Episode 1970 Scott Adams: The News Is Fun And Interesting Today. Let's Have Some Laughs
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Ted Lieu's deleted COVID tweet
George Santos fabricated resume
Dr. Malone's meta-analysis
Laundering of Expertise
Ross Gerber vs. Elon Musk
Poll: America's biggest threat?
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To the highlight of civilization, it's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
There's never been anything better.
And if you'd like to take it up a notch, well, there's a way.
There is a way. All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tankard, chalice or stein, a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now. Go. Yeah, that's good.
That's really good. So, I saw that Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat, He tweeted some COVID stuff in response to the Twitter files revelations about Fauci, etc. And Ted Lieu was immediately fact-checked by Elon Musk.
Apparently Ted Lieu was linking to some incorrect COVID information.
And so Ted had to delete his tweet.
Now the interesting thing is, It looked to me like obviously wrong information, like Ted Lieu was not well informed.
It was like he wasn't even up to date on the COVID stuff, which is really scary because he's one of the people in charge, sort of.
But how much do you love that?
How much do you love that Ted Lieu tweeted some bullshit about COVID on Twitter, got immediately slapped down and fact-checked and had to run away with his tail between his legs?
I'm not supposed to enjoy it.
I should simply observe it.
But there's something broken inside me.
Something deep inside me is broken, and it made me enjoy it.
If there's something deep inside you that's also broken, you might be enjoying it too.
So, all of us broken people, we can have a good laugh.
Now, what if I told you I was going to do between now and the end of the year.
Positivity. Positivity.
So let me say that I actually enjoy Representative Ted Lieu.
I've had a number of interactions with him on Twitter.
And I have to say, he's sort of a cheerful warrior.
He seems like a decent guy.
I could hang out with him easily.
Like, we could be friends.
Like, he just seems like a cool guy.
So I like him. You know, he's not going to be right on everything.
He's a Democrat, and so he's going to cheer his team.
But, decent guy.
I would say, don't hate Ted Lieu.
My other favorite story, all the stories are funny today.
I think every story is a little bit funny.
Is it just me?
Am I just in that mood or something?
Or are all the news stories just a little bit funny?
So there's a Republican who won a traditional blue seat, George Santos.
And he won a seat in New York suburbs.
And typically he'd been a Democrat But I guess he ran a really good race because he won a traditional Democrat area.
The only problem is basically everything in his resume was made up.
So he didn't go to college where he said, didn't have the career that he said.
Several of his employees were not killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting.
And the list of things that he claimed was sort of hilariously extreme.
But here's my favorite part of all the fake resume stuff.
My favorite part was he founded a charity called Friends of Pets.
Friends of Pets United in 2013.
But the IRS and the Attorney Generals of New York and New Jersey could find no record of it being registered as a tax exempt organization.
And there was some animal group that co-hosted a $50-a-ticket fundraiser with Santos in 2017 and said it never received any of the proceeds.
Now, I don't know.
Maybe it's because I already know it was a scam.
But if I saw something, Friends of Pets United, it just sounds like it's made up, doesn't it?
Friends of Pets United.
Because you know somebody's going to give that money.
If you ever want to do a scam, Friends of Pets.
So now there's a conversation about whether he should be removed from office for having lied about everything.
What do you think? Should he be removed from office?
Somehow. I don't know how they do that.
For having lied about everything.
Not in this world.
Not in this United States.
Because that's not a standard you could ever employ.
Because every single member of Congress would have to be removed on the same standard.
So, apparently he discovered what Trump discovered.
One of the things I always laugh about is that all politicians know that lying works.
That's why they do it.
Lying works in politics.
But I think Trump found the little gap where nobody had noticed.
I think he started saying, wait a minute.
Lying works, and there's no limit to how much of it I can do?
That's right. So I can basically just say anything I want.
That's right. Why would I say anything that's true if lying works?
We don't know. So just say those windmills are going to stop turning when the wind stops and the TV will stop working and everything will be fine.
And it was completely true.
It didn't matter how many times he failed the fact-checking.
He failed the fact-checking more than Anybody could ever imagine.
Did it make any difference at all?
In the end, was Trump removed because of his fact-checking?
No. The fact-checking had no impact on anything.
Trump knew that somehow.
Somehow he knew it wouldn't make any difference.
This guy decides that anything he says about his past, as long as it works...
Eh, good enough.
So he just tells these wild lies that are like way beyond the pale, apparently, allegedly, and it worked.
Got him elected. So all he did is he proved that he knows how to use the rules better than the other people.
Because if people under lied and they didn't lie enough and they didn't get elected, well I guess that's on them, isn't it?
Because he just set the standard.
I'm only half kidding.
I'm only half kidding.
Well, China loosened its COVID restrictions at exactly the time that the virus is raging the strongest.
So that gives you confidence that government is on the ball, even in China.
Now, you know what it sounds like to me?
It sounds like to me, if China's going to be ravaged by the Omicron, presumably, they're going to make sure everybody else is too.
I feel like they decided, well, we're not going to contain it here, we might as well open it up to travel, which is what they did.
Now, you still have to get a COVID test, I think, but it's not as strict as it was.
How many people did I hypnotize to get the vaccine?
Well, let me ask. Let us ask that question.
Did anybody get vaccinated because of me?
Did anybody make a decision, a medical decision, based on me?
There's a yes. So one of you, despite me saying every single day, don't make any medical decisions based on me, some of you went ahead and did it.
Would that be an example of following my advice or following the opposite of my advice?
Because if I tell you, don't take my advice on medical stuff, and then you took my advice on medical stuff, would that be a case of following my advice or not following my advice?
It's a little tricky, isn't it?
Because I told you not to do it.
Very clearly. Very clearly told you not to do it.
Following my advice, that is.
But I acknowledge the comment...
That with a big audience, some people would be influenced for their own reasons, I suppose.
But yeah, that's probably a thing. That's probably a thing.
And I would even go further.
I'll bet you if I told you every day, don't take the vaccination, and then I checked with you later, like a year later, and said, all right, Did anybody hear me say...
I didn't do this, by the way, but this is speculative, like, imaginary.
If I had told you every day, don't take the vaccination, and then I checked with you today and said, did anybody get vaccinated because I told you for a year not to?
There would be yeses.
Because people would say, yeah, you're so non-credible that you were so insistent, I just figured it would be a good idea to go get the...
So with a big enough crowd, you're going to get...
You'll get people on both sides in every situation.
But yeah, probably.
It's probably true that something I said convinced somebody to get a vaccination despite me having no intention of doing that.
Probably. So, Dr.
Robert Malone is tweeting that there's a new meta-analysis of ivermectin.
Does this sound like repeat news?
Does this seem like Groundhog Day?
We've been here before.
And how will this story go?
Well, people will say Dr.
Robert Malone is the inventor of the mRNA technology, and he's been saying ivermectin works probably for a long time, and now this meta-study, which is the best of all kinds of studies, say some people, shows that there's a very identifiable effect, positive effect of ivermectin.
So then we conclude That we have this big meta-analysis that shows that 29 out of 63 studies show that ivermectin has a positive effect.
And if you do a meta-analysis where you take all the studies and kind of lump them together, the average or the net, I guess the net would be the way to say it, the net is that ivermectin looks like it works.
So we're done here, right?
Big old meta-analysis, 63 studies, 29, say, ivermectin work.
And then the doctor who was the inventor of mRNA technology, or at least he was involved with the invention of it, says, take a look at this.
So is everybody good now?
Is that settled science now?
You're all settled, right?
Oh! You have complaints about meta-analysis?
Alright, so here's my theme that I've been telling you for a while.
Is Dr.
Robert Malone credible on medical questions, yes or no?
Is Dr. Robert Malone credible on medical questions?
I think we'd all say yes.
Now that's different from being right, correct?
That would be his area of expertise.
And when he's talking in his area of expertise, I feel I would be influenced by his opinion.
That doesn't mean he's right.
You know, experts can be wrong.
But yes, he would be a credible voice in the medical field, specifically this.
Now, how many of these studies did Dr.
Robert Malone do? I think zero, right?
Like, he didn't do any studies.
So he's looking at studies.
So what is Dr.
Robert Malone's expertise in evaluating studies?
And specifically, his expertise in meta-studies.
Meta. None.
None. So what you're hearing is somebody completely outside of his field of expertise giving you some information in a tweet.
If somebody completely outside their field of expertise, data analysis, Tweet something, should you say, well that's credible, because it came from somebody who's an expert in an unrelated, well it's related, but a different field.
You should give it no credibility.
The correct way to analysis, to analyze that is, it doesn't matter who tweeted it, because it's not his field.
Now, did you catch my magic trick?
How many of you caught the magic trick?
I told you that 29 out of 63 studies says it works.
You know that's less than half, right?
How did you hear it as it works if most of the studies say it doesn't, and yet you heard that it works?
How did you hear that?
Does that mess up your brain a little bit?
I said it plainly.
I said that fewer than half of them say it works, which means Most of the studies say it doesn't work.
Most of them. Now, a meta-analysis, you take the ones that say no, the ones that say yes, and you put them all together as if it were one big study, just artificially, and then you see what that looks like.
Do you know why that doesn't work?
Do you know why a meta-study of this nature is completely unreliable?
Because it depends entirely on whether the biggest studies were right or not.
If the biggest studies were correct, like they got the right answer, then you got the right answer when you put them all together because they biased it toward the big studies.
If the biggest study happened to be wrong, and remember, roughly half of the studies were on the other side, So you don't know if you're picking, you don't know if the biggest study was right or wrong.
You just know that it biased the entire average so much that it was like, basically, it was just that one study that mattered, which could have been wrong.
Now, how many studies are typically wrong?
Just in general, not about COVID, but in general, about half, yeah.
About half of all studies turn out to be debunked.
Now, of the half that are not debunked, how many of them are valid?
Half of all studies get debunked.
Half do not.
Does that mean the half that do not get debunked are the good ones?
Nope. It doesn't mean that at all.
It means they just haven't been debunked.
It doesn't mean they're true.
So something less than half of studies end up being true.
So if somebody, if all you heard was, there's a new study, there's only been one of them ever, there's a new study and it's on anything, anything at all, what is your opinion?
It's not true. Yeah, because the odds, if you just play the odds, every new study, you should assume it's not true.
It could be true, but if you're playing the odds, you say it probably not, probably So once again, we have what I call laundering of expertise.
So somebody's using somebody else's expertise to launder their own views through it.
In this case, Dr.
Malone, I'm sure, from all indications, has an opinion about ivermectin being likely a positive thing.
And he might have a little bit of a motivated, analytical view of this.
Now, just to be clear, did I just tell you that ivermectin doesn't work?
Or did I tell you it does?
What did I just do?
Neither, right?
Both. Neither.
And I've been consistent from the beginning that the longer you go without a confirmation that it does work, the less likely you're going to ever get one.
Doesn't mean it doesn't.
I've never ruled it out.
Never ruled it out, but there's no evidence that would convince me yet.
Good. I can easily be persuaded, but nothing yet.
How many papers related to COVID, not just about ivermectin, but COVID in general?
Just take a guess. How many scientific papers have been retracted by the authors?
Meaning they published a result and then said, oops, usually because somebody else pointed it out.
Oops, and then had to pull them back.
I don't know the percentage, but 224.
224 scientific COVID-related papers have been withdrawn by the authors, where even the author says, oops, oops, that was a mistake.
I think usually it's the author who also agrees.
In some cases it might be the scientific publication itself, I think, but I think the author usually also is part of it.
Yeah. So, yeah, the question is, and of how many, right?
But how many do you think?
How many scientific papers?
And how many of them should have been withdrawn that have not been withdrawn yet?
I don't know. But you should be aware that the state of science is chaos.
So, you know, be an informed consumer when you hear a study says something.
Alright, speaking of studies, I like studies that are amusing.
So there's a new study asking people in society who they trust.
The people they trust the most still are scientists.
So society trusts scientists the most, and of all the different categories of people.
Probably a good thing. I mean, compared to the alternatives.
Who do you think they trust the least?
The answer is government and journalists are the two at the bottom.
They trust the least government and journalists, and they trust the most scientists.
Now here's the trick question.
See if you can get this right.
Why do people trust scientists the most?
Why? Why are they at the top?
Where did you get that information?
Because you probably have the same opinion.
You believe it because...
Who told you that science is what you should trust?
The government?
And journalists told you to trust science.
Do you know why? Because then when the government that you don't trust and the journalists you don't trust tell you to do something, they will say, don't trust us.
Look at the science that we funded.
And then don't look at the science that we suppressed.
So the two groups that you trust the least, government, which includes schools, right?
Governments determine what the schools are doing.
So governments and journalists tell you that the scientists are who you should trust, and then they use those scientists to launder their own bullshit preferences through them.
So they say, oh, oh, This is a good policy.
You should all do it because the scientists say so.
Why do you believe the scientists?
Well, don't believe us.
Believe the scientists. Why do you believe the scientists?
Because the people you don't trust told you to believe them.
Am I wrong? Do you think you were born and you just sort of grew up knowing scientists or who to trust?
Was that like a natural, organic thing?
Did you do your own investigation?
Did you do a deep dive?
Huh. Who should I trust?
Let me do some research.
Find out who to trust. Nope.
Nope. The people you trust the least, the government, And journalists tell you every day to trust the scientists.
And so you do. Because you believe the people you believe the least.
Why do you believe that?
I don't know. I don't know.
I have no idea why you do that.
Stop doing that. Don't do that.
Alright, Whoopi Goldberg, as you know, was suspended from The View, I guess.
I don't know. Is she back? Or permanently suspended?
I don't know. Don't care.
But she said controversial things about anti-Semitism.
And she said it's not about race.
She said the Holocaust wasn't about race.
And it was simply white-on-white violence.
Because Nazis were white.
And according to her, Jews were white.
Now, as one Jewish expert, well, actually just a smart guy, I guess, I don't know if he was an expert, described, and I think it was a good description, is that whether or not Jews are considered white depends entirely upon your own bias.
It has nothing to do with them.
Like, if you want to be racist, well then, they're whatever you want.
If you don't want to be racist, then they're whatever you want.
Whatever works for you.
So basically, it's like the one group where nobody seems to be able to agree.
It's just, you know, do we want to be abusing them today?
Well, then, we'll say it's this or that.
So, and I agree with that.
I think that there's like a cultural, you know, agreed-upon definitions of things that is different from whatever scientific things it would be.
And so, Goldberg, Whoopi, did apologize, but now she's doubling down, I guess, saying more things about that.
But I have some advice for you on this topic.
Whatever you do, don't ask ChatGPT, the new AI, if being Jewish is a race.
Don't do it. Because it's going to agree with Whoopi Goldberg.
And that's not good.
So we can't have that.
Now, I did check.
I did check. Now, remember, I'm not saying that the AI is correct, because the entire context here is that AI doesn't handle political stuff well.
You know, there's somebody who's got their finger on the button on the AI. So let me be very clear.
I'm not endorsing the AI's view of things.
I'm just saying that if you chat GPT today and you ask them who is more technically accurate on this question, they'll tell you whoopee, right?
Depending how you ask the question.
Now the other thing you need to know is that the way you ask the question can completely change the answer.
So AI doesn't have one answer for stuff.
Weird, right? It'll give you a different answer depending on the exact way you ask the question.
So there might be several ways you could ask the question to get the exact opposite answer.
But here's my point.
It has nothing to do with the Whoopi anti-Semitism thing.
She's on her own. I'm not going to defend Whoopi.
Whoopi's on her own, right?
She knew what she was doing.
So my bigger point is this.
What are we going to do when AI starts disagreeing with us on stuff?
What are we going to do? Now, this wasn't like the great point for that larger theme.
It's more just reminds you of it, that it could be a problem.
Because at the moment, I don't think anybody's taking AI seriously.
Right? You shouldn't. At its current stage, it's like an infant, so you wouldn't take an infant's opinion, you know, too seriously.
You'd say, oh, that's interesting, and it'll be something better someday, but you can't take it too seriously right now.
Politico hilariously has an article, and the tweet headline is, it's an opinion.
It says, it could be that 2022 marks the year our love affair with narcissists started to falter.
And then the writer, who I know you'd want me to say her name, Because people like this...
Oh, that's interesting.
I didn't write her name down.
Well, I hope she's not a narcissist since I didn't remember her name.
But apparently Politico tweeted that this new opinion article was out.
And then they had to take down their tweet because they forgot to give credit to the author.
So the tweet didn't credit the author.
So the author who is writing about other people being narcissists, you know, they like to get attention for the stuff that they do.
Politico decided that the author who is writing about people who don't get enough attention wasn't getting enough attention.
Now, I don't know if management decided to fix that or if the author noticed it and said, hey, my article about narcissists who are trying to get attention does not give me enough attention.
And then they fixed it.
I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying it's possible that the author caught it and asked for an upgrade.
But more likely, probably more likely, the editors caught it themselves and wanted to give her proper credit.
Now, the narcissist Alleged narcissist who the author identifies would be, no surprise, Donald Trump.
Elon Musk, they threw him in there.
And yay, of course, yay.
And Meghan Markle.
Meghan Markle.
What do you think happened when they threw Meghan Markle in the narcissist category?
A good number of the Politico readers went, what?
What narcissist?
I don't see a narcissism with Meghan Markle.
All I see is somebody who's part black and is being subject of horrible racial discrimination.
And you should stop saying that strong black women are narcissists.
Because there's nothing like that going on, that's for sure.
Huh? Huh?
Now, do you know what projection is?
Projection is when you think the other person has a problem that you have.
Do you think that a person who writes opinion pieces in Politico doesn't like attention?
Now, I get that there are people who like attention and people who don't, but do the people who don't like attention become writers for Politico and do opinion pieces?
Because an opinion piece is the ultimate attention-grabbing thing, right?
If I wrote an article, a factual article, you wouldn't remember who wrote it, would you?
You wouldn't even care.
Yeah, Joanna Weiss, I think.
You wouldn't even care if it were just a factual article.
It's just, hey, give me the facts.
But if it's an opinion piece, an opinion piece is about the writer, isn't it?
That's the point. It's one person's opinion.
You should all know my opinion.
My opinion is so important.
You must all be subjected to my opinion.
And then you should give me some attention for my opinion.
It's pure narcissism.
Now, am I projected?
Yes. Of course I am.
Because I'm a narcissist.
It's what we do.
At least I'm aware of it, but here's the only defense I give myself.
I'm the good kind.
I'm the good kind.
I think Elon Musk is the good kind.
He would like to get, I'm sure, I mean, I've never asked him this question, but, you know, a decent understanding of human beings means probably he's proud of his accomplishments.
Maybe he'd like you to notice.
Don't you think? Don't you think he'd like to be known as somebody who fixed big problems?
Of course. Do you think he's doing it only for the money?
Apparently not, because he has enough of that.
So something is driving him to do things which a lot of people, including me, would say seem overwhelmingly positive for society.
You could argue that, but that's my opinion.
And do you want fewer of him?
Who wants fewer Elon Musks?
I want as many people trying to get attention for themselves as possible by doing really hard things that are good for society.
Now, I've told you that my organizing principle for life, maybe I only told the locals people, my organizing principle is to have the largest funeral that I could possibly have.
Does that not sound like the most narcissistic thing anybody ever said?
It's exactly that.
It's not even slightly anything else.
It's not even, well, it's a little bit of this and a little bit...
No, it's only that.
It's that exactly.
And it motivates me.
Should it? I don't know.
I don't argue should.
I just argue yes or no.
Does it? It does.
So it motivates me in a way that I think could be good for the rest of you.
So let's do more of that.
Now, is Meghan Markle motivated by making the world a better place?
I don't know. I can't read her mind.
It's entirely possible that her inner thoughts are as pure as they could possibly be.
Maybe. I don't know.
But nothing that I observe would suggest she's anything but exactly what most of you think.
I'm not going to label her, because I feel that's unfair.
But I feel like you can all see what's there.
You're all looking at the same stuff.
It might be two movies on one screen, but you can certainly all make your own observation.
Yeah, bless her heart. Yes, George Steele, that is exactly why I stopped the sentence where I did, because you would have said that.
All right. Here's one of the best reframes I've seen in a while.
You know how we get all worked up over opinion pieces, like that one?
Why do we get worked up over opinion pieces?
Here's a reframe to help you out.
From Henry Henry. That's his Twitter name, Henry Henry.
He says, I usually ignore opinion pieces since it's just one person's opinion.
I think of them more like a diary.
A diary.
That's perfect.
Because you would not be influenced by somebody's opinion in a diary.
Because the diary tells you that's just somebody thinking thoughts.
It has nothing to do with you.
It's just their own private situation.
The fact that they published it in Politico doesn't make it any less their private thoughts.
They're just public now.
So why would you care?
Why would anybody care about anybody's diary thoughts?
It's kind of a good reframe.
I think I might use that one.
I might borrow this, Henry Henry.
Note to self.
Alright, interesting exchange between a guest investor, Ross Gerber, and Elon Musk on Twitter.
So, Ross Gerber tweeted, Tesla's stock price now reflects the value of having no CEO. Great job, Tesla.
Board of Directors, time for a shakeup.
And then Elon Musk responded, because it turns out he spent some time on Twitter himself.
He says, please tell us your great ideas, Ross.
Now, here's my advice.
If Elon Musk ever invites you to a public debate on Twitter, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Run away. Run away, Ross.
Run away! But Ross did not run away.
He explained this.
As I tweeted earlier, my three points.
Number one, Tesla needs a media and comms team.
Two, Tesla needs a succession plan as well, as clarify when Elon will be back from Twitter.
Three, Tesla needs to communicate about Elon's stock sales, and a standstill agreement should be made.
Elon Musk tweets back, Go back and read your old securities analysis 101 textbook, he says.
In simple terms, as a bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are not guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks and into cash, thus causing stocks to drop.
Now, There is, of course, more to the story than just interest rates.
You know, savings accounts, they don't guarantee that you can't lose your money above a certain amount, you know, and interest rate isn't everything, and, of course, the individual company performance is the biggest factor, even bigger than interest rates, etc.
But, generally speaking, Musk is right.
And here's why I'm going to back him.
Ross is right.
That something like the actions of the CEO can move the stock in the short run.
Would you all agree?
That the actions of the CEO and how much trust he has can certainly move the stock in the short run.
And we're probably seeing that.
I think we're seeing it.
It looks like angry people on the left are buying fewer Teslas, probably.
Stuff like that. But Elon Musk has never given any credibility or attention to short-term moves in stocks, has he?
He's always consistently said, he's even said his stock was too high.
Do you remember that?
He said in public, yeah, I think the stock's too high.
And then the light came down immediately.
And why was he willing to crash his own stock in the short-term?
Because the short-term price of Tesla isn't important.
So he could even crash his own stock in the short term because it didn't mean anything.
The short term is not why you buy stock.
It's all long term.
So in the long term, interest rates are the biggest factor on stock prices.
But not every stock the same way, right?
Some are more effective than others.
So I do think that there's something happening with Tesla that goes beyond interest rates.
Would you agree? But probably we're looking at short-term effects.
In five years, do you think the Twitter story will be the Tesla story?
It could be. But that would be hard to predict.
So, you know, you have to take a five-year range.
You know, the whole Elon Musk Twitter story could be over in 12 months.
You know, in 12 months, he could have a strong president.
He could have pulled completely back.
People still like good cars.
Tesla takes off.
I mean, anything could happen. Anything could happen.
But I wouldn't do a debate with Elon Musk in public about anything, really.
That's not going to work out.
What do you think about, was it Abbott who shipped 50 recent immigrants to Kamala Harris' home in D.C.? And what did the people on the left say?
You monsters.
Because they were dropped off in 15 degree temperatures, freezing temperatures.
People who had no homes dropped off in 15 degree temperatures.
And then they had to sleep on the sidewalk for the rest of their lives.
Terrible. Wait, I'm getting an update.
It turns out that nobody, nobody slept on the sidewalk.
Actually, none of them slept on the sidewalk.
Update? They all were indoors somewhere, I don't know where, but they all slept indoors.
Getting more updates? It turns out that the temperatures indoors are very similar everywhere in America.
Right around 70 degrees.
You know, some 68, some 72.
Sometimes your grandmother's at 80.
But basically, the indoor temperatures, very, very similar from Texas to D.C. Very similar.
And yet, I saw so many people tweeting on this point, and yet, You had to wait for me to point out the most important fact of the story.
Indoor temperatures, very similar.
Very similar wherever you go.
Indoors. All right.
I have mixed feelings about using the immigrants for political stunts.
It is both creepy and immoral and unethical, and it's working.
So what am I going to do with that?
If it keeps working, who knows if it's working, but it does look like it's changed the debate.
That's what they're trying to do.
All protests are uncomfortable for people who are not part of the protest.
That's what protests do.
They impose pain on people who weren't part of the protest.
And if it's a little bit of pain, We say that's part of the process.
All right, you know, because we want the public to be able to protest.
We want the public to be able to push the government when they need to.
So when a protest, and I would call this a protest.
It's government on government protest, but it's a protest.
I would call it a protest.
If a protest puts pain on people who are innocent, unfortunately, that's what protests do.
You know, when protesters block the street, You can't get back to your house for five hours, but you don't die.
And it wasn't your fault.
You were just trying to get home.
So, I don't know.
I think in terms of what is standard in America, we do put pain on innocent people.
This is like a...
It's an example that you can't feel comfortable with because it's the least powerful people.
You know, the people who are in the worst situations who are taking the pain.
But on the other hand, what exactly were they used to?
Do you think they had a worse day in Washington, D.C. than they had in any of their days prior to that?
Was that their bad day?
Probably not. It was probably a day they were warm and fed and hanging out with people who spoke their language and figuring out where they were going to be.
They were probably saying to themselves, we're 95% to our destination.
Don't you think? We're 95% successful.
This is going well. And we're eating.
We're warm. And pretty soon I'll have a plan for where I'll be next week and I'll have a job.
I don't know. I will tell you one thing, that you should not get lost.
You know, don't lose this in the story, you know, losing the forest for the trees.
How brave are the people who are coming here?
It's crazy, isn't it?
Have you ever put yourself in their shoes?
How brave would you have to be to make that trip without knowing exactly how you were going to make it all work?
You'd have to trust that you could figure it out along the way.
It's insane, the level of bravery.
So I say again, just to be clear, I like solid borders.
I think we should be able to keep a mosquito out of the United States.
But, separately, we should have some kind of an economic bipartisan group that figures out how many people to let in under what conditions.
And I'm not sure I know the number.
I mean, it might be two million is the right number.
I would be completely non-surprised by that.
You know, if actual legitimate bipartisan people said, you know, we kind of need two million a year.
That's entirely possible.
Maybe not the exact mix.
That's another question.
But we probably need about two million a year.
That might be what we need.
I don't know. I'd like to hear experts talk about it.
But the one thing that I'm not concerned about is the quality of the immigrants.
And again, I have an advantage point, because I get to see that community all the time.
They're awesome people.
You want more of them, not fewer.
All right. There is something very good happening in the fentanyl world.
It looks like the free market, with some charity involved, a non-profit, are going to solve what the government is largely ignoring, which is fentanyl overdose.
There's a pharmaceutical non-profit that got some kind of priority review, which means the FDA will look at them quickly.
For this Naxalone drug that you can spray up somebody's nose if they had an overdose.
Now, right now, you need, depending on where you are, you might need a prescription.
That's not true everywhere.
But it's like $100 without insurance.
Yeah. So Narcan right now would be $100 without insurance.
How many drug addicts are going to spend $100 for Narcan just in case?
It's sort of impractical.
And also, how many people are going to have it just in case somebody they know needs it?
Like, would you buy a $100 item just in case a stranger needs it someday?
Some would, and some did.
I know some people did, actually.
Carrie. But they can get the price down, I think, to $18.
So it'd be almost a non-profit situation.
So at $18, and it's not an injection, right?
It's not a needle. You literally, if somebody's just laying there, you know, passed out, you just stick it up their nose and pump it a couple times.
Done. Apparently it works well.
So, yeah. So for 20, you know, under 20 bucks with, I don't know if there's tax or whatever, but for 20 bucks, everybody's going to have one.
Like, there's no way I wouldn't have, I would have two or three in my house at $20 and no, you know, easy availability and no prescription.
I'd have two or three.
I'd keep one in my car, and I'd keep one in my garage.
And the one in the garage would be in case a neighbor needed it and I'm not home, because I can open my garage remotely.
So, take my neighborhood, for example.
My neighborhood is super wired.
If anything happens anywhere in the neighborhood, a WhatsApp alert goes out and everybody in the neighborhood goes, who's doing what?
All right, let me take a look at this.
And everybody's on the street, like, looking for the perpetrator.
You know, we're all looking at our security cameras from, like, 15 angles and shit.
You come into my neighborhood, we got a picture of you.
We got a lot of pictures of you if you're in my neighborhood.
But imagine, if you will, the alert goes out and it says, there's an overdose at this house.
Does anybody have this stuff?
And I'm on WhatsApp.
I go, yes, I do.
I'm not home. Garage door just opened.
And somebody can literally run, you know, two houses down, run into my garage where I tell them it is, grab it, run back, and save a life.
So basically, I could control, you know, with the systems that we have in our neighborhood, I could control maybe like a five block radius and keep people alive within my five blocks.
Like, I can own that.
You know, as long as somebody in the neighborhood sends out the WhatsApp, The drug's there.
Five blocks. So I can own that five blocks.
So yes, we'll work on that.
That's good news. But it keeps telling you how bad our government is that the private enterprise had to figure this out at a non-profit.
Here's a question Rasmussen asked, Rasmussen polling.
They were asked, American people were most likely to vote, Americans, identify America's greatest enemy.
Nearly 40% of the voters did not choose a foreign power.
Now, obviously, the biggest foreign powers they chose were China and Russia.
But internally, Internally, let's see, 22% of U.S. voters say that Democrats are the nation's biggest enemy.
Not China, not Russia, but Democrats.
And 17% say the Republicans.
Now, does that match the media coverage?
If you believe the media, wouldn't you believe that the public thinks that Republicans are the dangerous ones?
But according to the poll, the public thinks Democrats are the dangerous ones.
That is totally opposite of the news, is it not?
Don't you get that same feeling that the news is all about the right-wing extremists and the Republicans?
But when you ask the public, they're like, uh, Democrats look pretty dangerous to me.
Yeah. Now, all of the answers are around one quarter, so that doesn't work for this one.
But here's the most interesting part.
If you asked how many people...
Well, the people who said that Russia was the biggest threat, 31% of Democrats say Russia's biggest threat, but only 12% of Republicans.
So a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans and who they say is the foreign threat.
The Republicans say China, 35 to Democrats, 16.
Like, big difference, right?
So Republicans think China's the problem, and Democrats think Russia is the problem.
Why? Why?
Now, we understand why Democrats and Republicans disagree on domestic stuff, because on domestic stuff, They just revert to the team, so there's no reasoning going on.
But why would there be a difference between the parties?
because we're all looking at the same stuff, aren't we?
Yeah, so it's probably a Trump effect.
Probably a Trump effect, right?
Because if they think Russia likes Trump, then they don't like Russia.
And it's also a Trump effect because Trump is tougher on China than on Russia.
So it makes sense.
Trump convinced a lot of people that China was the bigger thing.
Is there any influence you're forgetting?
Is there anybody, let's say, besides Trump, who Republicans would be more likely to listen to than Democrats, and who may have been telling you that China is the biggest threat?
Yeah, Tucker Carlson.
And me. Now, I call it the Scott effect, because I did set out to...
Change the public opinion exactly the way it has changed.
But Democrats don't listen to me.
So whatever influence I had was probably on one side.
Now, I don't know how to, like, unpack, like, who had the most impact.
It's got to be Trump, right?
But beyond that, I don't know.
I just know that whenever I tell you I'm going to do something, it seems to happen, and even I don't know why.
Like, it looks like a coincidence.
Who knows? Who knows?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I believe this brings us to the end of our prepared notes.
Was there anything I neglected?
How about your own eyes and ears?
Don't believe those. He's an MBA, not an economist.
You talking about me? I'm both.
I have a degree in economics.
Did we find out if Pence is running or not?
Yeah, there was some confusion about that.
Maybe he filed, but I don't know.
Maybe filing doesn't mean you're running.
PSA about Jesus being a refugee?
Didn't see that. Scott, our intel agencies are our biggest problem.
That's reasonably likely.
It's got reframing syndrome.
Thank you.
Oh, gratitude.
Right. Thank you. So we're going to show some gratitude to people and things.
Anybody have anybody that they want to throw into the mix?
Is there anything that you feel a little extra gratitude for?
Let's say something we would recognize, the rest of us.
What kind of? I've got the Clapton Strato.
Your wife? The internet?
Well, thank you.
I appreciate what you say about me.
Well, we appreciate each other.
I'll take that as a given.
Appreciate the Constitution.
I'll join you on that one.
I'm going to appreciate the founders of the Constitution.
They did a hell of a job.
It's hard to imagine anybody doing a better job on anything than the Constitution.
It's amazing. Elon Musk.
How about some appreciation for Elon Musk?
I appreciate the hell out of him.
Because I do think that he's doing what he's doing for larger purposes.
I don't think he bought Twitter to make money.
Like, I really don't.
So, huge appreciation for that.
Will he be perfect?
Will he never make a mistake?
Of course not.
But he's pretty transparent, and I'll take that.
With a maple neck.
Oh, okay. Aw.
Thank you. I'm glad I triggered some improvements.
I would like to also show appreciation for the independent podcasters, who I think are saving us, honestly.
Imagine what the world would be like without the independent podcasters.
That's a scary world.
Because everything we'd know would be sort of coming from the news.
That'd be terrible.
Yeah. Joe Rogan, again.
National treasure.
Joe Rogan is willing to take the hits, and he's national treasure.
How about internet dads?
Yeah. I have an appreciation for the internet dads who are trying to keep the world from going off the rails.
Right. Your Tim Pools, appreciation for that.
Viva. Yep.
V.D. Hanson. Joe Rogan, we mentioned.
Yep. Lex Friedman.
Cernovich. Mike Cernovich.
Naval. Jordan Peterson.
Yeah, very... Megyn Kelly.
Dave Rubin. All very...
Michael Malice. Trigonometry?
Yeah, these are great ones. All right, I have to say one more thing about Andrew Tate.
So yesterday I saw one of his clips, which he does brilliantly, by the way.
So if I ever suggest that he's unskilled, that you heard it wrong, he has a lot of skill, and he's pulling it together in a very amusing way.
But one of the things he says is that marriage is for idiots, basically, if you're a man.
If you're a man, getting married is basically just a sucker's play.
It's just stupid at this point.
And I'm not saying that I'll agree with that or disagree with that, but he's putting that out there.
And here's the part that's interesting.
He's not alone. It's one of the biggest emerging themes on social media is that marriage doesn't make sense for men.
Ever. It's just like a sucker's play.
And nobody had been saying it directly before.
So that's a value that Andrew Tate is adding to the conversation, just because he says it directly.
Now, just to be very clear here, I'm not saying you should follow Andrew Tate's advice on anything.
I like to point this out.
He smokes cigars and drinks whiskey and gives you health advice.
I mean, just...
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just observing.
Do whatever you want with that.
He also gives a lot of relationship advice, but doesn't seem to be in one.
So, that's just an observation.
He seems to have multiple children, but not in any marriage situation.
Now, how often does he see his children?
Well, that's his business, not ours, right?
Totally his business. But you should at least be aware that the people giving you advice may not have solved their own problems.
Just be aware of who's giving you advice.
And I would say the same thing for me, by the way.
If I ever give you relationship advice, you should throw it in my face.
You have full authority to say, how did it work for you, Scott?
To which I say, got me.
Got me. Right.
Yeah. So I'm not going to be a hypocrite about that.
Like, if I could figure out any of this stuff, I'd figure it out and then I'd share it with you.
I swear. I swear.
If I could figure out how to make relationships work, I would tell you.
Like, I wouldn't keep that to myself, I would tell you.
But I don't think anybody's worked it out.
And I think the basic reason is that we did not evolve to be in a steady state.
That we evolved to be, you know, in continuous transition, where you're eating, you know, eating your babies and creating new babies and stuff like that.
So we're not meant to find our happy place and then just sit in the pocket.
We're meant to be continually unhappy so that we're scratching to get something that'll make us happy.
That's how we move forward. My relationship advice is the reason you're happily married?
Well, maybe I got lucky on that one.
Maybe I got lucky on one.
No yay talk today.
Yeah, yay's been kind of quiet.
I'll talk about him if he gets interested.
Have you banned any words in chat?
I don't think so.
You got divorced?
Wait, that didn't happen, did it?
Did that actually happen?
I can't tell if you're kidding.
Oh, you're laughing, right?
Okay, good. Good, just kidding.
I see questions about Christina, but I don't want to answer any personal questions about her.
You understand that, right?
I'll answer personal questions about me sometimes, but I don't want to answer a personal question about somebody else.
So don't ask, I can't answer those questions.
Guitar is a Stratocaster.
I thought I would probably practice better if I had a better guitar.
Are you saying Tate does not drink, he's a Muslim?
Is that a recent thing? Anyway, I think I'm going to retire from the business Criticizing an opinion person.
Because he's writing in his diary.
All right. It's electric.
Electric guitar. I didn't see anybody...
No, on Christmas, I just...
It was just a day.
So I did learn that it's the C word, apparently, that gets me demonetized.
So yesterday I got demonetized almost instantly, as soon as I used the F word.
But then they reversed it pretty quickly upon human review.
I think the ones that don't get reversed is when I've used the C word.
But I don't know if that trend is 100% pattern or not.
How are the drum lessons?
Locals, people, I was just asked, how are the drum lessons?
Do you think I have an answer for that?
Well, YouTube, we're going to play you out.
You start.
This is me and my drum teacher jamming.
We'll get to the fun part.
fun parts coming yeah definitely Charlie watch
yeah
I'll see you next time.
So that's what 14 months of drum lessons gets you.
uh Once a week, 45 minutes.
So that was my guitar slash drum teacher who was jamming.
Now what you don't know is that that wasn't an actual song.
That was just me practicing beats, and my guitar teacher can play along with anything.
So I just laid down a bunch of different beats, and then he adjusts to the beat, and then we jam for a while to a new beat, and then I change the beat and stuff.
I can't even explain to you how much fun that was.
I probably enjoyed...
So that was just yesterday?
I probably enjoyed that two minutes as much as I've enjoyed anything non-sexual my entire life.
You just watched two of the best minutes of my whole life.
And part of it is I've said this before, I have insane levels of, just insane levels of planning and determination, which has served me well.
And so from probably the age of, I don't know, 10 years old, I wanted to be able to do that, like exactly that, from the age of 10 years old.
And couldn't do it until, you know, my mid-60s.
And I'll tell you a specific thing that sparked it.
I walked into the gym of my little high school in upstate New York and they were preparing for a dance that evening and some of the high school kids in my tiny little town had somehow gotten instruments and taught themselves to play.
So there was a band They were all self-taught.
They just listened to records and said, well, do this.
Somehow they learned how to play guitars and drums.
And the drummer was a new kid in town, Dave Huber.
Now, I hope he's still alive, and I hope somehow he sees this.
David Huber.
Because I want him to remember, in case he remembers the moment, So there's a bunch of high school kids.
We're milling around on the gym floor.
And the dance hasn't started.
The dance will be hours later.
But the band is just getting set up on the stage where we can all see them.
The drummer, David Huber, sits down on the drums and starts playing.
And just starts knocking out this whole drum solo.
And everybody just stopped.
Because we didn't know he had any talent.
He wasn't like a good student or an athlete.
He was just somebody who knew how to play the drums really well.
And he starts ripping out these drums, and our entire impression of him, I think, as one, changed.
Because he was a new kid.
We didn't know who he was.
We knew he wasn't an athlete, and we know he wasn't doing that great in school, so that's what we knew about him.
And he sits down on the drums and he just kills it.
Did he get laid? Oh yeah.
After that day, he did great.
He did great after that day.
And I had a moment.
I stood there in that gym and I said to myself, someday I'm going to feel that.
That whatever it is he's feeling up there, because he knew he was moving the whole room, like he controlled the whole room just by sitting down on the drums.
And I said to myself, I'm going to be that guy.
I want to feel what that was.
And I just spent well over 50 years trying to figure out how I could open my schedule enough that I could do that just once.
And that was it. You saw the culmination of 50 years Literally, 50 years to do that for two minutes.
How happy do you think I was yesterday?
And still. Like, so happy.
You rarely get to achieve a 50-year plan.
I mean, that's pretty unusual.
There it was. Now, the reason I had to wait so long is because I was still drawing every day with my hand.
And I didn't want to do anything that would, you know, first of all, take a lot of time, but also I didn't want to ruin my hands.
So now I'm semi-retired.
My art director does the drawing for the Dilbert comic.
So, you know, I thought I had a little hand resource available.
Anyway, so that's where that is.
And I'm taking up the guitar as well, seeing if I can have any progress there.
I'm up to four chords.
Four chords played very slowly, with some of the strings not entirely making the right noise.
Dilberdard is much better now.
Better than it was. And certainly my art director is better than I am.
Which chords?
C, G, E minor, and D. Guitar may take longer than drums.
Well, maybe, but I'm told that if you can get those four chords, you can do a whole lot of songs.
So it might be that the guitar can get me to playing faster, but all you would need to know for drums, I'm pretty close.
Like the total body of skill and information about drumming, I'm probably 80% there.
But I'd be able to play entire songs on the guitar being 10% there.
Does that sound right for you guitar players?
Like, I could play a song only 10% capable.
The other 90% takes the rest of your life.
With drums, you could get to 80% in 14 months.
And then the other 20%, you know, the rest of my life.
And a capo for other keys?
Capo? Yeah.
Try walk, don't run.
Stairway to heaven?
Yeah, that'll take a while.
At the M27.
What? All right.
I bet you...
Yeah.
Now here's my theory about why musicians get a lot of action.
So this is related to something I've said before.
I believe that everything that we think and do and the way we act as human beings is a projection from our mating instinct.
That everything you do is because of some connection to mating.
You might not be aware of it, but even the clothes you wear or sending a signal, the job you take, basically everything.
It's just a mating projection.
And that means that women Well, it doesn't mean it, but women, I think, are evolved to spot characteristics in men that are, let's say, proxies for good genes.
So if you see somebody who's tall and strong, you say, oh, probably good genes.
Somebody who's healthy, somebody who has good symmetry, which we call beauty, good genes.
But if you see somebody who's an athlete, You say, ooh, those look like some good genes.
If you see somebody who's unusually smart, good genes.
But I think musicians also project some kind of at least mental and physical capability and also ability to work hard without immediate reward.
You can't really be a musician unless you're willing to put in a ton of work without even an initial reward.
That's a very good indicator of future capabilities.
Very good. So I think that music, you know, I do it because I think I like it.
Like, that's how my brain works.
My brain says, oh, you like the sound of Ed, and it's a challenge, and all these things.
But I don't think that's why I'm doing it.
I actually honestly believe that my bass influence is just the mating instinct.
It's a way to show off.
And when I told you the story of how I got interested, it was literally because I wanted to show off.
I feel I'm very connected to my mating instinct because I never fool myself that my higher level thinking is guiding anything.
I always think my higher level thinking is just rationalizations for shit I wanted to do.
And the stuff I want to do is just related to my mating instinct.
Either directly or indirectly.
And by the way, drumming, I believe, also has an evolutionary connection.
So here's another theory.
I don't know how much Faith's put in this theory, but there's a theory that drumming and dancing had the same evolutionary purpose.
Which was to make an individual person who would be helpless compared to, let's say, a lion or a big animal, if they're with a group, and the group is playing in rhythm, and they're moving in rhythm, and they're standing together, then an animal that sees that is going to say, oh, shit, that's one big animal.
Like, I could take one human easily, but I can't take this big group of people.
And likewise, if you agree to attack another tribe...
Would you attack a tribe that could put on a musical show where they're dancing to the rhythm?
Because as soon as I saw that, I'd say, um, they're coordinated.
I do not want to attack anybody who's coordinated, right?
Because that's a sign of capability, coordination.
So I think drumming and dancing were always a defensive habit.
And that we've come to love it, so we think we do it because we love it.
But I think it's all based on self-defense, which is ultimately related to your mating instinct.
Because there's no point in mating if the lion is going to eat your baby.
So it's all related. I'm dancing with the stars.
That'd be the worst thing.
Me on Dancing with the Stars?
Terrible idea. Bam Bam wants us to know, quote, I'm not wearing underwear.
