google it and you'd see tons of proof that's incontrovertible, in my opinion.
So I think me mentioning something that's against the narrative but has so much evidence for it, and it's just so obvious, the worst thing that anybody could do, if they wanted people to believe the fine people hoax was real, the worst thing they could do is censor me for saying it's a hoax, because I already have too much visibility, like it would be a story.
That's right. So the press would cover it if I got banned from Twitter from saying that the fine people hoax was a hoax.
It would be in the press. And then you'd have to look at it.
Then you'd be forced to ask the question, well, why is this stupid cartoonist guy dying on this hill?
It's like a dumb place to die on.
So banning me would make my message bigger.
You get that? If you ban me for that in particular, it would make my message bigger and more effective.
If you ban Scott Ritter...
How many of you had ever heard of Scott Ritter before Twitter?
Did he even know who he was?
I mean, some of you had. But if he gets banned, he just sort of disappears.
So banning him actually changes...
You know, it supports the narrative.
Banning me would work against the narrative.
So it's not comparable.
Alright. Here's Biden making things worse.
Now he's decided that Putin has committed genocide.
So I guess using the word genocide just triggers things into a higher level of legal and moral badness.
But French President Macron, he didn't want to comment about that because he didn't want to say that Ukraine is committing genocide because he said, quote, I would be careful with such terms today because these two people, Russians and Ukrainians, are brothers. To which I say...
What does a genocide mean?
Did they change the name of genocide to something?
Because doesn't it have to be somebody different from you that you're killing to make it genocide?
Or is that not in the definition?
Should we just check the definition right now?
Because I think Macron's right, right?
That if you're just killing people who look just like you, that's more like just mass murder or evil or war...
Fratricide. Yeah, but it's not genocide, is it?
I guess it's just a definition.
So, I don't know.
Is Biden even being advised on this stuff, or is he just throwing out a word when he wants to get things going?
Now, I have to admit...
Let's do the what if the other team did it test, all right?
Remember, you should do this not just on things that you don't like somebody accusing you of, but you should do it on your own opinions now and then, like this.
If Trump had said that Russia was involved in genocide at this point in the situation, would I have said that was a bad idea?
Probably not. Probably not.
Because if Trump said it, I'd say, oh, he's just ratcheting up the public relations badness against Putin, because then no matter what happens, Russia will be in trouble as long as Putin's in charge, because he'll be under this genocide label.
So if Trump had said it, I would just say it's just good persuasion.
And so I'm going to give Biden the same break.
Everybody okay with that?
So I don't know for sure if Biden had thought it out.
I think if it had come from Trump, he probably would have, because his history is such that this is exactly what he does think out.
But I don't know if Biden had thought it out, but I'm going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I'm going to give him the benefit of that.
Because it could be that his advisor said, you know, here's the next escalation.
We need to keep escalating as he escalates.
It could be that it was just meant to be provocative.
In which case, I'd say that's okay.
It ups the pressure.
Well, Finland and Sweden...
Who have been non-aligned until now.
Looks like they're probably going to join NATO, maybe Finland first.
How many of you have ever looked at a map of NATO expansion over the last, I think it's 20 years or so?
Because if you look at the map, you could have so easily predicted that Russia was going to go to war over Ukraine.
Now, maybe it just looks easy in retrospect, because I'd never really paid attention, had you?
How much do you ever pay attention to what countries are turning NATO or not?
I've never paid attention. Did you know that Estonia was in NATO? Okay, they are.
I didn't know that. I mean, they could have been non-aligned or...
Who knew? Some of you did.
And I congratulate you for being well-informed.
But here's what you need to know.
I'm going to describe it visually.
If you could just imagine, there's a blob on the left that's Europe, and there's a blob on the right.
This will be opposite if you're looking at my hands on the video.
There's a blob on the right, there's Russia.
And then in between, there are all these states that, you know, all these countries that were part of the old Soviet Union, especially.
Maybe not all of them.
If you looked at it, you could see that the blob on the left grew substantially by absorbing into NATO a whole bunch of things, and they were getting closer and closer to the other big blob.
And the biggest remaining sort of uncontested area between the big blob on the left that was marching Pretty strongly marching toward the other blob.
And when I say marching, I mean bringing into NATO alliance more countries.
It was obvious on the map that that was going to be a war.
In retrospect, right?
You know, had I been looking at exactly the same information before the war, I'd probably say, well, they're not going to go to war over Ukraine because that would be crazy.
But after the fact, when you know what actually happened and you look at it on the map, which I just did today, I looked at it and I thought, that's super obvious that's going to be a war, which is what experts were saying, right?
Weren't there people saying, uh-oh, this looks like a war is coming?
For a long time. I suppose there are people who looked at maps.
Because when you look at it, it's really kind of glaring that that's going to be a problem.
Yeah, even Putin said it, right?
I guess Putin's been saying it for a while.
Peter Zahn said it.
So smart people saw it all along.
But, you know, I've told you that visual persuasion...
It's the second strongest kind after fear.
And if the fear is visual, that's the best of all.
But if you looked at the map, the persuasion filter on it would have said, oh, we've got trouble here.
And sure enough. So isn't this about the time in this Ukraine-Russia war that there would be an unverified chemical attack attributed possibly to Russia?
Isn't it about time for that to happen?
I was expecting.
I was like, geez, it's been a long time between unverified chemical attacks.
Let me check the news to see if anything's happened in the last several minutes.
Oh, okay, there's an unverified chemical attack being possibly attributed to Russia.
Right on time. Right on time.
So let's put a little bit of skeptical thinking on that, shall we?
A little bit of skeptical thinking.
Yeah. Yes, it already happened.
The alleged chemical attack has not been verified.
Even the Ukrainian President Zelensky said he cannot say with certainty if chemical weapons were used in Mariupol.
Now, I was looking at the news about Mariupol, and one of the headlines is that a unit from outside Mariupol fought itself, I guess, into, let's say, into, what would you call it?
They're in physical now proximity to the units that were already there defending Mariupol from the Russian attack.
Would be good news, right?
If you're pro-Ukraine, you say, yay, the unit that was already defending Marypol now got reinforcements, and it wasn't easy.
I guess it wasn't easy to get them in, but now they're there.
And then you read the details, and the people who were there were the Azov Brigade.
Now, the Azov Brigade has a little bit of a reputation problem, if I may say.
A little bit of a reputation problem.
It's the Nazi thing.
Now, Given that we never know what is true and what is not, I'll just say that the Azov Brigade is considered the, you know, at least has Nazis or they are Nazis or they like Nazis or something, right? There's something, there's a Nazi sheen on them.
Now, I don't know what is true and what is not true.
And I'm not sure anybody does.
But probably some of them are pro-Nazis.
Probably. I mean, just don't know how many and how much that matters.
But that's a bad look.
So you can see why the news downplayed that part.
It's like, oh, they're joining up with the Azov Brigade.
And then people who read that are like, oh, that's good.
And I'm not sure.
Because here's the warning.
The warning is, are you sure there's a good guy in this war?
Because you really have to decide there's a good guy and a bad guy, right?
Putin bad, Zelensky good.
I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not sure it's ever that clean.
I'm not sure that the United States is a good guy in this war either.
Because it feels to me we could have prevented this.
It doesn't feel like we wanted to that badly.
Does it? If you were to look at just the events and not look at what anybody said and not read anybody's minds, you just look at the events.
If the only thing you knew were the events, would you have concluded that the United States wanted war or didn't want war?
Because it sure looks like we wanted it, if you just look at the events, what we did.
Now, who would want war?
That would be crazy. But I feel as if there may have been somebody who was smart enough to say, you know, if we drag Russia into a conventional war, it's going to really degrade Russia forever.
Now somebody says, now Scott is contradicting himself, in all caps.
So look, all caps guy...
If you'd like to look like you're a 12-year-old troll, that would be a way to do it.
So it could be that there's something we don't know about this whole work-up to this war that would not make you happy about the United States, I feel.
Because it just feels like it would have been so easy to say, hey, if you don't want NATO there, how about we come up with some kind of non-alignment?
You know, unaligned, neutral thing.
We didn't even talk about it.
The hill we decided to die on was that the country itself gets to decide if it's in NATO. That's the hill we decided to die on, except that we didn't die.
Ukraine did. So we decided that Ukraine would die on the hill that we gave them.
It wasn't even a hill until we gave it to them.
We basically created the hill and then told them to die on it.
Hey, we've got this NATO thing.
Do not let anybody tell you you can't join.
Oh, no. If somebody else tells you you can't join NATO, well, then you're not really a sovereign country, are you?
Don't you want to be a sovereign country?
Wuss. Hey, wuss.
You bunch of wusses.
Don't you want to be sovereign?
Or are you just going to be a Putin puppet?
What are you going to be? So you better make a stand and say that even though it's almost impossible that you're ever going to join NATO, you should destroy your entire country just to preserve the point that you're a sovereign country.
You are not going to be pushed around by this big bully Putin.
So I think you should take a stand.
It feels like what happened.
Now, obviously, we don't know what really happened.
But... There's something really sketchy that happened over there, and I don't know what it is.
So we're left to speculate.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is just about all we have.
And I think I nailed it once again.
One of the best... Things you've ever seen in your life and probably it'll take you through the day with a little dopamine hit.
Would anybody like any oxytocin?
A little hit before we go.
Now you know oxytocin is the chemical that makes you feel good and connect to things and really get a connection with people.
And that one you usually get from hugging or intimate things, being in love, But I'm pretty sure I can jack up your oxytocin directly.
Do you believe me?
Have you ever wondered why the placebo effect works?
Even when you know it exists?
You can even know there is such a thing as a placebo effect.
It still works. So I'm going to make you think about a hug and think about hugging the person you'd most want to hug.
It could be me, but I doubt it.
But feel free. If there's anybody out there who just thinks that me hugging them would be terrific, then think of that.
But if you'd like to hug somebody far more attractive or that you like better, think of that.
Now, if you're all thinking about hugging people, do you think I didn't make 20% of you have more oxytocin?
It actually is that simple.
It's literally that simple.
All you have to do is put your headspace in the place that produces oxytocin, and I haven't studied it scientifically, but I'd be willing to make a very large bet that if you think about hugging your pet, hugging somebody you love, who's still around and available to hug, I'll bet you that for at least 20% of you, Your oxytocin just went up.
Because that's how many I can get with placebo alone.
But, because I'm a trained hypnotist, and because you've voluntarily decided that you'd like some oxytocin, probably, right?
Now, persuasion works best when somebody wants to be persuaded of the thing.
It doesn't work so well when they don't want it.
So you can't make somebody do something they don't want to do.
But who doesn't want to feel good?
Who doesn't want to feel connected?
Who doesn't want to feel a sense of well-being all day long?
Nobody. Every one of you, voluntarily, would like to be influenced by me right now.
You would like to know that I could tell you that your oxytocin level is going to get a little hit.
And so I am. It's also true.
Because when you think about that great hug, when you think about those hugs where you just melt into each other, Where you almost lose the sense that you're two people.
Think about that one. Think about that feeling you get that just doesn't come from anything else.
It's not sex. It's not love.
It's your whole body feels good.
Whatever that is. And you can start to feel it a little bit now, can't you?
Some of you are getting a little bit of tingle, aren't you?
If you're getting a little bit of tingle, like a little bit of a goose bump, Just say so in the comments, and you'll see how powerful this is.
So if you don't think that suggesting that the best hug in the world is in your mind right now, and that you can feel it, your entire body can feel it, not just your arms and the parts you imagine touching, but you can feel it in the back of your legs.
You can feel it in the back of your neck.
You can feel it in your hair.
Yeah. That, ladies and gentlemen...
Is your oxytocin.
And I'm doing that for you directly and with your permission.
And a little bit of dopamine to help.
So it's going to be a nice little combo.
A little bit of dopamine.
A little bit of oxytocin.
And one more thing.
We're going to top it off with a sip of your favorite beverage.
You ready?
Go.
Now, you didn't have to do a simultaneous It's still going to work.
You're just associating this good feeling, this good sensation, with a good thought.
And you get all that in there at the same time.
And we all feel it at once.
And suddenly, your oxytocin is higher.
Now, let me ask you this.
If I funded a study and...
Actually tested people's oxytocin levels before and after the simultaneous sip and live stream.
Do you think they'd be different?
I'll bet they would. I haven't done that study, of course, but I'll bet they would.
