Episode 1859 Scott Adams: Democrats Have Launched Their Newest Hoax. Come Share A Laugh About It
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
ESG series in Dilbert
Parent Party or Education Party?
The latest democrat HOAX is forming
Special Master for Mar-a-Lago documents
Russia & China tying their economic futures
Quiet Quitting trends
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And welcome to what will be, no doubt, one of the highlights of your life.
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Hit that subscribe button.
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Well, Here's a question that you can think of while I'm looking for this thing that I'm going to show you.
So this is a question from Machiavelli's Underbelly.
I quote his account a lot.
And he asks this today.
Why do you believe that you're made out of something different than your imagination?
In your imagination, let's say dreaming, as a good example of imagination, you have complete worlds.
And in your dreams you can touch things, can't you?
Doesn't everything have weight when you're dreaming?
If you touch something in your dream, it feels solid, right?
So why do you think you're made of something different than your dream?
There's no reason to think so.
There's no reason.
But that's not what I wanted to show you.
I promised you that I would take care of the scourge of ESG. And I am a cartoonist on my word, and so today we begin a series on ESG. And the first in the series will be Dogburp, who has been hired.
Actually, the ESG thing I'm going to hit in a different, a few different ways.
So there'll be some gaps.
It won't be continuous.
But in today's comic, You can see Dave, the new character.
Now, if you don't know the new Dave character in the Dilbert comic, Dave is a black employee.
I'll give you a little close-up there.
He's a black employee whose the joke, the running joke, is that he's a prankster.
And although he is obviously black, he identifies as white because he's just pranking his boss.
Anyway, so that's the context.
But Dog Bear says to him, says to Dave, he says, Dave, your boss hired me to solve all of his problems by renaming stuff.
Does that sound familiar?
Solve all your problems by just renaming them?
And then Dogbert goes on.
He says, I realize you identify as white just to prank him, but he asked me to rename you as black so he can reach his ESG goals.
And then Dave says, you are a worthy opponent, but I can change my identity as often as I want.
And Dogbert says, I get paid by the hour.
Now, this takes some explaining.
Take some explaining. The first thing you have to know is, is it weird to you that I didn't define ESG? Did that stick out to you?
Did you say to yourself, how many people are even going to read this comic and know what ESG means?
Well, first of all, they don't need to.
It's written. It is written so that you can still get the joke without knowing what ESG means.
But I intentionally don't define it.
Because once it appears in a Dilbert comic, and there are court cases that have actually confirmed this, it's generally considered common knowledge.
So I'm sort of gaming the system.
It is literally true that court cases have looked at Dilbert comic strips to determine what is common knowledge.
Because if it's in a comic strip in a newspaper and it's not defined, Then the argument is, well, if you didn't have to define it in a mass media, it means it's common knowledge.
There was actually a year 2000 case that was based on that.
Somebody claimed they didn't know the year 2000 would have some technical bugs involved with it.
And the prosecution said, it's impossible that you didn't know that because it's common knowledge.
It's even in the Dilbert comic, which it was.
So here's the first cartoonist trick.
I like to give you a little persuasion and marketing tips as I go.
By not defining it, what behavior did I cause?
By not defining ESG, what behavior did I cause?
Curiosity, right?
If you can inspire somebody's curiosity, well, you have them.
And basically, if I can make you curious, I own you.
Because you're going to stick around.
You're going to find out what's the answer to the mystery.
So the first thing is a little curiosity about what that is.
Secondly, some people will look it up.
Yeah, they'll look it up for the first time.
Now, if you make somebody do something physically with their body, such as go search for something else, what does that do for your art?
It binds them to you.
It's a bonding exercise.
So if somebody does something because of my cartoon and then gets back to the cartoon and creates more of a structure of activity around it, then they have bonded with me.
So it's part of the strategy that sometimes I don't explain things that are entering the common use but aren't quite there yet.
So here the idea was that if Dave can change his identity as often as he wants, and Dogbert is also getting paid by the hour to rename stuff, that they have a standoff.
And Dave will keep redefining himself, and Dogbert will keep redefining his redefinition.
Anyway, as long as Dogbert gets paid by the hour, he's fine.
All right. A lot of people ask me, why don't I move out of California?
Because we've got all these problems.
We've got the heat wave going on.
We'll talk about that in a moment.
We've got all the crime and the taxes and the immigration and stuff like that.
Do you know why I don't move?
Does anybody know why I don't move?
Let me tell you. Yesterday in my town it was 112 degrees.
And I call that a nicer day than Florida.
Have you ever gone outside in Florida in the summer?
On any day?
It's like you're being punched to death, just walking outside.
Do you know how often, how many days a year, it's unpleasant to walk outside where I live?
Hardly any. Hardly any.
At 112 degrees, it didn't stop me from doing anything.
At 112 degrees, I just did my outdoor stuff early in the morning.
It was around 75.
And then I go swimming at night.
I do all my errands.
I mean, it's just the same.
No difference at all. So at 112 degrees, because I don't have humidity, eh, it's not that bad.
I mean, it's noteworthy and you don't want to hang around in it, but eh, it's no big deal.
Now, You also hear a lot about San Francisco and LA and the homeless people and all that stuff, right?
So you say to yourself, how could you live with all that crime and homelessness and needles on the street?
To which I say, there's nothing like that around where I live.
That is less than 1% of 1% of the total land mass of California has anything bad happening on it.
99.99% of all of California, this enormous state, is kind of awesome.
It's kind of awesome. The view is good.
Traffic is a little hard.
Traffic is hard in the metropolitan areas, but you can stay away from them.
Just tell Amazon to bring you your stuff if you need it.
So if you're wondering what's the mystery of why people stay in California, they're definitely moving into the cities because the cities are mismanaged.
But where I live, the population is growing.
Where I live, there are way more people moving in.
The value of the real estate here zoomed during the pandemic because people were moving out of the city and into my neighborhood.
So I have the place that you move to, not the place you move out of.
If you lived in San Francisco, that's the place you'd move out of.
If you lived in LA, depending on the area, that's the place you'd move out of.
But you move to my neighborhood, it's a big place.
You'd like it. You really would.
So yesterday, I got a text.
I forget what it was.
It was in the early evening.
And it was a text from the state saying that we're going to run out of electricity any moment unless you turn down your use of electricity, like right now and for the next several hours.
What did I do?
The moment I got a text that says you might lose your power completely if you don't raise your temperature on your thermostat and stop your usage.
What did I do immediately?
Do you think I did nothing at a protest?
Or did I immediately turn down my appliances?
I walked directly to my appliances and I altered them all.
Turned off lights, closed doors that had, you know, AC zones.
Kept my office and my bedroom at a reasonable temperature because I used them.
And other things I just, you know, turned off the AC and let it drift up.
Because my house is well insulated so it doesn't get above 80 usually.
Now, how did I feel about it?
Here's the interesting question.
Let me ask you. How did I feel about that?
What was my internal feeling when I had to stop what I was doing and turn up the temperature?
How did I feel? Because remember, I tend to be a cantankerous personality.
I don't know, sometimes I can be cantankerous.
I tend to be reflexively against being told what to do.
I do not like my government telling me what to do.
Let me tell you what I did. I immediately changed everything and I felt really good about it.
And then I woke up today and I read the results.
Do you know what happened in California last night?
That text went out because we were, apparently they can measure when you're getting right up to the limit of your electrical usage.
We got right up to the limit.
I think we were using 45 whatever and 50 was our limit.
We got there and as soon as the text went out, Boom.
Drop like a rock.
Drop like a rock.
Californians just said, what do we have to do?
Okay, that's better than losing power.
It was easy. Not only did I do it, I felt okay about it.
Now today I woke up to lots of criticism.
A lot of criticism. I guess some people thought I shouldn't have done that.
Now the problem is how we got to this point.
The problem is not what I did yesterday.
What I did yesterday is not terribly relevant to energy management in California.
I'm just saying that here's what I was missing.
Here's what I was missing.
The critics are going to say, oh, you sheep.
You sheep, you did what you were told.
But let me tell you how it felt.
It felt like a shared crisis, and I felt like I was pitching in.
And I felt connected to the rest of California, no matter what their political leaning was.
More connected, more connected to the people in California than any time in the past, well, maybe since I've lived here.
No, actually one other time.
There was one other time Californians were more coordinated and on board with each other.
It was the big earthquake.
What was the year? Do you remember the big earthquake that whacked everything?
When the big earthquake hit, I was out here in California, 80?
89? When was it?
Late 80s? That's when the freeways collapsed.
I was one exit away from the freeway that collapsed.
Now, as it turns out, I wouldn't have been on it.
But I was that close to a pretty big disaster.
Like, as it happened.
Like, I was right there.
I was just not under it, luckily.
Have you noticed if you follow the news and you're following the imaginary civil war that we're supposed to be in?
The imaginary civil war makes you imagine that you're at each other's throats because on Twitter it looks that way.
If you follow the news it looks that way.
But the moment, the moment I got a text from my state that said, if you don't all band together you're all fucked.
I banded together.
I banded together. Because you know what?
I don't want to be all fucked. And I don't want the other people to.
I probably would have been fine, because my house was designed to withstand a power outage.
It was designed for that purpose.
So my house was designed to be fireproof, water shortage proof, because I had burned well.
And energy loss-proof.
It's not as loss-proof as it could be.
But it's designed so that the temperature will never be too high or too low, just because my insulation is so powerful.
So it wouldn't have been a big deal to me if the power had gone out.
I just would have, literally, I would have gone out and gone swimming.
If my power went out, I would have said, oh, okay.
I would have walked outside and just got in my pool.
That's it. That would have been my entire suffering for the night.
So I didn't need to do it.
I didn't need to turn off my power.
I didn't need to change it at all.
But the fact that I woke up in the morning and found out that apparently the whole state in some kind of lockstep fashion said, I could do that.
That is completely reasonable.
Now it's not reasonable that we got to this point.
Don't take me wrong. Don't get me wrong.
It is not reasonable that we had to do this.
But once we're here, I'm not going to let my fellow Californians die.
Am I going to let a Californian die because I didn't change my temperature a little bit and go swimming?
Really? So it was the smallest little effort on my part.
But here's the thing.
It really reminded me that we don't have a common enemy.
And we kind of need one, don't we?
So the United States hasn't had a common enemy for a while, not a real one.
So we divided into these two teams so we'd have a way to still fight.
Well, at least we'll fight with each other until we get a common enemy.
But the moment I got that text, that was a common enemy.
Right? The temperature was a common enemy of everybody in California at the same time.
And as soon as we saw that common enemy, how much did we care about politics?
Zero. Zero.
It was the most pure moment of the last five years.
It was the purest moment of being a human in the world.
Oh, I have to do this to save my fellow humans?
I'm in. No problem.
So it was actually kind of a magical moment.
I know that I'm going to get criticism for being a sheep and blah blah blah.
Why do you live in California?
Blah blah. I live here because your state sucks compared to where I live.
Let me be honest. Where I live is fucking great.
Even in California.
Even in California.
It's fucking great.
It's way better than where you live most of the year.
I get that where you live is awesome when the leaves change.
I get that where you live is amazing for like a month or two in the spring.
But if you want to have pretty good weather all year, you're going to come where I live.
Where I live, you don't die because you went outdoors, except for three days this year, I guess.
You would die if you went outdoors too long.
Here's the other thing.
Do you know what I haven't heard at all for the last, I don't know, two days?
I haven't heard anybody complain about climate change not being real.
Now, again, I'm not talking about the fact of it.
We're not talking about the science of it.
I'm not even arguing climate change.
I'm just saying that we're so anecdote-driven that it would have been impossible to be in California yesterday, walk outdoors, and doubt climate change.
Now, do I understand that a few days of hot weather don't mean anything?
Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
I completely understand that a few days of hot temperature in California don't mean anything.
It doesn't mean the models are correct.
It doesn't mean you're going to burn up.
It doesn't mean anything. But, even as much as my rational brain says, that doesn't mean anything, that's just a few days of extra hot weather.
I'll bet we've had those in the past.
But when you walk out doors, the first thing you think is, oh shit, this is real.
The anecdotal persuasiveness is so high when it's 110 degrees.
That even though your conscious brain is saying, don't believe it, don't believe your senses, because they're not reliable compared to science, not compared to data, don't believe your senses.
I know it's hotter than you've ever felt it before.
Don't believe that. That's just an anecdote.
It's not useful data.
And then you walk outside and you feel it.
And as soon as that sun hits your skin, you've never felt anything like it.
Like, there were a lot of people yesterday in California, probably a lot, I'll bet there were millions of people yesterday who had never felt that hot in their life walking outdoors.
Don't you think? At 110, there were a lot of people who felt that for the first time.
I'll bet every one of those people who felt that for the first time just decided that climate change is real.
Let me remind you of my personal opinion on climate change, which is that I think the basic science is real.
That's the most reliable part, the basic science.
Meaning that all things being equal, if you added CO2 to the air, it should heat up.
Because that's just basic science.
As Jordan Peterson pointed out recently, there's so many variables that the models are basically useless.
And I will add to that, given that AI will be, I think, reaching the singularity within three years, any prediction about humankind after three years from now is just nonsense.
Complete nonsense.
It's entirely possible that AI will solve climate change in four years.
Solving it in that context would mean developing a plan that was not obvious to us, but once you see it, you say, oh shit, that would work.
It turns out you just figured out how to make fusion, which could happen.
The AI is actually a big part of the advanced nuclear designs.
If you have AI, you can quickly adjust the Your containment.
I guess I'm using the wrong words.
But you can quickly adjust your reaction.
Would that be the better way to say it?
Somebody help me out with the technical words.
But if you're using AI and you're very rapidly adjusting your situation to maintain your, I don't know, the reaction or maintain the safety of it, whichever it is, you need AI to do that.
Humans can't do that. So AI is actually a critical technology for nuclear, as it turns out, the new designs.
All right. So I don't know about you, but a lot of people are going to believe in climate change who didn't believe it before.
I do believe climate change is real.
And I do believe that humans are part of it.
And I do believe that we can't predict it at all.
But I don't mind that we panic a little bit, because it does cause us to build new industries and stuff.
I don't think we're making all the right decisions.
Case in point, Michael Schellenberger notes today on Twitter that scientists claim that the algae bloom in the San Francisco Bay, which killed over 10,000 fish, was due to climate change.
So that was a claim at one point, that there was all this algae that killed a bunch of fish and it was climate change.
But now we found out it's due to the failure of local governments to upgrade the region's antiquated sewage treatment plants.
So it was actually just the government failure of sewage treatment that the scientists decided was a clear sign of climate change.
Would everybody be okay with the following statement of fact?
Regardless of how true climate change is as a risk, and regardless of what is true or false about the central nature of the claim, I think it's basically true.
Regardless of how true it is, do we agree that much of the evidence to support it will be absolute bullshit?
Would you go with me then?
So you don't have to agree with me whether the basic science is correct.
You could disagree with me on that.
But could we both agree that whether the basic idea is correct or not, the evidence shown is so fucking bad.
And I think it's because there's so many people who are trying to make a living, right?
Because you get your best scientists who do their work and say, hey, we got this problem.
And then all the lesser scientists need to publish a paper, too.
I've got to do something on climate change, because that's important.
And then you get these lower-level studies and lower-level hypotheses, and suddenly the public doesn't believe anything.
Because science at that point is lying to us non-stop.
And so those few true things just get, you know, the good stuff gets thrown in with the garbage and you think it's all garbage.
I mean, I think the main crime against conservatives and Republicans and anybody who doubts climate risk, I think a crime has been committed against that group because they were fed so much bullshit that they don't believe anything.
They don't believe anything. And let me ask you this.
Should they? Should they?
If you had been fed as much bullshit as conservatives and Republicans have been fed for years, would you believe anything?
And that's a big problem.
It's the crying wolf problem, right?
So I think this time this is a real risk.
But if you tell me you don't believe it because they lied to you so many times in the past, I'm going to say, you know, you know, that's not crazy.
If I say, I think the vaccinations might be a good idea, but I can't tell, there's just no way for me to know.
But you say, well, I'm not going to risk it because they lied to me so many times in the past.
Then I say, that's not crazy.
That's not crazy. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you're not crazy.
You're definitely not crazy.
By the way, how hard would it be to run for president and win?
Is it hard to show respect for an opinion you don't hold?
It's not that hard.
I mean, I feel like I'm doing it right now, right?
I'm giving some respect to the other side.
It's not that hard. And I don't think it took anything away from my argument at all.
In theory, it would make it stronger.
I have an observation that some of you will hate.
That people who have completely conquered their ego look like people with huge egos.
And you can't tell the difference.
And the reason you can't tell the difference is most of us have damaged egos.
So we're just projecting.
And let me give you an example. When I hear people say that Trump has a huge ego, I say, but that is completely counter to all the ways he acts.
Because yes, he does a lot of bragging.
He does a lot of bragging.
I get that part. But it's also like his job.
He's literally a marketer, brander, who became president.
And both of those jobs are about exaggerating your qualities.
So, but here's the part that doesn't make sense if he's protecting his ego.
Do you think he would act the way he acts if that was his main concern?
Do you think that Trump doesn't know what way to act for people to like him and respect him the most?
Because I think he does.
You think he doesn't? All right, well then, we'd be guessing about him, and we can't read his mind.
So I'm going to take you out of the guessing zone and put you into my own head.
Have you ever seen me say things?
Sort of a rhetorical question here.
Have you ever seen me say things that you said, oh my God, that sounded pretty arrogant and a little more certain than he should have been, and he's got a big ego there.
Have you ever heard anything that made you say that?
Whoa. We're certainly interpreting that as Scott has a big ego.
Right? You've all seen me do it.
Now, here's the question. Do you think I wasn't aware of how I would sound?
In any situation in which I've acted arrogant or egotistical to you, if that was your opinion, do you think that I was unaware how I would be received?
Of course not.
It's not rocket science.
It's obvious. I know exactly how I'm being received.
So why do I choose to do it?
Why would I choose to do something in which I know, easily I know, it will not be well received, I will be mocked, and people will have a lower opinion of me for it.
Why do I do it? Or, yeah, or narcissism.
Why do I do it? If I know people are going to have a negative feeling about it, why do I do it?
Sometimes it's for effect.
That's correct. Sometimes it's for energy.
That's part of for effect.
But here's the thing. I couldn't do it if I had an unhealthy relationship with my ego.
I don't think any of it's true.
If I tell you something awesome about me, I don't think it's true.
So the thing that you can't tell is what I think is true.
So if I tell you that I'm right about something, I don't know if I'm true.
I mean, I don't know if it's true.
It would just be an opinion.
I would ask you to look for this.
If you're trying to figure out if somebody really, their ego is out of control versus they've completely conquered it to the point where it's just not part of their decision-making, look for people doing things that they clearly know would not be good for them.
And then you know it's just for effect, right?
They're trying to accomplish something.
All right. So in the Washington Post had an editorial saying that the GOP wants to be the education party.
And I think it was encouraging the Democrats to fight back against that.
Now, my comment was that branding the Republicans as the education party is pretty good.
It's not bad.
What do you think of that? The education party.
Yes or no? Does that sound persuasive to you?
Do you think you could get any extra votes with that?
Yeah. Here's my suggestion.
The parent party is a better persuasion.
If you say you're the education party, then Democrats say, how can you be the education party?
You don't even believe in climate science.
It's just too easy. As soon as you say, we're the ones who will educate you, the other side has plenty of ammunition.
Plenty of ammunition.
But, if you say we back parents, you have it all.
The parent party is the high ground.
Education party is the low ground.
The low ground fight, you might win, you might not, but it's a fight.
The high ground, you're just going to win.
The whole point of the high ground is it always wins.
And you can tell it in advance.
As soon as you see it, you say, oh, okay, that always wins.
Now, the only thing that would beat that high ground is what's the one form of persuasion that beats the high ground?
There's only one. What's the only way they can beat the high ground?
Fear. Fear.
And that's what Biden's doing.
He's using fear, persuasion, and he's using it brilliantly, I would say.
He's killing it. He's not the most capable person at the moment, but on this one narrow mission of demonizing one side, he's killing it.
He really is. It's all we're talking about.
It's in the headlines. It's dividing the country.
People are talking about the civil war.
It's working. Now, I'm not saying that means he gets more votes, but has he scared part of his base?
Yeah. Yeah, it's totally working.
So, there was a poll in the Trafalgar Group.
They did a poll and they found that about 57% of the likely general voters said that Biden's speech, calling MAGA Republicans extremists, represents a dangerous escalation in rhetoric.
And of course, independents were even more sure that it was a dangerous escalation in a rhetoric.
Now, I was asked, is that a persuasion fail if the public doesn't like it?
So the public is saying, hey, Biden, you're ginning up all this conflict and hatred, and that's opposite of what you said you'd do, so therefore is it a persuasion fail?
Is the failure that he's doing the opposite of what he said he'd do?
And he's doing it as hard as you can do it.
Opposite of what he said he'd do, that everybody knows, and he's doing it as hard as possible.
Is that good or bad for Biden?
What did I tell you about fear of persuasion?
It's just really strong.
It works. Yeah, this works.
He's killing it right now.
I think it's completely working.
Now, you might say to me, but wait, if everybody knows he's using this trick and everybody knows they don't want a divided country, how could this possibly be working if people are saying, we see your trick and we hate it.
Stop doing that trick.
We hate it. We see it.
We see exactly what you're doing.
Don't do that anymore. It doesn't make any difference.
The only thing that matters is, did he succeed and make you afraid?
That's all that will matter.
They won't vote for something else.
And he only has to move 2% of people or make 2% of people stay home.
That's all. And does he have a fear persuasion that would get that done?
He does. That's not a prediction.
I'm saying he's using a tool that is appropriate to the job.
Does he succeed? We'll see.
But he's using the right tool if you have no ethical center whatsoever.
And I think in politics you can assume that.
All right. Hillary Clinton is weighing in on her emails.
Here's the claim she made.
So she tweeted that Comey admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails.
And she said Trump's own state department under two different secretaries found I had no classified emails.
Can you do me a fact check on that?
How did I get to 2022 while thinking that there were classified emails when she says there were not and that it was proven?
Have I been fake newsed or is she lying?
Is she lying or is it fake news?
But here's the interesting part.
Let's say I don't know if she's lying or not.
But hasn't she just proven that you can be accused of having confidential things when in fact you don't?
Didn't Hillary just give Trump his defense?
If you were going to weigh the possible explanations for Trump having those documents, what would you put the greatest odds on?
That he meant to sell it?
Sell secrets?
Well, let's say we're in a world where nothing can be ruled out, no matter how horrible.
Okay, I'll give that a 1%.
How about, he had all those documents only for the purpose of a biography.
There was no other reason just for a biography.
Maybe. I'd give that a solid 20% chance.
Now, that's not crazy. I'd give it a 20% chance.
It might explain some of the documents, but on the other hand, you don't really need the original document.
You could just tell the biographer what you want him to know.
I don't know. So, no more than 20% for that one.
The biggest possibility, oh, then blackmail.
Maybe there's some stuff in there that Trump thought he could hold as blackmail.
I'll give that another 20% too.
So, but by far the biggest percent Is that there was some misunderstanding about what Trump had and had given back.
And that it was more like a bureaucratic who was in charge and who heard what and was there an agreement about what was confidential and what wasn't.
Almost certainly it's going to be that.
And I think that Hillary has basically Um, bolstered Trump's defense.
Because if Hillary could be blamed in her own mind here, it needs a fact check, but Hillary's claim is that she could be blamed for having a bunch of classified emails, only to later find out none of it was true.
Well, in the context of Trump, it looks like the same thing's gonna happen.
That he will be blamed of a bunch of stuff, and in the end you'll find out, well, it was sort of a gray area, or it wasn't true, or totally out of context, or something.
Yeah, I think that's where it's going to end up.
So I told you I was going to teach you how to spot the latest Democrat hoax.
and If I told you the Democrats are working with the media to develop their next hoax, what would you expect it would include?
Number one, it would include an anonymous source, right?
If you're going to do a hoax, you need an anonymous source.
That anonymous source would be reported by whom?
Either the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Because that's how you get into a credible news-making entity.
So it's going to be one of those.
And then once the story comes out, it's going to lack detail, right?
And it's the lack of detail that allows who?
Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, to tweet and go on television and say, well, this report from the anonymous source in the Washington Post, if he did this and if he did that, it would be terrible. So that's what you'd expect, right?
That's what it would look like.
And then all the pundits would come on TV and support it.
So that's exactly what's happening.
So the latest is that there's a Washington Post report with a source that they won't tell us, anonymous source, Washington Post, that Schiff and Swalwell are already tweeting about.
And it claims that some of those documents that were found in Mar-a-Lago included, let's see, included something related to foreign government defenses, including nuclear.
So what the report is, is that there's some, at least some information, we don't know anything else, that might involve a foreign government and their nuclear defense.
So that sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
Like if you're just hearing that, and let's say you're a low-information consumer of news, and the only thing you hear is the headlines, you'd be like, oh, shoot, really?
Trump had, like, the most sensitive of nuclear defense secrets?
All right, let me give you an example of what this could have included, right?
Now, it doesn't say that the information about this alleged foreign government's nuclear defense, it doesn't say that this is information that's brand new.
Right? It doesn't say it's brand new.
It also doesn't say it's useful.
And it doesn't say it's dangerous.
It could be all of those things.
Could be useful to somebody else.
Could be dangerous to Americans.
But it doesn't say that. So remember what we don't know.
That's important. What we don't know.
Now, let me give you an example of what it could be.
Now, I'm just making this up.
These are just examples of what would be under this umbrella that you wouldn't necessarily have to worry about.
We believe that Iran is three years away from having a nuclear weapon.
Number one, you know our intelligence agencies don't have the capability to estimate that.
Because they're terrible at that, right?
It wouldn't mean anything.
If they said three years or ten years, I would have the same amount of skepticism because I think they're just guessing anyway.
Suppose it said Israel is unlikely to use nuclear weapons to attack Iran.
How about that? You'd say to yourself, eh, that's just sort of common sense.
But if it's in that document, then it's something about another country's nuclear defense.
But it would also be amazingly obvious.
Meaning that your own guess of what would happen would be equal to the CIA's guess.
There wouldn't be much difference. So I can think of infinite number of examples in which there could be a document that legitimately talks about a foreign government's nuclear defenses and yet gives you no information whatsoever that would have any value to an enemy.
Would you agree with that?
That... If you looked at all the things it could be, whatever the specific topic is, 99% of them are going to be completely harmless.
Because most of them are just going to be context.
As in, well, you know, France has a nuclear arsenal.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Or, you know, if Iran builds their, let's say, a domestic nuclear power program, That that will give them the ability to much faster develop nuclear weapons or more of them.
That wouldn't be a secret.
That would just be context.
So unless you know if there's something like new secret in those documents, you should assume it's just context.
So to have a document that simply references things about nuclear defense, I'm not even sure we know anything about the nuclear defense of other countries.
I mean, maybe it says something like, Russia claims to have X number of nukes, but we think they have twice as many.
How would that change your behavior?
It wouldn't. It wouldn't.
And it wouldn't matter who knew it.
It wouldn't matter who found it.
So 99% of all the things that could be on this document about a foreign country as nuclear stuff is just innocent nothing of no value to anybody.
And any country that would have the, let's say, willingness or need to know probably already knows.
Do you think there's something we know that, like, France doesn't know about another country's nuclear capabilities?
Probably not. All right.
So then Schiff did his usual thing.
New reporting.
This is a Schiff tweet. New reporting that Trump had highly classified information, including on foreign nuclear programs.
And he goes, if true, it raises yet more questions.
See, they have to do the if true thing.
So today is if true time.
Now, the other way to identify an obvious Democrat media hoax is the timing.
Kind of suspicious timing, isn't it?
That the Mar-a-Lago document story started getting boring.
You know, so there were no new news.
So it started getting a little boring, and right on time.
Right on time.
Boom. Story to renew it.
Huh. How about that?
So I'm going to call a hoax on this one.
Everybody agree? Yeah.
This has every signal for a hoax.
In fact, this one's just funny because it's so obviously a hoax.
So obviously, folks.
And I think it's funny that we've been treated seriously.
Because this one says it's the entire checklist, right?
Am I wrong that you could have made this checklist in advance?
In fact, we could make the checklist for the next one.
We could do the next one.
Make the checklist. Anonymous story, Trump did something bad, followed by media hits, followed by Swalwell and Schiff being the only ones who were willing to destroy their reputations, claiming bullshit.
And the other part is that the legitimate Democrats stay hidden.
Right? So this is the phase of the hoax where the legitimate Republicans, the ones who still have an ounce of self-respect, they're not doing what Adam Schiff and Swalwell are doing.
They're not getting ahead of the story like those guys are.
They're saying, I'd like to retain a little bit of credibility maybe for later.
So yeah, this one has just hoax written all over it.
Well, I guess Trump succeeded in getting his, quote, special master to look into all those Mar-a-Lago documents.
That'll slow things down.
I suppose he wanted that.
But they're going to check specifically for any attorney-client privilege documents.
They're not going to trust the FBI's look at them.
And I guess he, the nobody, I think all the smart people said that the special master would never be appointed because it didn't make sense.
And then it happened. And then people said, oh, that's because that's a Trump-appointed judge who was appointed after he'd already lost the election.
So while he was already lame-ducking, he appointed her.
And then she repaid the favor, is what the critics would say.
And I have to admit, if this were the Democrats, I would have said the same thing.
I would have said, ah, this looks like a little too insight-ish, that the judge you appointed just recently is the one that gives you the ruling that was unlikely but went your way.
That's a little bit of a flag.
So my guess is it's exactly what it looks like.
They got the friendliest judge they could, and they got a good result out of it.
I don't know that it matters, though.
I don't know if it matters. They might take a few documents out of the, I don't know, potential public disclosure domain or something, but I don't know why they're doing that exactly, the special master.
I guess one day after Russia cut off all the oil pipeline stuff, was it oil?
No, natural gas pipeline stuff.
To Europe, they signed a giant deal with China's biggest petro company.
So Russia's going all in on China.
Now, do you think that's bad for the United States?
That Russia and China are doing war games together?
And now they're tying their economic futures together.
Is that good or bad for the United States?
Is it good or bad for Russia?
You know, we're...
The reason that we're decoupling from China is the reason this isn't good for Russia.
Do you know what Russia doesn't want?
To be dependent on China.
Being dependent on Europe is one kind of risk.
Being dependent on China, that's a whole different deal.
Now, I do think that Russia and China will continue playing nice with each other, but only because they don't need a war, you know, two superpowers with a shared border.
They're going to play nice.
But I don't think we should make too much of the fact that Russia and China are acting like friends, because I don't think China wants Russia to succeed.
Would you agree? I mean, they want Russia to be just successful enough that there's not a war or something that gets sparked by poverty.
But I don't think they want Russia to succeed.
So driving Putin into China's arms should be seen as a huge loss for Putin.
In every way, really.
But I don't know if it'll be reported that way.
Well, I tweeted, there was a guy named Mark Wilson who had a tweet in which he included a whole bunch of studies showing that wearing masks works.
A whole bunch of studies.
But, to his credit, he does put the caveat that if the masks are not the good ones, they don't work nearly as well.
And if they're not fitted properly, they don't work nearly as well.
And if you stayed in a room long enough, your mask probably wouldn't help you.
But for short encounters, the science seems to say that there is friction that reduces the amount of virus, even if you use the crappy surgical masks.
They're ten times worse than the N95s, but they still make a big difference, according to all the studies.
Now, given that human beings do not wear their masks correctly, This does seem to completely support the view I've had, which is, from an engineering perspective, mask wearing must make some difference.
From a human experience, probably not, because people just don't take them seriously enough.
Everybody cheats with their masks.
Let me ask you this.
Those of you who had kids during the lockdowns, Didn't your kids just play with the other kids without masks as soon as, like, almost right away?
There was no real social distancing among the kids.
Yeah. I think there were, like, a few families who locked up their kids for the entire time.
But I think most of the parents just said, just don't be in public.
Just don't make a big deal of it.
But all the kids were still hanging around, just like always.
I mean, I had sleepovers galore during the pandemic at my house, and nobody wore a mask.
Nobody in my house wore a mask.
Well, maybe a few vendors wore them or something.
But basically, you know, Christina was flying, and airports were exempted from masks.
So I'd be sitting in my house.
My spouse would go to a completely unmasked situation and she'd be there all day long with people with no masks and then would come back.
My kids would be playing, you know, stepkids would be playing with other kids without masks all day long and then come back into my house.
There was no social distancing.
Not really. It was all pretend.
Because as soon as people aren't watching, nobody did it.
How many people invited their friends over to their house and made them wear masks while they're in your house?
I mean, some did. Some did.
But there was so much flagrant ignoring of the guidelines that you can't even say that masks were...
they were barely required.
It's almost like they weren't even there in terms of effectiveness.
So I think it can be true that if you did a study, you would see that it reduced the virus, but in the real world, everybody hates the mask so much that they ignored them when they could and probably didn't see much in the big picture.
So Bannon's in trouble, so he got pardoned for his federal charges about that build-the-wall charity thing that he had.
And the allegations are that it was some kind of a scam.
So now the state of New York apparently gets a shot at him.
And he can't be pardoned for that, not only because Trump's not president, because then there would be a state problem, not a federal problem.
Does it feel like Republicans are being hunted?
Steve Bannon says he's being taken off the board because of the big elections coming.
It doesn't feel like a coincidence, does it?
It just doesn't feel like a coincidence.
Do you ever think that maybe if somebody is pardoned for federal offenses, it should include state offenses?
I'm not sure I love the idea of a president pardoning somebody and then the state prosecuting them.
That feels like there's just something wrong with the system.
It's like pick one. Either don't have any pardons or don't have a workaround so that you can thwart the pardon.
I don't know. I think a presidential pardon should be applicable at the state level and local level.
What do you think? Otherwise, Otherwise, I feel like it's wasting the public's time and money.
Yeah. Now, you could have a lively debate about whether anybody should ever be pardoned, like if there's ever a good reason for that.
But as long as we have it, I think we should use it in a more rational way, which is if the President of the United States says, for whatever reason, remember, the whole point of the pardon is you don't have to give a reason.
It's whatever reason. I just don't think the states should usurp the right to punish somebody once the federal government said no.
It feels wrong to me.
Britain's talking about now flattening the curve of their electric use.
And boy, do people not like to hear that term, flatten the curve.
Because that just feels like another scam, doesn't it?
It just feels like, oh God, the wrong people are in charge.
As soon as you hear that, flatten the curve, no!
Now, the language makes sense.
It makes perfect sense what they're trying to do.
But, you hate to hear it.
What do you think about all this work from home thing?
I saw an interesting tweet from Jason Furman who said, the difference between economic research, so when you do research, it tends to show people enthusiastic about working from home.
But when you ask CEOs who almost all hate it, you know, there's a big difference.
So somebody must be wrong.
Is it the CEOs who are wrong?
And the employee should go work at the office.
Or is the research that's wrong that says that this work-at-home thing is a pretty good deal?
What do you think? What's wrong?
The research or the CEOs?
Here's what I think. I think it's hard to feel like you're managing something if somebody's not there in person.
And you could argue that maybe there's no management there at all.
And then some percentage of people who work at home are just going to take advantage of it, right?
It's going to be a pretty big percentage.
So some people will just be working three jobs and avoiding meetings and not returning phone calls and stuff.
So I'm not sure it's completely good or completely bad.
It probably has more to do with the individual.
I would say there are some people who are definitely good work-at-home candidates and some kinds of jobs.
And then there's a whole bunch that aren't.
So the CEOs, I think I'm going to side with the CEOs, and Elon Musk would be at the top of this list, for people who say if you're not physically there, you're not really trying.
The difference between being there in person and being at your home is so big.
There are some jobs that doesn't make any difference.
But if you're trying to invent the future, oh, you've got to be there.
You've got to be there. I don't think there's a way around that.
Have you heard of this term, quiet quitting, which is all the rage now?
Quiet quitting.
Have you even heard that phrase?
It's in the business news now a lot.
It has to do with employees who keep their job, but they don't do any extra work and they're not engaged.
They're just collecting a paycheck.
Now, the news is acting like that's something new.
Does that feel new? Because they're acting like it's this big surge in people not caring about their work.
Some of it's probably new.
Here's a little lesson on persuasion and psychology too.
If you make people drive to work versus stay home, What is likely to happen?
What psychological phenomenon will happen if you make somebody commute, this ugly commute, to go to work?
What's the psychological phenomenon that happens then?
Well, the obvious one would be they don't like their job, because it's got an ugly commute.
But that only works sometimes.
More of the time, you know what happens?
Cognitive dissonance.
Because it's hard for somebody to explain why they're doing something so unpleasant when we live in a world in which there are options.
And so, to explain their apparent irrationality for having to commute so long, they will tell you that they love their job.
They love the job. And they'll come to believe it.
It'll be cognitive dissonance.
So one of the benefits of forcing people to do something unpleasant, the commute, to come to work, is it has the ironic effect of making them like their job more.
Does that make sense?
Because they have to explain to themselves why they would put up with such an ugly commute, because it doesn't make sense unless it's a good job.
You must love your job. So that's exactly how cognitive dissonance works.
So from the CEO's point of view, if they want the employees to love their jobs, they have to make them more unpleasant.
I know, right?
It's opposite of common sense.
Now, it's also not true for every person.
If you say to yourself, well, that doesn't apply to me, you might be right.
It might not apply to you.
It's a general statement about how brains work and how situations work.
And by the way, this long commute example is one that I've used for years.
It just happens to be what we're doing right now.
But it's always been an example of cognitive dissonance because it's an easy one.
Why do you commute so long when you can just get a job where you don't have to?
And the answer is they've talked themselves into thinking they love their job.
Now, what happens if you take all those people and then say, all right, spend two years working from home?
Well, suddenly, the value of their job goes down in their mind because they're not physically there and they didn't have to sacrifice anything to get their paycheck.
They just sort of stayed home and it was easy.
So everybody's feeling about their job should have gone down because of the pandemic, because the pandemic made their job easier.
Weird, huh? Instead of liking your job more because it got easier, it will make people dislike it more.
Not everybody. It'll work in both directions.
I don't know if there's any more quiet quitting than there had been, but if there is, the pandemic is a perfect explanation of why that happened.
Alright, just looking at some of your comments here.
You're more effective at home.
Let me ask you, alright, this is a collaborative intelligence question.
I've been trying to solve something.
I'll bet you there's somebody here who can solve this.
I'll bet you there's at least one person who's going to solve one of my biggest problems right now.
If, when I sit down to work, There's some kind of work that will make me fall asleep instantly.
You like to see a bullfighter or a lion tamer?
Quiet, quit. And I fall asleep instantly because when I go completely into my mind, usually when I'm trying to write comics or to write something, writing makes me fall asleep.
And the feeling I have is that when I crank up my brain to its highest level of function, which is what I have to do to write, writing is probably the only thing that I would do on a routine basis that takes my brain to the maximum capacity.
Almost everything else you can do with just half a brain.
Most of life is half brain stuff.
But writing, you have to go full brain.
You've got to put the whole thing out there or you get nothing.
Like 98% of your brain gives you nothing if you're writing.
You've got to use 100% and even that's not enough most of the time.
So I literally lose consciousness in minutes.
Minutes. I'm not talking about after two hours of working.
I'm talking about in 10 minutes of looking at my laptop, I can go from completely awake, like I am right now, like right now I feel completely awake.
If I looked at my laptop right now, in 10 minutes I would be unconscious with my head on the laptop.
Now, you're going to do a medical analysis of me.
Here's what you can rule out.
You can rule out diet, because it only happens in the circumstance.
But the diet would be all the time.
You can rule out sleep, because it does not conform to how much sleep I have.
It doesn't matter. Well slept or not well slept, it's the activity that puts me to sleep.
You can rule out tired and diet, because those can be isolated and they don't make any difference.
Now here's the next tip.
When I go to Starbucks, which I just started to do, and have a cold espresso, probably there's some sugar in there, I assume, drink, and I've got the buzz of the other people around, completely awake, completely engaged, and it's easy to write.
So, remember, when I'm at Starbucks, My diet is about the same as always, the same amount of sleep, but I'm completely awake.
Just retire. Yeah, retiring would help.
But I've had this problem for years and years and years.
Somebody says I'm depressed.
I don't think so.
Oh, my brain is telling me to stop writing.
Stop writing. Maybe.
I don't know. Hypnotized.
Put a thumbtack in the issue.
All right, here's my hypothesis.
You ready for it? I believe that when my brain is most active, it draws either sugar...
There's something going on with my blood sugar that I believe that my...
How can I say this without being attacked again?
If you were 6'8 and dumb, your brain would be a very small percentage of your total energy need, right?
Thank you.
Because your body would be most of it, and your brain wouldn't be using anything.
But if your job is completely mental, And you weigh 157 pounds.
I feel like when my brain goes into its highest level of activity, it just sucks the energy completely out of me.
You know, like running a marathon would for somebody else.
And I think there's some kind of nutritional crash that happens.
Could it be sugar? Do I need more sugar or less sugar?
Because I usually eat something that's sugary at Starbucks and it wakes me up.
You think it's just boredom?
Ketones? No.
What do you mean I need ketones?
But I would need ketones just as much in Starbucks.
See, you're not doing a good job of isolating.
Remember that it's definitely not nutritional and it's not how much sleep I have.
It's definitely not those things.
It's something else. If it's nutritional, it's something that's happening in the moment.
And I think that's what's happening.
I think my brain is just sucking the energy out and I got nothing left after five minutes.
Yeah, the brain burns glucose.
So if my brain is burning glucose, would it keep me awake to eat sugar?
Does that make sense? Some of you are just going to be maniacs about, I need more sleep, and it's diet.
But you have to understand that I've tested all of those things, and they're completely irrelevant to this.
It doesn't matter how much sleep I got the night before.
It just really doesn't.
You prove before you write.
Cernovich explained this is why, what?
Cernovich explained why they're fat lawyers.
Their brains crave glucose and burn through it to the detriment of their bodies.
So that might be it.
So do you think...
The other thing I thought is salt.
I thought maybe I wasn't getting enough salt because I cut down, you know, somehow accidentally.
Too much salt.
Too much salt? Yeah, I think it's a glucose level.
But has anybody ever heard of that?
Has anybody ever experienced a glucose crash that was related to mental activity?
Do you sleep?
What?
Fasting?
Try fasting? Alright.
Well, we'll see if we can figure that out.
But in the meantime, I'll just go to Starbucks and get my writing done.
Alright. That's all for now.
I think this was easily the best experience of your day.
