Episode 1822 Scott Adams: Most Of The News Today Is Fake And Kind Of Funny
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Andrew Yang's new political party
Harvard study of J6 "rioters" motivation
Newsweek FAKE NEWS on Fentanyl under Trump
Dean Obeidallah FAKE NEWS on Vet Health Bill
Doc Anarchy on unintentional opioid overdoses
Abraham Hamadeh vs terrorist cartels
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Well, once again, let me inform you, I do not have monkeypox.
But if you want to know what a bad luck looks like, bad luck looks like injuring your lip during a monkeypox.
I know, it looks like I put my lip in the wrong place, doesn't it?
But no, no, just a burn.
Alright, you seem like you're in Texas, somebody says.
Huh. Good morning, everybody.
How would you like to enjoy today's show more than any show you've ever enjoyed?
I know! Pretty good stuff.
It's coming. And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a canteen jug or glass.
What? Hold on.
Canteen jug or flask.
I'm going to get this right.
I'm trying to remember my own stuff.
And all you need...
All you need is a cup or a margarita glass, a canteen jug or a flask, a tank or chalice or stein, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine the other day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go! I apologize for my dainty cup.
This is no way to drink coffee.
No, coffee does not go in a dainty cup unless you're visiting the Queen.
And even then, you should be drinking tea.
So there's no right time for a little teacup.
Well, I have a question about the Democrat strategy.
I feel as if the strategy is not to remove Biden from office for incompetence, but rather to make him slowly disappear.
I feel like that's the strategy.
For example, first he got COVID, and then he had to quarantine, so that was good.
But then he got out.
And then they said, we're going to have to give him COVID again.
So he gets COVID back to back.
But what I'm expecting is somewhere around the end of this next quarantine period, I think we're going to hear that he has something called serial COVID. Serial COVID. It just keeps coming back.
And he's probably got a comorbidity of TDS. So if you add the comorbidity of TDS to the serial repeating COVID, well, Joe Biden is just going to have to hide in his basement forever.
Now, I'm not sure about this next part, but does it seem to you he's getting thinner?
Has anybody noticed he seems to be getting thinner?
He was always quite fit.
He seems to be thinner. I think they're feeding him less.
Yeah, I think they're slowly trying to make him disappear.
Like they'll feed him a little less and he'll just get a little smaller.
And one day you'll see a video of him in his basement.
He'll be like 85 pounds.
And, you know, it's not until you get down to like 65 pounds that you can, you know, say he's actually gone.
But I think the cat is on the roof.
They're slowly trying to disappear him.
First, his public persona, and then they'll shrink him with lack of food until he's a little ball about this big, and they'll just keep him alive with tubes and stuff.
I feel like that's the strategy.
I don't know. I'm just guessing.
Well, what do you think would happen in a hypothetical matchup for president between Biden and Trump if it were to happen today?
What do you think Rasmussen poll showed?
Let's see if you're smart. Who do you think would win As of today.
Well, according to Rasmussen, if the election were held today, 40% of likely voters would vote for Biden, and 46% would vote for Trump.
But another 10% would choose some other candidate, if it were just those two and somebody else.
10% for another candidate.
So what do you think of Yang's new political party?
Who is he going to take votes away from?
Yeah, I think I heard somebody say he would take votes away from Republicans, but it was the Republicans who were going to vote for a Democrat anyway.
I don't know. Maybe. Yang will yank votes.
Yeah, it's hard to see how it's helpful, but maybe.
You know, if Yang can control 10% of the vote, he's a kingmaker, right?
So it's not a bad strategy.
You've got all these sort of in-between confused people.
What if? Let's just do a what if.
What if Yang's real play is to only try to control the sensible people?
Because there aren't that many of them.
I'd say about 10%, maybe.
If 10% of the country identify with a political party, but they're willing to listen to a better argument, it's about 10%.
He could control the whole country like Joe Manchin.
So everybody who says this Yang thing is just a sideshow and no importance, it's not a sideshow.
It's an insurrection.
Legally. But it's an insurrection in concept.
In the sense that if he succeeds, he will be effectively the president.
Just by having a third party that actually makes sense.
And here's something that I think Andrew Yang could do that so far nobody else was able to do.
Be reasonable.
Nobody tried that yet.
Nobody really tried being reasonable yet.
There have been third party attempts, but they always seem, you know, sort of ideologically driven.
So what would happen if you had a third party where the only thing they're trying to do is figure out what makes sense?
You know, follow the science.
How about this?
What if you had to follow the science party?
You know, I guess the Democrats think they are that, but evidence suggests maybe not so much.
I don't know. So I think if you ignore this Yang situation, you do it at your peril.
Because if he gets just 10% of people on board and it's the reasonable people who could switch sides in a situation, that's real power.
That's real power.
Define science, yeah.
Good question. Well, how would you like a story about how I'm so right?
That's your favorite story, isn't it?
No, your favorite story is when I'm wrong.
And I admit it. I know.
I know. I know how you are.
You'd rather me be wrong.
But I'm sorry. I'm as right as right can be.
Because it turns out that there's a new Harvard University study.
And they tried to look into the motivations of the Capitol rioters.
Now, they used an interesting term here, rioters.
So I don't know if that excludes people that they thought were just protesting.
So I have a little question about how they define that.
But they found out that only 8% of the people who they called rioters believed they were there for an insurrection, and 92% of them believed they were there to save the democracy.
Save the Republic.
Now, is there anybody you know who said, hey, I think that J-6 committee is making us think past the sale?
The sale is what did the people who were at the event believe?
Because they started with, they want an insurrection, and then let's look at all the facts.
No, you don't start with, they want an insurrection.
You have to demonstrate that.
And when anybody did, well, I guess this is probably the first one.
I don't think there's been another.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But I don't think there's been another study, and certainly not from Harvard University, which at least the left would be inclined to believe, that says that basically 92% of their people believed Trump.
That there was some sketchiness to the election and that they were there to fix the sketchiness.
They were not there to overthrow the government.
They were there to fix it.
Now, what does the January 6th committee and all of the mainstream news do with the fact that the very foundation, the most important part of their narrative, has collapsed and it was destroyed by their own side?
If you call anything coming out of Harvard left-leaning, I think you could make that assumption.
Now, even the person involved in the study said he was quite surprised.
He was surprised.
And the results were that, quote, many believed they were defending democracy from, quote, imminent existential danger, unquote, unquote.
Right? How does the news handle this?
The only way the mainstream news can handle this new information is by completely disappearing it.
It will be disappeared right in front of you.
Do you think there's any way that if Harvard University did a study and it came out showing that 92% of the attendees wanted a literal insurrection to install a dictator?
Suppose it had gone that way.
Do you think the news would cover it?
I think so. Yeah, I think they might.
I think they might cover it if the people said they were there for an insurrection.
But what if the people say that they were not there for an insurrection, they were there to fix the Republic, exactly what it looked like?
To me, I mean, that's exactly what it looked like to me.
Is there anybody who even doubted that, who's watching this?
Is there anybody here who didn't have the same impression that they were there For good intentions, even if they had bad information.
We don't know if they had bad information, but if they did.
So, this is fascinating.
The degree to which the fake news no longer needs to pretend is sort of stunning, isn't it?
Are you surprised that the fake news doesn't need to pretend anymore?
They're really not trying to hide this.
This is not hidden at all.
Well, it's hidden in the sense that you'd have to go to Breitbart in this case.
So I found out about the Harvard study by looking at Joel Pollack's article in Breitbart.
And Jonathan Turley's been on this point as well.
Now, let me ask you this.
Who in the country of, let's say, a political public figure What political public figure has been telling you, and I haven't heard one other person say it, of political, you know, let's say public figures.
What other public figure told you that they were thinking past the sale and that the most important question is this, what were they thinking when they did it?
It was only me, right?
I'm not wrong, am I? I believe it was only me.
In the whole fucking world, I think it was only me.
That's why you watch me.
Alright, and then I've got a second question about the 8% who did think they were there for an insurrection.
Do you think that if you really drilled down with the 8% that you would find out that they really wanted an insurrection?
Maybe. I know some of you are saying the 8% are feds.
That's funny. There might be some feds in that.
Who knows? I doubt that's who got interviewed for the poll.
But what do you think they wanted?
Do you think that if you asked them, they would have said, well, our end goal is to destroy the country?
Some might. They might be anarchists.
Do you think they would have said their end goal is to install Trump as an actual dictator?
I doubt it. I doubt it because he wouldn't want the job.
I mean, I've seen no indication that he would want to be the dictator.
I mean, in the sense that it's impractical.
If it were practical, maybe that's another conversation.
But given that it's so obviously impractical, who did they think was going to be the dictator?
Or were they going to overthrow it for some other form of democracy?
See, if you drill down on the insurrectionists, I think you would find out that they're either literally crazy or what they wanted was a little bit closer to fixing the republic after all.
It's just they had a different view of what that looks like.
I feel like the insurrectionists were probably closer to the regular people than we think.
They just like to use more hyperbole and maybe they're in militias and they just talk that way.
And the other thing that I've been saying forever that the Democrats don't seem to recognize is that there's a way that Republicans talk about overthrowing their government that is, first of all, very healthy because Republicans are always on the verge of, don't push us, don't push us.
That's a healthy tension.
But it's never that serious, in my opinion.
They're not really that serious about overthrowing the government.
They're just making it clear that there's a line.
Don't cross that line.
Alright, here's my next fake news story from Newsweek.
I'm not sure if this is...
Yeah, I'll call it fake news.
It's in the category of fake news.
So here's the title of the story.
Tell me what you think the story would be about if you saw this headline in Newsweek.
Fentanyl surge started and peaked under Trump, despite the GOP blaming Biden.
Wow, the fentanyl surge started and peaked.
It was the highest under Trump.
Wow! So what do you think that story says?
Do you think the story says, if you're coming in late, it's a burn?
I burned myself on twice-heated soup and a piece of spinach that wouldn't leave my lip.
It was quite painful.
But no, it's not monkeypox or anything else.
Sorry for that diversion.
So the Newsweek story about fentanyl surge under Trump, when you dig down into the story, it says that Trump seized more fentanyl coming across the border than Biden did.
Just let that sink in.
Just let that sink in.
This is Newsweek.
It's Newsweek. They are a discredited organization, I give you that.
But not everybody knows it.
If you're 75 and you grew up reading Newsweek and you see a Newsweek headline, do you think that Newsweek is a discredited news organization?
Maybe you don't know that.
I mean, those of us who are a little more sophisticated in our knowledge, we know that.
But not everybody knows that.
So I think that when they see a fentanyl surge, they're going to think it's a surge in overdose deaths, don't you?
But in fact, the overdose death rate is the highest under Biden.
So not only did Trump do a stronger job of seizing fentanyl at the border, according to Newsweek, But there were also more overdose deaths under Biden.
Both of the facts in the story are pro-Trump.
And they made them look like they were negative.
And this is right in front of you.
Because the title simply just doesn't match the content.
And they'll do this over and over again.
Title doesn't match the content.
Title doesn't match the content.
Alright, here's another fake news out of CNN. So, I love learning who the opinion hit people are.
So, there's this guy, Dean Obadila.
I might be pronouncing it wrong, not intentionally, who does opinion pieces for CNN. He's often a Trump attack dog.
He'll just attack Trump for anything, and Republicans.
And CNN and all of the fake news had a little trouble yesterday.
Because their fake news was that the GOP doesn't like veterans and vetoed or didn't vote for a bill to protect them and their health from the so-called burn pits danger.
And of course, because Jon Stewart was saying that the GOP voted against something that they had recently voted for, it looked like it was all political and they were painting the GOP as a bunch of political bastards who didn't really care about veterans.
What do you think the real story was?
The real story, of course, was that the Democrats put a whole bunch of pork, like 400 billion or some gigantic number, I don't know what it was, some big number, of pork in the bill, and the Republicans said, I don't care how good the bill is, you can't do that.
Yeah, it was a poison pill.
So do you think that Dean Obadiah Who is their, I would say he's among their lowest level attack dogs.
And by lowest level, I mean, I feel like he gets the assignment that you can't win unless you just lie.
Like you can't make your case.
Unless you're willing to stretch or lie or omit, you know, leave out context.
It's the only way you can get it done.
So apparently there are some people who do opinion pieces for CNN who are consistently willing to, let's say, Test the outer boundaries of fake news.
But Dean completely leaves out the context that's the only context that matters, which is the Republicans didn't like all the pork in the bill.
Do me a fact check.
I'm right about that, right? Am I correct?
The only thing the Republicans didn't like...
It was the extra stuff that got added on as a dirty trick, basically.
So, if you don't mention that, you have so little respect for your readers.
So little respect.
And in fact, Dean Obadiah characterized the GOP's action as, quote, the GOP is trying to score political points by delaying this vital piece of legislation.
Is that what they're doing? They're trying to score political points by making themselves look bad by stopping pork.
It looks like it's exactly the opposite of that.
What this looks like is that politicians put their own benefit lower than the country's.
Now, it's hard to imagine anybody would do that, so I'm not sure that we could read their minds and conclude that they were just operating out of principle, but it looks like it.
It looks like it.
Again, I can't read their minds, but if you're a Republican, would you want to turn down something that was a veteran health bill?
A Republican. What Republican thinks it's good to vote against a veteran health bill Even if there's a reason that's technical that has to do with the pork.
That never looks good.
That never looks good. But a lot of Republicans did it, apparently, or are going to do it or whatever.
Did it. So, are we mad at Republicans for standing on principle against their own self-interest?
Because that kind of looks like what happened.
I feel that they were not exactly pursuing their own self-interest.
Because here's what would have looked good for the politician.
I voted for that bill because I like veterans.
By the time you got campaigning for re-election, you could just say that and people would believe it.
I'm one of the few Republicans who voted for helping veterans.
Nobody's going to look into that pork part of the problem.
Yeah, go read the bill, somebody says.
So I floated the idea that every bill should have a list of ingredients.
So you can see what's in the bill, good and bad.
Like the bad might be, might raise taxes on some people.
The good might, you need the, I don't know, somebody to score that, the OMB or something.
But the good would be, here are the things we want to accomplish, and then here's the price.
The price is, this might cost more, this might cause inflation, this might raise the debt.
Just list the ingredients, the good stuff and the bad stuff.
And then somebody else mentioned that there should be a requirement for a one-page executive summary.
I like it. A requirement for a one-page executive summary.
Now, you might need a paragraph or two for each part of the bill, and there might be lots of them, so maybe really it's more like a paragraph for each component or something like that.
But it needs to be readable by the public.
And I would say that if the public, if the average voter can't understand the bill, then it should not be voted on.
In fact, I'd love to see each bill be scored for, let's say, clarity.
Scored for clarity.
Give some independent group to say, alright, we talked about this bill with, let's say, a group of volunteers, and they couldn't understand it.
So we score this, you cannot vote on this.
I think the Congress should be prevented from voting on anything the public doesn't understand.
By a majority, anyway.
What do you think? The Congress wouldn't be allowed to vote for anything the public doesn't understand.
Yeah, if you're joining late, I'll just tell everybody, this is a burn on my lip.
If you think it's something more exciting, I kind of wish it were, but it's just a burn.
A score for readability would be something that AI could do.
There you go. Artificial intelligence could write a summary of every bill.
How about that?
How about that? Those are pretty good ideas.
Alright, here's a provocative idea that I don't think that I'm quite in favor of, but I want to share it with you.
And it comes from a doctor.
Alright, so this is not from me, this is from a doctor.
On Twitter, he goes by Doc Anarchy.
He's got a substack you might be interested in as well.
Has lots of interesting and provocative ideas that are not quite the normal point of view that you see.
So it's worth seeing it, even if you disagree with him.
I love seeing an actual medical doctor who's thinking through things critically.
So that alone...
That alone is worth doing.
So if you want somebody to follow that you're not following, follow at DrAnarchist for interesting points of view.
Not ones you're all going to agree with.
So it's not about agreeing.
They're just interesting points of view.
All right. Here it is, his interesting points of view.
Nobody overdoses on prescription opioids.
I don't know if that's true completely.
This sounds like a little bit of an over-claim, but he's a doctor.
So let's say it might be hyperbole, but don't get too caught up on whether that's 100% true.
Let's say it's 95% true.
It's probably closer to 95% true, but we'll allow a little hyperbole, okay?
And then he goes on, eliminate the black market for opioids, and you'll eliminate 99% of overdoses.
Now, remember, he's a doctor.
He's a doctor. So, at least anecdotally, and probably he's looked at studies too, that it's hard to overdose on a prescription med, because you would know what the overdose amount would be.
Now, before you question him, you should do your research.
Because the addicts themselves will tell you that the real danger is the fake stuff.
Now, again, I'm operating purely anecdotally right here, right?
But my own stepson told me in direct language that he wouldn't take counterfeit pills because they probably have fentanyl in them and you can't know what you're getting.
And then he died of an overdose.
So he probably did exactly what he said he wouldn't do the week before, which is why I question whether this would work.
But anyway, let's get to that.
So if you eliminated the black market for opioids, you wouldn't get the fake stuff.
If you could give legal, well-known entities to the addicts, would they take these legal, well-known things and not have overdose deaths?
Now, some of you are going to say...
Yeah, we're talking about unintentional overdoses.
We're not talking about suicide.
So, can you compare this to the San Francisco outdoor drug thing that looked like a huge failure?
And Michael Schellenberger talks about that a lot.
Do you think what he's talking about is similar to this outdoor free drug clinics?
No. No, he didn't say that.
You're conflating two stories.
That's the problem here.
You're conflating the homeless problem, which he's not even talking about.
That's not his topic.
Giving free drugs to homeless people doesn't make them be less homeless.
So if you're trying to clean up San Francisco, which is all the homeless people walking around and taking over the city...
Giving them free drugs is not going to make them leave the streets or go away or anything.
So it doesn't do anything about homeless.
But what I don't know is if it reduced the number of overdoses.
I haven't heard one way or the other, so I don't know.
But what Doc Anarchy is talking about is really just a narrow point That if the only kind of opioid that was available, and let's say there was some way to make that happen, if the only kind available was high-quality control, that that alone would eliminate 99% of overdose deaths.
What do you think? Now, let me be coldly analytical here.
What would happen if you stopped 100,000 addicts per year from dying?
Now, this is going to come back to me, so do not think I'm exempting myself from the following point.
I'm not. I'm in this point.
If you let 100,000 addicts live every year, are you better off?
Now, I obviously would like my stepson to still be alive, but are you better off?
I hate to say it, but you're not better off.
I might have been better off because I love him, right?
So I loved him. So I might be better off because I would prefer it.
But would you be better off with my stepson back in society?
Not even close. Sorry.
Sorry. If you want to be honest, you would not be better off with him in society.
He was not adding. He was just purely subtracting.
Sorry. People loved him.
I mean, he was popular and lovable and stuff.
But he wasn't going to help.
So, you have to ask yourself, even if you could get what you wanted, do you really want it?
Because that's a fair question.
It's a fair question.
Now, I do think that Some kind of ethical, moral consideration suggests that keeping them alive would be the better alternative, and that would be a reasonable point of view.
But you can't ignore the fact that keeping alive 100,000 liars has some impact.
Because remember, all addicts are liars.
You know that, right? If you see somebody who's lying about everything, the first question you should ask yourself is, what drugs are they on?
Because often people who are lying about everything are covering a drug pattern.
So always look for that.
Sometimes lying about everything means you're a narcissist, and sometimes it means you have a drug problem, and sometimes it means you're both.
I made the point that insurance predicts all.
This is a point I've made a number of times, that every time we're arguing in the political realm about what is or what isn't, what's true, what isn't, that you can ignore all of that, because that's all political, and just look what the insurance companies do.
Because the insurance companies don't have the option of being political, they just have to look at the numbers and say, well, we've got to set our premiums based on this level of death, And we have to adjust it based on changes, right?
So the insurance company is just coldly looking at data.
And the other thing that the insurance companies have that you don't have is their internal data.
So an insurance company in 2022 can tell you the following.
It can tell you which zip codes had the most vaccinations, the highest vaccination rates, and it can tell you where there was the biggest change in death rates.
Now what the insurance industry is telling you is that where there were high levels of vaccinations, the death rate did not go up nearly as much as where there was a low level of vaccination.
Maybe there's some other factors involved.
But their data is very clear that vaccinations saved lives.
And so they're going to base their premiums on that.
So if you're in a zip code where people are dying because they're unvaccinated, maybe you pay more for insurance.
Now, where do you find the data?
They have their own data.
That's the key. If you say to yourself, why do the insurance companies believe that?
Show me the data.
They're not going to do that because it's internal data.
It's their own customers who are dying, right?
They're literally looking at their own customer base, and they're saying the ones in this zip code are suddenly dying.
The ones in this zip code are also suddenly dying, but at a smaller rate.
Now, a number of people said to me, Scott, Scott, Scott.
What you don't realize is that insurance companies are lying just like all companies.
And what they're doing is they're trying to be woke by telling you that vaccinations work.
It's really just wokeness.
So they're not using data to make decisions.
They're not trying to make money.
They're trying to be woke because that's more important than profits.
Do you know who says that sort of thing?
Do you know who says that an insurance company favors wokeness over profits?
What kind of person says that?
Characterize somebody who would say that they might prefer wokeness over profits.
You're saying idiots, but that's unkind.
I'm going to give the kindest interpretation.
It's people with no experience in business whatsoever.
You don't have to say NPC or stupid.
Just say this. People with no experience in business whatsoever.
I don't believe there are any experienced business people Who would say that an insurance company is going to put itself on a business to serve wokeness?
I don't think so. Now people said to me, but Scott, but Scott, Disney did exactly that.
They made a bad decision for wokeness and it hurt their profitability.
So what about that?
To which I say, that's not what I'm talking about.
That's a completely different situation.
Yes, companies will make public PR statements That are for wokeness.
But that doesn't mean they're intentionally destroying the engine of their economic survival.
If an insurance company starts pricing things incorrectly, they go into business.
They have to price correctly based on their data or they can't stay in business.
That is completely different.
Staying in business versus saying some things in public you think will sound good but you hope it won't hurt you too much.
Disney made a gigantic mistake, but they didn't do it intentionally.
They did not intentionally destroy their business or degrade it by doing something like that.
I don't think they quite saw the DeSantis pushback coming.
So, to imagine that it's similar that somebody accidentally hurts their business by saying things they think wouldn't hurt but it did, that's completely different from an insurance company saying, look, we'd better make ourselves super unprofitable or else we won't look woke enough.
That's not happening.
That's not happening anywhere, ever.
Ever. No insurance company behind the scenes is going to tell you...
Well, behind the scenes they're going to make money.
They wouldn't be talking out loud to help themselves in this case.
Do you think...
Yeah, I feel it would just hurt them if you knew what they were doing.
They're just trying to make money. Period.
All right. There is something called, and I don't know too much about it, some kind of the QPARQ framework for having rational discussions without all the crazy stuff that happens.
I saw Brett Weinstein talking about it, and I think he invited Sam Harris to be part of it.
And the idea is there's this useful framework For debating, and if you use the framework, and I think there's some software that helps you work through it or something, I don't know all the details, but the idea is that you could use some third-party format to keep two people on a sane and reasonable debate.
What do you think of that? Suppose the technology works.
So let's take an assumption, I don't know that that's true, but let's say that technology works.
Will this change everything?
Because now you'd have a way for people to debate getting rid of all the crazy parts so you could actually see the debate.
No, it won't. Do you know what's wrong with this problem?
It solves the non-existing problem.
Because the reason that people say crazy things during debates is that they don't want to say the real thing.
The real thing doesn't help them.
The reason people lie is that the truth doesn't give them power or entertainment.
People want to watch the news or interpret the news or get their preferred interpretation to the news.
They want to win debates because they want power.
And we watch them because we want entertainment.
As soon as you imagine that people's main motivation is to get something right, you're completely lost.
Nobody's main motivation is to get the right answer.
The main motivation is to be right and to get power.
Now, people think that if they had power, they would do the right things in some way.
That's the right thing too. But nobody cares about the logic of a debate.
So you're solving a problem that isn't a problem because debates are intentionally bullshit.
If anybody wanted to debate in a reasonable way, they already know how to do it.
Do you think that Brett Weinstein and Sam Harris don't have the intellectual tools to have a rational discussion?
Of course they do.
Of course they do. But would they do it?
I don't know. Those might be two of the most famously rational people in the public discussions, and I don't even think they could do it.
And I have very high opinion of both of them in terms of their intellectual academic credentials.
I just don't know it's something people can do.
I had a conversation with Sam Harris and it was not my opinion that logic was guiding his opinion.
Some of you saw it too, right?
Did you have a sense that he preferred logic?
I didn't get the sense that it was even a preference.
It felt like a strong preference to avoid being rational about Trump.
That's how it felt. Now, again, I can't read his mind.
I don't know what Sam Harris is thinking privately about anything.
So it's just a reaction, you know, basically a reaction on my end.
It's not about him. All right, so I love the fact that somebody's working on that, trying to get our conversations realistic.
But I think AI is going to solve this problem for us, and here's how.
I think AI is going to take any story and add the context that is missing, and it's going to rewrite it in simpler terms and make the misleading headlines go away.
It should not be hard for AI to dismantle fake news and tell you what was fake about it, just like I did, basically.
So what I did was I said, hey, this title doesn't match or is misleading compared to the content.
I think AI could do that most of the time.
And I think they could summarize better.
And I think they could basically solve fake news.
I mean, they could come close.
Is Google the top AI? I actually don't know that.
And I believe I credited the wrong person with saying that AI was conscious.
So I saw a follow-up.
I saw a follow-up saying that I may have accredited the top Google researcher for saying that AI was conscious, but at least somebody who knows what they're talking about thinks I was crediting the wrong person, because I think the actual Google head does not say that.
So somebody who's high up in that world did say it.
All right.
He was considered one of the four horsemen of atheism.
Yeah. Code of the Life Maker.
Alright, just looking at your comments.
Well, that's all I had to do to talk about today.
I noticed that Greg Duffield was trending today.
His show has continued to be gigantically popular.
It was weird that weirdo hired a lawyer for the AI. I don't know that story.
Oh, let's talk about Pelosi going to Taiwan.
I don't know. Is that really a story?
I think it would be a story if Pelosi didn't go to Taiwan, if she had wanted to and changed her mind or something.
But I feel as though it's sort of a nothing.
Yeah, it's absolutely a story because we'll talk about it.
But what do you think China is going to do?
Do you think China is going to punish the United States in some way for an American citizen who is a free citizen going to another free country to visit?
Do you think they're going to punish us for that?
I hope so. I hope so.
Boy, do I hope China tries to punish us for Pelosi visiting Taiwan.
Yeah, I hope so.
Because, yeah, we definitely need to be murdering their fentanyl dealers in China.
So if there's something they're doing to us, let's ratchet it up on our side, too.
Let's go kill their fentanyl dealers where they stand.
Did you see that there's a...
I tweeted this, but I forgot to put it in my notes.
There's a candidate for Arizona Attorney General.
Let me find his name so I can give him a little shout out here.
Probably didn't write it down.
Damn me for not writing that down.
Somebody will give me the name here in the comments.
But there is a candidate for attorney general in Arizona who says we should, at least that Arizona should treat the or label the cartels as terrorist organizations.
So if the federal government will not label The cartels as terrorist organizations.
Arizona might do it if they elect this attorney general and if he gets his way.
And apparently there's some constitutional allowance.
I've never heard this before, but have you heard that states can create their own national, like a state guard, not a national guard?
Have you heard that states can form their own armies, basically?
Apparently that's a thing.
Yeah. So, the Arizona potential AG, guy running as a Republican, will somebody give me his name?
He deserves a shout-out.
Just Google that for me and give me a shout-out in the comments, because I don't want to not mention his name.
He's too strong.
Evergrande? No, Hamada.
Hamaday. So his last name is H-A-M-A-D-E-H. Hamaday.
So he's Republican and he's tough on the cartels and I like him.
I like him. I like him for that.
I don't know what else he does. Oh, Garfield's still trending.
Let's see why. There's a July 25th Glenn Greenwald tweet about the Gottfeld Show, how it's basically mopping up the competition.
Now... So it's fun to watch him succeed.
I hope you're enjoying it as much as I do.
All right. Here's a...
Huh.
Alright, here's a little information on fentanyl and the Dr.
Anarchy comment.
I don't want to attribute this yet, but let's just say it's from another doctor.
And Dr.
Anarchy, I better read it to myself before I read it out loud.
Oh, okay. So, it's hard to overdose on oral opiates.
So I think that's what Dr.
Anarchy was saying. It's sort of rare to overdose on prescription pills.
But if you mix it, if you add a second medication called benzodiazepine, it becomes very easy.
And 90% of prescription opiate overdoses include that drug, benzodiazepine.
Oh, wow.
So that's a special case, but I don't think that takes away from Doc Anarchy's point, because the people who are not taking this other drug at the same time would get a lot of benefit.
So this is good context.
All right. All right.
And that... That is what I had to talk about today.
Yeah, Carrie Lake is tough on the cartels as well.
Also running... What is she running for?
Governor of Arizona? Yes, it is a great show.
It is a great show. You know, the larger point is that I'm right about everything today.
All right. How did I determine that the Democrats put a poison pill in the pact bill?
Look, well, Google it, and you should find that the bill includes things that are off point and that the Republicans cared about that.
I feel like there was a story I skipped here that I really wanted to do.
Let's check. Yeah.
Did you affect the DeSantis ESG move?
I did not.
I mean, I don't think I did.
Okay.
What's my prediction for China's response?
I don't know. I think it's going to be symbolic.
I don't think China's response will affect you as a citizen of the United States.
I feel like they might do something like move some warships around or talk differently.
I just don't think it's going to be anything.
They have to push back.
The famine coming.
I'm going to vote against the famine.
Based on the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters.
Now, I know this one's special because you can't grow food very quickly.
So if the food you grew doesn't produce, that's not really a quick turnaround fix.
I get that. But I'm going to vote against mass famine.
Now, I don't know that I'm right, so I'm not going to put 100% on this one.
I usually don't.
But I'd say I'm going to put a 90% odds of no famine.
And the reason is that humans are just really, really good at responding to a known problem with enough time to respond.
One way or another, I feel like we might be able to get by.
Now, I don't think the famine is for the first world countries.
It's going to be for who can't afford to pay massive prices to get the limited food.
But I feel like we'll figure out how to keep them alive long enough to get the next crop going.
That's what I feel. But we'll see.
Africa could be tough in Africa.
I don't want to minimize the risk, but I'm confident we'll figure it out.
Micro lessons on how to make a killer tweet.
I can do that. I feel like maybe I have.
All right.
And is there any topic I didn't cover that you just desperately need me to?
Where am I?
I'm at a secret writer's retreat location.
Are you able to smoke while on vacation?
No comment. MTG was acquitted of what?
I didn't know there was anything going on.
Market index? Is the market up or down?
make the sun bigger?
Well, I can probably tell you now what makes a killer a tweet.
and You want your killer tweet to be short and something that people would want to say to their friends so they can remember it easily.
So it has to be short and clever.
It has to be on something that's in the headlines or people are really thinking about right now.
I burned my lip.
It's not a monkeypox or a weird disease.
It's just a burn.
All right.
And you should always be clever and provocative and ideally say something that's not quite true.
Oh.
If you say something that's provocative and sort of almost true but not quite, you're going to get more energy.
Because people want to argue about how true it is.
Yeah. All right.
How about less about me?
Maybe let's talk less about me for a while.
All right. Talk about Trump's misspelled tweets.
I think the misspelled tweets are not intentional, but I think he leaves them intentionally, which is different.
You know, there have been a number of times that I've had a typo in a tweet, and I've decided to leave it because it was getting attention.
So, I think that's all that's happening.
Is Japan safe? Probably.
Give us the women's version of the men's secret lesson.
I don't know if I could.
I think Covfefe was probably just a pocket dial.
No hints. All right.
What was your inspiration for writing God's Debris?
If you don't know, I wrote a book called God's Debris.
It came out about the same time the Twin Towers were falling, I think.
But these many years later, my book God's Debris is still the thing that people talk about the most.
When I'm out in public, these days, I guess they'll more often mention Coffee with Scott Adams.
But God's Debris has really made a big impact on people.
And the answer of how I came up with it is I was in the shower.
And one day, all of the things I've been thinking about for decades, I realized were all connected.
And that if I put it in a book, it would blow your mind.
Because it was blowing my mind when I thought about it.
So I thought, well, if it's blowing my mind, maybe it'll blow somebody else's mind.
So I put it in a book.
And when you find out how all these things come together, you might enjoy it.
Yeah. Blew your mind?
Good. Good.
It is designed to blow your mind.
The context of that is that I used hypnosis technique in the writing.
If you use hypnosis technique in the writing, you can get some powerful results.
So that's what I did. That's my balcony, that's not a fence.
All right. 2001 Space Odyssey, terrible movie.
2001 Space Odyssey is one of the all-time worst movies.
I would like to reenact a scene from the movie 2001 Space Odyssey.
Now don't get bored.
Don't get bored.
Ah, ah, ah.
This is pretty interesting so far, isn't it?
Ah, ah, ah.
Don't you like how the plot is moving forward?
Wow, look at that ship!
Still. Is anybody going to talk in this fucking movie?
When do we stop looking at this fucking thing?
We've looked at this same fucking thing now for 10 minutes.
That's my description of 2001.
Literally one of the worst movies ever made.
The other worst movie was Titanic.
If you recommend somebody watch Titanic, you're an asshole.
Because no matter how much you like Titanic, it's way too long.
And it doesn't have a good ending.
And not only does it not have a good ending, it has an ending that will give you PTSD. Why are you going to spend three hours to give yourself a lifetime of PTSD? Dumb.
Don't do it. Titanic, terrible idea for a movie.
You know what's worse? Schindler's List.
Oh, my fucking God.
Schindler's List, there's a specific scene in there, and I'm not going to mention it, that traumatized me for years, and still.
I was actually traumatized.
Now, I get that we should all know how bad it was.
You know, you should know the Holocaust was bad, and making it emotional and bringing you into it definitely has some utility.
But don't watch that for entertainment.
If you want to give yourself brain damage, watch that movie.
I got brain damage.
That's not a joke.
Actual brain damage.
Because it created something in my mind that was unpleasant and didn't go away.
If somebody puts something in your mind that stays there, it stays unpleasant and it never goes away, that's brain damage.
I had a brain that didn't have that, and now it does.
It's brain damage. That fucking movie gave me brain damage.
And that's not hyperbole.
Literal fucking brain damage.
And people, like, give it an award.
Why do you give an award to something that gives you brain damage?
Come on. I mean, well, I know why, but...
Yeah, serenity is excellent.
I agree. What about Stephen King?
The only thing I can say about Stephen King is that when you see him tweet, you wonder how he could write a book.
Anybody else have that feeling?
He tweets like he's somebody who used to know how to write a book, but something terrible has happened in the meantime.
Like maybe drugs?
Some kind of mental decline of some type?
Because if he's always been like this, is that smart enough to write a book?
I don't know. See, the problem is that even his criticisms don't seem smart.
There are lots of people I disagree with, but they don't look actually stupid.
They look like just people who, you know, maybe they're confused or whatever, but they don't look stupid, you know?
If Jake Tepper says something I don't like, he never sounds stupid, because he's not, right?
But Stephen King actually sounds stupid when he tweets.
Maybe he's just a bad tweeter.
But it's hard for me to reconcile the tweeting with the fact that he wrote all these popular books.
Maybe Joshua Lysak could explain it to us.
Because I already know the answer, but maybe Joshua can explain that to you.
Why is it he's writing all these good books still, and yet he seems like he couldn't be capable of that?
What could possibly be the explanation for that?
That's one explanation.
I don't know if it's the only explanation, but it's certainly one of them.
Yeah. Alright. That's enough for now.
No, I don't have monkeypox.
I burned my lip. I hope that's the last time I have to say that today.
