Episode 1878 Scott Adams: Join Me For The Finest News Commentary That Ever Got A Cartoonist Canceled
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Is diversity our strength or weakness?
Inner city, low income people
White women, the source of systemic racism
Persistent public illusions
Fentanyl illusions
Adam Schiff's shifty persuasion
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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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And welcome to the best thing that ever happened to anybody.
It's Scotland Coffee with Scott Adams.
It's a highlight of civilization.
And aren't you glad you're here?
Yeah. Yeah, you are.
How'd you like to take it up a notch?
Everybody? Everybody?
Hold hands. And repeat after me.
All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
Everything. Everything.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. Savor it?
Savor it? Okay.
Well, is there a setting on Twitter that allows you to see the people you follow?
Has anybody found that yet?
Any kind of feature?
Because I used to think that Twitter was something you followed up, you followed people.
And then when they tweeted, you'd see their tweets.
When did they change that?
Because now I just see sort of nothing.
Or random people I don't know.
Did Jack Posobiec stop tweeting?
Did Mike Cernovich just stop tweeting?
Used to see them every day.
Every day. Now?
Nope. Nope.
All gone. All gone.
Now, I know what you're going to tell me.
You're going to say, Scott, Elon Musk told you how to solve that problem.
You go to the interface where there's the three little dots, three little stars, and you hit that, and then you set it to show everybody in order instead of using the algorithm.
Oh, I did that. I did that.
Do you think that worked?
They changed it back.
Wouldn't you expect that if I'd signed up and had a setting, that that setting would just stay there?
Would you ever expect that the setting would change itself?
It did. It did.
Because I would never change it myself.
And so when people said, you know, I thought, oh, I'll go back and change that a second time.
So I thought, I'll go back and change that a second time.
So I tried to find that menu again.
Do you know how well they hide that fucking thing?
Now, to be fair, if I'm looking in the refrigerator for a condiment, I'm not going to find it.
If you tell me to look for my car in the parking lot and I don't remember where I parked it, we're going to be here a while.
If you tell me to find something in my room that's not where I thought I left it, well, I'll be looking for a while.
Because I'm not the guy who's good at searching for things in difficult to find places.
So I spent some time, and I don't even think it's on both interfaces, right?
Is it... And I've already forgotten.
Is it on only the browser interface but not the app?
Or is it only on the app but not the browser interface?
It's not on both, right?
Can you tell me? It's on both.
It's on both. All right.
So if I picked up my app right now, like just an average user, just call up Twitter, and we'll see how quickly I can find it.
Now keep in mind, I'm looking for something that I know exactly what I'm looking for, and I generally know where to look for it.
All right, so it looks like you'd have to be in the home page.
Yeah. See, part of my problem is I live on the notifications.
And then they put that with three little dots.
Okay, it was too easy because I knew where it was.
I'd just done it. But I would swear I've spent a lot of time looking for that thing and not finding it.
God fucking damn it.
All right, sorry. I've got a technical problem on the locals thing I'm going to fix right now.
Or not. Nope.
It looks like that would be...
So here I'm going to try to fix my screen control because I'm using my phone instead of my iPad because I've got a technical problem there too.
Unless... Because locals took away the live streaming on the iPad or they hid the menu because I can't find it.
So somebody said brightness.
Display and brightness. Auto lock.
Ah, there we go. Auto lock.
Never. All right.
All right. Alright, let's get back to the show.
Going back to locals.
You know, if I hadn't fixed this, I wouldn't be able to concentrate, so it would bother me too much.
Let's see if I can get the locals people back.
Locals, are you back? If you're back, I fixed your technical problem.
Alright. You know, you could make a real good argument that Hollywood is destroying the world.
Now, not in an obvious way.
It's like a tired old argument everybody said.
But in a real way, Hollywood is the reason that nuclear energy is not already everywhere.
Am I right? Imagine everything in the world, how different it would be if we had nuclear power everywhere.
Would the Ukraine war look the way it does now?
Not so much. Not so much.
No, it wouldn't. Would anybody be worried about losing energy?
Would California have blackouts?
Would we be talking about climate change?
Would we be changing the entire economy to service climate change if we had nuclear energy everywhere?
We wouldn't. And do you know what the argument against nuclear energy is?
Let me tell you the whole argument about nuclear energy.
I saw a movie and it scared me.
That's it. I saw a movie and it scared me.
I saw Silkwood or the China Syndrome or Chernobyl or some damn thing and it scared me.
And then on top of that, I would have a bunch of illusions that I'm under.
The illusions would be, we don't know what to do with the nuclear waste.
Yes, we do. You just store it in barrels on site.
It's totally solved.
It's not even a little bit not solved.
There's nothing left to solve.
It's 100% solved.
And then say, well, what about the danger of meltdown?
The types of nuclear energy that is built today has never had a meltdown.
Nobody's ever died with the current versions.
I think Chernobyl was like version one.
And we're on version 3, never had a problem.
Version 3, never had a problem.
Never had a death.
Or a meltdown, I think.
So everything we know about nuclear is wrong, and most of that comes from Hollywood.
Hollywood actually is destroying the world.
Like, actually, causing a war.
I mean, we're very close to nuclear war because of movies.
That's not an exaggeration, is it?
You tell me, am I exaggerating?
The popular view of nuclear power that has kept it from being the main thing is that people have wrong opinions about its danger.
That's entirely from Hollywood and people who are in that domain.
Completely. It has nothing to do with science.
Oh my God. So we always look in the wrong places for where the problem is.
The problem is literally Hollywood.
It's literally... Most of our operating system for how we think about our world, all of our filters on life come from entertainment.
And the problem is that the entertainment industry is not trying to set your filter in a productive way.
It's not trying to make you smarter.
It's trying to get you to buy a ticket.
It's entertainment. So if your education, and that's what it really is, you don't think of it that way, but you're being miseducated.
If your education is being given to you by people who don't want you educated, and they don't, it has nothing to do with their intentions.
They just want to make money and entertain you.
So, I mean, it's pretty obvious how we got here.
We're being educated by people who don't want to educate us.
They want to trick us into doing what they want to do.
Anyway, I saw Ron Klain of the Biden administration touting U.S. manufacturing jobs went way up, like quite a bit, over 600,000 manufacturing jobs.
Now, Is that real?
Do you think that's real?
Do you think a lot of manufacturing jobs are returning to the United States?
I didn't read the article because he didn't link to it.
Cleverly, he didn't link to the article.
He took a phone picture of a newspaper headline.
Okay. I'm guessing if he had linked to the article, there would have been something there about, well, you know...
Don't get so happy because maybe it means this or that.
Maybe it's purely recovery from the pandemic.
I mean, it might be just pandemic recovery, which would mean it's basically nothing.
It's just what we expected.
It's baseline. I don't know.
But is it possible that actual manufacturing is coming back to the United States?
Has anybody heard of a...
I've heard of lots of plans...
But have you heard of any actual factory that got built where somebody can point to the factory and say, this factory is replacing stuff we got from China?
Is there an actual example in the real world of that yet?
Because I think lots of people are making plans to do it.
I think it's going to happen. But I don't think any manufacturing jobs have come back because of decoupling.
Have they? Or is it like, you know, a big part of it is just the Tesla Giga plants or something.
I don't know how much they employ.
They've got a lot of robots.
I guess the Tesla robots are being rolled out primarily for industrial use.
Now, what?
Why is somebody swearing at me?
Why are you effing at me?
What did I do? I must have done something.
Made somebody mad.
All right. Apparently China is conducting a survey to find out why its citizens are unwilling to get married and have children.
Why do you think Chinese citizens are less willing to get married and have children?
What do you think is the reason?
Bleak future. Bleak future.
Right. But there's also...
I saw a tweet from Naomi Wu, who's a good follow on Twitter.
Naomi Wu.
She goes by the Twitter handle RealSexyCyborg.
If you don't like your Twitter follows to be sexy, this would not be one for you.
So she's a real interesting follow.
Don't be thrown off by the fact that she has gigantic tits.
And I think I can say she has gigantic tits because it's sort of her brand.
It's a topic, right?
It's something she talks about.
I don't know why. There's some story behind it.
I think there's a story behind it.
I don't know what it is. But don't be thrown off...
No, she's female.
Don't be thrown off by the fact that she is voluptuous.
Is that the right word? Her Twitter account is actually quite valuable, and I like it.
So one of the things she's saying, because she has lots of connections back in China, that there's something called...
Hukou, H-U-K-O-U, slash home ownership.
So there's some kind of a tradition in China where you register your household and that gives you access to services.
And something about that system is suboptimal.
I don't know the exact...
But there's something built into the Chinese system which makes it very difficult to get your own place and have a family.
Just something in the system.
But I think it might be more that high income always reduces population growth, right?
Have we seen that everywhere?
Wherever there's high income, there's low population.
Then you add that to growing up in a...
I don't know. Maybe the nature of things there is that people don't want to bring a kid into that world.
But I doubt that's true.
I would imagine if you were a young professional in China, you would have just as much interest as every other country in having a kid or not.
I mean, it's not like Ukraine.
If you're in Ukraine, you could reasonably say, maybe not have a kid this year.
But... I mean, China's stable enough that I don't know what the real story is there, but they've got a big problem.
All right, here's the question.
Let me ask you this before I give you my answer.
The United States has a lot of diversity compared to other countries, compared to most countries, right?
There might be some that are better.
Is our diversity our strength or our weakness?
Go. Is diversity a strength or a weakness?
I'm seeing answers all over the place.
But both is the correct answer.
Yes, both.
Now, if you don't think diversity is a strength, are you enjoying watching the Japanese-American basketball teams that are dominating?
So just take one country, Japan.
So Japan has low diversity.
Can Japan compete with the United States on high tech?
Pretty well. Pretty well.
How's their basketball team?
Not so good.
So we can compete on high tech, even beat them, and then we can beat them in sports.
Now, sounds a little racist, doesn't it?
Did your racist antenna go up and go, Scott, are you saying black people are just good for sports, or what kind of racist thing are you saying there?
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the very opposite of that.
I'm saying that the more diversity you have, the more likely you're going to have people who will fit any particular need.
Be it sports, be it art, be it singing, be it fashion, be it you name it.
I don't think it's an accident that the United States dominates in a bunch of different ways.
I think we have entire populations which, for whatever reason, tend to excel at various different things.
We've always got somebody who's going to be great at anything.
And I feel as if...
If you add that to the fact that we're the ultimate talent-skimming country, if you were in another country, it doesn't matter what country you're in, let's just say you're you.
Let's just start with you.
And you were contemplating going to another country because you wanted to improve your life.
Maybe you didn't like whatever country you're in.
Wouldn't you hesitate to go to a country where everybody was different from you?
I try to imagine myself moving to, let's say, Pakistan.
And I'm the only white guy walking around.
I'd feel pretty uncomfortable.
I don't think I'd do it.
If I imagine moving to, let's say, Switzerland.
Fairly diverse, but mostly diverse within the white-looking people.
And I'd say to myself, oh, you know, maybe I could fit in better there.
Because I'm not talking about myself.
I'm talking about a person talking about their selves.
But then you look at the United States.
What do you see when you see the United States from the outside?
Don't you see in the United States that it doesn't matter what you look like, you've still got a good shot?
Oh, you'll be discriminated against.
Sure. We have plenty of racists.
Everybody does. You'll be discriminated against, but you can make it in the United States.
You'll be able to find plenty of people like yourself.
Not all of them, but you can find a pocket like yourself and get a little support there and then branch out.
Next thing you know, you're living in my neighborhood, which has got a little bit of everything.
So, here's my argument.
I think the United States has a dominant advantage in having somebody who's good at anything.
And I really think that makes us special.
Number two, we are the ultimate talent skimmers from other countries.
And Trump was smart about this.
Trump understood that we're the ultimate talent skimmers.
We can get the best talent from every diverse group.
We don't have to get their low performers.
We can just get the highest performers.
And we get the best of everything.
If you get the highest performers from every group, racism is just stupid.
It's just stupid at that point.
Because you'd be like, okay, even if you imagine there's some average difference between groups, even if you imagine there is, and I'm not saying there is, even if you imagine it, if you get just the best people from each group, you're in pretty good shape.
Now, here's my more controversial statement.
I think we already do.
And it doesn't mean the best as in, you know, highest educational achievement.
I am absolutely in love with the fact that we're a pirate ship.
We're a pirate ship in the United States.
We let everybody in.
You just got to be a pirate.
Alright? Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
I might be making this up just to make up a good analogy.
But weren't actual pirate ships kind of diverse?
Am I wrong about that?
Does anybody know enough about actual pirate ships?
Were they diverse? Because I thought they were.
It doesn't matter. I mean, it would be an interesting point if they were.
Well, no women. Okay. No women.
But the United States, and I've always described Trump this way, Trump's personal life is like a pirate ship, and his supporters are like a pirate ship.
Do you know what it takes to be a Trump supporter?
It doesn't take your skin color.
You just have to want to be a pirate.
That's all. What do MAGA people think of black Republicans who are compatible with the Trump movement?
Love them. Love them, unambiguously.
Love them. Because they're pirates, right?
Who doesn't love a pirate?
Come on. You know that teacher in Canada who allegedly has transitioned to a woman?
But probably is a prank.
Probably is a prank.
It's the one wearing the enormous prosthetic breasts and going to school.
That's a pirate. That's a pirate.
I want that pirate.
If Canada will give us that pirate, I want that one.
Now, here I'm making an assumption that it's a prank.
I feel confident in that.
I could be wrong, but I'm just using it as an example.
So give us all the pirates.
We'll take them. Pirates are great.
And by pirates, I mean people who are willing to break the law to get here.
Not real pirates, not the kind who are going to kill people, but the kind who say, you know, I want to be American, and I'm going to break a law to get there.
And by the way, I respect anybody who says they're lawbreakers and therefore I disagree with you, Scott, completely.
I respect that opinion.
That is a completely respectable opinion.
I just like pirates.
I'm not saying I have a super good reason for it.
All right. And I would say that we have less chance of war because of our diversity.
Because you can't get enough of anything to get a proper civil war.
Right? If we had sort of two types, and the two types were even whatever, Republican or Democrat, or only black and only white, something like that, that would be a problem.
But you can't even find families that aren't diverse anymore.
Is there anybody here who has a family that's all white?
Like your cousin?
Nobody married anybody black?
Nobody married Hispanic?
Oh, some of you do.
Well, how extended are you talking about?
Like even your cousins.
There's nobody in your whole family who married anybody who isn't white.
Your whole family. Well, that tells me what kind of a bubble I live in California, right?
In California, it's almost unheard of.
In California, the racial, ethnic mixing is just so thorough that you can't really go to a party and it's going to be just a bunch of white people.
I don't know if I've ever seen that.
In California. In New York, yes.
Upstate New York, yes.
All right. Well, that was a little wake-up call for me.
Thank you. All right.
Well, are we still...
Every day, I go to Fox News, and I turn it on, and there will be a new video of young black people, usually young.
Well, not even young. But black men, and sometimes black women, beating up on people who are not black.
Now, I'm starting to worry about Fox News a little bit, because on one hand, it's getting hard not to notice that when the Wawa was overcome and there was a riot there, that all of the faces on camera were black.
Am I supposed to ignore that?
We are supposed to, right?
Because it would be racist to point out that the inner-city violence is...
If you believe what is on film, it's entirely a black problem.
Can I say that?
It's 2022.
Can I say out loud that no smart person would ever go live where there are a lot of low-income black people already living?
Can I say that? Because I believe that would be true for a high-income black person as well.
What high-income black person would intentionally go live where there are a lot of low-income black people living?
I mean, I'm sure it's done, but it's got to be rare because it doesn't seem like a good play.
Do you think that in 2022...
You could be a non-racist and do the following thing.
Choose the place you live by the fewest number of black people who live there.
Is that racist? In 2022, is it racist to choose where you live to be away from, as far as you can, from black people?
It's technically racist.
But because using that proxy...
Is almost exactly the same thing as staying away from crime if you're talking about low income.
High income, everything's different, right?
I've got a black neighbor.
Am I worried that my black neighbor is going to riot my 7-Eleven?
No. No, he's well-off.
It's a well-off couple.
They're doing great. I'm not worried about them.
So I'm not trying to stay away from them.
They're awesome. But, yes, I think we should be able in 2022, and here I will fly close to the sun for you so you don't have to.
You know how close I am to being cancelled right now, right?
But I'm doing it because I think the conversation has to be at least a little bit more honest.
And I'm kind of in that place in my life where I can be honest on your behalf.
We have a black people problem in this country with crime in the inner cities.
Now, again, if you said, Scott, that's so racist, you said black people, and clearly it's not black people.
It's the low-income people in a certain situation.
Correct. Correct.
Don't be thrown off by shorthand explanations.
We're all on the same side here.
Do you think there's any black people who want more black crime?
No. We're on the same side.
Let's just talk about it honestly.
And here's a little more honesty for you, if this helps.
Why? Like, what's the reason?
Is the reason that black people have some genetic defect?
Not as far as I can tell.
Because when black people have money, they're not rioting stores.
Right? It looks like a money problem, doesn't it?
Primarily. I don't know if it's anything else, but the obvious thing is that people with money don't riot.
People with jobs.
Now you're going back to another level and you're saying fathers.
I disagree completely with the father interpretation.
Not because you're wrong.
There's going to be a nuance here that some of you may not catch.
I definitely agree that if you had a mother and a father and they were both functional, that's your best situation.
Can we agree on that?
Can we agree that best situation is a functional mother and father?
No question. But when you say the problem is fathers, you act like that can be fixed.
By just saying, well, be better fathers!
Or what?
How do you fix it?
No, there's something beyond that.
The father thing is also an outcome.
That's not the root cause.
One of the reasons this can't be fixed is that conservatives are obsessed with the father thing.
They're right, but it takes you down the wrong path.
Because you can't fix it. There's no fixing that.
How in the world are you going to fix that?
There's nothing even close.
Nobody even has a suggestion.
We've gone decades and nobody's even suggested how that could be fixed.
Am I right? But where's the plan?
Where's the policy?
There is none. Nobody has any idea how to fix that.
So if you say to yourself, that's the root cause, well, then you've just given up, because there's no way to fix that.
So let's go back further.
Systemic racism is the problem.
Now, some of you may not believe that's the problem, but I'm absolutely convinced systemic racism is the cause for why Fox News can show a video every fucking day of black people killing non-black people on the street.
It's not because of some weird genetic oddity.
It's because somehow we got here.
And the way we got here was systemic racism.
Specifically... Specifically who?
You know who.
White women. White women are the cause.
It's all white women.
I'm sorry. It's white women who are teachers and run the teachers' unions.
That's it. The whole fucking problem with black crime in America is white women.
If white women...
had done the job for the people instead of the job for themselves, which is what is good for teachers.
That's what teachers' unions do.
It's not the teachers' union's job to help you be successful.
Not at all. The teachers' union is to help the teachers be successful.
It's not for the kids.
So we have a system which rewards people for not doing the work.
Or rewards them independent of whether they do the work or not.
Now, what would be the way to fix that?
How do you change the situation where any rational American would stay as far away from black people as they could?
Because that's where we are.
And again, when I say any rational person, I include black people.
You're telling me if you're a You're a generic black citizen of the United States.
You're telling me you want to go to the inner city where it's mostly black?
Because there's going to be a lot of crime there.
Nobody wants that. And this isn't as racial as it sounds.
And if we can't talk about it as bluntly as I am, about why does it look like the problem is all black people and crime.
Why does it look like that?
It's white women. Ultimately, they're the cause of it all.
It's just fucking white women.
And do you know why white women can do this and have this much power?
Because they own white men by the balls.
White men don't have any power over white women.
I'm not saying they necessarily should.
I don't know if there's any reason that they should.
I'm just saying that's a description of the situation.
White women have all the power and they've decided to destroy the underpinnings of the nation because it's good for the union.
Good for them. Now, I'm oversimplifying everything, right?
But sometimes oversimplification can kind of move you down the road a little bit, and we can add some nuance from there.
And let me say it again.
For everybody who is going to do white nationalists or something, I know that's going to happen.
I'll give you some background.
I didn't support his protest, but I supported his protest.
You know that I tried to work with Black Lives Matter to actually see if I could write up some of their recommendations for police interactions and see if I could help them.
That didn't go anywhere.
Do you know why? There wasn't any interest in solutions.
And I had to actually do the work to find out that was true.
It was really about the organizers just had made jobs for themselves.
That's all it was. Black Lives Matter was basically organizers who created jobs for themselves.
That's all. Did you see that no recommendations ever came out of Black Lives Matter?
Because they didn't need any solutions.
They weren't interested.
I never saw any interest in a solution at all.
So... That's where we are on that.
So the reason I'm reminding you that is that I'm all about the solution.
And if saying blunt things that make people mad at me so that they'll argue with me gets me more attention, then I'm going to use that to help work on solutions.
You already know that I've been turning my one book into a teacher's guide.
So it'll be a curriculum and teacher's guide.
And what it teaches you is how to succeed even if you have a big disadvantage.
So it should be exactly what anybody who's low income would need.
And if there's any way to get that especially into the black population, I would think that strategy would help the most.
Did you see what happened the other day when I said in public...
That a black candidate of equal qualifications has a five times advantage over a white candidate.
Did you see what happened when I said that in public?
I got some pushback, but very little.
It's 2022. Things are changing a little bit.
The things you can and cannot say are always changing, and there's something happening here.
There are things I think that at least some of us can now say out loud.
You can't yet. You don't have freedom of speech like I do.
I have freedom of speech because I'm willing to pay for it.
I guess it's not free, huh?
The only reason I can do it is I know what the price is.
The price is full cancellation and destruction of my reputation.
Economic destruction.
That's the price.
And I say, okay.
Because I can afford it.
You can't afford it.
But I can. So, I'm going to try to help the black population of this country as much as possible.
And I do think that going directly as systemic racism as it permeates the education part of our entire structure and really ruins everything above it, that if you're not on that, you're not doing anything.
Everything else is just blah, blah, blah, blah.
Let's talk about fentanyl.
I don't want to bore you with the same old fentanyl things.
And I know that for most of you, it's not really a big issue.
It's not like inflation touches everybody.
But fentanyl is getting bigger.
So, with your permission, this will be toward the end of what I'm going to do today.
I want to present it as persuasion lessons.
Would you find value in that?
So I'm telling you how I'm persuading, and I'll let you follow along so you can see technique as it happens.
Because I think that's useful. So it's one thing to talk about persuasion technique, and it's another to see it actually employed in the real world as it's happening.
And the funny thing about persuasion is you can describe it to the people you're persuading.
I'm using this technique right in front of you.
It still works.
It doesn't make any difference at all.
That's the weird thing about persuasion.
All right. Number one.
Fox News is one of the biggest causes of the fentanyl problem.
Fox News is one of the biggest causes...
Of the fentanyl emergency.
Ready for this argument?
Today, as a perfect example, there's a big article, a major article in Fox News that says that too much fentanyl is getting across the border and that Biden's border policy is worsening the fentanyl crisis.
So Fox News reports that the border, that Biden's border crisis, his bad border control, is worsening the fentanyl crisis.
How is Fox News the actual cause of the worsening crisis?
Tell me. Why is it that Fox News is actually, literally, there's no hyperbole here, literally a major cause of the problem?
Is it not obvious?
Because they've diverted all of your political energy to the wrong place.
They know they can draw you to the wall, right?
Wall, wall, wall.
Illegals. Oh, any good reason for a wall is good with me.
Throw fentanyl in there.
The wall has almost nothing to do with the fentanyl problem.
You could throw a baseball full of fentanyl over the wall and it's enough to poison all of San Francisco.
If they catch 90% of the fentanyl, there's still plenty.
10% would be enough to light up the whole country.
The border wall has nothing, almost nothing.
I mean, it helps. I'd still do it.
Because you need to do it for other reasons too, right?
It's not just about fentanyl.
So I'm strong on border security.
But every day that Fox News tells you that border security and fentanyl are the same topic, you are being fucked over badly.
They are fucking you so badly.
I mean, they're really doing you a super disservice.
If Fox News ever educated itself up to the point, and maybe it does now, it is just choosing to make money this way.
This could be just a money-making thing.
If they would ever properly educate conservatives, we'd have a chance.
But Fox News is telling you all the wrong stuff.
And so you're getting all worked up about border stuff and thinking, doesn't it make sense to you that if they fix the border, well, there's your fentanyl problem right there.
So why don't we do what we know we should do, fix that border, and then I got the border and I got the fentanyl fixed too.
No, Fox News is lying to you or they don't know.
But it's a gigantic emergency that they're misinforming you this badly.
Now, I don't know if CNN is doing the same thing, but I don't think CNN is saying the border is the big problem.
I think CNN is doing a version of this that's almost as bad.
Here's the version that's almost as bad.
Biden caught more fentanyl at the border than Trump did.
So therefore, Biden's doing okay, right?
Because they captured more fentanyl than Trump did.
That doesn't tell you anything.
There's no information in that.
You think there is.
Oh, there used to be this much fentanyl, but they capture this much, therefore there's less available.
No. Nothing like that happened.
Nope. No.
Let me explain what happened.
Yesterday, when fentanyl was, let's say, 100 pounds, and they caught, let's say, half of it.
So they got 50 pounds.
And then the next day, there was 10,000 trillion fucking pounds that went across, but they only caught 1% of it.
Was it more or less the second day when they only caught 1% of it?
It was more. It was way more.
So have I ever taught you that if they tell you a number without the percentage or the percentage without the number, they're lying to you?
If the news tells you the number without the percentage, it's a lie.
If they tell you the percentage without the number, it's a lie.
It's propaganda.
Every day that you see the tons or the number of doses that's captured at the border, that's a lie by the news.
And if you think, oh, good news, they've caught a bunch of fentanyl.
No, no, that's a lie.
Maybe they did catch it.
They may have caught this much.
But if they don't tell you what percentage that is of the hole, or they don't tell you how easily it would have been to ship it a different way, do you know why it comes across the border?
Because it's easy. If the border were secure, do you know where it would come through?
Somewhere else. Just send it FedEx.
You tell me you can't mail fentanyl FedEx...
Really? You tell me you can't vacuum seal some pills in a FedEx box and wash the vacuum pack so there's no smell and just put it in a FedEx or whatever the mail is and mail it?
Of course you can. You tell me you can't put it in a boat and drop it off on any kind of boat because you don't need a big boat because it's so small, right?
All right, so here are some of the persuasion that I'm using, which I told myself I was going to have on my notes, but instead I'll be reading them off my tweet.
So I did a Twitter thread on all the illusions of fentanyl.
Some I've mentioned before, but you're going to want to hear these again.
So I started out by saying that fentanyl and nuclear power failures are the same problem.
So here's the first persuasion trick.
I'm comparing fentanyl to nuclear power, as I did earlier.
In both cases, the problem is an education problem that we have been fooled into thinking are policy differences.
They're not policy differences.
They're education differences.
If you educate somebody on nuclear power...
The two of you will be on the same side in two minutes.
Assuming they believe you.
With fentanyl, same thing.
The only people who think they're disagreeing on policy are because they're not educated on it.
Everybody who's educated on policy ends up in the same place.
I'm sorry. Everybody who's educated on fentanyl ends up in the same place.
Same with nuclear. So this is purely an education problem, and the thing that keeps us from being educated is a bunch of illusions.
So there are illusions about nuclear's risk, and there are illusions about what you can and cannot do about fentanyl.
In both cases, these are education problems, but a special kind.
Because it's not just telling you stuff, it's removing a hardcore, deep illusion.
And education doesn't do that.
Let me say that again.
If you have no preconceived idea, education works great.
Young people come into school.
They're told things for the very first time.
It works great. But if you've got a deep bias, education doesn't make any difference at all.
It doesn't even touch it.
So that's the problem with fentanyl, is that the deep biases are not subject to better information.
All right, so watch the way I word these.
So we're going for the persuasion technique here, right?
So first of all, I did a thread in list form, you know, one through whatever.
Threads tend to get a lot of attention, and they get retweeted, and they go through thread readers and stuff.
So if you want to make a bigger point, a thread gets it done better than one tweet.
So that's the first trick.
So here's what I said.
Number one, people believe demand can be reduced.
So people believe that you can reduce the demand for fentanyl.
But I said, but no one has ever seen that approach succeed anywhere.
We only believe someone else knows how to reduce demand.
So here, the trick I use here is anticipating what somebody's going to think and say.
If you can anticipate their objection and then cut it off before they say it, that's good technique.
And what I anticipate is that many of you are saying it right now, of course there's a way to reduce demand.
Of course there is. And then if I asked you to describe it, you'd say, well, there's somebody who knows how to do it.
There's a group that does this.
There's a group that does rehab.
There's an entity that does this.
And I say, right, that's what I said.
You believe someone else knows how to do it.
So do they. Everyone believes someone else knows how to do it.
That is the illusion.
If anybody knew how to do it, that's all I'd be talking about.
If anybody knew how to decrease demand, I wouldn't talk about anything else.
That's all I would do.
All day long, I'd be, hey, let's use this technique that people know how to use, reduce that demand.
If it were a case of building more rehab, I'd be trying to give funding for that.
But nobody knows how to decrease demand anywhere.
No one in the world, no one in the professional world, no one anywhere.
If you see it, you are mistaken.
It doesn't exist.
And there's nobody who's tried to help an addict who thinks it does.
They've actually looked.
I've spent a lot of time looking.
I'm not guessing.
It doesn't exist.
And as soon as you lose the illusion that you can cut demand, Then maybe you can concentrate on something that might work.
People believe that if you cut the fentanyl precursors that are flowing in from China, and now India, by the way.
So apparently China did put enough pressure on their dealers that some of that is moving to India.
So I don't know if that means China was a little more serious than I gave them credit for.
We're not. That's a little opaque.
But people believe that cutting the fentanyl precursors that come from China and India to the Mexican cartels won't help.
They say if you cut the supply from China through the cartels, it won't help.
Because if you do that, they'll just make it in America.
Because it's not hard to make, people say.
Well, they'll just make it in garages like meth.
To which I say, no, that's an illusion.
How do I know that's an illusion?
Because it'd be happening right now.
Why would you get your chemicals from China and India and the cartels if you could make it in a garage?
The profit margin on fentanyl is so gigantic that if anybody could make it in a garage, they'd be fucking making all kinds of it, like meth.
Meth is made in garages because you can.
That's why they do it.
Because you can. But you don't see fentanyl made in garages.
Do you know why? Well, it has to be because you can't.
It has to be. What other reason would it be?
There's no economic reason.
There's no legal reason.
Because illegal things are done in garages all the time.
But think about it.
If it were possible, it'd be happening.
Now, what I assume is happening is it's too hard to get the precursors in quantity to anywhere except a lawless place.
At least illegal precursors to a lawless place.
So I think it has to be manufactured in a lawless place that does not have American surveillance state.
Have you noticed there haven't been any major terrorist attacks in the United States?
It's got to be the surveillance state.
It has to be, because there's nothing else.
There's no other possible thing it could be.
It has to be that we're catching them fast, because we're just catching every communication.
Now, if AI is monitoring communication for terrorist stuff, and you know it is, you don't think they could look for fentanyl-related vocabulary?
Of course they could. Now, I don't think that they do that now with meth labs.
Do you know why? Why wouldn't they do it with meth labs and just dealers in general?
Coke and heroin.
Do you know why they probably...
I don't think they're doing it. Do you know why they probably don't?
Because the problem's not big enough.
The problem is not big enough.
But the fentanyl problem is.
The fentanyl problem is not a drug problem.
The fentanyl problem is a terrorist attack from foreign countries.
If you have a terrorist attack from a foreign country, even if it's being made in a garage in Encino, I believe the surveillance state can turn on that knob and catch those guys, right?
So I would think that fentanyl dealers, even small ones, would get picked up by the surveillance state.
If they were in this country.
I don't know. But for some reason, and I might not know the real reason, it doesn't seem to be something you can make in a garage in the United States, or it would be here already.
The other myth is that people believe the Portugal experience with...
I think they legalized or decriminalized drugs and made it easier to get it, made it safer.
A lot of people think that worked, so therefore we should imitate that.
That's just an illusion.
If that worked, we'd already be doing it.
So would everybody else.
It obviously didn't work.
If it worked, we'd be doing it.
So you can find articles that say it worked, but go deeper.
Just Google debunked Portugal drug experience.
Just put it in debunked, see what pops up, and you'll see what I mean.
So obviously it didn't work well enough to spread, so forget about that one.
People believe, here's another illusion, people believe that personal responsibility is sort of the beginning and the end of the story.
It's like, hey, just let them fucking die.
If druggies want to take drugs and die, let them die.
Who cares? Now, I have some empathy for that point of view.
It's not crazy. It's not crazy.
But it ignores the fact that if 100,000 people are dying, you're affecting about a million Americans a year.
It's really expensive, too.
This is super impactful on everybody.
And if you're not impacted yet, it was 50,000 deaths a few years ago.
Now it's 100,000.
Is it slowing down?
Nope. Where do you think it's going to stop?
At what point does it get your attention that it becomes your problem, too?
Five million? Ten million?
I mean, we're going to get there.
I started yelling at 50,000 a year, and it's doubled since I started yelling about it.
It's not going down, so it's going to get to you, too.
People believe that addicts can make different choices if you provide the right support.
No, they can't. They can't.
Addicts can only do what addicts do.
They can promise you anything, but all addicts lie.
Do you know why I know that all addicts lie?
You could just ask them.
Hey, addict, do all addicts lie?
Yeah, of course. Of course we do.
The addict will tell you that themselves.
They all lie. And they all lie about some things, right?
Not everything. So addicts are only going to do what addicts do.
Now, here's why you're fooled by that.
You think some people can be helped because you've seen it happen, right?
How many of you have seen somebody who used to be an addict, but now they're not?
They cleaned up. That exists.
So you're saying to yourself, Scott, why are you saying that that doesn't work?
I know all kinds of people.
All kinds of people that got better from addiction.
Here's what you're missing. All the people who decided to get better got better.
It didn't matter what method they used.
All the people who wanted to do drugs just kept doing drugs.
What do you think is the largest population of people doing drugs?
The ones who decided to get off it or the ones who think, this is pretty fun, I think I'll keep doing it?
The problem is people don't want to.
The people who decide to, do.
Now, I'm of course using some hyperbole here for effect, right?
I don't want to stop every three seconds and say, but of course there are exceptions.
Of course I'm not talking about everybody in all situations.
You should have that little recording running in your head.
This doesn't mean everybody.
I'm just talking about averages, that sort of thing.
But in general, the people who want to do drugs cannot be talked out of it.
The people who have decided on their own, for whatever reason, and deciding on your own can be influenced by your family, but it's still your decision.
Those are the ones who have decided, they do have good results, often.
People say that the addicts who buy fentanyl know their risks.
They know what they're getting. They know the risks they're taking.
They die. Fuck them. That's what some people say.
You say that? So Jenny says that.
They know the risk. Jenny, the people dying are not the people who are taking fentanyl intentionally.
You know that, right? The people dying are the ones who didn't know they were taking fentanyl.
So that's an illusion that you can reduce it to, well, they knew the risks.
They don't know the risks.
Now, let me explain what an addict brain is.
Hey, addict...
The risk of you dying from this pill I have in my hand is 50%.
There's a 50% chance if you take this pill you're going to die.
There's also a 50% chance you're going to have a great high.
So don't do it, right?
Give me that pill. Got it.
It's an addict. As soon as you make the mistake of thinking that an addict would think the way you would think...
You're gone. You're lost.
It's Russian roulette.
You don't know you're getting fentanyl.
You think you're getting something much safer.
You think you're getting Xanax, for example, and you're not.
You got fentanyl.
So, while it's true that...
And let me give you the exact conversation I had with my stepson right before he died of fentanyl.
Stepson, you know that there's fentanyl in all the street drugs, and you can't tell, right?
Yes, I do. I would never take a street drug because you don't know what's in them.
Could be fentanyl. Yeah, if there's one thing I know for sure, I'm definitely not going to take any sketchy drugs because they might have fentanyl in them.
I know the risk. Dead in two weeks.
Dead in two weeks of fentanyl.
Do you think he knew he was taking fentanyl?
Nope. Nope. Because I don't think he would have intentionally taken fentanyl.
It was probably just in something else he had.
And so decisions, all that stuff.
None of the thinking, deciding, none of that applies to addicts.
He was an addict.
Yes, he's dead now. He was very much an addict.
And... And you may have noticed I have resources.
So we did everything.
Like every rehab, everything.
Just everything. None of it made any difference.
I talked about the border wall.
Then number eight, people believe the U.S. government when they tell us how successful they are at catching fentanyl.
Why would you believe the government...
It's catching more fentanyl and they're doing a good job.
Why would you believe anything about the government?
You know, I talked about it.
If they don't tell you the percentage, they're lying to you.
All right. People believe the government of Mexico should step up, and we should pressure the government of Mexico to handle those cartels.
I had to break it to you.
I hope I'm not the first one to tell you this.
About the government of Mexico?
It is the cartel.
Am I the first one to tell you that?
Hadn't heard that?
Nope. No, the government of Mexico is controlled by the cartel.
They don't have any control over the cartel.
The border is controlled by the cartel.
The government of Mexico doesn't even...
They don't even police their own border.
The cartel does.
If you didn't know that, you're really confused about fentanyl.
People say we don't want to start a war, you know, with Mexico or China especially.
We don't want to start a war.
That is an illusion.
That's an illusion. We're in a war.
Our only choice is to fight back or not.
That's our only choice.
We're not deciding to be in a war or not in a war.
We're in a war. We can only win or lose, or decide to try.
But we can't decide not to be in a war.
Who gave you that decision?
That's purely imaginary.
You don't have any war-not-war decision when it comes to fentanyl.
People believe that legalizing relatively safer drugs would reduce the number of Of overdoses.
Because if the problem is you don't know what you're taking, it wouldn't be great if you did.
Then you get some legal drugs.
But here's the problem.
You could test that in one zip code easily, couldn't you?
Just take one zip code and say, all right, if giving everybody free, I don't know, OxyContin or whatever the fuck it would be, We'll try it.
It's never going to happen.
San Francisco did this crazy needle injection site thing, and that turned out to be a complete clusterfuck.
But don't you think that it's possible you could test variations on that theme?
Now, they did needle injections and everything else.
Suppose you just took one zip code and said, anybody here who wants an opioid in pill form, come get a government opioid pill, and at least you'll know that that won't kill you, and you'll get a pretty good high.
Would the addicts take the government pill?
What do you think? Would addicts agree to take the government pill to stay safe?
What if they had to give their name?
I think people would go get free ones and then sell them.
Although that wouldn't make things worse.
Yeah. So, here's the thing.
This might work. This might work.
But I don't know if there would be unintended consequences.
And I don't know if it...
It helps the way you hope it would.
It might keep people in permanent zombie form.
Do we want that as opposed to dead?
Do you feel better if your child became an addict and was just a zombie for 30 years versus dying in the first year?
Are you happy if they're a zombie for 30 years?
Does that make you happy?
Because now you solved the fentanyl problem, they didn't have an overdose, but they're an addict for 30 years.
I don't know. I'm not so sure that death is any worse than that.
If free will is an illusion, how do you decide?
You don't. You do what you do, and then later you said, I decided.
That's how brains work.
Brains rationalize after decisions.
If you don't realize that, everything's confusing.
Once you realize that your brain comes up with your explanation after you decide for important stuff, not for little stuff, then everything makes sense again.
If you want a world where everything makes sense, be compatible with science.
Science confirms. The rational part of the brain doesn't even activate.
It doesn't even activate until after the decision.
We know that for sure.
All right.
Methadone, somebody says.
Oh, Narcan encourages more use.
I can see that.
I can see that.
I've heard that the Pfizer antiviral Might make it easier for you to catch COVID if you've had the antiviral.
There's some speculation on that.
I think the data is lacking.
But there's some anecdotal reports of people who took the antiviral did not build up enough immunity.
Now I did see, and of course all data on pandemic stuff is...
Hard to believe. But I did see some statistics suggesting that even if you got the mild Omicron version and you got it without any therapeutics, which is my case, in theory I have almost complete immunization for a long time.
Did anybody see that story?
I think there was a study that said that.
That the actual...
So I feel like It's possible I played it just right, by accident.
It's not like I was smart or anything.
But I think I reduced my chance of serious long-term COVID and death a little bit, getting the initial vaccinations, but that was mostly to travel.
And that I didn't get any boosters after that, so that when I got the full Omicron, by the time I got Omicron, I didn't have any vaccination left in me, in terms of protection.
So I got the full Omicron and it kicked my ass.
But, if I recover from it, and I'm not sure I have, actually, I think there might be some long COVID still there, I'm not sure.
I should have the best immunity for a while.
Yes. I have some kind of muscle problem in my legs, but today it was better.
You're rationalizing after the decision.
Well, except that I told you my decision before I made it.
So rationalizing after the decision in this case I don't think makes as much sense because everybody admits they were guessing.
If you guess and then you guess right, that's just lucky.
So what I'm suggesting is not that I was smart.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying I may have guessed just right, but I'm not claiming that was based on my superior knowledge or reason.
It may have just been an accident.
And to your point, had I gotten a blood clot from the first vaccinations, then I would say I guessed wrong, when it would have nothing to do with my reasoning ability, right?
Wouldn't you agree? That if it had gone the other way, I'd say I guessed wrong.
I wouldn't say I was really smart, but I got bad luck.
Many people did not guess.
I'm sorry. The worst take is that some of you knew.
That's the worst take in the pandemic.
You've watched a world in which there isn't a single thing that's credible.
There's not any data.
There's not any Oh, fuck.
I lost the connection here.
There's no data whatsoever that's credible in the pandemic, especially in the fog of war.
There's still people who will look you in the eye and say, I knew.
No, you didn't. Nobody knew.
It wasn't knowable.
You may have guessed right, too.
And if you guessed right, I give you credit.
But you guessed. You guessed.
New Alzheimer COVID study, is that the one that said it makes it worse?
Is there a study that says COVID made your Alzheimer's worse?
I'd like to think it fixed it.
Start eating meat now?
I don't think that's the answer.
Because I do eat fish, so it's not like I'm not getting protein.
Alright, makes it worse?
Yeah, probably makes it worse. Alright, that's all for now.
I'm sure I drove everybody away with that last conversation, but did you see that Alan Schiff is doing a make-you-think-past-the-sale on the January 6th stuff?
So Adam Schiff says that any decision to turn over the January 6th stuff to prosecution should be made unanimously by the January 6th group.
So any recommendation to the Department of Justice should be unanimous.
Now, of course, it would be unanimous, because they're all on the same side.
But do you see how that's making you think passed the sale?
Do you see how clever that is?
He's making you wonder if it would be unanimous, which makes you think that it must exist, which is not demonstrated at all.
I've not seen anything that looks like it's even close to a crime for Trump.
So Schiff is telling you to think about whether it would be unanimous instead of thinking about whether it exists.
That's a good technique.
Schiff is shifty. All right, that's enough for now.
