Episode 1840 Scott Adams: If Democrats Tell The Truth About Trump, It Makes Them Look Like Monsters
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Content:
The specificity of Sam Harris clarification
When Is anything justified to achieve your desired outcome?
Will Adobe Photoshop problem end my Dilbert career?
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams, the highlight of your day, probably the best thing that's ever happened to you.
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The dopamine the other day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called Simultaneous Sip.
Happens now. Go.
Ah. So far, so good.
What do you say? I think we're off to a great start.
And, uh, what do you think's happening, uh, With the midterms, so it looks like the latest is that, according to Rasmussen, the Republicans are up by five points, a generic Republican versus a generic Democrat, with 81 days to go.
Do you think that will narrow?
Do you think that will narrow?
I believe it will.
By the time we get to the election, there probably won't be much of a gap there at all, because everybody just retreats to their team.
Always does. Yeah, always does.
So, it turns out that DeSantis is not going to get away with his Stop Woke Act, which restricts colleges and universities from discussions of race and gender.
So, do you know what's wrong with restricting freedom of speech in colleges?
Now, why did nobody see this coming?
How can the government restrict free speech in college and get away with it?
They can't, apparently. Apparently, it's the most obvious thing you can't do.
So, while DeSantis had been on this long winning streak of doing the obvious right thing to do for his base in any situation, this feels like an error, doesn't it?
You're saying that colleges can.
Right, yeah, a private institution can, but the government can't tell a college what to do in terms of freedom of speech.
So there's no way that the government can get away with telling you what you can and cannot do, right, in terms of speech.
They can certainly change what they fund, if there's any funding element to it.
Well, we'll see what happens there, but it looks like colleges will get to say whatever they want.
Let's talk about the Sam Harris situation.
Again, because there's an update.
So, as you know, famous rational person, Sam Harris.
Some people think he destroyed his career by noting that he was happy that Hunter Biden's laptop was suppressed by the left As a conspiracy, basically.
And that it probably made a difference in the election, and he thought that that was fine because there had been similar laptop-related things.
Hillary's... What's...
Weiner's laptop was a factor in the first election with Trump versus Hillary.
And so Sam Harris was saying, well, if Trump lost because of a laptop thing...
But maybe he also won because of a laptop thing.
It's not the biggest thing in the world, and it's probably fair because, in Sam Harris' view, Trump is so dangerous that gaming the system a little bit was probably appropriate, specifically in terms of that laptop thing.
Now, of course, people got on him and said to him, does that mean that you would justify...
The election being rigged, which is the obvious next question, right?
And so he wanted to tell us that he did not think that.
So here's his full answer.
He said, there's a podcast clip.
Now, here's what you should listen for.
I want you to listen for the specificity of his answer.
It's a little too specific.
All right? But wait for it.
See if you catch it. So it's a multi-part tweet.
He said, there's a podcast clip circulating that seems to be confusing many people about my views on Trump, which is understandable because I wasn't speaking very clearly.
So, for what it's worth, here's what I was trying to say.
All right? So now I... I'm a proponent of forgetting what he said before if a clarification is being offered.
So forget about what he did say.
He's got 48 hours, according to my 48-hour rule that I've made up, to clarify.
And if he does try to clarify, you should just take the clarification.
Don't try to beat somebody up about what they said if they've already clarified, all right?
So I'm on board with him so far.
Let's look at the clarification and sort of ignore what he said before.
I like that as a standard, even if you think maybe it causes people to lie or backtrack or weasel or whatever.
But I think we should just keep that as a social standard.
If somebody clarifies, just take the clarification.
All right, so he goes on.
He said, I was essentially arguing for a principle of self-defense.
Interesting. So the idea here is that Trump is dangerous, and therefore our citizens would have a right of self-defense.
And then he goes on, where there's a continuum of proportionate force that is appropriate and necessary to use.
So again, I think he's going back to if the wiener laptop made a difference in one election, Maybe the Biden laptop makes a difference in the other direction, and those would be roughly equivalent.
I think that's the argument.
I've always viewed Trump as a very dangerous person to elect as president of a fake university, talking about Trump University, let alone the U.S. And when he became a sitting president who would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power, I viewed him as more dangerous still.
However, I've never been under any illusion that he is orange Hitler.
What? So here he's saying that he's not under the illusion that he's orange Hitler, which is interesting because when I talked to him on his show, he did make a Hitler analogy with Trump.
So I guess the Hitler analogies are not to be taken seriously.
Okay? So he doesn't compare Trump to Orange Hiller.
And then on the podcast, he goes on, I was speaking narrowly about the wisdom and propriety of ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop story until the election.
I've always thought that was a very hard call, ethically and journalistically.
But given what happened with the Anthony Weiner laptop in the previous election, I think it was probably the right call.
Now, here's the part you want to look for the specificity, all right?
Look what he says, and then what he doesn't say, right?
So watch for what he doesn't say.
This is the important part.
He goes on, Talking about 2020.
Or take other illegal measures to deny Trump the presidency.
Nor do I think they did that.
All right, so what he's saying is that he didn't mean to suggest that Democrats would have been right to commit fraud.
He didn't mean to suggest it.
Does that mean he doesn't think it?
Because that's different, right?
It's one thing to say I didn't mean to suggest it, which is an interesting way to say it.
How about I didn't mean to say it?
But, you know, what I do say is this.
If it was confusing, I change it.
But interesting, he didn't mean to suggest it doesn't really give his opinion about it, does it?
I didn't mean to suggest it is very different from that wasn't my opinion.
Am I wrong? I feel like when you say I didn't mean to suggest it, it means I didn't mean to say it.
It doesn't mean he doesn't think it.
And we don't know what he thinks, right?
I'm not putting a thought into his mind there with my imagination.
I'm just saying that he didn't specify that it wasn't his opinion.
He simply specified he didn't mean to suggest it.
Slightly different. You can imagine them being the same, or you can imagine that he meant them to be the same.
But they don't sound exactly the same, do they?
Sound a little different. And he says, nor do I think that they did that.
Now, whether he thinks they did that or not is irrelevant to whether they did that or not.
But... Didn't mean to suggest that it would have been right to commit election fraud or other illegal means.
Didn't mean to suggest it.
It feels like we still don't know if he thinks it would have been a good idea.
Like, why not tell us directly?
Because here's the thing.
If it's not a good idea to rig an election to keep Trump out of office, why isn't it?
Why isn't it a good idea?
If you believe what you say about his danger, it would definitely be a good idea.
I would do it. If I believed what they believe, I would rig the election.
Would you? Would you?
If you were keeping a monster out of the office, or yeah, I think he actually compared Trump to an asteroid barreling toward the Earth.
Because if you imagine, let's say you imagine from the left point of view, if climate change is going to destroy the world in some fashion, and you think Trump's going to make climate change worse, it's kind of like an asteroid coming toward Earth.
Alright, and somebody says that if you break the law, they'll do it to you.
What about that argument?
If you cheated on the election, they'll do it to you.
How does that deal with the fact that everybody who can get away with it does it already?
I mean, we live in a world where everybody who can get away with stuff does it.
It's just whether they think they can get away with it.
That's the only thing that limits people.
In the real world, that's it.
If they thought they could get away with it, pretty much everybody would do it.
Pretty much. Now, you think you're the exception.
Okay, I get it. You're the exception.
And people in your family are awesome.
No, people do what they can get away with.
That's the world you live in.
Now, getting away with it includes God watching you, right?
If you're a religious person, you believe God will judge you, so that might not be getting away with it.
In your own point of view, that would not be getting away with it, because you're being watched by God.
But if you didn't believe God was watching, and you didn't believe anybody else was watching, and you didn't think there was any chance of getting caught, you would all rig the election.
I know you think I'm wrong, but I'll give you my opinion.
It's just an opinion. I can't prove it.
So it's just my view of the world.
100% of the world would rig the election if they thought they were saving the world.
If they thought they were saving the world, 100% would rig the election.
If they thought they could get away with it, nobody was watching.
No God was watching.
Your conscience, well, your conscience, I guess you still have that.
Now, I accept that you don't agree with me.
I accept that you don't agree.
But I'm positive.
I'm positive in my opinion.
Very rarely am I this sure about an opinion, but I'm positive about this one.
Now, you could say there would be some exception, right?
You know, if you took a million people, yeah, you could get somebody to not do it, definitely.
But the ordinary person would save the world if there was no risk.
That's what I'm saying. Now, the ordinary person might not destroy the world for their own benefit.
That's true. I can see that they wouldn't destroy the world just to get a little extra gain.
Some would. Some wouldn't.
But everyone would break the rule to save the world if they thought that's what was happening.
Everybody would. The exceptions would be so rare that you wouldn't even discuss them.
It would be crazy people, stuff like that.
So I want to see if I can get somebody to say right here in the comments, under this scenario, that you wouldn't break the rule, because, you know, the rules are the rules, and we're a rules-based people, but you wouldn't break...
Tell me you wouldn't break the rule even if you thought it was the end of the world.
It's the end of the world unless you break the rule.
Would you break the rule? How many would break the rule to prevent the end of the world?
You would not. So there are people on here who would not break a rule made by humans that would let all the humans die.
You would let all the...
There are people actually saying that on the locals' platform.
Yeah. And people are confirming.
Yep. People are saying yes.
They would let the entire world die because following the rule is more important.
You're actually saying that, right?
I'm not misinterpreting you, right?
Yeah. Yeah, so there are actually a number of people who would destroy the world...
To protect themselves.
Because that's what that is.
Yeah, if what you're doing is not breaking the rule because you can't break the rule, that's really protecting yourself at the expense of the entire planet.
And there are people saying they would do that.
They would protect their own feeling about being a protector of rules.
More importantly, that all of the people who are alive, all 7 billion of them, Yeah.
Now, am I supposed to take you seriously?
How can I take that seriously?
Because you're either lying or you're so stupid that you wouldn't be able to log on and have an account.
I mean, are you lying?
Nobody would do that.
Unless you were like mentally ill or something.
Yeah. Now, Remember, my situation is that you know the world is going to be destroyed.
There's no question about it, and you would still do it.
Now, if you were uncertain whether you were right, that would make sense.
If you said, well, I don't know if Trump's, you know, the end of the world, but I worry about it, in that case, I wouldn't break a rule.
Would you? Suppose you just had a suspicion that things would go wrong with some candidate.
I wouldn't throw an election in that case.
I'm not even close. I'm talking about you're sure that this candidate is just going to destroy the world.
You're sure of it? In that case, sure.
I would break any rule there was.
All right. So the people who are saying that they would not break the rule, even at the risk of the entire planet, now I'm seeing the real thinking is being revealed here, they don't believe this setup.
So in other words, they rejected the hypothetical that there could ever be a case when there would be any danger because of who got elected.
If that's what you're saying, then you're not good at answering questions.
So that's the problem.
The reason that I ask hypotheticals is to force you to clarify your thinking.
If you refuse to clarify your thinking, that's a message too.
That says something.
All right. But here's the problem with the Sam Harris opinion.
And again, I guess I would be speculating and reading some minds a little bit here.
It's a little bit unfair, but it's hard to avoid.
How can you be honest in this situation?
And Sam Harris, I don't think he has the capability of just lying.
I think it's sort of beyond his framework.
Because, first of all, I don't think I've seen an example of it, ever.
I don't think he's even been accused of lying, has he?
Like ever? I mean, it's pretty amazing when there's a public figure that we can all sort of have some familiarity with, and as far as you know, that person has never tried to lie to you.
You could disagree with them all day long, but they haven't tried to lie to you.
So I don't think that Sam Harris is lying, do you?
There's no evidence of that.
But what do you do if your honest opinion is that somebody is so dangerous that bending some rules might make some sense, if that's his opinion?
You really couldn't express that, could you?
Because it would be so damaging.
Suppose you are a person who only tells the truth, and it's really important to your psychological makeup, your brand, your legacy.
It's just real important that you tell the truth all the time.
And I think Sam Harris is...
Probably the best example of that.
His entire being is wrapped around rationality and being honest.
So how does he deal with the fact that if he believes what he says about Trump, it does make perfect moral sense to rig an election?
But I think that it's so dangerous to say that because that gets taken out of context, of course.
Of course it would be taken out of context.
And of course it would be used as evidence that it was rigged when we don't have proof of that.
So wouldn't it be really dangerous for Sam Harris to be honest about the hypothetical?
That if you believe that Trump was as bad as he believes, and you have the ability to rig the election, then maybe it wouldn't be the dumbest thing in the world.
I don't think that they can say out loud what they're actually thinking.
Imagine having a point of view that you're afraid to say out loud.
It's common to all of us, I think.
But I think the problem is that they actually can't say their actual opinion.
Because it would be...
It would sound disgusting even to themselves when they said it out loud.
So if you have an opinion that you can't...
A political opinion that you can't express in public, that's a problem.
He's afraid of being cancelled.
Yeah, I suppose we all are.
But anyway, this is more interesting than any of the other people in the news, because you know, well, you don't know, but a strong assumption he's not lying.
So think about how interesting this is.
The reason he's such a good discussion case.
Not lying, not stupid, not under-informed.
When do you ever see that?
In all of politics, when do you ever see not lying, not stupid, and not misinformed?
And then he has a different opinion than I do.
Now, you don't know it, but I can know it of myself.
I'm not lying.
I think I'm smart enough to be in the conversation, and I think I'm well informed enough.
To be in the conversation, too.
So how do you explain, of course, this is me complimenting myself here, but how do you explain two people who are not lying, they're both smart, both well-informed, and have completely different views on Trump?
How do you explain that?
Well, the explanation I would give is that one of us is experiencing cognitive dissonance.
And then how do you tell which one it is?
Do you remember my trick for doing that?
What's the trick for seeing who has the cognitive dissonance?
The trick is if you can take the other side of the argument and give a full-throated argument for it to show that you understand it.
But if you can't do that, you're probably in some other kind of a mental situation.
Now, I believe I could take Sam Harris's argument and completely explain it.
I don't know if he could do that with mine.
Probably could, but I don't know it.
And that would be interesting, wouldn't it?
How would you like to see the two of us, you know, say, talk, split screen, and we just do that exercise, where I try to take his point of view and explain it as well as I can, and then he tries to take my point of view and explain it as well as he can.
Do you think we could do it?
Here's the interesting thing.
I'll bet we could. Probably could.
I don't think I've ever seen it before.
Actually, I've never seen it.
I've never seen anybody do that before.
It would be fascinating.
But I suspect also maybe we might think the other one hadn't quite nailed it.
You know, maybe left something out.
But we'd probably end up pretty close on that.
Alright, here's my theory. I think that, in my opinion, it looks obvious that he's experiencing cognitive dissonance.
To me, it looks obvious.
But it might look obvious to him that I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance.
And how would you know who's right?
You wouldn't, really, unless you do that exercise.
And we might both pass that as well.
So... Here's what I would say about that.
Before Trump was elected the first time, I think it was a reasonable fear that maybe he was as bad as the worst impressions, right?
You didn't know.
I didn't know. In the first election, it wasn't impossible that he could have turned into some kind of monster once he got in office.
It wasn't impossible. I didn't think it would happen.
But it wasn't impossible. So four years go by and it doesn't happen.
The one thing that many of us would disagree with Trump is how he handled the losing.
If handling the losing is the only major thing that justifies their opinion, I feel like that's clearly cognitive dissonance.
So here's the part that I would like to see Sam Harris respond to.
What would be his response to the fact that a Harvard study showed that two-thirds, at least two-thirds of the people who were at the protest believed that they were saving the Republic?
They honestly believed the election had been rigged, and not necessarily because Trump told them.
They felt that from the moment they saw the result.
It wasn't because Trump told them.
Everybody saw it. So how does he explain that two-thirds of the people there, genuinely, in their deepest feelings, felt something had gone wrong and they were there to fix it?
To actually repair the Republic, not to overthrow it, to repair it.
Why would two-thirds of the people there who believed they were there to repair the public, or more I think, why would you imagine that Trump was not one of those?
Because the majority opinion was that something was wrong and they need to fix it.
It was the minority opinion that nothing was wrong and we need to overthrow the country anyway.
Why would you imagine that Trump would be signing on to the dumbest of the opinion when the smartest one is just right there?
It's right there. People thought they were saving the republic.
How do you rule that out?
You can't. Now, today's livestream will be a little truncated.
Because my Dilbert career is in great jeopardy at the moment.
So I'm spending all my time trying to fix that.
Problem is, I've been drawing for...
I don't know, 15 years or something, on a Wacom tablet in Photoshop.
And I think Photoshop either changed how the program works, or there's some setting, or I've got a bug, I don't know.
But I can no longer paste something and then draw on top of it.
I mean, I can manipulate some things so I can get it done, but the manipulation would take too long.
I just couldn't use the tool if I had to do that.
So, I've published my problem on Twitter for everybody to give me advice.
What do you think happens when you ask for a technical advice?
Let me tell you. They will tell you to reboot, which I've already done.
They'll tell you to make sure you have the new version of the software, which I've already done.
They will also look at the screen that you give them, and they'll say, oh, your problem is that you have that icon pressed, even though the picture shows it's clearly not indicated.
So some will hallucinate that there's a lock that's set when it's not.
You can see it clearly. Others will tell you, Scott, why don't you Google it?
Now you could Google all day long.
You'll never find a technical solution by Googling.
Have you ever found a technical solution by Googling it?
I've tried.
I've tried about a billion times.
When you do it with consumer software, it might be different if you're programming.
You know, a developer probably does find answers.
But if you're just using a commercial piece of software, what happens when you look for your answer online?
It's all different versions.
What happened when I asked people, they sent me screenshots of exactly what menu I should select.
Do you think there's any chance that the screenshots that people sent me actually exist on my software?
Of course not. It's a different version that they solved.
It's either for Windows or it's an old one or something.
Then somebody will say, well, have you tried the Framajan blah blah menu?
And I'll say, I would try that if it existed.
But mine does not have a Framigen menu.
I don't know what you're looking at.
So basically, all of your technical help is going to be read the manual, what doesn't help, Google it that doesn't help, reboot that doesn't help, update the software that doesn't help.
And then there's always this one bastard.
There's always one bastard who says the only thing you can do is delete all of your software and reload it.
I'm not going to do that.
I will sell my computer before I do that.
Because you know it's just going to be problems.
So the problem is that when I paste a layer, I can't draw on the layer unless I send it to background.
And I didn't ever have to send it to background before.
You should be able to write on the layer you just pasted.
That's just basic. Yeah, so if I have to change to a new software, there's going to be a big learning curve.
I've got a deadline I'm up against.
So here's the problem.
I don't know that I can solve this problem before my deadline.
And I don't know that it's solvable.
Because the solution might be to stop using Photoshop and use something else.
Now, some people said, why don't you contact Adobe Technical Support?
I would never even try.
I'd never even try. Do you think there's any chance that's going to work?
Yeah, it's not a Wacom problem.
It's definitely not a Wacom problem.
It's definitely a Photoshop problem.
No, it's not going to work.
Have you ever tried to get technical support on the phone?
That's not a thing. No, you'll just be sent through the phone trees and then it'll disconnect and then you get somebody who started yesterday.
Yeah, and it would take me probably two hours even to find a contact number.
I mean, I'd Google it, it'd be the wrong number.
I'd try this, they'd tell me that I've got to use the other number.
Yeah, customer service isn't really a thing that happens anymore.
So there's not really any customer service from a tech company.
Right? I mean, you could try, but it's just going to be a waste of half a day sitting on hold and then getting nothing.
What would Dilbert do?
I don't know, but I know what Dogbert would do.
Dogbert would make it a huge public problem.
So the Adobe has to fix it for me.
Because it's probably...
Here's what I think. I think they did it intentionally.
I think it's an intentional change to the software.
I think. I don't think it's a bug.
I think it's intentional.
Now, it could be that somebody requested it because there's some advantage about the way they're doing it.
So I think somebody benefits from this change, but it makes it useless to me.
Like, it would make my job so hard.
I don't know if I could even bother doing it with the software anyway.
Yeah, you can't really reinstall the old version because it's a subscription service.
Yeah, you...
If I tried to do that, it would take longer than I have.
So I'm either going to have to miss my deadline or a miracle has to happen.
Brush mode behind.
The culprit is brush mode and behind.
Well, I don't know what that means.
So most of the people would give me...
All right, so here's a good example.
The culprit is brush mode and behind.
What do I do with that? I don't know what to do with that.
Those are just words. Brush mode and behind.
What's that mean? I know the layer needs to be moved, but I don't want to move the layer.
That's the problem. It's a consumer version.
Right-click? I don't have a right-click.
I'm on a Mac. But most of your advice is going to be for a Windows.
That's the problem. Compress layers and draw.
No, it doesn't work. Even compressing, even flattening the layers, you can't draw on it.
Yeah. No, there's lots of things I can do to hack it.
But it doesn't just work.
It needs to work.
You can't debug it, pick up the pen, draw, debug it, pick up the pen.
Closer to drawing or you can't even use it.
Reset the flux capacitor?
I need to do that. Yeah.
So what happened was when I paste a layer, I can't draw on the new layer, and there's no reason for that that I can see.
And don't say that I got something locked because nothing's locked.
Okay, now you're getting closer.
Now you're saying a two-finger click on the trackpad.
That I can do.
But when you tell me Windows commands for my Mac, I don't know what to do with that.
Procreate saves a project.
No, I've saved it and reopened it.
I've done all the obvious stuff.
Make a backup of the...
I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to erase my whole hard disk and reinstall all my software for this one bug, which is not a bug.
I don't believe it's a bug.
That's the problem. If you think it's a bug, That's a whole different problem.
This appears to be a software change, which maybe I can unchange with some kind of a setting, but I don't know where it would be.
Let me fix it.
Scott is waking up.
Now, the problem with this is that I'll get so many suggestions that I won't know which ones are right, and I could pour through the wrong ones all day long.
I don't think there's any kid that could solve this, honestly.
I think that maybe Adobe just made a change and there's nothing I can do about it.
Release notes? Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
Previous version? I don't have access to a previous version.
It's a subscription. Stop answering if you're not an artist.
Alright. Google, how to revert to previous software versions?
No, I'm not going to revert to a previous software version.
I'm never going to do that.
I'm going to fix it with this version or some future one, but I'm not going to revert.
I'm not going to revert to any...
because that's just asking for a whole bunch of new problems.
All right.
Let me bail out.
So there's nothing else I can do today except work on this one problem until it's fixed.
So that will be all I'm going to do until that's fixed.
I don't have an option. So I'm going to go do that.
