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Nov. 1, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:09:37
Episode 1914 Scott Adams: Rebound COVID, The Pelosi Fact Checking Problem And How To Air Dry A Cat

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Rebound COVID after Paxlovid CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checking again Paul Pelosi story misinformation Russian grain vs Ukrainian drones Harvard, UNC affirmative action Black leadership in America ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Good morning, everybody.
And I'm so proud of you for making it here on time.
Because last night was, of course, a big party night, but you managed to rally.
You managed to rally.
Good for you. If you'd like to take it up a notch, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. Ah, so good stuff.
Yes, if you hadn't noticed, I am wearing my Voldemort Zelenskyy President of Ukraine disguise.
Some of you thought you were watching the actual President of Ukraine.
No, it's me. It's me.
It's Scott. It's Scott.
I know. It looks exactly like him.
But let me tell you the weirdest thing that happened.
How many of you have noticed that the advertisements that you're fed Are based on things you've said?
How many people have noticed that you were talking about something out loud, and the next thing you know, you get fed that?
Okay. You've all seen that?
Okay. All right.
I see your answers.
Good. All right. Now, next question.
So stop answering that.
Here's your next question. Has anybody had the experience Of only thinking about something, and then seeing the ad serve to you.
Has anybody yet thinking about it?
Okay? Let me give you my example from yesterday.
Now, I assume it's a coincidence, but let me give you my example, which is not that unusual.
So yesterday, I gave Snickers a bath.
I was all alone, and I don't know if I said anything out loud that would have suggested bath or anything else.
And then I dried her off with a towel.
But you know how hard it is to dry off a dog with a towel?
Even if you have infinite towels, for some reason they don't dry off.
Right? You just can't get the water off them.
And then I said to myself, wouldn't it be great if there were some kind of air dryer just for the dog?
Because if I use a hair dryer, it's going to be loud and, you know, scare the dog.
But I thought, somebody should make some kind of a hair dryer just for the dog.
Today I opened up my Instagram.
Somebody has developed a dryer for a cat.
Not a dog, but a cat.
And that actual advertisement was, it's a little sort of a box with fans, and you put your cat in the box and it dries the cat off after the cat gets a bath.
Have you ever seen those before?
Well, let me ask you this.
Have you ever seen an advertisement for it in your feed?
Has anybody ever seen that advertisement in their feed?
I've never seen it.
And the one day I was saying to myself, wouldn't it be great if there was some way to dry my dog off?
There's a freaking cat dryer that shows up in my feed.
I've never seen that.
I am positive I would remember if I'd ever seen that even once.
Now, here's my question.
Is... Is social media actually able to figure out my intentions?
Did it somehow pick up that I was washing an animal and that was enough?
Maybe it did.
I don't know. I don't have a theory about why it happens.
It could be just reticular activation.
If you've ever heard of that term, reticular activation is where if something's on your mind, you notice it in the environment, such as when you buy a new car, then you notice everybody has that same car, but you've never noticed before.
It could be just that. All right.
I'd like to give a shout-out for best prediction I've seen recently from Twitter account Unhoodwinked.
Which is a good follow. Unhoodwinked is the name of the account.
And after noticing that three people who took the, what's the name of that therapeutic that people take, I think it's the Pfizer Therapeutic for COVID, Pavloxid, Paxlovid, Paxlovid, right.
So Unhoodwinked, after noticing that Joe Biden, Dr.
Fauci, and Professor Peter Hotez all took that therapeutic, and he noticed that they all got a second round of COVID. What do they call it?
The bounce back? There's some name for it.
But you get a second case.
And based on that pattern, Unhoodwinked predicted That the following people would all have bounced back COVID. He actually predicted in advance that Jill Biden, the CEO of Pfizer, and the CDC head Walensky, he accurately predicted every one of them would get rebound.
I'm sorry. He accurately predicted all three of them would get rebound COVID. He predicted that in public.
He got all three.
Now, do you know what was the best healthcare that I got this year?
The best healthcare I received was that it was so hard for me to contact my own healthcare provider and get Paxlovid when I got COVID that I didn't get it.
It was just too much work.
It was too hard. So if I could have gotten it easily, I'm pretty sure I would have taken it.
I'm pretty sure I would have taken it.
Now let me ask you, is there anybody here who would have been comfortable with the vaccination but uncomfortable with Paxlovid?
Is there anybody here who thinks the vaccination would be bad but the therapeutic would be safer?
Is that a thing?
Because they're both, you know, too untested.
Not untested. They're two drugs which everybody, including the people who made them, would wish they were more tested if we had more time.
Yeah, I don't know. So, it turns out the smartest thing I did was have a healthcare provider who couldn't provide any healthcare.
Am I wrong? You know, here's an update on my blood pressure.
So I quit cold turkey blood pressure medication, which I want to say very carefully, you are not supposed to do.
You are not supposed to go cold turkey on your blood pressure meds.
That is a very not recommended thing.
So I want to say that as clearly as possible.
Don't be like me. Nobody copy me.
Don't do it. I was just pissed off.
Because the day that I stopped taking it, I felt perfectly good after months of pain.
And I thought, I'm not fucking putting that in my body again.
Do you know what my healthcare provider recommended?
After I found out that the blood pressure meds were literally killing me?
And I mean literally, because they made me suicidal.
And if something makes you suicidal, and it makes you not able to exercise...
It's killing you. So that's not too strong a statement, right?
It tried. It just didn't succeed.
It tried to kill me. Do you know what my doctor recommended?
Double the dose. Double the dose.
Because my blood pressure had not been adequately controlled.
Because I gave some readings and they weren't controlled enough.
So I was asked to double the dose.
What do you think I'm doing?
Do you think I'm going to double the dose?
No fucking way.
No. Now I'm having a little issue with my health care provider because my doctor is on leave.
So there's a whole communication problem that's not normal.
My actual doctor is great.
So let me be clear.
There's no way my doctor would have made that recommendation.
What happened is it went through a third party.
And by the time it got to me, the communication had been lost.
Then instead of trying to get more of it, I was trying to get rid of it entirely.
So just a communication problem.
But that's my current healthcare.
My current healthcare is too inconvenient to use it.
Literally. It's too inconvenient to actually use it.
I actually choose to treat myself.
And so far I've done better.
That's a fact.
So far, I've beat my healthcare provider in performance by ignoring them.
I hate to say it, but it's true.
Alright, so yesterday I took my blood pressure.
This is after a week of no blood pressure meds.
Pretty dangerous, right?
How do you think I did after a week of no blood pressure meds?
There you go. Oops.
Dammit. There's my readings.
How'd I do after having no blood pressure meds?
Right? 115 over 79 and 120 over 77.
Do you know what I did instead of taking blood pressure meds?
Ask me how I did it.
I took a 20 minute walk and I cut down on coffee.
That's it. I read somewhere that if you take two 30-minute walks a day, you're basically fine.
And I wondered if that's actually true.
And so I thought, okay, I won't do like a full exercise.
I'll do a nice, nice little slightly challenging, you know, just a brisk walk.
And then I sit down and test my blood pressure, and I got perfectly normal after a week with no blood pressure meds.
Now, let me be clear.
I probably hit a low point.
This might have been my low for the day.
I do think I have a problem with his spiking during the day.
But let me ask you this.
Can you refer to the science and tell me if that puts me in danger?
Look at the science and tell me, if you know that I can get down to good blood pressure some part of the day, but it might be spiking other parts of the day, what is my risk?
Nobody knows. Nobody knows that.
There's no science that could tell you that at all.
But if you talk to your doctor, I'm sure they'll tell you that they have some firm ideas about that, but they'd be guessing, I think.
So, I know I'm setting myself up for karma to give me some health problem because of my high blood pressure.
We all know that, right? But I feel like I'm doing some kind of a public good here that's a little bit bigger than me, which is if I don't die and I successfully manage my blood pressure into a healthy zone, just with lifestyle, wouldn't you like to know that?
Wouldn't you like to know if that's a thing that works?
I mean, I'll just be one person, so it's not like a study or something.
But wouldn't you be curious?
And I figure I'm going to take the chance for all of us.
I mean, I probably would do it for myself, but it has a bigger value to you.
Maybe. We'll see.
If you were on the Locos platform, you would be seeing my naughtier cartoon called Robots Read News, in which robots read the news.
Now, normally, you on YouTube could not see these comics, but this particular one that I published yesterday, which features just a robot reading the news, has a humor technique in it I would like to teach you.
And this is one that's really easy.
This is one you could all incorporate immediately and become funnier.
You all want to be funnier, right?
It's called the list of three.
List of three. There is something about a list of three concepts or things that if you pick the right three, it's funny.
And you know it when you see it, right?
So what makes it funny is three things that don't normally belong together, usually.
And there's something about the bleed over of one item into the other that isn't part of the point but it bleeds over that makes it funny because your brain is trying to make it make sense and it's not quite making sense for you.
So I'm going to read you the joke.
And then I'm going to explain what I did, so you can see it.
So look for the list of three.
Three things that don't belong together, but it's funny when you put them together, right?
So the first two panels are one joke, and then I just do a completely separate joke in the third panel.
So the robot says, the government released a new COVID advisory today.
It says, quote, stay one mile from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
Because she got COVID yet again.
And then the third panel is just a new joke, and the robot says, in our Tips for Humans segment, tonight's tip is, never sleep in your underpants if your gun is a hammer.
Never sleep in your underpants if your gun is a hammer.
All right, now here's why this works.
Underpants, gun, hammer.
Underpants, gun, hammer.
You put those three together, I don't care what else you say about them.
Do you see it?
You can't put those three words together and not laugh.
Right? As soon as you hear them, you're like, okay, underpants, gun, hammer, I'm done.
Underpants, gun, hammer.
There's nothing else you need to say.
That's it. Right?
You can make your own joke.
You could put any other words around them.
There are about a hundred different ways you could make them funny.
I just picked one. So there's your tip.
Now, if you're saying to yourself, but Scott, how would I know that those three went together and were funny?
That's not the way it works.
What you do is you just cycle a bunch of words through your head until one of them makes you laugh.
One combination makes you laugh.
And when it makes you laugh, it'll probably make other people laugh.
So here's why it's hard for AI to write humor.
This is a perfect example.
The way I wrote this joke is the first time I thought of it, it made me laugh in my head.
As soon as I thought of those three words together, I was like, okay, these three words are one of those, that's one of those three-word combos.
But the only way I knew it worked for you is that it made me laugh, and AI can't do that.
So the AI can't test its own joke on itself because it doesn't have a sense of humor, yet.
So that's the only advantage I have right now, is that I can A-B test faster than the fastest computer.
How long is that going to last?
Right? Because the computer will eventually beat me by testing with lots of humans fairly quickly.
Just send out a query.
What's funnier, this or that?
And you're like, that one.
And then it knows what people think is funnier.
So that's your tip for the day.
Alright. So when did Twitter get an edit button?
Because I saw one today.
That's only for the special people, right?
Some people testing it.
Can you confirm that?
Because the edit button worked exactly the way I would have...
It's not for blue checks.
You have to be on Twitter blue, meaning you're paying money for it, right?
Yeah, you don't have an edit button.
So it's the first time I saw one today.
And I don't know if you remember, but I was describing how I would have designed it.
It turns out they designed it exactly like I would have, which I assume is a coincidence.
But the way I would have done it is you have to show the history.
So it just shows a little tag that says it's an edited tweet.
And as soon as I saw the tag, which was notable, I mean, it was easy to see the tag, I clicked on it, and it showed me that there was a typo in the first tweet.
And then I was all happy.
I was totally happy.
Because it was my choice to look at the edit.
I didn't have to. And when I looked, I said, oh, he used it for this reason.
It was a typo.
Perfect. To me, that was perfect.
How would you improve on that?
You can't improve on that.
That's as good as the edit button can be designed.
So I think you'll see that.
I'd be surprised if they don't roll that out for the rest of us.
So did you see there was a tweet by Stephen King, author Stephen King, and he said it had been floated the idea of charging blue check people $20 a month.
And King tweeted, $20 a month to keep my blue check?
Fuck that. They should pay me.
If that gets instituted, I'm going like Enron.
Now, here's what I just absolutely love about Twitter and about this time in In our world.
So Stephen King tweets this tweet about Twitter and he gets an almost immediate reply from Elon Musk.
Now, so probably the most prolific or, I don't know, financially successful author in America of all time, I'm guessing, probably, gets a direct tweet from the richest man in the world and then we can all watch it.
The transparency of all this is just amazing.
But what Musk tweets back is, he goes, we need to pay the bills somehow.
He goes, Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers.
He goes, how about $8?
Now, how awesome is that?
That you actually watched the richest man in the world, you know, the most successful entrepreneur we've ever seen, negotiating in public with our most famous prolific author of fiction, And something could come of it.
You know, if King actually gave his opinion, it could actually matter.
Like if King said, you know, I could do $8.
But you know what's the funniest thing about this?
You lose sight of the fact that the richest man in the world and the richest author in the world are arguing whether $8 a month or $20 a month is the right price.
There are no two people in the world who could care less about the difference between $8 and $20.
But yet it's happening.
I mean, everything about this is interesting.
Just the fact that we can observe it in real time.
Have you ever seen a famous person that accessible?
I mean, Musk is so accessible.
I mean, he's responded to my tweets a few times.
He's responded to people I know several times.
It feels like if you make a tweet that actually has merit, he actually sees it and responds to it.
It's kind of a phenomenal time in history.
I saw something that confused me at first, but then it all made sense.
And let me explain it to you.
Do you know how, I think Dan Bongino was pointing out recently, how Biden hadn't been fact-checked all summer?
We went like a whole summer and CNN's fact checker just disappeared.
And then it became a little embarrassing because people noticed that they just stopped fact checking.
And then today I looked at CNN's page and there down in sort of a hard to find place was a fact check of Joe Biden.
And it was Daniel Dale, the fact-checker for CNN, and he fact-checked Biden's lie about what gas prices were on average when he took over from Trump.
So I guess Biden had been saying that gas prices were $5 on average when he took over from Trump.
Which is not even close to true.
It's not even in the neighborhood of true.
It's just like an amazing lie.
So, were you surprised that CNN would fact-check Biden's claim about gas now, when apparently they've been not fact-checking anything for months?
Does that surprise you? That suddenly, even when we're closer to the midterms, we're closer to the midterms, he's fact-checking it.
Surprise you at all? Let me give you a related story that will explain to you why CNN's fact checker suddenly is on the job.
Now watch me tie these two unrelated stories together and see if you make the connection without my help.
I think you will. I think this wasn't an easy one.
Totally unrelated story.
Did you hear that Paul Pelosi was hit by a crazy guy with a hammer?
Yeah. And have you heard that the political right is creating a bunch of stories that, let's say, don't have factual proof, suggesting that Paul Pelosi was maybe in a gay relationship with the attacker?
Now, is that the sort of story that the Democrats want to stay out there as something that might have been true?
No, that's the sort of story that you might want, what's the word, the phrase, two words.
What do you think the Democrats would want to do with a story like that?
They'd want to fact check it?
Would they want to fact check it?
Now, how do you fact check something when your fact checker's gone?
How do you do that?
Huh. Wouldn't it be great, in a situation like this, if you were CNN, wouldn't it be great to have a fact-checker who could come in here and fact-check that thing away, make sure that gay rumor goes away?
Well, as luck would have it, Daniel Dale has made a big appearance, and in a major piece, he's fact-checking this Paul Pelosi stuff and says it's all unfounded.
Now, Could Daniel Dale come back and do a big fact check on the Pelosi story while completely ignoring everything that Biden's done all summer?
Nope. That would be a little bit obvious, wouldn't it?
So he's got a little bit of a fact check on Biden.
Just a little one.
Just gas prices.
Just a little one. So that gives him cover.
For doing the big one that they really need to get done.
They can bury the Pelosi thing.
Right? Now, is it a coincidence that he just appeared and he fact-checks Biden after months of no fact-checking at just the right time when they needed that other fact-check?
Now, how many of you would have noticed that?
Would you have noticed the pattern?
Somebody did, right. I think that many of you are now so sophisticated in watching the news that you can see the pattern even before you can see the fake news.
We all know the wrap-up smear now, right?
We know how the wrap-up smear works.
We know how the Democrats will release something as a To a news entity that's friendly, and then they'll refer to the news entity to prove the thing that was the rumor they made up, you know, the wrap-up smear.
So once you understand the patterns, everything just is so much more clear.
Now, here's what's interesting.
With that little move, they made it impossible for Biden to become president if whoever runs against him decides to be even a little bit smart.
Here's how it goes. And I'm doing the media's job for him, but you can imagine a candidate taking this attack, too.
So imagine Peter Ducey asking the president's spokesperson this.
The president ran for office promising to remove a liar from office.
So Biden ran for office to remove that liar from office.
That was a major theme.
But he also says the price of gas was more than $5 when he took office, which has been fact-checked as false by CNN. So I would ask the question, which one of those is true?
Did he really run for office to remove a liar from office, or is he lying now about the gas price?
And I would ask that question.
Now, isn't that fair? That's a fair question, right?
A major theme of his campaign was, I will get rid of that liar, but a major theme of his current governing is that gas was $5 a gallon when he took over.
Now, that's an easily debunkable fact, but it's also unique.
You know what's unique about the gas price claim?
What's unique about it is that it's the most debunkable thing you could debunk.
There's nothing that would be easier to debunk, because it's just like a statistical fact anybody could look up, basically.
So here's what I'd do if I were debating Biden.
I'd say the same thing.
You ran for office because you wanted to put honesty in the office.
You're also, your major claim in your office is that gas was $5 when you took over.
Pick one. Either you care about the truth, or there's something wrong with this gas price thing.
I would make Biden...
See, the trouble is, if you go for the fine people hoax, which would be another example of him lying, you can't fact check that.
Because the fact checkers would say it didn't happen.
Which they do. Of course they're lying.
It obviously did happen.
You can watch it yourself. You don't have to even rely on the fact-checkers.
But because Daniel Dale fact-checked the gas price thing, you can use it.
That's sort of like a lawyer knows not to ask a question and he doesn't already know the answer.
And you don't want something introduced into the trial during the trial, because you're not ready for that, right?
You don't want to accidentally introduce a thing that you're not ready to deal with.
So I think that Daniel Dale accidentally put this into evidence, that the president is in fact lying about something that would be easy to fact check.
It's a major point.
I mean, it's a big point, right?
And it's the opposite of the biggest claim he made during his presidency, that he would bring you the truth.
So I would make him answer to that and only that, and I wouldn't even bring up anything else.
I'd just say, look, just tell us if you're real.
Now you might say to yourself, how is that going to work if he's running against Trump?
Because he's just going to say, but Trump had 10 million fact-check problems.
But you know what's different?
Trump actually ran telling you that he likes to use hyperbole to get the job done.
He told you he would be a cheerleader for the country.
He didn't tell you he was going to be the most honest president you ever had.
He never once made that claim, did he?
Did Trump ever say, I'm going to bring honesty and fact checking to the presidency?
He absolutely did not.
He did not. But Biden did.
So if you're going to compare the two, you've got one person who says, of course I use hyperbole all the time.
It works really well. And I'm going to use it for you.
I'll use it on your benefit.
I'll run the country using hyperbole, just the way I did my business.
And then you look at what he did and it's like, sure enough.
Sure enough, he ran the country on hyperbole, and it worked pretty well, just like he said it would.
Biden said he'd run it on honesty, but used lying instead.
You can call him on that.
You can call him on that.
All right. Let me test a claim with you.
I don't believe that people on the right actually believe that Paul Pelosi...
Was maybe engaged in a gay tryst.
You're just having fun, right?
You don't actually believe that, do you?
Can somebody tell...
Is there anybody who actually believes that?
Or is it you're just having fun?
Okay. Oh, somebody says they do.
Alright. I think very few people actually entertain that as a probability.
Okay. You know, I suppose I'd put it in the category of anything's possible, right?
But pretty unlikely.
Pretty darn unlikely.
Now, you have to be careful because here's where you need to be careful.
Because this now becomes a famous conservative hoax.
And you've given ammunition to the Democrats.
So what you got out of it was a funny story.
With no political value whatsoever, right?
There's nobody in the world who would vote differently based on the Paul Pelosi story, right?
Nobody would vote differently.
If anything, they would have some empathy for him, I would think.
So there's no benefit to this conspiracy theory, if you want to call it that.
But there's definitely a downside.
The downside is that the other side says, look, you're a bunch of liars.
You know, don't be on that team.
It's a bunch of liars. But at some point, I think the conservatives need to admit they're just having fun.
And I think at some point, you know, you might need to admit that collectively, not you specifically, in order to get past it.
Because you've created a problem for yourself, you conservatives.
Because now you've painted yourself as conspiracy theorists, when in fact I think you were just having fun.
Like, fun is somebody's expense, so we could argue how ethical that was.
But you can't argue that it wasn't fun.
Unfortunately, we're complicated people.
Does anybody have a problem holding in their head, simultaneously, that you have genuine empathy for Paul Pelosi?
I know I do. At the same time, it's funny.
You could have both of those feelings.
And you could have them fully, I think.
I think you can be fully human and have empathy.
At the same time, if it makes you laugh, it makes you laugh, right?
I wouldn't be laughing if he hadn't survived.
And I wouldn't be laughing if he'd been permanently crippled.
That wouldn't be... There's nothing I could find in that.
But he is tragic as it was and, you know, traumatic and wish it hadn't happened.
I can't help the fact that people are normal and they laugh at funny things like underpants and hammers.
All right. So, but just if you hadn't heard the whole...
Are you trying to understand why the story said that Paul Pelosi called them a friend?
Are you trying to understand why that could be true at the same time it's true that they didn't know each other?
Because Paul Pelosi is not on record as saying that.
Only one of the dispatchers had that characterization.
But there's no record of Paul Pelosi saying that, and both Pelosi and the other person with the hammer, they both say they didn't know each other.
And they both have the same story.
Now, that would be pretty rare.
Because they're not exactly on the same team, right?
But they both have a consistent story that it was an invasion, it was something about Nancy.
Now here's the second part you need to know.
It was definitely political.
Do you agree with that yet?
I don't know what news you've seen or not seen, but it was definitely political.
I see the right trying to explain it away as crazy.
Well, he's crazy too.
But he left a very clear path that it was a political act.
There's no doubt about it.
Alright, so I'm happy that almost all of you are on the same page on this.
Because I would be a little worried.
Somebody's saying I'm a boomer because I believe the narrative.
No, what I think is that the thing that's most likely is most likely.
That's all. If it turns out I'm wrong, that wouldn't be the first time.
But I'm saying that the ordinary explanation is completely available to you.
You don't need an extraordinary explanation for something that's ordinary.
Now, I would say there's one thing left, which is why it was the glass on the outside of the window.
And I could give you several ways that that might be explained.
Now, I'm not saying these are the actual reasons.
I'm only going to give you an example of how you could understand it without actually knowing what the explanation is.
All right? Number one, how many times have you seen a story like this where, you know, you saw a picture of the break-in, and then you found out later it wasn't even the right house?
That's like an ordinary thing.
Like, the news might have shown a picture of the wrong house.
Now, I don't think that happened.
But that's in the category of these things, right?
That wouldn't even be, right, it wouldn't even be unusual.
It could have been photoshopped, right?
So you don't even know if the photo is real.
Would you agree? I think the photo is real, if I had to guess.
But would you agree that you can't rule out a fake photo?
You can't rule it out, because it's actually so ordinary and so common That in the initial fog of war, how often is it in Ukraine, for example, that they ran military actions from other wars?
You saw a bunch of that.
Very common. Here's another way it could happen.
There was a breakthrough that allowed him to get in, and then there was just something else that happened that also sent some glass.
Here's another one. Let's say you've got a claw hammer and you're trying to break in.
You break through with a hammer, but the hammer leaves a discreet hole.
Is the next thing you do to keep hammering it, or would the next thing you do grab the claw into the weakened glass and pull it toward you?
Which would you do?
You could imagine...
That if there was like a hole at the hammer hole, but you saw the glass was weakened, you could imagine that you would just pull in the claw and pull it out, right?
Now, I'm not saying that happened.
I'm not making that claim.
I'm just saying there are probably five different ways this could happen.
All right, here's another one.
You break the window, and it doesn't get rid of all the glass in the pane.
And then you yank open the window, And the rest of the glass falls out after you've already opened it.
You've opened the door. So now you've got glass on the inside from the initial break, plus glass on the outside, because when you yanked the door, some more glass came down.
Now, I'm not saying that happened either.
But can you see how easily you could get glass on the outside without being weird, right?
Without being weird.
It's pretty easy, right?
So, I don't know if any of those are true, but I would say that everything is explained.
The reason he was called a friend, Pelosi, there's no evidence he ever said that.
There's only evidence that the dispatcher believed he heard it.
How often does somebody misquote somebody else?
In your experience, how often does somebody accurately quote somebody else in a, let's say, high emotion situation?
Almost never. They always get it wrong.
The most common thing in the world is for a third party to misinterpret you.
How many times does a third party misinterpret me?
Every day. All day long my Twitter feed is full of people misinterpreting something I said.
But they think they're right, as the dispatcher probably thought he or she was right.
Yeah. Alright, I think I explained most of that.
You know, I didn't talk about too much of this story about we know now that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were coordinating with the social media platforms to tamp down on disinformation.
Now, it's being treated like a new story.
I thought we knew this for a long time.
Is there anybody who didn't know the social media companies were talking to the government about disinformation?
We did, but we forgot.
This isn't a new story, right?
It's only that we saw it in writing somewhere else.
Yeah, yeah, Zucker admitted it.
So I don't understand the story.
There's nothing new, right?
We all know this is a thing.
You know what's hard about this story is I don't know if I don't want it to happen.
If the only thing you knew is that the government was talking to social media about how to handle disinformation, if that's the only thing you knew, it's not automatically bad.
It becomes bad because the government's involved and everything it touches, it ruins.
But at the concept level, is that a problem?
That your government is concerned about misinformation during a pandemic?
Yeah, it can become a problem.
I don't know that the instinct was necessarily 100% evil.
There might have been a little bit of good intentions involved there.
But the evil gets in the tent too, right?
Once the evil gets in, there's nothing to do to get it out.
So I would agree with you that it's a bad idea.
I don't think it's obvious that it was always about bad intentions, but clearly the bad intentions got wrapped into this concept, clearly.
Yeah, you know, and you could also imagine a good way to handle it and a bad way to handle it.
Here's the good way. The good way to handle it is to say, social media companies, you should have a feature where if somebody makes a claim that's false, That you can easily associate it with the correct claim.
Would that be a problem to you?
Because I've said social media should do exactly that.
They should make it easy. Well, actually, no.
Let me change it. Not to the correct claim, to the counterclaim.
That's where it's different. All right, here's where we differ.
I don't think you should have a service that tells you what's true.
I think you should have a service that exposes you to the counterclaim.
That's the difference. Would you agree?
You don't want the government saying what's true, but if the only thing they did is say, make sure that the true information also gets surfaced, true as we think it's true, make sure the counterclaim gets surfaced, that would be okay with me.
But that's not what they did, is it?
I don't think that's exactly what they did.
But there is a good version of it.
How many of you have ever heard of something called the fine structure constant?
Are there any nerds here, science nerds?
The fine structure constant.
So, somebody directed me to it this morning to break my brain, and it did.
It broke my brain a little bit.
Now, I don't fully understand it, but I'll tell you the best I can.
There's this number 137.
Which, maybe coincidentally, maybe not, is a prime number that pops up in physics too often.
And there's another quality to it that I don't understand.
There's some kind of measureless quantity thing to it that I don't understand.
But it comes up way too often.
And scientists don't know why.
And why would that be a constant?
And to my mind, it's probably proof of the simulation.
It's probably proof of the simulation.
So let me give you an example of why you would need a constant for a simulation.
Years ago, when personal computers were brand new, I tried to learn computing on my own, programming on my own, because I wanted to see if I could build my own video game.
And I did. I succeeded.
So I learned enough that I made a video game that featured the The space shuttle, but it had laser cannons in the game, and it could shoot down Soviet satellites back when the Soviet Union was a thing.
So I actually created a game.
Now, here is the problem.
I was such a bad programmer that I created a game that worked perfectly on my computer.
You see the problem, right?
The very next computer I bought was faster.
And so the speed of the game...
Became the speed of the processor.
What I really needed was that the speed of the game always stayed the same no matter what processor was running on.
So in other words, I needed a constant.
I needed a constant.
I needed some number or a constant that no matter what processor I'm running on, the game looked the same.
The fact that this 137 constant shows up all over the place It tells me that we're a game.
We've been designed with a constant that would keep...
Now, I don't know if it's keeping the speed constant.
Maybe it's that. Because if we're a simulation, we may move from one processor to another without even knowing it.
And all the processors need to operate in a similar fashion.
I feel like the constant is so that the simulation treats everything in the simulation the same at the same time.
Just a hypothesis.
I'll just put that out there. So, did you hear that Russia exited the grain deal, where they were going to allow safe passage of the grain from Ukraine out, is it the Black Sea?
Yeah, the Black Sea. Then Russia pulled out of the deal because Ukraine sent a bunch of, I guess, water drones and attacked the fleet.
So Russia's fleet got a big attack a few days ago based on drones.
And there's actually some video from one of the drones.
Which is, I can't imagine wanting to be in the water when one of those drones is there.
Because you can see it speeding toward the boat, and then you see the anti-drone defenses, and it goes around them and stuff.
I'm like, holy shit. If you had enough of these aquatic drones, I think you could take out just about any warship.
Because it... So here's a guy, Smithson says, Scott, duped again.
Only exited a deal because Ukraine bombing ships.
All right. I have to pause again for another fucking idiot.
So this is only a message for fucking idiots.
Everybody else, you can ignore this.
Anything I ever say about Ukraine, you should assume is very low credibility because all sources, Russian and Ukrainian, have no credibility.
Got it? So if you'd like to put a comment in here that says, Scott doesn't know information from the Ukraine war is low credibility, well, you would be wasting your fucking time because we all know that.
Guy did nothing wrong.
All right, so we're done with you.
So again, we don't know what's true.
But the story is that Russia was using the attack as an excuse for saying they're pulling out of the deal.
And they said, we can allow the grain to go out if Ukraine will agree to stop destroying our navy.
And as other people have pointed out, We've come a long way from Russia is going to conquer Ukraine in 24 hours, or whatever the hell it was.
They've gone all the way to, please don't destroy our Navy.
That actually is happening.
Russia is basically trying to negotiate to not have their Navy destroyed.
Because it looks like Ukraine could just use these drones.
I don't know how fast we can make drones and ship them to them, but I bet we can make them and ship them to them faster than they can make battleships or destroyers or whatever we're blowing up.
So I think that Russia's naval superiority is over.
And it turns out, I didn't know this until today, but apparently Turkey has a massive naval force there.
As, you know, makes sense.
It's their backyard. So apparently Turkey just said, well, we are going to ship this grain.
So Turkey and Ukraine just decided they're going to ship some grain, whether Russia likes it or not.
And Russia decided to let it go, because they don't want to fuck with the Turkish navy, apparently.
Now, I don't know if that's true.
Remember, every part of this is low credibility.
But that's the story of today.
Yeah, so it's funny how the news continues to describe Russia as poor and incompetent and, you know, paper tiger and all that stuff.
I don't know if any of that's true.
I really don't. All right.
What else is fun? I'm going to file this under everything that they told you was bullshit.
And whoever they is, anybody in charge, any expert, everything they told you was bullshit.
Here's one for today.
Did you know that plastic isn't really recycled?
I can't believe I'm saying that.
You know all those plastic bottles?
I carefully separate them and recycle them.
Not recycled. Nope.
Not recycled. And in fact, they end up in garbage in Asian countries, I think.
And then it gets into the water supply and it kills us all.
So apparently the worst thing you can do is recycle your plastic bottles.
You should throw them in the regular trash.
I learned this from Michael Schellenberger in a tweet today.
I'd never heard this before.
Now, I'll tell you what I had heard.
I remember years ago there was an expose where they showed a video of all of the recycling stuff taken to a central place, and it all ended up in the same garbage with everything else.
But I remember thinking, well, that's probably an exception.
Or maybe it's early in the recycling phase, but eventually we will in fact be recycling everything because everybody's trying so hard to do it.
But apparently we never got there.
I think only 2% or something of plastic gets recycled because it must be hard to do.
And it just gets thrown away.
So Schellenberger says the worst thing you can do is recycle your plastic.
You should throw it in the regular garbage and let it get incinerated or whatever the hell happens to it.
I don't know. I can't even imagine that's better.
I don't know how anything is better.
It sounds like plastic is just poison.
All right. So don't believe anything anybody tells you.
All right. Here's some Rasmussen polling information.
So we're a week before Election Day for the midterms.
And half of voters say inflation and the economy are the most important issues.
All right. So 26% of likely voters say inflation is the most important issue.
And 22%, coming in a strong second, say the economy is the top issue.
That's right. So we're separating inflation from the economy in this polling situation here.
Now, should people who can't tell that inflation is part of the economy, should they be allowed to answer polls?
Maybe people who can't tell that inflation really is the economy, maybe they shouldn't be allowed to answer polls.
Alright. I'm just kidding.
So actually the way the poll was answered, it was a reasonable way to answer it.
It was actually reasonable because they asked, it's based on asking what's the top issue.
And so if some people pulled inflation out of the economy and said that's the top issue, that's not crazy.
But it does tell you that it's basically the economy.
The economy is all anybody cares about.
Not anybody, I'm exaggerating.
But here's a number that surprised me.
Now this is a ranking of what people think is most important.
Only 19% say abortion rights.
19%. That's still a lot.
That does seem like enough to move an election.
8% say climate change.
8% say violent crime.
Does that seem right?
Now, 8% say violent crime actually makes sense, because that's how many people probably are in dangerous places.
Where I live, I still don't have a big violent crime problem, although it's definitely ticking up.
Even where I live, it's ticking up.
There's some home invasions in the neighborhood and stuff.
But I don't think about it on a day-to-day basis.
Like in my daily travels, I don't really ever think about crime.
But probably about 80% of the country lives somewhere where it's all they have to think about.
So, and maybe more than that, because those are the city centers.
But it still seems like a low number.
I'm surprised that's not bigger.
And only 2% of people say that Ukraine or LGBT rights matter to them, in terms of ranked at the top.
So, here's the good news.
I feel like people have their priorities right.
Don't you? I would be worried if one of these lesser issues happened to be at the top.
Is that good news?
It feels like it, doesn't it?
It feels like good news that when we look at the list of priorities, we're kind of all on the same page in the country.
We have different ideas what to do about it.
But I feel like that's unusual that we're even on the same side of what the problem is.
That's a little bit unusual, isn't it?
Maybe it suggests something good is going to happen.
But illegal immigration was only the most important thing to, I guess, 8%.
You know what's weird about illegal immigration?
Here's what I can't understand.
I don't understand why the impact of it on my day-to-day life is not bigger.
Is anybody else having that?
Or maybe it's like a huge impact in some small areas.
Now, I don't live on the border, so if I lived on the border, I'd be probably complaining every day.
But why does that problem not spread faster from the border?
I'm in a border state, but I'm in the northern part of the border state.
And here, I don't really see...
I'll tell you, the only place I see the impact is there are quite a few students who are, shall we say, undocumented immigrants.
So a lot of the students in the schools are clear there.
But it doesn't affect people too much.
They make friends, they stay with their group.
It doesn't seem to make much difference where I am.
Healthcare is overloaded.
Well, maybe that's why I can't get healthcare effectively.
So that's a good point, but I wouldn't know that that's why.
I think that's more about a staffing problem, isn't it?
I think healthcare is more of a staffing problem, but I'm not sure.
All right. So I'm just going to make the comment that everybody feels the economy and everybody feels inflation, but the poll, I think, reflects that not everybody feels anything about immigration.
Most people, I think, don't feel the direct immigration effect, although it's probably affecting us in a big way indirectly.
And then the fentanyl thing, you might connect with that, right?
Exactly. Supreme Court is listening to this case about racial discrimination in college admissions.
And I guess Harvard and University of North Carolina are arguing that they should be able to use race in part of their decision-making about who to bring in.
And I guess it's Asian Americans who were the victim class in these lawsuits or these actions.
And Here's something that I didn't know, a little background that's very interesting.
So there was a case in 2003, Grutter v.
Bollinger, in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, and I guess that was the thing that allowed colleges to use race in admissions.
So in 2003 there was a case that gave them the cover to use race in admissions.
And then even when that decision was made, 25 years ago Sandra Day O'Connor said that probably you wouldn't need this in 25 years.
You wouldn't need it in 25 years.
And it's 19 years from then.
That was a pretty good call.
Talk about a good prediction.
That was a hell of a prediction.
And also, I would argue, that's the best of America right there.
That's the best of America.
Because that was a 25-year plan to fix something with an understanding that once it got fixed, you needed to adjust again.
Damn! Damn!
You know, if I'd known that that was sort of a 25-year expectation, now it's not a binding kind of thing, it was just a prediction, but that would have felt different to me than imagining it's some permanent condition.
It would have felt different.
So good job Sandra Day O'Connor on that prediction.
But we'll see if it makes any difference.
We'll see if she's right. Harvard apparently wants to use race forever.
Even if they reach some kind of parity, they just always want to use it.
And it sounds like the argument in favor of keeping it is weak.
So it's hard to know how the court will rule based on the questions they ask.
But so far it looks like It's going to be overturned.
And I think race will not be allowed as a, you know, a tool for admissions.
Overturning is probable, yeah.
Now, that's what you get with your conservative court, right?
There's no way this would get overturned with a liberal court.
Wouldn't you agree? I think so.
All right. Well, we'll see what happens there.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
It's another wonderful day in which we'll be waiting for Elon Musk to make us more news, because he's in charge of making news now.
And if he doesn't tweet today, I don't know what I'm going to talk about.
Yeah, Sunset it, exactly.
with.
You know what I think?
If you're going to get rid of racial preferences in colleges, I feel like you should be accompanied with some kind of like a celebration.
And like a congratulations to black Americans in particular.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, Did not black Americans fight for exactly this sort of thing for the last 19 years?
And did it not help them?
Probably did. Probably helped a lot.
And if you reach a point where the help has reached a sufficient level, if black Americans were willing to release on that, that would go a long way for racial harmony.
Wouldn't it? This is one of those opportunities where saying the right thing could make such a difference.
How would you feel about people who use racial preferences to get into college?
You're probably saying, I understand why it exists.
I understand the history of it.
But isn't it time to do away with that?
So you don't like the racial preferences.
It gives you a bad feeling about maybe people who benefited from it.
It's sort of automatic. But suppose the people who benefited from it said, thank you very much.
We appreciate it.
And now we can release on it.
That's George Washington level.
And it's not going to happen.
Imagine having a really good black leader, like a Martin Luther King type.
Imagine Martin Luther King saying, you know what?
Thank you. Damn, thank you.
Thank you for 19 years of helping to make this more even.
And in return, we're going to release it.
We're going to George Washington it.
And we're going to walk away when we didn't need to.
We could have fought to keep it.
But we're going to just say thank you.
And fight other fights together.
Because the next fight that the black and rest of the world needs to fight is teachers unions.
So, imagine a world in which we declare a collective victory in the college area, but don't, you know, don't give up on making sure that everybody's got a chance to go to college, right?
If that even makes sense anymore.
But say, how about, that was great.
How about we worked together and we got that done?
And how about that was just awesome?
And how about now we've reached a different point in time?
We both agree that that's just a thank you situation.
That's just thank you.
And then we work together to solve the next biggest problem, which is, correct me if I'm wrong, if you fix the lower level schools, you don't need to have your colleges be biased.
Because then they just accept everybody who did a good job in school.
And then everybody's happy.
Or close to them.
Yeah. In terms of persuasion, gratitude is one of the strongest pieces of persuasion you can ever use.
When somebody shows gratitude, it completely changes how you treat them, right?
If somebody just asks for something and they've got an attitude like you owe it to them, you're going to do everything you can not to give it to them.
But if somebody is like really genuinely thankful, You actually feel good, too.
They get something, and then you get something, and then everybody's happy.
Like, that's a perfect world.
But think about it.
Imagine if the court case goes the way I guess it will go, and it actually says, that was great for 19 years, but now we need to make an adjustment.
Should we treat that as we lost something?
Because I fear that I fear that we'll treat it like a loss, or half the country will treat it like a loss.
That should be treated like, wow, that really worked, now let's work together on the next other problem, and then have a victory after that as well.
So, maybe we have some opportunity for the golden age.
Maybe. Yeah, dream on.
You're right, dream on.
I would argue that the biggest thing that the black community in America lacks Is a capable leader.
Would you agree with that?
If I ask you, who's the leader of black America?
I'm not even sure what names I would put in the top three.
Are you? You know, somebody says Obama, but Obama is successful because he wasn't a black leader.
Like, his success entirely depended on him rejecting The idea that he was the black president, which he did perfectly.
He did that perfectly.
All right. What about John Fetterman?
Well, I hear the...
I was going to say it's neck and neck, but that just seems so wrong.
Just so wrong. Larry Elder.
Yeah, there are plenty of black leaders...
That you could look to to say, hey, if I want to have somebody have an opinion on TV or something, you know, you could get plenty of choices.
But who would be a black leader that the black community looks to as a leader, sort of, in some...
No, you're saying stuff that are clearly just conservative black people, right?
Thomas Sowell is awesome in a lot of ways, but he's not a black leader.
He should be.
Like, in my opinion, imagine how well off the black world would be if they looked at Thomas Sowell as their guide.
Everything would be fixed.
Honestly, Thomas Sowell, if he were the leader that they decided to rally around, you're one generation away from having everything fixed.
You couldn't do it in one generation, but you're one generation away.
All right. I believe we've done everything we need to do, and it's an awesome day.
And how about you go forward and just have that?
Oh, Herschel Walker?
If you're naming Herschel Walker as our national leader, I don't quite think so.
Yeah, you know, there are some famous people like Denzel and Morgan Freeman and stuff, but I don't think anybody Zuby.
Zuby's not American.
I think Zuby has done such a good job of having a popular position in the world.
People love him so much they forget he's not even American.
I think he could get a lot of votes for President of the United States, but he's not American.
Now, Zuby is another great example of a talent stack situation, right?
He's a perfect talent stack example.
There's just a whole bunch of things that he does really well, but if you're trying to pick the one thing, you say, I don't know, he just does these whole bunch of things that work together really well, and then he engineered them to turn it into something awesome.
Yeah, he's impressive in general.
I would say he's an impressive person.
That would be a true statement.
Yeah, Morgan Freeman's great, but he's not really seen as a black leader.
Lizzo? Okay. Ice Cube?
Yeah, you see the problem, don't you, Wayne Brady?
But you see the problem.
Yeah, Jason Whitlock's great.
But everybody you name, I can say they're great, because, you know, many of them are, like, awesome in whatever they do.
But they're not recognized as a leader.
You know, not yay, not anybody.
George Floyd. I'll bet that's, in a weird way, that's true.
George Floyd would be the most recognizable, unifying character, which is scary.
Alright. That's all for now.
I will talk to you tomorrow, YouTube.
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