Episode 1803 Scott Adams: Words That Don't Have Meaning Anymore, So We Can Stop Debating Them
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Josh Hawley says only women can have babies
15 Words we don't agree on the definition
Major "News" stories that are just mind-reading
John Bolton says J6 wasn't a coup
HIMARS missile systems in Ukraine
7/11 and Starbucks closing stores
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So what percentage of the news that you see on the internet do you think is real?
We talk about this all the time.
The fact that if you're famous, or you're an expert on something, you'll see news about your expertise or about yourself, in my case.
And you know how fake that is, because you're the expert, or it's about you.
So those are the cases where you know if it's fake.
You don't have to wonder. So there are two stories about my...
Divorce. I was just looking on the internet.
So I don't know if you call those stories.
They're just things on the internet.
And if you look at the internet, you're going to find two things about me.
Well, you'll find lots of things about me.
One of the things is that I asked for a divorce after my wife got a cancer diagnosis.
Have you seen that one? That I asked for a divorce after she had a cancer diagnosis.
Do you think that's true? Just ask yourself, do you think that's true?
No, no, that's not true.
The relationship decision was like a year before that.
You don't hear about it because there's a time lag.
So by the time you heard about it, they lined up a little bit, but no, the relationship decision was long before.
Secondly, the cancer itself was a stage zero.
Now, that's not nothing, but stage zero means they're just going to zap it with some radiation.
It's a huge pain in the ass, you know, to go through weeks of it.
But when you're done with it, the prognosis is you're fine.
That's it. Nothing gets cut off.
You know, nothing's changed.
You're not degraded.
So she went through that, and she's 100%, like it never happened, right?
So that's the first thing. There's another example of some individual I won't mention who is starting rumor of something with her, but you can ignore that one.
That one's also false. Somebody she's never met.
The other one, what was the other one I saw?
I'll see. Oh, the other one is that I got custody of her children.
Did you hear that one?
That I got custody of her children.
That's not true. Does anybody think that was true?
I don't think that's ever happened in the history of anything.
No. No, you know what the real story is?
The real estate market was so hot that there was no inventory for a house that would fit her and a kid.
So it just took a while.
That's all. So then she got a place.
That's all. That's the whole story.
But, you know, you just use those two examples and now generalize that to all the news that you see, right?
I can tell you for sure what's true in my own life, but you wouldn't know, right?
You read it on the Internet, it looks real to you.
Well, let's talk about other things that are not real.
Did you see the clip of Josh Hawley?
Senator. And he was talking to some law professor about trans issues and who has babies and stuff.
I don't even know what the topic was.
But they got in a little back and forth about what is the definition of a woman.
If, like Hawley says, only women can have babies, then he's being transphobic.
Because if you say only women can have babies, you are minimizing trans women.
Am I saying that right? I think so.
And I guess non-binaries and stuff.
So there are other categories, according to the law professor, who can have babies.
And so using that word makes him transphobic.
Is it me, or have words lost all meaning?
Let me give you a list of words that we don't agree with they mean, but we used to.
So here's a bunch of words.
I've got 15 of them.
I've got 15 words that we use to argue about in politics.
These are like real words that we really, really argue about.
And we don't agree what the words mean.
Here's all 15.
We don't agree what woman means.
We don't agree what find means, as in, find to be 11,000 votes.
We don't agree if that means stealing or making it up or doing an audit.
Insurrection. We don't agree even what an insurrection is.
Is it a protest?
Is it an unarmed people being in a room for a while?
How about fascism?
Everybody's a fascist, right?
But people generally don't even know what it means.
It's just sort of a word for somebody who's powerful, but you don't like them.
How about bodily autonomy?
You think you know what that means, but why wouldn't it apply to vaccines and pregnancies?
What's the point of having one word if it has two completely different meanings?
We don't give it the same power in one situation as another.
That one's a little different.
How about phobic itself?
Doesn't that mean afraid of something?
Do you think that Josh Hawley is afraid of trans people?
Like, if he goes out in the hallway and he sees somebody that identifies as trans, does Josh Hawley go...
Does he do that?
It's an irrational fear.
Do you think he's operating from his fear of trans?
I don't know. I don't think we agree what phobic means.
Now, the way she described what he did was she said that essentially by diminishing the importance of non-women having babies, the way she would say it, by diminishing that, he is creating a risk for trans.
Okay. Now, I'm not going to even argue on her point.
But it has nothing to do with phobic, does it?
That's a little mind reader-ish, isn't it?
It's kind of a mind reader thing to imagine that he's phobic as opposed to just as a preference for some kind of clarity or something.
How about racist?
Yeah, of course. We all disagree what that means these days.
How about a vaccine?
Right? We used to say a vaccine prevented you from getting something.
Now it just makes you not get sick.
I guess that's the vaccine now.
How about a meeting? Didn't we used to think that a meeting, you had to be there?
But now, you know, it's a Zoom meeting.
So we don't agree what a meeting is.
How about a baby? We don't agree what a baby is.
I mean, not all the time.
After it's born, we agree.
But we don't agree what that thing in the mother's body is.
How about proof?
Or evidence? They don't mean what they used to, right?
It used to be that to prove something, or to have evidence of something, you would have to find something.
And you'd say, here it is.
You'd go find it, and then you'd present it.
That would be like evidence. Or if it was really good evidence, it would be like proof.
But now, if you don't look for something and don't find it, you've done just as good.
That's a completely different meaning for proof or evidence.
How about audit?
Audit. If you told me that a system had been audited, I would automatically think that you had looked at all the ways that people could cheat it, and you found out, you know, whether there was anything there.
But now, an audit can be if you check any part of a system.
So instead of an audit to find out if there's a problem, now an audit can be any component of the larger system, and if you find out that that one component looks good, you can then conclude that you have audited all of the things that you didn't look at because you've now done an audit.
So an audit means that there's no problems.
That's not what an audit was, in my opinion.
In my opinion, an audit would be looking for problems.
How about science?
We barely agree what science is.
I don't even have to give you details on that.
How about healthy?
Didn't we used to agree what healthy looked like?
And now you can put a plus-size model on Sports Illustrated, and we'll have an argument over whether that person is healthy.
We don't even agree what healthy means anymore.
How about right?
Or not right, but rights.
How about rights?
We don't agree what is a right.
You know, like the right to vote, the right.
We don't agree. Because we think that some people have rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution.
How do rights happen?
We don't even agree on any of that.
So think of this.
Almost all of our major topics have at least one word that is critical to our debate that we don't use the same way.
It would be as if people who spoke two different languages and didn't understand the other had a debate.
No, it's actually exactly like that.
Because if you're not using the same words, there's not really any hope you're going to get agreement.
Alright. Here's a shocking news.
Shocking. The Biden administration thinks that something Trump did is not so bad.
I didn't see this coming.
But Biden's in Israel. And apparently the Biden administration is quite happy about the Abraham Accords that were negotiated under the Trump administration.
And... Wants to broaden them, maybe bring Saudi Arabia a little closer to Israel.
I think the President's going to take a direct flight from Saudi Arabia to Israel, which, if you're not following the weirdness over there, is unusual.
So apparently it's a big deal to fly a plane directly from Saudi Arabia to Israel, but apparently there's lots of...
A lot of conversation and agreement, maybe, going on beneath the scenes or behind the scenes between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
So that's all heading in the right direction.
And it's interesting that Trump finally got credit for something.
There are a few topics in the news I'll probably ignore, like the bodega thing.
There's a gaffe here or there.
What is it? Jill Biden referring to people as different as breakfast burritos.
That's too racist.
None of that matters to me.
There's nothing to say about that stuff.
Tacos or whatever it is.
There's nothing to say. And by the way, well, okay, I'm going to say it.
I can't watch...
People who generally agree with me, I don't want to say on my side, because that's weird, but people who generally agree with me, I don't want to see them make fun of the First Lady for using maybe an awkward analogy or something.
Clearly, she's not a racist.
I mean, if you thought she was a racist, then we'd have something to talk about.
But if she just used some words that were, you know, poorly chosen, I think that doesn't mean anything.
That's a nothing. Have I ever chosen my words poorly?
Yeah. It's like something everybody does.
There's no news in that.
How many of our issues in the news involve mind reading?
I think we have to be honest about this, don't we?
How many things that we think are news really are based entirely on mind reading or the imagination that you know what other people are thinking?
The January 6th thing is totally that.
To imagine that Trump...
Knew he lost.
Remember, the entire argument on the left for why Trump must be punished and it was an insurrection is that Trump knew, and it's obviously new, that Trump knew...
There's some funny memes going by on Locals.
That Trump knew that he lost.
Now, that seems ridiculous to me, but I can't read his mind.
However, the people who are accusing him can't read his mind either.
So that's a mind-reading situation.
And what about Ukraine?
You know, it's a war, so there's more going on than mind-reading.
But a lot of it is revolving around what does Putin want, right?
We're trying to figure out, what does Putin want?
Does he want the whole country?
So we have to do some mind-reading on that and make some decisions.
But there's a ton of mind-reading going on.
You know what's interesting? I keep talking about CNN... Maybe a little bit is leaning towards the middle with their new management.
So a little less crazy as CNN. They're not all the way there.
They're definitely left-leaning still.
But I do think there's some movement.
And I'm going to keep reporting on it because I think it's important.
I think it's important. If CNN does this pivot, it's important.
Let me say it.
The most direct way.
If CNN can clean up the worst of their excesses, that's a big deal for the country.
Even though CNN has low viewership, if CNN starts saying things closer to true and MSNBC is still out here saying crazy shit, it's going to be a little harder for the crazy shit to take hold.
But if you're on the left and you look at CNN and they say it and then MSNBC says it, well, you're going to believe it.
That's two networks on your side that say the same thing.
But what if CNN starts saying something more, let's say, reasoned and balanced?
Would it make MSNBC look silly?
Or would all of the viewers go to MSNBC because MSNBC would be saying more of what they want to hear?
You know, they get the dopamine hit.
I don't know. But whatever it is, it's important.
Like, it's a big deal if CNN shifts.
And to that point, Jake Tapper interviewed John Bolton.
Now, to be fair, I think interviewing John Bolton, if you're CNN, usually they would expect to get an anti-Trump quote out of that, right?
You'd expect that Bolton would tell you something bad about Trump, and so it makes sense that CNN would have him on.
But I don't know if they knew what he was going to say.
But John Bolton said, basically, he said about January 6th, he goes, a coup takes a lot more work in planning.
I've organized coups.
This wasn't one.
Now, wasn't that awesome?
He's literally admitting he's organized coups in other countries.
I don't know which ones he's talking about.
And Jake asked him and he didn't answer directly.
But, or his answer didn't seem direct to me.
But if the person who literally, literally organizes coups looks at it and says, no, I do this for a living.
I organize coups for a living.
They're really hard. This wasn't one.
Do you think that made a dent?
If you were watching CNN and you saw the guy who organizes coups and, importantly, does not like Donald Trump, importantly, And he looks at us and goes, you know, you can say lots of things about Trump, and then he went on to say Trump was too disorganized and, you know, too bad of a manager to have organized something like a coup.
So, you know, he gets in his digs.
But what if you're a CNN viewer?
You've been fed nonstop, this is definitely an insurrection.
This is a coup. And then the person who is most qualified to judge a coup...
Was close enough to it so we could see everything that needs to be seen.
Doesn't like Trump one bit, and that's public knowledge.
And says, nah, this is not even close.
Does that make a dent?
Like, try to think if that happened with something that you believed.
Right? Say there was something that you believed, you know, whatever it is.
And you heard the person who was the most qualified and had nothing to gain from It doesn't look like he's got anything to gain by that opinion, right?
It's not an opinion...
Well, maybe he does, because it's sort of a Republican-y opinion.
He wants to get appointed to something, maybe.
Maybe he is. I'll take that back.
It might make a dent.
You never know. And if it does, then Jake Tapper and CNN gave you some really good context.
And I would applaud them for that.
That's good work.
When will the left realize that every time they say there's no evidence that the election was rigged, no evidence meaning no court-certified evidence that's large enough to make a difference?
If they keep saying that, how are they going to...
You know, also keep in their head the opinion that there's no evidence that Trump knew he lost, but they're sure it's true.
There's no evidence he knew he lost.
In fact, the evidence is the opposite.
But they believe it's true.
So, why is it that in one case you believe if there's no evidence of a thing, it's definitely not true, and in the other case there's no evidence of a thing, so it definitely is true?
So you've got to pick one.
If there's no evidence of a thing, it would be more...
I think if there's no evidence of a thing, it would be more accurate to say you don't know if it's true or false.
There's no evidence.
I don't know. You'd think that consistency would haunt them, but it's not being pointed out.
Wouldn't you like to see some journalist...
Say, you know, was the vote rigged?
And then, of course, the Democrat would say, no, there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
And then they ask this direct question.
The January 6th thing depends totally on Trump knowing he lost.
That's the central claim.
What would be the evidence that he knew he lost?
And you know what they'll say?
When he called Rafsenberger, he said, find me votes.
And then you say, okay...
But what would be the evidence that find means what you say it means instead of its normal definition of the word in the context of an audit, meaning that you audit to find things?
And then they would just change the subject or get mad.
Their entire argument is not just a different priority.
It's actually illogical.
And that's not terribly common.
I mean, you see it enough. But usually when there's...
Let's take, for example, abortion.
I think the difference in opinion of abortion is an honest difference.
What do you think? I think mostly, you know, there could be exceptions, but I think for the average person, their opinion on an abortion, no matter which way it goes, to me that feels like an honest opinion.
And also, it does not suffer from a logic problem for most people.
It's really just a feeling, a preference, you know, different priorities maybe, different source of assumptions, maybe the Bible, for example.
So that one, I call that an honest debate.
Would anybody agree with me?
Then no matter what you think of it, at least it's an honest debate.
Can I get a yes on that?
Okay. Yeah, that's an honest debate.
That's the kind we should be having.
And by the way, can you think of anything healthier for a civilization than to have a pitched, serious, serious argument over protecting everything that looks like a human life?
That's exactly what we should be having our biggest fights about.
We shouldn't be agreeing on that.
If you want a place to have disagreement in the most productive way, that's the place to put it.
It's insanely healthy that half the country, or whatever the percentage is, is fighting like animals to protect what they think is a human life.
Now, Others have different opinions of what's the human life, etc.
But I can't think of anything healthier than this.
This is a really, really healthy and honest debate.
It's healthy and it's honest.
But this January 6th stuff is none of that.
It's not healthy and it's not honest.
It's not even logical. And the fact that they would present us with this is offensive, frankly.
It's offensive that we're being asked to accept something that's just not an honest debate at all.
Now there's some news that Trump tried to call a witness for the January 6th hearings.
I didn't really see the story.
I was looking for it, but it dropped down to the headlines.
Who did he call? And he didn't get a hold of him, right?
And then I saw Liz Cheney talking about it like it was the worst thing in the world, and that he was trying to...
Bias the witness or something.
And here's my question.
I'm no legal expert, but can you prevent a human American from having a conversation with another one under this situation?
Is it illegal to contact somebody and just communicate?
So somebody says yes?
Now, would it matter why you communicate it?
Suppose you said, happy birthday.
Would that be illegal?
Now, whether or not that is illegal or not, I'm going to make a point after another point.
So, my question is, is it illegal for any American to have a communication and contact another American to Under this situation.
Under this situation that there's some hearings and one of them is witnessed and one of them is accused.
I don't want to live in a country where you can't talk to anybody you want.
So I have a problem with this if it's a law, but I don't know if it's a law.
Liz Cheney seems to think he needs to be referred, and it's bad.
But a related story is there was a list of Republicans who met with Trump to talk about what were the options for delaying the certification and getting an audit.
And the way it's being presented is that the people who attended that meeting are demonized for attending the meeting.
So in other words, if you started the narrative that the entire operation was, you know, vile and terrible, then anybody who had a meeting with somebody who was in a vile and terrible situation gets stained by that vile and terrible situation.
So the idea is that we should, you know, heap scorn and whatever on the people who had a meeting with Trump about the most important question of the time, which is, is there a path to To delay the certification and find out if the vote was real.
Now, why are these people being castigated or penalized for simply going to a meeting to discuss if something is legal and appropriate and good for the country?
Why is that?
Why are we giving them a hard time?
And specifically, So Trump is not allowed to talk to somebody under the specific situation that that person might be a witness because he might influence a witness.
But also, it's bad to have a meeting with Trump because then all the people at a meeting with him are, you know, they acquire all the bad reputation or whatever from Trump who is accused of something based entirely upon reading his mind.
Now, when I see these two stories...
And I think of all the people who get in trouble for taking a photograph next to somebody bad.
Didn't Elon Musk just say...
It was somebody...
Who was it?
Epstein's girlfriend there.
What's her name? What's her name?
Giselle? Ghislaine?
Ghislaine? So he had a picture with somebody who then went to jail for grooming or whatever the hell she went to jail for.
And... And he just said, I'm taking pictures with lots of people.
And I feel like I have to periodically assert this, which I did by a tweet today.
So here's why I tweeted.
I said, tell me who you think is the worst person in the world, and I'll take a selfie with that person.
Smiling. Why?
Because fuck you.
That's why. Tell me who's the worst person you hate that is vile and should be in jail.
I'll take a selfie with that person because fuck you.
Because you're not going to limit who I can talk to or who I can stand next to.
I will take a fucking picture with anybody I want.
I will shake hands with anybody I want.
I will meet with any fucking person I want.
I will tweet to any fucking person I want.
I will follow on social media any fucking person I want for any fucking reason.
And if you think that's a problem, fuck you.
Because I still live in a free enough country that I assert my freedom to associate.
That includes communicating with any fucking person I want for any reason.
Fuck you. That's the whole conversation, is fuck you.
Because as soon as you say, but, but, but, but, no, fuck you.
But that person, no, fuck you.
There's no other conversation.
You can't be with that person.
No, fuck you. Fuck you.
Did you know? Here's a good Twitter account to follow if you...
If you're leaning right, I think would be the way to say that.
Look for an account called Dr.
Interracial. Just search for Dr.
Dr. Interracial.
I believe it's an interracial couple who do some tweeting together.
And he points out that three years ago today, Kamala Harris explicitly agreed with the claim that Trump didn't really win in 2016 and that he was an illegitimate president.
Three years ago today.
While the January 6th hearings are underway, three years ago today, Kamala Harris was committing this crime of creating an insurrection or trying to stir up an insurrection by calling the current president illegitimate, claiming that it was rigged.
217 people were arrested on Trump's inauguration day.
Did you know that? There was so much rioting on Trump's inauguration day and claims that he was an illegitimate president that 270 people got arrested on his inauguration day.
Well, that feels like a violent insurrection to me.
And it's just shocking that the mainstream news would just sort of ignore that this happened.
No, that didn't happen. Now, I tweeted today that somebody's going to make a billion dollars, By creating the news context site, where every news item will then be linked to the proper context.
So wouldn't you like to know, when Trump is being blamed of questioning the election, wouldn't you like to know that the people who are accusing him did the precise same thing?
Not approximately.
So here's the thing. It's not like an analogy.
It's not approximate. It's the same thing.
It's the same.
It's exactly the same.
And the left can only keep their bullshit illusion of the insurrection alive by completely ignoring that it ever happened and hoping that the public doesn't remember.
I didn't remember. Did any of you remember?
How many of you remember that Trump's inauguration was, you know, Pretty, yeah, some of you do.
I didn't remember. J6 on the roof, yeah.
Here's another good account to follow, Barry Ritholtz.
So just search for him on Twitter.
And Barry and I have had, let's say, a number of disagreements.
Publicly on Twitter about a variety of things.
But he's a high-value account, meaning that his tweets are always good context and stuff.
So even if you don't feel like you agree with him all the time, here would be somebody to follow that I can certify as a reasonable, open-minded, high-value account.
It just doesn't lean in your direction, so just be warned.
But here's something that Barry tells us, and he's tweeting some data.
Apparently commodity prices fell pretty fast, and that would be a good indication that we're past the worst of the inflation.
Now inflation went up a little because energy prices are still high.
But it's starting to look as though, and here's a weird one, wheat prices went down.
Did you see that coming?
And Forbes has an article that says, maybe this Ukraine wheat thing isn't such a big deal after all.
But it could be that there's a lag before the wheat thing becomes a problem, so we'll wait.
But there are indications that if we could get the energy costs under control, which weirdly are the easiest thing to control.
Am I wrong about that?
Well, maybe you could say it's the hardest, but I would argue it might be the easiest.
Are we down to...
If we could make a big dent in energy costs, we'd be in good shape, because the other commodities seem to be falling.
I mean, that's not the complete picture, but it would help.
Isn't energy the one thing you can sort of pull the lever if you want to?
But we don't want to, right, because climate change, blah, blah.
So it feels like we now have control of the problem, which is the first step.
So the first step is, you know, you've got a problem, What do you do?
What do you do? What do you do? And the first step is to get control of it.
I feel like we just got control of it.
Now, what we do with it is a separate question, and we could easily fuck it up.
But I feel like we have control of inflation in the singular sense that energy is such a big component, and we could drill more, or we could stop some regulation.
It would immediately make a difference.
Expectations drive prices because of expectations.
So, inflation might not be the worst thing in the world.
Max Boot had an interesting article which I recommend.
It sounds funny coming out of my mouth.
Because he's one of the people on the left that is, let's say, so in the bag for Democrats that a lot of what he says strikes us funny.
Because it's just so obviously propaganda.
But he's got an article here.
And again, if you take out the propaganda part and just take the information part, it's really useful.
So apparently Ukraine has nine of what are...
These HIMARS systems, H-I-M-A-R-S, and I guess they fire rockets accurately over long distances.
And so these are what is being used to knock out the Russian ammo depots.
But there are only nine of them.
So those nine are actually making a big dent, because the news shows depot after depot blowing up.
And if the ammo gets wiped out sufficiently, because Russia doesn't have a good logistics and supply chain, so it's a little easier to knock out their supply chain than it would, say, an American supply chain, because it's more sophisticated.
But theirs is pretty simple.
It's got to run on a train, so their ammo has to go on a train, and it has to be unloaded by hand, And then it's stored in a big place near the train tracks.
Because you don't want to move it too far, right?
It's hard to move. Until the local units need it and then trucks take it to them.
So we only have nine of those, and already the news is reporting that...
I wouldn't say it's changed the direction of the war, but it's a little closer to a stalemate than it was before.
A little closer. And there is some thinking by people who know how to do this stuff that if we gave them a 60 instead of 9, they would literally win the war outright.
Now, I don't believe that at all.
But it's an interesting thought.
It's an interesting thought.
Yeah, let me not pretend to have any military.
I don't think it's as simple as we need more of these, no matter how awesome and accurate they are, because you would assume that Russia would change their tactics, right?
They would adjust.
That's the part that's always missing.
If Russia didn't change its tactics, there is a theoretical number of these missiles that would destroy all of their ammo, right?
Now, that's true, right?
If Russia just kept doing the same thing they're doing, bring it in by train, unload it by hand, so everybody can see where it's going, because that can't be fast, right?
We've got eyes above all their trains.
I'm sure we can see everything. And we'd know exactly where their depot is, and then it blows up.
Don't you agree with the simple analysis That if you had more of these and people were trained to use them, and training and getting them there is a big deal.
Like, it's not easy. So let me back up.
It would be really, really hard to get 60 of these over there.
That's no easy thing.
But we've done hard things before.
Like, America does know how to do a hard thing, especially the military.
If you said to the military, this is really hard, we don't know how to do it, but you've got to do it, they might figure out how to do it.
But don't you think that Russia would just have to go to tactical nukes or threaten tactical nukes or use more hypersonic missiles to scare the shit out of us or open up another front somewhere or attack again from the north?
They would just change their tactics, wouldn't they?
Am I wrong? But then I guess, let me debate myself by backing up.
Suppose they changed their tactics, and then Ukraine, instead of having 60 of these, got 200 of them.
Probably this is all impossible.
I don't think we could deliver 200.
But is there a theoretical number of these things that literally just stops Russia and that's it?
Because there almost might be.
You know, if I had to bet, I would bet against it.
In other words, I would bet that if they had 60 of these, it wouldn't stop the war, and they wouldn't win the war.
Does anybody think they would?
But there might be a theoretical number that would do just that.
What if you had 200 of them?
What if you had 1,000?
I don't know. I mean, these are all impossible numbers.
We couldn't make them and deliver them.
But you do wonder if there's a path out.
And we're pretty good at figuring out paths out.
Maybe this is one?
I don't know. I would bet against it.
But it's worth a thought.
All right. And today, uncharacteristically, we have flown through the prepared material.
And now I'm looking for you to...
Oh yeah, 7-Eleven is closing stores in LA because of so many robberies.
Starbucks is closing stores too.
Same reason, right? So retail doesn't really work anymore, does it?
Here's what I think doesn't work.
Cities. In my opinion, cities need to be abandoned or transformed into some other thing.
I think cities need to be largely abandoned.
Because... We now have much better ways to live.
There was a time when living in a city made sense, because you needed to be in one place to get stuff done.
It made a lot of sense.
But I don't think it makes sense anymore.
And I think that cities have such legacy baggage that you couldn't really turn them into green cities.
You couldn't, like, just remodel them.
It would just be so expensive.
But if you go out in a field, I say this all the time, here's the house of the future.
Let me describe some specs of the house of the future.
You know there's this little EDU thing where a number of companies now, startups mostly, are doing these little homes that you can deliver on a truck.
And there's one boxable that actually unfolds into a tiny home.
Now, those are not the solution.
Here's what I think is going to be the solution.
A home you can build yourself with nothing but a hammer and a pickup truck.
Maybe one other person to hold things.
But that's where it's got to go.
And do you think it's doable?
Here's the specification.
There should be no cutting, no nailing, And no liquid anything.
In other words, no concrete, because you have to add a liquid to it.
No caulk, because it's wet, it has to dry.
No paint, because it has to dry.
Could you build a house, could you design a house where there's no cutting?
Now, they'd have to be the same, right?
So they'd have to be built so they're just X number of models.
Do you think you could design a house like that, that somebody with a pickup truck could go to Home Depot and say, all right, it's your first day.
So you're going to start with, what do you call them, the pillars that hold up your house?
What's that called? What's the name for that?
The, like, If you didn't have a...
Not a footing.
Pylons, yeah. So the first thing is pylons.
Now, what would be the hardest thing about pylons?
Getting them the same height, right?
That would be the hardest part.
So suppose the pylons were self-adjusting.
You know, you could just crank them, and you could move them up a little bit, you know, maybe just a few inches, right?
So you get them, you dig a hole, put in your pylons, you adjust them.
Then you go back to the Home Depot and say, what's next?
And they say, floor.
And you just get a bunch of square parts that you snap together, and those become your floors.
So I don't think it should be beams and wood and stuff.
It should be a component you can put on your pickup truck.
So everything's about the size of a pickup truck bed.
So when you want to do the walls, the walls are blocks that are exactly the right square that when you put them on, they end perfectly at the edge of the wall.
And then there's your house.
Now, do you believe that you could not design a house that I described?
Here are the specifications again.
No nailing, no sawing or cutting.
Everything's got to be the size when it arrives.
No wet stuff.
Caulk, paint, concrete, floor levels.
Could you do it? What do you think?
I see a no.
No? It wouldn't be like a regular house.
The plumbing, you wouldn't be able to get away...
Is there anything wet with the plumbing?
I think if you made the plumbing the standard, it wouldn't be hard, but you probably still need a plumber to check it before you go live, right?
How hard would it be to do plumbing if every house were designed the same and you never had to change the size of a pipe?
All the pipes are just the right size.
All you do is say, oh, this one is labeled 23, and this one is 22.
I'll just screw 23 onto 22.
Boom. But you wouldn't want to live there.
Yeah, PEX, exactly.
PEX is a sort of a bendable technology where you don't need...
It's much easier to plumb your house with PEX. P-E-X. True.
No one wants houses all the same.
Let me address that. Would your houses have to be all the same?
The answer is no.
There wouldn't be one model for everybody.
There would be one best model for each application.
So what I mean by application, I mean you'd have a different design for different climates.
You'd have a different design for the number of people living there.
You know, a single-person thing would be totally different than multiple people.
You would have maybe a deluxe model for people who could afford it, and a more basic model.
But each of these would have the same quality that it's a kit.
And HVAC, I think you could make the components small enough that you could put them on a pickup truck and just combine them.
Jerome thinks that I've invested in one of these startups, and I'm pumping it.
What do you think? Does anybody think that I've secretly invested in one of these startups and I'm pumping it now?
You don't think I would tell you the name of the company if I had?
No. No.
If I were trying to promote a specific company, I'm pretty sure I would have mentioned it.
Of course I would have. In fact, I'm thinking of investing, but I would rather invest if there was a way to have a fund or something, like an index fund.
I don't want to pick a winner, because I don't think I could just put money in Boxable or something like that and pick a winner.
I'm at the age where picking an individual winner is bad investing.
I'm all about the diversification.
Now, everybody who says...
Let me go further.
So I said there'd be no paint.
But that doesn't mean they're all the same color or even the same design.
Because you can imagine whatever is on the walls would be your choice of, let's say, color.
So if you want blue walls, you go to Home Depot and say, give me the blue squares.
And you just put them up. And then when you're tired of your blue wall, you take them down and just put up another wall.
So you could have infinite variety.
But in each case, the home would be designed for the best livability within that application.
You know, a two-person home, three-person home, three-person with a garage, three-person with a home office.
So you get that? Like, one of the applications would be home office.
Another one would be two home offices.
Another would be a business like hair stylist or something like that within it.
So all of them would be a kit.
And then here's the other important part.
You would not be limited to the first box, you know, whatever the first home you build is.
You could buy additional rooms and they would have a technology to connect them seamlessly, right?
Some kind of hallway connector or something.
So if you had enough land, you start with your basic house for one person, you get married, you add another room, you have a kid, you add a bedroom, but they're all kits.
And you're just building until you've got what you want.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think all of you who are saying it would remove, you know, sort of the creativity and stuff, you're on totally the wrong page on this.
Most people just need affordability.
Take a look at the cars on the highway.
Just go out and take a look at the cars.
Then ask yourself how many of those cars look awesome and you'd like to own them.
Almost none, right?
Am I right? If you went in the street...
Let's say you already have a car you like.
You say, all right, all these cars, all this traffic, how many of those are so awesome I've got to have one of those cars?
And you would say hardly any.
5%, maybe. But do you think that the car industry is completely broken because all the cars are boring?
Because you're saying that about these homes.
You're saying, oh, I don't want these communist homes all alike.
Look at your fucking car.
I'll bet you bought a Pontiac white.
So different than somebody who had a Ford Taurus white.
Completely different. You're showing your creativity there.
The fact is that people who can buy a different product, more expensive, more unique, they still will.
There's nothing in what I said that would prevent somebody with money and time from having anything they want.
I'm just saying that people who don't have money and don't have time, they need an option too.
A little white generic car.
A pre-built, perfectly designed, Little house.
So stop acting like your preferences have anything to do with the market.
Your preferences are irrelevant if there are other people and plenty of them that will buy that product.
Floating homes with balloons.
Apparently there's going to be a floating hotel or restaurant.
There's one design, I don't know if it'll happen, there's one design for a What would you call it?
Hydrogen? Is it hydrogen still?
Like a giant Hindenburg?
What could go wrong?
The giant Hindenburg kind of thing that will be so large, just enormously large, that it would have like a hotel in it.
Would you stay at a hotel that was floating in the air?
Helium. Is it helium?
I don't know. It feels like the ultimate terrorist target, doesn't it?
Because you just pop that thing and you get the whole hotel.
I don't know. I'd be a little worried about it.
I suppose it'd be hard for anybody to reach it from the ground, though, unless you're really dedicated.
It's totally BS, somebody says.
I think that's most likely true.
It's probably unlikely in the short term.
In the long term, though, I think it's guaranteed.
In the long term, I would say floating facilities that are just permanently floating, probably more like guaranteed.
Because one thing you could do is make sure that all of the helium is in compartmentalized things.
It's not one big balloon.
It's really a thousand little balloons captured in a larger balloon, right?
So then if a missile goes through it, it gets the ones it gets, but the rest of them, you know, can keep it up a little bit.
Something like that. Your papa flew airships in World War II? Wow.
Drone attacks? Yeah, drones can still get them, but they might not take it all down.
How do you and others know exactly what Russia believes would be a win for Russia?
Well, I don't think I'm the person to question about that.
So I was asked on the locals' platform, how do we know what Putin, you know, would consider a win?
And that's my point of view.
My point of view is we don't know.
What am I smoking today?
That's actually a good question.
What am I smoking today? Let me give you a little cautionary tale.
So the answer is nothing yet.
So at the moment, I'm not under any influence.
But I did discover, and I've had this same discovery now maybe five times in my life, and I'm having trouble learning the lesson.
Have you ever noticed it's really hard to know why you feel something?
Let me give you an analogy, and then I'll back into it.
Have you ever had any situation where you're hungry, and you're really mad and irrational, and as soon as you eat, you're better?
Right? Or you have a good night's sleep, and suddenly you're okay when you wake up.
So you've all had that. But isn't it weird that the illusion is that it's not because you're tired?
And the illusion is it's not because you're hungry.
The illusion is you're just mad at the thing, right?
And no matter how many times you get hungry and mad, or no matter how many times you're sleepy and tired and mad, you still don't connect the dots.
Do you have that problem? It's not just me, right?
Like, no matter how many times it happens to you, other people can see it, right?
Like, if I see somebody who didn't sleep last night, and I know they didn't get any sleep, and they're also, like, cranky, well, I can see it.
To me, it's obvious. Oh, I didn't get enough sleep.
You're cranky. But they can't see it.
Because when you're in it, you're sure it's what the person said.
It's because the person is late.
They broke the promise.
You're all mad about that.
So here's the... Back to the weed question.
About five times I've been enjoying...
Sativa, which is the one that keeps you awake, keeps you energized.
And I would notice that my, let's say, anger or tension, I don't know, I'm not sure what words to put on it, but were through the roof.
Like I'd be cursing at things that didn't deserve it and kicking things that didn't need to get kicked.
Not people or dogs, but things.
And it takes me the longest time to connect the dots.
And yesterday I connected the dots.
Because sometimes there's some things in your life...
Yeah, prednisone is the same problem.
Sometimes there's things in your life that, you know, elevate your energy.
And then I do the sativa on top of that, and I'm elevating a negative energy, right?
So I was generating a whole bunch of negative energy just...
You know, because of some things, temporary things, nothing to worry about.
And because I generated an internal, you know, organic anger, and then on top of it, I put on something that increased my energy.
Do not increase your energy when you're angry.
Don't do it. It just makes you angrier.
So yesterday, I thought to myself, it's like, duh.
Five times in a row, when I switched from the sativa to the indica, I was immediately better.
Immediately changed everything.
And so yesterday, last night, I said, huh, could this be the fifth time in a row or sixth time in a row that I'm discovering the same frickin' thing?
Yes. Immediately changed to indica.
Took the edge off of my natural, you know, my organic...
You know, disturbance and put me in a perfect place.
So here's the pro tip.
If you're anxious and you've got anxiety and you're angry about something, don't do sativa because that will add energy to a negative thing.
If you want to get rid of a negative thing, all that feelings, take the one that decreases the energy, and it decreases all of your energy, including your anger.
It just takes everything down a notch.
If you reverse those, and you're in a sleepy mood and you do indica, you're just dead for the day.
All right? But if you do them in the right order, they're just lifesavers.
So one of the reasons that I never recommend marijuana to anyone else is that I'm not a doctor.
And number two, well, that's the end of the statement, but I'll add something anyway.
You see the complexity of this?
The experience that I have would not be like yours at all, because I'm a pretty much adult lifetime doctor.
Chronic user. The experience that I have would not at all be like yours if you just started.
Not at all. I wouldn't even have anything to, I don't know, probably couldn't even give you any advice or anything.
So how long you've been doing it, how it affects you personally, whether it's indica, whether it's sativa, whether you're doing them in the right head frame, etc., those are all complications which mean that you could smoke marijuana and ruin your life or save your life.
It does both. Now, there are a lot of things that do that, right?
It's not the only thing that does that.
A gun can save your life, and it can get you killed.
Marijuana is like that.
So the last thing that you want to do is be a non-doctor and recommend it.
I absolutely do not recommend it.
I'm just telling you my experience.
But the thing you should get out of it is that my experience is really unique.
And I've really thought it through.
And I still can't navigate it.
I mean, this example. I'm as experienced as you can get in this topic, and I did it wrong.
For like days. Several days in a row, I did it wrong.
Somebody's asking about edibles.
Let me give you a pro tip.
Don't do edibles. Here's why.
Every case I've ever heard of, of somebody having a bad experience with marijuana was edibles.
It's always the same thing.
I ate the brownie, and I didn't feel anything, and half an hour went by, so I guess I'd better have four more brownies.
And you're done.
Because people don't realize that smoke hits you almost instantly, and food could take an hour to settle in.
So you're going to be so high with that fourth brownie.
Because I don't think anybody bakes brownies where you need four.
They bake brownies so you kind of need one, right?
One's going to get it done.
But it's not a good head high.
It's not anything. I would say I've never seen any useful...
Practical reason for an edible, unless you're hooked on marijuana, it's a long flight, and you don't want to get caught smuggling anything, I suppose.
All right. Start with a quarter of a brownie.
No, that doesn't work either.
That doesn't work either.
You know, no matter what you do with edibles, it doesn't work.
Now, I'm sure you're going to hear from somebody who says, oh, edibles are awesome, I like them.
I just don't hear anything but bad news about them.
Nothing but bad news.
Oh, there's a story about a Kentucky woman who OD'd on fentanyl because she picked up a dollar bill on the street, and there was some on it, and just touching it killed her.
And I was asked, do I believe that story is real?
No. No. No, I do not believe that story is real.
Could be. By the way, it's reelable.
I just made up a word.
It's reelable. Meaning that it could be.
I mean, there's nothing that eliminates it, you know, in terms of science or anything like that.
But it seems it's like too on the nose, right?
Yeah, it's plausible. Okay, sure, they already had a word for it.
I didn't have to invent a word.
Reelable. It's plausible.
Damn you. Damn your eyes.
There was a word for that.
Plumbing is easy, somebody says.
Okay. No more smoking of anything.
Yeah, I wouldn't...
Oh, vaping? Ugh. Vaping is just nasty.
Here's the analogy. Have you ever done like an energy drink, like a monster energy drink?
You feel like you're getting something a little too kerosene-y in chemicals.
You know you're not having a natural product, right?
And then compare that to a really good cup of coffee.
A similar kind of energy increase.
But doesn't the coffee feel like it's organic?
Because it is, mostly.
So vapes are like that.
When I vape, I just feel the chemicals.
And it doesn't feel...
It just feels like I'm, I don't know, poisoning myself or something.
And it doesn't give you a good high, so it doesn't do anything for you.
But it could relax you, you know, if you like sex, it's good for that, if you don't have anything else going on.
But... Now, you might detect that there's a gigantic hole in my reasoning.
I'm surprised nobody said it yet.
I smoke. I mean, I smoke the weed.
I don't smoke tobacco. But are you going to say to yourself, that can't be any worse than putting smoke in your lungs?
And you would think so, right?
You would think so.
But as far as I know, the people who are chronic marijuana smokers have exactly the same life expectancy of people who don't do it at all.
So, I don't know. If that's ruining my lungs, I don't think it's affecting my life expectancy.
I usually use a Bahagya.
60 years in solid lungs.
Except that I do that all the time.
All right, that's all for now.
And gummies for chemo relief.
That probably is a good application.
Doctors say smoky weed is bad for your lungs.
They do say that. Yeah, so here's another reason why I don't recommend marijuana.
Doctors say it's bad for your lungs.
Studies say it isn't.
Doctors say it is.
Who's right? In this case, I'm not sure I would trust the studies, but I also don't trust the doctor.
