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May 24, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
54:38
Episode 1753 Scott Adams: Take My News Hoax Quiz See If You're Smart Enough To Talk Abt World Events

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- HOAX Quiz --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Good morning, everybody.
Wow! I don't know, have you been getting extra sleep or working out?
Why do you all look so good today?
Incredible. I don't know.
You get better looking, dare I say sexier, every single time I see you.
And that's no lie.
If you'd like to get even sexier, the only thing you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chelsea stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any...
That's right.
Kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid I like.
Coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
It sounds like I'm talking dirty, but I'm talking about coffee.
Join me now for the Simultaneous sip, go.
Oh, oh, shudder.
I feel a quiver coming.
Does anybody else feel it?
It's coming on. It's going to be like a shiver.
There it was. All right, well, I once again tried to watch this TV show called Star Trek Discovery, a new series.
And... I told you before, and this is an update on what I've told you already, that a lot of the sci-fi has gone extra woke, which is fine.
Because Star Trek was always the most woke of the early sci-fis.
It's one of the things that made it, you know, so big and so popular everywhere.
Basically, every person likes Star Trek.
You know, every demographic, not every person.
But within every demographic, you've got Star Trek fans.
So they did a good job with the whole inclusiveness before that was a big deal.
But, like any good idea, Sometimes you can take it too far.
Yeah, like the State Farm commercials.
So I watched the third episode, and I swear to God, I'm simply going to describe this.
I'm going to describe this.
Oops. Not now, Alex.
Not now. I'm going to describe it the way I saw it.
But I'm going to describe the characters in terms of their demographic groups.
So I'm just going to tell you the story the way it unfolded.
But instead of naming the characters by their names, I'll refer to them by the demographic group they're in.
So the number one and number two stars of the show are adult white men.
Adult white men.
Which is weird, because it's such a woke kind of thing.
But the episode involved the adult white men being trapped in a storm on a planet until they were rescued by some entities.
But the two white men, who are the stars of the show, didn't have anything to do with the show except they were trapped on the planet.
Meanwhile, the women who were in charge of the enterprise of various species, some were, well, I don't know, actually.
I'm not sure if any were meant to be earthlings.
But there were various creatures that were female in look.
And they saved the day.
They saved the day, and it turns out that when they figured out, once the women had saved the day, while the two men were huddled together on the ground on the planet, literally huddled together on the ground on the planet, not part of the plot at all, and they discovered that there was a tragic, dare I say, mistake?
There was somebody on the crew who made a terrible mistake.
And they'd narrowed it down to the one black guy.
So the one black guy made a mistake that almost cost the entire crew their lives.
But he was spared by the two women who were in charge because it was an honest mistake, I guess.
So, it must be torturous to try to write plots in 2022, or whenever they wrote it, because you really have to juggle all of these things so you're not accidentally insulting some group.
And how do you really do that?
Part of this, I'm responding to it as a writer, as a creator.
It is so hard...
To write any kind of a story that people want to hear.
There's a reason that people who can do it well are highly compensated.
It's rare. It's hard to do.
But if you add on top of the burden of writing a good story that you've got to handle all of the characters with their demographic sensitivities and the audiences and please everybody, it almost eliminates all of the space you can move.
So it just makes your art get smaller and smaller.
And let me say again, and I'll say this a hundred times, I like all the woke stuff, right?
It's entirely the right impulse.
Let everybody live their best life.
It's not my business, what anybody does.
And certainly, you know, I don't see any kind of pattern that would tell me that any individual must conform to any specific stereotype.
So my personal feeling is that woke is great.
And if somebody wants to be referred to in some specific way, I just think that's good manners.
I would want people to refer to me in whatever way I felt most comfortable.
And they already do. Well, I mean, except online, where everybody's awful.
But in person, people generally refer to me in whatever I would be most comfortable with.
So I'd gladly return the favor.
The only thing I ever ask in return is if I get it wrong, just don't be an asshole about it.
That's all. I want to be polite.
I'll try my best.
But if I get it wrong, if I dead name somebody accidentally or something, just don't be an asshole about it.
That's all I'm asking.
I'm asking what you're asking of me.
I'll give back what you're asking of me.
That seems fair. Well, here's an update on my Keith tactic.
Some of you know, I've been using this tactic on my trolls online, where when they attack me personally, as opposed to anything about what I said, my argument, I respond with, okay, Keith.
Now... My internal thought about why I'm saying this is that I'm just mocking Keith Olbermann, who for years has been coming after me personally, basically, just personal attacks on me, and doesn't really have much to do with anything I'm saying.
It doesn't seem like it.
It seems like it's more personal. So here's why this works.
People don't know what to do with it.
Nobody has a mental model for what happens when they attack you personally and you call them by their wrong name.
They don't know what to do with it.
It completely...
So far, I think it has diffused 100% of what was about to become a troll fight.
You know, because I like getting sucked into troll fights because it's just good sparring.
I just like it, so I do it more than I should because I sort of enjoy it.
It's part of the public spectacle of Twitter, so, you know, I'm all in on public spectacle.
So, it's Good Eden.
So just think about this from the persuasion perspective.
There's actually a basis for why this should work exactly the way it's working.
It should work because it takes people out of their frame.
When somebody insults you publicly on Twitter, they've entered a frame in which they think you should feel insulted and either ignore them or block them or fight back with some equally toxic words.
So they get into this frame and then you say, okay, Keith, and it's not even their name and they don't know what the reference is or why or where you're coming from, and they can't stay in their frame.
Because there's nothing in there that tells you what to do with...
Thanks, Keith.
Now, I suppose at some point it would be like Karen if it became big.
I don't think it will. But if it did, then people would recognize, oh, that's Karen.
But it would still work. Until they had some way to bring it back into their frame.
Because it just doesn't fit there.
So try it. Try it at home.
Just say, okay, Keith. Or you could throw in any other name of somebody that you think is funny.
But there's something about the word Keith...
Especially because it's so white.
It's so white guy.
It's like one of the whitest names you could ever have.
Keith. I suppose Scott is the whitest name you could have.
Let me confess that.
I don't think you can be Scott for a whiter name.
Am I right? Has anybody ever met anybody black named Scott?
Is there a famous one? Is there like a famous black man whose first name is Scott that I'm not thinking of?
Scottie Pippen. Thank you.
Scottie Pippen. Scottie Pippen.
One of the all-time great basketball players.
All right. Will Smith.
This is the weirdest story.
You thought the Will Smith slapping Chris Rock story lasted too long?
But finally it was Scott Joplin?
Scott Joplin.
Is that a musician?
Okay. So there are lots of black people named Scott.
Apparently, it's a very black name.
And since I identify as a black woman, I believe that's at least one more example.
All right, so you're right.
So this Will Smith story...
Just released was an interview that Will Smith did before he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.
And it was with David Letterman on his interview show there.
And Will Smith was talking about an experience with ayahuasca, a psychedelic, in which he hallucinated that he lost all of his money in his career.
His career and his money just went away.
And it was a nightmare, and he panicked, but that the learning he got from it was that there was anything he could withstand, because he learned to be calm while his career and even somebody he loved was in danger.
His daughter, Willow, was screaming, and he managed in his ayahuasca hallucination to find calm Despite the worst possible things he's imagining happening around him.
And then he thought that his permanent learning from that is that he could handle anything.
Nothing would destroy him.
Now he had this vision of losing all of that right before He slapped Chris Rock on stage and lost all of that.
Now, he's still going to be rich, one assumes.
But, you know, for a while his career has taken a pounding like few people have ever taken a pounding.
And here is my first question.
Number one, did he, in fact, survive this so far in exactly the way he said he could?
In other words, did the ayahuasca actually do what he imagined it had done at that point?
Did he carry that ability through and weather this latest thing?
Because even though he's the one to blame, I think we all agree, right?
He's the one to blame. And he would know that, one assumes.
Do you think that he...
Is he okay with it? Do you think he just took it like a Zen Buddhist monk and just said, well, clearly it was my mistake.
I'm now dealing with it.
And I accept this.
I'm dealing with it. I don't know.
I'm going to surprise you.
I'm going to surprise you.
I'll bet he's handling this better than 99% of you could have.
It's just a feeling.
There's no way to know, right? But that ayahuasca experience, I think that's real.
I think that's real.
I believe that he actually did learn that he could handle anything.
That didn't make his mistake any less of a mistake.
But he certainly found himself in a situation where he had to handle something pretty, pretty bad.
I mean really bad.
And I think he handled it probably better than you could have.
Just a guess. I think it's probably real.
But what is the coincidence that he would have this just before it mattered?
And again, this makes you wonder about the nature of reality, doesn't it?
Did he predict it?
Or did he cause it?
Did he predict it?
Did he cause it?
Or is it just a coincidence?
Because, you know, coincidences happen.
That's why we talk about them.
They happen all the time. Rare things happen all the time.
It's just you can't predict which rare thing is going to happen when.
But rare things happen all the time.
So if this is just another rare thing, you'd say, well, I wouldn't have predicted this specific one, but rare things happen all the time.
This is just another one. And we notice them because they're special.
I don't know. It certainly makes you at least say, what the hell's going on here, doesn't it?
Well, Ricky Gervais has a Netflix special in which, in his Ricky Gervais way, he's going after whatever would cause the most provocation.
So apparently his jokes target.
I'm going to say target, but then I'm going to argue that's the wrong word.
Let's say involve. Yeah, I'm not going to say target.
I'm going to say his jokes involve the trans community.
Now, Ricky is fairly brutal in his comedy, and the trans community is, you know, some of it anyway, is up in arms, and one assumes that some of the trans community thinks it's funny.
Is that fair? Do you think that the trans community acts as one and they all have the same opinion at the same time?
No, of course not. One assumes that some percentage of the trans community will watch Ricky Gervais special and say, that's hilarious.
I would have made that same joke.
That's pretty funny. Same thing we say privately.
I assume. But then I think some percentage, and I don't even know if it's 80-20 in which direction.
I have no... I have no sense for which way that goes.
But one could see why others would be offended.
Now here's the thing I'm going to say that Ricky Gervais doesn't ask for and doesn't need and probably doesn't want.
Me defending him.
Because part of the beauty of what he does, like the thing that makes it art, is that he doesn't apologize for it.
And so I don't want to ruin his art.
By apologizing for him.
But there is some context here.
And it's not an apology.
There is some context here that's very important.
And it's the personal perspective context of who has the power.
I'm going to prime you for this with the following example.
Let's say there are two people you're considering.
One is a boss and one is a really high-end engineer who works for the boss.
Who has the power?
In the comments, that's all you know.
Really high-end engineer and a boss.
Who has the power?
The boss or the engineer?
Sort of depends on the point of view, doesn't it?
Well, if you're saying engineer, you sort of guessed where I was leading you.
Depends. There we go.
That is the correct answer.
The correct answer is it depends.
If the engineer If the engineer wants to take the power, that engineer has the power.
If the engineer chooses not to take the power, then the boss has the power.
Now, in some specific instances, the boss would have all the power.
In other specific instances, I would argue that the engineer would effectively have all the power.
And so we often...
So here's the priming for my next point.
Who has the power is always an opinion.
Well, that's too strong.
Who has the power is often an opinion, and it could go either way.
Will you go with me that far so far?
The who has the power in any given situation is somewhat ambiguous.
Often. And it depends on the specifics, right?
So, given that, wouldn't we all agree...
And, of course, that's not true, but...
Wouldn't many of you agree that it's unseemly to punch down, meaning make jokes at people who are below you in the power scale, but that it's routine and actually maybe even good to punch up, to make fun of the people in power?
Would we...
Largely, would you agree that that's a good standard?
It keeps comedy in its proper place, To maybe take the powerful down a notch without hurting the disadvantage, right?
So if you saw somebody punching down, your natural instinct would be, oh, stop that punching down.
If you saw somebody punching up, you'd say, yay!
Cheer for them. So here's the controversial question.
Is Ricky Gervais punching up or punching down when he talks about trans?
Here's what makes it art.
You can't fucking tell.
That's why he's Ricky Gervais.
And you're not.
He can do that.
That's art. That's art.
You can't tell if he's punching up or punching down.
Because much of what the trans community has managed to pull off is increasing their power, Around certain issues that they have the most at stake.
So when Ricky Gervais is, let's say, involving the trans community, I'm not going to say targeting.
I'm going to say involving them.
Is he punching up from the perspective of a, let's say, a generic white male in 2022?
Do you think that a generic white man in 2022 feels that his power, Is above that of the trans community in society right now?
No. No, I'm not saying what's true.
I'm saying what does a generic white man feel is true.
And I'm not even saying what Ricky Gervais feels is true.
Because remember, he's producing art.
He's not telling you his inner feelings.
That's not what he does. I think the genius of what Gervais does is that you can't fully sort out if he's punching up or down.
And to pull that off, that's like Chappelle-level cleverness, in my opinion.
There are only a few people who are operating at that level, and he's one of them.
So I like the fact that Netflix is going to back him on this.
And I hope people can see this for what it is.
And he's actually said...
So this is an actual Gervais quote.
He said... I don't know if he said this on stage or in an interview.
He said, OK, full disclosure.
In real life, of course, I support trans rights, Gervais says.
I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights.
Live your best life.
Use your preferred pronouns.
Exactly my opinion.
So, is he punching up or is he punching down?
Here's the other thing that people don't understand.
When I misuse a word because I'm using the way people commonly misuse a word, I get to do that because I'm a professional writer.
And professional writers, as a class, get to decide what is common usage.
I know you don't like it.
I didn't sign up for it.
But it's just one of the duties that come along with being a professional writer that anybody's listening to.
We get to decide, not me personally, but as a group, the people who write stuff, the people who write stuff for a living, get to decide what moves from bad grammar into good grammar because people use it a lot.
It's just the way it works.
And people like Ricky Gervais get to decide when somebody's moving from a powerless situation into a powerful situation.
Now, he didn't sign up for that.
Probably never thought about it.
It's not in his job description, but it is his job.
Comedians do that. Part of what they do is decide who they can punch at, and they tell you, okay, they took power.
Now they can take a punch.
So it's sort of like getting promoted.
If you're in the trans community and you're wondering, how are you being viewed by the world?
Ricky Gervais just gave you a promotion.
And if you don't see that...
That is sort of a little bit of a tragedy, because if it makes you feel bad or makes you feel diminished, it should feel the opposite.
Now, and I'm going to make a real important distinction.
Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle, including you in their humor, is not diminishing you.
Not the way they do it.
If it's a bad comedian, somebody who's not operating at their level of subtlety, then yeah, they're just being assholes.
They're just picking on somebody because they can get a cheap laugh.
That's not what's happening.
This is a promotion. All right.
There are two groups you can insult.
People who are more powerful than you and people who are not organized.
So you can still make fun of dumb people.
Because dumb people don't have much power, but they also are really bad at organizing.
Guess why? It's because they're dumb people.
It's the only group you can punch down at, because they can't organize.
All right. The World Economic Forum is happening, and the president of Alibaba Group, this Michael Evans, He was talking about the development of, you know, noodling about this as a possibility, of individual carbon footprint trackers so you can monitor what an individual buys, eats, and where and how they travel.
Now, of course, I think he's describing it as something you would use for yourself so that you could monitor your own carbon use.
Motherfucker went there on a private plane.
Is there anything else to say about this?
Well, that's the whole conversation, right?
He's talking about, wouldn't it be great for everybody to be able to track their own carbon footprint?
Motherfucker went there on a private plane.
There's nothing else to say.
Dismissed. Dismissed.
All right. Are you watching this Pennsylvania race with Dr.
Oz and McCormick, I guess?
They're down to within 1,000 votes...
That are being disputed, so we don't have a final answer.
And if that thousand gets a little bit fewer, then apparently there's a forced runoff or something.
So they're really fighting for every vote.
And McCormick's filed a lawsuit challenging ballots that were returned on time, but they don't have a date on them.
So it shouldn't matter...
It shouldn't matter that they don't have a date on them, because they were returned on time, and I guess they can verify that.
So they don't have to wonder if they were late, because they have them, and they had them on time.
So what do you think of that?
Do you think that would be a reasonable...
if the court were to agree, oh, since we can confirm the dates were sufficient, we don't have to see the dates.
What do you think? I'm actually really curious about your opinions on this.
Opens the door. Yeah, you're a little cautious on this one, aren't you?
See, the problem is it makes perfect sense.
That's the problem. The problem is the argument is perfectly good.
And in any other context, you'd say, okay, that makes sense.
That is fair. But it opens the door.
As soon as you say that any rule can be broken because you've got a good reason why you can make an exception, I wouldn't call that a slippery slope.
That's more direct. If you can break a rule, you can break a rule.
It's pretty much...
I mean, that's the beginning and the end of the slope, right?
So it's not too slippery.
It's just yes or no.
So as soon as you break that rule, as soon as you break that rule, everything falls apart, doesn't it?
Now, I suppose if you took it through the court system, maybe if it went to the Supreme Court, that could launder it into credibility.
I would accept that, actually.
If that's what happened, I would take the answer.
Anyway. What if this changes the outcome?
What if the counting...
Reverses the current vote.
Is anybody going to...
And nobody's going to trust any election ever again if they do.
I don't know. But this could be devastating.
I mean, it's not that big a deal if they simply delay the result and it goes the way the vote has gone so far.
If it doesn't change the direction, we're going to forget about it pretty quickly.
But if it changes the direction of this thing, like reverses it, I don't know.
People are going to be talking about that for a long time.
All right, here's a question that people are debating with me.
Did Putin want all of Ukraine, or is he getting the parts he wants and therefore assuming that he consolidates control?
Did he win? So what do you think?
Did Putin want all of Ukraine, Or was it always a fake-out so that he could pin down the Ukrainian military around the capital and then take his time consolidating forces where he really wanted to control things where the separatists are?
What do you think? I'll give you the correct answer.
The answer is, why would he have either opinion?
Both. Sort of both...
Here's how a good decision-maker would approach this.
Now, let's assume he's a good decision-maker.
Let's assume Putin's a good decision-maker.
Let's assume that he's at least as good a decision-maker as I am.
Because here's how I would play it.
I would say to myself, well, I want all of Ukraine.
I want it.
And there's at least a non-zero chance I could get it for cheap, the whole country.
Because who knows?
Maybe you start the war and you're so devastatingly effective in the first few days.
Maybe Ukraine folds.
Maybe they say, oh, we'll put your puppet in if you stop bombing us.
Maybe. What were the odds?
I don't know. Low?
But still some chance.
So here's how you would approach it.
If you said to yourself, what I really want is those separatist areas, because it gives me a land bridge and blah, blah, blah, and economic whatever.
If you said to yourself, what you really want is just that part of Ukraine...
But you would love to take the whole country.
I mean, that would be ideal.
You would make a play for the whole country, but you wouldn't care that much if it worked.
Because if it didn't work, it would pin down the Ukraine military and the rest of the country and give you time to build up your forces where they were.
If it did work, well, then you conquered the whole country and it was cheap.
So anybody who's looking at this and says that Putin did not want all of Ukraine, or did want all of Ukraine, they're completely wrong.
I'm sure. I'm sure that what he wanted was separate from what he knew the cost-benefit risk analysis was, and he wasn't dealing with what he wanted, he was dealing with what's possible.
Somebody says, sorry, Scott.
Now, what's that mean? I beg to differ.
Does anybody have a counter-argument?
Generals dead on purpose?
No, I'm not saying that Russia did a good job at the invasion.
I'm not saying that they didn't take larger losses than they expected.
I do think the Ukrainian military was more effective than most people except me predicted.
But I feel like a Putin would know that he has two ways to win, get the whole country or get part of the country, but that he'd be happy with either one.
Why isn't that obviously true?
Wouldn't you say there's no argument to be made here?
That it's sort of obviously true?
That if he would be happy with just the separatist parts, because it's such a big win, he should be happy with that.
And he could spin it as a victory at home.
I don't know. His losing only has to do with what happens with his economy after that, I guess.
I asked this question for which I was pilloried online.
I said, how could Russia hold territory in the age of drones?
Let's say Russia consolidates control over these separatist regions, they call them.
And what happens if Ukraine wants it back?
And they're willing to fight to get them back.
Wouldn't the Ukrainians just put endless drones into there until the Russians just can't hold it anymore?
Maybe nobody can.
Maybe they would return the favor if the Ukrainians did it.
But here's the feedback I got.
Scott, Scott, Scott.
If the Ukrainians could reconquer territory with drones, Scott, you idiot, they would have already done it with Crimea.
So... What do you think of that?
If the Ukrainians could conquer or get back these territories in the future, why didn't they do it in the past before drones were available and good?
So is there any reason that before drones were available and worked well, is there any reason they didn't use them to get a victory before they existed?
Anybody? That's the quality of argument I'm getting online right now.
Is that why didn't they do it in 2014?
Well, the drones were a little bit different in 2014.
As in a lot.
As in a lot.
They're different than they were a year ago.
In fact, they're way different than they were a year ago.
And certainly the availability, the militarization of them, how much payload they can take, the distance they can travel, all of it is like completely different than it was even a year ago.
So everybody who says to me, drones can't work because they haven't worked so far, and then a number of people said, Scott, you're ignoring all the reports of the Ukrainian drones that have been shot down by the Russians.
To which I say, you mean in the past?
As in last week?
Because last week's the past.
I'm not talking about what is going to happen in the past.
That's not my prediction. I'm not predicting the past.
I'm predicting that drones will continue to get better really quickly, and that Ukraine will have unlimited access to them because of NATO, etc., and that if they decided to use them, that's a big if.
That part I don't know. But if they decided to use them in a continuous stream of swarm attacks eventually, you don't think that they could make it unoccupiable?
Because I would assume they would always have spotters, right?
The occupied territories would be full of spies.
Check that assumption.
Could we assume that the occupied territories, if Russia takes that Donbass area, etc., that they would have plenty of Ukrainian spies?
That would say, okay, here's the barracks.
This is where the Russian soldiers come out of every day.
And, you know, here's the thing that's going to blow up over there.
So I think they'd have spotting, exact spotting.
And they would have unlimited drones to send over to blow up wherever there's a human being outside.
Now, they might not be able to blow up a tank.
And I'm not talking about the big, like, Turkish drones.
I'm talking about the, you know, the hobby-sized ones that can travel two miles or whatever it is.
I think they can do a couple miles now.
And I would expect that with...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the distance a drone can travel change with Starlink?
If you add Starlink to hobby drones...
At the moment, you can't do a handoff like forever, but if you had a continuous Starlink connection, could you control your drone with very small lag to anywhere, as long as the drone had power?
Is that right? They don't use internet, but they could.
No, I realize they don't use internet, that's why they have a distance problem, but they could, right?
The only thing that they couldn't do is necessarily have the right time lag to be just a little bit more of a time lag.
But if they're targeting something stationary or it can track something that's moving and fire on its own, they wouldn't need that.
They could be a second or two late and it would still work, right?
You need large equipment to receive Starlink.
Really? So you don't think you could put a Starlink receiver on a drone?
Yet? Okay, well, it's an open question.
So, anyway, my point is, I'm talking about Ukraine in the next one to three years, what kind of drone power they could put together.
Do you think that Russia has the technology to stop a drone swarm?
I don't think so.
I don't think anybody has that.
There seems to me that some number of drones will beat some number of anti-drone defense.
Even if it's a cat-and-mouse game, both are going to win for a long time.
All right. So that's an interesting question.
Corey DeAngelis reports that 23 states have now decided to cut ties with the National School Board Association because of the pressure that they were putting on parents.
So it turns out that parents are rising in power, and...
Half of the country has now, at least in terms of number of states, decided to cut ties with the National School Board.
People are finally realizing that the biggest problem in the world is teachers' unions and school boards.
Because their power distorts what society needs.
All right. Provocatively, I tweeted the other day that Trump would have solved the baby formula problem in 10 minutes.
Oh, boy, did that stir up a hornet's nest of turds.
Wow. By the way, I saw a great meme yesterday.
It was Amber Heard.
There's a picture of her, and the meme said, I think it said that she was the only one in the relationship that gave a shit.
I'll just let that sink in.
All right. So when I said that Trump would have solved the baby formula problem in 10 minutes, what I meant was my understanding was that it was only red tape or agreements with other countries, etc., that was preventing it.
Now, is that true? Because I know we didn't have a domestic supply, but was there more to it than just the availability of getting it from other countries?
All right, so I think there's...
There was definitely a shortage in this country, but was there a shortage in other countries?
Did other countries have enough that if we had rapidly purchased it, it would have made a difference?
Does anybody know that? I'm seeing a lot of people say, no, it wouldn't have made a difference.
If there's no shortage in other countries and trucks exist...
Would our supply chain problem have caused us not to be able to get it in an emergency situation?
Because we would have airlifted it as we did.
I don't know. So my assumption was that anybody who said, all right, break all the rules and feed our babies, would have gotten something done faster.
I don't think that's a bad assumption.
But then I learned that Democrats have been taught that Trump caused the problem.
Have you heard that narrative?
That the baby formula shortage was caused by Trump?
It's sort of popular on Twitter.
Has anybody heard that? And it had something to do with NAFTA or something?
I don't know. Maybe.
But I treat them as separate problems.
Even if it's true, and I doubt it is, but even if it's true that something he did caused the problem, it was obviously something that smart people thought was the right course.
It just didn't work out. So that's different from could he have fixed it.
I think the fixing he's better at than the predicting weird things in the future, which nobody's good at.
There's a great article on China dominating rare earth materials, which sounds like the most boring topic, but I've been waiting to see somebody just summarize it so I can get a sense of, you know, is there any other source for rare earth materials and stuff like that.
So this appears to be a big, big deal because of all your technology.
Requires these, you know, 11 or so heavy earth rare materials.
But here are some things I didn't know.
One source for some of these is Greenland, which might suggest why Trump wanted to buy Greenland.
And there's something discovered near Japan and the ocean that looks like it's got tons of rare earth in there.
It's hard to get out of the ocean.
But you should read the article.
It's written by...
Insightful geopolitics. But just look at my Twitter feed and you can see it.
It's the only time I've seen somebody explain it in simple terms.
Now, it turns out that we, the United States, is doing a lot to try to get our own friendly sources of rare earth.
So there's a lot going on.
But China has so far dominated the known sources.
But here's the big wild card.
We keep discovering new sources.
So it could be the kind of thing...
Yeah, maybe it's an asteroid.
It could be space.
But we keep discovering new ones.
So, you know, if we keep discovering new ones, could there be...
I guess there's a recent one in far west Texas, a mountain called Round Top...
Round Top is the mountain. That it might make America greatly self-sufficient in rare earth materials.
It discovers 5 out of 6 of the light rare earth and 10 out of 11...
So there's basically one place in Texas, one mountain, that might have enough of these rare earth materials that would make the United States self-sufficient.
And... Now, do you think there's not even one other mountain in the United States that has any rare earth materials?
There's this one mountain that's got five out of six of one type and ten out of eleven of the other type and all five permanent magnet materials.
That's just one mountain in Texas.
You don't think we're going to find some more mountains?
Somebody says a pebble mine in Alaska, right?
Well, isn't the problem just finding it?
I feel like the problem is not getting it.
The problem is just knowing where it is.
I feel like this is one of those gigantic problems that will be solved one day.
Like, maybe this is it.
Maybe this far west tall mountain, maybe it solves everything.
I don't know. Once they start digging, they're going to find out how much is in there.
They don't know how much is in there.
What if it's ten times as much as they think is in there?
The problem is already solved.
I mean, you know, given some time.
I think the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters applies here better than in most places, and it works pretty well everywhere.
And that goes like this.
Before we would run out or have some World War III with China over rare earth materials, or that we'd have a war and, you know, they'd make them unavailable to us, probably far before that's going to happen, we'll just discover a few more mountains...
And we'll have all the rare earth materials we want.
We'll just look harder for them.
Or we'll learn how to get them out of the ocean more reasonably.
Erasmus had a poll and they asked, is it possible to completely prevent mass shootings like the ones in Buffalo?
Completely. Is it possible to completely prevent mass shootings like the ones in Buffalo?
24% of the people said yes.
24% think that you could completely prevent mass shootings.
Twenty-four percent. That's roughly...
It's a neighborhood of a...
It's about a quarter.
A quarter. Twenty-five percent.
Twenty-five percent.
All right. The next question was, would stricter gun control help prevent mass shootings like Buffalo?
Forty percent said yes.
But in this case, it was help prevent.
I think you could answer that one either way.
You know, stricter gun control, even if you didn't like it, it might help.
There might be one fewer, and that would help.
I mean, it would help a lot if you were one of the victims of that one fewer, the one that didn't happen.
So, yeah, I suppose this has more to do with how you define the question or understand the question, I guess.
All right, here's the big payoff for today.
I developed a quiz, a 10-point quiz, of news hoaxes.
And I propose that you should not talk to me about world events unless you can pass this test.
Would you like to now participate in the 10 questions that will determine if you are one who is duped by hoaxes?
I will tell you in advance that everything on this list is a hoax, a known hoax, a really well-known hoax.
If your news source believes that these are true, You need to change your news source.
All right. Number one, Russia collusion hoax.
Number two, the Steele dossier hooker story.
Three, Russians paying bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Number four, Trump calling neo-Nazis fine people in Charlottesville.
Number five, Trump suggested drinking or ingesting bleach to COVID. Six, Trump overfed koi fish in Japan with the Prime Minister, I guess.
And seven, Trump cleared protesters with tear gas for a Bible photo op.
Number eight, Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation.
Number nine, elections were fair because no court found major fraud.
And number ten, January 6th was a, quote, insurrection to overthrow the government.
Now, how many of you think one of these hoaxes is true?
Ten for ten.
All right.
Well, that has as much to do with who my audience is as the hoaxes themselves.
But what do you think of this as a starting point?
Here's a rule of persuasion that is one of the best rules you'll ever learn.
And I learned this when it was my job in corporate America...
To write up business cases or write up what our strategy was or generally to put into words what it is we wanted or planned to do.
And what I learned was that the person who puts it into words is actually sort of in control.
Because the way you word things decides whether it's going to happen.
If you word it right, it happens.
If you word it wrong, it doesn't.
And so the person putting things into words can also insert a little bit that maybe the boss hadn't intended.
Maybe subtract something that the boss would have put there, but you don't think belongs there.
So the person who controls the speech, the speechwriter, has a lot of control over the country, the business, whatever.
So if you're ever in a position to be the one who writes it down, take that job.
Take that job immediately.
Because the one who writes it down It's a charge.
So what I did was I wrote down this quiz, and this gives me sort of a power position because since I created it, it makes something that somebody has to respond to.
And it makes them respond within my frame.
So I'm creating a frame...
And then I'm inviting victims in to respond to it.
But I've rigged the game, right?
So it's already rigged. So it gives me power to be the first one to write it down.
So that's your persuasion lesson.
Be the one to write it down.
Be the one to write it down first.
Gives you tremendous power.
And I noticed that when I would mention any of these hoaxes individually, people would just fight them to death.
But I'm using list persuasion here, where if somebody looks at this list and they say, yeah, okay, I admit that half of these are definitely hoaxes, what are they going to think of the other half?
Because I put it in the context in which they could say, okay, even I know, at this point I know, that the Hunter laptop was not Russian disinformation.
So I know that one's true.
So if that one's true...
Oh, wait, I know...
Okay, I do know that Trump didn't overfeed the koi fish.
I saw the full video to know what that was about.
Okay, so two of these, I know they were real hoaxes and they were on TV. Oh, okay.
Yeah, that third one...
Yeah, they never proved that there was any bounties paid on US soldiers.
Okay, I'll give you three. So don't you think that people who were inclined to believe at least one thing on the list would look at the list and sort of talk themselves into thinking that the list maker knew a few things?
Because when you agree with somebody, you think they're smart.
So if I put something on the list that they're going to agree with, they'll think, well, you're at least smart about that one.
So I'm drawing them in.
So persuasion-wise, this list persuasion, which I hate it when it's used against me, but it's a powerful technique.
If you're going to be the one who makes the list, it's powerful.
So imagine the same technique if you had made a list of mistakes that Biden made or mistakes that Trump made.
A list of ten of them is going to be more persuasive as long as somebody believes a few of them.
If the whole list is bullshit, then it doesn't work at all.
But if a few of those on the list, you say to yourself, okay, I see your point on a few of those, then you're more inclined to think that the larger list has some weight.
Oh, I forgot an E on Steele dossier.
Thank you. I'll fix that.
All right. I would invite you...
Actually, I think I'll probably...
I might correct that typo and then repost it.
But feel free to use that, to use my list of 10.
You don't need to give me credit or anything.
But if it's useful, you have my full permission as if you needed it.
You didn't really need it. Can we move Charlottesville higher on the list?
No, because I didn't want people to get there until they'd seen a few that they agreed with.
So Erica asks, could we put the Charlottesville neo-Nazi one higher on the list?
If it were a list of how bad they were, I'd put it toward the top.
But remember, the point of it is persuasion.
So putting it forth is about exactly what you want to do.
Alright. That's all I've got for today.
I think you would agree this was just about the best thing you've ever seen in your life.
Am I right? Yeah, of course I am.
And once again, your dopamine levels are higher than they would have been.
I think your oxytocin is starting to peak.
A little bit of caffeine, too, for some of you.
Yes, you're feeling good.
You're feeling better. Things are going great.
And by the way, if you want to look forward to a Dilbert series that's coming up, Dilbert's company is entering the big pharma space, and they're producing a pill, and there will be some controversy about whether the data is accurate or not.
So if I'm still around a month from now, I'll be surprised.
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