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Oct. 16, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
52:03
Episode 1898 Scott Adams: Why Hasn't Elon Musk Ended Ukraine War In His Spare Time Yet? Is He Lazy?

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to A Highlight of Civilization, Coffee with Scott Adams.
Today, you may have noticed, I'm wearing my Halloween costume.
I'll be going as a Zelensky.
It's the easiest costume you could ever do.
Yeah, it's just a t-shirt.
But I think I'm killing it.
And if you'd like to take this experience up to stratospheric levels, and I know you do, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a 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, the dopamine, the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
That's right. And it happens now.
Go! Oh...
Ah...
I keep saying Jack Posobiec's name wrong.
Are you telling me? I think some people just have to get used to the fact that people are going to say their name anyway.
I think if you have some kinds of names, you just have to get used to the fact that people are going to do it any way they can.
So, do we need to talk about Madonna?
I feel like I was going to ignore the whole Madonna got some plastic surgery, didn't look so good story, but oh my god, there's something going on there that's not good.
And it's a perfect example of what happens when somebody has too much power.
First of all, she's clearly insane.
Would anybody doubt that?
She's exhibiting serious mental problems.
And obviously there's nobody who can say no to her.
I mean, even her surgeon can't say no to her.
How in the world does anybody intervene?
Like your children probably have no power over?
This is going to get worse.
It's going to get worse.
And I have no idea what the problem is.
I mean, it's just...
You know, massive mental problems, but I wonder if the pandemic got her.
I don't know. There's more video of Joe Biden trying to sniff girls and get creepy with him.
I don't know if you've seen the latest, but it's just as disturbing as you think it would be.
I don't know if it means anything, but it's creepy.
Here's my favorite story of the day.
Reportedly, CNN is going to release Jim Acosta.
So Jim Acosta will no longer be with CNN. And also Jim Scuto?
Scuto? I guess he had some accident and some personal problems he's working through.
So he's working through some personal problems, and Jim Acosta will be gone.
Now, here's the thing.
The reporting on the Jim Acosta leaving, as well as the other changes of CNN, correct me if I'm wrong, But CNN is telling us directly that they didn't used to be real news.
Am I wrong?
Am I interpreting too much in there?
Or is it fair to say, because obviously I'm biased, but it seems fair to say that they have now admitted they did not used to give you straight news.
Right? So here's my question.
What do the people who are watching CNN admit that they were never real news?
What do they think about all the opinions that they got from CNN? Is there any realization that goes on there?
Do you think? I don't think so.
You know what I think? I think they say...
What do you think they say? Go ahead.
This will be your test to see if you can anticipate their cognitive dissonance.
What would CNN viewers say if you challenged them of the fact that it is now admitted and demonstrated that they were not watching real news?
Exactly. They would say, well, it's not Fox News.
At least it's not as bad as Fox News, right?
That's what they would say. That's where the cognitive dissonance would go.
Now, it's not my job to defend Fox News, but there's one thing that I always say that I think is worth saying.
Fox News does a better job of distinguishing between their opinion piece and their news piece.
I think I would stick by that statement.
I mean, if you see Hannity say something about Biden, don't you just put it in context?
It's Hannity. It's Biden.
Hannity is going to say bad stuff about Biden.
The same as Acosta.
The problem was that Acosta was pretending to be news.
That's not cool.
That's not cool at all.
And I still don't know what Jake Tapper is supposed to be.
Does anybody know?
Is Jake Tapper news or opinion?
I actually don't know, and I've watched him for years.
What would you say? Is he news or opinion?
Yeah, it's a little of both.
So, you can see why that model would be confusing.
So, I guess...
Chairman Xi, over there in China, opened up the CCP summit by announcing that they have full control of Hong Kong and Taiwan is next.
What? What?
Taiwan is next.
Now, there's something strange going on with China.
And it goes like this.
According to Peter Zeyan and some other reports, Biden's sanctions have completely destroyed the tech business in China.
Completely. As in, the tech business in China is just going to have to shut down because, you know, he did some sanctions with, I guess, some employees who are American over there.
They can't be over there and also be American or something.
But here's the thing.
Why is Peter Zhang saying that the entire Chinese tech sector just got shut down, like actually just shut down, and it's not in the news?
What's going on?
Look for yourself.
How would that not be the biggest story in the world?
If that were true, it would be the biggest story in the world, would it not?
What would be a bigger story than that?
I can't think of anything.
Now go check CNN and check Fox News.
This story doesn't exist.
It's not even a story.
So why is one person who I think is credible, I mean I've been told he's credible, why is one person saying the biggest thing in the world is happening right now and their biggest news sources are actually ignoring it?
Who is lying to us?
I can't tell.
Can you? Peter Zahn called third out.
You fell for a fake.
Okay, so we actually don't know what's going on here, right?
There's something gigantic happening with the news that we don't really have a grasp on at all.
Did you notice that the news is empty today?
Just sort of in general?
There's no news today.
The entire news business just shut down like there's something big happening or coming.
Is everybody working on something new?
I feel like there's some trouble brewing or something.
Is it just me?
Anyway, if you were China, would you move on Taiwan now?
Well, if it's true that Biden just shut down your tech business, aren't you going to have to go get some chip makers somewhere?
Did Biden just guarantee that China would have to conquer Taiwan to capture their tech industry?
Because they just lost their own tech industry thanks to Biden?
Right? Well, what am I missing?
Because it feels like...
I mean, I don't know what China's options are.
I suppose they could try to just get talent from other countries or something.
They could probably do that. But isn't there incentive to take control of a functioning tech center through the roof?
Because they can't really be a modern country without it.
It's almost a military requirement now to conquer Taiwan.
Now, I don't know anything about these...
Military issues. I'm just the person who's been right about everything.
Except I was definitely wrong about Russia invading Ukraine.
So, Saturday Night Live, I didn't see it, but I read about it.
It sounded like they were really dunking on the Democrats for the January 6th thing, being a boring, useless waste of time.
Did anybody see Saturday Night Live?
And if you did, could you characterize it?
Were they unambiguously mocking the Democrats?
Or was it balanced?
Was it balanced?
It was negative.
I didn't watch it, so I'm asking you.
Yes, but without malice.
Yeah, so they made fun of the January 6th thing as just being bad theater, right?
Talk about theater.
So Nancy Pelosi literally was being filmed for a documentary while she ran around trying to look presidential during January 6th.
Everything about January 6th looks like a fake...
Well, it doesn't look like it.
It's completely fake. The hearings are all just fake theater.
Our government is no longer serious, if they ever were.
They're certainly not serious about doing the job of the people.
That much is clear.
Alright, here's a story for you.
A horrible, horrible, tragic story.
There was a 17-year-old boy in a New Miami high school, and you will not believe the horrible thing that happened to this young man.
And we'll probably take a moment of silence after I read you this horrible, horrible, tragic story.
This victim, this victim...
Well, anyway, this poor 17-year-old boy was victimized by a 31-year-old teacher's assistant and softball coach who, this is disgusting, but she had sex with him multiple times.
Multiple times.
That poor, poor boy.
Now, they don't... He's underage, so they don't mention what kind of therapy or medical treatment he's getting to recover from his amazing sex.
But it can't be easy.
Can we take a moment of silence for this poor child, this poor 17-year-old boy who, while this teacher's assistant and softball coach was sucking his cock, he was...
Probably having one of the worst days of his life.
And I think that we need to really take a moment of silence.
Okay, I think that's long enough.
That's good. Thank you for that moment of silence.
Alright, here's the real question.
Was the crime...
The crime, or was the crime the way we treated the crime?
Which one was the crime?
Was the crime all the good sex they had together, because they did it a lot of times, so therefore it couldn't have been bad?
Was the crime all the sex?
Or was the crime the fact that their lives will be destroyed because we're all fucking assholes?
Which is the crime?
Is it the crime that a technical violation occurred?
And of course there was, you know, I mean, usually these are about a power differential, right?
I mean, even though there's a, you know, technically there's an underage boy here.
But usually it's about the power differential.
You tell me what the power differential is of a 17-year-old boy versus a teacher's assistant who's a softball coach also.
Are you telling me the assistant teacher and softball coach had power over the 17-year-old boy who was probably a head taller than her?
No. Not at all.
So this is one where we really have to take a look at ourselves.
This is not a story about these two people.
This is a story about us sucking.
This is about everybody but the two people.
It looks like it's a story about these two people.
It's everybody but them.
They were the only two people who should not be involved in this story.
We fucking suck.
We are assholes.
Like, just... We are disgusting pieces of shit.
Just in case you wondered.
In case you wondered who you were.
I mean, I hate us.
I hate us because of this story.
I really do. Now, if there was any real damage here, then, you know, that's different, but I don't think so.
I don't think so.
All right. So Elon Musk, I guess, got so much heat for allegedly threatening to turn off Starlink in Ukraine that he tweeted, the hell with it!
Even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of taxpayers' money, we'll just keep funding Ukraine government for free.
It must be nice to be that rich.
I would love to be that rich that you could say, ah, 20 million a month.
Screw it. I'll just pay the 20 million a month.
It's a tax write-off.
You can't be a follower of mine and say stuff like that as a tax write-off.
You can't do that.
Don't make me stop and explain why.
All right. It is a tax write-off.
But you don't make money by losing money.
So then I saw an exchange with Kim.com and Elon Musk, where Kim.com was, you know, encouraging Elon that everybody has to try to make peace here.
And Elon said he's trying hard, but getting nowhere, apparently.
And let me ask you this.
How serious is it When Elon Musk talks about his own involvement in trying to end the war, I think it's pretty serious.
I think that he actually is probably at least 20% of the equation.
I think he would have at least that much influence.
He can't do it alone.
But if things were maybe teetering in one direction, I think he could push it.
You know, I think if it was on a balance point, he could be the deciding vote.
You know, he does have the influence to push things one way or another.
But let us game this out.
Number one, I saw an extended military explanation of how Ukraine made such a big gain recently around Kyrgyzstan.
And Was it around Kursan?
No, but whatever big gain...
No, not around Kursan. It was about how they made their recent big gains.
And it turns out that it was a special case.
Did you know that?
So the big gains that Ukraine made...
Where they made a big gamble to do...
What's the name of the military technique?
Where they go in fast and they break through the lines.
They create as much chaos and they find out how much defense there is and then they retreat.
Thunder roll, yes.
It's called a thunder roll.
So the thunder roll is you take a small, very fast unit with some armor And you blaze through the lines and you get behind the lines and you cause all confusion and chaos.
Because then, you know, it's hard for them to communicate and, you know, there's bullets, or at least there's people on both sides of people.
So it's supposed to sow confusion and also find out where you can attack best and then they go in and attack.
Now, The requirement for that to work is as follows.
You have to have a thin defensive line.
A thin defensive line.
Because otherwise the fast unit can't break through it.
Because they would reach, you know, a level, then there'd be another level, then there'd be another level, and they couldn't do anything fast.
And the speed is what makes this work.
So, If you thought that Ukraine's massive unexpected victory, you know, recently, a few weeks ago, if you thought that was the beginning of them rolling up the rest of those areas, and I wondered if that was true too, it turns out they don't have that special case anywhere else.
Because part of what made it work is they faked Russia into fortifying a different place.
But now they would have to attack that different place.
And that place does have defensive lines.
So, it doesn't mean that Ukraine won't succeed.
It does mean they can't do it the same way and almost certainly not as fast.
Right? So, now, I wouldn't say that this either is the final word and now we know everything that's going to happen, right?
But, it is true that whatever we saw up to this point does not tell you what happens next.
So, let's game this out.
When was the last time you heard a report from the war?
I haven't heard one in a few days.
Nothing important, right?
Some stuff blows up, but nothing important.
It doesn't seem like any territory has changed sides, right, in a few days?
I don't know that it will.
I don't know that it will.
But they're going to keep fighting, right?
So what happens if no territory is changing sides and the fighting is continuing?
Well, Putin will continue to degrade things in Ukraine.
But let me ask you this.
Why is his degrading of things in Ukraine sort of muted?
In other words, it doesn't seem to be an all-day-long assault.
It seems like Putin, you know, launches some stuff and, you know, destroys some infrastructure, but then they sort of, you know, next day they do some more.
And the speculation is that Putin's out of ammo, and that the reason there's not a sustained attack on the infrastructure of Ukraine is that he can't do it.
He doesn't have enough accurate missiles.
And it's the accurate stuff he needs.
Right? Here's something I ask you.
Just if you wonder how gullible you are to propaganda.
Here are two facts that are reported in the war, and I never see anybody connect them.
And here are the two facts.
The Russians are targeting, intentionally targeting civilian residential areas.
True? True or false?
True or false? The Russians are intentionally targeting residential areas.
Well, the news says that.
The news says they're intentionally targeting residential areas.
How could that not be true?
All right, here's the other thing that the news says.
The Russian missiles and artillery are not accurate.
True? True or false?
The Russians have some accurate stuff, but most of it is the inaccurate stuff.
So the news is telling you two things.
They're intentionally targeting these residential areas, and their weapons are super inaccurate.
Pick one. Now, it could be that they're intentionally targeting residential areas.
I'm not... I'm not poo-pooing that, because there's some history of that.
Some say that is the Russian military doctrine.
But I think that's not the military doctrine you use when you're attacking your own countrymen, is it?
It would be one thing to be attacking the Chechens or somebody who doesn't look like you, you know what I'm talking about?
But the Ukrainians and the Russians, they look like each other.
I don't know. I don't know if you want to destroy all the residential areas in Ukraine and then hope to live together in harmony.
Is that going to happen? I don't know.
So, here's what I think is going to happen.
The fighting in Ukraine will continue for a while, and there'll be some horrors and tragedies, but nothing's going to happen.
There won't be any major changing of hands.
Maybe a little bit, but not any large-scale changing of hands.
At that point, it's also going to look like the only way that would happen is if America massively increased the military assets of Ukraine, Which I don't think we'll do.
At least not enough for them to capture the rest of those territories.
Or it could be that we have some intelligence that says the Russians are just going to run out of assets.
I mean, it could be that the Russians just run out of stuff and they just can't defend it anymore.
So what do you think is going to be more likely?
Permanent... Permanent nothing?
Nobody goes anywhere?
Or do you think Russia will run out of stuff?
Because I think they would run out before we would run out.
Because it looks like there's no end to how much we're willing to borrow to give them.
So, my prediction remains the same.
That there will be no genuine peace talks until there's a genuine nuclear threat.
Now, you can say, we already have a nuclear threat, but I would say, no, we don't.
No, we have talk.
So far, we just have talk.
I don't actually feel the threat yet.
Do you? I mean, I feel that it could become a threat, and that's very real.
So I'm not saying there's nothing real there.
I'm saying that I don't feel it yet.
And I also don't think that Ukraine or Russia or the United States feels it yet.
But we will. I think there is no way that we don't get to the brink of nuclear war.
What would stop it?
There's no way that they're going to just stop and make a peace deal.
Right? Does anybody think that Russia is on the verge of making a peace deal?
No. No.
Not unless things are much worse there than we think.
Which is possible. It's possible that things in Russia are much worse than we think.
Because these things can, you know, they can have a tipping point where everything looks good until it doesn't.
We could be really close to the tipping point in Russia, but you don't know.
You could also not be anywhere near it.
Yeah. So, The most likely outcome is that we will go to the brink of nuclear war and then get serious.
But how in the world would they ever decide who owns those disputed territories?
I say that the future is pretty much written already.
And the future is that neither Russia nor Ukraine is going to be able to own those territories.
That's what I say. Because it's the only thing that could work.
It would make both countries unhappy.
It would make both countries unhappy.
But it's better than the alternatives.
Because the alternative is they just keep fighting forever.
Because nobody's going to win.
And if they won, the other side would just shell them forever or be a terrorist nightmare.
I'm surprised anybody lives there.
Five Ukrainians. Yeah, it would be like five little Ukrainians.
But if they were demilitarized, that could work.
Because I don't see any argument for why each of those disputed little territories should have its own military.
Because it wouldn't have a military that could defend against either Ukraine or Russia on its own.
So there's no point in having any military at all.
They can't win any wars.
They're not going to discourage anybody.
Yeah.
I would not. Alright, so I think somebody, some third party like the UN or somebody is going to have to step in and run those disputed territories and there's no other way it can go.
So that's my prediction.
There's no other way it can go.
Does anybody want to give me an alternative prediction But you have to make the case that it could go in that direction, like it's actually possible.
What would it be? Anybody?
Let's see your predictions in the comments.
What do you think?
Russia has a substantial arms-making capacity.
So they can continue making arms, but that's only until they're, you know, anything that requires technology breaks.
making weapons requires technology, and their technology structure were decapping.
So I don't know.
All right, so let's take the alternative possibilities.
All right, possibility one, Ukraine wins outright.
Possible or no? And Russia says, ah, darn it, we tried, but I guess we'll just stop trying to make war here.
All right, I say that's not likely.
So how about Russia wins outright, and Ukraine just says, you know, okay, you keep these territories.
How about that? Nope.
No. How about they split them?
How about they say, well, all these territories are disputed, but some of these lean a little Ukrainian.
You know, the population does.
Some leads a little Russian. We'll just split them down the middle and call it good.
How about that? Nope.
I don't think so. Because I don't think we have the right leaders that would get you to that kind of a result.
So if neither side can win...
Militarily or by negotiating.
The only thing that's left is that somebody else is going to have to run those countries or you have a permanent war.
And we're not going to settle for a permanent war.
Yeah. So...
Has anybody except me floated the idea of somebody who's not Ukraine and not Russia running those disputed territories?
Because it's going to happen.
Can anybody give me a confirmation?
Has anybody anywhere mentioned...
You're saying Elon, but he didn't do that, did he?
We wouldn't know about that.
But anybody in the public realm?
Yeah, I don't think Elon Musk.
Elon said vote to decide, but voting to decide is deciding, you know, which of the big entities you go to.
I mean, that would work.
You know, if they had a vote that was credible, if they had a vote that was credible, yeah.
But that still gives you a winner and a loser, doesn't it?
Suppose you were Russia, and you already knew which way that people would vote.
I don't know which way they would vote, actually.
But suppose you knew, and you knew it was going to go the other way.
Would you agree to the vote?
See, here's the problem with the vote.
Here's the problem with the vote.
Probably both Russia and Ukraine think they know which way the vote would go.
I think the vote would only work if you genuinely didn't know which way the vote would go.
Does anybody agree with that?
Would you agree with the statement that no one will agree to a vote if you know which way it's going to go?
Because that means one side is agreeing to lose.
Who would agree to lose?
So I think they can't do that.
I think they have to create a situation in which they both don't know the outcome.
And that will be vital to the outcome.
You have to genuinely not know how it's going to turn out.
And that's why having a third party run it until they get up on their feet and decide who they want to be, I think that's the only way to go.
I think. So that's my prediction.
So my prediction is that today I'm the only person talking about those disputed territories being independently run.
And I predict that in a month it will be a common topic.
Does anybody want to bet?
In a month it will be a common topic That one of the options is some kind of an independent country situation.
What do you say? Possible?
Just the conversation.
I'm not saying it's going to happen in a month.
I'm going to say that that conversation will be a common conversation in a month.
All right.
We'll see.
I'm really curious whether Biden really did end the Chinese tech sector and that the news decided not to report it.
Like, I don't know what's going on today.
That is really confusing.
All right. What do you think Elon Musk should do with Starlink?
Do you think Musk just needs to run Starlink and let it go?
Now, one thing that is worth mentioning, do you have any idea how much money he could make on Starlink, once that's all up and working?
Do you have any idea how much money Starlink could make?
It's a replacement for the whole internet, basically.
Or at least the transmission part.
But people...
Yeah, why can't they get paid like everyone else?
I'll call it a mistake.
But he made the mistake of giving it to him for free before he signed a deal.
And if you do that, then people say, well, why should I sign the deal?
I'm getting the milk for free.
It only works with a stationary reception, right?
So you need a little dish.
That's true. So it's never going to...
So by definition, that means it's never going to be in a car.
Right? So your car will never be able to hone in on the satellites.
There's so many of them, though.
You can't automatically find one.
I don't know. It works for mobile platforms, somebody says.
It's on boats. Oh, there is a mobile device.
Okay. So some here are saying it is mobile and some are saying not.
He has a flat version.
All right. You could put a receiver in a car.
All right. Yeah, you know, I would be worried if I were Elon Musk.
I don't think he wants to be in a position that he's the one who caused a peace, if it's one that one side doesn't like.
The laser inter-satellite links aren't turned on.
Okay. Is China is with what?
I'm sorry. Monkey brains.
What? All right.
It's a weird day in the news, like I said, because there's just not much happening there.
I think I probably won't go too long today because I don't have anything else to talk about.
Is there anything I'm missing? Oh, here's one thing I wanted to mention.
I was saying today, you've seen this a bunch of times, the list of all the Trump business failures.
Have you seen that on the internet?
I think there are like 14 or 15 of them or something.
And so it's everything from Trump Stakes to Trump this and Trump Airlines and stuff like that.
But I don't think people understand that some number of those businesses were licensing deals.
And the way a licensing deal is, if that's what they were, and I think they were, if it's a licensing deal, then Trump sells his name, but he's not involved in the business.
He just sells his name.
So if the business fails, Trump still makes money because he sold his name, and he doesn't have to give it back.
So he's not on the hook for any debt that they cause or anything else.
So when I was doing a lot of licensing for Dilbert, In the frothiest time for the Dilbert product, licensees were coming from everywhere and saying, can we please give you money?
And that's it.
You just have to take our money and then we can use Dilbert on a product.
And I would look at the product and their business plan and I would say, there's no way that anybody's going to buy that.
You know, it would be like Dilbert pajamas and stuff.
And I'd look at it and say, alright, you know, you're going to sell like six Dilbert pajamas.
But they were very hard to do it, and it wasn't up to me.
So they would say, can we give you money, and we'll take all the risk, and there'll be no consequence to you.
If it doesn't work, nobody's even going to notice.
Just there won't be any pajamas.
And so I would take their money, and I would be done.
I'd be done. There's no more work on my part.
I don't even know how the business goes.
And then that business fails.
Well, if I were Trump, I would get blamed for that.
But why would Trump be blamed for licensing his name, taking his money, putting it in the bank, completely done, and then somebody else's business doesn't work?
Licensing... Licensing is a business that, at least the kind of licensing guy was in, and probably him too, it's the kind of business where most of the companies should fail.
And the people who are tweeting these list rounds don't realize that.
Trump was always in the business of high-risk things, That he controlled his downside on.
So he had a potentially, you know, a high gain, but he couldn't go any lower than, let's say, you know, bankruptcy or whatever.
So he had a, his downside was capped.
But his upside wasn't.
So he kept doing high-risk things until something paid off and he became president of the United States.
Yeah. Some of the businesses were definitely his.
The casinos, as you mentioned.
Yeah. The casinos were his.
Well, I doubt the airline was.
Somebody do a fact check.
Was Trump Airlines a licensing deal?
Probably was, right?
Some Trump towers are licensed, if not all, at this point.
I think at this point they're probably all licensed, but I don't know.
Don't know for sure.
He owned the airlines, but I'll bet he protected his downside.
Okay. Anyway, so I'd like to see a list of which of those failures were actually licensing deals and which weren't.
But in any case, he wasn't managing any of them.
We all agree he wasn't managing any of that, right?
Do you know what the best explanation for Trump University was?
I gave you this a long time ago.
The best explanation for Trump University is that Trump licensed his name, And he trusted the people who ran it to do it right.
And they didn't. And maybe somebody told them about it, but it just wasn't his top priority.
Maybe he should have followed up and maybe he should have done something about it.
But if you look at all the things that have his name on it, he couldn't have possibly managed all that stuff.
And he couldn't have possibly been interested in the details of those courses.
Do you think he really looked at the curriculum before he put his name on it?
Maybe skimmed it.
Maybe skimmed it.
Yeah. Whether he had an ownership stake or just a licensing stake, in either case, it's very unlikely he knew what was going on because he had too much of a business enterprise at that point.
All right. That's all I got.
Is there anything else? Anything I haven't talked about?
No, I just got allergies.
It sounds like I'm catching a cold.
Oh, the California Bill 2098.
So 2098 would...
All right, we're gonna have to talk about this.
This might not go the way you thought.
So California Bill 2098, if I understand it correctly, would require that doctors only talk in the approved way about the pandemic, or was it in general?
I think it might have been more generalized than that.
But the idea is that if you're a doctor, you couldn't just...
Yeah, it's generalized.
If you're a doctor, you couldn't just be making up stuff that wasn't sort of approved medical narrative.
I don't know the details of that.
But you saw how hard it was for me to just describe it?
Doesn't that mean that it would be hard to decide what the narrative would be?
Like, how would you decide what is approved and what's not?
So, without knowing anything about it, you automatically could know.
It would be pretty hard to decide what was a violation and what wasn't.
Now, let me ask you this.
Suppose it's a toss-up situation and the experts disagree.
In that case, is it the worst thing in the world if your doctor departs the official narrative?
Because the experts disagree.
Well, in that case, you can say to yourself, no, I won't.
You know, it's between me and my doctor.
You can make that argument. But what if the actual risk of doing it wrong is just really bad?
It's a little bit sort of a free speech problem, isn't it?
Let me back up here.
All right. How many of you believe in unrestricted free speech?
Everybody? We're all on that side, right?
We all want unrestricted free speech.
But most of you would agree that yelling fire in a crowded theater because it could have an immediate, you know, bad impact on people's health and safety, that you would agree that that should be potentially a legal problem, right? Would you agree with me that?
Unrestricted, except with that exception.
You don't want to yell fire in a crowded theater.
Okay. But otherwise, completely unrestricted.
Now, well, you'd have to make an exception for libel, defaming somebody intentionally.
So would you agree that we could also have laws that say you can't, you know, libel somebody?
Right? Yeah, if it could be proven.
All right, most of you agree.
So unrestricted free speech, you can say anything you want, as long as it doesn't immediately hurt somebody, right?
Right? But if you did it with the knowledge that it would hurt somebody, and maybe even that was why you did it, maybe that's bad.
Somebody says yelling fire in a movie theater is not illegal.
No, it's not. It's not illegal if it doesn't cause any problem.
Right? You can yell it if everybody ignores you.
That's still legal. Yes, that's correct.
All right. Then, so we've got these minor little things.
Now, so you're in favor of unrestricted free speech.
So most of you are in favor of teaching children about sexuality at ages five and six, right?
You're all good with that?
Oh no, no, you're not good with that.
So that would be an exception too.
So unrestricted free speech, we're all in favor of it.
Unless it hurts somebody, like yelling fire in a theater, or defames them, or slanders them, or teaches sex to your children.
But otherwise, otherwise unrestricted.
Are we on the same page?
Otherwise? So in other words, all of the exceptions, what do all the exceptions have in common?
The exceptions have in common is immediate harm.
That there is obvious, immediate harm to the...
Yeah, there's a safety issue, and it's immediate.
That's different from saying general things like, oh, generally, Democrats are bad.
And then you make the argument, oh, if you hadn't said Democrats are bad, society would be working better and people would be more alive.
So that doesn't work.
It needs to be direct...
Obvious you can draw a clean line from the language to somebody got hurt.
In some of those cases, those would be illegal.
And that's what that 2098 law is trying to do.
It's trying to prevent people from yelling fire in a crowded theater.
That's what it's trying to do.
It's trying to keep you from teaching sex to children.
I mean, in a...
Not literally.
But what it's doing is trying to prevent harm.
So, the problem is it's probably too broad, yeah.
That's probably the problem. But could you imagine a situation in which telling people the opposite of the known scientifically demonstrated truth maybe should be illegal?
Is there any certainty that would allow you to be okay with that?
Suppose you had a doctor that was advising people to start smoking.
Anybody? If you had a teacher who advised people to start smoking, should there be any legal consequence for that?
What do you think? Should there be legal consequence for a doctor who tells people to start smoking?
Most say no. Most say no because you already understand that smoking is dangerous.
So it's a trick question.
But imagine if you didn't know.
Imagine if science knew it was bad for you, like totally bad for you.
You didn't know the difference.
But your doctor said, that's fine.
It's good for you. Would it be illegal then?
See, the only reason it's not illegal is that you're well informed.
So you already know it's bad for you.
So it wouldn't fool you. I don't know.
All I'm going to add to this conversation is that we do have a precedent that restricting free speech to stop immediate harm is good.
But then you have the situation where the...
See, here's where everything got murky.
In my opinion, this is where things currently stand.
Then I'm going to be describing mainstream science's opinion, not my own, okay?
Everybody okay with that?
I'm going to describe mainstream science's opinion, not mine.
So don't get on me if you don't agree with this.
Mainstream science says the vaccinations did not stop transmission, but it did save a lot of lives.
That's what they say.
Not me. Don't blame me.
Don't get on me. That's what science says.
Mainstream science. But is it not also true that the same people who are telling us what's good for us clearly misled us?
I'm not going to say lie because I don't know who was lying and who just didn't know.
They clearly misled us about the transmissibility if you're vaccinated.
So in that case, should it be illegal for somebody to depart from the narrative when you know that the people who created the narrative are not credible?
That's where it gets complicated.
Because you really don't know who has your best interest.
If I knew the consensus of scientists had my best interest in mind, I would at least be open to the possibility that they should have maybe some extra rights or something.
But we don't have that assurance.
At this point, we don't trust anybody.
So I think you have to default to free speech if you don't trust anybody.
Because free speech is your only hope.
It's your only hope.
Everything else can't work.
And maybe free speech won't work either, but it's your only hope.
So having walked you through it, I think I'm going to favor free speech in that case, even though there might be situations where there is immediate harm At risk.
I'd still go with the free speech, I think.
The missing snow crab story.
Yeah, a lot of snow crabs missing, but I don't care.
I don't miss any of them.
Yeah, Sweden is going to build new nuclear reactors.
So take that, Greta.
She's in favor of nuclear.
Greta likes nuclear now.
Thanks, Greta. How about the Alex Jones situation?
We talked about that already.
That's... I think the penalty was out of whack with the crime.
All right. Georgia's starting up a new reactor?
They are? Alright, that's all for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
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