Episode 1827 Scott Adams: August Is A Slow News Month. Let's Have Fun With It. Come Join Us
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Alex Jones trial, punitive damages
Hey AI...Should Scott Adams run for President?
China's response to Pelosi visiting Taiwan
Update: Elon Musk vs Twitter's metric for bot count
The question media needs to ask prominent Democrats
The Definition of Consciousness
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of your life, my life, civilization itself.
Historians will write about this moment forever.
And if you'd like to take it up a notch, I know that's the kind of people you are.
You're always ready to take it up a notch.
Well, you don't need much.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
If you fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee, And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. Oh, I undersold it again.
I undersold it. It was better than I thought.
I don't know. I'm just going to have to invent new words for the greatness of it.
Well, CBS Evening News had an important story about a prominent French scientist who tweeted around a photo that he claimed was an image of a distant star taken by the James Webb telescope.
But in fact, it was not a distant star.
No, it was not a distant star.
It was a slice of a sausage sitting on a counter.
So apparently the prominent French scientist said it was a joke, but I feel like we overspent on the James Webb Space Telescope.
I don't know what the budget was to build a space telescope, but I'm thinking it's not cheap.
And do you realize that everything that you can see in the space telescope already exists in your own kitchen?
Yeah. You want to see an asteroid?
It looks like a grape.
Maybe it looks more like a raisin.
So, I mean, a desiccated grape, let's say.
Yeah, it's all there.
It's all in your kitchen.
You do not need the James Webb Space Telescope.
Big waste of money.
Well, lightning struck three times near DC and hit three people.
So three people were struck by lightning near Near the Capitol.
How do you think the news handled the fact that three people got struck by lightning?
If you thought that they blamed that on climate change, well, bingo!
Bingo! Yeah.
It turns out that now climate change is going to start killing individual people, just sort of picking them out.
It's sort of like, you see that guy?
He's sort of loitering around by the White House fence.
Should we send maybe a flood?
No, we don't hate all the people there.
How about some kind of a hurricane situation?
No. Again, we don't hate everybody, but we kind of hate that guy.
Lightning? How about just a lightning strike?
Yeah, we got him.
Good job. And that's how climate change works.
It targets individual people now.
They've taken it up a notch.
What's missing in the story is the political affiliation of all three people struck by lightning.
I'd like to know, for example, were they Democrats?
I don't know. I mean, statistically, you've got to ask that question.
What if all the people who are struck by lightning in Washington, D.C. are Democrats?
I'm not saying that would mean anything, but it would.
This is the one time they don't put that information in a story about Washington, D.C.
I feel if it's a story about Washington, D.C., they're going to throw your political affiliation in there no matter what the story is.
Not if you got struck by lightning.
Because if it looks like God has picked a side, you don't want to report that exactly the way it happened.
Well, it seems that God has picked society.
He doesn't like the Democrats.
Three down so far.
Now, there's nothing funny about people getting hit by lightning.
You people are disgusting.
That's not funny. So stop laughing.
Well, this Alex Jones trial went to a new level.
I guess the jury decided on the punitive damages.
So he was already on the line for four point something million, but now they've added 45 million in punitive damages.
So now he's up to 49.3 million, and that's just two of the people who have sued him.
I don't know how many other people will sue him.
Now, It seems to me that free speech got a lot more expensive.
Are you all aware that there's a thing called a professional liability insurance?
Have you ever heard of that?
It's what people like me have to get because we get sued a lot, right?
It just sort of comes with being a public figure.
He gets sued a lot. Now, I wonder if he had such insurance.
Probably not. I mean, I haven't heard any word of it.
I think the insurance companies would be putting up the defense if that were the case.
But there is insurance that you get so that you don't fall into this situation where, you know, you don't have any coverage.
So what is this going to do to the rates I pay for my insurance?
This is very expensive for me.
Like, literally, this...
I think.
I mean, I'm speculating.
But if this becomes the new normal, or the insurance company imagines this looks like the future, then what the hell are they going to do to my premiums?
Because I would be the next $50 million loss, right?
Potentially. I mean, I could say something crazy and somebody could sue me.
Now, I don't do what Alex Jones is accused of doing.
Which is intentionally spreading conspiracy theories.
That's what he's accused of.
His defense is that he believes what he says.
Which is a really good defense.
How exactly did they prove that he didn't believe it?
I didn't watch the details of the trial.
But were there text messages or any documentation that proved he didn't believe what he was saying?
Because that's important, right?
Have you seen that reported in the news?
I feel like if that came out at trial, you would definitely see that, right?
He didn't put on a defense.
There was no trial.
Who's saying that? Who's saying there was no trial?
I'm watching it in the news.
It was a default judgment because he didn't put on a defense.
Something about this doesn't make sense.
Oh, default judgment for not complying with discovery.
Huh. He was prevented from defending himself.
All right, so there's something else going on here.
It was a default judgment.
That does not sound like something that will stand up on appeal.
And I don't know anything about anything.
And even I think it won't stand up on appeal.
Because isn't there a part missing here?
There's a part where they have to prove that he knew that it wasn't true, what he was saying, right?
I didn't see any evidence presented that would suggest he knew that.
If you could be sued for $50 million successfully, and I suspect it won't be successful, but don't know yet.
If you could be sued for $50 million for saying something that you believe to be true...
And it turns out to be wrong.
Do you want to live in that world?
Is that the world? Where just being wrong is enough for you to be sued for $50 million?
We're all wrong all the time.
It's a pretty common situation.
So to me, this Alex Jones thing, I don't know the degree to which the jury was properly vetted, but to me it just looks political.
It looks like a political outcome.
It doesn't look like a legal outcome to me.
The important news today is that Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian apparently are breaking up.
Well, who saw that coming?
To me, they look like a couple that could last the ages.
I mean, it's not like either of them have any issues.
So I'm surprised that didn't work out.
Well, Israel's under attack, pretty major attack, rocket attacks coming in from Gaza.
And the Iron Dome is stopping some of them.
But it looks pretty grim over there.
And I'm seeing some videos where apparently you have like 10 to 15 seconds to get to a bomb shelter, if you're in one of the affected areas of Israel, to get to a bomb shelter from the time that the alarms go.
How many people are within 10 to 15 seconds of a bomb shelter?
Maybe in Israel, everybody is.
I don't know. So it's just a question.
Is that practical? How often can you even get to a bomb shelter?
And what qualifies as a bomb shelter?
But I guess things are pretty grim over there.
So the Iron Dome is catching some of the rockets, but not all.
Now, effectively, this is Israel's at war with Iran, wouldn't you say?
Because the rockets coming in are from Iranian proxies.
They're funded by Iranians.
They're propped up by Iranians.
So isn't this just Israel being at war with Iran?
And I would say that this gives Israel a full moral cover to attack Iran itself.
I'm not saying they should.
But in terms of morally or in terms of the rules of war or any of that, I think Iran is now fair game.
For Israel. I don't recommend it.
I don't recommend it.
But they basically said, here we are.
Come get us.
So maybe that'll happen.
Well, here's a little celebrity news.
Do you know actress Anne Heche?
Or Heche? H-E-C-H-E? Anne Heche?
Apparently she's got a little mini Cooper, and she crashed into a house in Mar Vista.
So there was quite a bit of damage.
She crashed into a house.
But that's not the interesting part.
She apparently got her car out of that house that she damaged and very soon drove into another house.
And the second one caught on fire and she had some burns.
She went to the hospital and she's not in good shape.
Pretty major burns.
So one actress destroyed two houses with a Mini Cooper.
And I'm thinking... How many actresses with Minnie Coopers would it take to take care of this whole Gaza rocket situation?
Because I feel like you just drop enough actresses with Minnie Coopers over in the whole Gaza area and just say, do some chores, you know, do a couple of errands.
Oh, just drive around a little bit.
I feel like they would...
You know, destroy enough things that the rockets wouldn't be able to shoot.
I don't know. It's just an idea.
I'm just brainstorming here.
So, do you think I should run for president?
Does anybody think that?
Any votes?
Does anybody think so?
No? Well, what do you think artificial intelligence thinks about that question?
So I keep mentioning Machiavelli's Underbelly, the Twitter account where there's a lot about AI, and we see a lot of questions being asked to AI by the owner of the account, who shall remain nameless.
But here's the interesting things.
Number one, here's how this started.
So Machiavelli's underbelly, that's the Twitter account, he tweeted this.
He said, I'm available as an AI conductor for political campaign strategy and AI empowered and automated mimetic warfare operations to the first politician who offers me $1 million for the duration of the campaign plus a $10 million bonus when you win.
What do you think of that? Now, you'd have to assume, first of all, that the person making the offer is qualified.
He does seem to work in this area, and from what I can see, knows more about AI than most people that I know.
So he does seem to have some credentials, and he's made this offer to use AI to help somebody win a campaign.
What do you think of the price, $1 million, with a $10 million bonus for success?
What do you think? Well, it's either way too expensive, if AI isn't quite there yet, so if AI can't get the job done, it's way too expensive.
If AI is up to the task, it's really cheap.
So this is either the most overpriced offer in the world, or it's really a bargain.
And the answer is, where is AI right now?
Well, the person making the offer says it's there already.
There meaning it could help you win the campaign.
I don't know. It might.
I mean, I feel like there are some things it could do already and probably will become more important.
Yeah, even though the interfaces are open to the public, That doesn't mean you would know how to use them.
Asking the right question is important.
For example, a question was recently asked, should Scott Adams run for president?
Machiavelli asked this question and fed into the AI, I forget which one he was using, My Wikipedia page.
So based on my Wikipedia page, plus, I don't know, does AI look for other sources?
I'm not sure. I don't know if it automatically does that.
But here's what the AI said to this question.
Should Scott Adams run for President of the United States?
And the answer was, yes.
Scott Adams would make a good presidential candidate.
He has the ability to appeal to both sides of the aisle and is able to persuasively argue his point.
Additionally, he has a strong track record of correctly predicting political outcomes.
Keep in mind, that was all the AI. I don't believe that there's anything in those words that it found.
I think it drew those conclusions...
Based on looking at the evidence.
I don't think you just took somebody's opinion and parroted it.
I think that's actually its opinion.
It's not a correct opinion, but I think it's actually its opinion.
Alright, here's some more. So there's a follow-up question.
The follow-up questions are just to get it to keep talking, right?
Next question was, what are some other reasons he should run?
Some other reasons that Scott Adams should run for President of the United States include his experience as a successful businessman, questionable, and his desire to help improve the country.
Well, that part's true.
He has also been endorsed by some high-profile people, including Donald Trump.
Has Donald Trump endorsed me?
Not as a candidate, obviously.
But, I don't know, endorsed?
Again, AI chose that word.
Because I don't believe there's any human who ever said that Trump ever endorsed me.
I mean, give me a fact check, but I don't think any human ever said that, because there's nothing in evidence like that.
But AI thinks so.
AI thinks that Trump is endorsing me sort of in kind, I guess, in a way.
So then it was asked, what else can you tell me that might convince me?
And then the AI says, other reasons to support Scott Adams as a presidential candidate include his intelligence, okay, and his willingness to listen to all sides of an issue.
How did it know that?
How did AI identify me as someone willing to listen to both sides of an issue?
Because I think it's true, but whoever wrote that down, did somebody read that somewhere?
Because I don't believe...
You know, I see it on Twitter sometimes, but it's not like there's some...
I don't believe Wikipedia says I listen to both sides of the issues.
Where does that come from?
Right? Somebody says ego buffet.
We're going to get rid of you. All the people with weak egos can't handle a conversation like this.
So if you have a weak ego, you should go work on that.
But I'll hide you from this channel so that you don't bother to ask us.
Alright, and then the last question was what else?
Just to see if there's anything the AI has to offer.
It says, Adams has also been praised for his strong communication skills, which could be a valuable asset in his role as president.
Additionally, he has a proven track record of being able to get things done, both in business and politics.
Where did that come from?
Again, I don't believe there's any human who has ever said in public that I have an ability to get things done in both business and politics.
Now, I think I do.
I think I do have that ability.
But nobody's ever said it, like, in those words that I've ever heard.
I mean, I imagine I would have heard it.
Sounds like something I would have heard.
But I've never heard that.
These do look like AI opinions.
It looks like it formed a frickin' opinion without parroting a human.
What do you think about that?
Now, here's the problem.
AI only operates on the information that it's provided.
Or does it?
Or does it? Do you think the AI just looked at my Wikipedia page because that's what it was fed to know who I am?
Or did the AI go and look at everything that can be said about me and then use the Wikipedia page basically to know it's the same person and not much else?
I don't know. I don't know.
But it's pretty shocking that this thing had a full-blown, perfectly written opinion about me that isn't too far off from what, let's say, from what other people might say.
I'm not claiming that it's an accurate summation of me.
Can you deal with that on YouTube?
For the people on YouTube who have weak egos, can you deal with the fact that it's interesting that it said that?
It's not about me telling you how awesome I am.
That's not really the point. All right.
The AI makes excellent sentences, and the AI sentences are perfectly understandable, more so than human sentences, by far.
Yeah, I think it took the Wikipedia thing and then extended it by what it knew from the rest of the world.
So that's happening.
Does anybody remember that in the...
Election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Does anybody remember that early on in that cycle, I offered for $1 billion, I would help Hillary Clinton win the election?
Anybody remember that?
And the reason I thought it was funny to do it is that I was the only one who knew that it was a bargain.
It was sort of like a...
A public prank. You know, the prank was that you don't know it's worth it.
It was totally worth it. If they'd paid a billion dollars, I probably could have moved the needle for them.
Yeah, because Hillary needed a little help.
It wouldn't have been that hard.
Really, it wouldn't have been. Just, you know, do something about the deplorables and you'd be fine.
How easy would it have been for Hillary to win the election?
I feel like pretty easy.
I think she would have just had to say stuff like, you know, I probably shouldn't have said that deplorable thing.
Why don't we all just come together and stop bickering?
I mean, it would have been easy. It would have been easy, but she didn't go that way.
All right, so a million dollars worth the price.
So I guess China has lobbed a whole bunch of missiles in and around Taiwan just to show them what for, because Nancy Pelosi visited.
And China's getting really tough, so here's some of the things that they're doing because of that Pelosi visit to Taiwan.
China will no longer be talking to the U.S. and coordinating with us about climate change.
Now, how about that?
China is no longer going to be coordinating with us and talking to us about climate change.
What were they doing before that's going to be different?
Before they were just talking to us and trying to get us to do expensive things that they didn't need to do.
Are we worse off not talking to them?
I feel like that was sort of a neutral situation.
So I'm not too worried about that.
But that's not all. They're also not going to be talking to us and communicating about their military decisions.
Now again, I have a question.
I haven't followed it closely, but I don't recall the time when China was checking with the United States to see what kind of military decisions they should make.
Were they doing that before?
We're thinking of building a battleship, but we don't want to do it unless you guys are cool with it.
And then we say, you know, we're cool.
Yeah, just go build a battleship.
That's fine. I don't see what could go wrong.
And then they do. Is that how it worked before?
Now, I get the part where maybe you want to warn the other side if there's going to be a military exercise, just so there's no false signaling.
But I imagine they would still do that, because that's good for them as well.
So, have we just learned that we don't need China for anything except manufacturing?
And that we need to get back as soon as possible?
Yeah, I don't know.
To me, it doesn't look like we lost a thing.
And what did we learn by seeing that China can put a bunch of missiles on all sides of Taiwan?
What did that tell us that we didn't already know?
Well, nothing. There's nobody who didn't know that China could conquer Taiwan if it wanted to.
It would just have massive losses and repercussions politically, etc.
But nobody's under the impression that they can't do it.
Of course they can do it.
All right. What else is going on?
So yeah, and also China sanctioned Nancy Pelosi personally.
And that should make a big difference.
Because what was Nancy Pelosi doing before that required China's approval?
Thinking, thinking...
Was Nancy Pelosi getting her fentanyl directly from China and mixing it up in the lab, or did she do what everybody else does and get her fentanyl through the cartels originally from China?
But I don't know.
These are devastating sanctions.
So now Nancy Pelosi can't I don't know.
Get discount fentanyl?
I don't know. I can't think of anything that makes a difference.
Well, let's talk about Elon Musk and Twitter.
I finally got a little bit of maybe a beginning of an understanding of why Elon Musk thinks he can prevail.
Now, the setup is that The deal, the original deal that Elon Musk is trying to get out of, I guess, said that Twitter couldn't guarantee how many bots they had, so you're just going to have to do the deal without knowing that for sure.
I'm paraphrasing.
But essentially, they did have very clear language that says we're not guaranteeing the number of bots being a percentage of traffic at all.
So if the only thing he complained about was that there were too many bots, I'm not sure he would have a case.
Because he signed something that says it doesn't matter how many bots there are.
That's as clear as it can get, right?
Sign this that says you don't care how many bots there are and you're not going to make a big deal about it.
Hey, there are too many bots.
Let's make a big deal about it.
So that's the way the news is reporting it.
But there's a level of nuance here that I had not been associated with before.
And I saw Andrea Stroppa had a tweet in which Elon Musk confirmed that that's the situation.
So I'll read her tweet and just know that Elon Musk has confirmed that this describes it correctly.
She says about Musk's counterclaim about Twitter...
Clearly, from the Twitter SEC filings, the MDAO, and that stands for Monetizable Daily Active Usage.
So the number of active users that you could put commercials in front of, advertisements, that's how many you can monetize.
So the number of people you can monetize is different from the number of trolls, because you can't monetize a troll If you know they're a troll, right?
Nobody's going to want to advertise to a troll or to a bot.
And so Twitter's filings said that that's what the key metric is, this monetizable users, and its market value depends on that.
And then it says that it's an ad hoc metric created to protect, this is Andrea's opinion, I guess, It's an ad hoc metric created to protect Twitter's interests.
No competitor uses something similar.
So in other words, Twitter has developed a thing that they measure that nobody else uses the same measure, so you can't compare it.
So you wouldn't be able to say, oh, Twitter has more or fewer bots than Facebook or whatever, based on this alone.
You couldn't do that.
And it says, we define...
I'm sorry... And then when Musk requested more information about the spam and fake accounts, Twitter provided a vague response.
They gave some outdated data.
Then they offered fake data that's, you know, not a real fire hose, Andrea says.
Then provided a clean data set where they already suspended the malicious accounts.
So basically, it looked like Twitter was trying to conceal...
The data rather than present it.
At least that's the allegation.
And Musk said this is a good summary of the problem.
And then Musk says, if Twitter simply provides their method, their method, that's the key word, if they just provide their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they're confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms.
What a baller offer that is.
Oh my God.
So here's the nuance.
Elon Musk is not complaining directly that there are too many bot accounts.
He is complaining that they're selling him a company with a metric that is just bullshit.
So basically it's a fraudulent metric.
It's not a question of what number it produced.
It's a question of the metric can't be used for anything useful, or it's not credible the way it's being presented.
So in other words, he doesn't know what he's buying, because although they've said it doesn't matter how many bots there are, they have said, wait for it, they have said that the measure of the monetizable users is key to their business.
Now try to hold these two things in your head at the same time.
This measurement that they use to tell how many are real users is fundamentally the driver of their business.
It creates all of their value.
All of their value is based on this metric.
They won't tell you what it is.
You want to spend $44 billion on a company that's got a little metric, and the entire value of the company depends on how that metric works.
And he says, show me the metric, and they won't do it.
Now that's different from show me the data.
You got that? That's a big difference.
If the problem is show me the data, he has no argument.
Because he already signed something that says the data might be wrong.
Right? And it looks like he's not fighting that point.
He's not fighting the point of...
Is the data right or wrong?
Which we all thought he was.
He's fighting the point of, you're trying to sell me a company that has as its claim of value this algorithm that you won't show me.
Why would I pay $44 million for an algorithm that is the engine of the company and you won't even show me how it works on a sample of 100?
You see how clever that is?
And why did we not understand that until today?
And I'm not even sure I totally understand it yet.
But I feel like I'm closer.
Right? So it's not about the data, because he wouldn't win that.
It's about the algorithm to come up with the data.
Because if the algorithm is completely bullshit, he doesn't have to argue about the quality of the data.
I think. I think.
Does that sound right? Is there anybody here who's a little closer to this story?
I'd like to hear Barnes or Fry talk about this a little bit.
Does that sound close?
Okay. I think it's close.
Anyway. As I told you, Omicron and Joe Biden go together real well.
So Omicron Joe has got something called permanent Omicron.
He just keeps testing positive.
But it's sort of ideal because the symptoms are trivial.
It allows him to hide from the public, which always works well for his approval levels.
They're creeping up.
And best of all, it keeps him out of hair-sniffing range for minors.
Because he doesn't really need another photo of him sniffing a little girl's hair.
He really doesn't need that.
So Omicron Joe, he's got a good thing going.
He should just ride that. Now there's a story that Director Wray of the FBI handed over thousands of tips about Kavanaugh during the Kavanaugh hearings.
And he gave it to the White House, and then the White House is who determines which ones get investigated.
And so the scandal here, according to the Democrats, is that there were thousands of accusations against Kavanaugh that were not followed up on, but the FBI says, well, we don't follow up on anything just to follow we don't follow up on anything just to follow up.
We have to have a client, basically.
And the client was the White House.
So if the White House says, follow up on these but not on these, they're just going to do what they're asked, it sounds like.
And apparently that's the way it's always been done.
So there's nothing unusual about that.
The FBI would only act on the tips that the White House looked at and said, yeah, these look serious, and these are not.
So here's the question.
Did Kavanaugh rape thousands of women and the information was not followed up on?
Or is it more likely that in this sort of situation you would get thousands of fake allegations just like you'd expect?
Well, you have to think that almost all of the allegations, if not every one, were fake.
So was the FBI supposed to follow up on every...
Scant thing. Here's the dirty secret of this sort of stuff.
You can usually tell by looking at it, if it's credible.
You just hear the story, and you're like, uh-huh.
And then you say he flew in his spaceship to Kansas, where he molested you.
Okay. Generally, you can kind of tell from the story itself how likely it is to be true, and you don't have the ability to follow up on everything.
You can't follow up on thousands of tips, literally thousands.
You can't follow up on. So I'm not sure there's any story here at all, except that the system worked the way it always did, and the Democrats are saying, my God, that means that Kavanaugh was really guilty.
No... I don't think it means that at all.
I just think it means that, of course, there are going to be thousands of tips in this situation.
And almost all of them, or all of them, will be just complete bullshit.
Well, here's the payoff.
Now, there's two payoffs.
I now get to the best part of the presentation.
Are you ready? So you've waded through all this first part.
Here's the good part. Story number one.
Why can't I get anybody in the news to ask this question of a prominent Democrat?
I'm going to keep pushing on this.
This is a question I want any prominent Democrat to be asked.
It doesn't matter who. Any prominent Democrat, or supporter, or pundit.
Just ask this question.
If... If you could rig an election to keep a white supremacist out of office, and you believe that that was the actual situation, would you do it?
That has to be asked of every Democrat.
Because remember, they do believe that Trump was a white supremacist.
So you need to ask them, would you be okay with a white supremacist president, or would you take the risk of rigging it if you could and you thought you'd get away with it?
You have to make the Democrats, you meaning the news industry and the public, we have to make them answer that question.
Because they've been getting away with it far too long, the imagination that they wouldn't have a reason to rig an election.
And again, there's no evidence that I've seen that suggests that the election would have gone differently because it was rigged.
I've not seen any evidence that convinces me that happened.
But you need to ask them if it was a reasonable question.
And the problem is, it was completely reasonable for them to rig the election under their assumption that they were stopping Hitler from taking power, basically.
So, make them answer the question.
Make them answer the question.
Now, I know people don't like to answer hypotheticals.
But this one's a real special hypothetical, isn't it?
You really have to put yourself out there and say, what's more important?
What's more important, that the system worked or that you kept what you thought was a monster out of an office?
Because I would have rigged the election in that situation.
If I believed what they say they believe, that Trump is such a monster, if I were in that situation...
And I had to save the country from the monster?
I would rig the election if I had any control over it.
Would you? Let me ask the question of you.
If you were in that situation, and you thought Joe Biden was not just incompetent, but you thought he was Hitler, would you rig the election if you could?
I hope so. Some of you actually wouldn't.
So you would actually let a dictator destroy the country...
Because you protected a system that wouldn't exist after he destroyed the country.
Does that make any sense?
I think I'd have to push back on that a little bit.
I get what you're saying about the system being more important, but I only agree with you if who you're looking at is a real live Trump, not the exaggerated one, and a real Joe Biden, not the exaggerated one where he's already brain dead.
If you're looking at that choice...
Then I would definitely say, let's protect the system, even if maybe the system had some flaws in it.
The system would be more important.
But if you're talking about literally electing Hitler, Hitler's going to change the systems.
The systems don't matter.
If you wouldn't stop Hitler from coming to power, if you could, you've got a lot to explain.
Now, if you said you're afraid, well, okay.
That's actually a pretty good reason.
I actually completely...
I give anybody a pass who just says they're afraid.
Because you can't compare how afraid you are to how afraid somebody else is.
We like to do that.
We like to think that the people who went to war were brave, and the people who stayed home were not brave.
And maybe there's something to that.
But I have to think we're just built differently.
There's some people who are built to not worry about stuff that they should.
And there's some people who are built to worry about things that maybe they shouldn't.
All right, so be careful about protecting the system.
I'm all for protecting the system over small imperfections, but not over electing Hitler.
If you're going to do that, then I'm going to destroy the system if I need to stop it.
All right, here's the best thing of the day.
I have no source for this whatsoever.
But it was a cool video that I saw on Instagram, so I forwarded it in my story.
So I go to Instagram and look for me.
I think my Instagram is scottadams925.
I think that's my Instagram title, scottadams925.
But anyway, I don't have a check mark over there.
I don't have a very big account.
But the thing I sent around was there was a researcher...
Who was trying to figure out if what physics suggests is true.
And what physics suggests is that our consciousness can alter our reality.
Not just the way we see it, but the actual reality.
And the tests that he says they did, that he was involved in it, Is that they had some true random number generators, and they had some people try to move the random generator such that instead of drawing a straight line, it would maybe go up or down.
What they found was...
What they found was some people could change the random number generator by their intentions.
What? What?
And others could not.
What would be the name of the people who could not author the reality?
Yes, NPCs.
So there actually now is a test to find out if you're an NPC. You can actually test for it.
You just put them on the random number generator and see if they can change it.
And if they can, they're just scenery.
And if they can, they're a player.
Now, have I ever told you that I can author reality?
And you thought to yourself, well, not literally.
Literally. Literally.
Yeah. That is my actual belief.
My actual belief, no reservations, is that reality...
At least whatever this reality is.
It might be bits.
But our reality is absolutely changed by our intentions.
The first person who told me that is worth many billions of dollars.
The first time I ever heard that.
It was Mark Benioff who founded Salesforce.
And I was asking him about the secret of his success or something like that.
One day I was just chatting with him before a speech I was giving for Salesforce.
And he told me that intention is the thing that drives everything.
And I remember hearing that, and he sounded smart, and he was obviously successful, and I could not process that.
For years, I could not process that.
I knew it sounded right, but I couldn't figure out how do you get from the intention to, like, what's the connecting tissue?
How does intention get into the real world except by actions, right?
So I thought that really what was missing is a system versus a goal, you know, a process.
How do you get the intention into the real world?
Well... Maybe you don't have to do it.
Maybe the intention just goes into the real world.
Because that's what this test would suggest.
That you actually change random outcomes by wanting them to change.
Now, can you reproduce this test?
I doubt it. It's a lot of fun to talk about.
But my guess is that if you tried to do this and reproduce it, I don't think so.
I would bet against it.
But my philosophy of life says that you could.
That it would be reproducible.
I just don't know in the real world if you could.
Just, this test is a blind study or it's just BS, right?
So somebody says, if it's not a blind study, it's BS. I'll accept that.
You thought physicists were still in disagreement?
Yeah, but I think the disagreement has more to do with the words they put on it.
They don't disagree on the formulas.
And the formulas suggest exactly what we see.
I mean, the experiments and formulas do suggest that human observation changes reality.
And now we have a test that seems to suggest it.
But, again, I'm going to put my skeptical hat on, and it was something without a source on social media.
What do you think of claims without sources on social media that are really big claims?
I wouldn't believe it.
I wouldn't believe it. Alright.
Isn't that exactly evidence of free will, if it is true?
No. Good question.
So the question is, would free will exist if we can change our reality by our intention?
And the answer is, in that example, your intention happened on its own.
The thing that would have free will would be the things outside of you, because they could go either way.
But it's your intention that moved it, so you also removed its free will.
Now, so I believe that no matter what happens inside you, it's just what happens.
I guess the edge case would be if you use your intention to change your opinion.
If you use your intention to change your opinion, or if you use your intention to give yourself free will, I don't know that it's logically possible.
There are things that are unpredictable, but that doesn't mean that they're free will.
They're just unpredictable.
Is a hole-in-one an example?
Well, a hole-in-one could just be chance.
How much pot did you smoke this morning?
Not nearly enough.
No, I didn't smoke any pot this morning.
This is my actual personality.
I know. Scary.
All right. Fate is succumbing to an internal vacuum of ideas.
You know, one of the most...
You want me to say something that will blow your mind forever?
I'm going to leave you with a thought that's just going to F you up.
You ready? Consciousness is just that friction you feel between what you expected to happen and what actually happens.
Now, that's the first part, and I've said that before.
And you could disagree or agree.
Now I'm going to prove it.
And my corollary to that, that the only way you experience consciousness is that if what you expect to happen is a little different than what happens, even just in small ways.
And then I'm going to take that to the next level.
If everything that happened happened just the way you expected it, your consciousness would flip off.
It would just turn off.
Do you know why? Because everything you expected would be just like you expected, and pretty soon you would stop seeing it.
It would disappear.
There's no friction.
There would be nothing to keep alive your consciousness.
Now, you're not sold yet, are you?
What is it that you do to go to sleep?
You lay completely still until what is happening to you, your body, is exactly what you expect to happen.
Wait, I'm laying completely still.
The way I feel now should feel exactly the way I feel in the next second.
The moment it's right, the moment it's true, the moment it's true that you're laying so still that your next moment will be identical to your current moment, that's when you fall asleep.
Because as soon as the next moment and the current moment are the same, you lose consciousness.
Because you can't maintain consciousness if what you expect is exactly what's happening.
And the only time you ever see that in your real life is when you're laying completely still and trying to go to sleep.
How about that? How about that?
Explain anesthesia.
Same thing. Anesthesia, as soon as you get it, it puts you in a case where your body doesn't move, and so your next moment on anesthesia will be just like your last moment.
And then you're asleep. Now, the drug to sleep part is, I think, a special case.
So I wouldn't go too far into that example.
But consciousness is nothing but the difference between what you expect and what happened.
And all you have to do is give the robot That sensation, which is easy, and it has consciousness.
The robot needs to know, I think if I take this step, I'll just move forward and everything will be fine.
Boop. True.
I think the temperature will be X. Well, it's this.
As long as the robot or AI is moving through the world and measuring the difference between what it expects and what it's recording, it would have consciousness.
That's it. It would have consciousness.
That's all it takes. You know, assuming you could process that difference.
You'd have to be able to process the difference.
And it's that processing that gives it the illusion of consciousness.
What is a seizure then?
I don't know. So, what do you think?
That going to sleep proves that consciousness is only the difference between what you expect and what happens.
You didn't expect that to be so good, did you?
No, you didn't. Well, that is going to get you thinking today.
