Episode 1757 Scott Adams: Fix Every Problem In America With Better Home Design. And Mutant Hamsters
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Delayed gratification for success
Aggressive mutant hamsters
High quality prefab homes, BuildCover.com
Programming a better life partner
Pondering personal life of trolls
Dealing with negative people
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Hey, good morning everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Coffee with Scott Adams.
Now, you could also have your own favorite beverage, it doesn't have to be coffee, but this is going to be a simultaneous something.
And when I say simultaneous, you know what I mean.
I mean, at the same time.
Or asynchronously.
That works, too. We're very permissive here.
This is the place that you can be yourself.
Unless you're a bad person.
And then go somewhere else and be yourself.
But if you're a good person and you'd like to be better, what you really need is the simultaneous sip, and all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass, say, tank or Chelsea's dine, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind, filled with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure The dopamine to the day, the thing that's going to release all of your feel-good chemistry, this is going to feel really good.
You should time whatever it is that you'd like to have simultaneously with this sip.
Go! Now, keep your mug with you, because this is more of a sipping kind of a day than it is a news day.
Let's talk about the tragedy, blah, blah, blah tragedy.
Was that good enough?
Is everybody happy that I've covered the tragedy?
I really don't want to talk about it anymore, do you?
Not really. Like, I had some notes here, and then I thought, you know, you know what you really need?
There's none of that.
How about let's just talk about good things?
So today's going to be a little bit different because the news is nothing but that bad thing that we're not going to talk about.
But there's some interesting things happening, too.
And one of the interesting things was, I just saw on the locals' chat, that somebody was saying that the best predictor of success was the ability to put off rewards.
How many of you believe that's the best predictor of success?
The ability to forego immediate pleasure for later pleasure.
A lot of people say yes, a lot of people say no.
Well, first of all, we don't know if studies ever are real.
I'm not sure any study's real anymore.
I've gotten to the point where if I see that a study says something's true, I just sort of automatically think it might be the opposite of that, just as my starting point.
You know, I can be convinced, but as my starting point, as soon as I hear a study make some wild claim, I just assume it's not true.
All right, now here's an alternative to that theory.
So one theory is it's the ability to put off pleasure to get a larger pleasure in the future.
Here's my reframe of that same concept.
It's the ability to imagine.
What if the ability to put off pleasure now is really nothing but the ability to imagine better?
Think about it.
I believe that I'm very good at putting off immediate pleasure.
Better than most.
If there were some kind of a contest where you said, alright, who's going to put off pleasure the longest in order to get some big reward later?
I would say, you don't want to be in that contest with me.
Because I can put off pleasure like a motherfucker.
I mean, I can really put off pleasure.
I can just shut down my pleasure as long as you need.
If... Here's the big if.
If I can imagine a bigger pleasure that I'm competing for, right?
If I can't imagine a bigger pleasure later, then I'll take the pleasure today.
Because it's not being compared to anything.
The one today is the only one, so I'll take it.
Why wouldn't I? But...
Do you think it's a coincidence that I have...
And I'm going to say that this is a factual statement, and I'm hoping that you'll agree with this because it's important to the concept.
Would you say it's a factual statement that I have a commercial-grade imagination?
Meaning that my powers of imagination essentially are behind everything I create.
And that it is proven to have a commercial value in a few different domains.
So if you'll give me that, I'm going to see if I can generalize from it.
Now this is just a hypothesis, right?
My hypothesis is that the ability to put off pleasure today is really just a difference in imagination.
If you can really, really imagine what tomorrow looks like, You can bring tomorrow to today, and you've got two things to compare today.
It's like a discounted cash flow, if anybody's an NBA nerd out there.
The way that you do a financial analysis, if you were, let's say, to compare an expense today to some expense that might be done over time, you do this calculation on the expenses that are done over time, To bring them, I guess, into the present so that you have two things that are both in the present.
So one is artificially massaged to bring those streams of money into the present by adjusting for what it would mean in the present if you were to wait for it, basically.
And same thing.
So I think that putting off pleasure is completely related to how much you can imagine a competing pleasure in the future.
Have I convinced you? What do you think?
And now, if that's true, if my hypothesis is true, it means that you could cause people to make different decisions by teaching them to imagine more vividly what the alternatives are.
Now, there was an experiment that's always really influenced me, in which now, of course, who knows if this could be reproduced, but I'll bet it could be.
It agrees with my preconceived notions, so therefore I think it's good.
And that is that if you allow people to see themselves artificially aged, so you take somebody's photo and you digitally age them so they can see themselves as a senior citizen, that they will save more money today.
If they can see themselves like an actual photo of themselves that looks like themselves in the future.
Because they'll protect that person.
It's them. So you've basically digital-aged something to bring it into the present so that you've got two things in the present to compare.
Shall I save this money or spend it?
Ooh, I don't want to hurt this guy.
I'm looking at him right now. So, I'll betcha...
I'll bet you the more time you spend imagining a good outcome that comes from exercising or dieting or working hard to learn a new skill so you can improve your career, whatever it is, I'll bet you the more time you spend imagining the goodness of the outcome, the more likely you're going to get there.
Just a thought. All right.
There's a story about aggressive mutant hamsters in the news.
A team of scientists at Northwestern University, they've accidentally created overly aggressive mutant hamsters.
So they were doing a gene editing experiment.
They were trying to make the hamsters increase their bonding and be more lovable.
They wanted more lovable hamsters.
But they somewhat accidentally created, quote, overly aggressive mutant hamsters.
Now, the first thing I thought, probably the first thing you thought too, was how do I get one?
Am I right? Because if there's anything I've ever wanted, it is an overly aggressive mutant hamster.
I've had a cat. I have a dog.
Excellent pets. Cats, love them.
Dogs, big dog lover.
I love dogs. But if I could have an overly aggressive mutant hamster, I don't know if I'd even need friends.
I mean, I would just stay home and play with the hamster, if the hamster would have me.
I mean, I don't know what kind of powers the mutant hamster has.
They say mutant, but they're sort of quiet on what kind of superpowers the mutant hamster actually has.
They say overly aggressive, but that seems true of most evil mutant hamsters.
So, I'm more specific.
Can they shoot any kind of lasers or maybe control the weather?
I don't know. Richard Gere is reportedly trying to buy one.
I don't know what that's all about.
Well, I don't know. I think it would increase my bonding just to have one.
So there's another story in the news, sort of.
All right, here's the nerdiest news story that, unfortunately, is the most interesting thing in the world for me.
So I'm going to try to convince you this is the most interesting thing in the world for you.
You just don't know it yet.
So if you were to make a list of all our social problems, it would be a pretty long list, right?
You'd have everything from drugs to inflation to crime to bad schools to blah, blah, blah.
But I contend that the following is true, that you could solve almost all of society's major problems with better home design.
Does that seem like a big claim?
That you could solve almost all of society's major problems by better home design.
Not more expensive ones.
Much less expensive ones.
That would help you with your budget stuff.
But also ones that are designed for how people live.
So let me give you just an example.
Home Depot now is selling entire homes.
So you can order a Home Depot, one of these little small homes that comes ready to assemble.
And they have a pretty big variety of them now.
And I guess they've got their bathroom, bedroom, kitchen little deal, and you just snap it together.
And the cost, I think the high-end one with two bedrooms...
Was $44,000.
So that's where the profits all built in, $44,000.
Now, of course, you'd need land and connect to systems and local permits and stuff like that.
So I don't know what you would be in all in, but you can see where this is heading.
On top of that, so I tweeted that, that Home Depot had these new things.
As I'd imagine, you know, even though Home Depot is a fine company, and I have only good things to say about Home Depot as a company, but imagine if these little small homes were designed by Apple.
How much better would they be?
Because Apple knows how to do human design.
They would build prototypes, they would test it endlessly, they would figure out what works and what doesn't, they'd tweak it, and then they'd really get you something.
But the way homes are built today, I'm pretty sure somebody just designs it on paper and then builds it.
I think that's it.
Am I wrong? And maybe they learned something from one they'd seen before.
When they took classes, somebody said, don't make this mistake or that mistake.
So they do learn from their mistakes.
But it's nothing like design.
I don't think.
Even if you can build a 3D model and tour it with the software, which you can do, you don't really know what it's like to live in it.
So imagine taking the modern design capabilities of an Apple, I would say similar to Google or Tesla, just to pick, you know, three companies.
Amazon, Amazon, same thing.
So imagine taking that level of design expertise, figuring out what people really need in the modern world, which is completely different than how homes are designed now, and then building, you know, The good version.
Basically the iPhone version of a home.
Now by that I do not mean overly technically complicated.
It could be the opposite. But I mean the iPhone was such a difference from any other kind of phone.
That's what I'm talking about.
So there's this company called CoverBuild.
I think it's one word. If you want to follow them, it's at CoverBuild.
C-O-V-E-R-B-U-I-L-D. CoverBuild.
And they build, it's a startup, and they're making homes that are like, they describe it, like Lego blocks.
How many times have we all talked about that, right?
Why can't they make a home that you could just put together, you know, like Sears used to do, except stop saying that.
The first person who says Sears used to make kits, I'm going to block you.
Because here's the important thing.
Yes, it's been done in the worst possible way in the past.
There's nothing like what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the best possible way.
So the fact that the Model T once existed should not inform you whether you should buy a Tesla.
They're completely different products by the time you fast-forward all the improvements.
So now CoverBuild has this Lego-like thing, and based on the video, it looks like you don't have to cut anything.
It looks like it comes with panels.
So there's wall panels and floor panels, and it looks like some kind of ceiling or roof panels.
Now they're a little boxy.
Because it's easier to make boxy stuff.
But if you make things boxy and well designed, meaning that you've got lots of glass windows on one side and you've made the best use of space, you probably have something pretty good.
And then if you put these homes in an organized community, Where you've got things like forced ways for people to interact.
In other words, you're making people interact so that they have a social life and they meet their neighbors and stuff like that.
So if you designed your community...
And by the way, this is done in senior communities already.
Here are the following problems that you could eliminate by designing your house and your community from scratch.
Now forget about the tiny part.
So the two things that we should forget about in this conversation are Sears used to make kits.
No, that's the old primitive way.
It's irrelevant to what we're talking about.
And then the other thing was what I just mentioned.
Tiny. So don't assume that tiny is the goal.
They could be tiny, but they don't have to be.
Tiny is just one way to save money, and it's probably the worst way.
I'd make them a little bit spacier, actually, so that they're the right space for living.
But here's what you could solve if you just designed your house and your community right.
You would save maybe 80% on your budget.
So I think that's completely doable.
Let's say one person living alone could probably reduce their living expense by 80% if they lived in a place that was designed for that purpose and also to make it a good place to live.
You could, of course, be so green that there's no fossil fuels used at all.
You could make every small house sort of have a Tesla battery attached to it.
Of course, that's going to run up to cost another 20,000 or whatever once you're all in.
But you can make a community that's completely green, as green as electricity can be.
You could get rid of loneliness because you designed the community so there's some forced interaction.
Maybe there's some apps that connect to everybody.
You could reduce medical costs by having more places that people walk and go outside and get vitamin D. So basically you create a place where people just are automatically healthier because they walk to the store and they're getting outside and they're meeting their neighbors and all that stuff.
And they've saved so much money they can all have health care.
Transportation, you can completely solve it by having everything you need in the community.
You can get rid of crime.
You can just completely get rid of crime by having cameras everywhere.
Now again, you might say to me, Scott, I don't want cameras everywhere.
Well, then maybe the public cameras...
I'm only talking about in public spaces.
But maybe the public cameras...
You have to have a court order to look at them or something, so you'd have to have cause.
So you could see how you could design crime right out of it.
How about education?
Homeschooling would be easy if you designed the community for it, wouldn't it?
You just design micro-classrooms for five to ten kids, and you just schedule them for whatever Guardian is there, plus whatever Zoom video is the class itself, however they do it.
So it seems like if you designed it from the ground up, you could just solve systemic racism.
Meaning that...
Every kid, even with low income, would have enough money to live there because it would be so cheap.
And then they'd have as good a school as everybody else because it would just be all, you know, whatever is the best school designed.
I don't know what it is. So he says, dude, your opinions are creepy.
Now, what did I say that was an opinion?
Did anybody hear an opinion yet?
No. I don't know that there was any opinion here, was there?
Because I'm saying things I think everybody would agree with every part of it.
I'm not sure that even qualifies as an opinion if everybody would agree.
So let me say the things that I think you're thinking and then see if that sounds right.
You're probably thinking the following things.
If it's organized like a commune, It's going to be sort of communist and not work, and nobody's ever made that work.
So why would you do that?
So I'm assuming you wouldn't do that.
You wouldn't design it in a way that doesn't work.
You would test it until you knew it worked.
So if you're saying, don't do the things that haven't worked in the past, I'm saying that's exactly the idea.
Don't do the things that haven't worked in the past.
That's the one thing you can rule out.
Hasn't worked in the past.
The other thing is people are saying it's dystopian.
You won't have choices. That's not true.
The cover-build homes are built so you can reconfigure them in an infinite variety of ways.
Infinite variety.
And you can imagine that that would only improve over time.
So I think the current models, it looks like the wall panels have a structural part and then a part that's just a decorative inside cover.
But you can imagine that the decorative inside covers would start basic, but then, you know, there'd be one that looks like a brick wall, one that looks like anything else.
So you can imagine that it would start basic and then you could do whatever you wanted with it.
So I would imagine that the opportunity to be customized and unique would go up, not down.
So why would you assume that any new design that's meant to be better would be substantially worse in some way that you can identify?
That's not the idea.
The idea is that none of it's worse.
So if you're thinking, yes, but this part will be worse, well, that's not the idea.
The idea is that every part of the living experience would be better.
Including it would look better, feel better, be cheaper, more efficient, it would give you a social life just by forcing you to interact with people, etc.
So it's interesting you can see people's personalities by how they respond to something like this.
I think the personalities that say this won't work and here's the reason probably have trouble succeeding in life.
Whereas the people who say, well, if the idea is to solve all those problems, then I'll go along with that idea.
I don't know if you can do it, but if you can solve all those problems, I'd live there.
You won't own anything and be happy about it?
Who said that? Who said you won't own anything?
Everybody's just throwing in, like, ridiculous ideas so that you've imagined something wrong with it.
Why would I say there would be no private ownership of anything?
Nobody said that. I would say whatever works.
And it could be that there are different models.
Could be. I feel like one of the models will be that you can buy one for yourself and one to rent.
And some people will say, I'll just build two units at a time, one for me and one to rent.
I think that'll be a thing.
Oh, that's a quote from the W. Oh, cheap house, inexpensive land.
All right, here's the second part of the thing.
Am I wrong that we've reached a point where you could make better use of more remote land, meaning that you don't need to drive to the city for as much?
Would you say that's true?
In other words, could I put a community on relatively cheap land where that didn't used to make sense?
In the old, old days, you wanted to be near a coast.
And then you needed to be near where the food supply or the water is.
You still need to be where the water is.
But if you had water, you're in pretty good shape, aren't you?
So probably if you just went where the water source is good, you'd be okay.
Now, have you seen the inventions that will take moisture out of the air, even in the desert?
How many of you have seen that?
I don't know how commercialized that is, but it's a thing.
It's a device that sucks moisture out of the air and actually can create a fair amount of drinking water.
And so here's what I imagine will happen.
I imagine that the small home industry will get somebody building the infrastructure part of the home and then other people building the walls and windows and doors.
So the infrastructure would be like a Tesla battery with solar panels, some kind of a Bill Gates toilet so you don't need actual sewage.
So Bill Gates was developing this toilet for Africa where somehow it just recycles everything and it just doesn't need to be connected to the grid.
So if you get your electric off the grid, you could get your toilet off the grid.
I don't know how much of your other sewage, maybe all of it.
And then you would want to get your water off the grid.
And it's possible...
That maybe some future version of this device that sucks moisture out of the air could be enough.
Maybe you could just have that thing working all night long producing water.
You fill up your tank and that's all you need for the day.
So, roads.
You would need roads.
But you would only need one major road to the development.
And then once in the development, you wouldn't need roads beyond what electric vehicles could do to deliver stuff back and forth.
But I guess you'd need to bring in some refrigerators now and then, so I guess you'd need to be able to deliver.
You need to purify waste now.
Anyway, but I could see that we would have indoor farms...
So you get rid of all your pesticide and problems like that.
All your weather problems.
So you probably would have passive cooling.
So the air would probably be flowing through tunnels or through berms or something.
So anyway, you can imagine that you get the cost down by 80% and the lifestyle up by 500%.
And that...
Ladies and gentlemen, plus legal cannabis is everything you need.
You know, aquaponics.
Are you talking about fish farms or hydroponics?
Hydro? I think fish farms tend to be kind of a nasty way...
To grow food. I'm surprised that nobody's made a fish farm that, you know, doesn't recycle the waste that's in the fish farm more effectively.
Seems like that would be an obvious thing.
Yeah, tilapia is just...
I used to eat a lot of tilapia until I found out about it.
I won't be eating any more tilapia.
Uh... Fish farm water is great fertilizer.
Is that true? So if you had a fish farm and a vegetable farm, you could use the fish waste to...
Now, what do you feed the fish?
You feed the fish on the fish, right?
Can you feed the fish the waste that you don't use from the vegetables?
Or do they have to eat something alive?
So could you have...
Obviously somebody's thought of this.
So is there a fish that would eat the parts of the plant that we don't want?
Like the corn cobs and the stuff you don't want.
Could you feed your fish with that?
No, they eat a mush of what?
I don't know, it feels like you could.
I've got a feeling that something like that's going to happen.
All right, well, today was the day we are not going to talk about any sad news.
We're just chatting because I know that you like to be here at this time of day.
Now, is there anything else that is not sad and tragic that we could talk about?
Can we talk about how awesome your weekend is going to be?
The golden age...
I really think that the building industry is going to have such a golden age that it'll drive everything.
Because, well, I don't believe that housing...
This is ironic.
The one thing that I don't think better housing will fix and cheaper housing...
What's the one thing it won't fix?
Homelessness. Ironically.
It's the one thing it won't fix.
Because what causes homelessness is people who don't want to be in a home, for the most part, because they're on drugs or they have mental problems.
It's not a lack of physical space or economics.
It's people who literally don't want to be indoors because they don't want those restrictions.
This housing idea hinges on nuclear power availability.
Well, that would help, but it doesn't hinge on it.
I think if you had your own Tesla batteries and a very energy-efficient place and solar panels, I think you could live off the grid.
We're probably 80% of the way toward having a house that can live off the grid productively and really economically.
I know people make it work, but I think you have to work at it.
But we're pretty close to making it just a kit, aren't we, to live off the grid?
Say gridder? Is that like the bad name for somebody who lives on the grid or off the grid?
There's not enough electricity for everyone using it for cars, etc.
Well, that's why the community would have to make its own electricity, both for your transportation as well as your house.
Yeah, you're seeing more and more energy around the small nuclear plants, right?
Almost every day now you're seeing positive articles about nuclear energy.
Have you noticed that? That the coverage of nuclear energy, I'd say in the last six months?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
In the last six months, every story about nuclear power has been positive.
Yes or no? Last six months, every story about nuclear energy has been positive.
Right? And there have been a lot of them.
And they're all about breakthroughs and something's approved and old plants are being opened up and they found new ways to convert fuel and there's a new fusion record being set.
Yeah. And I feel like collectively we were part of a very large project to make that happen.
So do any of you feel any ownership of that?
You know, it's hard to say how much any one effect makes, but I feel like you were a well-informed group and probably had a lot to do with spreading the word.
Because there was probably a...
Five to ten year time lag between when nuclear just made complete sense and when people realized it.
Because I think nuclear had to mature just a little bit to solve the risk problems and solve the waste problems, etc.
And now that it has, it just took a while for the public to figure it out, and then the politicians.
Is housing the new thing?
I think so. I think housing is the next thing.
And here's why. You have all these enormous companies.
By the way, this was Professor Scott Galloway's insight.
Companies that are as big as Apple, they can't do a small product.
So they can't say, all right, next we're going to make the pencil sharpener, that's the Apple pencil sharpener, because the total worldwide market for pencil sharpeners is too small.
So if you're Apple, you've got to bite off entire industries, like the big ones.
So one of those thoughts is that Apple will take on education, for example.
But housing is another one, or cars.
You would expect Apple is going to make a self-driving car at some point.
It almost has to.
Because it has to take on gigantic markets.
Likewise, Amazon.
Amazon sort of had to get into the grocery business.
You know, the Whole Foods sort of model.
They sort of had to, because there's not that much left that's big enough for an Amazon to absorb and make money from.
I'm just looking at some of your comments.
Okay.
Can we reprogram ourselves to be more attracted to our partners?
Oh, so I'm asking, can we reprogram ourselves to be more attracted to our partners?
And the answer is, your partner can program you to be more attracted to them.
It would be really hard to just sort of talk yourself into it.
I mean, you could, but that would be the hard way.
The better way...
Would be for each of you to learn how to make the other one more attractive.
And how hard would that be?
Well, you would just pair something that you both like with each other.
So the more things you do that is just naturally stimulating and fun, as paired with each other, the more you're going to be attracted to each other.
And the more you spend doing unpleasant things together, the less you'll be attracted.
And you'll think there's some kind of natural...
It's like, oh, we're just getting used to each other.
No. It's because when you met, you went on dates.
Right? When you first met, you went on dates.
And you were thinking, tonight's the night.
I think we're going to do it tonight.
And it was all good.
And then you got together, and then what do you do?
Whose turn is it to clean up the cat's vomit from the rug?
I'll get it. All right.
If you're doing that, I'll...
I'll pick up some groceries.
So basically, you go from pairing your partner with sex and good food and smelling good and having a shower and everything that feels good.
That's what you paired them with when you started.
And then, as soon as you lock them in, you start pairing them with the most awful things.
Like pain and medical problems and, you know, talking about all your problems for the day and all your co-workers are evil and blah, blah.
And then every time you see the face of your partner, what do you think?
Ooh, yeah.
No. After a while, your partner can wear you down.
They'll wear you down.
And there's nothing but time and focus and repetition.
If you pair people with positive thoughts, they become more appealing in your mind.
if you pair them with negative thoughts and actions, over time it all becomes one thing.
Then you let yourself go.
Somebody says, then you let yourself go, because how much work are you going to put into preparing yourself to take out the garbage and mow the lawn or whatever you're doing?
So you'll get ready for a date, but you're not going to put on your nice shirt to mow the lawn, necessarily.
So, yeah.
The reason that things turn out the way things turn out is because people act the way they act.
If they were conscious about the fact that every time they pair a negative with a positive, those two things are going to start conflating, as long as you know that, you can manage your mind and the mind of your partner productively.
I bet you didn't think I could answer that question, did you?
Why you haven't stayed married?
Why you haven't stayed married.
Well, I don't think the question of whether someone stays married has, you know...
There's only one reason to that.
I was thinking about this the other day.
And you've heard me say this before.
A number of people have expressed sympathy or empathy when they heard that I'm...
Going through a divorce.
You know, it's sort of a long process thing.
But I always get confused by it because I think...
And some of the trolls online have been...
When the trolls come after me, they like to say, So, what about your marriage that fell apart?
And I'm thinking, Is that supposed to bother me?
Because that's just my biography.
I'm not really bothered by hearing my own biography.
I'm pretty sure I know what's happening in my life.
But here's what I don't understand.
Why would anybody assume that the end of something is a failure?
What is the mindset that says that?
Because my mindset is, if it worked when it worked, then that part was a success.
And then when things that work stop working, for whatever reason, do you change so that you find some other thing that works?
Or do you just keep doing the thing that doesn't work?
Is it a failure if you enjoyed something immensely for some period of time, but then something changes, and then you don't?
So should you just keep doing the thing that didn't work?
I mean, or must you always fix the old thing?
So I'm not sure that there's...
I think there's sort of a failure mindset and then there's a success mindset.
And I think you can sort of develop the more productive one over time simply by reminding yourself to do it, you know, just making it a habit.
And I never really see the end of something as a failure.
Or even a tragedy.
Of course, I'm human, so I go through all the same emotions everybody does.
But I fairly quickly talk myself out of it.
Somebody says, why get married to begin with?
You know you're going to die, right?
Everybody knows that.
So why do anything?
Why do anything if you're going to die?
It's actually a pretty good question.
Why do anything? You're just gonna die.
It's not like it lasts forever. And the best I can come up with is the only thing that I know for sure is that some things feel better than other things.
Well, I know two things.
I know I exist.
Because I'm asking the question.
So there has to be something asking the question, so I must exist.
And I know that I have an experience.
I experience some things like pleasure and some things not.
So I try to get more of the pleasure ones.
Basically, those are the things you can know.
And everything else is a little bit of an interpretation and a guess.
Yeah, and I do believe the most likely explanation for reality is that We are in a simulation.
Or I am, and you're not real.
Or you're real and I'm not.
All those possibilities. Oh, please teach me to talk myself out of the failure mindset when relationships end.
Oh, easy. Easy.
Why is it your fault?
Why is the end of a relationship your fault?
There's no real logic to that.
It's just something we feel. Why can't you just say, you know, mashed potatoes and a nail?
They don't go together, right?
Like if you wanted to pound a nail into a board, you'd need something harder, like a hammer.
But that doesn't mean mashed potatoes are a failure, does it?
Sometimes mashed potatoes are for eating.
Although maybe not the best thing for you.
And a hammer is for hammering.
And so if you've somehow managed to put mashed potatoes and a nail together, what, did the nail fail?
Or did the mashed potatoes fail?
Neither. Neither.
Sometimes people change, or a situation changes, and then things don't work.
Do you know that every relationship is going to end, right?
One of you is going to die.
I was trying to think the other day, what would be worse to have a series of 10-year relationships and all of them come to some kind of end that you didn't see coming?
Or a 70-year relationship and then your spouse goes first?
Imagine that. One 70-year relationship and your spouse dies first?
I can't even fathom it.
A 10-year relationship...
The ends, you know, that'll tear you apart for a while.
But I can't even imagine the 70-year one.
So when I think to myself, which one of those is the better deal?
I'm not entirely sure.
I don't know. If you had, you know, several longish-term relationships that were all individually awesome for different reasons, maybe that was for you.
I also think there's a whole bunch of different alternative lifestyle things going on that if you haven't talked to anybody who's involved, you have no idea how many alternative lifestyles are out there.
And by alternative, I mean it's not one person dating one person or married to one person.
All the different models of how people relate, they're all more popular, as far as I can tell.
All the things that people don't talk about, there's just more of it, a lot more of it.
There is no one right way.
Now we get to the bottom of it.
Sometimes I have trolls.
Whose name that they pick for social media has something to do with trolling me.
Like they've even picked a name that's specific to trolling me.
You know, so this is one of the downsides of being in the public eye, I guess.
Is the people who just make it their hobby to try to hurt you.
Like, there's somebody here who took time out of their day to think, okay, how could I hurt this Scott Adams guy?
I'll make a fake account, and I'll just stalk all of his social media and say stuff that will try to bother him in some way.
And I'm thinking to myself, there wasn't anything else you had to do that was better than that?
Anything? Of all the things you had to do, That's the one that went, ping, right to the top of the list.
Because I wonder if I looked at you, would you look like your physical fitness was right on point?
Basically, you're taking care of all of your needs.
I'm sure your career is just going great.
Probably your social life is good.
Because if there's one thing we can tell about somebody who makes an account just to troll me, one thing you can know about that person...
They've got a great personal life, huh?
Am I right? That's somebody who's got so many friends, they barely have time for anything extra.
So, when I see somebody put that much effort into trying to make me sad, I think to myself, I feel like I'm winning this.
Because I didn't put any effort into making you sad.
Well, maybe now, I guess.
But I do it in the spirit of entertainment.
Finish him.
I'm not sure I'm interpreting that comment right.
But the way I interpret it made me laugh anyway.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, we're not going to talk about the bad stuff in the news today.
We're taking a day off.
How do I not let the negativity on Twitter affect me?
Well, it's a good question, and the answer goes like this.
Number one, Twitter is part of my job.
I don't know how you would do it.
If you were using Twitter entirely for entertainment, I don't know why you'd do that.
Really, I don't know why.
But for people like me, You need to have a social media presence in order to sell anything, right?
If I want to sell a book, if I want you to remember there's a Dilbert comic out there somewhere, social media is basically how one does that.
And then the live streams work sometimes compatibly and sometimes opposite of my intentions.
So anyway, when I use Twitter, I feel like even if I'm enjoying it, it's part of my job.
So I'm not sure I would watch it every day if it weren't.
I probably would look at less contentious news sites if I wanted to just catch up on the news.
So the first way is I frame it as it's just work.
And there's always somebody complaining at work, right?
Doesn't it feel different if there's somebody you only know in your personal life and they're complaining about you?
Well, that's going to hurt you.
But if it's just work, like a customer complained, blah blah blah, and you don't even think it's a valid complaint, that doesn't really hit you the same way.
So some of it is it's just strangers.
Some of it is it's just practice.
The more you see yourself insulted, the more it doesn't mean anything.
It's just like looking at scenery at some point.
And... And I also get lost sometimes in the technique.
I'll look at how somebody's coming after me, and I'll judge whether it looked successful, relatively speaking.
I'll be like, oh, that was a good approach.
I also find myself wondering how organized they are.
Because we know they were organized trolls, and we know they seem to have disappeared after elections.
Who knows if that's a coincidence or not?
So I have lots of curiosity about the trolls.
And I even actually wonder, what are they thinking?
The ones who come in just to be terrible, is it really all about them?
Are they having a bad life, a bad day, and they're just taking it down on me because they think they can get away with it?
Because they don't know me, I'm not going to fight back or something?
So I always wonder, what is broken about the troll?
So here's the first reframe to help you deal with negative people.
There are two kinds of criticisms.
There are more, but let's just say there are two.
One of the kinds that are valid, Have you ever gotten a criticism that's just valid?
It hurts, doesn't it?
You hear something bad about yourself and you think, well, that's true.
Okay. I gotta be honest.
Okay, that's just true.
I always take the value out of those.
Because the thing that punches you in the face is also powerful, right?
That's why it punched you in the face.
It's powerful. You can use that power to fix that thing.
Just use it. So if somebody gives you the worst criticism and you say, that is true, they've excited that thing in you that makes it easier to fix that thing.
So I always think, oh, you just gave me a little gift, because I wouldn't have fixed that thing otherwise.
I wouldn't have had enough energy to do it, but boy, did you fix that.
You totally fixed my problem.
So the first thing I look at is if it's a valid criticism, and I can fix it, that it was a gift.
And I've told you before that I actually hear cha-ching.
When I get valid criticism, something I can actually fix, I actually hear like a cash register.
Cha-ching, cha-ching.
And I actually will replay that in my head, like as a little reminder that every time somebody tells me something I can fix, It's just money in the bank.
Why wouldn't I fix it?
Thank you. Now, the other kind is the kind of criticism that's invalid.
Usually, they're misinterpreting you.
They read something wrong.
They're just being bad people.
And those kind, I just say, these are just strangers.
These are just people with chemical reactions inside their skulls.
I'm seeing the output of it, but I'm not sure it has much to do with me.
Now, the valid criticisms, they have to do with me.
The invalid ones have something to do with some other person I don't know.
There's a person online, they think something's true that's not true, and they're mad at me because of it.
Well, it's hard for me to really take it personally when it's literally not about me.
Because the thing they're complaining about generally is some imagined thing, you know, out of context.
So that's not something I did.
It's something imagined.
And then it's a person I don't know.
So how much should that bother me?
So it's a person I don't know imagining something that didn't happen and then flailing out because they're broken.
Because usually there's something wrong with the critic, right?
They're broken in some way.
So watching a stranger flail at the imaginary because they're broken is easy not to be affected by it.
You just have to see it that way.
So that's a reframe. It's just taking the standard thing you're already seeing and just reframing it.
Now suppose it's somebody you know Who's imagining something and now it's actually a real problem in your real life?
Because the imaginary stuff can enter your real life.
And it happens all the time with me.
If you looked at people's...
I don't know if you've ever done this.
If you've looked at people's criticisms of me online, none of them are true.
Actually, none of them.
Literally none of them.
They're all based on something out of context.
If you knew the real context, you'd say, oh, that wasn't so bad.
So, I don't know if I answered anybody's question there.
Why no man cave last night?
Sometimes I have other things to do.
But I like coming to you from the man cave.
I do that only for the locals, subscribers.
Did that help? Was anybody helped by my description of why the critics are irrelevant?
Chemical reactions in the brain of a stranger over something imaginary that has something to do with them being broken.
That's what it is.
It's just not about you.
You should care about things that are about you.
Because there's plenty about you.
I'm sure you've got lots to work on.
But you shouldn't care about somebody imagining something.
So here's a perfect example.
So here's the sort of thing I get.
So George Siegel over on YouTube says the following about me.
Scott's always right and everyone else is just not smart enough to understand.
Like the vaccines and masks.
Sheep. So, should I be concerned about that criticism?
So that's somebody who says, I believe I'm always right, but I happen to know the context which I often say I'm wrong.
So it's imaginary.
That's literally based on imagination that I always think I'm right.
And also, almost certainly, has an imaginary false memory of what I said about masks or vaccines.
I guarantee that part.
That part's guaranteed. Now, should I be concerned about George's criticism when I know I don't know George?
He's a stranger. What he's criticizing me for is literally imaginary.
And there's something wrong with him.
I don't know what. But the fact that he felt the need to make that comment, yeah, maybe he's just a troll or something.
So maybe there's nothing wrong with him except that he likes being a troll.
I would argue that is something wrong with you.
But how's that about me?
Like, how did I... I'm not even involved.
It's literally imaginary.
It diminishes the value of your brand when you have to watch the trolling.
Don't know what that means. Oh, George says he's a fun troll.
He's just trying to get reactions.
Scott, can you choose who to fall in love with?
Yes. Yes, you can.
Does anybody believe that?
You can do it indirectly.
In the same way you can control luck.
You can't control luck directly, but you can go somewhere where there's going to be more of it.
So you can't necessarily control exactly who you fall in love with, but you could go where there's a certain type of person.
So if you, let's say, went to college, there's a pretty good chance you'd fall in love with somebody who's a college student.
So if you wanted to have a relationship with a college-educated person, would that be luck or something you managed?
So you can certainly manage down to a type.
But then there's a little bit of luck involved, of course.
And then you can also know when to say no.
So you could fall in love with the wrong person, but be smart enough to know it happened.
You know what I mean? And back out when it's time.
Back out early enough.
Well, I'm glad I could help. - Lost Angeles. It's easier to fall in love during the mating years, you say?
Yeah, probably. I would imagine that we're built that way.
Oh, the Amber Turd trial, I guess, is...
The jurors are on recess.
Can you imagine being one of the jurors in the amber turd thing?
That would be so disgusting.
All right. Well, I think we've done what we need to do today.
Today, we're going to go and have an amazing day.
And somehow, I made this last an hour.
I know. I'm surprised, too.
But I enjoy this time that we spend together.
There may be more news that is not the tragic kind, I'm hoping.
I'm guessing the next two days will not be filled with news.
