Episode 1909 Scott Adams: Elon Musk Buys Twitter And Nothing Will Be The Same, Including Ukraine War
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Content:
Elon Musk's impact on Twitter
Elon Musk touts value of citizen journalism
PayPal Fake News that's real news
AI's impact on business within 3 years
Russia threatens Starlink satellites
AI + 10 rules of persuasion = WMD
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Good morning everybody and welcome to a highlight of civilization and one of the most fun days that you'll ever have on Coffee with Scott Adams.
Today, Neo has entered the Matrix.
And I don't think anything's going to be the same.
I don't know. We'll find out.
But would you like to take it up a notch?
Would you like to enjoy coffee in not only this dimension, but higher dimensions as well?
Well, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid I like.
Coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. Mmm.
Yeah. Freedom.
Freedom! Well, I was very proud of my tweet last night.
I tweeted the following.
Everything you can identify by its initials is working for its own interests, not yours.
No exceptions. Now, how would you like a little persuasion tip to kick off your morning?
What was the persuasion part of this tweet?
I'll read it again. And you tell me what is the persuasion part.
Everything you can identify by its initials is working for its own interests, not yours.
No exceptions. Yeah, no exceptions.
Do you know me well enough to know that of course I know there are exceptions?
Don't you know I know there are exceptions?
Of course there are exceptions. Of course there are.
But the fact that I make you think about it is what binds you to the tweet.
So here's what I hoped you would do.
I'm seeing some exceptions like AIDS. Yeah, that would be an exception.
So what you're supposed to do is say, well, this can't be true.
Well, it can't be true that everything that you can identify by its initials is working for itself, not you.
I mean, what about the FBI? Oh, okay.
All right, but it can't be true of everything.
I mean, take, for example, the IRS. Oh, okay.
Well, at least you've got the GOP. Oh, okay.
Yeah, and not all people.
Not all people. I mean, what about AOC? Oh, yeah.
But surely not BLM? Oh, yeah.
Somebody said KFC. Somebody said every business is identified by its letters on the stock market, to which I say, that's my point.
That's my point, not your point.
Every single company is working for itself.
That's called capitalism.
So yes, every single company that's listed on the exchange is working for itself.
That's how it works.
Even KFC. Even IBM. All right.
So just so you know, you can be on the inside.
Of course I did not believe there were no exceptions.
Of course I did not believe that.
What is funny? Can you give me that?
Did it work? How many of you spent extra time because I said there were no exceptions?
I'll bet you did.
Yeah, ESG, right?
So that's your persuasion tip of the day.
That would be the intentional error persuasion trick.
Well, I continue to watch CNN to see if they are turning toward the middle.
And I do see signs of it.
I do see signs of it.
For example, we did see that even CNN people, I saw several of them, question whether Fetterman should have given, even done the debate.
I'm not sure they would have done that a year ago.
I feel like that that was, you know, clearly a move to the center.
And Smirkanish, I think, was the one who said it directly.
You know, maybe it wasn't his time, maybe wait till next time.
You know, which has nothing to do with a disability.
I think you can be, you know, perfectly appropriate and still say, maybe next time was better for him.
Along that theme, Chris Eliza, who writes for CNN, and had been one of the most prolific anti-Trump opinion people.
But here he is today.
He says, he writes a little opinion piece.
It's just his weak little opinion piece.
It looks like he dashed it off in 10 minutes.
He says, with less than two weeks left before the November midterm elections, All signs are pointing to a strong Republican showing that would result in a switch of party control in the House and possibly the Senate.
He goes, that's very good news for Donald Trump.
And then I'm waiting for the twist, you know, the part where, okay, now he's going to get him.
And he just goes on to say that Trump will do what he always does, which is take credit.
If the midterms go Trump's way, Do you think Trump will take credit for the fact that a lot of people that, let's say, the observers didn't think had a chance or at least tie or might actually win?
Yes. Not only will Donald Trump predictably try to take credit, but let me ask you, he deserves it, right?
Right? I wouldn't even, I wouldn't question it at one moment, would you?
If Trump took credit, wouldn't you say, yeah, that's warranted?
Because I believe that even the people who are doing things sort of independently from Trump are still conforming to Trump.
Am I right? There's nobody who's out there completely independent of Trump if they're a Republican.
If you're a Republican, you're running under a Trump set of parameters, whether you say it out loud or not.
You don't have to say it out loud.
Trump would get complete credit for this, in my opinion.
I think that would be completely justified.
But here's the surprising part.
Even Chris Eliza says that's true.
He says it a little more indirectly.
But he does say that Trump campaigned for some of these semi-underdogs, and that they might actually win, and that taking credit wouldn't be crazy.
I mean, I'm adding that part.
But, yeah, I do see a genuine shift toward the middle for CNN. It continues.
All right, the big story you all want to talk about is Elon Musk carried a sink into Twitter headquarters yesterday.
An actual kitchen sink.
Now, and then he tweeted that he was in Twitter headquarters, let that sink in.
Now, Was that the most brilliant thing that anybody ever did?
See, you think that Elon Musk is mostly smart with technology.
That's what you think.
He knows how to make money. But you really miss that his understanding of persuasion is as good as it gets.
It's as good as it gets.
He's in the elite category of persuaders, and this was a perfect example.
Who else would have carried a sink into Twitter headquarters?
And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why, right?
How many of you spent a lot of time thinking about it and trying to figure out why exactly a sink?
I actually still don't know.
Oh, is that an old meme? It's an old meme.
Let that sink in.
Yeah, but let that sink in.
Is that why he brought the sink?
Just for that one line?
People are saying it's an old meme.
Well, I understand that everything but the kitchen sink, but how does it...
I'm not quite connecting it.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
So, here's the beauty.
The beauty is that you all interpreted it however you wanted to.
Am I right? Didn't you all simply put whatever interpretation you wanted on that?
Which is perfect.
It's just perfect. So, what do I teach you about persuasion?
Here are two rules that Elon Musk is using.
Number one, visual.
Visual persuasion beats everything.
So he created a picture that could capture the concept.
Because everybody was going to talk about the concept of him buying it today, but there's no picture of a person doing a contract to complete a transaction.
He actually created a visual to basically capture that story.
And of course he guaranteed that that would be on every media outlet.
Now, here's the other. So the first rule of persuasion is visual.
You have to own the visual.
Second part of persuasion is surprise.
Surprise. So you had to do something that was visual, but visual in a surprising way.
So he brings a sink.
These are two of the, you know, probably if you listed your top ten rules of persuasion, these would be two of the ten.
When you see him persuading, he's doing it right, like he's actually using the best technique of persuasion.
This is not an accident. He knows how to do this.
And I don't know where he learned it, but one can speculate.
All right, so I tweeted that Neo has entered the matrix, and Neo has entered the Matrix.
Now, I always tease people when they make Matrix references because it's such a stale reference.
But I'm going to make an exception for myself, like everybody does.
Everybody makes an exception for themselves.
I'm going to make an exception for myself because it's too perfect.
Because he actually is entering the, you know, not exactly the Matrix, but But once he has access to the algorithm, he actually controls reality.
He's not just controlling a company, and he's not just controlling an important media enterprise.
It's way beyond that.
He's controlling reality.
Neo has entered the fucking matrix.
He's literally...
I mean, this is as close to a literal as you can get.
I mean, it's not literally Neo, but it's as close as you can get, you know, in our world.
Now, do you think this marks a turning point, or is it just going to be another ownership of Twitter, and he'll do some funny things and nothing will change?
What do you think? Do you think this changes everything, Or change is nothing.
I think it's going to change everything.
Maybe not right away, but faster than you think.
And I'll develop this a little bit.
Now, I saw somebody very smart on Twitter, Brian Romaley, I wish I could pronounce his name, but he was speculating that this is just the first part.
And that Elon might have his eyes on acquiring Rumble.
Now, I own stock in Rumble, so full disclosure.
I don't want to start a rumor that benefits me financially in some non-disclosed way, right?
So I've got some stock in Rumble that I acquired because Rumble acquired locals, and I had a small investment in locals, so I went over to Rumble.
What do you think? Do you think Elon Musk would buy rumble?
It feels like a natural, doesn't it?
It does actually feel like a natural extension, but it feels like, you know, who knows.
So I'm not going to predict that, but I'll note that somebody else has predicted it.
Somebody smart. Question number one.
What would happen, just hypothetically, If Twitter ends up changing the algorithm such that Democrats see real news for the first time, what would happen?
I mean, seriously.
What would happen if Democrats saw real news for the first time?
What will that do?
Because I'm here to tell you that there's a mental health element to this that is underappreciated.
Have any of you ever had the experience of thinking something was true, let's say about your own life, only to learn that what you thought was always true or had been true for a long time was completely untrue?
I'll give you an example. Suppose you worked for Enron, and you'd worked for Enron for years, and then later you found out that Enron wasn't even a real company.
It was basically a whole sham.
Like, what would that do to your mental health?
I know a woman, I won't name names, but somebody I knew, somebody I still know, obviously still know her.
And she had been with a guy for years and years and they were very close.
Didn't feel like getting married necessarily, but it looked like it was heading that way.
And one day, her boyfriend had some major health problem.
So the boyfriend goes to the hospital and she visits him in the hospital.
And there's another woman in there visiting her boyfriend in the hospital, and they see each other.
They go, hi, I see you're visiting the same person.
What are you here for?
And she goes, oh, I'm his wife.
And she goes, what are you here for?
And she said, I'm his girlfriend of five years.
And they learned for the first time he had two lives, two complete lives.
Now, what happened to her mental health when she found out the last five years of her life were not what she thought?
It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy.
Like, it was really disorienting.
I mean, you can imagine what that would do to you.
Your whole life, your whole life would be altered by that, because everything you saw would be, I don't know if I can trust that.
What would you ever trust?
You would never trust anything again, right?
So, one possibility of Elon buying Twitter is that Democrats will see real news for the first time.
Also, people on the right will see things from the left that they've never seen before.
What will that do to people?
Will that bring us together or make us crazy?
Because I think the initial impact will be to make us disoriented.
What happens when people get disoriented?
Go back to your persuasion lessons.
If everybody gets disoriented and they can't find their base anymore, like their team doesn't make sense, they're not sure which team they're on now, what happens?
When people are disoriented, they don't thrive in chaos.
No, that's not what happens.
Cognitive dissonance, maybe.
Cognitive dissonance may give them some escape.
But there's something scarier.
The scarier thing is that when nobody has anything to latch onto, the first person who provides that thing to latch onto, they'll latch onto it.
In other words, they'll be looking for a new truth.
Whoever provides the new truth owns them.
They'll be broken free from their old truth and floating free, and they're free agents.
Somebody's going to suck them into their team.
You hope it's somebody good.
Right? You hope it's somebody who has some principles and not somebody evil.
But somebody's going to do it.
A lot of free agents will be created by this, I think.
Now that assumes that the algorithm changes in some dramatic way, but which might not happen.
We don't know. What would happen if Elon Musk finds out that Twitter was actually, let's say, being influenced by foreign forces and everything was corrupt?
Well, he'd fix it.
I mean, that would be step number one.
But things could look real different, because we don't know.
So you want to hear a good example of some fake news today?
Wall Street Journal had some excellent fake news.
And I don't really blame the Wall Street Journal of fake news often, do I? In fact, I don't know if I've name-checked them before for fake news.
So this will be the first time, probably.
So the Wall Street Journal had an article that China is considering interfering in our elections.
I don't know if that's true or false, but probably true.
And it reports that they may have changed their mind about interfering in the 2016 election, or was it 2020, but they haven't interfered recently because they didn't have a preference of who was president.
So they didn't think that their interests would be served by either president, so they didn't interfere.
But now the thought is that they might interfere, and they would interfere in a general mucking up society way, as opposed to picking a winner.
So they try to sow civil war and, you know, and make us doubt the elections and stuff.
Now that part, I'm willing to believe, is all correct reporting by the Wall Street Journal.
I wouldn't know one way or the other.
But here's what they said next.
That China had not risen to the level of Russia, and they said also Iran, in interfering with their elections as Russia and Iran have alleged to have done.
Do you see the fake news?
Russia interfered with their election.
Now, specifically, they were talking about Bots and fake users.
So here I'm not talking about hacking emails, so nothing about hacking emails or steal dossier or anything like that.
I'm only talking about trolls, where you're sending social media trolls.
Now, do you think that Russia influenced our elections in the past with their trolls?
What's the news say?
The news says yes, right?
The news says they tried to influence.
Now, is that real news or fake news?
Is it real or fake news that Russia tried to interfere with our elections with bots?
It's real fake news.
It's real, and it's also fake.
It's real that it happened.
I think everybody agrees that it happened.
How big was it?
It was like a $100,000 ad spend for some memes that we got to see eventually, and the memes had no power whatsoever.
I can tell you as somebody who has studied persuasion, they didn't have any persuasive power.
They were just random jokes.
No persuasion whatsoever.
So do you think the Wall Street Journal gave you a straight report by saying that China might try to get up to the level of interference of Russia, or should they have said nobody has done anything of substance yet?
They might. But even Russia has not done anything of substance yet.
They did a real thing, it just didn't make any difference and couldn't have at that size.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, that's fake news, right?
It's fake news to suggest that Russia had an impact with the bots.
That's completely fake news.
So, alright.
Elon Musk tweeted that citizen journalism is one of the big benefits.
He said, a beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism.
People are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias, which of course caused critics to stream in and say, but those citizens will not be fact jacked.
Now, does that sound like the dumbest criticism you've ever heard in 2022?
Let me say it again just so you can laugh at it.
I will now be the critic.
You can't have citizen journalism because who would do the fact-checking?
All right, you can stop laughing.
There's no fact-checking now.
Who believes there's any fact-checking on the actual professional news?
The fact-checking's clearly fake.
It's obviously fake.
It's like way beyond the level where it's a conspiracy theory that it's fake.
It's obviously, demonstrably, factually proven to be fake.
How could citizen journalism be worse than that?
It couldn't possibly be worse, could it?
Yeah, in a sense, every tweet is fact-checked in real time by the rest of the comments.
You're right. All right, here's some more fake news that's real news.
Fake news?
Fake news that's real news.
You remember PayPal said that they were going to fine people $2,500 for spreading misinformation.
Then the world rebelled and said, no, you can't do that.
We'll close our accounts.
And then PayPal, they...
They backpedaled, and they said, oh, oh, oh, that was just a mistake.
That wasn't even supposed to be in there.
Total mistake. We took that out.
It was like a typo. It's almost like it never happened.
And then, after you were no longer paying attention...
They published their new Terms of Service, and the $2,500 fine is, according to Twitter users, not Twitter, but users on Twitter, they put that $2,500 back in there as soon as the outcry died down.
Is that true news or fake news?
Go. True news or fake news that PayPal put the $2,500 back in there after they said they'd taken out.
It is fake news, but also kind of true.
Here's what's fake.
They did take out the spreading misinformation part.
So the $2,500 part apparently was always in there, but it was related to other bad behavior.
So, for example, if you were using their service to promote Hitler or racism or something, you could have been dinged for $2,500.
So the $2,500 is still there, but it was there always.
And it wasn't related to spreading misinformation.
So the misinformation part they got rid of.
Or did they?
Or did they?
Let's go a little bit deeper.
So first of all, it's fake news, because they didn't put in the spreading misinformation part.
What is it? Because let's look at what part they did leave in.
So they do not have spreading misinformation as one of the triggers for the $2,500 fee.
But here are some things that I think these have been in there before, I think.
But they're in there now.
So one of the things that you can't do is collect money for products that represent a risk to consumer safety.
So you can't be doing something that would...
Present a risk to consumer safety.
So what would be some things that would be a risk to consumer safety?
Firearms. Firearms would be a risk to consumer safety.
How about ivermectin?
Is ivermectin a product that, in somebody else's opinion, could be a risk to consumer safety?
Well, I could interpret it that way.
Because even if somebody said, well, Ivermectin is well-tolerated, then could not PayPal say, it doesn't matter that it's well-tolerated.
If you're promoting this, you're sort of anti-vaccine, and that's misinformation, or it's harmful.
Not misinformation, it's harmful.
So don't they still have a way to say that you're doing stuff that's harmful related to a product?
Does that give them any...
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm just speculating here.
I don't know. How about this one?
Yeah. How about TikTok?
Do you think TikTok is a product that presents a risk to consumer safety?
If you collected money for something on TikTok, I don't know if that's a thing or not, but could you collect money?
Well, here's a story about TikTok.
Apparently TikTok was spreading around something called a blackout challenge in which children were encouraged to strangle themselves.
I'm not making that up.
So the algorithm of TikTok...
Delivered to a ten-year-old girl, so it decided that she would be interested in seeing this, a challenge to strangle herself, which she did, and then she died, allegedly.
Now, this story does have a little bit too much, a little bit too on the nose, so if tomorrow you find out this is fake news, don't be surprised.
This has fake news written all over it, but it also could be true, which would be a huge tragedy.
But whether or not this one incident is true, clearly TikTok is spreading, you know, information that somebody could say was dangerous.
Somebody could. So we're in murky territory if products that are a risk to consumer safety are a trigger for, you know, getting in trouble.
How about this? You could also get in trouble, according to PayPal, if you're collecting money for sale of products or services identified by government agencies to have a high likelihood of being fraudulent.
So if you sold ivermectin for COVID, then government agencies would say that has a high risk of being fraudulent.
Right? Wouldn't that example fit that?
So, they do have some questionable elements in that terms of service, but we'll see how that works out.
Let's see. More on AI, because as much as you hate talking about AI, it's the only thing that's going to matter in about three years.
And you really need to be ready.
You would be mad at me if I didn't warn you about this.
Right? Do you remember that it wasn't long ago when people who thought they were smart said, well, AI might take some of your factory jobs, but the last thing AI will be able to do is art?
Do you remember when all the smart people thought AI couldn't do art?
And do you remember when I kept saying, uh, you are so wrong.
No, no.
Art will be the first thing it can do.
Why? Because art has patterns and rules that the artists know, but you don't.
So the reason that art looks magical to people who can't do it is that they don't know it's just based on rules.
And if they knew the rules, maybe they couldn't be as good as the great artists.
They could come close.
For example, I discovered that humor has a formula.
And I believe I'm the only person who's ever written about it.
But there are six dimensions of humor.
You've got to use at least two out of six to make it a joke.
Could I teach AI to write a joke?
Yes, I could. Then all it would need to do is rapidly test its jokes against real people until it had the best form of it.
You might need to test, you know, a thousand different varieties, but one of those thousand would be better than a human could do.
It's already there. It's just a trivial iteration until it can do humor and singing.
It'll do music. It already does graphic art better than actual artists, in my opinion.
Now, what it doesn't do yet is follow the boss's specifications as well as a human might.
But that'll happen.
So here's an example of how this is going to mess up every industry.
I believe every industry is going to be turned upside down in three years or less.
So Shutterstock, a company that sells photographs or licenses so you can use them in your own content, but it had a problem because people were putting computer-generated art on their site.
And the computer-generated art would borrow from living artists and create a composite, and so the living artists were saying, hey, That's actually my art that it just stole and combined with somebody else's.
You can't do that. And so Shutterstock is coming up with an idea in which they would compensate the original artists from which the AI borrowed.
I don't see how that can work.
Do you? Because how do you know what the AI borrowed from?
It just doesn't seem workable at all.
But they'll try to do it.
Now, let me give you a secret to how to destroy a business model.
Are you ready? So my business model is I'm a syndicated cartoonist.
So if Dilbert does really well, I get a lot of benefit.
But if another cartoonist who is also syndicated doesn't do well, very few newspapers buy it, for example, then they make a small income and I make a big income because Dilber does well.
Well, do you know what the newspapers want us to do?
Us, the syndication?
They want to combine all comics as one thing and then just charge one price and then the cartoonists would sort of get an equal share because everybody's cartoon is being contributed to this product.
Do you know what that does to me?
Puts me out of business.
Because I would never, if that business model becomes the dominant one, and it will, it will, then I can't make money.
Right? It would basically, it would lower my income, which is very worthwhile, down to a level that is not worthwhile, and then I would find something else to do that could pay better.
Because cartoony wouldn't pay.
That's what's going to happen with these photographers.
So you start with, you know, the best photographers who can make insanely good pictures and they're really the stars and their stuff gets, you know, leased more.
Those people will no longer be in that business because AI will make it unprofitable.
So the best humans will retire immediately because they won't have a business model.
So whenever you're doing something like combining people's art, You've destroyed the art industry.
You got that? True with music as well.
You know how music streaming, it was terrible for the most important artists, but it was probably good for the lesser artists.
So everything is going in a direction that artists will be out of business if they're the star artists.
Now, you might not care, unless you're a star artist, like I am.
Which is weird to call myself that, but it's true.
I think at the moment, I'm not sure this is true, but I think I'm the most successful living cartoonist who still has a cartoon that's published.
For adults. I think Garfield's bigger, but that's more oriented toward kids.
I think that's true. I think I just outlived artists who are better.
So here again, let's talk about Ukraine.
The Adam's Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.
You all remember that?
Years ago, I came up with this idea that humans reliably solve any problem they can see coming from a long ways away.
If it's a really bad problem, they can still solve it if they have time.
Like the year 2000 problem, like running out of oil in the 70s.
Just, you know, all kinds of problems.
Running out of food, we solved it, etc.
So if you have time, we're fine.
And here's another example of that.
As of today, CNN is reporting that Germany, who had been importing 55% of its gas from Russia before the war, 55% of all of Germany's gas, you know, not gas for...
I think they mean gas for heating.
They've already replaced it.
Yeah, LNG. They've already fully replaced it.
Germany already has enough gas for the whole winter because they knew they had time.
Now, if you told me that that was possible, I would have doubted it, actually.
I would have doubted my own law of slow-moving disasters.
Because I couldn't imagine that they would build storage facilities, or that they had storage facilities that would effectively double their capacity, and they were just sitting there empty.
I mean, how exactly do you store it?
Or is it stored maybe on-site somewhere else, but they own it?
Oh, you know what? I'll bet that's it.
I bet that's it. It's not stored in country.
That's it. They own it, but it's probably still with the producer.
Right? Yeah, the producer still owns it.
The producer holds it, but they own it.
That's got to be it. But anyway, they worked it out.
Now, Ukraine, of course, has a bigger problem.
And I didn't see any note about the other European countries because maybe they had less exposure to Russia specifically.
But if the other European countries are in as good a shape, then Europe is going to get through the winter.
It's just going to be really expensive.
And that would take away Putin's biggest weapon, wouldn't it?
So Putin's biggest remaining weapons are nuclear weapons and freezing Europe.
It looks like he's not going to get away with freezing Europe, and even Ukraine, I think, is going to, you know, survive.
It'll be difficult, but they will.
Oh, Italy is upping drilling in the Adriatic Sea, somebody is reporting here.
Citizen reporting, there you go.
So here's the next thing that's happening.
What happens when, so Putin, well Russia, has threatened to shoot down Elon Musk's satellites.
What do you think of that?
So Putin and Russia Actually threaten that they might take out satellites, if the satellites are helping Ukraine.
Now, let me just put this out there.
I've told you that AI will be able to do better than humans.
The other thing that AI will do better than humans is persuade.
It will be persuasive.
Way more persuasive than humans, because you could just feed AI the 10 rules of persuasion, and they would just use them.
I could tell you the 10 rules of persuasion all day long, and you'll still forget to use them.
But an AI will just use them correctly.
It will also instantly test to see which things get more retweets.
So AI... Could, in theory, very quickly be so powerful as a persuasion, it would be a weapon of mass destruction.
Not a joke.
Oh, I hate to quote Biden.
My God, I just quoted Biden.
That literally, with no exaggeration, no hyperbole, Persuasion, once it's weaponized by AI, will be so powerful that it could cause a revolution, it could take down the country, it could turn off your power, it could kill everybody.
So do you know who has access to a weapon of mass destruction of that size?
Probably Elon Musk.
Now, I think he's no longer involved with one of the big AIs that Sam Altman was backing.
I think they were together at one point.
I read something that said he might not be involved with AI now, but that's not true.
He's doing AI with Tesla, right?
Yeah, he must have AI access in a variety of ways.
So imagine this.
Imagine Putin targeting Elon Musk satellites, hypothetically, and then imagine Elon Musk getting pissed off.
And deciding to target Putin with AI persuasion.
Do you think that Elon Musk could take down Russia, or take down Putin specifically, with nothing but AI persuasion?
What do you think? Do you believe that Elon Musk would have, first of all, access to it?
He'd have to have access.
He'd have to have Twitter supporting it and not banning it.
So he has a platform, he has the AI, and he would have the motive, hypothetically.
So if his satellites get targeted...
Elon Musk has the power of a nation-state, just about, as soon as he has Twitter.
Right? Because he'll have the platform, he'll have the distribution, the satellites, and he'll have the AI to weaponize it in whatever way he wanted, if his ethical...
Let's say if his ethical constraints allowed him to do that.
He might just say he'd never use it for war.
He might have an ethical constraint about weaponizing AI, which would be reasonable, actually.
So, I wouldn't worry if I were Putin, because Putin can attack Ukraine, and he might survive.
But if he attacks Elon Musk's satellites...
I don't think he has a chance.
I don't think he has a fucking chance.
I think Elon would take him out.
And he would never know.
Right? Putin would just know that things weren't bad.
He wouldn't know why.
Because the persuasion would be somewhat under the hood.
He wouldn't even see it happening. Anyway, the other thing is that if you're a gazillionaire, You can just bribe the highest people in the Russian government to do anything you want, can't you? Oh, here's a question for you.
Now, it is illegal for an American to bribe a foreigner, or bribe anybody, right?
Isn't it illegal to bribe in every situation?
Is that true? Yes or no?
It's illegal in every situation, right?
Does that include war?
Is it illegal to bribe somebody in the context of war?
Of course not. In the context of war, you can bribe somebody to be your spy.
Right? Now, I don't know if an American citizen can participate on their own in a war.
Can they? Would that even be illegal?
I don't know. Like, suppose, let me give you, for example, let's say we're at war, and I send a tweet out that I think is really persuasive and could make a difference.
Am I joining the war without permission?
What if I just, like, grab some weapons and fly over there on my own and start shooting bad guys?
Is that legal? You know, if I'm shooting the enemy?
Is it illegal to do that if I'm an American citizen?
And suppose I only killed actually combatants.
I didn't kill any citizens. Would that be illegal?
I'm assuming it is.
I'm assuming it is. But suppose Elon Musk went to our military and said, I know I wouldn't normally do this, but I know a bunch of high-level Russians because I do business over there.
And I can guarantee you that I can tell some of those high-ranking Russians that if they get rid of Putin, they've got a good job with me on SpaceX someday.
Could he do that? Would the American military say, sure.
I mean, if you can make it happen, go ahead.
Would they give him the yes?
Because, you know, no money has to change hands.
All it would require is one conversation through intermediaries.
Hey, Igor, Elon told me to tell you that if you turn on Putin in some specific way, let's say, you've got a job at SpaceX.
I feel like going after Ukraine is a real dangerous thing, and Putin took a big risk, but going after Elon Musk would be another level of danger that I don't think he would take on.
Because you wouldn't see it coming.
You wouldn't know what Elon Musk did back.
You would just know something bad happened.
All right. So...
The U.S., apparently Anthony Blinken says he's reiterated that the U.S. is tracking the Kremlin's nuclear saber-rattling and...
And has warned Putin not to use nuclear weapons.
And I guess Putin knows what the response would be.
And it would be a terrible response, something terrible.
Now, let me ask you this.
I don't want to get into, you know, a definition war, but is it really a war if you can tell the other side what weapons to use?
Like, there's something weird about this.
Am I wrong? If you can tell your enemy, who's trying to kill you, if you can tell them what weapons they can and cannot use, is it really a war?
I would say it's a negotiation.
It's a war when you use all of your weapons.
When you hold back your best weapons, I think that's just a negotiation.
That happens to involve bullets.
Right? Yeah.
Chemical and nuclear being held back.
Yeah. So, to me, this looks like an act of negotiation.
If somebody wanted to win a fucking war, they'd use all their weapons.
That's what I think. So, it's partly economic, so we can sell military weapons, I'm sure, and partly just an extended negotiation.
Right? I mean, all war is negotiation.
People say that. All right.
Do you believe that somewhere in the world an AI is already being trained in the skill of persuasion?
What do you think?
Well, if it's not, that would be an obvious oversight.
Yeah, it's already happened, of course.
And her name is Trinity, yes.
Was the Cold War a negotiation or a war?
Well, it wasn't a war.
It was a bunch of bullshit, is what it was.
You know, I still maintain that the reason for the Ukraine war is not any reason that's been mentioned.
Do you want to know my reason for the Ukraine war?
Do you remember what it was? Let's see if you can remember.
So my reason for the Ukraine war is not, no, not this, not Hunter's laptop, not about money, not about money laundering, not about lithium, not about the World Economic Forum, not about lithium, not about money, not about resources, not about ego, not about NATO expansion.
You know what I think it was? The root, root, root cause.
You ready? Not about regime change, not about land, not about military.
Nope. It's simpler than that.
There are too many Russian experts in our government.
That's it. There are too many Russian experts in our government.
And let me really fuck up your mind here.
Here's a mental challenge.
Imagine if the number of Russian experts in our government, let's say that all changed, and that was a small number, and the number of, let's say, Iranian experts in our government was expanded to the number of Russian experts.
Do you think we would be starting a war with Iran if most of our experts were Iranian experts?
Yes, we would. You're going to start a war with whoever you have the most experts with.
Why? Because there will be the most number of voices telling you you need a war so that those experts are more important.
Follow the money. If you follow the money, it goes all the way down to how many experts are on each team.
If we only had one Russian expert who was really good, Just one person.
But they're really good. And everybody knew they were really good.
Do you think that one expert could start a war?
No. It's just one person.
But as soon as you've got, like, Russia experts all through your organizations, they're going to be looking for war with Russia.
Because that's what makes them important.
It's good for their income, good for their careers, good for their prestige, good for everything.
So, of course, there's going to be war.
If you have a lot of Russian experts...
So all of those other reasons above that, those are all fake.
They're all fake.
Because you could recreate the situation just, well, you could predict it just by the number of experts.
That's all it would take. Right.
Yeah. The people who only have a hammer think everything looks like a nail.
Because aren't you confused about the fact that the United States and the Russia have any beef whatsoever?
Doesn't it make no sense?
It doesn't make any sense.
I will say it until I'm blue in the face, and it will definitely happen.
And it goes like this.
Russia and the United States are natural allies.
You can't stop that arc of history from happening.
There's nothing that will stop us from being allies in the long run.
It will happen. We just have too much in common.
And a distrust of China is at the top of the list.
Right. So I suspect...
That the way we solve Ukraine is by bringing space and a future where we can work together into the mix.
Now, do you think the United States could ever propose that we work together with Russia?
No, because there are too many Russia experts.
The only way that would work is if you found a way to monetize the Russia experts for helping to bring Russia into NATO or an alliance or whatever.
If the Russia experts could find a way to make money from non-conflict, then it could work, but I don't know how that would work.
Nobody makes money from non-conflict.
That's an exaggeration.
All right. I believe that is all I wanted to talk about right now.
For those of you who are not members of the local subscription forum...
I'm going to start putting Dilber comics in the locals network, because since that community I manage, I can do that legally.
So if anybody wants to see Dilber automatically, That's one way to do it.
I'll also be increasing my Robots Read News comics that I've let lapse for a little bit.
So the edgiest comics you'll ever see will be in Locals because I can't get cancelled for that stuff.
Alright. You haven't emailed, okay.
Yeah, the local subscription network would replace my entire syndication company.
Because in theory, I'm not doing this, but in theory, I could just say to any newspaper or entity that wanted to run Dilbert, I could just say, yes, all you need is a $5 a month subscription.
If you buy an annual subscription, it's $5 a month.
And for $5 a month, you can run Dilbert anywhere you want.
Just put it in your newspaper.
And they could just go get it.
They just screen grab it or whatever they need to do.
Or download it. All right.
I have a question for you.
I need to use the collective mind.
So I've done this experiment before, but every time I do it, I'm fascinated.
And I'm going to ask something that's purely for my own benefit, but maybe helps you too.
Here's a question. If you use a blood pressure monitor, the kind that wraps around your arm and then compresses your arm, If you sit in one place and just measure your blood pressure three times in a row, will it always be lower on the third try?
And is that because you've been sitting there, or is it because the machine squeezed you once or twice and so it's getting a different reading the third time?
In other words, is the third reading accurate if you keep the band on?
Do you have to take the band off and put it back on each time you use it?
Or can you just sit there and hit yes every time?
Alright, I'm seeing your answers are all over the place.
Alright, here's why I want to know.
Alright? Because I did something yesterday that blew my mind.
Now, a number of times I've done multiple readings on my blood pressure monitor, and generally they're not too far, like each reading is within the range of the other one.
They're different every time you do it, but they're not that different.
You can tell if you have high blood pressure or not.
But here's something I did yesterday.
I took it three times.
First time, 134 over 90 something.
So that's high.
Second time, similar, like 132 over high 80s or something like that.
Third time, I used a mental exercise.
And all I did was drop myself on a beach in Hawaii, a beach that I know well enough that I can imagine it in perfect detail.
Dropped myself on the beach, and then took the blood pressure monitor.
It went from 134 over 90, and in 30 seconds of visualization, I lowered it to 118 over 68.
118 over 68.
That's low blood pressure.
That's below normal.
In 30 seconds.
Now, don't take this as impressive.
That's not where I'm going with this.
I'm not saying that really worked.
I'm asking you if it really worked.
I'm not claiming it. I'm not claiming it worked.
I'm asking you if I fooled myself because the cuff was just looser on the third try.
Now, I'll try to recreate it.
You were taught to do it by a psychologist.
Now, here's what you need to know.
As you know, I'm a trained hypnotist, and I can do self-hypnosis.
It's one of the things that I learned, you know, learning hypnosis.
And self-hypnosis is sort of a rapid meditation.
So you can bring yourself to a desired state, but where meditation, it's sort of, you know, you work your way toward it, and you're never sure you're there, and everything else.
But with hypnosis, you can go right to it.
So when I say I dropped myself in a beach, I mean I could feel my entire metabolism, feel the exact way I would feel if I were on the beach in the sun.
And I did it in 30 seconds, and I could feel the entire beach feeling.
Like, I could feel it on my skin.
Now, I also have an unusual, let's say, an unusually commercially developed imagination.
Do you ever wonder the famous question, do you see red the same way I see red?
There's no way to know. But there's also no way to know, although there was a test that claims that we do see it the same, but I don't believe it.
There's also no way to know if everybody imagines the same way.
Because I can't see your imagination and you can't see mine.
But I believe, the evidence suggests, that because I'm a professional, creative person, I probably have a stronger power of imagination.
Because I make money on my imagination and I use it every day.
So, just, oh ho, carpe donctum!
Hey everybody, say hi to carpe donctum, who says to us from YouTube, see you soon.
That is the best message I got all day.
See you soon. Absolutely.
Absolutely. All right.
So the question is, do I have better powers of imagination?
Is that why maybe I could imagine my blood pressure down?
Or was it just a trick on me?
So I'll test it again.
But I wondered if anybody knew the answer to that.
All right. That's all for now.
And... Everything is a bell curve, okay.
Yes, we talked about Georgia and Milani on different live streams.
All right. Carpe, make sure that you tweet me as soon as you're on Twitter and we'll get your numbers up.
We'll get you up to a million users in about six months.
