Episode 1845 Scott Adams: Today I Will Solve Many Of Your Personal Problems While Talking About News
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Senate race, Dr. Oz vs John Fetterman
Steven Crowder's scientist prank
Andrew Tate's YouTube videos lied about me
Depopulation is a major problem
Education's future
How we think about things is important
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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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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that will happen to you today.
And probably the best thing that's ever happened to you in your whole life.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
Kind of a peak experience.
And if you'd like to take it up to the next level, and I know you do, all you need is a cupper mug or a glass, a tenker chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Go. Everything's good now.
It's all good. If you hang out to the latter part of my live stream today, after we talk about the news, I'm going to give you a little hypnosis treat, anybody who wants to stay around for that, in which I will teach you how to release on the past.
Release on all your problems in the past.
So wait for that.
That's coming. I saw there was a scientific study where scientists analyzed people who coincidentally look alike.
Have you ever seen anybody who looks like you?
You're walking down the street and you say, wait a minute, that person looks just like me.
I have a bunch of those, doppelgangers.
Well, now it turns out that people who look like each other, even if they've never met, no matter where they are, they end up acting the same as well.
So they have sort of similar preferences.
Now, we already know this with twins, so it's actually not that big of a surprise to me.
Whatever it is that makes you look physically exactly like somebody is probably affecting your mind as well as your body, right?
There's some kind of genetic commonality there.
So, what does this tell you?
Does it tell you we might be a simulation?
That there is code reuse?
And that there just aren't that many people in the world?
I've hypothesized there are only 100 people.
I think there are only 100 people.
And everybody's a version.
It might be 200, but it's not a lot.
It's not a million. There are definitely not a million people.
More like one or two hundred.
That's it. And everybody's like a version of that, you know, based on what your, I guess, your environment did to you.
So, not only might we be a simulation, but what would it tell you if there are some characters that are the same characters, but they're playing in different scenes?
Well, that would be consistent with my hypothesis, that if we're a simulated reality, the reason we're being simulated is to try to solve problems for whoever built the simulation.
So in other words, we're running through A-B testing of, okay, if I do this, how does that work out?
If I do this, how does it work out?
But then you would also have to test it In different environments.
So it wouldn't be a good test to test just me and my specific life, trying a different thing and seeing if it works, because you wouldn't know if there was something else about the situation that made the difference.
So you would have to test me in a variety of different situations, trying a variety of different solutions, until there was a commonality between the thing you tried and it didn't matter where you were doing it.
And then you'd have a solution.
So, maybe.
All right. I had been ignoring the Senate race in Pennsylvania.
Apparently, I missed a lot of fun because I don't really pay attention to state races.
But this Dr.
Oz versus Fetterman thing has gone to such a ridiculous place that I can no longer...
I can no longer ignore it, because...
It's not funny, except that it is.
So, have I explained to you before that there's nothing wrong with laughing at something that's horrible?
If you also understand it's horrible, right?
If you're laughing at tragedy and you don't care, like you have no empathy, well, maybe you're a bad person.
But if you know it's bad and there are people genuinely suffering, as long as you acknowledge that, if there's something about it that's funny, well, that's not your fault.
That's not your fault at all.
And this... This John Fetterman thing, the thing I can't get past is that, you know, again, I do have empathy for him and his family.
He had a stroke. It seems like it was pretty bad.
And the stroke has debilitated him to the point where he tried to give a five-minute speech, and it really didn't work.
He just couldn't come up with the words in time.
Some of the words seemed to be the wrong choice of word, and it just didn't work.
I mean, it was pretty brave.
If we're going to give him any props at all, that was pretty brave.
Pretty brave. But apparently somebody on the Dr.
Oz campaign said...
I guess Dr.
Oz got some pushback because he was complaining about his crudites costing too much or something, which is what some people call a veggie tray.
That's what the Democrats said.
Anyway, so he seemed like sort of an elitist complaining about his crudites being too expensive.
And so somebody on the Dr.
Oz campaign actually said this.
If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn't have had a major stroke.
He wouldn't be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.
Rachel Tripp, Oz's senior communication advisor, said.
So she actually...
She's like the head of his communications.
She's a senior communications person.
What did the junior communications person say?
If this is what the senior communications expert said, I'd like to hear what the lesser qualified people had to say.
Hey, I've got an idea.
Why don't you say he's the vegetable?
How about that? Why don't you take it to that next level?
Saying you should have eaten vegetables, that's pretty cutting.
But you should take it to the next level.
That's what the junior communication advisors would have recommended.
But here's the funniest part.
The race is close.
It's neck and neck.
There's one guy who's basically barely organic.
And again, I do have empathy.
It's a horrible thing that happened to him.
I wouldn't want it to happen to anybody I loved.
But the political part of it, you can't avoid the fact that that's funny.
That he literally can't function at all.
Again, we have empathy for him, but in the political sense, they're running somebody who can't even function against Oz, and it's neck and neck.
It's like really close.
That tells you everything you need to know about American politics.
Here's another story.
I swear I'm not high.
I know it looks like I am, but I'm not.
It's not my fault.
The news is just funny today.
So I saw...
This wasn't news, but there's one of these little advertisement kind of interstitial things you see on the Internet all the time.
And it purported to show the IQs of the 40 smartest presidents.
And the first thing that's funny about it is that we can calculate the IQ of...
Of, like, the founders of the country.
Now, I get that they were smart, but you can't really calculate their IQs.
That's not a thing. But apparently they think they did.
And the funniest part is I think they put Trump at, like, number three, because his IQ has never been measured in any way that anybody's seen, but he claims it's very high.
So they used his claim of his IQ and put him on a list at, like, number three.
Oh, my God.
But here's the part I like best.
Do you know who's number one, according to this very unscientific list?
Do you know who is the number one IQ of all the presidents?
Anybody know? Allegedly, it was John Quincy Adams.
John Quincy Adams, who apparently was a Harvard graduate and spoke fluently seven languages.
He spoke fluently seven languages?
That doesn't even sound true.
I never believe that.
When somebody says they're fluent in seven languages, do you ever believe that that's actually true?
I don't. I don't.
Usually that's three.
That's sort of three plus.
I don't believe seven.
But I love the fact that Trump made it onto number three of the smartest presidents list just because he made a claim.
So I thought, can I do that?
I've actually had my IQ measured, so I actually have a number.
But you've never seen it.
You don't have access to it.
So let me tell you, my IQ is 185.
As far as you know.
So I'm just going to put it out there.
Because someday they're going to make a list of the smartest cartoonists.
And I want them to have the same problem.
Well, we couldn't find any information about his IQ, but he says it's 185.
So I'm going with that.
So from now on, I'm not going to tell people that it's a joke.
I'm just going to put it out there like it's true.
So you're all in on the joke, okay?
You're all in on the joke.
From now on, I'm just going to say I have an IQ of 185, and I'm going to see if I can make that turn into a thing.
You're all in on it. And by the way, you can help.
So if you see like a tweet where somebody's calling me stupid or something, just go in there and say, stupid, he reportedly has an IQ of 185.
But say reportedly. Just say reportedly.
It will turn into a fact.
Some people are going to believe it.
All right, let's do that.
John Stossel had a great piece about what it means to be scientific in terms of the government.
And his point was, and he showed lots of good evidence for it, that what we believe is science...
If it has any connection to the government, it is really just left-wing preferences that they've laundered through fake science.
I'm kind of oversimplifying his thesis, which I can do, because I have an IQ of 185, so I can simplify this so easily with my big IQ. And so he makes his case pretty well that if the government is involved in any way, you should not assume it's science.
If the government is involved in any way, it's very unlikely that it's actual science.
It's just advocacy, that they launder through fake studies.
And he gave some examples.
But my favorite was, and I guess you knew about this, but I didn't.
Did you all know that Stephen Crowder...
Submitted a paper about something about fat studies and fat acceptance and was invited to some kind of fat acceptance conference where he attended over Zoom in a dressed as a woman.
He was dressed as a woman talking pretty much like a guy, but he was dressed as a woman.
And he completely sold the conference that he was a real scientist or had real scientific studies or whatever.
And not only did they love his presentation, but they invited him to look at some other people's studies.
Oh my God.
How many of you know that I once wore a disguise and went to a...
A top-level business meeting in corporate America.
So, a true story. Years ago, when Dilbert was sort of a bigger phenomenon in the country than it is right now, I dressed in an actual fake costume.
I had a mustache and a wig, and I went in as a consultant.
Now, it was a prank that was being pulled by the San Jose Mercury News, so a reporter there was working with me.
And she got the CEO of the company to be in on it.
So the CEO knew that I was a fake, but his top generals did not.
So it was a meeting of his top generals.
And this is what I did.
I told them that I was there to help them create a mission statement But I was really there to see if I could get them to create a mission statement that was complete nonsense.
And I wanted to see if I could get them to create nonsense and all bark like train seals and it was awesome.
And so I used my hypnosis and persuasion powers to get them to think that they were contributing to it.
But I would just take all the worst things they said and write them down.
And then I strung them all together.
I don't have it with me, but their mission statement, when it was done, was the most ridiculous...
Jargony nonsense because I made sure that the worst ideas got implemented and I made them think that they were the good ideas.
And so when it was all done, it was something like, you know, we strive to be the, you know, it was just a jargony nonsense thing.
And then at the end I said, you know, science has proven that if you want somebody to remember something, it helps to make it rhyme or to put it to music.
And I said, is there anybody in the room, and remember, these are the top executives of a tech company, top executives.
And I said, is there anybody in the room who has some musical background who could maybe help turn this mission statement into a musical piece?
And I actually got somebody to volunteer to turn the mission statement into a song.
So once I had reached the ultimate level of ridiculousness, I stood in front of the group and I just took off my mustache.
And they're all just sort of in shock.
And then I took off the wig.
And they're still in shock.
And then somebody recognized me.
Like, you're that Dilbert guy!
And it was all over.
Great story. Anyway, Steven Crowder's prank, I think, is better than mine, and one of the best I've ever seen.
So kudos to Steven Crowder.
I guess this was a while ago he did this.
I don't remember when. But that's one of the best pranks I've ever seen.
Have you ever seen a better prank than that?
That's got to be, like, number one of all American pranks.
It'd be tough to top that one.
All right. So, Karma is coming for Andrew Taint.
Been kicked off of all platforms.
And he's made a heartfelt video about how he was bullied.
And that's on Rumble, if you want to see it.
But I'd just like to say something to YouTube.
Because I know, if you don't mind, the people on Locals, just a point of personal privilege.
Hey, YouTube. I understand you banned Andrew Taint.
There's a video on there you need to get rid of, in which he claims that I promoted vaccines and masks.
Now those are lies.
They're not the only lies there.
The other lies are incredibly misogynistic.
And I can't believe you let that video up there, YouTube.
So YouTube, what the fuck are you doing?
You motherfucking pieces of shit.
You cunts. You absolute cunts.
If you're going to get rid of Andrew Tate, get rid of all of it.
Because that's the worst thing he has on there.
And it's still there.
You motherfuckers.
Do I have the attention of any of the censors yet?
You stupid fucking cunts.
You absolute pieces of shit.
You fucking motherfucking assholes.
You listening yet?
Because this is just to the censors.
If you're watching this to see if you should ban some of this or demonetize it, you're in the wrong fucking place.
Go look at your site, go find Andrew Tain lying about me, get rid of that piece of shit, and squash him for good.
He's a lying, worthless, dangerous piece of shit.
And if you don't get rid of him, I'm coming for you.
So, take care of that.
Well, it turns out that Apple is decoupling a little bit, or at least we like to think so from China.
They're gonna be making more phones in India.
I feel like the decoupling is happening.
Do you think it's real? The decoupling with China?
I think it's very real.
Isn't this like the biggest story that's happening?
And here's a question that I have for America.
We can't really decouple from China too effectively if we can't make stuff here.
Shouldn't we be working really hard to figure out how to make things in America?
Or at the very least, make things in Central America so we can, you know, control the immigration.
Although I'm not sure I want to control it anymore.
You know, you're going to hate this.
This is just my thought of the day.
But I'm getting more and more worried about the depopulation problem.
You know, Elon Musk says it's the biggest risk for civilization.
And I think I agree.
It does look like the biggest risk.
Because I do think we have other things somewhat under control, but we don't really have a good solution for the underpopulation problem.
And so I'm wondering if all of us are wrong about immigration.
Now, I think immigration had to be controlled when the natural population was growing.
I think that stopped around 1970 or so.
Replacement population.
But you do know that if we stopped immigration, or if we kept immigration even where it is, or we stopped it completely, you know we'd be doomed, right?
How many of you know that?
Do you know if we stopped immigration, just if we stopped it completely, America would be doomed.
Do you know that? Is that something that is not commonly understood?
Yeah, there are people saying no.
Yeah, there are people who say no.
So some of you disagree with that.
Let's do this.
Yeah, pick your fate.
Yeah, as I've often said, we've been talking about the wrong question forever.
We keep talking about immigration, yes or no, and we never talk about the smart way to say it.
Do you have a mechanism for controlling it?
Can you dial it up and dial it down as you need it, and can you control who gets in and who doesn't?
That's the only question we ever should have asked.
And then the question of how many you let in should be experts, basically.
They should say, well, we're below replacement value.
We have certain levels of skills we need more than others, so we'll dial it up.
But not for everybody. We'll let in the people who have certain characteristics, certain skills.
But how many of you are having a moment right now where you're saying, oh, shit, is that possible?
Is it possible that if we succeeded in keeping everybody out, we'd be doomed?
It's probable. It's actually probable.
Because the only way we would not be doomed is if our own reproduction started suddenly going way up.
And I don't see anything that's going to happen to do that, do you?
Do you see anything that would make people have more babies?
I mean, it could be a pendulum thing.
Maybe it just swings the other way at some point.
But be careful about what you wish for.
Be careful about what you wish for.
I feel like at this point, as bad as the problems that immigration creates, they might be less than the alternative.
And I'm at least open to that conversation where I don't think I was even a week ago.
A week ago, I don't think I would have said this.
It's just the more I think about this population problem, the more concerned I am.
And I don't think opening the borders and just saying, hey, everybody come in is the solution.
That doesn't feel like a good solution.
But I don't think we're thinking about it as smartly as we need to.
Imagine, let's just use your imagination.
Imagine if Trump said, we need more immigration, not less, to survive.
But we have to do it a little smarter.
How does that sound?
That sounds completely different, doesn't it?
Because as soon as you say we have to limit immigration, you sound like a racist.
Because people just assume you're talking about brown people.
But if he came in and said, look, I agree with Elon Musk.
I had several kids.
I like kids. We should have kids.
We're going to have to have kids. But if we don't, and that's your choice, if you don't have kids, you know you're doomed if we don't bring in fresh blood.
So we don't have a choice, but let's do it in the smartest way we can.
That would solve everything, wouldn't it?
You tell me that somebody could argue against that position.
We need more people, we just have to be smarter about it.
Who disagrees with that?
You could so easily make that case.
I know there's some of you who said, no, we don't.
We don't need more people.
But I would ask you to research population collapse as a risk.
So just do some reading on population collapse, and you might change your mind.
You might change your mind.
Yeah, we like skilled people first, but remember, young people don't have skills.
And a lot of the people that we're bringing in are the young people without the adults.
By the way, that's a thing.
So it's not uncommon for the young kids to come to America and the parents not be able to come for one reason or another.
So they do send their kids.
And they can be trained.
So Biden is pushing the student loan forgiveness, $10,000 per person.
I think it was on the 5, and Dana Perino was saying, I think it was Dana Perino was saying, that the $10,000 forgiveness might make a lot of people angry, So they would vote against the Democrats for doing it, but probably there's not anybody going to be so happy about it that they vote for it.
I don't know about that. I don't know.
If you were a student, or if you had student loans, wouldn't you vote for the person who gave you $10,000?
All else being equal, which most people don't follow the news anyway, they'd just say, wait, I just vote for this person, I might get $10,000?
I don't know. There's no right answer for student loan forgiveness, meaning that it's a problem that needs to be addressed, but on the other hand, it's a problem that people created for themselves.
But on the other hand, there's no free will.
So if you knew that somebody had conned you and you were a victim, would you blame the victim?
Because that's what we're doing. We are blaming the victim if they took out too big of a school loan.
Because they're a victim of society.
Society said you have to go to college, and if you can't do it any other way, you've got to get a loan.
That's what we told everybody.
We brainwashed kids into thinking that's the only way to succeed.
So if you brainwash people, and then they do what you brainwash them to do, is it fair to blame them?
Because to me, they're the victims.
Why are you blaming the victims?
Seems to me the colleges have something to explain.
But again, most of the colleges don't have enough extra cash that they could do anything about this either.
So the real solution is the long term.
Which is redoing education.
So education has to be redone so it doesn't cost anything.
You know, the actual cost of an education, what do you think it should be?
It should approach zero over time.
The cost of an education should be trending towards zero forever.
You know, it'll never get to zero, but it will half that distance every few years, right?
into perpetuity until it costs a penny.
Because in theory, once you get something on video or in VR or whatever form it is, once it's there, it can teach people math forever from the same content.
Right? So, at the moment, there is not a substitute for in-person learning that's as good.
You'd agree with that, right? Zoom is not as good as in-person learning for most things.
But for some things, it's already a little bit better.
Just special cases.
The special case would be the teacher is not so good, but the video is excellent, and it's a visual thing, so being on video helps.
But that crossover will continue.
There's no chance, no chance that a human teacher can be competitive with technology as a teacher.
No chance. Not in the long run.
So in the long run, it might be an avatar or an AI or something.
But there's no way that a human will be able to, you know, be competitive.
Except maybe as a coach or in the room or something, right?
But the main teaching will definitely be technology.
And that means that the cost of it should be dropped.
So that's the long term.
And I've said this before, but if you haven't heard it, I'm going to make this a thing.
I tried to start a startup to do this and actually had an agreement to get it funded.
A company was going to work with me on this.
But something happened with that company and they changed their priorities and fell apart.
And the idea was this, that each of the courses that you teach in school Should be defined so that you can break the course into chunks.
Here's the module where you learn how to calculate angles and geometry, or whatever it is, but like discrete little chapters.
And then you say each of these chapters is available to the entire world to make a better version.
So you can just work on this module.
If you could teach somebody how to calculate an angle better than anybody else, then maybe yours gets voted up because people would be analyzing them.
And then your module gets voted up to be a recommended part of the class.
And then somebody comes in later and they come up with a better module.
And that module gets voted up and replaces the other one.
Over time, all of the modules in the class would be the best one that the market could produce.
It'd be way better than a human teacher.
Way better. Wanting to be close.
You just have to add competition, and then you have to build an Amazon-like market where people know exactly what they're building and what money they could make if it's successful, like a book.
When you write a book, you have a really good idea, you know, what's my advance?
And if it succeeds, what's my upside?
It's a very mature market.
Education will become that.
So in the long term, I would expect Amazon would be the only place you get an education.
How about that? And it won't cost much.
Maybe you pay a dollar for a module.
It's just video.
Right? So they can deliver it for basically zero cost.
So, yeah, a dollar a module times everybody who's learning, it's pretty good profit.
Once there's a good lesson, who will ever...
Well, anybody who thinks that they can write a better book tries to write books, even though there are plenty of books already.
You never have to worry So I'm seeing Khan Academy and Udemy and everything being recommended, but I don't think that any of those models have what I'm describing.
I think they have entire courses given by one set of people or person.
I don't think there's any one course that's broken into chunks.
Is that true? But if you ever see that, let me know, because I would promote it for you.
Jordan Peterson is working on a school like that?
Are you serious?
Well, let me know about that. Oh, yes.
Well, I'll be damned. So you're saying that Udemy does that?
I don't believe that.
I think Udemy is just something you want me to know about, which I know about.
All right.
Okay.
How would you like me to make your past problems disappear?
Okay.
Thank you.
Is anybody wracked by, let's say, doubt or guilt about the past?
Anything that's been bothering you?
Well, let me see.
Can we hear it?
Can we hear it?
simply began right now.
I took an insane...
Well, it looks like that got cut off for some reason.
But, as it turns out, I can complete it even better than listening to the video.
Because it's hard to listen to the video.
Oh, just tap the video. You don't need to hear the rest of the video because I was going to do this myself.
So I want to give some credit to the person who reminded me to do it.
It goes like this.
Okay, you just want me to tap it, don't you?
All right, because I know you're not going to stop saying that until I do.
But, no, I'm not going to do that.
Forget that. I'm not going to show that to you because I can do it better myself.
Okay? So stop saying tap.
There's absolutely no reason you need to keep identifying with the past.
And if you disagree...
God!
So I'm going to do it myself.
It goes like this.
Think about where you are.
Look at your surroundings. Just look at your surroundings.
And feel that this is all that exists.
Imagine that you were just born into the world this moment.
You never existed before, and you just popped into existence right where you are.
Now do this with me.
Just look around and just say, I just popped into existence.
Somehow I know how everything works.
It's like, oh, I know what this is.
So just go through the visualization and just imagine, you just appeared in the world.
History, even if you have a memory of it, doesn't exist.
You couldn't take a handful of history.
You couldn't punch history.
You couldn't put it in your pocket.
You couldn't paint it.
You couldn't touch it. You couldn't smell it.
History doesn't exist.
What exists is this.
And you can start today and just say, I'll just act like my history started today.
Just act like it didn't exist.
Now, you don't have to worry about the reality of it.
Because we're not talking about reality.
When you reframe things, you don't need to be technically correct.
It just has to work.
And that's the main theme of my reframing book that I'm working on now.
A reframe doesn't have to be true.
It doesn't have to be logical.
It doesn't have to be factual.
It just has to work.
This is one of those.
Instead of imagining yourself as a creature across time, imagine yourself as a creature of a time.
You are of the moment.
Imagine you are not a creature who is spread across the past and the future.
You are a person who exists right now, and that's all you are.
Is it true? It doesn't matter.
It does matter if you can imagine it as true, which you can.
And when you do that, it takes all those past things and puts them into the imaginary box, and then you can close the box, and at least for a little while, you can live free from the box.
Eventually, the past gets out of the box.
But you can do it again.
Just every time the past gets out of the box and you start obsessing about it, Just bring yourself to the room, touch things, feel things, and say, I was just born.
I just came into existence.
Here's the stuff I have to work with.
What do I have? Okay, I got this body.
I apparently have some kind of job I know of.
And I'm in this space.
I'm hungry. I'm horny.
I'm tired. I'm something.
But I'm right now.
I'm right now. That...
It's the technique. Now, some of you probably felt it just in my description of it.
But it does work.
This is one I use all the time, by the way.
I've used this a number of times.
And it does work for a while, right?
It's one of those things you'd have to reinforce.
But it works for a while.
I'll try it out.
All right.
So this next part, many of you will want to turn off.
I think we can agree that nobody cares about vaccinations anymore, right?
Do we all agree with that? Nobody wants to hear an argument about it.
Nobody wants to hear if you chose right or chose wrong.
Blah, blah, right?
But, here's what I'm not going to release on.
How we think about things.
That's important, right?
And given that I have an IQ of 185, I'm going to help you think through some things.
And I was sort of curious myself about how people were thinking about it.
So I did a poll in which I asked people, what is your level of certainty That the risk of long COVID for people over 40...
Forget about the young people for a moment.
But what is your certainty that the risk of long COVID for people over 40 is too small to be of concern?
How certain are you that long COVID is something you don't need to worry about?
The people who are totally certain that long COVID is nothing to worry about was...
What do you think that came out to about, roughly?
The people who are totally certain that you don't need to worry about long COVID at all.
Yeah, it's about a quarter.
About a quarter of the people.
That's probably a coincidence.
It was 28% specifically.
And then...
What was the other people?
Did that really not print?
Yeah. Oh, here it is.
People who were confident but not totally certain was about a third.
And then the 38% said it was just unknown.
Just unknown. Now, that's your whole vaccination discussion right there, right?
Because if you said to yourself you were sure about the risk of long COVID, you had everything you needed.
Am I correct? If you were sure about your risk of long COVID, that it wasn't a risk, then I think you'd have everything you needed to make an informed decision.
Would you agree with that?
Because you have some sense of the vaccination itself.
You have some sense of the risk of the virus itself.
The only thing that was unknown would be the long COVID. Would you agree with that?
That that was the big unknown.
And if you were positive that you knew, then you would say, I knew everything I knew.
Does that sound correct?
I would agree that if you knew long COVID risks, somehow you had a way to do it.
That's all you know. But I ask people also...
I ask this question...
I'll ask you here. Alright, you ready?
Now some of you are going to say, hey, that's a trick question.
But here's what you can't do.
You can't add your own assumptions.
You can't change the question.
This is only to see how you think.
It's not about the actual...
So it's not about this pandemic.
It's just a general how-do-you-think question.
And the question is this. If you knew for certain...
Now, you have to accept it's a hypothetical question, so there's no doubt because it's just hypothetical.
Right? If you knew for certain exactly the risk of a vaccine, and it doesn't matter what vaccine.
Again, it's not about the pandemic.
If you knew exactly the risk of a vaccine, would you know enough to make a decision about taking it?
Go. If you knew the exact risk of the vaccine for you, would you know enough?
Yes. Yes.
Some say no. Why do you say no?
And some say yes. I'm saying you know exactly what the vaccine risk is for you, not even for other people.
You know for you. Now, those of you who are watching the answers go by, are you confused that there are people saying yes and people saying no?
Like, do you wonder what the other people are thinking?
Aren't you curious? Like, whichever answer you gave, aren't you shaking your head and saying, how in the world could somebody be on the other side of this question?
And it doesn't matter which side you took, right?
Aren't you amazed?
Aren't you amazed that somebody's answering differently than you are?
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
No matter which side you're on, it seems weird, doesn't it?
Yeah. Well, here's the answer, because I have an IQ of 185, as far as you know.
The answer is that if you knew the exact risks of the vaccines, it wouldn't tell you anything.
That's no information.
No useful information.
There's none. Do you understand that?
That knowing everything about the vaccination would give you no information that's useful for making a decision about taking it.
How many of you understand that point?
That having complete, accurate information about the vaccine doesn't give you any information about whether you should take it.
Hey, you got really quiet there, didn't you?
Some of you got really quiet suddenly.
Do I need to explain why that's true?
Do I need to explain that?
Because a lot of people, I think half of the people, said that if they knew the risk of the vaccine, they'd have everything they needed to make a decision.
And that's 100% wrong.
Because you would also have to know the risk of the thing you're trying to solve with the vaccine.
So if you knew everything about the risk of long COVID, and everything about the risk of dying, and everything about the risk of the vaccine, you'd probably have enough information.
But if you only know about the vaccine, or think you do, And you don't know if long COVID is real or not, then you don't have enough information to make an informed decision.
Now, those of you who think long COVID is not real, in the comments, tell me, is long COVID real or not real?
You tell me in the comments.
Is it real or not real?
I'm seeing a little bit of both.
Not real, not real.
Okay, this is one of those questions that I can answer with complete certainty.
Most things I can't answer with this level of certainty.
It's real. I had long COVID for a month.
There's no question that's what it was.
No question. And I couldn't walk upstairs for a month.
And I'm in good shape, right?
Normally, I run upstairs, you know, even at my current age.
I run upstairs, just because I'm always in a hurry.
But I couldn't walk upstairs for about a week.
Like, I'd stand at the bottom and go...
Like, it was a process.
Now, I lost a month of quality life, meaning that I could not enjoy myself in any way whatsoever for a month.
If I had it to do over again, I would have taken the booster.
Now, I didn't get the booster shots because I didn't want the risk of the vaccination when I thought that the risk of Omicron was so small.
So I said, why would I take the extra risk of a vaccination when the Omicron is such a small risk?
If you had told me that I would lose a month of my life, I would have taken the booster.
Because I think there was a chance it would have reduced my symptoms.
Now, I do have regret, but I have regret that I didn't take the booster.
And that's sort of a recent realization.
Now, I do like the fact that I have maybe something like natural immunity, but just Omicron, I don't know.
Somebody says, 185 IQ and vaxxed.
Here, let me fuck with your brains a little bit.
There are people here who got vaxxed, and there are people who didn't get vaxxed.
How many think you made the right choice, no matter which way you went?
Just speak for yourself.
How many of you say you made the right choice for you?
Go. All yeses.
I think I saw one no.
One I don't know. But mostly we've decided we've made the right choices.
So I think we could all claim victory.
We can claim that we all made the right choice, no matter what choice we made.
So that's pretty good.
Anyway.
Now, if you tell me it would be a bad decision to add a booster to whatever else I've already got in me, because the booster itself has some risks, which of course it does, I would tell you that you didn't experience which of course it does, I would tell you that you didn't experience my month If you had experienced my month of long COVID, you would be way more flexible about the risk of the vaccination.
It was really bad.
It was really bad for a month.
All right. But let me say as clearly as I can, I don't know what's going to happen in the future.
I don't know if I'll get a blood clot in the future, and I don't know if my long COVID will be the cause of the vaccination.
I don't know. I was guessing, and I wanted to take a vacation.
Here's something interesting. What percentage of doctors immediately signed up for the mRNA vaccination when it was available?
What percentage of doctors?
Because we don't trust experts, right?
Can't really trust experts anymore.
We don't trust the government.
We don't trust the WHO, right?
I saw a number that said 96%.
Yeah, I saw 96%.
Does that sound right?
Now, I don't know if it's right, but let's say it is.
If 96% of the doctors took the vaccination, do you think they did it for coercion reasons?
Does that sound like doctors?
The doctors that you know, have you ever met a doctor?
Are doctors opinionated?
Do doctors have strong opinions about things?
Yes, they do. Doctors have really strong opinions about shit.
You think you could get 96% of them to sign up to an experimental drug unless they were feeling comfortable it was the right choice.
Now, that doesn't mean it was the right choice.
I'm just saying, did they feel comfortable?
Now, let's compare that to this situation.
I recently was diagnosed with a, I forget what you call it, one of the hernias.
It's like a little hernia, like a break, it doesn't matter what it is.
But when I talked to the experts, my regular doctor had primed me this.
I'm going to have you talk to the expert, the surgeon who does the surgery.
But you should know before you talk to the doctor That the doctors who do the surgery are the least...
Yeah, it's an inguinal thing.
That the doctors who do the surgery are the least likely to have it performed on them.
And I said, what?
That's right. The doctors who do the surgery are the least likely group to have the surgery done on them if they have the same problem.
Do you know why? Too risky.
Too risky. And...
And so when I talked to my surgeon, he started going through this long description of the risks and rewards.
And then I just stopped and I said, most of the people who do what you do, do they get the operation?
Because I heard they don't. And he just stopped.
And he said, what do you do for a living?
He goes, what do you do for a living?
And I told him. And he goes, okay, because I thought you were probably some kind of science or engineering kind of person, because you got to the risk too quickly.
Basically, the only thing that mattered was that the people who have the most information about it don't do it.
He goes, that's the only thing that mattered, right there.
All the other stuff, all the other stuff, it doesn't matter to the decision.
What you need to know is that the people who absolutely, positively know the most about this, don't do it.
That's what you needed to know.
Everything else was a distraction.
And so I didn't do it.
Now, I still might do it.
The factor is if it ends up being painful or something.
But it's not painful. It doesn't bother me.
So I don't do it. Someday I might.
So you would do it if it hurt you every day and you didn't have a choice, basically.
So yeah, you just got a life lesson, didn't you?
Right. So I'm not going to say that because doctors all did it, that it's a good idea.
Because I think the peer pressure in this pandemic situation was not like anything else.
Can we agree? Generally speaking, if all the doctors are doing it, I'm going to be feeling favorable about it.
This would be the exception.
Because I think the pandemic was such a big psychological event as well as a medical event that I don't believe you could trust even the experts to make independent decisions.
I don't think that was an option.
Some will become rogue and maybe be right.
I generally bet against the rogues because they're usually wrong, no matter how convincing they are.
They're usually wrong. Some of them might be right.
Alright, so that's all I'm going to...
The thing that I noticed is that the people who were the most certain that they had made the right decision were also the least likely to know what all the variables were.
I'll say it again. The people who are most certain that they made the right decision about vaxing or unvaxing are also the people who are least aware of the variables.
Because almost everybody who says, I didn't get a vaccination and I'm happy about it, doesn't include long COVID as even a risk variable.
If they do include it, then they say, well, I've said it's zero risk, but that's not based on information.
It couldn't be, because we don't know the future.
And if you had, if you'd lost a month of productivity and you thought you could have that lost month two or three more times, because keep in mind, I don't know if I get Omicron again.
I don't know if my natural immunity would keep me from a month of badness again.
Because remember, this is an engineered, we think.
I believe I can say that now.
All indications are, from what I can hear, that it's probably an engineered virus.
How many of you believe you can predict the long-term effect of an engineered virus?
How many think that's a thing?
How many of you can predict what will happen having an engineered virus in your body?
Interesting. Because we all agree we can't predict how bad the virus will be, but yet you're confident of your decisions.
You shouldn't be confident of a decision if you don't know what the future looks like.
Confidence in a decision means you do know what the future looks like because it's just cause and effect that's obviously going to happen.
All right.
So that was about what I wanted to do.
And so the reason that the Andrew Taint thing pisses me off is that he got a lot of attention, and part of it was a lie about me.
Well, actually, several lies about me.
And so his lie is that I was pro-vaccination, pro-mask.
That's the opposite of true.
I was anti-mandate.
Anti-mandate. What you do with your own body, that's your decision.
But definitely anti-mandate for all those things.
So he has lied in a very dangerous lie about me.
And so karma is coming to get him.
And he said my IQ is 112.
185, you tell him.
185. Confident in making the right choice given the current information?
Okay, I'll take that correction.
In case you never think I changed my mind?
Yes. Being confident that you made the right decision with what you knew at the time is different from being confident that it will work out.
That is correct.
I accept that correction.
All right, let me ask you this.
A number of people told me that the fact that the medical community was all on the same page on vaccinations is your indication that there's something wrong.
Yes or no? The fact that the medical community was so pro-vaccination and it seemed like they had all, you know, except for the rogues here or there, that they seemed to have this unified front, is that an indication that there's a problem?
Look at your answers, yeses and nos.
Here's the right answer.
The right answer is there are two situations in which the medical community would be on the same side.
One is the one that we're talking about.
Everybody is group thinking and they're afraid of the consequences of going against the recommendations.
That's one possibility. What's the other possibility for why all of the medical community would be on the same side?
I'll give you an example. The medical community is very, let's say, unified in saying that smoking cigarettes is bad for your lungs and for your health.
Now, is that a red flag?
That the medical community is pretty much solidly against cigarette smoking?
Is that a red flag that maybe cigarette smoking is good for you?
No. There are two situations in which the medical community might be unified.
One is if they're totally correct.
And that's the most common one.
The most common way that the medical community agrees is when they're completely correct.
The least likely way that they all agree is peer pressure.
But it is a thing. That's a real thing.
I absolutely agree with you that what we could be seeing could be nothing but peer pressure.
That's possible. It's not my opinion.
But if you say it's not possible, oh, it's possible.
It's very possible that every one of them could be wrong.
Very possible. It's just the least likely possibility.
The most likely possibility is at the right.
By far. Probably ten to one.
If I had to put a number on it, I'd say, no matter the situation, if you see the medical community is solidly agreed, probably tend to wonder right.
But the pandemic would be the one situation where you'd have to question it.
Can we agree on that?
That the pandemic was such an unusual situation with government control and everything else, that is the one time Where all the doctors being on the same side should mean closer to nothing.
Closer to nothing.
But if you took it as more than nothing and you moved it all the way to, well, it's a sign of fraud, well, that's not justified.
The fact that they all agree is not a signal for fraud.
It's either a signal that it's an obvious good thing, Or something extraordinary happened and unusual.
But that extraordinary and unusual thing would happen in exactly that situation.
So it wouldn't be extraordinary in that situation.
You know, the pandemic. All right.
The doctors were unified that masks don't work at first.
Were they? No, they weren't.
No, they weren't.
I don't think doctors have ever been unified on masks.
I think masks is the one thing they're not unified on.
Well, let me say that differently.
I believe that doctors are unified, that masks work, with quotes, if you're visiting your 90-year-old grandmother in the rest home.
Correct or not? I believe that nearly 100% of doctors In the pandemic context, would tell you to wear a mask if you're visiting your grandmother in the rest home.
And not just for looks, and not just because it's the rules.
But I think all of them would say, you know, it might make some difference.
It might make some difference.
So if you believe that the virus is too small for the mask holes, which is true, The virus is much smaller than the gaps in the mask, and plus it gets out the sides, plus people wear it wrong.
So in the real world, if you're wearing it all day, it probably doesn't make much difference, because there's enough getting out.
If you're around people all day long, you know, it doesn't matter how it gets there.
But on a short visit, does your mask get moistier on the inside of the mask?
Yes or no? Is there moisture from your exhaling on the inside of the mask?
There is, right? And if the virus travels on the moisture, do you think you wouldn't be able to measure any virus on the mask?
If somebody had COVID, you don't think you'd be able to pick it up on the inside of the mask?
So we know the mask would stop some.
If it only stopped...
Bad logic. It's not bad logic.
Remember, I've got an IQ of 185.
Don't forget that. So if you know that virus is on moisture, you know the moisture's on the mask, some of that virus is on the mask.
Now, is that enough to make a difference?
Don't know. Because one of the hypotheses that we heard, that I've not heard debunked, but I've not heard it confirmed, is that the amount of virus you're initially exposed to makes a difference.
How many of you think that that's confirmed, or maybe just logical?
That the amount of initial virus you come with, yeah, logically it makes sense, but it doesn't mean it's true, right?
Our logic brings us, oh, less virus, probably good, because your body has less to fight, right?
Right. So here are the things that we can say for sure.
From an engineering perspective, there's a 100% chance the masks stop some virus.
If you disagree with that, you're a fucking idiot.
Let me just say that.
Does anybody disagree with that?
Does anybody want to out themselves as a fucking idiot?
If there's moisture on the mask and the virus travels in the moisture, it's stopping something.
Nobody disagrees with that, right?
Now, do we see the difference in the statistics?
I haven't seen it.
So whatever's happening is too small to justify a mandate, but probably not too small to justify wearing it if you're visiting your 90-year-old grandmother in the rest home.
How many would agree with that assessment?
There's no evidence that it works in a macro sense when everybody wears them, and there's definite Indications that there are negatives to it.
But if you're visiting grandma, who knows?
Worth a shot. Are we all on the same page?
I think we're on the same page.
Now, I would also say that in the beginning, we didn't know.
We were guessing. So I don't fault anybody for being wrong in the beginning, except that Fauci told us he lied.
But he lied for a reason that was, I hate to say it, he had a reason.
And that reason was for the benefit of the medical community, so they wouldn't run out of masks.
And that was the right call.
Well, the right call was to protect the medical community first.
It doesn't mean that was the only way he could do it, but I don't have a better idea.
If I'd been in his position, I feel like I would have lied.
Would you?
If you thought that the lie would protect people's lives, would you have lied in that position?
It's easy to say no, but people would die if you told the truth.
You know that, right? Suppose you were sure that telling the truth would kill people.
Would you lie anyway? Or would you tell the truth?
If you knew people would die because you told the truth, would you tell the truth?
Yeah, it gets tougher if you know people are going to die.
Because I think that was the case.
I think Fauci was closer to knowing people would die if he told the truth.
Yeah. So, I think here's how I would have preferred to handle it.
And it would have gone like this.
We need those N95 masks for the medical community.
If I see you wearing an N95 mask and you're not a doctor, I'm going to talk to you about it.
And everybody else should, too.
If you see somebody wearing an N95, ask them if they're a doctor.
Well, I mean, if they're outside in the street, I don't know, why are they wearing it anyway?
But I think you could have embarrassed the public out of wearing them.
I think you could have done that.
You could have just embarrassed the public and say, look, if you're wearing an N95 mask in public and I don't have enough for my surgery team, you're an asshole.
Yeah, I get that you're protecting yourself.
I get that you're right, but you're not making the right choice for the country.
So I feel like we maybe could have embarrassed the country into not scooping them up.
Because I do think that Americans will step up.
What do you think? I mean, not everybody in every situation.
But my impression of Americans is that in emergencies, we do step up.
And I think if he said, this is an emergency, I'm going to ask you not to protect yourself.
I'm going to ask you not to protect yourself with these N95s until the medical community can protect themselves, because that's your better outcome in the long run.
Would we have stepped up?
Well, if 10% said they wouldn't, because they just are afraid, I would say those 10% probably needed them.
If there's 10% who have such a mental, let's say they're so mentally debilitated by what they perceive as the risks, maybe they need the N95s, right?
Because at that point, it's medically required.
But I think you could get 80% of the public to say, you know, I will increase my risk a little bit for you doctors because you're increasing your risk for me.
How hard is it to increase your personal risk to benefit somebody who's increasing their personal risk and you're seeing it in real time for you?
Everybody in the medical community increased their personal risk for you.
Would I increase my personal risk to compensate them?
Absolutely. In a heartbeat, yeah.
It would be an easy choice.
Yeah, maybe 75%, you're right.
Wow, you're really showing your COVID stripes here.
Really? Sean, so you're on a subscription platform, so I'm going to charitably assume That I'm misinterpreting you.
So if you'd like, this would be a good time to explain what you meant by, I'm showing my COVID stripes.
Because I think you heard what I said about the last person who misinterpreted me on this topic.
And I'd be happy to say it again.
But I'm going to charitably assume that you are...
Oops.
I just lost the feed.
Hold on a second.
How the hell did that happen?
I just lost the entire local's feed.
There we are. Hey, I'm back.
Hello. Sorry, I hit the wrong button.
Um... You are scared and making decisions based on fear.
Alright, you stupid bastard.
Let me take a minute to deal with the people who say that I'm afraid and making my decisions based on fear.
Number one, I don't really even remember the last time I was afraid.
Not really. I mean, honestly, if you said, when was the last time you were afraid of something?
I was like, I don't know. I can't even think of the last time.
I do see things as mostly risk.
But even within that context of not actually feeling fear, fear...
Oh, actually, I'll tell you.
The last time I was afraid was when the supply chain looked like it was at risk.
When the supply chain looked like it was going to crash, I was a little worried about that.
Now, I told you I wasn't worried, and that was part of making sure it didn't crash.
But that worried me.
I don't remember having any specific worries about the virus or the vaccination.
I would say those of you who believe that the people who got vaccinated was because of fear and the people who didn't get the vaccination were brave, well, you're fucking idiots.
You're fucking idiots.
Let me be... You're a fucking idiot if you think that.
Because the reason you didn't get the vaccination is you were afraid of it.
Now, you might not have been trembling in your boots.
Maybe you weren't shaking.
I'm not shaking. But you looked at two things, two risks, and you said, this risk is bigger than this one, just like every other fucking person.
They just looked at the two risks and they said, I think this one's bigger than this one for me.
You're not a hero.
You're not a fucking hero because you didn't get the vaccination, right?
You could be somebody who accurately calculated your risks.
You could be that. You could be a person who looked at two risks and made a reasonable decision.
You could be that. Absolutely, you could be that.
If you're 25 and, you know, you're not around a grandmother and you decided not to get vaccinated, I'd say, ah, well, okay.
That was a reasonable approach.
If you're 75 and you did get vaccinated, I'd say, well, I don't know if you're right or you're wrong, but it was a good approach.
But if your view is that the people who looked at two risks which are hard to calculate, and they chose a different one from you, and you think that they're a coward just because they looked at two risks they can't calculate and picked one, you're a fucking idiot.
That is the lowest level of intellectual honesty and evaluation you could possibly have.
If you didn't take the vaccination because you're afraid it will kill you or turn you into a mutant, you're a fucking coward.
Oh, how does it feel?
How does it feel? How does it feel to be called a coward for not taking a vaccination?
And you say to yourself, I'm not a coward.
I looked at the pluses and the minuses, and I decided that there were more minuses than pluses.
Well, you fucking coward.
Stop being a pussy.
What? Well, you can't put a little needle in your arm?
You're afraid of a little mRNA?
Oh, oh, you fucking pussy.
You goddamn coward.
Man up. Man up and put a needle in your arm.
It's not that hard. All right, was that useful?
I didn't do anything useful there, did I? There was no benefit from me calling you a coward because all you did is what every fucking person did.
They looked at the risks.
They did their best based on their personal situation.
Nobody did anything different from that.
You're not a fucking hero.
You're an idiot.
So don't go through life thinking, I'm a fucking hero, I'm a hero, I didn't get the jab, those dumb people did.
No, you were afraid of the jab.
You were afraid. You're a fucking coward.
Not really. It's just easy to say, right?
Nobody was a coward.
Nobody was a hero.
We all just did our best.
And most of us are happy with our choices.
Most of us are happy with our choices.
You're not a fucking hero.
You're not brave.
You're not the rogue.
You're not the one who bucked the things.
You might turn out to be right.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
Because, again, fog of war, we're all guessing.
And I'll tell you who annoys me the most.
The people who are sure that they saw the problems coming, and here they are.
Those people are really lost.
Stop talking about your bad choices.
Well, that's the NPC approach.
Okay.
How many people did I drive off?
I was assuming that I'd lose everybody here.
Yeah, it looks like I lost most of the YouTube people.
