Episode 1733 Scott Adams: The Persuasion Game With The Supreme Court Leak and Roe V Wade
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
NXIVM Keith Raniere, retrial?
Creating my own Disinformation Panel
Long COVID study on IQ impact
Elon Musk's sunlight disinfectant tweet
Supreme Court abortion leak
Leak timing for political impact
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
And my goodness, you are energizing me so much because of your awesomeness, your curiosity, your general sexiness, and that go-getter attitude.
Wow! Am I impressed with all of you!
Now, would you like to take today's experience up to heretofore inexperienced Inexperienced.
Heretofore levels you've never experienced.
Probably should have worked on that one in advance.
But I know you'd like to.
Let's take it up a notch, and all you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chels or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dope meat hit of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything better and makes everything go your way.
It's called the simultaneous step, but it happens now.
Go. Never experienced?
Yeah, I should have gone with never experienced.
Heretofore never experienced?
All right, we'll go with that.
Do I look sleepy today?
Because that would be hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?
Because I've been tweeting and talking and writing about how important it is to get sleep.
And look at me. Clearly, clearly did not get enough sleep.
Now, am I a failure or a hypocrite?
Because I preached to you about getting enough sleep, and clearly you can see that I'm not succeeding at this.
What do you think? Here's my take on it and I'll give you an example from another domain.
I like to go to the gym and I have a system that I try to be active every day, one way or the other.
And so often I'll feel like, ugh, I don't feel like going to the gym.
But I'll get ready anyway.
I'll force myself to do it because I've got a good habit going.
And I'll get to the gym and I'll walk in the front door.
And I'll walk toward the weight room and I'll look at all the heavy objects I'll be lifting.
And I just stand there for a moment and I say, nope.
Nope. I turn back around and I walk directly out the door, get in my car and drive home, and declare victory.
Not failure. Total victory.
Because I don't have a goal of going to the gym.
I have a system. The system is something that is sort of a programming I've created in myself to stay active every day and at least go to the gym or put my best effort into it.
Some days you really just don't have it.
But my system was so strong, it got me all the way to putting my foot on the floor of the gym, you know, miles away from my house.
Didn't have enough energy to complete the transaction, but my system was a complete success.
Over time, I'm going to go to the gym a lot more with a system that I will go there and turn around and go home.
Likewise, with sleep.
While I feel that I am not succeeding at the moment, I am doing something that is true to my system.
Here's like a little systems lesson.
I am continuously experimenting.
So I'm going through a cycle of, okay, what if I do this kind of bedding?
What if I get rid of more light?
What if I set an alarm?
Oh, here's a trick that I've been trying lately.
Instead of setting an alarm to wake up, which I also do, but I rarely use my wake-up alarm, I don't know the last time I used a wake-up alarm.
I set it, but I'm usually awake two hours before my alarm.
So I started setting a go-to-sleep alarm.
So the idea is that at 10 o'clock at night, my alarm goes off, and it's just sort of a...
It probably doesn't make any difference in any given night.
But over time, it's going to train me.
It's going to be like a little annoying thing that happens at 10 o'clock every night.
And so sooner or later, at around 9.30 a night, if I just keep doing this, I'm going to start thinking to myself, that alarm's going to go off pretty soon.
It will just be one extra thing I'll test to see if it helps my sleep system.
So I'm going to keep chipping at it.
It'll make a difference. There's a story that I didn't read any of the details of because I didn't want to ruin the irony of it.
Or not even irony.
Stop me from using that word, please.
Don't let me use irony again, because we don't agree what it means.
But there's a story that says that there's a tick, you know, a little bug, a tick, that makes you allergic to meat, and it's been discovered in D.C. So if you get bit by this tick, you'll be allergic to meat.
Now, what would happen if this tick got everywhere?
What happens if everybody becomes allergic to meat?
Well, climate change would be much better, wouldn't it?
Did the climate change models, did they account for the fact that the farting cows might be affected by the tick?
And the tick that would make you not eat the meat would make you have fewer cows that would be far, far less.
Is that included in the long-term climate models?
Or just wondering?
Now, I only use this as an example.
I don't think this is actually a very big percentage of anything.
Let me check my security cameras.
They're going nuts here at the moment.
What the hell is attacking my house?
My dog is locked outside.
We'll take care of that later.
She's safe. Don't worry.
She's in a gated area.
And it's warm. So...
What was I talking about?
Something about climate change.
Yeah, so the models don't include a tick, but they also don't include any one of 50 things that are going to look like they'll change everything.
You know, if you're looking at an 80-year climate model, Nobody sees the allergic to meat tick.
Nobody calculated that in.
So just remember, nobody can predict anything more than tomorrow.
Here's a little update on a story that this one might catch you by surprise.
You remember the NXIVM so-called sex cult story, which was not really a sex cult, but that's another question, in which the so-called cult leader, Keith Ranieri, ended up being sentenced to prison, but I think the worst of the charges were an underage girl, alleged murder, Sex trafficking or sex-related thing.
It was based largely on, let's see, I guess some stuff found on a laptop.
So there were some images on a laptop and the dates on the images would show that the girl was underage and those images proved that there was something going on or Or strongly, you know, set the date of when something was going on.
And so that was a big part of how he got convicted and why he's in jail.
And apparently a former FBI forensic examiner looked at the evidence and concluded that it was falsified.
What? It looks like maybe the...
I think the problem is that the dates on the images were altered, and I guess you can tell somehow.
So they're asking for a retrial based on the fact that it's possible that law enforcement may have planted evidence about the worst of the charges.
Now, what would that make you think of the lesser charges...
If, hypothetically, and this is a long way from being proven, but what if you found out that the largest charge was fake?
Just what if? I don't know if it's going to happen.
That would certainly make you think twice about the lesser charges, wouldn't it?
The next thing you'd have to wonder is, you know, is it a conspiracy or just like one person had a bone to pick?
Or is there some larger situation here that really needs to be looked at?
Because I think Keith Ranieri made some enemies.
Because anybody who was, say, a family member of someone who had been brought into his world, they might have some problems with it.
Maybe some jealous husband's situations.
You can imagine lots of people who would have a bone to pick with him and would maybe find some mechanism to do it.
Now, this is all speculative.
I'm not saying it's going to go one way or another.
I'm not supporting him or not supporting him.
I don't know what's true and what isn't.
But we don't live in a world where you can believe law enforcement anymore, can you?
I hate to say it.
But really, can you trust any of your institutions?
Not automatically. Now, I think that we're fortunate that most of our institutions are working well enough to keep the system together, somewhat.
I mean, we're still limping forward, okay.
But you can't look at law enforcement and say, well, automatically, they don't plant any evidence.
You know, they don't do anything illegal because they're law enforcement.
I mean, we're so beyond that innocence, aren't we?
I feel like when I was a kid, we were innocent enough that if the police said it was true, I'd say, well, I get that in the inner city some of the police are corrupt, but, you know, that would be the exception to the rule.
But now I think, ah, it could be anywhere.
There's just a perfectly good chance that any entity anywhere in the United States is corrupt, or that individuals within it are.
All right. On the Locals platform, somebody suggested that I create my own disinformation panel.
And at first I laughed.
I thought, ah, ah, ah.
And then I thought, well, why can't I? Well, what would stop me from creating my own disinformation panel?
Let me tell you how I do it.
Number one, we wouldn't have meetings.
That would be rule number one.
No meetings. Number two, You'd be on the panel if I say you're on the panel.
So that would be the mechanism.
If I say, hey, you, you're on the panel.
You're on the panel even if you don't want to be on the panel.
You don't even have to agree to be on the panel.
You're just on the fucking panel.
So you're appointed to the panel, and you have no choice about it.
So, for example, I might appoint...
Mike Cernovich to the panel or Elon Musk to the panel.
And both of them might say, I don't want to be on your stupid panel.
I didn't agree to this. And I'd say, that's not how it works.
I'm sorry. That's not how it works.
You will simply be one of the, let's say, 12 people that I toss the ball to in a communication sense when there's a question of what's real and what isn't.
That's it. So if one of those two people I had appointed to my disinformation panel against their wishes, if they tweeted something that said, I believe this is true or I believe this is not true, I would direct you to it, along with the other 11 people that I had appointed against their will to my panel.
So I might throw Matt Taibbi on there, Glenn Greenwald, Might throw them on there.
No, I wouldn't be on the panel myself.
I would not be on the panel myself.
I would be the chooser of people on the panel.
But I would keep my own opinion out of it.
Now, I'm seeing some other names of people I would consider more political.
So I would pick people only who have a chosen ability to disagree with their own team.
You'd have to have that. Right.
Yeah, Goffeld would be a good example.
So Russell Brand, good example.
Probably I'd pick Americans just to keep it...
Well, yeah, I probably would.
Just to keep it at least national.
So, what do you think?
What do you think? Yeah, Dave Rubin, good example.
So I'll hold back on who those people would be.
And you wouldn't have to like them.
It could be Alan Dershowitz, and then some of you say, we don't like him because of what you imagine he did or didn't do in some case.
And I'll say, I don't care.
It's not about his personality. It's about a demonstrated ability to reason through things and to disagree sometimes with his own team.
If you have that going for you, good enough.
You're on. So I might create a disinformation panel.
I might actually do that.
Long COVID. There's a new study, which, like all studies, is completely useless.
I say that without knowing anything about it.
But this one seems a little more obvious than most.
And it's about long COVID, and it seems to have found that people who have long COVID are as much as 10 points lower in IQ even after some time has gone by.
And they say having a long COVID infection could be, not for every person, of course, but for an alarming number of people, the study would say it's almost like the cognitive decline between the age of 50 and 70.
To which I say, what cognitive decline between 50 and 70?
I'm almost 65 and I'm getting smarter every day.
I don't know what they're talking about.
Can you imagine how smart I'm going to be at 70?
My God. And what I'm waiting for is when I reach 100, I am going to be so cognitively...
My cognitively abilities should be amazing by 100 because they're so good now.
I mean, between 50 and 65, I feel like I've picked up 7 to 25 IQ points.
And I can say with complete certainty, Then my cognification abilities are excellent now.
And I'd certainly notice them if they weren't.
So my smartification seems to be amplifying every moment that I'm alive.
So I don't understand that point.
But they do say you might lose 10 IQ points if you have long COVID. But here's how they figured that out.
They compared people who had long COVID to people who had never been infected.
Huh. Does that seem like the right comparison?
People who have never been infected to people who have been infected.
And then they determined that the people who have been infected generally had lower IQs.
And so their conclusion was it was the long COVID that was causing the drop in IQ. Now keep in mind what they didn't What they did not study is the same group of people before and after.
Now that would have been a good study, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't you like to see that study?
The one right before COVID and right after?
Now that would be an interesting study.
Do you know what would not be interesting or useful in any way whatsoever?
Comparing the IQs of two completely different people and saying that the reason that this group has different IQ is because of this one variable.
I don't know. I'm just going to put this out there.
Do you think that there might be a difference in IQ in a broad range of activities in which you could define success and not success?
Are there too many fields in which a high IQ does not give you an advantage?
Not every person. For example, not every person with a high IQ has a high income.
We're not talking about every person.
I'm just saying on average, because that's what a study does, it's just an average.
So on average, do you think there would be any difference between people who didn't get infected at all and people who did?
You don't think there would be an IQ difference between those two groups for a variety of reasons?
I'm not even going to get into it.
But if there's no IQ difference between the group that got infected, on average, again, just on average, not individuals, of course, just on average, you don't think there's any difference.
Because if there's no difference between who got infected and who didn't, based on how smart you are, it would be the only human endeavor where that's the case.
I know that seems like an over-claim, But can you come up with an example of the opposite?
Can you give me a counterexample?
Is there something else that humans do in large numbers in which the smart people universally do worse?
On average. Again, just on average.
Not every person. I can't think of one.
Vote. Well, that feels like an opinion.
Voting feels like an opinion.
Right. IQ alone is not predictive of one individual.
We all agree with that, right?
Can we all agree that IQ doesn't predict what one person will do?
Of course. Of course not.
There's too many other variables. But, well, it can predict whether you'll be a rocket scientist, I guess.
Wouldn't you say? Now, I'm not sure that the one thing that IQ doesn't seem to be correlated with is happiness.
Although I've never seen a study, but I'm guessing.
Do you think that IQ is correlated with happiness?
It might be opposite.
You know, the whole ignorance is bliss situation.
So if you say to yourself, let me counter my own argument.
If the only thing that's important is your happiness, some would argue.
And smart people are worse at having it.
What's the point of being smart?
If it decreases, your odds of being happy.
It might. I don't know.
You might be able to get more stuff, but if the stuff doesn't make you happier, it didn't work.
All right. Let's get to the good stuff.
Elon Musk tweeted this tweet, Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I assume he's talking about disinformation and Twitter and stuff, but we don't know.
We don't know what he's thinking.
We only know what he tweeted. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
And let me tell you, this man knows how to tweet.
Of all the tweeters I've seen, and I've seen some good ones, his tweet game is just crazy good.
And just the fact that everything he says is a little bit provocative.
How does he do that?
How can everything you say be a little bit provocative?
But when he says sunlight is the best disinfectant, immediately we ask, how long will it take before CNN asks, why is Elon Musk saying you should drink bleach?
Now, if that joke doesn't make sense to you, your news sources have failed you miserably.
Because when Trump talked about light as disinfectant, CNN literally turned it into he's recommending drinking bleach.
Literally. And so Elon Musk basically wades right into this dangerous, edgy territory...
And he's not even making a point in that domain, I don't think.
He just has a way of putting everything in a way that makes your brain catch on fire, which is definitely a skill.
It's definitely a skill. All right.
Let's talk about Roe vs.
Wade, and may we start with the following agreement.
Can we agree on the following?
None of you care about my personal opinion about abortion.
Can we agree on that?
Because I'm not going to give it to you today.
But are you okay with that?
Because I want to talk about only the persuasion element of it.
Let's see if I can do that.
Now, if you think you're detecting my actual opinion because I say one side is more persuasive, then you're misinterpreting today's livestream.
If I say one side is more persuasive, it's just about the argument.
It doesn't mean anything about my personal opinion of how things should be.
I don't think you need my opinion, and I don't think you want my opinion, but let's all agree that in our system I would have the right to speak, and I would have the right to vote on it.
But there's no reason you need to know what it is, and I don't want to influence you on it.
I don't want to influence you on it at all.
So let's just talk about the persuasion, okay?
Number one. More persuasion that we live in a simulation.
These are two weird things.
I just want to start with the weirdness of them because it just doesn't look like it could be a coincidence.
It probably is. But it doesn't look like it could be.
That's the fun of it.
In all literal truth, it turns out that there's a horse medicine...
That is exactly the same medicine that is used for one of the pills for, I guess you'd call it an abortion, if you take the pill to...
Technically, that's what it is, right?
So the left is literally recommending horse medicine.
Oh, like, what?
What?
There's nothing you can even say about this, right?
Am I right? There's nothing to say about it.
You just have to experience this and say, is the simulation tapping us on the shoulder?
Because this feels like a prank at this point, doesn't it?
Doesn't this feel like somebody's playing a joke on you to see how long it takes before you realize that you're a simulation?
It's like, watch this.
We're going to make the left recommend horse medicine for people.
We'll see if they catch on.
If this doesn't tell you that somebody's messing with us, I don't know what will.
Okay, I do know what will.
Here's another one.
How many of you had never made this connection?
When we're talking about abortion, we're talking about Roe versus Wade.
What do Roe and Wade have in common?
They're two things you do when the water rises.
You've either got to row your boat or you've got to wade through the water.
What does a fetus live in?
A bag of water.
I don't know that it means anything, but what are the odds that this important case would be two different things you can do in water about a fetus that's in a bag of water?
Like just a coincidence? I don't know.
I don't know. But how many of you made the connection that rowing and wading are just two things you do in water?
What were the odds of that?
I mean, just a coincidence, but it just feels like we're being told something, right?
And I'm not saying we are.
It's just it gives you that weird feeling.
All right. Question number one.
The leak of the draft opinion yesterday before the news came out that it had been confirmed as a legitimate real draft.
So the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts, Chief Justice, confirms that the draft is 100% real.
Now yesterday I said to you, there's something sketchy about this.
And I said the possibilities were it was a complete hoax.
Another possibility is real, and that's the actual opinion, and that's the way it's going to go down.
And then the third option I floated was that it's a real draft but does not represent a real decision.
And that's what Justice Roberts said.
It's a real draft that does not represent a real decision.
But you're saying to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, he's not going to write 98 pages of a detailed decision Unless it's kind of a decision.
Like, I get that technically it might not be.
Technically. But in reality, is somebody going to write a 98-page decision before the vote?
And the answer is yes.
Yes. And here's how you should see this 98-page draft.
Number one, it has to be seen as persuasion within the court.
If you want to persuade somebody, write it down, if you think your argument is strong.
That's how you persuade.
Now, if we believe that the process is that they haven't voted yet, and if we believe that there might be some changes in opinions, One way you would get to a changed opinion is to show somebody exactly what they would be voting for.
Not approximately, but exactly what they would be voting for.
So that they can say, okay, now that it's written down as a majority opinion, that is exactly what I'm voting for.
So my inclination to say yes has now been confirmed.
My yes is a yes.
But... Other people might look at it and say, okay, now that I see this specifically, I've got this problem with it, and I just can't.
Now that I know exactly what I'm voting for, I'm not for it.
So, having been one who had a job of making business cases, there are two reasons to explain or to write a business case.
One of them is to get it approved or signed, or in this case, it would be the decision.
That's one reason. The second reason is to see if your argument holds together.
And I've been through this process a number of times.
There are times when I would be told, okay, write this business case to support why we should or should not do this thing.
And then I'd write the case, and it would come out the opposite of what we thought we should do, because the numbers didn't work.
So it was the writing of the business case that showed me that I wanted to do the opposite of what I thought I wanted to do.
I would imagine that given the size of this issue and how it will rip the country apart, likely, that the justices would write a very detailed draft at an earlier stage than normal.
Because this isn't a normal issue.
And they would know that.
This is a destroy the republic issue.
Potentially. It's that big.
So I think the justices would say that this draft opinion might not be like regular draft opinions.
This might be, at least in some people's opinion, something somebody might have wanted to leak.
Because a big part of what the Supreme Court needs to balance is, will their decision destroy the Republic?
Now, I don't know if that's actually written into their job description, but of course they're going to consider that.
Of course they will. It doesn't matter if they're not supposed to.
Of course they will.
You would. Anybody would.
So how would they know exactly what the public opinion would be unless there was something that looked like a complete opinion that was circulating?
Because remember, one of the big questions is how limited would this opinion be and would it spread to these other topics?
We'll talk about that. This detailed opinion answers that question.
And as Joel Pollack reported in Breitbart, and I think he's the first one to say this specifically, I didn't see it anywhere else, that if you read the draft opinion, it specifically limits it To this issue and specifically excludes anything you might try to generalize it to.
So the question's been asked and answered in the draft.
Isn't that important?
That's important. Because Biden is out there telling you exactly the opposite of what the draft says.
So they have to say the opposite of what the draft says because their strongest argument...
It's arguing about something that isn't there.
That's their strongest argument.
We'll talk about that in a minute, the persuasion element.
So I would say that, generally speaking, that this specific draft should not be viewed like any other Supreme Court draft and should not be seen as automatically a reflection of their opinion.
They could become so spooked by the public reaction that they don't change it.
My guess is that the court is clearly leaning toward the majority opinion.
We all believe that, right?
If you had to bet on it, you'd bet that they're currently leaning strongly in that direction.
But if they're watching for the public reaction, that is a whole new variable that could easily swing a vote.
Easily swing a vote.
Easily. And They, of course, might try to...
And, of course, the supporters will try to frame it as a change or an improvement in the system of who decides, moving it from the courts to the states, which is a more appropriate place for local decisions.
So no matter how hard anybody tries to defend it as an improvement in the system, it's going to look like, and in a practical sense it will be, A removal of somebody's, I'm not going to use the word right, but a removal of their ability to do it without consequence.
So people will be losing something in their opinions.
Even though it's just a system shift in theory, it does change things in reality.
All right, so I'm going to say that, in my opinion, this could go either way still.
The actual vote could go either way still, and they're waiting to see how big the outcry is.
How big will the outcry be?
Well, Rasmussen did a quick poll, and so you've been hearing that, what, 70% of the public is in favour of abortion?
Here's Rasmussen's poll.
51% are in favor of abortion rights.
And 40% are pro-life.
So the opposite. So that would be a clear advantage, but nowhere near 70%.
Right?
And that still leaves some undecideds.
But if you look at it, here's where it gets interesting.
Rasmussen also asked whether people approved of the Supreme Court overturning Roe.
48% approved of it, and 46% opposed it.
So if you look at who's pro-abortion versus pro-life, there's a serious gap there, a good 20% gap or so, 25%, yeah, 25% difference.
But if you looked at who wants to change the existing situation, it's almost a tie.
I think statistically that probably is a tie.
48 to 46. So the country is evenly split about changing the situation.
Just evenly split.
That's a pretty serious problem when it's one of the biggest issues of life and death, some would say.
You know, that's one point of view.
That's as hot a...
Yeah, you don't get a hotter potato than that.
So would the Supreme Court be influenced by the size of the revolt?
And I would say yes.
So here's the most contrarian take you'll ever hear in your life.
You ready for this?
The leak, as egregious as it is, is helping the system.
I didn't imagine that that would be my opinion today, because I just arrived at it at this moment.
But when I look at this whole situation, obviously the leaker needs to face consequences.
Do we agree on that? Can we agree that there should be consequences?
You don't want to encourage this.
You don't want this to be a precedent.
It's the worst thing in the world for the system.
The system is definitely damaged by this.
And you want to do everything you can to discourage this in the future.
So I'm anti-anti-anti-leak.
Absolutely anti-leak.
But maybe there's an exception.
And it looks like a human being, at least one, made a decision...
To help the republic, maybe, maybe, maybe, by doing something deeply inappropriate according to almost everybody.
Because Elon Musk says sunlight is the best disinfectant, right?
And when he said that out of context, didn't you agree?
You agreed, didn't you?
When you heard it out of context, sunlight is the best disinfectant, you said to yourself, yeah, we want transparency.
We want to know what's going on under the hood.
We'd actually like to know what's happening behind those closed doors.
We want to know what people are thinking.
We want to know everything we can about everything.
Well, you just fucking got it.
You just got what you wanted.
You got some radical transparency, and some citizen, and I'm really going to piss you off now, A patriot.
Just gave it to you.
Sorry. It's possible that you're not going to hate whoever did this.
It's possible you're not going to hate them.
Because if I could have scripted this and chosen how this would play out, I would do it just like this.
If I could cause the situation to unfold in the best possible way, It would be with the leak.
Not without a leak. It would be with a leak.
Because the leak is doing exactly what you'd want the leak to do.
It's giving the Supreme Court the information they need to make the right decision.
Now, I don't know that they'll make the right decision.
We'll disagree no matter what they do.
But I'm saying that it gives them the maximum amount of information.
Because they're going to see what the public reacts to.
They're going to see what the law looks like exactly.
We'll all become far more educated in the process.
This leak is going to force us to be educated in the same way that Trump used to force us to be educated about shit we didn't understand before.
And suddenly we're like, oh, God, I guess I'm going to have to go understand this now because I didn't care about it before.
Like, how much do you know about immigration that you didn't know before Trump was...
I mean, you knew it was bad, but that was about it.
And now we're all like immigration experts.
We can tell you where the wall needs to be built and how much it costs, right?
So this leak is going to have the same absolutely positive effect to the republic.
But here's where we have to be smart.
Can we? Are we wise enough to treat this as the exception that it is and should remain?
Can we say that the Holocaust is the only Holocaust, that slavery was the only slavery, and that there are some things, and abortion is one of them, that just don't have analogies?
They are simply, they must be one-offs.
They cannot be forced into the same system in every way.
In most ways, yes.
But not in every way.
There's some things that just have to be different.
And I would prefer living in a system in which somebody leaks this.
Now, that's probably going to make some of you really mad, and I would actually respect your opinion on that.
If that bothers you, I completely get that.
Because you have two bad choices here.
One choice is to protect the system, and that impulse is very strong and very good.
I would like to protect the Supreme Court and the Republic as much as possible.
But sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I can't change that.
I can't change the fact that if it's going to be the most important decision in the country, I want more information about it, not less.
And boy, did we get more information.
We got all the information you're ever going to want, 98 pages of it.
And a minority opinion is still coming.
We're going to read that too. Or at least we'll read the summary.
So, I can't...
I guess I was as shocked and offended as every citizen was and should have been yesterday when they heard the story of a leak.
It seemed just so wrong.
It offends just at a basic biological level or something.
It doesn't even seem intellectually.
It just seems like a violation.
You feel almost physically violated by that leak, don't you?
It's still wrong. And I'm not saying that the person who did it is...
Should be free of consequence.
Because whistleblowers do take that risk.
I believe that somebody did it because they thought it was good for the country.
Now, you might disagree.
You might disagree whether it's good for the country.
But let me ask you this question.
Do you think they did it for purely political reasons, or do you think the person who did it did it for the benefit of the country, in their opinion?
What do you think? I'm seeing a mix, purely political.
Purely political. Some saying both.
Some say scapegoating, political.
So most people are saying political on the locals' platform.
Over on YouTube, political, political, both.
See, I think whenever you say things are done for one reason, you're wrong.
And I don't even know what the topic is.
If you have a complicated topic...
No matter what it is.
Taxes, employment, abortion.
No matter what the topic is, if it's complicated and you think that somebody did something for one reason, you're probably wrong.
Because people don't really do things for one reason.
Most things have multiple benefits and multiple costs.
So my guess is that somebody was political, yes.
I feel like that's safe to say.
It's definitely a political act.
Can we agree on that? Can we agree that no matter what else it was, it's 100% political?
Maybe that's the better way to ask the question.
Let's start with a base agreement that it's political, but on top of that, was it also patriotic?
In my opinion, probably.
Because it's probably somebody who believes their political opinions match patriotism.
That's a safe assumption.
Don't you think most people believe that their own political opinion is compatible with what they would call a patriot?
No. It appeases terrorists.
You know, I even...
This is the one issue...
And I guess this is why I'm not giving you my personal opinion on abortion.
This is the one issue where I have 100% respect for both sides.
And that's rare. Meaning that...
Both sides have a different assumption starting point, and then they reason from the different assumption.
But their reasoning isn't bad.
They just start with a different assumption.
All right. Here's my persuasion analysis.
When the left says they're losing the right to abortion, do you recognize that persuasion play?
They're losing the right.
What persuasion play is that?
Fear, yes.
Fear. It's thinking beyond the sail.
Because the question that's being bandied about is whether the Supreme Court is the place to make the decision.
The Supreme Court is not deciding whether abortion should be legal or illegal.
They're silent on that.
They're only deciding whether the Supreme Court is the one to decide.
It would be the states to decide it if they bail out.
Here's the other part. So the first part of the technique is making you think past the sale and incorrectly making you think that it's about abortion rights.
It's really about who decides.
The second part of it is that we know from studies that people are more likely to respond to losing something than to the potential of gaining something.
Do you all know that?
People will respond more emotionally to taking something away from you that you thought you had than to, oh, I might get a free thing.
So loss aversion is always a stronger one.
So persuasion-wise, framing it as losing the right is a really good technique because it activates their side of the thing.
All right.
Here's some more persuasion stuff.
Have you noticed that the people who are opposed to abortion can say all of their reasons in public?
And clearly and pretty much they're all the same, right?
If I were to characterize the pro-life side, most of them would say something like, my religious belief, or maybe even my intuition, says that life begins at conception, they just have that strong feeling, and that life is sacred, and that it shouldn't be ended for any reason.
Now, you can agree with that or disagree with it, but They all have the same argument, wouldn't you say?
It's basically the same argument.
And it's clean, and it's something that people are proud to say in public.
Am I right? I've never heard anybody who is pro-life who is shy about saying it.
Like, usually people are quite proud to say that.
Now compare that to what Biden said about the abortion rights situation and the Supreme Court thing.
He says in the tweet, Biden said, the draft opinion calls into question the fundamental right to privacy, the right to make personal choices about marriage, whether to have children, and how to raise them.
These are fundamental rights for Americans, a critical part of who we are.
Now, Sometimes I read tweets before I read who sent them, and this was one of those cases.
And when I read this, I got to the part about how this is going to change your fundamental choices about marriage and whether to have children and how to raise them.
I thought, who's the dumb fuck who would say that, like, in public?
Like, who would be so dumb that they would say that in public?
That's just the worst argument ever.
I mean, especially given the Joel Pollack...
Observation that the specific thing in question eliminates these possibilities.
This isn't even on the table, this stuff.
And if it were on the table, there would be nobody who favored it.
Just everybody would be not in favor of this.
So what does it tell you when one side of the argument can tell you in public, proudly, what their opinion is?
And the other side has to use what I call laundry list persuasion.
Have we talked about that before?
Laundry list persuasion is where you hope that if you give ten reasons, somebody's going to say, you know, I don't know too much about this issue, but if there are ten reasons...
Ten reasons is pretty strong.
That's way more than nine.
Way more than three. If this were a two-reason situation...
And I didn't understand any of those reasons, I'd say, well, it's only two reasons.
Maybe they're not real. But once I see there are ten reasons, then I don't understand one of them in any way whatsoever.
Well, I don't need to understand this topic, do I? Do I need to be an expert to count to ten?
I do not. There are ten reasons.
That's all I need. So that's what laundry list persuasion is.
It tries to make the argument by quantity without any regard to whether any of the reasons have any merit whatsoever.
So one side is using a persuasion tactic which is designed for weak arguments.
It's designed for weak arguments.
But do the people on the pro-abortion side have weak arguments?
No. They don't.
They have strong arguments that have one weird quality.
You don't want to say them in public.
Sorry. Their arguments are strong from just a persuasion perspective, right?
I'm not giving you my opinion on abortion.
That's not in any of this. It's just a persuasion.
If they said their actual argument, I would say, oh, well, that's a pretty good argument.
Would you like to hear the argument?
They value their own life and freedom over that of a maybe baby.
Because to the left, their starting assumption is, well, this fetus might be a baby, might not.
It's a maybe baby.
And if they were to say their opinions just cleanly and clearly, I would respect them.
And they would say, you know, it might be a baby, it might not.
I'm no expert on babies or life or any of that.
Maybe it's a baby, maybe it isn't.
I just value my own freedom, my own economic well-being, and my own choices in my body.
I just put those at a higher value than I put a potential life.
That's a strong argument.
Now, you could disagree with it, and you could throw up when you hear it.
You could say, my God, you're valuing things differently than I value them, and that is correct.
But remember, what you're disagreeing about is the assumption.
It's just the assumption you're disagreeing with.
The value of the maybe baby.
If you think it's life and sacred, you go one direction.
If you think it's, well, I don't even know what it is.
It's something that could be or maybe not.
Why should I let my life be determined by something that's a maybe?
You could imagine somebody having that opinion and not having a moral element to it at all.
And I would actually respect somebody who said it directly like that.
I think it's good for women.
I'm a woman. I'd like to have the choice.
I'm not so concerned about the well-being of something that might become a baby, in my opinion, or might not.
So this is a weird discussion because one side can say exactly what they think and exactly what they want.
One side has to use the fog of argument The laundry list persuasion, because it's just a little bit embarrassing to say you're so selfish.
Now, here's a question for you.
Is there any narcissism that's affecting this debate?
Possibly. I don't know.
But possibly seems to affect everything.
All right. Then I saw this argument.
And since I'm not a birthing person, I would not want anybody making a decision about me if I were.
Likewise, if women were mostly the ones deciding on vasectomies or circumcision, I'd have something to say about that too.
So I do think that the closer you are to the topic, the more influence you should have over it.
I mean, as a general rule.
And since I'm not a birthing person, now or later, I think that people who are closer to that world should be making those decisions.
And I'll kind of stay out of it.
But this question made me laugh.
Can a woman make decisions about a man's body?
And I thought to myself, I think that happens to every husband every day.
Pretty sure your wife is making a decision about your body every damn day.
Because you know what's good for your health?
Vigorous sex with a loved one.
That's really good for your health.
Everybody agrees. There's no doctor who would disagree that making love with your spouse and enjoying it would be good for your health.
Am I right? Am I right?
So every day, if you're married, there's a woman who makes a health decision about a man's body.
No, it's about our own as well.
I'll grant you that. But it's pretty much every day.
All right, it's just a joke.
Don't get so technical with me.
All right, I know it doesn't describe your situation.
All right. That is my persuasion take on the debate, which is really the only thing happening today, it seems like.
Is there anything else you would like an opinion on on the persuasion element of the debate?
Yeah, if you separate the child support question from the question of having the baby, then yes, you could take men out of it.
I 100% think that men should decide about their economic impacts.
So I would certainly weigh in about who should pay for what, if you'd like an opinion on that.
So Dave Chappelle got attacked on stage by somebody who apparently had a gun and a knife.
Now, we don't know the details of that, but that was the report.
He was at the Hollywood Bowl. Somebody jumped on stage with a gun and a knife, but he was apparently unhurt.
Now, what do we know about the perpetrator?
If he had a gun and a knife, and he got to Dave Chappelle, and yet Dave Chappelle was unhurt, what can we conclude about the person?
Not a conservative.
Because I don't think a conservative would have missed.
Sorry. Probably a left-leaning person.
I think that's what you're going to find out.
Yeah, I'm guessing something about the trans community, probably.
That would just be a guess, though.
And Chris Rock was actually in the audience.
Because the simulation.
I'm not making this up.
A comedian gets attacked on stage, and Chris Rock is sitting in the audience.
That actually happened.
Yeah, it wasn't Will Smith.
We checked.
That's pretty funny.
All right.
I saw a joke, but I'm not gonna repeat it.
Chris Rock asked if it was Will again.
Oh, did he make that joke?
That would have been hilarious. All right.
Yeah, top that. What is my opinion regarding the timing of the leak?
Oh, yeah, let's talk about the timing of the leak.
You know, one thing, let me give a little shout-out.
I was watching The Five yesterday discussing the leak, and I thought they had, especially Dana Perino, had the best takes on, you know, the things you hadn't heard yet that kind of gave you the best take on that.
As far as the timing of the leak, Someone pointed out online that if it was someone from the left, wouldn't it be just as good if they waited until July?
Because it could have come out in July, and then the energy would have been through the roof and closer to the election.
So it would have been maybe more of an election issue if we hadn't worn it out before the election.
So that's one argument.
But I would say somebody could also think you wanted to get a head start.
Because you might need to build a lot of momentum around it, so it's the only thing you're talking about.
And the sooner you did this, the sooner it could erase Biden's other mistakes, right?
So I think the smarter argument is that doing it now was a perfect time if you're a Democrat.
It was a perfect time.
Because it not only erased the current headlines that are all negative, but it's an issue that can't die.
And it's going into the summer...
So the protests will start to get organized now.
It's the right kind of weather.
It's always summer, right?
Summer is the protest season.
So it's perfect for the protest season.
You wouldn't want to be at the end of the protest season.
You want to be at the beginning. But then there are other motives.
If the person doing it was a patriot, which I think is a distinct possibility, then they just wanted the country to see it as soon as possible, and that the...
The country's reaction could be included in the decision, maybe.
So that would argue for sooner is better because then it influences the decision as opposed to being after the decision.
So everything argues for a left-leaning person to have released it.
The only argument for a right-leaning person is if it was an inoculation.
But that would be a bad play because the inoculation would also be wiping out all the headlines that were already negative for Biden.
If you were on the right, your best play would be to do nothing all the time because you're already winning.
So people on the right don't have an incentive to make a big play, right?
It's just grind it out and you can get everything you want, it looks like.
There's going to be plenty of surprises.
But it would look as if the Republicans should just grind it out and not do anything provocative.
Just coast and then take a complete victory.
But Democrats needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
Am I right? This is definitely rabbit out of hat situation kind of stuff.
So I would say the argument is strongly on the side of someone left-leaning releasing it, but I will not rule out that they were just a patriot and they thought they were doing the right thing for the country. but I will not rule out that they were just Rick Wilson identified the leak as fake news but claimed it came from the right.
Well, I think it was too soon, and so that's why I avoided doing it.
Too soon to say it was definitely fake news.
And now we know it's at least a confirmed draft.
What do you think about the idea that Russia is trying to reinstall Trump?
Well, what could Russia do about it at this point?
If Trump runs...
I don't know that Russia has any impact on that.
You know, we're not even talking about Ukraine anymore.
And by the way, how many of you have come around to my point of view that it looks like the United States thinks it can win, just outright win in Ukraine?
How many of you think that that's actually the way the government is thinking at this point?
Do you think so? Yeah, a few more yeses.
Because the longer this drags on, and with the more firepower we put in there, the more it's going to look like we must have planned to win.
When was the last time I was truly shocked by something?
I can't tell you.
Because it was so shocking that I can't even tell you.
Can't even tell you. But let me tell you that the past few years have been pretty illuminating.
All right. And by the way, there are things I know about most of these stories that...
Oh, damn you.
Damn you.
Every once in a while I see a comment that's just so perfect that I lose my complete trade of thoughts.
The disinformation bill money is in the Ukraine bill.
Great. Over on the YouTube platform, the locals people can't see it, but about every fifth comment refers to me as clot.
Now, let me ask you this.
How long do I have to stay alive before it will look like maybe I didn't make any mistakes in the pandemic?
Is there any standard for that?
Like, suppose I live to 100 and I don't have any clots.
Will you say, well...
You played it right. There's no winning in this, is there?
At what cost? At what cost?
Exactly. There's no way to win, is there?
It's a no-win situation.
All right. Most of the people who call me Claw Adams believe that I was pro-vaccination.
