Episode 1742 Scott Adams: Late And Sleepy But Here For The Simultaneous Sip
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Blue Check context-adding option
PolitiFact FAKE NEWS, rate vs raw number
31% trust the political news?
Baby formula shortage
Bad For Babies
Russian military vs modern technology
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
I used to be in the restaurant business, and one of the secrets I learned is that the special of the day is decided based on what you have too much of.
So if you bought too much of a certain kind of meat or protein, that was your special of the day, next day.
Now, I don't have my cup of beverage right now.
So we're going to interrupt in the middle to do that.
It might be a closing step.
I know. It's backwards.
It's going to bother you. The screaming birds on the beach here are added again, but weirdly, I'm getting used to it.
Literally, there are screaming birds every night.
They sound like babies.
It's a terrible situation.
Hey, what's happening today?
Anything exciting happening to you?
The Guatemalan screaming baby birds?
Okay. Now, I went to look at the news today, as I always do, and it turns out that now all of the news is about Elon Musk.
It's like, there's no other news.
Let's talk about crypto.
Is everybody doing great in their crypto wallets?
Crypto is looking pretty scary right now, isn't it?
Here's the question I ask you.
Does it seem as if the United States, at least, is spending money as if they've decided money will no longer be useful?
Does it feel that way?
Because I've been trying to decide, why is it that the United States thinks it can spend infinite money?
Because we just keep printing it.
And it feels like, I hate to say this, because I'm sure this isn't the case, But it's starting to feel like somebody in power has decided that money will no longer have value.
So we better spend it now while it still has value.
It's like somebody assumes that the dollar will be worthless at some point.
Now that wouldn't make sense with crypto going down at the same time.
It doesn't really make sense that everything goes down at the same time, except real estate.
I guess real estate will have to take a pause as well.
Rand Paul stopped 40 billion going to Ukraine.
He's delayed it, right?
It's not really stop, stop.
I don't think it's stopped.
Well, it sounds like my coffee is just about done brewing.
I feel as if, before we talk about everything being about Elon Musk, that I should go get it and do the simultaneous sip.
What do you think? I know, you agree.
You agree?
So if you don't mind, I'll be right back.
Ah, hot and perfect. hot and perfect.
A lot like me.
Alright.
So you can actually hear the sound of the ocean?
Huh.
Ah.
So, something amazing happened in my weird little life yesterday.
How many noticed it?
I don't know if there will be any articles about it, but we'll talk about it.
I don't remember the simultaneous sip.
Something about a vessel to put coffee in.
I know you remember it.
So, imagine that I'm saying it now, and then, when you're ready for the dopamine of the day, are you ready?
Okay, go. Oh, yeah, that's good.
That is good. By the way, if you add things to your coffee, Such as sugar and cream.
Well, I... I don't know why you do that.
Say it like Brandon, you know the thing?
Yeah. Alright, so here's what's happening.
All things Elon Musk.
So, Musk has put the Twitter purchase on hold, he says.
What? Why would you put that on hold, you ask?
Well, it turns out he's asking for a verification, or confirmation, Twitter's claim that less than 5% of all Twitter users are bots and whatever.
So Twitter will now have to show him data to support their notion that less than 5% is fake accounts.
What do you think is going to happen?
I feel as if...
Well, first of all, it's a reasonable thing to ask for.
Because it would be the thing that you would most wonder about, right?
So I'm not so concerned about the number of users, but the amount of interaction.
Because I think the fake accounts probably do more interaction than they are numeric.
What do you think he's going to find?
Do you think? Yeah, it sounds like babies, but it's actually birds who just scream all night and sound like babies, if you're just joining us.
I don't know. I think Twitter's numbers might be right, but it's also a corporation.
So it makes you wonder if they can support it.
Well, we'll find out. So that's the first Elon Musk story.
He's doubting the 5% number.
Secondly, And this is the most interesting story for me.
So there was some viral stuff going around about the so-called directory of misinformation.
And the idea was to...
Well, this is some fake news from the post-millennial.
So I always give you fake news from the left-leaning outlets.
But you know, fake news doesn't only come from the left, right?
So here's what I consider fake news from the Postmillennial.
So it's an article about Biden's Ministry of Truth, so-called Ministry of Truth director, and according to the headline and the tweet of the Postmillennial, this is how they say it.
They said the director wants to, she wants verified people, that would be people with blue checks on Twitter, like her, to be able to edit people's tweets so they can, quote, add context to certain tweets.
Is that a true story or a fake story?
So the postmillennial says that the Ministry of Truth wants people with blue checks like me to be able to edit people's tweets.
Do you think that the woman in charge of the so-called disinformation group, do you think she actually said that?
And somebody said they said it on Zoom and you saw it yourself, right?
Now she may have used the word edit.
I don't know if she used it. But it wasn't what she was talking about.
No, it's not a true story.
It's a totally fake story.
And here's the fake part.
They're treating edit as if it means changing the original tweet.
Nothing like that is being contemplated.
The Biden administration is not suggesting that anybody's tweet could be edited by somebody else.
That never happened. What was suggested is that Blue Jacks, and this is controversial, Would be able to add context and that it would show as additional context.
Now what I didn't know is apparently this is already being beta tested.
Did you know that? There's some kind of test.
I don't think that I'm part of it because I've never seen this.
There's some kind of Twitter thing that comes up and says that readers...
There's a Twitter message now that comes up for some people that said readers have added context to a tweet.
Now, if you saw that banner, you might click on it and see that context.
Would that be bad?
Well, here's the argument.
The argument is you don't want to give blue-check people too much power because it would be unfair, right?
Why should blue-check people have this special ability to change the conversation?
But here's what I would like to add to that.
Don't assume that Twitter would implement such a thing in the worst possible way.
Because this is what a lot of people do when they look at ideas.
They say, okay, I understand the idea.
Now, to evaluate the idea, I will assume that they will implement it in the dumbest way that anybody can do something.
And then they give an opinion based on the dumbest way you can do something.
Is that the way things happen?
I mean, I get the cynicism of, oh, we'll find the wrong way to do it.
Like the government, of course.
But for a corporation, a high-tech corporation, that has experts on interface, experts on developing new features, etc., do you think that they're just going to slap something together?
So here's a basic question.
Do you think if such a thing were added to Twitter, don't you think people would have an option of whether they see it or not?
Because that would be consistent with what Musk usually likes to offer, which is giving people a choice of how they want to consume their own information.
So don't you think that they would give you a choice of either seeing context or not?
Now, does that sound abusive?
Well, here's a choice.
You can look at it or not look at it.
But it's a little more prominent.
Now some people said, Scott, Scott's that.
Not only is it completely unnecessary and it would destroy the world if people could edit people's tweets, but it's already a feature.
Because that's what a reply is.
A reply is basically editing or adding context to somebody's tweet.
That's what replies do.
Or can do. It's one of the things they can do.
So really all that's being contemplated is an improvement in the interface.
Basically, it's just improvement in the interface.
Who is it who doesn't want an improvement in the interface?
So this whole post-millennial story of turning, adding context into editing the tweet, it's just fake news.
And it's pretty direct fake news.
The other thing that people don't understand is how features are tested in the tech world.
If I say to you, I have an idea for a Twitter feature, And you say, it's a bad idea.
You're already not smart.
And I haven't even said what my idea is.
Do you get this? I'll say it again.
Forget about what the suggestion is.
Just say the general idea that I make a suggestion for a feature.
And then you say, no, that's a bad idea.
That'll never work. You're wrong.
Because the right answer is, I don't know if it'll work.
But you could test it.
You could test it with a small group of users.
You could wall them off.
And you can see what happens if a hundred people use it.
I mean, you can limit it to such a small amount of users that it would have no impact on anything, and you would be smarter when you were done.
So anybody who says, this won't work because they will create it poorly, I say, well, you don't understand.
Every product is poor. On the first draft, everything's poor.
So, I would say that this is the sort of thing that we could give a try.
Now, somebody said, and it's a good comment, why should blue check people have this extra power in society?
Does that seem right or fair or good or efficient?
Is it good in any way?
Can anybody defend that?
Could any of you defend me having a greater voice than you if you don't have a blue check?
Somebody says, no fair.
Somebody says, I'm seeing lots of yes's and no's.
Alright, here's the way I interpret it, and again, this has to do with the interface.
Keep in mind that Elon Musk has already said that he'd like the verification process to be more robust so that more people can have their true identity and be verified.
So, when Musk is talking about being verified or being a bluejack, he's not talking about being a special celebrity.
He's talking about the future when it just means that you are the person you say you are, which is a more useful thing to do.
So, is it bad for the public if the people who are willing to identify themselves and say, I am this person, if they're the ones who have the context and you can't get context from an anonymous account, Are you worse off or better off?
Worse off or better off if the only people who can add context are people who will tell you who they are.
I don't know. Again, if you said that's definitely better or you said that's definitely worse, those are both the wrong answer.
It's not definitely better and it's not definitely worse.
It's different and it's testable.
That's all you need. If it's different and it's testable, and there's at least a theory of why it could be better, just test the friggin' thing.
You don't have to wonder.
You know, the question of will it be a good idea is just not a relevant question anymore.
Not one you can test so easily.
And that applies to software print.
A lot of people don't understand how easy it is to test without disrupting the whole platform.
So if you understood how easy it is to test, you wouldn't be asking if it's a good idea or a bad idea.
That just doesn't make sense anymore.
Alright. So, the interesting thing about this story is that the minister, the so-called Minister of Truth, as we like to call her, made the same suggestion that I did.
Now here's my, except I didn't have the blue check part about that, but here's my one defense, and I think you could argue with this, so this is not the hardest opinion you'll ever see from me.
Here would be my defense of allowing the blue check people, or just, you know, verified people, to have a little bit more influence on the conversation through adding context.
It goes like this.
Number one, we are the people who will tell you our actual identity.
That does help. I think that helps.
I don't want to see opinions from people who won't say who they are.
Now, I'd optionally like to see it.
I'd like to be able to turn that on and off.
But, where do you think the Blue Jacks get their information?
Where do you think I become informed about what it is that is useful context and what is not?
I don't make that up myself.
That all comes from The people who follow me, who far and away are not bluejack people.
So most of what I contribute to Twitter comes, I'd say 80%, comes directly from somebody who's not a bluejack, who saw an article today, for example.
Andres Backhaus sent me an article which is really good context.
I think I'll talk about it in a minute.
And it's something I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
And so once I saw it, I said, oh, this looks like something other people would like to see, so I retweeted it.
Now, is that me?
Would you say that's me adding context?
Or is the only reason that I could be the one who pushed the button to add the context because Andres found it and gave it?
It's the latter. It's the latter.
If you think that I'm an elite, Who thinks I have more value or something to the concept.
That's not exactly how I see it.
Both views would be fair, because this is subjective.
My own view is that it's a service.
I feel like I'm working for the people who are not blue checks.
I feel as though I have some obligation to sort of the Spider-Man problem.
You know the Spider-Man problem?
With great power comes great responsibility.
If you have a blue jacket and you have a lot of followers, you have, within the Twitter universe, relatively speaking, more power.
If you have more power, and you're not a flaming partisan, you feel a little bit of responsibility.
Well, not a little bit, a lot.
I feel a lot of responsibility.
And so when people are sending me context, I'm not thinking, oh, watch me get this partisan little bit here and put that out in the world.
I'm usually thinking, oh, this would be actually useful.
And I could do something that would be useful to the conversation.
I could add some context.
Now, in my specific case, I try to add context from both directions, as I just did in front of you.
So, I'm just damning the post-millennial at the moment.
So, you've seen that both sides can get some play, even if you think I'm playing one side more than the other.
At least there's a little bit of both side-ism.
So, now, and somebody, I was watching the comments, somebody said I'm romanticizing that a little bit too much.
Maybe. Maybe.
That's a pretty fair statement.
So, again, the plus side would be that a lot of the blue check people like me, I think, and I haven't talked to anybody about this, but my belief is that there are a lot of people with blue checks who feel responsible.
And feel like it's a service they're providing to filter things and boost things, etc.
That's how I feel. But, surely, others would just use the blue check to promote their site.
So, again, it's a good thing you could just test it.
Find out what you like. Let's see what else is going here.
Here's a PolitiFact fake fact check.
And it's fake because it looks like they intentionally worded it to be misleading.
And I think it's time for a second simultaneous sip because the first one was too hot.
And I couldn't take a full, meaningful swig.
And I feel like it's time.
Swig hard. Oh yeah, that's better.
Much better. Alright, here's what PolitiFact said.
I'm going to read their tweet and see if you can find the fake part.
Okay? So the fake part is just in the tweet itself.
It's the way it's written.
So you don't have to have any outside information.
So just see if you can find the fake part.
PolitiFact says in a tweet, quote, there are long-standing false claims that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, men in particular, molest children at higher rates than people who are not LGBTQ. And then they go on, studies have revealed most child molesters identify as heterosexual, according to the Zero Abuse Project.
Where's the fake news? Did you see it?
This one's kind of clever.
So they conflated two completely different things and hoped you wouldn't notice.
One is the rate of this abuse.
And what they say is that the claim is that there's a higher rate among the LGBT community.
Which, by the way, I don't think there's any evidence to that.
So that's the claim they're evaluating.
And then, to debunk it, they say studies have revealed that most child molesters identify as heterosexual.
Wait a minute, isn't that because most people are heterosexual?
So they went from talking about their rate, you know, what percentage of LG, well, men, mostly gay men, I guess, what percentage of them were trans, I don't know, I'm not exactly sure how they define men in this context, Which is dicey, isn't it? As soon as you're talking about LGBTQ, and then you put in the sentence, men in particular, you have to say, okay, I have to think about what they mean about that.
All right, I'm not sure I understand it, but they go from the rate of gay men doing this crime to the raw number of straight men doing the crime.
Do you think you've done something useful?
When you compare one group's rate, the percentage, to another group which is ten times the size, or nine times the size, whatever it is, and their total number, this is clearly, clearly disinformation.
Am I right? Now, by the way, I have no opinion about the content.
Because I don't know what's true and what isn't.
But I've never heard that there's any higher rate in any group of people.
So I'm guessing that there's no real difference.
That would be my assumption.
So that's interesting.
Now what makes this interesting, as some people pointed out in the comments, is that where does this stand in terms of people being born the way they're born?
You always have to ask the question, how much is social, how much is, you know, the way you're born.
And we're not going to sort that out.
More stuff on Musk.
So, in my tweet I told you about the disinformation minister and how I agreed that Twitter should have a similar feature for context.
As part of the replies to that, and part of my tweeting about it, I mentioned that Twitter doesn't work the way it is now, because some people said, oh, the replies are all you need.
As long as everybody can reply, you're going to get all the context you ever need.
To which I say, if it's millions of bots and, you know, partisans replying, you're not going to be able to find the good context.
It'll just be lost in the noise.
And so I use as an example of that, if the current Twitter system worked, we wouldn't believe in what's called the drinking bleach hoax.
So, you know, half of the world or more believes that Trump actually suggested drinking bleach.
And I said, half of the world wouldn't believe that if you could add context to tweets.
Because right now that's always in the comments, but people don't see it.
So, As you know, I've been fighting against the drinking bleach hoax ever since it happened.
And the big event was that Elon Musk replied to my reply, in which I was talking about the drinking bleach hoax, and he said the drinking bleach hoax is a hoax.
That was the little tweet.
So seeing that the person who's trying to buy Twitter, and probably will succeed, Elon Musk, has said unambiguously the drinking bleach hoax is a hoax.
So, do I win?
Can I ask for a score?
You've been watching me fight this mother...
I'm sorry. I'm not going to be profane.
I don't need to. You've seen me fight this thing, and other people.
I'm not alone. But you've seen me fight this thing from day one.
I've been just beating this horse.
I mean, it's not a dead horse, but I've been beating this horse like crazy.
And finally, to get somebody at Musk's prominence in terms of attention, especially given that he's got a buy order on Twitter, to have him say it clearly and unambiguously that it's a hoax feels like validation.
And primarily, it's not because it's just his opinion, it's because everybody's going to see it and you can't ignore it anymore.
You know, if somebody prominent in the Republican Party had done this, that would have been just as good.
But having Musk do it, I mean, I'll tell you one thing, he's not afraid.
How many times have I told you that not having an embarrassment problem is a superpower?
Would you agree with me that whatever is true or not true about Elon Musk, it appears to be true, and in every possible way it could appear that way, that he is not influenced by potential embarrassment?
True or false? Now, we don't know what's happening inside his head.
I never will be that guy.
I'm just saying that...
Can you imagine another billionaire Who, when the camera is rolling, will dance on camera in a way that people are not going to necessarily say, you're sure good at dancing.
Right? I mean, he dances on camera.
So wading into the fine people, I'm sorry, maybe the fine people hoax will be next.
But wading into the drinking bleach hoax at the same time he's buying Twitter, it's sort of a ballsy thing to do.
And every time you do something that's a little outside what I would imagine is other people's comfort zone.
You want to see the view? Somebody has to see the view, so I'll show it to you.
You want to see the view? Alright, so the locals people are looking at it now.
There's the view. Pretty impressive, huh?
Alright, YouTube, you want to see the view?
I'll turn it on. There.
There's the view.
Pretty impressive, huh?
I don't think you realize how early you have to get up to do this.
I tried to be online at 4 a.m., which would require me to wake up at 3 a.m., which is a little tough to do after flying.
So I couldn't quite get in there and hear what I wanted to.
All right, so there's no view yet.
Just a lot of crying baby birds out there.
So I'm going to say that this feels like a good day for me, just because I got that wind.
It feels like a wind. All right.
Rasmussen asked a poll today.
He did a poll. They asked how many people trust the political news they get.
What would you guess as a percentage?
Total number of likely voters in the United States.
What percentage do you guess trust the political news?
I'm seeing the locals platform 25%.
You're all guessing 25%.
Interesting. On YouTube, you're all guessing 25%.
Interesting. What a wild, wild, crazy thing for you to say.
Why are you all so sure it's around 25%?
You're so wrong.
You're so wrong, it's 31%.
Completely different than 25%.
Okay, it's roughly about 25%.
31.
31%. So, I saw this and I said, are you kidding me?
31% of people trust the political news?
And so here's the second question.
How many of them are Fox News viewers?
What do you think?
Versus CNN viewers?
I have a feeling that conservatives are less likely to even trust their own news.
Is that not true? Don't you think this is probably three to one Democrats trusting the news?
It's probably three to one.
I'm guessing. Don't know.
It would be... Well, actually, I'm an idiot.
I don't know why I'm guessing because Rasmussen actually sent me the breakdown.
If I looked at the thing they sent me, it would tell me which are Republicans and which are...
But I forgot to look at it before I signed up.
But anyway, when it comes out, you'll be able to see it.
I'm just amazed that there could be anybody who could actually trust political news.
Does that mean they don't watch it?
Or does that mean they only watch CNN? Because if you were never exposed to anything but CNN, I think you'd trust it, wouldn't you?
Because you've never seen any reason not to.
You would say, well, that's the news, that's the news, I guess, that was the news.
You would have no reason to know anything was wrong.
So I've got a feeling that the people who trust the political news only watch one side, and they're never exposed to the other side.
That's my guess. Somebody says it means they work in that industry.
Yeah. Maybe that's some of it.
That's probably 6%.
Yeah. So, of the 31% who say they trust political news, Somebody said that maybe 6% of them are connected to somebody who works in the media industry.
To which I thought, well that sounds high.
But if you considered everybody who's like associated family members and extended employees and everything...
Maybe. Maybe.
Once you get all the friends of friends and stuff included.
Could be. Alright.
Let me make sure. Oh, here's the weirdest little study.
I'm not going to tell you that this study is accurate, the one I'm going to talk about.
And the reason I'm not going to tell you it's accurate is, first of all, I don't know.
And secondly, when was the last time you saw an accurate study?
Is that even a thing?
Is anything accurate anymore?
It's not even an expectation anymore.
But the study, I think Jeff Seeger was tweeting this around, This comes from the AP report.
It says that cleaner air in the United States and Europe is brewing more Atlantic hurricanes.
To which you say, what?
What? Are you telling me that cleaning up pollution is making hurricanes worse?
That would be the opposite of the climate change argument.
Now, we're talking pollution, not CO2, so don't let me conflate that in your minds, right?
Pollution is pollution, CO2 is its own separate problem.
You can call it pollution, I guess.
But it's a separate topic.
But they're saying that the pollution part, by reducing it, which is exactly what you do when you go green, right?
It's not necessarily the reason you go green, but it does reduce pollution.
So apparently the more we pursue climate change, according to this study, which again, if you believe one study on anything, you're probably a little bit gullible, but it's fun to talk about.
Now, how big is the difference?
So the first thing I thought when I saw this was, alright, it's not going to be that big a difference, right?
They're going to find a 5% difference, and then I'm going to say to myself, okay, 5% difference?
That sounds like you didn't prove anything.
Because I'm never going to buy a 5% difference in a study like this, right?
Studying the weather and telling me you've got a 5% difference, like that would mean anything to me.
It wouldn't. It wasn't 5%.
Here's what they think it is.
A 50% decrease in pollution particles is linked to a 33% increase in Atlantic storm formation.
What? Because the 50% decrease in pollution is real.
That's what we actually experienced, a 50% reduction in particles.
And that's associated with a 33% increase in Atlantic storms.
That feels like a really, really big problem, doesn't it?
A lost YouTube? No, it's here.
I'm still seeing comments. So, what do you think?
Do you think that's true? I feel as if that could be true.
I've talked before how Atlantic hurricane formation is based on largely Oh, it looks like I'm going to lose my feed because I'm going to lose my battery here on the locals platform.
If the locals platform turns off, it's just that I'll be done for the day because I'm almost finishing.
But your battery's got a few minutes left on that device.
Yeah, correlation does not prove causation.
Thank you. Thank you, you skeptical viewer.
That's exactly what you should say.
Oh, locals dropped.
Now it looks like it's still working. So what would we do?
What would we do if it's true?
Suppose... Yeah, it looks like everything's back up now.
Suppose it's true that improving the air gives us more hurricanes.
What the hell do you do?
So there's just no solution?
Now let me ask this question.
Let's say this study is replicable.
No, that's the wrong thing.
Let's say more studies back it up.
So, if more studies back this up, which part of the 100-year climate models knew that this would happen?
Because this is a gigantic thing.
Now doesn't that prove that the long-term climate models are garbage?
Because this is a gigantic effect.
One of the major causes of disruption and death would be these hurricanes in the Atlantic, and it's going to make it worse.
Define new, right?
Alright, because I don't have much time left, and I might lose my battery in a moment over on Locals, is there anything I missed today?
Is there an inflation gate?
You know, I haven't talked that much about inflation because it's just sort of boring and it just sits there.
It's not much of a topic. It's just unpleasant.
And you can really feel it.
During the Trump administration, I had the experience of feeling like At least the country was getting richer.
I think I lost money during the Trump administration.
Because, you know, if you talk about Trump, your customers go away.
So all of my All of my lines of business just got decimated.
And I'm using decimated in an understatement in this case.
Because decimated would be a 10% difference.
But my income took way more than a 10% hit during that period.
And still does.
So all of my lines of business are heading down because of what I do.
And partly because I'm provocative.
You came here because I talked about Trump.
Yeah. So, at least I can compensate in some ways.
One of the reasons I'm writing a book is because my normal lines of business got so whacked.
I just felt like I wanted to add a little extra.
And a formula. So the baby formula thing...
Let me tell you something that is...
I guess this is advice.
So, I'm watching Fox News in particular, talking about the baby formula change.
And there's a sub-story that somebody noticed that there's a whole bunch of baby formula, pallets and pallets of baby formula, going to feed illegal immigrant babies at the border.
And people are saying, where is our America first?
Why are we helping those babies when our own babies might starve to death?
Now, Separate from the question of what's true and false about this story, because it's hard to know what's really true, separate from that question of factually knowing whether this is a credible story, don't make that argument.
How does it help you?
How does it help your credibility?
How does it make the world better to argue that the brown people's babies should die And the other babies should live.
I guess some of them would be, actually most of the babies that die in this country would probably be non-white, because poverty would skew in that direction.
Now, I don't know that any American baby is going to starve, do you?
Because I don't know what the alternatives are, etc.
But it feels to me that in America we would We'd be far more capable of adjusting and helping each other, you know, citizens, the legal citizens, would be able to get each other's back.
Honestly, you'd probably see some wet nurses.
You might see some really innovative stuff that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.
And while I'm not going to give you the opinion that we should or should not put baby formula in any place or not, I don't know.
I'd have to look into it. I'm only talking about the argument.
So I'm not talking about the reality.
You know, I don't know what's the best thing to do.
Because it's sort of a moral, ethical question.
You're all going to come up with your own decision.
And that's fine. I'm just going to say that if you would say out loud in public that somebody else's baby should die because their mother made a decision that you don't think they should make, it's just not a good look.
It's not a good look.
If you're saying somebody else's baby should die because their mother made a decision about how to improve their lives and it's not the one you would have made or the one you would have encouraged, just don't do it.
Don't do it. You know, my understanding of bureaucracy and supply chains and everything else is that there's probably an entirely different process that got this baby formula.
Probably it's been brewing for months and months before we knew there was a problem.
But what are you going to do?
Go empty those pallets and then the people on the border are like, well, there's no backup for you.
You know, there's nobody who's going to have your back because you're in detention centers or wherever you are.
I don't know. I assume there's people in detention, right?
Detention centers? So, there's no good answer here.
No good answer. And, yeah, there's some weird question about the government keeping the plant closed for safety reasons.
I don't know if there's anything to that at all.
Is that a fake ocean?
It feels like a fake ocean.
Are you talking about abortion now?
No.
Now, here's another question.
If I were, well, maybe it's a recommendation.
If I were a Republican running for office in this environment, I would say the following clever thing, and then I would let the other side try to debunk it.
Now, like all political statements, it's not 100% true, right?
It's just something that would work as a slogan or an argument.
It goes like this.
Everything that's bad for babies, Democrats like.
Because you can take almost everything that they suggest and you can make an argument that is bad for babies.
Right? So, you know, the baby formula question, the abortion question.
Again, I'm not giving you my opinion on abortion.
I'm saying that if you were a pro-life person, talking about you, not me, if you were, you could make the argument that everything the Democrats do is bad for babies.
How about climate change?
Well, the Democrats would argue that what they're doing is exactly good for babies, because the babies will grow up into a safer world if they fix the climate change.
But what do the economists on the Republican side say?
Well, they would say, if you suppress the oil and energy production, those babies will grow up into a worse situation, not a better one.
So every argument that there are two sides for, Republicans could make an argument that it's bad for babies.
Because, basically, if something is bad for babies, it's really hard to get anybody on board with it.
Democrats, bad for babies.
Now, how do you like bad for babies?
Bad for babies kind of comes off your tongue, doesn't it?
You want to say it.
You want to say out loud, wherever you are right now, how many of you want to say, bad for babies?
Say it. Say it.
Say it. Say it.
I can hear you.
I know it seems like I can't because of the technology and everything, but I can actually hear it.
Say it! Some people are holding out.
Say it. Bad for babies.
Alright, there you go. There you go.
I think we all feel better now.
Thank you. Thank you.
Bad for babies. Biden is bad for babies?
Thank you. Build Back Better?
Do you notice that Build Back Better turned out Biden is bad for babies?
Do you know who's going to pay for all the inflation?
Not the old people, because they're going to be dead.
It's the babies.
The babies.
You know, Build Back Better wasn't terrible.
Build Back Better was catchy enough that it has survived.
A lot of the attempts that the Democrats made for catchy statements, especially in Hillary's regime, she would come up with one potentially catchy saying after another and they didn't catch on.
But everything that Trump said caught on.
But Build Back Better did.
It lasted. We all know it.
You know, we could all tell you what you're saying is.
So, on the normal standards I would apply to that, it's not.
Build Back Better is intended to be boring.
Don't you think? Build Back Better, they're not trying to excite your passions.
It's sort of like, well, we'll just say a non-divisive, ordinary thing.
Let's build back, but why would you build back the same?
Let's build back better.
Now, you could argue that all this is Make America Great Again.
Build Back Better just sounds like some version of that.
But Biden is bad for babies.
Oh, that's a little sticky.
Because you throw that baby part in there, it gets a little zing.
Yeah, the no malarkey thing was instantly mockable.
That was, like, the worst idea ever.
And Bildenburg, back better.
I get that. The World Economic Forum uses the phrase, WEF. BBB. Binding is bad for babies and birds.
Alright. Micro lesson on gesticulation.
As in using your hands to talk.
Is that what you mean? So let me tell you that the reason I came to this remote location is so I could concentrate on writing.
How many of you have experienced that working at home is nearly impossible?
Does anybody have that experience?
That you went from working in the office to working at home, and it became almost impossible.
I would say that for my kind of job, that is creative and you just need lots of alone time to do what I do, all day long my phone is ringing, my dog is bothering me, until recently my cat had needs, medical needs. I get emergency calls all day long.
Do you? By the way, is it just me?
How many of you get emergency calls all day long?
And by emergency, it would go like this.
My phone battery is almost dead.
My car is broken down in a remote part of a dangerous part of the town.
And if you don't leave right now, I might die.
Please come pick me up.
No, I just made that one up.
I've never gotten that call. But all day long, I get a version of that call.
Now, they're not always going to die.
But they're, I'm going to lose money.
I'm going to miss a deadline. I'm going to be late for the thing.
I won't make it to my own wedding.
All day long, there are problems that only I can solve.
And the only way I can solve it is to stop what I'm doing and do this thing right now.
And I don't even know how there could be that many things.
No, an assistant wouldn't help at all.
It wouldn't help at all.
Because the assistant would just come to me and ask me questions.
So having an assistant does not make work less.
Trust me, I've tried it.
If you have the assistant, they bring as many problems as they solve.
It doesn't work.
The personal assistant model just doesn't work.
Buy an island. And I found that it was literally impossible for me to sit down and write on top of my regular work.
So by coming out here, I've reduced the number of inputs to...
I've reduced the number of variables in my life to beach, sleep, eat, work.
And that's about it. I get no emergency phone calls.
My dog doesn't bother me, nobody checks in, just to FYI me.
And I sat down yesterday and I just wrote for hours, and it was easy.
It actually took a very unpleasant process, writing, and turned it into literally pleasure.
You know, I'm sitting in a perfect environment, just pounded it down, and it felt great.
So, and I had to do that by reducing all of my other distractions until writing was the most interesting thing I was doing.
Scott's just running cover for abusive parents.
What topic are you on?
Have you noticed that a lot of my critics aren't even on the same topic?
I'm the coolest guy you know.
You need to meet more people.
How can you write with those birds?
I can't. I have to wait for the birds to stop.
So they do this all night long, but they don't seem to start until something like the early afternoon.
So as soon as the sun comes up, they're going to stop making noise and then I'll have about six hours to write.
But if you missed it yesterday, this is hilariously true.
When I put in my noise-canceling earbuds, which are really, really good at noise cancellation, they don't cancel out these birds because the birds are just so freaking loud.
But if you take a YouTube video of ocean noises that people use to go to sleep, if you play fake ocean noises in your earbuds while standing next to a real ocean, You think you're listening to that ocean.
Because all oceans sound the same.
So I put in my fake ocean sounds that stand by the ocean and it just feels like I'm standing by the ocean and there are no birds.
It's the funniest frickin' hack ever.
I completely eliminated the actual experience of the ocean and replaced it with a virtual version.
Just as good. Just as good.
You need a picture of the birds?
I don't know which ones they are exactly.
No, I'm not in Bordeaux.
Get a megaphone and yell at them to get off my lawn.
I did wonder if I could yell at them and make them stop, but I'm sure there's some better protected species.
I'm not going to do that. Do you know where your viewers are located?
Well, let's find that out.
Viewers, give me the location you are at right now.
Where are you right now?
Everybody. Everybody look at these.
All right. Wow. All over the United States.
I'm looking for other countries.
Looks like everybody who's answering is in the United States on vocals.
And then over YouTube, a little more international.
I've got Australia in the house.
Finland, Germany.
Mars. Okay. Hong Kong.
Really? Israel. Alright.
Here we go. International people coming in.
More Australia. Ireland.
Philippines. Hello, Philippines.
We've got one Albonium in the house.
Good. Kapalua.
Are you really in Kapalua?
You're not really in Kanapali Shores, are you?
Are you really? Alright, is there anybody out here who is in Maui right now?
Is anybody in Maui right now?
Because if you are, I'll say hi.
Stop by the beach. Are you really?
I figured somebody would be here.
But if you're here, you're not awake now.
Actually, that's how I know it's not true.
There's no way that there's somebody who lives here who is awake right now.
This is not the time anybody in Hawaii is awake, except me.
You know, when I go walking on the beach in the morning before the sun comes up, usually, I only run into people who have weird sleeping problems out here.
So you see two kinds of people on the beach early in the morning.
You see the Instagram models who know that the light is best early in the morning or at dusk.
So you see a bunch of Instagram models just by themselves.
You can tell their husband or boyfriend or whatever slept in.
They're down there on the beach doing the selfies.
And the other is the young mother with a toddler.
Because the toddler doesn't know what time it is.
And the toddler's been up since 3 a.m.
And finally the mother's like, all right, just...
It's 6 a.m., you're going to the beach.
And they just get out of the hotel.
So you see those two categories all over the beach.
That crying cat.
Yeah, it's birds, actually.
This is my target demo.
For a crackhead? I don't know.
Maybe. It's a wedge-tailed shearwater, as the bird names.
I think that's correct. The birds are, I read this somewhere, a wedge-tailed shearwater.
That's the name of the bird.
No wonder they're crying. They have such a bad name.
Oh, rename us.
Oh, we don't want to be wedge-things.
We don't like that name.
It's too long. Why are there three words in our name?
That's what they're saying. Yeah, I thought there were crying babies too until I realized there couldn't be hundreds of crying babies at the same time.
Alright, can you please take a look at the Ethical Skeptic's recent claims?
Let me make a comment on that.
So there's a user on Twitter called TheEthicalSkeptic.
Who does lots of very data-driven analyses which are often, you know, non-narrative.
They're on the side of the narrative.
And it's COVID-related for the most part.
Excess deaths and stuff he's looking at.
But I can't understand his work.
So sometimes I think I'll pick up what the top line is, like what the point is.
But there's something about the complexity or the style of communication where when I look at his work, I think, I sort of feel like I kind of know where you're heading with this.
I don't quite know why yours is different or where the data came from.
I just can't penetrate it.
So I don't have an opinion about whether he's accurate or not.
I just know he has non-conforming opinions that seem to be based on a great deal of skill.
So those are the two things I know.
A great deal of skill in data analysis, which does mean he's doing things right and others are doing it wrong.
I don't know that. But he has a great deal of skill.
And he looks to be showing his work.
So, those are two things which I have immense respect for.
He has the skill, and he's showing his work, I believe.
I mean, I think you can look at the same data he's looking at, and you can see if it looks right to you.
So, if you can do those two things, then you're automatically on my good list.
But I wish...
I wish he had a little more...
The one thing he needs to add to his talent stack is simplicity.
Because when I see his tweets, I go, ah, I sure wish I knew what that meant.
Because it looks like there's something there.
I mean, I think he's onto something.
Feels like it. I just can't tell, really.
And keep in mind that, you know, again, I tell you this to the point of obnoxiousness, but it's important.
I did data analysis for a living.
You know, not at the level that he's doing it.
Like, he's at a higher level than I ever worked.
But how would anybody else, if you didn't do it for a living at least, how would you penetrate what he's trying to tell you?
How would you possibly understand his point?
I can't. I mean, I'm not even close.
Alright. That was my flashlight collection.
They keep breaking in storage, which is funny.
As a former teacher, you think I'm avoiding my writing assignment by doing this?
It's a little bit true.
But it's hard for me to write until there's at least a little bit of light over the horizon.
For some reason. Okay.
Has Dilbert ever gone on vacation?
He has. One of my favorite comics that I ever drew was Gilbert going on vacation.
Why do we care about his flashlights?
I've told people I have a flashlight collection.
But I've gotten rid of most of them because when you just keep them in storage, they all go bad.
They just sort of rot. So they're no good.
Is weed legal where you are?
I think it's legal for medicinal users, which I am.
Yeah, we talked about Elon putting Twitter on hold.
No, God's degree has nothing to do with Dilbert not being asked on that platform.
All right. Dead battery storage containers.
That is exactly what a flashlight is.
A dead battery storage container.
Thank you. Good one.
Scout about critics. If they aren't on topic or comment or others, they are likely bots.
When you respond to them, you only hope to train them to be better.
Eh, maybe.
Oh, let's talk about Ukraine.
As of today, It appears that the U.S. policy, and I think it was, who said this directly?
Representative Crawford, saying that the U.S. policy of spending $40 billion to degrade our enemy's military, meaning Russia, is money well spent.
What do you think of that? Suppose you knew that for $40 billion you could essentially degrade Russia's military until they're just not a powerful...
Essentially you could take them off the map.
Do you think that the U.S. policy, which seems to be an actual real policy now, is to take them off the map and basically make them not an important power anymore so we don't have to deal with them?
It looks like the United States has decided to just degrade Russia permanently and just take their military off the important part of the map.
I don't know if it's a good idea, but it's definitely maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I do think there's an opening.
To do it, I do think it's doable.
I don't know about the price of it, but it looks doable to degrade them to the point where they are no longer an important military power, they just have nukes.
You know, a gas station with nukes.
So, I tweeted around an opinion piece, it was actually an interview, with a retired Chinese diplomat.
Who we presume is speaking in a way that is at least compatible with Chinese thinking.
But he said that the Chinese thinking, and we don't know that this is true, is that Russia definitely is losing the fight because they can't fight against a modern military.
And that's it. So there's one diplomat who's willing to say this in public, that the Chinese opinion is that Russia can't win the war.
It's not even an option.
Because they don't have a military that can survive the U.S. plus Ukrainian higher-tech forces.
What do you think? I think it's all a question of how much supply you can get to the Ukrainians.
And it looks like, at least in terms of small drones, that we're getting them a lot.
So And by the way, it looks like, at least there's a claim, this is an allegation, that the Chinese drones, that China has a way to give that data to the Russian military so they can tell where the Ukrainian drones are.
You know, the small ones that are just spotting targets.
So I guess the nerds over there are using the drones, the cheap drones, to locate targets.
And then they use the expensive drones, the kind that can hover, to go to those locations so that the expensive ones don't have to do a lot of hunting.
So they use the cheap ones for hunting to find the targets, and then they send in the expensive ones to take care of the targets.
And apparently they're just lining them up and knocking them down.
Because there doesn't appear to be any defense against this drone attack.
So as of today, the news is that there were no Russian advances.
But there were Ukrainian advances.
So there were Ukrainian counterattacks and there were villages that Ukraine has retaken.
But the news as of today is that only Ukraine is winning and Russia is in a defensive posture.
Now, who knows if that's true?
Do you think that's true?
Do you think that Ukraine is already winning, and it's clear at this point that they are, that's one point of view, it's not necessarily mine, and that Russia is already, basically they're in a dwindling, losing, definitely going to lose situation already?
If that's true, who predicted it?
Well, I did.
So I have both my best and worst predictions at the same time.
The worst prediction was that Russia would not invade.
But the reason I said that is because they couldn't win.
So, my part about they couldn't win is the best prediction I've ever made.
You know, a contrarian prediction.
It's probably the best contrarian prediction I've ever made.
Because it was literally opposite of 100% of experts.
You know, when I said that Trump was going to win in 2016, I was a contrarian among people who are talking in public.
But I certainly was not a contrarian among the public.
Wouldn't you agree? I mean, there's a reason that Trump got lots of votes.
Because a lot of people thought he would win.
So among the public, I wasn't that far outside of normal thinking.
Just for people who talk in public, I was outside.
But when I said that I believe that Ukraine would surprise Russia with their military capabilities, I don't think anybody agreed with that.
Can you remember anybody, even in your personal circles, just, you know, your friends, did anybody think that this would be closer to a Ukrainian victory and a fair fight?
Some people said yes.
And I'm seeing in the comments somebody said yes.
Anybody else? I only saw one person say that.
Oh, here's a comment.
It's worth saying. So, when somebody's saying that Eastern Ukrainians all want to annex to Russia, it's pitiful that you have never spoken about them being slaughtered for eight years.
I don't know that that was especially important to anything I've talked about.
But it's nothing I'm avoiding.
I just don't know if it's directly relevant to anything.
Because, remember, I'm not pro-Ukraine.
And I've said that both sides are bad.
So, once you've said that both sides are bad, I'm not sure that the details matter that much.
So, when you say both sides are bad in this context, I'm saying they're both doing atrocities.
So, I have a clean, clear view that both sides are bad.
In a complete way.
Completely bad. Now, in the real world, you still have to take sides.
So you're going to end up taking sides with a bad actor because the alternative is the other bad actor or staying out of it.
But if there's somebody there who wants to say that I went easy on Ukraine in the context of them battling with their people who want to be separatists or whatever, I'm not going easy on them.
I'm saying that Ukraine is probably shooting Probably executing soldiers, probably doing war crimes, probably did lots of war crimes before this action started.
None of them are good.
It looks like just bastards all the way from top to bottom, honestly.
Now, again, when you talk about, you know, A big group of people.
You're not talking about every person in the group, right?
I'm not saying every Ukrainian is bad or every Russian is bad.
Nothing like that. I'm saying that as organizations, they have enough bad people in them that you can't say either of them is doing a good job in terms of morality or ethical anything.
So don't be lulled into thinking that I'm pro or anti one side.
I think they're both They're both despicable on some level.
But at least on the Ukrainian side you can see why they're fighting.
On the Russian side it's a little less clear.
I don't think the Russians are fighting for a good reason.
The Ukrainians are. They got a good reason.
So sometimes it doesn't matter what's right or wrong.
You're just observing two people duking it out and there's nothing you can do about it.
You're an observer. War is never a good thing.
I don't know. I don't know if it's ever a good thing.
It's sort of like forest fires, maybe.
You would never say a forest fire is a good thing, but you also would say they're necessary.
They're not a good thing, and they're also necessary for, you know, long-term forest management.
Forest fires end up being a good thing.
I think that's true.
Fact check that. All right.
Just looking at your comments and I think we're done here.
And I've got a lot of writing to do.
Keeping NATO's missiles out of your backyard is not a bad reason to fight?
Yeah, it is. Because the alternative would have been easier.
You know what the alternative to going to war to keep NATO's missiles out would be?
Don't give them a reason to put missiles on your border.
How about just don't act in a way that makes anybody want to fight you?
How about just that? Alright, that's all for now.
And I'll see you later, YouTubers.
Thanks for joining. Oh, assume that tomorrow will not be 7 a.m.
or 10 a.m.
if you're in these scopes. So just assume that I'll get on when I can.
