Episode 1911 Scott Adams: Let's Have Fun With The News Because Its Been A Wonderful Week
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Gottman couples therapy
Catturd, MTG and "Turdstock"
Twitter Moderation Content Council
Emerging details, Paul Pelosi attack
President Obama's anti-Herschel persuasion
Questioning blood pressure medication
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to what might be the dawn of the golden age.
I think Musk's purchase of Twitter is changing things more than I thought.
And I feel like it's not changing the technology so much as how we're thinking about everything and how we see everything.
More about that later.
But first, how would you like to take it up a notch?
All the way from the most exciting thing that's ever happened to you, coffee with Scott Adams, to something Transcendent.
Well, if you'd like to do that, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, chalzer, 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 of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And I love you too.
Savor it.
Savor it.
Savor it. Well, Dilbert.com is down this morning.
I don't know why. I'll look into it later, but apparently my own website's down.
I don't manage it, so I guess I'll have to look into that, too.
All right, I've got to tell you this story.
But I don't want to give you the personal identifiers in it.
So it's sort of a real story, but I'm going to change the name.
The name in the story.
This actually happened to me last night.
So last night, I was in an extended conversation, in a digital way, over the choice of a name.
Choice of a name.
And the idea was to come up with an unusual name, sort of not a common name.
It doesn't matter what the name was for or anything.
And I'm just going to make up a name.
Mortimer. That wasn't the real name.
So just imagine that this really happened, but the name is different, right?
So the conversation went like this.
I'm thinking of Mortimer or Mort.
Yeah, that's great.
You know, that's great for a number of reasons.
All right. All right, that's the name.
It's going to be Mortimer. Now, keep in mind that Mortimer, I picked it in my example because it's a very unusual name.
You don't really...
Well, Morty, yeah. But you don't hear Mortimer too much, do you?
Now, the real name was not Mortimer, it was another one, but it was as unusual as that.
Now, 30 minutes after this conversation, And I want to say this clearly.
It's a name I probably have never used in 50 years or more.
So probably it's a name that has never crossed my lips, and rarely would you ever hear it in the real world.
It's a very unusual name.
I turned on a TV show from the 70s, from the 70s, And there was an episode in which a huge scene was all about that name and what a good name it was.
Now, what the fuck was that all about?
And it literally included the phrase, wow, that's a good name, within 30 minutes.
What does that mean?
I mean, seriously.
That couldn't have happened by coincidence, could it?
I mean, here's what a coincidence would look like.
I'm not going to tell you the name of the show, because I don't want to put any identifiers in it, but it was just crazy.
And it's the sort of thing where you have to sit there and think, did I make that happen?
I mean, it would be one thing if you simply heard the name, right?
That would be a coincidence.
Because you see that a lot.
If the only thing that happened is, you know, we talked about Mortimer and then I turned on the show and somebody was named Mortimer, I wouldn't think that's a big coincidence.
That would just be like an interesting little thing.
But it was a whole scene about whether it was a good name.
That is very specific.
I mean, how often have you even seen a TV show?
That discussed whether a name was a good name for a person.
And it's just so rare. Anyway, I was blown away by it.
All right, so let's talk about some persuasion tips for you.
So I tweeted today.
As you know, it's been my mission to kill ESG before the end of the year.
Now, when I say kill it, I mean mortally wounded, right?
It's still going to limp along for a while.
But by the end of this year, I want to make it difficult for anyone to think ESG is a good idea.
Like, you should sort of automatically feel a little embarrassed if you mention it.
And so I tweeted this.
I said, if by 2023, just, you know, once for now, if by 2023 you still think ESG is a public good as opposed to a money-making scheme, that's on you.
Now, let me explain the persuasion.
That is embedded in this simple tweet.
Number one, I put a date on it so it makes it sound a little more serious.
Whenever you put a date on something or you put a number on it, it takes a concept that doesn't exist and just hardens it.
So now it's like a little more real because there's a date.
Do you remember when I said...
Provocatively, back in 2020, I said that if Biden got elected, there's a good chance you'll be dead in a year.
What was the operative part about that?
The dead? Or the year?
Well, they're both pretty operative, but the year actually is pretty operative.
Yeah, the year is what makes it solid.
Like, oh, it's not just a concern.
If I said there's a good chance you'll be dead, then that would just be sort of a free-floating concern.
But as soon as I put it within a year, it hardened it, and then everybody got excited about it.
So I did the same thing.
By 2023, if you still think ESG is a public good, here's the next trick.
I said, if you still think...
What's the persuasion in that?
If you still think...
Tell me what the persuasion trick is.
Yeah. The trick, of course, it's the word still, but the trick is to make somebody embarrassed that they got left behind.
Have you ever had that feeling?
Wait a minute, why does everybody know something that I don't know?
So I'm creating the impression that the smart people have already moved past you.
You don't want to be the person who got left behind when the smart people have already moved to a better opinion, right?
It makes you automatically competitive.
So I'm creating people's...
I'm stimulating their competitive juices by saying, well, if you got left behind, you know, and then I say, as opposed to a money-making scheme, how hard is it to convince anybody anywhere of any persuasion That there's something that's really a money-making scheme and is not to their benefit.
That's the easiest thing you can convince anybody of.
You can pick anything.
Say, you know, that a Catholic church, it's really a money-making scheme.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you can pick anything and just say it's a money-making scheme.
And the public is sort of primed to agree with that.
Wouldn't you say that? Vaccinations.
It's not to help the public.
It's a money-making scheme.
You're right. You're right.
Right. So people's heads are just going to bob automatically when you say money-making scheme.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. The Democrats or the Republicans, pick anybody.
They're not a real party.
They're a money-making scheme.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's just automatic.
so i've got all the automatics in there i'm making you think past the sale i've got a high ground maneuver i've got a date to harden it i've got an alternative so you can you know imagine the alternative and then i ended with that's on you if you still think esg is a public good that's on you because i want people to know that they will literally be embarrassed to hold this opinion longer you will be embarrassed to hold this opinion Now,
this also very subtly gives you an out.
Because you know what triggers cognitive dissonance?
What triggers cognitive dissonance is being wrong and then being shown to be wrong in sort of a way that other people can notice, especially.
So I've allowed that there's something like an evolution involved here.
It's not like you were wrong, and now I have to convince you to be right, because that would just trigger a cognitive dissonance.
Instead, I'll say, you know, we're all on this path.
The path from thinking it was good to realizing it's a money-making scheme.
So you and I, we're all the same.
You're on the path, I'm on the path, but I'm going to take the path.
If you decide to move slower or don't take the path, well, that would be on you.
But the path is there for all of us, right?
It's not like I'm special, I'm not arrogant, you're dumb.
Nothing like that. The path is there.
Just get on it. All right, so you can see that you can pack a lot into about 20 words or whatever that was.
And I can tell it works because although it didn't get a lot of retweets relative to, you know, my most retweetable stuff, it did get over 2200 likes, which in my universe would be showing strong approval for the tweet.
All right. It also makes you research, forgot to mention.
If you can do some persuasion that makes somebody go look it up, That's a real winner.
Because if somebody takes the time to research whether what you said is true, or to research any part of it, then that becomes much stickier than something that somebody heard and then didn't act on with their muscles and their brains and their actual body.
All right. Here are two words that I would like you to remove from your vocabulary as much as possible.
This is not a standard which I can achieve myself.
So it's sort of like something to aim for, but we can't really reach this goal.
And that is to stop using the words must and should in terms of argument.
Must and should.
Must and should are very handy words when you're just trying to not discuss something.
If you want to not have an argument, just say somebody must do something, like a child.
Yeah, I don't want to hear your reasons, you must do this.
No, you must. Yeah, I know you have reasons, but you must do this.
So that would be a good use of must.
Should is the same thing.
Should tries to trick you into thinking there are reasons, But it's just a word.
It's just a should. So when you say should or you say must, the first thing that goes off in my head is, oh, you don't have an argument.
Right? Because people don't use those words when they have reasons.
Here's what a reason sounds like.
Oh, if you do that, there's a high risk you'll die.
That's different than you shouldn't do that.
Right? It's pretty different.
So now you must and should, or at least reduce them.
I ask this question because it's really...
I mean, in some ways, it's the biggest question in the country, and it's weird how little attention it gets at the same time it gets lots of attention, meaning that all the people giving it attention live in bubbles, and their bubbles don't collide.
So here's the question.
Do you know anybody personally, personally, not something you read about, but do you know anybody personally who you suspect, suspect is a key word because you don't know, do you know any personally that you suspect died from a vaccination complication?
So now my Twitter followers are anything but a random group.
They lean right. But what percentage do you imagine believe that they know somebody who died, actually died, from a vaccination?
And the answer is 24%.
24%.
Which is roughly a quarter.
So you could round it.
Some people would round that to 25%.
I'm not making any point about it.
I'm just saying rounds.
Now, I'm just sort of being a dick.
The 25% rule that I always joke about, that 25% of the public will get every poll question wrong.
It doesn't matter what the question is.
There's just something magic about that number.
25% get everything wrong.
But I don't think that applies.
In this particular case, I'm going to give you an exception and not do the 25% rule, because that's just for fun.
This is actually life and death.
Now let me ask you this.
If you had never heard of vaccinations, would you have even noticed?
Because I wonder how often people die You know, for reasons that they're too young.
I mean, are there that many people dying unexpectedly?
I mean, there are lots of reasons for extra excess deaths.
Everything from health care that was deferred to people got fatter to maybe they have a long COVID. I don't know.
Yeah, it's the healthy ones, they say.
It's the healthy ones who are dying.
I don't know. Here's what I can't understand.
If it's true, imagine it's true that something like a quarter of you actually personally knows somebody who died unexpectedly, meaning they're not filled with comorbidities, 80 years old, that they're young and nothing obviously wrong with them.
Don't you think that if a quarter of you were seeing this in the real world, and it was real, Don't you think the medical community would be more aggressive about this?
Or do we still believe that they're just worried about their paychecks?
And that something of this scale they would still ignore?
What would be the scale at which you think there would be a tipping point?
This is just a mental exercise.
Now, I'm not convinced that these unexplained deaths are vaccinated-related.
I'm not convinced. I could be.
I could be. So let me be really clear.
If it turns out that they are vaccination-related, don't come to me and say, you said that wasn't the case.
I never said that. I'm saying I don't have information that I find compelling personally.
But there's nothing to rule it out.
I'm not aware of anything to rule it out.
Are you? Is there anything that would rule out the possibility that there is an unusual amount of vaccination-related deaths?
I'm not aware of anything. But I'm not aware of anything that confirms it, either.
But let me ask you this question, just hypothetically.
Suppose 75% of you were aware of somebody personally who died probably from a vaccination.
You don't know. But the timing suggests that.
Suppose 75% of you are aware of it.
Do you think that the medical community could still say, yeah, but paychecks?
Suppose a million people a year started dying unexpectedly.
Would the medical community as a whole still say, mm-mm, mm-mm, no, mm, paychecks, got to get our paychecks, mm, no.
Would you still see only the rogues?
Would it still be just, you know, Dr.
McCullough and Dr.
Malone? Would they still be the only ones out there?
Not the only ones. There are other ones out there.
But I'm just wondering if, do you see any tipping point?
Is there any level at which this suspected problem, if the suspected part got bigger and bigger, is there any level that people would go against their economic interests?
I don't know. I don't know.
At some point, even the media would notice, right?
Well, here's the thing.
To me, it's already at that level where I can't imagine the medical community would not have risen at one and said, all right, we're going to have to take this seriously.
So there's something going on here.
I don't know exactly what it is.
It's an interesting mystery.
All right. Let me cause some real trouble here.
I tweeted today to make everybody angry.
And this is based on a bunch of stuff I'm seeing on social media.
So this is not Scott was sitting there and cooked up a new thing to be provocative.
This is Scott keeps seeing the same thing on social media.
And the same thing is that marriage doesn't work because women are incentivized to cheat and take your money and leave.
And I'm seeing women say it, basically.
There's one woman in particular who's getting a lot of A lot of retweets or getting a lot of attention on mostly Instagram.
And the idea goes like this.
Two people are dating and they show each other their best side.
So then they decide to get married, and as soon as you're married, you end up relaxing, right?
You're not as romantic, and you have kids, and then the kids are the priority, and you get busy, and you see each other dirty and unwashed, and sick, and every other bad thing.
So you've got some challenges.
Now, in the past, that was still enough to stay married.
I don't know if they were happy or not, but people more likely stay married.
But in the modern world, have I ever told you to follow the money?
One of my most consistent themes is that follow the money works even when you don't think you should.
It just works every time.
It's just so consistent.
And the idea is that if a young woman gets married to a guy who's got some money, And then she decides to divorce him.
She gets, you know, a portion of that money, and then she can just go find another guy who's more exciting.
So she doesn't have to stay with a suboptable guy when she can take money and improve her situation by just cheating and ruining the marriage and moving on.
Now, and there's always someone more exciting because social media makes everything Everything possible.
Now, here's what I think is the biggest fuck you that the public has ever given itself.
We keep blaming each other for this.
Cut it out. Cut it out.
Like, if two people have a divorce, what do we assholes say about them?
We're assholes. We say, well, you picked wrong.
You picked wrong, right?
It's on you. You picked wrong.
It's not your fucking fault.
The fault is that society is designed to sort of encourage you to get into this one kind of arrangement, and it simply doesn't work in 2022 for most people.
Now, are there people for whom it works?
Yes. Yes.
Can we all agree on that?
Can we all agree that people are so different that you could pick anything and it works for somebody, right?
Is there somebody in the world who can smoke cigarettes every day of their life and live to 100?
Yes! Yes!
Does that mean you should smoke cigarettes?
No! No, it means that we're so different, everybody can find something that works that might not work for you.
But, in my opinion, it is obvious that marriage doesn't work in 2022.
It's obvious. And I think we all see it.
But we don't have an option.
There's no option. Because let me be very clear, being single isn't any good.
I've been married and I've been single.
I can tell you there are two conditions that definitely don't satisfy.
One is being single and one is being married.
Those are two conditions that absolutely do not meet the needs of a modern person or many of us you know again everybody's different so yes marriage 100 meets the needs of some people it's just not many of them or not enough of them i guess right now i've heard a bunch of people say well if you tweak this if you tweak that i don't think so i don't think so i you know i don't think You know,
I don't think having multiple couples works.
I don't know anything that works.
I'm not aware of any method that works sort of generally.
And if you were going to design the system of marriage that didn't exist, would you ever have designed this system?
I mean, think about it.
Like, if no one had ever thought of marriage, like it just didn't exist, would you have come up with it?
So here's the problem.
In the old days, men and women offered something to each other that they couldn't do on their own, right?
Because if the guy's out farming all day, the guy can't have a baby.
The guy can't raise the baby if he's also farming.
So it made complete sense at one point.
It made economic sense.
It made social sense.
It made survival sense.
It made sense in every way. Now you go to 2022, and now the entire last 50 years have been dedicated to make individuals not need anybody.
Am I right? The last 50 years of social change are mostly about making each individual capable of supporting themselves in every way that you can support yourself.
You can get a job, you can get your own health care, you can hire a nanny, you can find friends on the internet.
Basically, everything you need can be provided in other ways.
And society has pushed very hard to make sure that a woman Can not only get married if she wants to, but she can have as good or a better job than the guy she married.
Don't we all agree with that being a good idea?
So it's not like it's a bad idea.
Is there anybody who thinks women should make less than men for doing the same work?
I've never met anybody who had that opinion.
Have you? Have you ever met anybody who thought a woman should be paid less for doing exactly the same job as a man?
I've never met one person who had that opinion.
So we're all happy about the changes.
All right, so here's Captain Hank.
And by the way, just so you know I'm not as sexist, Hank, you stupid cunt.
Let me say again my simple point.
If you believe the problem is the people chose wrong, you are in a serious delusion.
It's very obvious that that's not the problem.
Because if people choosing wrong is part of the system and we can't do it right, that means the system is broken.
If people were capable of choosing right, well, then I'd say, well, that's a good system.
You take this system and then you add people to it who can choose correctly on a consistent basis.
You've got a good system there, Captain.
But if you know you're not fucking guessing, you're not guessing, you know this doesn't work for half of the people who try it, at least.
I think it's 75%.
But you know it doesn't.
So stop acting like the people are broken and the system works.
Not true. The system can't work for most people in 2022.
And now, because some of you will not be able to handle this point, I have to keep saying it can definitely work for some of you.
And I know that no matter how many times I say it definitely is perfect for some of you, the argument will be, but it works for me.
No, that's not an argument.
The fact that it works for you doesn't really conflict with my point at all.
Not at all. Not at all.
It's completely compatible with my point.
It works for some of you.
Now, why does this illusion persist?
Would you like me to give you a demonstration right now why this illusion persists despite the obviousness of it being false?
I'm going to give you a working model of it right now.
Married men. Married men.
Just the married men.
Tell me if you're happy in your marriage.
Go. Married men.
Are you happy in your marriage?
A lot of yeses.
Look at all those yeses.
Now, some people said no, but overwhelmingly, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Have I ever mentioned that all men are liars?
Here's another meme that's going around the internet.
If, as a woman, you force your man to lie to you, he will do what he needs to do to survive.
And they're doing it right now.
They're all fucking lying to you in public.
Again, let me adjust.
Some of you, some of you are genuinely happy.
Some of you picked the right people.
For some of you, marriage is perfect.
Are we okay? Have I stipulated that again every one minute?
Because you can't have this conversation unless you stipulate that every fucking one minute.
Let me do it again. Let me stipulate.
Some people, some few people, marriage is perfect.
Don't use that argument for the rest of us.
Don't use that argument for the rest of us.
Do you know what is good for some people?
Sucking a dick. For some people, sucking a dick is a great day.
It just isn't for everybody.
Okay? So, no matter how much you love sucking a dick, and I'm okay with that, by the way.
I'm not... I'm not...
It's not a criticism.
I'm just saying that people are different, right?
If that's your thing, do not argue that it's my thing and everybody else's thing because you love it so much.
Same with marriage.
It's just like sucking a dick.
It's something that works great for some people.
It's just not an argument for everybody else.
All right.
And let's see.
So I think men are lying about how happy they are.
And also there's some cognitive dissonance that goes into there.
But I also think men are easier to please.
Let me give you...
All right, I'm just going to say it.
I'm just going to say it.
You know, you always think to yourself, how honest do you want to be?
So I'm going to be a little extra honest.
It's my belief, after living a lifetime, that evolution has created a situation in which the most natural arrangement for a man and a woman is a woman who cannot be pleased and a man who doesn't know that she cannot be pleased.
And he's pretty sure that the next thing he does is going to get it done.
Because men are perpetually fooled by women who say, if you give me one more thing, I'll be happy.
If you just do this one thing.
I got one complaint.
I just have one problem.
Seriously, just one problem.
If you could fix this one problem, well, thank you.
Thank you for fixing that one problem.
Well, I have this other problem.
Now, let me be really clear.
Am I telling you there's something wrong with women?
No. Nope.
I'm telling you that I believe that we evolve this way for the best possible reason.
That it seems to be supportive of having children.
It seems to help us survive as a species.
But if you don't see the world in those terms, you're sort of living in a dream world.
Now, why does a marriage sometimes work if there's a woman who can never be happy and there's a man who is continually fooled into thinking he can make it work?
Why are some people still happy?
And the answer is, everybody's really different.
Some people like that.
For some people, that's a perfect situation.
Have you not met men Who are happier giving than receiving.
Am I wrong? You've met men who are happier giving than receiving, so they're just always giving, and that's just a good situation for them.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Again, I'm not criticizing.
If you heard anything in any of this that sounds like me picking out somebody and criticizing them, I haven't done that.
I'm talking about the system is broken, the people are good.
In fact, it's the opposite of criticism.
I'm saying the people are fine, the system is broken, but you can't see this obvious fact because all of the men involved in the system are lying, because lying is what keeps the system working.
You have to sort of lie to yourself that this is okay to be in it.
So, that's my cheerful...
And to be clear, I'm not aware of any alternative that's better than marriage.
So let me end on the positive.
I don't know anything that's better.
Do you? If you do, I'd be sort of curious about that.
All right.
I heard from a marriage counselor.
Who saw my tweet and said, as a marriage counselor who teaches the Gottman method.
Now the Gottman method I don't know much about, but there was a little chart involved.
I guess the chart involves teaching couples to act differently.
So it's basically a set of things like, in this situation, do more of this and less of that.
In this situation, do more of this and less of that.
So it's a set of steps that if everybody just followed these simple guidelines, they'd have better marriages.
And so this marriage counselor teaches the Gottman method with success.
He says he has an unfair advantage of knowing that I'm wrong, And he'd encourage me to look and learn more about the structure and function of marriage so that if you did these steps, you would do better.
And I tweeted back, I said, you've met women who are willing to change their behavior?
Have any of you seen that?
Have you ever met a woman who was willing to change her behavior?
I mean, seriously. Again, if this sounds like a sexist thing, I don't mean it that way.
I mean I've never seen it.
I'm not saying it's good or bad.
I've just never seen it.
Have you? I saw one yes.
But most people are saying they've never seen it.
All right. So some of you believe you've seen it.
Oh, I was seeing a bunch of yeses.
You've actually seen people change their basic behavior.
What would that look like?
Let's take an example.
Let's say the basic behavior is nagging too much.
A very sexist kind of a statement.
But let's say it's that. Let's say the problem is the wife complains too much about things that are not that important.
And let's say that that woman learns that that's a toxic behavior and agrees to it.
Yeah, that is a toxic behavior.
So that the woman stops complaining about things which bother her.
Everything's good now. Problem fixed.
In what world would that fix anything?
Because whatever it is that makes the woman unhappy or complain doesn't change, does it?
If she still feels unhappy, Or unsatisfied or whatever, isn't she gonna act that way?
One way or another. I mean, to me it feels like, you know, you're blocking one hole, but another hole gets created.
Reframing? Maybe some reframing helps.
Anyway, let's talk about Twitter.
That's more fun. Did you see the prank?
I fell for it, too, of the two pranksters who pretended to be Twitter employees who had been fired.
And they stood outside, I guess they stood outside the Twitter headquarters with their boxes like they were leaving.
And they gave themselves fake names of Ligma and Johnson, their last names.
And I guess they're like...
Pranksters. And one of them got interviewed.
I saw the interview. And what made it a great prank is that...
So here's the key to a great prank.
A great prank has to include at least one indicator that it's a prank.
But the indicator that it's a prank has to be invisible to the person you're pranking, but not to the observers.
You got that? In other words, it had to be something that the media would accept, but that you as the audience would go, did they fall for that?
And here's the statement that one of the pranksters said when he was being interviewed.
At the end of the interview, when he was saying how he felt about getting fired, I guess, he goes, all right, I gotta go.
I have to touch bases with my husband and wife.
All right, no, you fucking asshole, J.M. Ramsey.
How many more fucking times can I tell you if you're blaming who somebody picked, you are just living in your own little illusion there?
Could you hear that any clearer?
It doesn't matter who you picked.
And let me say something that will amaze you, because I know you're all trying to guess about my relationship.
The difference in our ages literally never came up.
I know that's weird.
But if you were to look at, you know, causes of divorce, I don't think it was ever, even indirectly, believe it or not, believe it or not, even indirectly, it never became an issue that I'm aware of.
I mean, it should have.
You know, common sense says it would have.
But did I tell you earlier that everybody's different?
Everybody's different. That thing that would have been an obvious problem for almost anybody else was less of a problem for us.
Just, you know, other stuff.
So, no matter how many times I say that people are different, you're still going to say you picked the wrong person.
Because I think maybe that's part of cognitive dissonance or some sort of confirmation bias.
So that you can justify your own situation.
Alright, but the Twitter pranksters are pretty funny.
Now, people seem to be getting back on...
Twitter, who had been temporarily banned, but we don't think that is necessarily because of Elon Musk.
So, for example, Ye is back on Twitter, and Musk had to confirm that he didn't do that.
That was just an automatic thing.
It was like a two-week suspension that he got put back on.
So the timing was coincidental, but people think that Elon Musk put Ye back on Twitter, but that did not happen.
That's fake news. But then Cat Turd is back on, and also Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So those are two people who have been, I don't know what the right word is, temporarily banned or something?
Whatever the word is. I think maybe their bans just ran out, or maybe they deleted the tweets so they could get back on, whatever it was.
But here's the weirdest thing in the world.
You all know the user, the Twitter user Cat Turd?
Who's got over a million users.
And he's just a clever, abundant who's built quite an audience.
I don't follow him. I blocked him a long time ago for being a dick.
I forget why. But Marjorie Taylor Greene retweeted CatTurd and said, you're almost to one million users ever since Elon Musk took the shadow bans off.
And then she says, I'll host a hashtag turdstock after the party.
Turdstock. So here's a representative of the government who first of all is spreading some fake news because Elon Musk did not remove any shadow bans.
But she's a member of Congress and she's telling you that that happened.
That didn't happen. That's fake news.
But she's also offering to host turd stock.
This is the greatest week ever.
I don't think I can enjoy a week of news more than this week.
Like, I don't really have a comment or observation about this.
I just think it's the greatest world where Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene can retweet Cat Turd and offer to host Turd stock.
I want to live in this world.
I want to live in this world.
All right. Stocks were up.
Yesterday, quite sharply.
Was that the Twitter Elon Musk effect?
Was there something else that made the stock market go up on Friday?
GDP report, Apple earnings.
Was that it? But we were expecting the GDP report.
We already knew about the GDP report, right?
I thought we knew that was going to come in strong and roughly how strong it would come in.
Yeah, I don't know. 2.6, is that enough to raise the...
That was exactly what we expected, right?
So it feels like that was already baked in.
Here's what I think. I think that markets move...
We think they move on the news, but if they did move on the news, everybody would be able to guess what the market would do.
You got that right?
There's a whole industry based on people saying smart things about why the market did what it did.
And the reason there's a big market for it is that they don't all say the same thing.
If they all said the same thing, then there wouldn't be a market for it.
Everybody would know what's happening.
But the financial market is mostly a gigantic scam in which people pretend to tell you they know why markets did move or have.
When they get it right, they say, well, look there.
Because remember, a market is only going to do two things.
It will go up or it will go down.
Whichever way it goes, there's going to be a whole bunch of experts who got it right that time.
And they will come on television and they'll say, yeah, I got it wrong that other time, but this time?
Well, this time I got it right.
My reasons were right. The outcome was right.
Boy, did I do good. But really, the market was going to be up or it was going to be down, and half of the people were going to be right no matter what happened.
So I don't think...
I think what we're...
Here's my hypothesis.
Markets move for irrational reasons.
But there are people paid to tell you they move for more rational reasons.
So you imagine that they do because all these experts are telling you that.
But there's no evidence of that.
All the evidence is the experts don't know what's going to happen.
They're guessing, too.
So here's what I think, and it's just a guess, that the Elon Musk effect and Twitter had such a big effect on optimism and maybe energy that it looked like the free markets were a little bit freer.
Now, I don't know that there's anything to that, but I would say that yesterday I felt more optimistic about the country...
Than at any time in certainly a year or two or three.
I felt actually just giddy yesterday.
I was giddy.
I haven't felt that.
What was the last time I felt that?
Election night 2016 was a fun night.
But that's about it.
So something's happening that's bigger than Twitter and bigger than Musk, but maybe that's my illusion.
Don't know. So my user numbers went way up.
So normally I'd get maybe 200 new followers a day.
I got 4,000 yesterday.
Now, do you think that I went from a baseline of 200 a day to 4,000 just because more people were interested in joining Twitter?
Now remember, Elon Musk has confirmed that he's made no change to who's allowed on and no change to the algorithm.
Did everybody go up?
In other words, are people on the left going up as well?
Is it bots? Let me put out a hypothesis.
Now, there's no knowledge behind this, right?
So this is pure speculation.
Imagine if you were the Twitter engineers and you did, in fact, know that the algorithm was suppressing some people.
As Paul Collider pointed out on Twitter...
You can imagine them architecting that in at least two different ways.
One would be there's something about the algorithm itself that suppresses conservatives, maybe by keywords or something like that.
That'd be one way to go. The other way to go would be that the algorithm is the algorithm, but that some individuals are tagged.
So if you've been tagged as somebody to suppress, the algorithm just does what an algorithm does, and it just doesn't know why it did it.
It's just reading those tags.
So, as Paul pointed out cleverly, if you remove the database with the tags, or just remove the tags, the algorithm would look unchanged, or it would be very hard to notice that there had ever been anything wrong there.
You'd have to find the exact thing that was looking for the tag, notice that there weren't any tags, notice that they used to be.
I mean, you'd have to go pretty deep to find out something wrong had happened, if anything wrong happened.
Now, do you think that's what happened?
Do you think that there's nothing but more interest in Twitter?
Let me ask you this.
Do you think that there were 4,000 people who didn't think about following me on Twitter until yesterday?
What do you think? Is that possible?
The 4,000 people didn't really have a notion of following me on Twitter until yesterday.
Yeah. And it's also election season, right?
But still, it's a one-day change.
You know, election season's been creeping up for every day.
I don't know. A lot of conservatives signing up?
That's a good theory.
So one theory would be there were 5,000 conservatives who had left Twitter, and I'm just one of the people that they would follow when they signed back up.
That could be. Yeah.
I'm going to say that the odds that they changed the algorithm are low.
The odds that it was just conservatives coming back is high.
But I wouldn't rule out That they may have untagged something.
Maybe there was like a kill switch on there.
If the company gets bought, make this piece of code disappear.
Something like that. I don't know.
Seems like you could hide it pretty well if you wanted to.
So, Musk says he's going to be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse views and that they won't make any decisions about who to reinstate until this council does their work.
So we'll find out. All right.
Have you noticed that the one...
I say this a lot, but if you see a story on the Internet that makes your head explode, what's the first thing you should know is most likely true about that story?
It's fake, yeah.
And when I say most likely, I don't mean 51%.
I mean closer to 95, 98%.
The head-explode stories are almost always fake.
So the story about Elon Musk immediately reinstating Ye, which was fake news, I saw on Twitter heads were exploding.
How could you let him back on that anti-Semite?
And of course the answer is, if your head exploded, it probably didn't happen.
And sure enough, it didn't.
All right. Just more on this Jack Dorsey's new product.
I guess it's going to launch soon.
It's already got beta users.
I think it's called Blue Sky.
I may have used the wrong name for it yesterday.
I don't know what Zion is, so I'm a little confused about what's the product, maybe what's the technology.
But the idea here is apparently there are multiple...
Social networks in some kind of formative stage.
They were trying to solve the problem That current social medias don't solve, which is too much consolidation of power and the government could, you know, force them to do something.
So the ideal situation would be you could post on any social network, you would always own your own data so nobody else could influence it, and there wouldn't be any corporate entity that could be influenced by money.
I don't even know if Blue Sky is a money-making venture.
I'm that confused about it.
I'll probably know by the end of the day.
But is Blue Sky an open code, open network for the benefit of the world?
Or is it a money-making venture?
It's open source, but that doesn't mean it's not-for-profit.
So I'm a little confused about what's going on, but at least there's a possibility that there's some blockchain-related open system that people might enjoy that would have less government influence, maybe?
Yeah. And then you can own your own data.
Now, that's one of the benefits of the Locals platform.
So I'll give a little commercial for it.
So I have a subscription community within the Locals platform.
And part of the deal there...
I'm also an investor.
Part of the deal there is that I get to keep all my user data.
So I have X number of users or subscribers or community members.
And presumably, if I decided not to use locals anymore, I get to keep my list of users.
So, I mean, that seems fair.
All right. Let's talk about Paul Pelosi.
Number one. He's a fighter at 82.
He's a fighter at 82. I like the fact that at 82, he was willing to get into a physical confrontation.
I mean, I don't know if he thought he had an option, but I sort of like the fact that he manned up and he was going to do what he could, but at 82, obviously, he was limited in his abilities.
Now, I would like to say something that is maybe uncharacteristically positive about the Internet.
I thought that social media was unusually respectful to the Pelosi's yesterday.
And I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed that.
Because I expected worse.
Now, of course, there was the usual amount of 4chan stuff, but there weren't as many memes as I would have thought.
There weren't as many, you know, ugly jokes.
But there were jokes.
There were jokes. And I would like to, you know, Maybe boost that show of respect.
I do think that the world showed him some respect.
And given the division in our politics, I don't know, I was a little bit inspired by it, actually.
I mean, it's a huge tragedy.
I really hate that that happened to anybody.
To anybody.
But I feel like the public's reaction to it was not horrifying.
And I was surprised, actually impressed.
That said, has enough time gone by that I can make some jokes about this?
Everybody okay? Here's the way I'm going to do it.
I'm going to tell you about somebody else's joke about it.
Okay? Because if I tell you somebody else's joke about it, I'm just reporting about these terrible people, these trolls on the internet.
That's fair. I can certainly report about those damn trolls.
So this is not funny, but it's things those damn trolls are saying.
Apparently, both men were discovered in their underpants at 2.30 in the morning.
And, of course, the 4chan trolls are wondering if this was a Grindr hookup that went wrong.
Now, I just saw a user, Chael, said, looks like a grinder hookup going bad.
I think I laughed for 10 minutes.
Okay. Talk about a grinder hookup going bad.
That's about as bad as you could go.
Because you can imagine what that would look like.
You know, Paul Pelosi is saying he's 29 years old and you show up and he's 82.
Like, classic. Classic Grindr.
I'm guessing. I'm not on Grindr.
And you can imagine that the other guy shows up and suddenly there's a hammer involved and it's just a Grindr day gone bad.
Now, joking aside...
The reason that both men were in their underwear is one is a famous nudist, so he's always in his underwear, and the other one was awakened at 2.30 in the morning.
So there is a good reason both men were in their underwear that's fully explained within a Grindr account.
But it was still funny.
It was still funny, with all respect.
With all respect to the Pelosi's, it was still kind of funny.
Likewise, Some people on the internet, probably more than one, pointed out this wasn't the first time that Paul Pelosi had been hammered.
Poor taste. Poor taste.
I disavow these trolls who made that clever pun.
It was the second time he's been hammered this year.
All right, let's talk about some more persuasion.
Obama, trying to wade into the situation, the election with Herschel Walker, And Obama said this, and we will grade this for persuasion.
Obama says, some of you...
Let's see if I can do an Obama impression.
Some of you may not remember, but Herschel Walker was a heck of a football player.
Does that make him the best person to represent you?
Let's say you're at the airport and you see Walker and you say, hey, there's Herschel, there's Herschel, Heisman winner.
Let's have him fly the plane.
We will now grade him on his persuasion.
Don't grade me on my performance.
That was bad. Alright, what do you think of that point?
Just because Herschel Walker was a Heisman winner, that doesn't make him a politician.
And just because he's a Heisman winner doesn't mean he can fly a plane.
And what did people say about that?
They said, your analogy is no good because the person he's running against can't fly a plane.
No. No, that's not how analogies work.
No, that's not how analogies work.
And other people said, no, that doesn't work, because Obama himself doesn't know how to fly a plane.
No! No!
That's not how analogies work.
An analogy is not about all the things being the same.
An analogy is about one narrow point, and the narrow point being If you're an expert in one thing, it doesn't necessarily make you an expert at another thing.
That's it. It does not matter if Obama can fly a plane.
Not the point.
Not the point. Anyway, as soon as an analogy enters, everybody goes nuts.
But I liked it because it was visual and you could feel it.
Did I tell you that the greatest persuasion is fear?
And following that, the greatest persuasion is usually visual persuasion.
So here Obama managed to get some visual, because you imagine yourself walking up to Walker in the airport, right?
Don't you imagine it? When he describes it, you put yourself in the airport.
Oh, there's Churchill Walker in the airport.
Now you're seeing him, and then you imagine him with a pilot outfit looking like John Travolta, right?
Like a little out of place.
And then you imagine yourself on a plane, and you imagine that an unqualified pilot is flying it, and you're like, oh, I'm afraid.
So somehow Obama managed to work fear and visual into it.
But because he made it an analogy, everybody blew up on the analogy and it didn't work.
I was going to grade Obama high for the visual and for the fact that he worked some fear in there in a clever way.
But when you see that it's an analogy and the public can't handle analogies, they just argue the details, which is completely missing the point, I guess I'd say it didn't work.
But it was a hell of a try. Yeah.
All right.
Was there anything that happened in the actual news that didn't have anything to do with Twitter or your personal life?
Now do Herschel, a brain surgeon.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, so somebody says, you know, can Fetterman fly the plane?
The point is...
Now, how many of you actually literally don't understand the point is that being good at one thing doesn't make you automatically good at another thing?
Does anybody not know that's the point?
And if you understand that is the point, why would you argue about whether Fetterman could fly a plane?
What's that got to do with anything?
Fetterman is a politician looking for a job as another politician.
That's a little bit closer than a Heisman Trophy winner trying to become a senator.
Mayor to senator, it's a rage, but at least it's the same domain.
And by the way, that doesn't mean that Herschel Walker wouldn't be a good senator.
I don't have an opinion on that.
I gave an example from the movie.
What? Okay.
Do you believe that success is a transferable skill?
How many of you believe that being successful at one thing, let's say successful in the film industry, does that extend to other domains?
It depends. Yeah, it depends.
Mark Wahlberg got famous, and he's a great example.
So Mark Wahlberg gets famous singing with, I believe, no real musical background.
Am I right? He was part of a group, right?
Mark Wahlberg became famous singing without musical experience, really.
Then he became an actor without acting experience.
And he succeeded again, right?
He has now started several, I don't know how many, maybe six or so, companies that have nothing to do with being an actor or singer.
Like one is Wahlburgers, he's an investor in that, they make burgers, and several other businesses.
Now, I don't know how successful they are, but he seems to be somebody who can manage business, as well as singing, as well as acting, with no experience in any of those things.
No experience in any of the things he's succeeding in.
And then Ye would be another example, although the last few weeks would disprove it.
But it's a long game, so we'll see how he does.
But Ye, another example.
Success in music, then he becomes a producer.
Okay, they're sort of related.
But then suddenly, he's making clothing and stuff.
Totally unrelated. Elon, success in a variety of things.
Although you could argue that being an entrepreneur, you know, a startup person is a skill that is transferable for sure.
Trump, yeah, succeeded across...
Now, Trump's an interesting case because he has a tremendous amount of, like, failed things.
But if your strategy is to just keep doing a lot of stuff, and if any of them work, you become a billionaire president, then that's a pretty good strategy.
So you wouldn't rank Trump on the percentage of things he got right.
You would rank him on the overall strategy of trying a bunch of stuff that all have a huge upside.
Yeah, Shaq. Shaq's a great example.
Shaq is now, you know, doing TV commentary very well.
And I believe he's got...
A number of people have started, you know...
Shaq was actually in my town.
He was like walking distance down there, because I walk it all the time.
He was in the restaurant I eat at all the time.
He was selling his liquor there.
Had an event. Yeah, if you look around, you'll see that the most famous people...
Stallone is a great example.
Stallone blows me away with his talent stack.
Here's something you don't know about Sylvester Stallone.
I might have the story a little bit wrong, but this is approximately right.
The first Rocky, he wrote...
Let me say that again.
He wrote that... Before he was ever an actor, or a famous actor.
He wrote it, and then he, I think he was offered like $400,000 for it, back when that would be worth, I don't know, maybe $2 million in today's money, and he was broke.
And he was offered $2 million for like a photocopy of a thing he wrote.
And he turned it down because he wanted to act in it.
And then he got his way.
So he's acted, produced.
He's basically done everything you can do in the movie business, right?
And here's what blew me away.
He has an Instagram account.
Now, wouldn't you expect that somebody...
He's in his 70s, right?
Can you confirm his...
How old is Silvestri?
He's in his 70s. He's in his 70s.
He has one of the best Instagram accounts.
Do you know why? Because he understands it.
He understands it.
He really understands Instagram.
I love his account.
It's one of the best follows. And he gets on there and he just does little Stallone things around the house.
He's got three beautiful adult daughters who look like supermodels, and he puts them in there all the time.
Because he knows what sells, right?
It's family, but he knows they're also unusually attractive.
Yeah.
I just love Stallone.
Stallone has a sense of humor.
He has basically everything that you need talent for.
He has every one of them covered.
It's quite impressive. Ryan Reynolds is another.
We'll see how he does. Ryan Reynolds has taken on some businesses that if I had to bet on them, I'd bet against them.
But he's bringing a huge asset to them.
He's buying a soccer team you haven't heard of.
And he's got some alcohol thing that I haven't heard of.
He's got Mint Mobile that I don't understand how they can compete against the big ones.
I don't understand it.
I'm not saying they can't. I just don't understand how that works.
Does anybody understand how Mint Mobile can even offer a product?
Like, what's a virtual network?
They buy excess time on existing networks?
Yeah, I don't really understand that.
All right. It's a reseller.
But it doesn't seem like a reseller could get that big if they're just reselling excess capacity.
Anyway, I don't understand it.
But I'm sure it's a good idea.
All right. Any other story that...
Oh, Ryan Reynolds divorced?
No. That's not true, is it?
Did Ryan Reynolds divorce?
With Blake or whatever?
That's not true. Is it?
I don't think that's true.
I thought they were one of the more successful marriages.
Yeah, no, let's not say that about him.
You know, if Ryan Reynolds can't stay married, who can?
Yeah, Tom Brady got divorced.
Yeah, Arnold, Arnold Schwarzenegger, there's a talent stack guy.
You can see why Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stallone get along.
Because they're both geniuses that people don't recognize as genius.
It's because their genius is distributed against multiple domains.
And if you have genius in one thing, like golf or physics, everybody says, hey, you're Einstein or you're Tiger Woods.
But if you're really, really seriously good at a whole bunch of things, people just say, well, you had a good career.
But I would say that both Stallone and Schwarzenegger, in my view of things, they qualify as geniuses.
Because you can't get that much skill added up across so many different domains.
Yeah, The Rock. The Rock's got a lot of skill.
Scott, why would Paul Pelosi call the attacker his friend to police?
Because the attacker was insane.
And he may have been just managing the situation.
So if you call him a friend, maybe you...
Maybe you get him to be less violent for a moment.
I don't know. I can imagine any number of possibilities.
I would say there's zero credibility to the fact that it was anything but a break-in.
I mean, I don't think that Paul Pelosi broke his own window to make it look like it was a break-in, do you?
Do you think he did that?
He did have a hammer in his hand.
On the other hand, he did have a hammer in his hand, so...
He did have a hammer. No, they did not both have hammers.
That confusion was cleared up.
Only Pelosi had a hammer, but the other guy pulled it out of his hand and then beat him with it.
So we believe there was one hammer.
You're thinking drug-related.
Well, it's insanity, for sure.
All right. I think it's about time for me to go eat a bagel.
Long guitars investment, what?
Is there any big story I'm missing?
What's the latest in Ukraine?
So, correct me if I'm wrong, won't the Russian soldiers be freezing too?
Why do we keep saying that only the Ukrainians are going to be freezing?
I feel like the Russian military is going to be pretty cold.
So we're already seeing, there's an article on the front of CNN about the military losing the will to live, or the will to live, the will to fight.
Why is this?
Well, I'm having a computer problem.
home.
All right. Rush has more energy assets, but you have to get them to the front, right?
And the problem is their supply lines are being cut.
Bagels are bad for me.
Well, compared to some things, maybe.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Well.
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah.
You think most Russians have never been in a hostile environment?
Yeah.
What? I'm pretty sure every Russian has been in a hostile weather environment.
Oh, let me tell you about a tip that I heard the other day that I'm testing.
Here's a lifestyle tip that I think you should take to heart.
It has to do with continuous A-B testing for your main things.
So your main three things would be diet, exercise, and sleep.
If you get diet, exercise, and sleep right, then everything else is going to work out better for you.
So I'm continually experimenting with better ways to eat and better ways to exercise, better ways to sleep.
And I saw this tip from some alleged expert on social media, and I wondered if you'd heard it before, and I wondered if you'd tried it.
So I tried it for the last two nights, and it worked exactly as the expert predicted.
But it's only two nights, so I have to do it more.
And it goes like this. That if you eat within three hours of going to bed, you won't sleep well.
Have you ever heard that? That it has to do with having carbs in your system, you don't sleep well with carbs?
So you have heard that.
So the night before last, I tested that.
So I made sure that I was done eating.
I didn't eat anything after 6.30 a night.
And I had the best sleep that I've had in weeks.
So then the next day, because my schedule got ahead of me, I couldn't do that.
So I ate dinner at closer to 8.30 or 9 o'clock at night, and then I tried unsuccessfully to go to bed like an hour and a half later.
And I had a terrible night of sleep.
So I've tried it twice, and so far it's 100%.
That when I ate was completely predictive.
And here's the weird thing. That one good night of sleep is the first one.
And I never don't eat for three hours before bed.
Like, I'm generally snacking all night.
Often the last thing I do before I go to bed, because I don't like to be hungry, like that wakes me up too.
So often the last thing I do before I go to bed is eat.
Do you do that? All right, so here's what I'm going to do.
I'm not claiming this works, because I don't know.
What I'm claiming is, is really smart to test everything that's easy to test, with an emphasis on easy to test, right?
This is one of the best life advices you'll ever get.
Continually test in the domains of exercise, sleep, and diet.
Never stop. Test, test, test, test, test.
But always test the things that are easy to test but could have a big impact first.
You don't want to test the big things.
I'm not sure I would...
Oh, I don't know.
I guess something like going on a fast for one day seems like that's small enough you could test that.
Not much of a downside. So you saw when I did my...
I tried to solve my own medical problems.
I filled my whiteboard with all the things it could be.
And some of them were tough stuff, like endocrine problem.
If it's an endocrine problem, you know, it's going to be testing doctors and trying drugs and God knows what, right?
But of all the things that I wrote down that it might be, one of the possibilities was my blood pressure meds were the problem.
Now, it turns out that was the easiest thing to test, because I simply just skipped taking them for one day, which I knew was safe enough.
I researched that if you miss it for one day, that's not a risk.
It is a risk if you skip it for, let's say, more than one day.
I don't know how much the risk ramps up, but if you go a week, I'm told there's a bounce-back effect, and I don't know how dangerous that would be.
Oh, I'm going to go somewhere really dangerous here in a moment.
I'm going to switch gears.
Let me tell you something I did yesterday that blew my fucking mind.
And I need some help.
I'm going to ask the internet brain, the collective intelligence, to help me out.
Because I sort of reached a cap of what I can do on my own.
When I decided to experiment by stopping my blood pressure meds, The first thing I wondered is whether it's dangerous, right?
Is it dangerous to skip one day?
I figured no, but I didn't know how long I could go before it was dangerous.
So I looked it up.
And I didn't get a clean answer, but then I thought, well, my blood pressure is not super high, you know, down to like 130 over 84 or something.
And I thought to myself, okay, is that dangerous?
Do we know the science says for sure that for the average person, that being a little bit high, 134 over, let's say, 84, is that going to be dangerous?
And so here's what I did.
I googled it.
Now, if you google that, don't you think you're going to get an obviously clean, clear answer?
Yes or no? Do you think that the science of blood pressure and blood pressure medication Is settled to the point where if I ask it what blood pressure should be treated, there'll be a clean, clear answer with a consensus.
Let me tell you what my experience was.
So I googled it and I found a research that looked at other research and it went through, you know, what everybody says about what's dangerous and what's not.
And then, since I couldn't understand all the science, I do what I always do, I skip to the conclusion.
So this is not what it actually said.
I'm going to make this part up.
But this is how it felt.
This study says this.
And then the conclusion said, this is the national guideline.
What I was looking at was an Australian study.
And then the conclusion was, here's the Australian guideline.
Do you see what's missing?
They never connected the research to the guideline.
They showed the research, and then they said, here's the guideline.
And nowhere there did they say directly, this research supports the guideline.
Because you know what?
It didn't. It didn't disavow the guideline, but it also didn't support it.
And so instead of just saying that directly, it just changed the subject.
And so I read another one, and I thought, well, that's weird.
So I read another one. And sure enough, it's like, blah, blah, blah, this is what the science says.
And then the conclusion was, Merry Christmas.
Now, it didn't say Merry Christmas.
I'm making that up. But what it didn't say is something related to what I just read, the science.
And so I ask you this question.
Is blood pressure medication bullshit?
Now, let me be very clear.
I'm positive that for some people it keeps them alive.
Can we all agree on that? I'm positive, I'm not a doctor, but I'm positive there's some people in some situations that it must keep them alive.
I think my father might have been one of those, actually.
Yeah, some people say it saved your life, etc.
So I think so. But let me ask you this.
Do you think science can tell me, specifically, I'm at my ideal BMI. I'm a pescatarian for decades, or vegetarian, pescatarian.
I don't drink alcohol.
I don't smoke tobacco.
Do you think that science knows whether I should take blood pressure medication?
What do you think? I think there's a guideline, and I think they told me I should.
And I think if I asked 100 times, they'd say yes.
I think if I asked 100 doctors, 100 doctors would say yes.
But do you think the science supports it?
Because if it does support it, can you show me where that is?
Because I looked and I didn't see it.
Is that missing for a reason?
So here's why I think this is important.
Important. What happened when I took blood pressure medications?
The first thing I did was I didn't want to exercise.
You got that? The first thing I did on blood pressure medications is I didn't want to exercise, so I did less.
I tried to push through as hard as I can because I'm pretty stubborn, but it was still less.
Do you know what else I felt?
I felt I didn't want to live.
And that was just the medication.
As soon as I was off it, boom, went away.
It made me not want to live.
What is the life expectancy of people who don't want to live and can't exercise and can't enjoy life and their libido takes ahead?
Are you telling me those blood pressure medications aren't killing people?
Because I just described something that does kill people.
If you gave a pill to somebody who was otherwise perfectly healthy, and the only changes it made is it made them not want to exercise, gain weight easily, not care about living, lose their libido, you're telling me that person isn't going to die sooner?
I think they'll die sooner because they don't give a fuck about living.
I didn't. I honestly didn't care about living.
And I don't mean there's no hyperbole there.
When I was on that drug, I had no interest in being alive.
None. None.
Now, fortunately, my executive function of my brain was still intact, and the executive function told me to wait it out, right?
So I was overriding all the rest of my brain with my executive function, but just barely.
Just fucking barely, right?
And I'm not sure if everybody could do that.
I'm sort of unusually mentally strong, I like to think.
That's probably just my own illusion.
If you can skip the meds for a day, you didn't get better in one day.
I don't know what that means exactly.
Yeah, everybody's different.
So starting with the everybody's different theory, do you think that I personally am in danger More in danger, or let's say this exact case.
Your blood pressure is 134 over 84, which is high.
You'd want it 120 over 80.
So it is high, but it's not super high.
It's just high-ish.
You tell me that for sure that's better than taking a pill that removes my will to live.
It's not even close, is it?
Let me be clear.
So I haven't tried all blood pressure medications.
I'm going to experiment to see what I can do without it for a little while.
But probably, probably I'll go back and maybe try something that I think has less deleterious effects.
But here's the other scary part.
I went months without knowing it was the blood pressure meds.
Do you know what I thought it was?
Here's another learning point.
Let me teach you something.
When I went public and said that I had extreme fatigue, everyone who had a pet peeve or a pet theory told me they were sure what caused it.
So the people who thought long COVID was real said, oh, you definitely got long COVID. I've got that too.
The people who thought vaccination's injured people said, that's a clear example of a vaccination injury.
No doubt about it, Scott.
That's what you got. The people who thought vegetarian diets are bad for you and rob your strength, they said, eat some meat, damn it.
That's all you need to do.
Eat some beef. You'll be better.
The people who think that testosterone May have helped them.
Said, it's obvious that you're low testosterone, Scott.
Get your testosterone tested.
Now, right?
Many of you are guilty. Now, people had all kinds of theories, but here's what you should learn.
They were all pretty damn certain that they were right.
Just as certain they are that their neighbor who died, died of a vaccine injury, just as certain they are of everything else that's not true.
We get really certain of things that aren't true really fast.
By the way, I appreciate the suggestions.
That's not a complaint.
I do appreciate the suggestions.
So somebody's suggesting here that I should try different blood pressure meds to see which ones give me side effects.
And here's the problem. I thought I was doing that.
That's what I thought I was doing.
And it almost killed me.
I didn't know that the blood pressure meds were the cause of the way I felt, because it doesn't happen the day you take it.
It must build up.
Because on day one, I didn't have any of those problems.
It was, you know, it just got more and more and more.
Somebody says low carbs.
Everybody has their own theory.
But all of your theories are wrong if I miss one pill by one day and all of my problems are solved.
So now it's been several days.
I don't know, a week or something.
So it's been several days.
And these are the only several days of good life I've had in a long time.
Somebody says it's all in your head, that's not even slightly possible.
You'd have to know from the inside how dramatic the difference is.
The difference is between not being able to walk up the stairs and spontaneously skipping.
It's completely different.
Like spontaneously, I think I'll just skip from this room to this room.
