Episode 2011 Scott Adams: Killer Eggs, Romantic Robots, My Third Act, Madonna's Face, FBI vs America
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Robosexuals & robot brothels
GOP wearing AR-15 lapel pins
Jonathan Turley perfectly explains free speech
Senator John Cornyn convinced pot is harmful
How Dave Smith calculated long-COVID risk
How to identify a Fang Fang
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's never been a better time.
If you'd like to upgrade your situation, all you need to make this moment one of the greatest moments of your entire life, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a sign, 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 of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
go.
Now, for you members of YouTube and anybody on the Locals platform who is just joining us, if you had been a local subscriber this morning, and if you had been early on the On to the live stream.
You would have had the pleasure of watching me destroy my printer on my hard floor.
There's not much left of it, but I think you'd like to... Well, I won't show you what's left, but there's... I'm sort of sitting within a debris field here.
I'm trying to figure out, because I'm not wearing shoes, I'm trying to figure out...
I have to get out of the debris field when the live stream is over.
I think I'm going to have to climb over my desk to go get some shoes to go clean up the debris.
Now, a lot of you are saying to yourself, Scott, do you have some kind of like terrible, I don't know, some kind of anger problem?
Not anymore.
I did have an anger problem.
About ten minutes ago I had a hell of an anger problem.
Now I just have a broken printer problem.
But anger?
Totally gone.
Totally gone.
Do a lot of people waste time going to anger management programs?
No.
Just destroy the thing that's bothering you.
Not humans.
Not humans.
Not dogs.
Not animals.
But if it's an inanimate object, At some point, the correct answer is to destroy it on your hard floor.
I don't make the rules, that's just the only thing you can do that works.
So today I'll be working from my notes on my phone, which won't be nearly as dynamic, but it's the best we can do for today.
I'll see if I can get myself a new printer.
The biggest story of the day is what the hell's wrong with Madonna?
What the hell's wrong with Madonna?
What was the awards program that was on last night?
Was that the Grammys?
Was it the Grammys?
Alright, am I the first one to make this joke?
If I'm the first one to make this joke, there's something wrong with the world.
And it goes like this.
Wind up, wind up, wind up.
It's called the Grammys.
Why else would Madonna be there?
It's called the Grammys.
All the grandmothers are there.
Now, did nobody else make that connection?
I can't be the first.
I can't be the first.
Yes, it's the Grannies.
From the Grammys to the Grannies Award.
Some people said that the entire thing was satanic.
Did I miss something?
I saw on social media today, people saying that artist Sam Smith did some kind of satanic presentation.
And then I saw their outfits, and the outfits did look like they came from the basement of some pizza parlor, if you know what I mean.
And here's the thing that I... And then also one of the big applause scenes was apparently there was the first trans woman winner.
I saw it only on a clip.
That's what happened, right?
Was it the first trans woman who won a Grammy?
And there was lots of clapping and people were quite happy about that.
And I've got another story that's gonna tie into that pretty well.
But here's my take.
To me it looks like Madonna's on drugs.
What do you think?
Is that what's going on?
Because it doesn't look like insanity.
It doesn't look like any kind of dementia.
And it doesn't look like somebody who's not on drugs.
So I think the people who are making fun of her physical appearance are sort of missing the plot.
The physical appearance is really an outcome of whatever else is going on.
And I feel just... What I see is someone who can't be helped.
Because she's a free person, and she's Madonna.
So nobody's going to embarrass her, right?
It's impossible to embarrass her.
Nobody's going to shame her, nobody's going to pressure her, because she's Madonna.
But somebody needs to.
This is one of those situations where it looks like, and we can't read minds so we're speculating quite a bit here, but it looks like she needs some help.
But she's in this extraordinarily unique situation where she can't be helped because she's Madonna.
And I feel like that's the fatal flaw of a lot of the celebrities who end up dead from overdoses and whatnot, that nobody can help them.
At some point, they're just unhelpful.
And one of the reasons that I'm tuned into this is that I'm the, let's say I'm the poor man's version of this.
Who the hell is going to tell me what I should do when I'm 90 and I'm out of my freaking mind?
Who?
That's right, Erica.
Erica will tell me.
But will I believe Erica?
Because I'll be out of my mind.
So it doesn't matter how well-meaning or smart or helpful somebody is, if you're not going to listen to them.
What are the odds that I'm going to listen to somebody's advice when I'm 90?
Assuming I still have assets and I can still live independently, I'm not going to take anybody's advice.
I don't think.
And I think I would, at the moment, So at the moment, I still have enough of my faculties that I know, oh, that sounds like good advice, and I'll incorporate that.
But I don't think I'll be able to do that forever.
So what the hell is going to happen to people like me?
I'm going to have too much power relative to my sanity if I live long enough.
So it is something I literally wonder how that's going to work out.
All right, the other important issue of the day.
There's nothing but important issues today.
These are the big ones.
Eggs.
Eggs.
Are they the healthiest food you can eat?
A great source of protein?
Or are they serial killers?
And if you want to spell C-E-R, that would be sufficient pun for this morning.
That would be okay.
I'm not going to do that, but you can.
And so I did a Google search, because whatever Google Decides to highlight?
Feels like that's the official, what the government wants you to know.
Doesn't it feel like that?
Because we've seen how much the FBI and Congress can influence all the social medias.
So if Google summarizes one of the answers, and you know how Google summarizes some answers?
If it's something that people ask a lot, they'll put a little category with their own official summary of the answer.
Well, Google's official summary of the answer of whether eggs are dangerous for your health Half an egg a day is associated with more deaths from heart disease, cancer, and all causes.
All causes.
All causes.
If you eat half an egg a day, your odds of falling off a ladder apparently go through the roof.
If you eat a half an egg a day, the odds of being a victim of a drive-by shooting All causes.
It does say all causes.
Your odds of dying on a trip to Mars?
Probably up as much as 24%.
That's just a guess.
But it's way up.
So that's what Google says, and you can certainly believe Google, because they're going to use science and stuff.
So half an egg a day, it'll probably, it'll freaking kill you.
Or, or, as Ivor Cummins sent me in response to this tweet, The story of an 88-year-old man who ate 25 eggs a day for many, many years, and they studied him, and he had normal cholesterol.
He had normal cholesterol.
He ate 25 eggs a day.
Now, I don't want to tell you that studying one 88-year-old man who eats 25 eggs a day is science.
It's not exactly science.
There could be individual differences.
Maybe some people are just natural egg eaters or something.
But are you blown away by the fact that we don't know if eggs are good for you or bad for you?
Everything is just COVID shots.
Once you have that frame in your head of the pandemic and all the COVID mandates and stuff and the vaccines, even the egg looks like a COVID vaccination to me.
Like my head just can't get out of that model.
I'm stuck in that model.
So I don't believe anything about eggs.
I don't know that they're good or bad.
I have no way to know.
Do you?
So what do you do?
Do you eat eggs and make yourself healthier or do you eat eggs and Have a 24% greater chance of dying!
Or whatever it is.
How do you make that decision?
Well, I have a... I have a suggested possibility, but we'll get to that.
Here's what I think.
I think almost nobody eats an egg by itself.
Am I right?
The only person I know who eats an egg by itself is this 88-year-old guy who eats 25 of them a day.
Because I think that's probably all he eats.
But don't you eat it with toast?
Right?
I feel like the people who eat an egg a day are eating other stuff that has cholesterol in it.
So it might be a little hard to tease out just the egg part.
You wonder if they did that right.
Anyway, I have nothing to say about eggs, except we don't know.
The most important story of the day is that there's a company that's trying to roll out a chain of sex robot brothels.
That bears repeating.
Sex robot brothels.
Now, if you think, well, that'll never work, it already did.
The reason that they want to do a chain of them is that the first one must have been a big hit.
If you're surprised by that, if you're surprised by that, you don't really understand men.
Let me just say that.
If there are any women who don't understand why some number of men are, you know, happily going to sex robots, you really don't understand men.
Because it's very, very understandable.
If you take a heterosexual man and put him in prison, How fast does he become flexible?
Really fast.
When that person gets out of prison, are they heterosexual again?
Yeah, usually, immediately.
Yeah, right back to heterosexual.
So it turns out that men are very flexible when they have that one need that needs to get met.
And so, they're trying to put one in Houston, which I think is the funniest thing.
Of all the places you would put your sex robot brothel, I think Houston is the funniest.
Now what I love about this story is when people have to think too much.
That always gets funny.
And one of the things that people have to think about is that our laws do not make it, well in most cases, I think most states it's legal For a human to get busy with, let's say, a sex toy.
It just happens to look like a person and act like a person.
A little bit.
So I think this is going to be a big hit if it's legal.
But why?
Let me ask you.
Do you think it should be illegal for a human to have sex with a robot?
How many think that should be illegal?
Mostly say no.
Should not be.
What happens if it eliminates reproductive processes?
Would you change your mind?
See, I think we're going to get pushed into a situation where our reproduction rate is so low that some politician is going to say, huh, maybe part of the reason the reproduction rate is too low is because of the alternatives.
These sex robots are too good.
We're going to have to get rid of the sex robots so that people want to reproduce.
That's going to happen.
That's definitely going to happen.
All right.
But here's my prediction.
I was reading even today the article that was about the sex robot brothels.
You would not be surprised to hear that the journalist, and I won't even name him, the journalist seemed to be sneering in his attitude about the people who would be robo-sexuals.
Can we call them robo-sexuals?
People who like robots as their sexual preference?
Robosexuals.
I'm going to coin the term if nobody's already done it.
Robosexuals.
So here's my prediction.
Robosexuals are now the one sexual preference category that you can, well, I think maybe the furriest people still make fun of.
But there are some groups you can still make fun of.
And so articles about sex robot brothels, definitely you're going to throw some shade on the customers, don't you think?
Don't you think the customers are going to get a little shade every time they talk about it?
Yes, they will.
And do you think there'll be a point where those customers organize and insist that they add the R for robosexual to the LBGTQ plus blockchain?
Because now the whole LGBTQ things become like a blockchain.
Where you never destroy the history, so it'll always be at least LGBTQ.
But now we're adding letters to it, as we find more discriminated classes.
And I think the robo-sexuals are going to have to add an R. So someday, God willing, the Grammys will not just be about your grandmother, but will also be a robo-sexual winning an award, and people will cheer.
And they'll say, you are so brave.
You're so brave to have sex with robots and be out of the closet.
Would that be the right term?
Yeah.
So that's coming.
The GOP apparently have decided that in their gun control debate that they're having right now, That many of them are wearing an AR-15 pin instead of the American flag pin, which they often wear.
The Republicans.
Now, what do you think of that?
Is that a good play?
Because the AR-15 looks like the gun itself.
It's the little pin they have on their lapel.
So a number of them are wearing it.
I don't know what percentage are wearing it.
Good idea or bad idea?
All right, here's how you analyze it from a persuasion perspective.
You ask yourself, what's the upside?
You ask yourself, what's the downside?
How many extra votes will the Republicans get because they wore a gun on their lapel?
Extra votes?
Zero.
Right, right.
And we can be pretty confident of that.
No matter how low your opinion of people in Congress, I believe, because I have faith in them, Almost nobody has ever based a vote on somebody's lapel pin.
So would you agree there's no upside?
Would you agree?
No upside.
Let's talk about the downside.
It created a whole new cycle which makes Republicans look like the real issue is love of guns as opposed to love of the Constitution and America.
The flag pin says, I like everything America stands for.
That includes the second amendment prominently.
Right?
The American flag is the exact logo for the second amendment.
It's not even off by like 1%.
It's right on target.
It's the exact message.
It's America.
We do this.
As soon as you make it about the gun, you lost the argument.
You come to me and say, I want guns to be legal because I love my gun so much I'm wearing it as clothing.
I will say, nope, nope.
You brought me no argument.
My argument wins.
But if you bring me the American flag, you high grounded me.
That's the high ground.
You can't get higher than nationalism within the country.
Okay, so here's my prediction, which can be, I guess, falsified.
I don't know the answer to this, and you might already.
So, I promise you I don't already know the answer.
It might be a public record, but I haven't seen it.
I promise you I don't know the answer.
I predict that Matt Gaetz will not wear that lapel pin.
And the prediction is based on the fact that he's playing at a higher level of understanding of persuasion.
I cannot wrap my head around the possibility that Matt Gaetz would be dumb enough to wear the lapel pin instead of the American flag pin, which is obviously the right answer.
Now, somebody go check that, because probably we'll know.
Yeah, the news will probably cover who wore and who didn't.
But my prediction is he's operating at a higher level and would not fall for that ridiculous bad imagery.
Let's see.
So now you have something you can test and call me wrong about.
Let's talk about Jonathan Turley, who you should be following.
He's talking about how the House Select Committee is holding his first.
So he's got an article in The Hill and also on his own website.
So the Republicans now, with their new majority in the House, are going to be looking into the weaponization of government, as they like to say.
And it's a variety of things, but one of the things we're looking into is the FBI influencing social media.
And we know at this point, we know that the FBI really, really have their finger all over Twitter.
Possibly legally.
In fact, probably.
Probably legally.
In the sense that they do have free speech, they can talk to anybody they want, they can express any opinion they want.
But we don't like it.
If all of that was legal, and I think it might have all been legal, the question is, should it be?
And should we allow it?
And that's a different question.
But one of the things that Turley said in his article I had been struggling to communicate and I'd failed completely and he nails it, which is why you should follow him, right?
He has a uniquely good ability to write and just put things into simple terms.
Alright, so here's his point.
He said, for years many politicians and pundits have dismissed free speech concerns I'm thinking of this FBI talking to Twitter thing.
They've dismissed free speech concerns by noting that the First Amendment only applies to the government.
So long as corporations do the censoring, they contend, it is not a free speech problem.
And then Turley says, this obviously is wrong on several fronts.
Here he does a better job of making this point than I ever have.
He said, the First Amendment is not the exclusive measure of free speech.
Corporate censorship of political commentaries or news stories are denials of free speech that harm our democratic system.
And I'm thinking, why did I struggle so much to say this simple thing?
This is exactly my point, which I've never said clearly, which is that the First Amendment is not the only measure of free speech.
Because free speech is not just a thing we put in the Constitution.
Free speech is why we're here.
It's not just the Constitution.
It's the whole game.
The whole game is free speech.
Everything we do that's right comes from free speech.
Like, you couldn't have the free market, you couldn't have anything.
So, I don't know why it took Turley to explain my own opinion to me, but when you see it, this one sentence is just perfect, I keep reading it over and over to myself.
The First Amendment is not the exclusive measure of free speech.
Just remember that sentence.
How well-constructed that one sentence is.
Because if he said it almost any other way, it wouldn't have hit as well.
So that's a really high level of writing skill.
All right, that's why you should follow him.
Even if you didn't like his opinions, you should follow him as a writer.
All right, Turkey had a... The topic is going from Turley to Turkey.
Turley to Turkey.
Turkey, the country, has an enormous earthquake, 7.8 magnitude, and it's pretty bad.
The pictures from over there are just insanely bad.
But one picture really caught my attention.
Which is, somehow there are a bunch of smartphone videos of a ten-story building that looked like it was completely intact and then just dissolved into the basement.
And they got that from the moment before it happened until it was gone.
It was all on video.
And I looked at that and I said to myself, now somehow they probably knew it was weakened.
They might have known it was weakened by the earthquake.
But I didn't see any obvious signs of weakness.
It looked intact until it just disintegrated.
And I'll tell you, I have never been more thankful for government building codes.
Am I right?
Like looking for the positive and the tragedy here.
That building would not have collapsed in America.
There are probably almost no buildings, in an earthquake zone anyway, left in America that would have collapsed like that.
And that wasn't the oldest building.
It's not like it was an ancient building.
It looks like it was, you know, it might have been 40, 50 years old, but it was, you know, in modern times.
Haiti was the same thing, yeah.
Yeah, every once in a while you just have to say, yeah, your government may be doing a lot of terrible things, and they are, but U.S.
building codes have kept us safer.
I believe that we should have a federal building code, and it should be taken away.
I think states should have their own building code, but there should be a higher level one, a federal one.
And the federal one should allow for more experimental stuff.
People want to experiment a little bit, but the local zoning codes are a little restrictive.
If you had one good, tight federal one, so somebody could say, look, I'm either going to follow all the local ones, or I have an exception, so the exception will allow me to do just the federal one.
Now, the federal one would still have all the good stuff in it.
It just wouldn't be stupid.
Right?
It'll just allow you a little more flexibility.
But you still have to, you know, earthquake-proof it and, you know, do your best to make it safe.
I think that's what we need.
But it's hard to sell because, you know, it just looks like it's regulations on top of regulations, when in fact it would be the opposite.
Alright, so I saw a tweet this morning from Senator John Cornyn about the health impacts of weed.
And his tweet said, So there continue to be more stories about the good and bad of weed legalization and use.
And here's the problem.
We can't really measure the risk of either the benefits or the costs.
Right?
We actually don't know.
And the reason we don't know is that the tests seem to be all over the place.
You know, there'd be a test that people are getting more sickness, but then somebody will check the mortality and they find it's the same.
You know, could it be true that more people who smoke weed get emphysema, and yet the death rate is the same as everybody else?
Could be.
It could be because maybe weed is giving some benefits to some types of people, while being worse for other types of people.
Maybe it sort of balances out.
Now here's the biggest thing.
We, as a human species, we like to treat mental health and physical health like they're two separate things.
But they're not.
If you have bad mental health, you're just as unhappy, just as crippled, as if you had some physical problem.
Or could be.
So, if you look at mental health and physical health as one ball, how do you measure the people who are benefiting from weed?
Because surely some people are worse off smoking marijuana.
I think that's just a given.
Because you can just observe it.
You don't need any science for that, do you?
Would everybody agree with that statement?
Some people are worse off with weed.
I think that's just guaranteed.
Would you also accept the possibility that some people, and it might be a very small set of people, some people are better off.
Let's say some people, you know, they don't have to worry about their career for whatever reason.
Maybe they're independently wealthy or they're an artist like me.
And they, you know, don't operate heavy equipment and their family doesn't care and it's legal in their state.
So you can imagine a special case where somebody's better off, mentally especially.
And you can imagine a case where people are worse off.
So how do you make a law?
This is the same problem that I note with guns.
When we have the gun control debate, it's all stupid.
It's just all stupid.
Here's the only thing you need to know about guns.
They make some people safer, and they make some people less safe.
Does anybody disagree with that?
Yeah.
And we're all lying when we talk about guns.
Unless you say that.
Unless you say what I just said.
You're just lying.
Here's the lie.
That one of those two conditions, either guns are legal or they're restricted, the lie is that one of those is the better situation.
It's not.
It's better for some people.
It's worse for other people.
You can't.
There's no way around that.
No way around it.
Now, I understand the arguments that even if it's bad for people, you know, you want that right because it protects the country and whatnot.
But you need to be at least honest about it.
If you can't say directly, you know, gun freedom is good for some people and it's definitely bad for other people, But, there might be one argument where it's good for everybody.
And this is one where we all go stupid.
Or we go Democrat, it's the same thing.
In this case.
The Democrats are just stupid about guns.
Because they don't understand how they would have any impact in keeping America free.
With my audience, I don't even need to explain that, do I?
Because they always say, well, what's your AR-15 going to do against my jets and my nuclear weapons?
And I'm not going to go through the whole explanation again, how those guns would not be used against your nuclear weapons.
They would be used against your police force.
Ask the police how well they would do in a fight against their own citizens.
How well do you think they'd do?
Because you can't have a big old fascist organization unless you own the police.
Owning the military doesn't get it done.
You have to own the police.
And the police are outgunned.
We outgun the police, I don't tend to one.
If the police decided to join the fascists, the citizens would surround the police department and light it up.
It would last an hour.
And you would have local control because you would have wiped out the police.
Assuming the police became fascists somewhat instantly.
And I don't think the police would become the fascists.
I think the police would join the citizens.
That's what I think.
I don't think our police are this close to becoming fascists.
I think they're this close to becoming on the side of Americans because largely that's how they were trained.
So anyway, the gun control debate, I consider it a phony debate because the things we talk about are just pure bullshit.
It's just people not understanding how guns would protect the country, and people not understanding that the guns are good for some people, definitely, on average, right?
And bad for some people, definitely.
Definitely.
So if you know it's good for some people and bad for some people, how do you make the decision?
The way I would make the decision in this context, because you can't weigh those two things and it's different groups, etc., is I would go to the higher level of liberty, exactly.
Yeah, the tiebreaker is liberty.
And I think, you know, I wouldn't say that that's based on logic or science, but it's certainly based on a preference for how civilization should be organized.
My preference is, if you can't agree on the details, you default to liberty.
Does that make sense?
If you can't agree on the cost-benefit, default to freedom.
That feels like the process, it just makes more sense.
Yeah.
But you won't see that argument because it makes sense.
So when I talked about the documentary effect where all documentaries are persuasive even if they shouldn't be, Elon Musk commented on it and agreed with that being a risk and other things as well.
And I got two million views on that tweet.
So if you wondered, what does an Elon Musk comment on your tweet do for you?
Two million views.
Now, I just have to say something about this whole internet dad thing.
I've talked before, and again, internet dad is inclusive of all genders and non-binaries and everything.
So the dad thing is just sort of a shorthand for an adult who is taking some responsibility, I guess.
Now, I think that this whole dad effect is the biggest unreported power shift in the country.
The number of kids who were influenced by Andrew Tate is huge.
It's huge.
Whatever you want to say about him, his influence was huge.
You know, Jordan Peterson, his influence, huge.
Huge.
Elon Musk, his influence, huge.
My influence?
You can decide for yourself.
But in this case, Because one internet dad agreed with the point.
Two million people saw it, and it's two million people who would follow Elon Musk.
So it's a certain type of, let's say, more informed, people running the country kind of people.
So every time you see this effect, just watch how it's getting bigger.
And I would also argue, That we're either at or near the point where if the people I call the internet dads, and you know who they are, right, you can make your own list, are the people who are somewhat independent, and they talk about political stuff and social stuff, and they're not gonna just come down on one side all the time.
They're gonna independently think about it.
And I think that group is just getting more and more powerful because other groups are harder to trust.
The internet dads, I honestly think, are mostly in it for the right reason.
Would you agree?
Would you agree that... Make your own list, a mental list of who the internet dads are.
And again, you could add women and LGBTQ and robosexuals and non-binaries.
By the way, why do the non-binaries not get an N?
Shouldn't LGBTQ have an N for non-binary?
It's got a plus.
Or maybe they already added it.
I don't know.
It's hard to keep up.
Yeah, Joe Rogan would be one of the internet dads.
So keep an eye on those internet dads.
All right.
We have reached Act 3 in Scott's public performance.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Does everybody know what public performance I've been putting on for the last, I don't know, few weeks?
So it's about the pandemic and the so-called COVID shots.
And we've boiled it down to the third act.
So in the third act, Scott is wildly criticized by all of his critics.
The critics have been proven completely right.
Scott has been proven completely wrong.
And now he must pay.
He must pay.
So that's the third act.
Now, in a movie, the third act is where the protagonist, the subject of the movie, is in such a problem that that person cannot possibly get out of that problem.
The viewer of this movie says, ah, there's no way to get out of that.
You're dead.
But then, as if by magic, the protagonist escapes.
We have reached Act 3.
I promised you it was coming.
I told you there was something coming.
See, you were just getting all mad because you were watching the first part of the movie, and you didn't know it was a movie.
If it's just the first part, that would just make you mad.
There's no relief.
But we're reaching the part where I try to escape from the third act trap.
And comic Dave Smith, who may or may not have some disagreements with me on long COVID, I asked him how he calculated the risk of long COVID.
And by the way, that is the solution to the third act.
It's one question.
How did you calculate the risk of long COVID?
And the question that we're trying to settle is, did the people who got the right answer about the COVID shots, did they use a better process?
A rational process that is superior to mine?
If they did, then we should learn from them, especially I should learn from them.
If they did not, then it was guessing.
And I characterize it as guessing.
And then allowed people to defend themselves.
And after they defended themselves, I followed up with one question.
How did you calculate the odds of long COVID?
So comic Dave Smith had a podcast, which I tweeted, and you can search for it.
Just look for Dave Smith podcast.
And you could add my name if you want to see the episode.
I don't know why people still say, here's the URL.
Isn't it easier just to say, just Google these terms if it works every time?
I mean, if you Google comic Dave Smith and Scott Adams, the video pops right up.
So do that.
But nine minutes in, he and his co-host talk about how they handled the long COVID calculation.
Now, here's the setup.
If they used a rational process, to look at all the risks and all the upside and downside.
Even if they calculated it wrong, I would say that's a rational process.
Right?
Because you could make a, you know, you could have bad data or something.
But is it a rational process?
And my line for rational is if you simply considered all of the costs and all the benefits.
If there was a big cost or a big benefit that you just ignored, I would call that guessing.
In other words, if you thought, if you pretended you were doing a rational process, but one of the biggest parts of the decision you just ignored, that's just guessing.
It's just you think it's not, but it is.
Because you're guessing that the biggest variable doesn't matter.
So, comic Dave Smith and his co-host actually argued that the only thing you needed to know was that the government was completely Let's say not trustworthy.
To which I said, wait a minute.
If you're only looking at if the government is not trustworthy, you would have to say the government has never made a correct decision and there's never been a pharmaceutical drug they approved that was good for you.
Would anybody say that?
Would anybody say that every drug approved by the government is bad for you?
There's some chance that the government approves something that's good for you, right?
Is it zero?
I completely buy into the don't trust the government when they're rushed, don't trust the government when lots of money is involved, don't trust them when they show you their work and they say it looks sketchy, don't trust the government when they say we'll let Big Pharma hide their data for 75 years, don't trust the government when they say it usually takes five to ten years to know but this time we did it in six months or a year or whatever.
Right.
So Dave goes through all those reasons why you should not trust the government.
Do I agree with him?
Yes.
Yes.
Totally on the same page.
And here's how you know that people are hallucinating about me.
Who in the world would believe that I trusted scientists or the government?
Nobody did.
Did they?
I don't think anybody did.
They just took their best shot based on what they knew and what they didn't know.
So, comic Dave Smith admits that he looked at the distrust of government as his primary decision-making thing.
And when it came to long COVID, they said he believes it's a very low risk and impossible to calculate.
So what do you do when you believe something's a very low risk?
That was based on analysis?
No, that's a guess.
He basically argued in public that he didn't know that one of the biggest factors, so he acted like it doesn't exist.
And he said he thought the risk was similar to getting hit by lightning, and if something is a very low risk, it's reasonable to ignore it.
Do you know what else is a very low risk?
Vaccination injury, COVID injury, long COVID, all of it.
The entire domain is low risk stuff.
So we're trying to compare a low risk of vaccine injury to a low risk of COVID injury to a low risk of COVID death.
Right?
So his argument is that one of them is low risk, so you can't count it.
Is that analysis or is that guessing?
To me, that's just a laundered guess.
That's just a guess, because you don't know, so you just guessed.
And I think he says it directly.
That's the third act.
Now do you think he would be the only person to take the same tact to explain that the government should not have been trusted, and somehow, and here's the logic gap, somehow I'm an educated, well-informed person, and I'm the only person in the world who didn't understand that the government shouldn't be completely trusted in this context.
Who would believe that?
Who would believe that I'm an educated, well-informed person, but I'm the only person in the country who missed the fact when every day I talk about the government lying to us.
Every day.
Every day, for years, for about an hour a day, I spend some of that hour talking about how the government can't be trusted.
Do I not?
You tell me.
Do I not spend every day in public telling you the government can't be trusted?
And do I say that data on studies can totally be trusted?
No.
Every day, for years, I've told you that you can't trust any of the data about the pandemic.
Or much of anything else.
But being the most skeptical person you've ever met, Comic Dave Smith's best theory about why my opinion differs from him is that I didn't pay attention to anything that happened in the last two years.
That somehow I'd missed it all.
That's his working assumption, is that I missed all of it.
Uniquely.
And that if I'd paid more attention to one side of the argument, just one side of it, I could have gotten the right answer like he did.
But what I did was make the terrible mistake, apparently, of looking at all the risks and realizing that they were uncalculable.
And therefore, if you can't calculate the risks, you're guessing.
Comic Dave Smith says, if you can't calculate the risks, you're making a good decision by ignoring them.
Now, here's something that I should say more often.
If you're an expert, let's say you have some experience in decision making, you would say that looks crazy and irrational, right?
And I would guess that 100% of the engineers are saying that right now.
But here's something you should keep in mind.
Rational thinking is not a natural ability.
It's a learned skill.
Scientists are not born scientists.
They learn technique.
I too have learned how to compare things without leaving stuff out.
I've spent years of both educational attainment and corporate experience of knowing what not to leave out.
So there's nothing wrong with comic Dave Smith's brain.
Let me be as clear as possible.
He's a real smart guy.
He's a very smart guy who apparently cares a great deal about his country and the people in it.
That's all good.
That's all good.
You want more Dave Smiths.
Can we be clear about that?
The more Dave Smiths you have, the better the country is.
I said the same thing about Brett and Heather.
The more of them, the better.
So I don't have to agree with them to say that they're adding value.
They add a lot of value.
They add value by disagreeing with me.
I think they're disagreeing with me enhances all of your knowledge.
Because it, you know, inspires me to make my argument better, right?
So this is all good.
You're seeing, you're actually seeing the best part of America right now.
You're seeing free speech.
Nobody, nobody stopped, you know, Adam from saying, I'm sorry, Dave Smith from saying what he was saying.
Nobody stopped me from saying what I was saying.
And then you got to see what we both said, and then you can decide.
That's as good as it gets.
You're seeing the best.
All right, and there was another article that made exactly the same point, that you can ignore the biggest risk if you can't calculate it.
People are saying that out loud.
But you won't see any engineers say it.
You will see journalists, comedian, and entertainers say it.
But you won't see any engineers say it.
Here's what an engineer would say.
Specifically, a data engineer named Joe Moore, who is also a real good follow on Twitter.
And he often comes into my Twitter feed to teach people how to think.
And it's wonderful to watch.
He's simply somebody who has learned how to compare things.
And when people don't do it right, he goes into the comments and teaches them.
So here's what he says.
He says, Scott's position is... Now remember, he's a data engineer.
So he's trained to know how to make these decisions.
Scott's position is it's impossible to know the right decision.
And the podcast dudes, that was Dave Smith and his co-host, mock him and say it's impossible to know the risk of long COVID.
So they ignored it.
Proves Scott's point.
Exactly.
By ignoring it, they proved my point.
While thinking they were proving their point.
Now, again, These are smart people who are high-functioning people in society, well-meaning.
And there's nothing wrong with the fact that you don't know how to do stand-up comedy, and he's not trained to be a data engineer.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We're just figuring it out best we can, right?
And then Joe Boer went on, second tweet, he says, Scott isn't calling anyone wrong, in terms of whether they got vaccinated or not.
That's correct.
I've never said, I've never criticized any individual decision.
So Joe watches me so he knows that.
So he says, Scott isn't calling anyone wrong, specifically about the vaccination.
I am calling people wrong about the decision making.
It never has.
Dave admitted he couldn't calculate long COVID, and so he ignored it.
And then Joe asked this question.
I like this context.
He says, all the bad stuff, speaking about the pandemic, has low odds.
And then he lists these odds.
He goes, 1%, 1 in 1,000, 1 in 100,000, 1 in a million.
Which number is the vax risk, and which is the long COVID risk?
I don't know.
Do you?
I don't know.
That's a pretty good point.
The difference between 1%, or 1 in 1,000, or 1 in a million, that's a really big difference.
But I don't know which one of those is which.
I can't even tell.
Would comic Dave Smith know?
If he saw three statistics, would he know which one's the long COVID, which one's the dying from the vaccination?
I don't know.
All right.
I'm going to do something that I thought long and hard about, and I think it might be a huge mistake, but I'm going to do it here in public, because there's a benefit to it.
I'm going to teach our politicians and our corporate leaders How to identify a Fang Fang, in other words a Chinese spy, or any spy, who is trying to befriend you the way Fang Fang befriended Swallow.
Swalwell, right?
Now, there is a pattern that you can identify them.
Now, I don't know anything about how Fang Fang infiltrated the Swalwell organization, but he was a councilman in a smallish town.
Mid-sized town.
So he was a council person.
Now, the first thing you need to know is that they tried to influence people early on in their career.
So I got a phone call.
I'm sorry, not a phone call.
I got a text the other day that is either a scam.
This is definitely not a real person.
It's either a scam or it's a fang fang Chinese spy who is trying to get to me while I'm still in my, let's say, not too influential stage.
Now, I'm not going to claim this is an actual spy contact.
If the FBI wants the phone number that it came from, I'd be happy to give it to them.
But here's the problem.
What if they already have it?
What if the number that texted me is already known as a Chinese spy?
Because I feel like we probably know some of them, don't we?
Don't we have ways to identify who the spies are?
If, in fact, this is a known spy, Then there's a good chance that the FBI is already looking at all of my private conversations.
Because I believe that's legal.
Give me a fact check on that.
If they knew for sure that a spy was contacting me, and I'm telling you that maybe that happened, wouldn't they have access to all of my private communications?
I think so.
And if they don't already, they're going to have it now.
Because I'm telling you that I had a contact that, in my opinion, looks suspicious.
Now, they don't even need to know for sure that it's a spy, right?
They would only have to suspect it's a spy, and then they could look at all of the spy's communications, but also the communications of anybody they contacted.
All of it.
I believe.
I believe they'd have all of it.
Now, here's a little rule that I would like to teach you.
You never had privacy.
You never had privacy.
It's not attainable.
We don't live in a system where anybody has privacy.
The only way that you can stay safe is to be uninteresting, so that nobody cares to look.
But the government always had the ability to do a court order and look at all your stuff.
They just needed a reason.
And they didn't need a good reason.
That's one thing we learned from the FISA stuff.
They don't need a good reason.
They need anything that a judge would look at on a piece of paper and go, all right, well, whatever.
I don't have time to look into it, but if you say.
So I'm going to read you the contact as it happened, and then I'm going to teach you how to identify how a spy would operate.
Now, I'm going to make the following claim.
That I know how a spy would operate.
Don't ask me how.
I'm not a spy.
I'm not a spy, but don't ask me how I know that.
I just know it.
All right?
So let me find the communication here, and I'll read it to you as it happened.
All right.
The first text came in, and it was only a phone number.
And it was a 617 area code, which I think is Massachusetts area.
All right, so the first message says, I'll be in California next Saturday.
Would you like to eat Korean barbecue together?
Now, I often get spammy things, and I get scammers.
So I thought, oh, it's just a scammer.
But it could be somebody had a wrong number.
So what did I do?
I ignored it.
Because I ignore all the things that look like they're not for me, or it's a scammer.
So I just ignore it.
A few days go by, I get a follow-up message.
Are you really busy that you don't have time to reply to my message?
Now that's interesting.
That's interesting.
Now, the first thing you need to know is that a spy would try to meet you accidentally.
It has to look accidental.
So here's somebody meeting me accidentally.
And the first thing they asked about was Korean barbecue.
Now, nobody who knows me well would invite me to a Korean barbecue because I don't eat red meat.
So there's nobody who would casually ask me to lunch for a Korean barbecue.
So I know they don't know me, right?
So I replied, thinking that there was some possibility it's somebody who just had a wrong number.
And I didn't want to ruin her day.
I didn't want to ruin her day in case, you know, in case it's just a friend they're trying to catch up with.
So I said, I don't know who this is from.
Obviously, no one who knows me based on the message.
And then it comes back and the message says, it's me.
And I won't say the name just on the off chance that it's a real person, but it's an Asian first name.
Asian as in somebody not born in this country, maybe.
Or maybe a second generation person with an Asian sounding name.
And then I replied, I said, I don't know you.
You must have a wrong number.
So I'm already, right, my alert is already up.
That this is, you know, a scam or something.
But there's some possibility, some small possibility, it's like a real person who has a wrong phone number.
So I want to help him out.
I said, I don't know, you must have the wrong number.
And then I said, who do you think I am?
And then the answer came back, are you Jesse?
J-E-S-S-E.
Now, I said, no, not Jesse.
That's the problem.
Have a good trip.
I hope you two connect.
So now I've just closed, I've closed the circuit.
Everything this person needs to know is now known.
I'm not the person they're looking for.
And I said, have a nice day.
Now, if it's a real, if it's a real woman, what would that real woman do next?
What would a real woman do?
Sorry I bothered you.
Boop.
Or nothing.
Right?
But nobody keeps talking after that.
Am I right?
Nobody keeps talking after that.
Next message was, oh, I input the wrong number.
Sorry.
Oh, OK.
So now we're done.
That's the end of it, right?
So I think, well, that's the end of it.
Then another message comes in.
Thanks for being nice.
Oh, OK.
Still could be nice.
This still could be real.
Then the third one comes in.
I haven't answered the first two.
Are you in California?
There it is.
There it is.
There's the tell.
All right.
As soon as this question was asked, we can now eliminate real person.
Correct?
We've eliminated the possibility it's a real person.
Because zero real people, who are women, follow up with a man that they don't even know his name.
Keep in mind, she doesn't even know my name.
Allegedly.
Like, allegedly she doesn't know my name.
But, I think she does.
Alright, so...
I wanted to tease this out a little bit, so I said, I am in California.
So probably same area code as your friend.
So I'm playing along at this point.
So I'm giving her a reason why she would have asked the question.
Oh, because you're both the same area code.
Maybe that's how you got the wrong phone number.
And then she answers, yeah, he is my childhood friend, but we used to study together when we were in Hong Kong.
Used to study together when they were in Hong Kong.
Now, what information do I have about this person so far?
Here's what I know.
I know that they have an Asian, some kind of connection to Asia.
I know that they're young enough that they're talking about studying together in Hong Kong.
So the age of the person is sort of not too long after college.
So she's sort of identifying herself in her 20s-ish, probably.
And she's saying that she lived in Hong Kong.
Now, why would you say you studied in Hong Kong?
Do a lot of people internationally travel to Hong Kong just to study, or did they?
Or is it the safest way to say you're a Chinese resident?
Because, so I said, after she said, yeah, he was my childhood friend, but we used to study together when we were in Hong Kong.
Now nobody needs to tell that to a stranger.
I'm a stranger who did not need to know anything about Jesse or anything about their history.
This is clearly a tell that something scammy is going on, right?
So I try to close it down, but really I'm testing to see if she stops, right?
So it looks like I'm trying to close the conversation, but I wasn't.
What I was trying to do is close it in a way that any normal person would be done.
But I wanted to see if there was more.
So I said, good luck finding him!
Alright, that's just done.
Good luck finding him.
Next message.
I live in Florida.
I didn't ask.
I never asked.
I'd already checked the area code and it was for Massachusetts, but that doesn't mean anything.
And then the next text, and I don't even answer, it says, I live in Florida, I ignore it.
Next text is, have you ever been here?
Have I ever been to Florida?
Why would she ask a stranger whose name she doesn't even know if I've been to Florida?
All right, so now I'm going to draw around a little bit.
So I go many times.
And then I text, are you Chinese by citizenship?
So I said, are you Chinese by citizenship?
And she answered, yeah, I am.
Do you have Asian friend?
Do you have an Asian friend?
So the Asian friend thing suggests it could be just a scam, not necessarily a spy.
So my next message was, is your name Fang Fang, LOL?
And she responds, nope, haha, I'm, and then she tells her name, first and last name, that are Chinese sounding.
And then you can call me blah, blah, blah, my first name.
Now, I didn't answer after that, and that was the end of the exchange.
So here's what you look for.
You look for an accidental meeting that looks accidental, might not be accidental.
So it happens in the normal course of life.
In Swalwell's case, it was probably somebody who joined his campaign, and it looked like somebody who just liked his politics.
You also want to look out for the flattery and the flirting that's out of context.
Nobody flirts with a stranger.
No woman flirts with a man she knows nothing about that she called by accident.
That doesn't happen.
So the reason that that would work with anyone is that men will believe anything.
If it's a compliment to them.
If you tell a man that the most beautiful woman in the world is maybe flirting with him, the first thing he's going to think is, maybe she is.
So we're very easy to fool with flattery.
So flattery, accidental meeting, and then following up too much, way too much interest, giving too much information.
In this case, she started early by mentioning Hong Kong and studying.
The Hong Kong thing, I believe, was to prime me so that once I found out, if I did, that she was a Chinese citizen, she would have a reason to explain that she's one of the good ones.
Because if you were a Hong Kong resident before China took over, well, yeah, maybe you're a Chinese resident now, but you were one of the freedom ones.
You weren't necessarily one of the communist ones.
I don't think it's a coincidence.
that she mentioned Hong Kong, to, you know, right off the bat, to be able to frame herself as one of the good Chinese citizens.
By the way, all Chinese citizens are good.
I'm not saying anything except the government of China has issues.
You don't like my absolute?
So, look for the person who's willing to admit they're a Chinese...
I imagine that Fang Fang was very open about her connections to China.
Just guessing.
And that she probably had a whole explanation of a backstory that would make her look like she was safe.
All right.
Now, how many of you would have recognized this as a potential Chinese spy?
How many of you would have thought potential spy?
You would?
Good.
Good, good.
Now, how many of you think that somebody at my level of, I don't know, public exposure would be approached by a Chinese spy?
I think so.
Yeah, I would imagine that a lot of people who talk about politics on both sides And have had maybe a casual contact with somebody who acted a little friendly.
Anyway, that's your lesson on how to spot a spy.
Now, I don't know if it was a spy.
You can't be 100% sure.
It could have been just a romance scam kind of a thing.
But everything about it suggested Chinese spy.
Am I flattered?
No.
It's just creepy.
Like all I thought about it was, oh, this is creepy.
But it also tells you to be careful.
You think it was a bot scam?
You think I was talking to a bot?
There were typos.
I don't think so.
All right.
What top secret stuff do I know?
I don't know.
Do I know any?
It depends what top secret means, I guess.
I don't know anything that nobody knows.
I know things that not many people know.
But I don't know what a top secret would be in this context.
Yeah, so if it had been, if I had taken it further, I could find out for sure.
Here's how I'd find out for sure.
If it was a money scam, The way it would work out is, oh, I can't get a hold of Jessie, but I'd love to visit California.
And then see if she could get me to say, you know, I'm single.
I could show you around, something like that.
And if it's a scam, then the next thing would happen is she'd say, OK, I'm booking my flight, but my credit card got stolen.
So I can't book the flight and there's only an hour left to get this price.
Oh my goodness, if I don't know what to do, I guess I can't come.
And that's when I'm supposed to offer, oh, but you could temporarily use my credit card and then pay me back.
So it'd be something like that.
So if I had made plans to see her because I believe she was just sort of interested in me against all odds, at some point there would be an emergency on her end.
that required immediate funding to make the trip.
If that didn't happen, and she actually flew all the way out here, funded it herself and said, oh, I have a job, I don't need any money, that would be a Chinese spy.
For sure.
Yeah.
Because it's not a real person.
No real person does that.
And if she paid for everything?
Yeah.
Oh, wow, you had a fake person calling saying they knew you.
Yeah, that's... I don't know why I'm thinking about this.
This is the most random thing.
I saw a pickup line that somebody on Instagram was saying was a pickup line.
Tell me if I've told you this one before.
As soon as I heard it, I thought, that is the most persuasive pickup line I have ever heard.
You walk up to somebody at, let's say, let's say it's a business event, but you're definitely in flirting mode.
No, maybe not a business event.
Let's say it's a social event.
You get the business out of it.
It's a social event, and you walk up to somebody, or maybe it's not.
It doesn't have to be a social event.
And a man says to the woman, there's no reason for you to look this good today.
That is the best pickup line.
Because what is a woman going to say to that?
No woman ignores that.
Every woman will engage on that question.
There's no reason for you to look this good today.
And it's completely different than just giving a compliment.
If you walked up and say, you look beautiful.
I just had to tell you.
Oh, that's kind of creepy.
But if you walk up and you criticize her for looking better than she needs to, that's totally different.
That's like the, the nagging, the so-called like insult compliment is built into the first sentence.
You don't have a reason to do it.
Meaning that your brain, your brain isn't working right.
Yeah, you look good.
Big deal.
You didn't have a reason to do it.
If you do it with a smile, I think the person would get that you're just being clever.
But they would also engage.
It's like, what do you mean?
What do you mean?
And then get another compliment, blah, blah, blah.
Goodbye, Sharon.
Sharon, you don't seem like a good person, so we'll get rid of you.
What about Ukraine?
You're sending prayers my way.
Good.
Thank you.
Clipped?
Oh, you clipped that?
All right.
There's not much happening in Ukraine, is there?
Is there anything happening in Ukraine today, except people lying about what's happening in Ukraine?
I think someday is the only lesson about Ukraine that I'll give you.
The only lesson is that I don't believe anything that comes out of Ukraine.
If you do, that's on you.
All right, that's all for now.
YouTube, I'll say bye.
I'm going to talk to the locals people a little bit more.
