Episode 1843 Scott Adams: Being Bad At Data Analysis Is No Reason To Be Mad At Me. And More Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
TikTok to help American voters in midterm elections!
Beating allegations against Andrew Tate
Yuri Bezmenov on Soviet brainwashing Americans
President Reagan's 1st press conference in 1981
Excess vaccination deaths?
President Reagan, power and empathy
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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You woke up this morning and you said to yourself, I think I'll do something amazing today.
And then you did. You showed up here.
Just in time.
Unless you're watching this on a recorded replay, in which case you're just as awesome but a little bit delayed.
How would you like to take it up to a higher level yet?
Highest level of awareness possible?
Yeah. Let's max it out.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, sysdine, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it's happening now.
Get ready, everybody go!
You know, you'll always remember where you were when you took the first simultaneous sip.
Probably right where you are right now, in most cases.
But you won't forget that, will you?
So, yesterday was an interesting day for me, as my days often are.
And it was interesting because I heard from a couple of different people that I'd said something or done something that had an impact on their lives.
And I saw two people in particular believe that videos that I've produced have cured mental health problems.
And it was real people saying their stories.
And I thought...
How many people have had that experience?
Is it more than two?
Because the videos were created for that purpose, but I don't have a direct way to get feedback.
How many of you in the comments feel that something I produced or said, a video usually, fixed a mental health issue for you or somebody close to you?
Oh my goodness.
Oh. That's a lot of yeses.
Is this real?
Over on the Locals platform, they see different videos than you do on YouTube.
So they see what I call my micro lessons.
Now, the micro lessons are designed to reframe and reprogram people.
And I'm seeing a wall of yeses.
Now, are you answering the right question?
The question was specifically...
A mental health problem.
It's a wall of yeses.
I was not expecting that.
Oh, my God.
Something's happening. I'm going to just turn the screens toward each other.
You have to see this. YouTube, you've got to see this.
I'm not making this up.
Look at the comments.
I'm going to ask you again.
How many people...
Feel that I helped them cure or reduce a mental health problem with a video that I created.
Can you see that?
I wasn't expecting that at all.
Holy shit. What is going on here?
Good lord.
I don't know. My head is exploding.
I don't even know what to make of this.
I'm a little bit stunned.
I'm way stunned.
Here's what I expected. I thought I'd get two or three people.
I didn't expect I'd see a wall of yes.
Wow. All right, well, there was a specific video that people were talking about.
Was it one, what was the number on it?
I wrote it down and now I can't find it.
Anyway, if you check my Twitter feed last...
791? Yeah, so my video labeled 791, if you're looking for it.
791. I think that's right.
That sounds right. So that was the one that cured people's mental health problems.
Now, if you're new to my livestream, I'm a trained hypnotist, and I'm writing a book right now on how to do that.
But apparently that book's going to be more important than I thought.
So what the book would try to do is capture all of the reframes that people seem to have responded to.
And I guess whatever it was that fixed all these people's mental health problems, it was a reframe, but I don't know which one it was, so I'm going to have to go figure it out myself.
Was there a specific reframe that I used, or was it more the totality of it?
Was it like one specific sentence?
Because usually it is. It's like one sentence that switches your brain.
The addiction reframe.
Systems. It's different stuff.
Okay. So I guess I don't know exactly what it was.
We'll figure that out. TikTok has announced that it's going to be helping people with elections in the United States.
Now, that's good news, isn't it?
So a Chinese-owned company is going to help American voters make decisions on who to vote for.
That's actually happening.
A Chinese-owned company has announced that it has a whole variety of things it's going to be doing to help American voters make the right decisions and not be fooled by fake news.
What could go wrong?
What could go wrong When you have the Chinese government in charge of deciding what American voters will see before they make a decision.
I see no problem with that whatsoever.
Do you? So helpful.
So helpful. So one of the questions I'm wondering is, do you think the TikTok algorithms will show people a lot of news on the topic of China sending fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels to kill 100,000 Americans again this year?
If you had to guess, do you think the TikTok algorithm will give you a lot of that?
A lot of news about the Uyghurs?
How many TikToks about the Uyghurs are we going to see?
A lot of them? Because they want to give you the facts, right?
Give you the facts, just straight facts.
How in the world is this legal?
Now, I understand that the data is going to be stored at some Oracle American facility.
But that's just the data.
That's just the data.
What about the algorithm?
The algorithm is the one that's programming people, not the data.
If the thing you're worried about is China has my data, they were going to get your data anyway, probably.
I'm not sure if the data is the big thing.
I mean, I'd be worried about it.
I wouldn't want them to have my data.
But isn't the algorithm the big thing?
If they still control the algorithm, they decide what we see and how often we see it.
That is all it takes to program your brain.
What do you see and how often do you see it?
Nothing else. That's it.
And they have complete control of that.
And we're letting that happen.
Oh yeah, that's okay.
Do they let that happen to them?
Does China let their citizens get programmed by American media companies?
I don't believe they do.
I don't believe they do.
Do you know why? Because they're smart.
Do you know why we do allow our foreign adversaries to reprogram the minds of our own children?
Because we're dumb. I guess we're dumb.
Or we're already controlled by China, or something.
But If Trump is going to run for re-election, banning TikTok needs to be right up there at the top of his list because it's sort of like the wall.
It's easy for everybody to understand.
And it's right.
If it's easy to understand and it's unambiguously right for America, that's just like a classic Trump campaign thing, right?
It's simple and it's obvious.
And we're not doing it.
You can't get a better campaign topic than that.
Alright, how many of you have followed the story of Andrew Taint and And I know some of you think that I'm pronouncing it with an N, but that's just a Yanni and Laurel thing.
You hear it that way because I primed you.
But I'm actually saying T-A-T-E. So if it sounds like taint to you, that's probably just a psychological phenomenon that's happening on your end.
But I heard there was this video of him allegedly beating up a girl.
Have you heard that?
There's a video of him, allegedly, beating up a girl.
So I said to myself, well, I'm going to have to see that to find out how evil is this guy.
And I first watched it with the sound off, and then I listened to it with the sound on.
And that was an interesting experiment.
When I listened with the sound off, I said to myself, why is everybody so concerned about this?
It looks like consensual sex to me.
There was hair pulling, there was spanking, but there wasn't much in terms of resistance.
It looked like two people who had probably negotiated, probably negotiated what was in and what was out, and it looked like they were just doing their little kinky fun.
Now that was with the sound off.
And then you turn the sound on.
You turn the sound on and it just sounds really frightening.
And I say to myself, was any of that manipulated?
Because even if you heard the same sound but you heard it sort of muffled, I don't think it would have sounded the same.
There was something about the loudness of the sound compared to the video.
For example, there was a part at the beginning where it looks like he slapped her in the face.
When you see it with no sound on, it looks like it probably was more like a, you know, within the context of negotiated kinky play, more of a get your attention, not intended to hurt.
So without sound, it looked like this was a slap.
Hey, sort of like that.
Now, I'm not defending or condemning, right?
So I'm not giving you any opinion on what's happening.
I'm just describing it. So if you hear it without the sound, it looks like something that easily could have been within the realm that two people negotiated.
I don't know if they did, so I don't know what the woman said afterwards.
By the way, has anybody heard from the woman?
Did the woman say afterwards that she was within the realm of things she had negotiated, or was she not?
I don't know. But when you hear the sound, it's frightening, because the sound of the slap Goes from something that I would have imagined would not have even made a sound.
Because remember, he was an MMA fighter.
If he wanted to hurt her, it wouldn't have looked anything like that.
If his intention had been to hurt her, the visual would have looked a lot different, I think.
I think. Now, I'm not defending him, right?
I want to be really clear, because I don't know what was the situation.
I don't have information.
But I will say that when you hear it without sound, it looks consensual, or it looks like it could be.
You don't know for sure, but it looks like it could easily be within the realm of two people doing something that maybe you don't do, but maybe other people do.
Let me ask you this in the comments.
Have any of you ever been involved in sex play in which there was hair pulling, light slapping, and spanking, and the other person who was a recipient of such clearly enjoyed it?
So as expected, there's a combination of hell no and yes.
Lots of yeses and lots of noes.
Now, what would you conclude?
If you're one of the no's, if you're one of the people who said no, what would you conclude about the people who said yes?
Are they all people who sexually abuse people and are not aware of it?
Maybe the woman didn't like it as much, or it could have been either way.
It didn't have to be the woman. Do you imagine that women don't enjoy this kind of play?
Sometimes. Some women in some situations with some men.
See, the trouble is that what you see visually is well within the realm of what I would consider fairly routine sexual practices that are not exactly in the middle mainstream, but they're not too far out.
But as soon as you hear the audio, it turns into an assault.
And so the question I would ask, is there anything about that audio that's been manipulated?
And I would look for specifically the sound of the slap.
Because remember, the two people were not mic'd.
There was no microphone.
But the sound of the slap is really loud, and yet it doesn't exactly match what you see on the video.
It looks like there might have been a little video, audio trickery going on, but I don't know.
Anyway, so let me say again, I'm not defending him because I don't like him.
So if there's one thing you can be sure of, I'm not going to defend him, right, because he's a nemesis.
But just be aware that the days of if you saw it on video, it's true, are long gone.
It does not mean it's true if you saw it with your own eyes on video.
If you heard it with your own ears on video, it doesn't mean it happened.
It really doesn't. That used to mean something.
It doesn't mean anything anymore.
In fact, I would argue that the more famous it is, the fact that it's on video, the less likely it's true.
So just be careful about that.
So I'm not going to defend him.
I'm just going to say, be careful about what you believe.
Alright, and I think I would want to hear what the woman said about it afterwards.
I'd probably base my decision on that.
I haven't seen that. I had a friend who I talked to yesterday who made me laugh for a long time because he escaped the scenery.
And it's funny when somebody does it.
And here's what I mean. He stopped using social media except for an obscure hobby he has.
So he follows one hobby, but that's it.
And the reason he described...
Actually, I do have his actual words.
I'm going to give you his actual words.
For describing what he was experiencing.
And what I heard when I saw his words was, it sounded like somebody who had just achieved a higher level of awareness and was trying to deal with it.
All right.
I've got to read the exact words.
Oh, damn it.
I'm not going to be fine.
But the idea was that once he noticed that everybody was playing a part, like a character, he couldn't debate politics anymore because he wasn't really debating the topic.
He was in a play with characters.
So there would be one character who would be the American flag-wearing American guy, And there'd be another character who'd be the left-leaning, I'm so left person.
And then the third one is what made me laugh.
He goes, and then there's always a coach, some kind of coach for whatever the fuck.
And I just lost it.
I thought, oh my God.
There is always the American flag guy.
There's always the leftist crazy guy.
And there's always a coach.
There's always a coach.
And it's always a coach for whatever the fuck.
And I thought, why is there always a coach?
There is always a coach.
Am I wrong? And when I heard that, I just thought, oh my God.
It is so obviously...
It's just like Civil War recreations.
You know how the people dress in Civil War outfits and they go do the fake battles to recreate the battles?
That's all social media is now.
It's people literally taking and putting on a costume and going to do symbolic battle.
They don't know what the real date is and they don't care.
And one of them is always a coach.
And I thought, no, this is exactly like Halloween.
Politics has just become Halloween.
So what happens a few weeks before actual Halloween?
People start talking about what costume they're going to wear.
And what costume do people pick?
Well, they do it for a variety of reasons, but often, often people will pick a costume that's sort of how they're feeling.
Like, oh, on the inside, I feel like a devil.
I'm going to be a devil. Or, I feel like livestock because I'm in my cubicle all day.
I'm going to dress as a cow.
So, at some level, the Halloween costume you pick is a sort of a lifestyle decision of who you want to pretend to be.
And I think that's what politics have become.
Because we definitely don't have the data to use data to make decisions.
It's all sketchy data.
And we definitely don't have the logic skills.
But everybody knows how to act.
Everybody knows how to pretend.
So instead of debates, it's now just pretending.
And if you understand people's reactions as pretending to play a role, everything makes sense.
If you imagine that they're trying to be logical and failing, it's just really frustrating.
Because you'll be like, why?
Why is your logic failing?
Why? Or is it me?
You always have that question. And the answer is, nobody's even pretending to use logic.
They're just dressing up. It would be like asking, why are you dressing like a devil on Halloween when you know you're not really a devil?
That's not really the right question, is it?
Why are you dressing like a devil when you're not really one?
It's exactly the same with politics.
Why are you arguing that case when you know that doesn't make sense, right?
It is compatible with the costume you're wearing, but you know it doesn't make sense, right?
You do know that. That's what it feels like.
Once he described the situation that way, I couldn't see it another way.
It just feels like people wearing costumes.
All right. So watch for the coach of whatever the fuck.
How many of you have seen the video, there's a black and white video from long ago, maybe the 60s, in which a Russian, an ex-Russian spy, allegedly, Who defected from the Soviet Union, I guess a Soviet spy, was explaining the Soviet Union secret plan to brainwash their enemies, like Americans, into accepting socialism that would destroy America from inside.
You've all seen that, right?
I can't tell you how many people have sent that to me.
Yeah, what's his name?
Yeah, blah, blah, blah.
How many of you think Yuri Bezmenov, it wasn't black and white, it was just shitty video, Yuri Bezmenov, right?
How many of you think that he was a credible person telling you something useful?
Did you believe what he was saying?
Sounded pretty good, didn't it?
Sounded pretty credible. It's complete bullshit.
It's absolute bullshit.
Now, I hadn't watched the whole thing before I'd seen clips, and I imagined it was bullshit from the clips, so I'd never bothered to spend any time listening.
So I listened to an extended explanation.
It's really obvious that it's bullshit.
It's really obvious. Now, I'll tell you why, and maybe it'll be obvious after I tell you.
Number one on your detecting bullshit checklist.
What is number one on the checklist?
If something's a hoax or a prank, Let's say it's intentionally wrong.
What's the first thing you look for?
Two on the nose. Exactly.
Two on the nose. What is it that Americans are afraid of?
That those darn communists are trying to infiltrate the brains of our children.
Ever since the 60s, we've been afraid of that.
And there he is.
Just the way you'd expect.
The exact person telling you that behind the scenes, that's exactly what the bad guys are doing.
They're reprogramming your children!
Your children! So, it's a little on the nose, isn't it?
Now, that doesn't mean they don't want to reprogram your children, because I was just talking about TikTok, as somebody said.
But here's the difference.
TikTok can reprogram your children in an hour.
In an hour. TikTok can change your children's opinions in an hour.
Do you know how long the Soviets were willing to wait?
15 to 50 years.
Because that's how long, they said, it takes to educate the next generation of kids to believe in all this socialism.
Well, have I ever told you the trick about doing something random and then claiming credit when things go your way?
For example, when Biden said he was going to release the national oil reserves to increase the supply of oil and therefore decrease the price, what did all of the experts say?
They said, but there's so little of that oil that even if you released all of it, which would put us at some risk because we wouldn't have the reserve then, even if you used all of it, it wouldn't change the volume enough to change the price much.
But what did Biden know?
Well, he knew that if prices went up, he could say it would have been worse.
Right? Would have been worse.
And he knew that if prices went down, which in the long run, of course, they were going to go down, that he could claim credit.
So if you know something's going to change anyway, you know business will go up and you know business will go down, you do what all Dilbert managers do.
You change something, you change something, and then claim credit.
So, do you think that the Russians were, or the Soviets, or maybe just this one guy, Yuri, do you think that it was clever for him to say, oh yes, the reason that people are asking for more socialism is because we've been hypnotizing them for decades?
Do you know what causes people to ask for more socialism?
A good economy.
That's what does it. It was going to happen anyway.
Socialism was coming, no matter what the Soviets did.
Because if you've got a bunch of rich people, and they're living the good life, and they're living right next to people who do not have a good life, what are the people who don't have a good life going to do?
They're going to say, I have a good reason you should give me some of your stuff.
And what would be the good reason?
Socialism. It was going to happen on its own.
And it happened everywhere. Is there a country somewhere that had a good economy and the poor people weren't asking to get a bigger share?
That happened nowhere.
So the first part where the socialism is embedded into our schools to make everybody socialist, I feel like that was just going to happen on its own.
And he's sort of taking credit for something that's a normal trend.
Then what about the demoralizing part?
That once we don't trust anything, we get all demoralized.
Do you think we're more demoralized than we've ever been?
Not really. The only thing we've done is woken up to the fact that our news was probably always fake.
Did we come out behind by learning that our news was always fake?
Because when this guy, Yuri, was talking, this was in a time when the CIA was hypnotizing the citizens, and you didn't know it.
The CIA was actively managing movies and TV to hypnotize the public to get some result that the government wanted.
Was that good? Are you better off now Knowing that the Soviets are trying to influence you.
Not Soviets, the Russians.
And the Chinese. And also knowing that your own government is trying to influence you.
I'd say we're ahead. How did we come out behind?
To me, we're way ahead.
Because now we understand that we were being hypnotized way back then.
And not only by opponents, but by our own government.
And quite intentionally and quite aggressively.
So... I feel like Yuri was more of an opportunist.
Was he selling a book, by the way?
Does anybody know was he selling a book at the time?
Because if he wasn't selling a book, I would worry that he was still working for the Soviet Union.
And if he wasn't selling a book, it means that he probably was not so much an ex-spy, if you know what I mean.
He might have been a current spy.
He was a professor.
Okay. But people are always selling a book.
I don't know. So I would say I wouldn't trust anything about him because his explanations were academic and generic and they really described things that were going to happen anyway for different reasons.
and his two-on-the-nose part is a big flag.
Yes, I am selling several books.
Yes.
Does that make me less credible, because I'm selling books?
It would depend on the book you're selling, doesn't it?
But anyway, the beauty of my books are the funny ones, you can either laugh or not laugh, and that's all they're trying to do.
And the ones that are self-help, you can look at the people who already tried them, and you can see what their outcome was.
So you don't really have to depend on me for credibility.
Yesterday I came upon, just by accident, the first Ronald Reagan press conference from 1981.
And I tweeted it around.
It's really interesting.
If you look at Reagan's first press conference, Check his, let's say, his skill level, his communication ability, and compare it to Biden and Trump.
It's really interesting.
And I'll tell you what my impression was, and I think yours might be different, right?
Because we're all going to have a subjective impression.
But my first impression was, my goodness, this guy is good.
Wow. I mean, I remembered him as being good, but he was really good.
Like his charisma and his control of the stage and how he kept the conversation at a high level, like he didn't get in the weeds, he kept everything at a higher level, was masterful.
He was great.
But, here's a big but.
When he started taking questions about all different things, because it seemed like in those days they would ask you more obscure questions, somebody would stand up and say, Mr.
President, the Native American reservations have spotted eagles that are being destroyed by the tractors.
What are you going to do about it?
And it would be some topic that the president has never even heard of, and then they have to respond to it.
Now, it seems like they used to ask that kind of question all the time, and it was really good for seeing what the president would deal, how he would deal with, he or she would deal with a question that was tricky.
And I don't think they asked questions like that anymore.
But Reagan was actually a little bit stumped.
Because there were things he had made no decisions on, didn't have a thought on, and he kept having to say, well, we've just been here nine days.
We've been working on this big legislation.
When I'm done with that, we'll be able to look at some other things, but I don't have anything to tell you about that now.
Now, I do think there's a way to say that confidently and in a way that makes the country say, oh, okay, I get it.
That's coming up.
You haven't done it yet. But he did seem a little bit scared and lost during the questions where he didn't have a prepared answer.
So what I saw is that where he had prepared answers, like a good actor, he could deliver his lines and he would wow you.
I mean, his presentation was really spectacular.
But when he didn't have prepared lines, he did look a little lost.
He did look a little lost.
And I thought you could actually detect...
Maybe the beginnings of some lack of capability, but that's probably my imagination.
Because we know that, you know, toward the end of his term, there were more questions about his mental capability.
But if you look at it through today's lens and compare it to Trump's performance and to Biden's, it's really, really interesting if you have any historical curiosity.
All right. You know, it's funny we keep redefining terms.
And my critics are funny.
So here are some things that my critics have told me in the last 24 hours.
That if you got the jab, you were taking a dangerous experimental drug.
That's one thing they said.
And that people who voluntarily take a dangerous experimental drug are called cowards.
So the people who do something that's dangerous, and they volunteer to do it, are called cowards.
This is different than how I used to use that word.
I used to think that people who volunteered to do something that was dangerous would be called brave.
But no, they're called cowards.
And I also learned that staying home is called freedom.
It's called freedom.
But getting a vaccination so you can travel the world is a form of slavery.
Because you're doing what other people want you to do, which is get the shot.
So while I was in Bora Bora and Santorini, and my critics were in their basements staying home because they couldn't travel, they were experiencing something called freedom while I was suffering in a five-star resort with my lack of freedom.
And that's what I learned this week.
So here's my takeaway on that.
I don't know what is the best take on anything, necessarily.
But I'll tell you what the lowest, worst take is.
Here's the worst take.
That there was somebody during the pandemic who was operating on fear, and there was somebody who was not.
Nothing like that happened.
You were either afraid of the shot, or you were afraid of not getting the shot.
By which they could make a good decision.
So it was fear and guessing.
So you used whatever you were most afraid of and then you rationalized it.
That's all that happened.
There was nobody brave.
Every single person made a fear-based decision.
Were you afraid of the government?
Afraid of losing your job?
Were you afraid of not being able to travel?
Were you afraid of being alone?
You're afraid of something.
So to imagine that some group were afraid and cowards and some group were not is really the lowest level of understanding.
It's not even a logic problem.
It's like a low level of understanding what a human is.
That's like a complete misunderstanding of how a brain works, how people operate in the real world.
We're basically just afraid of stuff and then rationalizing our choices after the fact.
That's pretty much all we do.
We're afraid of stuff and then we come up with reasons why it makes sense.
That's it. And if you think we're a reason-based species and that some of us are brave and some of us are not, nothing like that's happening.
You're just going to be confused if you go through life thinking that's what your reality looks like.
All right. And then, because I can't talk about a story without becoming part of it, I was asking on Twitter, because I keep seeing graphs showing there's all these excess deaths after the pandemic.
Have you seen those on the internet?
A graph that's showing we expect this many deaths in a normal situation, but it seems like everywhere they're higher, pretty much globally.
Wherever you can determine it, they're higher.
Now, let's do a bias check.
If you believe that the data is correct, What is the most reasonable hypothesis for why they're higher?
Go. So here you're going to be just giving me the most...
We don't know because nobody's saying they know.
So could we agree that nobody knows?
But what is the most reasonable hypothesis for why they would be higher?
Somebody thinks it has to do with how the financial incentives work.
Okay. People who died with COVID instead of because of...
I don't know if that fits into excess deaths.
The data could be wrong, right?
What about the odds that the data is just wrong?
Some are saying the most obvious is the lockdown.
Some are saying the most obvious is the delay of health care.
Some are saying it's obesity.
People got fatter and less active.
What about increase in depression?
Depression, there's a hypothesis.
So, here's what I think is how to identify the worst take.
The worst take would be it's one of those things, no matter which one you picked.
I think that's the worst take.
Because people did get fatter.
And there's no question that made a difference.
People did delay care.
There's no question that delayed.
The vaccinations themselves may have had, don't know this, but may have had more complications than a normal vaccination, which doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea.
It just means there might have been more complications.
So there are lots of reasons.
It's probably five different reasons.
But let's rank them.
Let's rank them in order.
Let's give me a 1 to 10 on this.
So 10 means that this would be a really important variable, and 1 means it's not much of a variable.
What are the odds, because we don't know, what are the odds that the data is just misleading?
Scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that the data is just misleading?
I'm saying 8 or 10, right?
There's a very high chance of it.
Very high chance. But if I told you the data everywhere is consistent, so the way we collect data in the US is different than how they do it in the UK, but all the people collecting data are finding the same thing, I think.
I think that's true. So now if I told you no matter how you collect the data, it doesn't matter how you do it, You end up with the same general direction, that there are excess deaths.
Would that tell you that maybe it's not a data problem?
If I told you that everybody, no matter how they collect it, gets the same answer, does that tell you maybe not data?
So am I lowering your percentage on that one?
Yeah, it still could be the data because it could be everybody.
That's totally possible.
All right, how about the next one? The next one is that the elites, whoever they are, whoever controls the pharma companies or whoever the pharma companies control, that there's some elite group who is intentionally hypnotizing you not to notice the excess deaths.
So under this hypothesis, which I don't believe, The vaccinations themselves are causing the excess deaths, and that fact is being hidden from you by all the elites.
Give me the odds on that.
The odds that it's the vaccinations themselves, and the truth is being hidden by the elites.
Give me your odds. I'm seeing everything from 2% to 100%.
Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know the odds on that one.
So... How about the odds that it is delayed care?
Now, doctors say the problem is probably delayed care because the types of problems they're seeing people die of are the ones that need constant care.
So it turns out there's a pretty strong correlation, at least anecdotally.
I don't believe there's any randomized controlled trial.
But anecdotally, doctors are saying the people we're seeing dying Seem to be the ones that could have used treatment, like diabetes and cancer, I think, were the two examples.
They're two that you really need to stay on top of them to reduce the death rate.
Now, suppose that's true, and I don't know that that's been proven.
Suppose it's true that it's obvious that the people dying are the ones who didn't get continuous care because of the pandemic.
That would be pretty convincing, but I don't trust the data yet.
So here's how, once again, I become part of the story.
I'd forgotten temporarily that Alex Berenson is back on Twitter.
So somebody tweeted that I should have a conversation with him, and he saw that, and he weighed in, and he...
and his...
His statement is this on Twitter.
He said, but yes, the excess deaths are real.
So he's confirming that the excess deaths are real.
And I think I believe that.
So, so far, I am tentatively believing there are excess deaths just because so many people are seeing it in so many places.
So, so far, we're on the same page.
There probably are excess deaths.
But he says it's happening in all or nearly all of the mRNA vaccinated countries.
That part I don't have data on and don't believe.
So I believe that there were so many mRNA countries that unless all of them are experiencing this, the fact that nearly all of them are experiencing it would tell me that's not the problem.
If all of them were, I'd say, oh, there's a problem.
But if not all of them, and only nearly all of them, then I'd say, hmm, maybe it just means that a lot of countries who can collect data can also have lots of vaccines.
So it seems like there's a correlation between are you a country that even could get the mRNA vaccination?
And if you are, you know, what does that say about you two?
All right. So what do you think?
Do you think the shots are the most obvious?
So Alex Berenson says it's the most obvious explanation.
Is it the most obvious?
Because I would think most obvious is what the doctors say.
The actual doctors who are treating people are saying the most obvious explanation is delayed treatment.
But why is Alex Berenson looking at the same data and saying the most obvious explanation is one that agrees with something he said before we had the data?
Well, one of them is being consistent with prior statements.
If you were looking for a cognitive dissonance, which I don't see here yet, by the way, so there's not a signal for it?
Well, maybe there is.
Do you think this is a signal?
If doctors are the ones saying the most obvious thing is delayed treatment, why would somebody who's not a doctor say the most obvious thing is the shots themselves, when the doctors are not saying that that's the most obvious thing?
What is the definition of obvious?
I would think if doctors don't see it, but a non-doctor does, it doesn't qualify as obvious.
It doesn't mean Alex Berenson is wrong.
He could be the one that's right and the doctors could be wrong.
But I think obvious is a word that doesn't fit, does it?
Yeah. So you could say that the word obvious is a tell for something out of the ordinary here.
But I don't think you can conclude that he is wrong based on anything that we know now.
Now, here's some other data.
There was a VA study Which looked at only veterans and only unvaccinated ones.
And it found that long COVID causes all kinds of problems, especially heart disease later.
So if we know that long COVID causes people to die later, It could just be that.
So if you took the delay in treatment and you added it to the fact that long COVID itself might cause you to have a heart problem down the road, and this is down the road, so the VA found that you could have these problems months down the road.
So we're only months out of the pandemic itself, so this is exactly when we would see COVID, long COVID problems killing people at higher rates.
Exactly now. Anyway, I would say that the most obvious ones would be the COVID itself, the delay in care, the increase in weight.
You have to question whether the date is right.
And then you can't rule out the vaccination, can you?
And alcohol, yeah, drug abuse, exactly.
Drug abuse would certainly be in there as an obvious choice, too.
But what I worry about is that the people who were anti-vax from the beginning, they need to be right.
If you were anti-vax from the beginning, you need the excess deaths to be high and unexplained.
You need that.
So the only way the anti-vaxxers can be right is if the excess deaths are from the vaccination.
So I would worry that cognitive dissonance or confirmation bias are kicking in.
But everybody is...
I think we're all subject to it now, right?
Wouldn't you say it's a true statement that every one of us now is deeply in the grip of confirmation bias?
Because whatever you thought was true, you have found a reason to believe it's true based on data.
I can do it.
You don't think that Alex Berenson could do what I'm going to do right now?
I could easily tell you that everything I predicted came true, because I have.
There were some that didn't.
But most of the things I could argue came true, and here's my data.
But people who said the opposite, the very opposite of what I predicted, also say they were right, and here's my data.
We both have data.
It turns out the data is useless.
It turns out the data is completely useless.
All right. That turns out to be the bulk of what I wanted to talk about.
Yes, no mandates.
No mandates. Was there a topic I missed?
Is there anything that I should have talked about that I didn't?
I feel like I missed something.
It was like a big topic or something.
Oh, so the Salisbury Hill thing is what helped you.
Huh. The car bomb, we talked about the Russian car bomb, that I think it was probably Ukraine, and if it wasn't Ukraine, why not?
If Ukraine is not trying to kill Russian leadership, why not?
All right, here's a question I have for you.
Do you feel that things are...
Forget about where things are, but just the direction of things.
It feels to me like everything's starting to trend positive.
Does anybody else feel that?
Does anybody feel like, you know, there's still some things we don't like?
Well, let me make my argument.
Energy prices are falling.
Now remember, my argument is not that things are good.
My argument is that things are no longer moving bad.
That they're trending in the right direction.
They're not good yet, but they're trending right.
So the stock market has improved.
The supply chain problem, I feel like we've gotten past the worst of it.
Maybe there's more ahead, but I feel like we got past the worst.
I'm not really seeing enough worry about starvation, and I don't know if that's a reporting problem or we're not sure, but I feel as if Our stocks are down today, somebody said.
I wouldn't look at today to eat anything.
Let's see, about there, 1.6%.
That's no big deal.
That could come back in a day.
So I wouldn't worry about that.
So we're working through the shortages.
We're working through the economy.
It looks like climate change will be addressed with nuclear.
Nuclear is on the rise.
Elon Musk is sending things to Mars.
I would say the Ukraine situation has settled into some kind of a stalemate that at least doesn't risk nuclear war.
I would say that we are decoupling from China.
We do not have...
Well, the mortality is increasing, but we're not sure it is.
Is it? Yeah.
The excess mortality, you're right, but it's probably also temporary.
Because whatever caused this excess mortality is, unless it's the vaccinations, I suppose, but even if it is, it's likely to be done in a year.
Because if what you did is delay something, delay treatment, it's going to get you in a year.
If the vaccinations were a problem, and I don't see that as being true, but if they were, most of it's going to happen soonish.
Most of it doesn't happen down the road.
So whatever is causing the excess mortality, we've probably already chewed through most of it.
Probably. So what else is going on?
I mean, even our ability to mitigate serious death and risk from cataclysms is really good.
So we might have worse hurricanes.
Maybe not. But we'll survive them better.
Yeah. Fentanyl is getting worse.
But I feel like...
I feel fentanyl is approaching a tipping point.
Here's the tipping point.
Let me give you an example of how close it is to the tipping point.
I'm not going to do this.
But imagine I did.
Imagine I ran for president and I had only one policy.
I'm going to stop fentanyl.
And then the reporters would say, what is your view on abortion?
And I would say, you work on abortion.
I'm going to work on stopping fentanyl.
And then they say, but Scott, what do you feel about international trade and the trade agreement?
And I'd say, well, why don't you work that out?
I'm going to go stop fentanyl.
It's all I'm going to do.
And let's say I had an idea that actually looked like it could work.
You know, like stopping all trade from China until they stop it, for example.
Or killing the guy in the country.
Here's what I mean by a tipping point.
I could get elected on that.
I could get elected on that.
I could get elected on, I'm not even going to talk about the other stuff.
I'm just going to solve one problem.
And I won't even run for re-election if I solve it.
I'll give you one term, I'll solve one problem.
Now the other stuff I'll do my best.
I'll listen to the experts, but I'm not even going to debate it with you.
What are you going to do about taxes?
I don't know. I don't know.
We'll work that out later. I'm not even worried about it.
Just one thing. I'm going to make China's war on our children end one way or another.
I'm going to ship all their fucking students back home.
I'm going to stop all trade.
I'm going to remove our ambassadors.
I'm going to kill that fucking dealer in country, in China, and I'm not going to have any remorse for it.
That's all I'd promise. Now, here's what I want you to think.
Now, none of this is real, because I'm not running for president.
But the point is, I could win.
Think about it. You don't think I could win with just one point?
Because nobody could touch me.
I would be the only one who was doing anything for the country, and you would fucking know it.
You would know it. Because if I stopped the fentanyl trade, the odds of me getting killed would be very high by either the cartel or by China or somebody, right?
I would be risking my life To save 100,000 Americans.
And I would let everything else work its way through the system.
I'd let Congress make decisions.
You know, if I ran as a Democrat, I'd let the Democrats give me some proposals and I'd look at them.
If I ran as a Republican, I'd let them give me some proposals.
And I'd let either side give me some proposals.
I would just look at the experts.
I'd look at the thing.
And I'm not even going to tell you what I'm going to decide.
I'll just tell you how I decide.
I won't even tell you what the decision will be.
All right, here's how I will decide.
I will debate this in public.
That's how I'll decide. What are you going to do about this tax change?
I'll debate it in public.
I'll let the public see it the same time I see it.
I'll ask tough questions, and if you can't answer these tough questions in public, you're going to be very embarrassed, because I'm going to make you embarrassed.
How will it turn out?
I don't know. But that's my process.
So here's the thing that should blow your mind.
If you don't think fentanyl is really close to being the only topic that matters, you're not paying attention.
It's killing 100,000 people a year.
And it's intentional.
It's that close.
And do you think that I have the skill to make people stop caring about everything else for a while?
I do. Enough people, right?
I just have to be enough to get elected.
I do. I do have that skill.
And it's because the topic makes it easy.
Nobody can top the topic.
There's no high ground above that topic.
You can't get there.
If somebody says, uh, and I'm going to worry about your pronouns, and I'll say, that's great.
I think everybody should be treated with respect.
You're also not doing anything useful for the public.
I'm going to be stopping fentanyl, and you're going to be talking about pronouns.
There's your choice, public.
Take your choice. It would be easy to become president with just one topic.
That's how weak politics is right now.
Even though Trump is a monster, you know, like he's very capable even if you don't like what he's doing, There still isn't anybody good.
Because Reagan was good.
Reagan was good.
We don't have anybody like that.
Trump is his own thing.
I mean, he's capable in a way I've never seen anything like it.
He's very persuasive.
But he's not Reagan.
In some ways, he's got some advantages over Reagan, I would say.
But overall, there's nobody operating at a Reagan level.
And what I heard Reagan do was diffuse his criticism of the other side.
I forget what the topic was.
But there was one of those red meat situations...
Where a politician of today would have used that to just crap on the other side.
And Reagan took the high ground.
I forget what it was. But he treated the other side with such respect.
I thought, wow, you don't see that.
And it was effective.
Because it made the people on the other side say, oh, looks like he's listening to us a little bit.
That's not so bad. Isn't that how he got elected by such landslides?
Because he treated the other team like, you know, he did this sort of joshing, ha ha ha, you know, I'm definitely right, and I'm confident that I'm right, but I love you guys too.
It felt like he was a fatherly, I love you, even if you disagree, whereas Trump is more like, you're on my team or I must destroy you.
I mean, he's not, because he's Team America.
But you could easily feel that way because of the style of his rhetoric.
Yeah, Trump is noisy and expensive.
That's true. All right, is there any other topic?
Yeah, if all I did was stop fentanyl and TikTok...
I would be the greatest president ever elected.
And I would get out after one term.
I would go all George Washington on it.
Alright. We'll never know.
I can't run. Do you know why I can't run?
Does anybody know why I could never run for president?
I mean, legally I could, I suppose.
Yeah, I think I can. Too old?
No. I'm almost too old.
Yeah, bad knees.
Yeah, bad knees.
I can't walk up and down those ramps.
No, my problem would be...
My background. So the only way that I could run for office is with the following promise.
I guess I could do it.
And the promise would be this.
I'm not going to be your role model.
And if you look into my personal life, you're not going to like it.
But if it entertains you, you should believe all of it's true.
It won't be. Half of what you read about my personal life is not going to be true.
But if it entertains you, you should believe it.
But my proposition would be the following.
If whatever you think about me personally or what I have said or done, assume it's all true.
Don't vote for me under the benefit of a doubt.
Assume the worst things you hear about me are true, and I'm only going to want to solve one problem for you.
Fentanyl. If you think I can do that, then maybe look out for your own best interest.
Your own best interest is to get that problem solved.
It's not in your best interest to make a moral point about your moral superiority to me, because I stipulate that.
If you'd like me to stipulate that the voters are morally superior to me as a candidate, I give you that, freely and without reservations.
You are my moral betters.
I'm not running to be your god.
I'm not running to be Jesus.
I'm just running to stop fentanyl from getting into your kids.
That's it. If you want that, hire me like you would hire a plumber.
You got a leak in your pipes?
I'm going to fix your leak. You don't need to know what I'm doing at home.
Just assume it's all true.
Somebody in local says, I sound like a boring Trump.
Could boring get elected?
Do you think boring could get elected?
It could if it's provocative.
But I guess that wouldn't be boring.
Yeah, I think you could be provocative and honest at the same time.
Usually the way people are provocative is by saying something that's a little sketchy.
That's how you get people's attention.
DeSantis is kind of boring, but he could get elected.
Is he? I don't know.
I think DeSantis is learning to be less boring.
Because I think it's a learned skill.
And I think he is learning it.
Yeah, Tom Cotton would need some help.
So Tom Cotton has a real solid resume.
But he doesn't light up the screen.
But here's the question. Could he?
Do you think Tom Cotton could learn...
To be more of a charismatic presence?
I believe he could.
Do you know the definition of charisma?
I say this a lot, but it's one of the most useful things you'll ever understand, especially if you want to have charisma.
Charisma is a combination of power and empathy.
You have to have both.
And here's why that makes sense.
If somebody has power...
But they don't have empathy for you, what do you think of them?
They're dangerous. The worst thing is to be around somebody powerful who doesn't care about you.
You don't want to be anywhere near that.
So power without empathy is just danger.
Suppose you had lots of empathy, but you had no power.
Well, that's somebody who's going to need your help, because they have no power.
So, empathy doesn't help you.
It's nice that they're empathy. They have empathy.
They're nice people. But if they have no power, they're just a cost to you, probably.
Because you have something, you're going to have to give it to them.
In the form of money or something else.
So, if you have power and you have empathy, everybody wants to be around you.
Because they want to take advantage of your power, and they want to take advantage of it for their benefit, which is what the empathy gets them.
So how could Tom Cotton have more charisma?
It would be easy.
Because that's the formula.
There's a formula for charisma.
Just follow it. So does he have power?
Yes. Because he's a sitting senator.
He's highly educated.
He's successful in his job.
He gets on TV. People listen to him.
And he'll probably run for president or he's thinking about it.
He has power. Now, if he became president, he would have far more real power.
So the power part, he has nailed.
But what about the empathy part?
That's the part he's missing.
Now, I'm not saying he doesn't have empathy on the inside.
I'm saying it's not projecting.
Could he learn to project it?
Yes. Because it's acting.
Yeah, the empathy they have on the inside, nobody can see.
So the acting is making sure everybody can see it.
And then you say to yourself, but that would be a big phony.
No, everybody's a phony.
I'm a phony right now.
Do you think the way that I'm talking to you right now on livestream is the way that I talk to a six-year-old?
No. Is it the way I would talk to my mother?
No. Is it the way I would talk to a lover?
No. No, I talk differently for every situation, just like you do.
We're all acting all the time.
You have to get over that.
If you don't get over the fact that we're all acting all the time, some people say they're not acting.
No, you're acting. Sorry.
And if you're not acting, you're doing it wrong.
Because acting is usually what gets you a better outcome.
So, could I teach Tom Cotton to have more charisma?
Yes, because he has the power, and he would have more if he's president.
And his charisma is really just about adding more empathy.
Because when Tom Cotton tells you what we should or should not do, he takes a hawkish approach, and he says, here are the hard things we should do, and we should do these right away.
What's missing is understanding how we're feeling about it.
And all he'd have to do is say it out loud.
All right, I understand that this could be scary for all of you, but here are the things we're weighing, and I'm going to make sure that the least scary thing is what happens.
Right? Something like that.
So in other words, you just have to use your words and first say what the people are feeling.
After you say, I understand what everybody's feeling, that's the empathy part, then you can be as tough as you want.
So Reagan did that right.
Reagan acted like he had genuine empathy, and then when he acted tough, people were like, okay, all right.
Now, Trump does the opposite.
Trump is on the side of Americans, and he says it intellectually and consistently.
But the Democrats don't feel it, do they?
They feel his power.
They definitely feel his power.
Everybody can feel that.
But do they feel his empathy?
They do not. They do not.
And that's Trump's biggest flaw.
His biggest advantage is he's a fighter.
And I liked him for that.
Still do. I like the fact that you can depend on him to fight and not give up.
The trouble is, if it's something like losing an election, he still fights and he doesn't give up.
So, I have not condemned him as much as others have, because I knew what I was getting.
Right? If you get a porcupine as a pet, and then you hurt your hand trying to pet it, it's not exactly the porcupine's problem.
Is it? Is it?
Because you petted a porcupine.
If you voted for Trump, did you think you were voting for the person who would give up?
No. No, the thing you voted for is he doesn't give up.
And then when the election went the way it did, he didn't give up.
I don't know. Am I disappointed?
I wish things had gone a different way.
But I don't wish that he was a different person.
Because that's what I bought.
I bought that.
Right? If you buy a gun...
And you leave it loaded and shoot you in the foot or something.
Is it the gun's problem?
No. It's what you did and what you expected of the gun.
If you buy Trump and then he acts like Trump from the beginning to the end, don't tell me that's Trump's problem.
You bought that.
You bought exactly that.
You didn't buy approximately that, something in that direction.
You bought that. And if you didn't know you were buying that, what did you think you were getting?
I mean, it's the most consistent thing about him is he doesn't give up.
It's the most consistent thing about his personality.
He doesn't give up. All right.
I think that's all for today.
I think we've done it.
YouTube, thanks for joining.
Spotify, too. If you too would like to have your life changed, apparently I've done that for a number of people.
So go look for that video.
$7.91 it was.
They're all listed, the live streams I do.
So just Google my name and Coffee with Scott Adams and episode $7.91 and it should pop right up.
