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Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Murderous UFOs and Tucker Carlson
Ben Stein gets the peacock treatment
Republicans are being hunted
Worst takes on SVB
Border is virtually open - Confirmed
Criminalizing pronouns
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and anything else you'd like to be.
Welcome to the finest thing that's ever happened in the history of civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's never been a finer moment.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that at the end of the day makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Yeah.
That's good stuff.
And happy St.
Patrick's Day to all of you.
Probably racist.
I don't know.
It's hard to know.
Well, I'd like to give a shout out to a prankster who got me pretty good today.
And I have to confess, this is a good prank.
Let's see if I have the answer to getting rid of the prank yet.
Oh, we're looking into it.
Alright, so when I tweet before the show, I tweet the link to the locals community as well as YouTube.
And apparently when I do that, some prankster has apparently hacked my account, And so where it used to show my image automatically, you know, taken from the locals account, the tweet automatically replaced it with a picture that some prankster put there of Dilbert with a KKK necktie.
So I didn't have time to do the show without looking into it.
We're looking into it.
So somebody got into my account, or got into the locals account, or did it on Twitter somehow, I don't know.
So I don't even know what they got into, but somebody got into something they shouldn't have gotten into.
And my first thought was, oh, I'd better get rid of this right away.
And my second thought was, this is a really good prank.
That's like a seriously well-executed prank.
So I'm going to let it run.
I'll just leave it there.
Yeah, I put it in the comments that it was a hack.
But we'll draw some more attention to me.
Because, you know, I hate that.
All right.
I've been asked to look into the video of Tucker Carlson talking about UFOs.
And of course you sent me on a wild goose chase because I thought it was on his show but apparently it was some separate thing he did.
But I found it!
Now if you don't know the story, Tucker tells the story of, and I hope I get it approximately correct, That he knows or was contacted by somebody who was a tenured professor at Stanford and was some kind of a brain injury expert.
And allegedly, Tucker was told by this very person that he was personally contacted by the government some years back to look into the brain injuries caused by UFOs.
What?
Yes.
The claim, allegedly, Is that over a hundred or so?
Here, let me see, what's up with that?
Oh, okay, already taken care of.
So the racist prank's already been removed, but it was a good prank.
So let me just give a little hand to whoever did that.
Nicely done.
Nicely done.
Anyway, so the story is that this brain injury expert Was told by the government and the military that a hundred or so people had been wounded or killed by UFOs.
Military people.
Right.
Over a hundred people killed by UFOs, murderous UFOs.
Now the way they killed people apparently was with some kind of irradiating force that was giving people brain damage and sometimes they died if they got near it.
And so People quite reasonably said, uh, what do you think of this?
So here's my take.
If there's more to this story, this is the only part I saw.
The evidence that is true comes from a telling by Tucker Carlson.
So the first thing you say is, do you believe Tucker Carlson?
Separately, I'll ask you about the source.
But do you believe that Tucker Carlson is accurately recounting something that somebody said to him?
I'd say yes.
I'd say yes.
I feel confident that that's certainly not the sort of thing that most people would make up and I don't think he would.
Like I see no signs that he would just make up a story.
So let's say that we believe that somebody told him that.
That's all we know.
This doesn't even look slightly credible to me.
Not even like a little bit.
Because a hundred deaths, how in the world would you keep that?
Or injuries that are that severe?
How would you keep that a secret?
I mean really, how would you keep that a secret?
And secondly, if you have one source, first of all, do you know it's a tenured professor?
Do you know it's a tenured professor who other people think is sane?
Has a tenured professor never done a prank?
Has a tenured professor never lost their faculties and imagined something that wasn't there?
I mean, there's just no credibility to this at all.
Generally speaking, a single source is going to be far more likely wrong than right.
Would you agree with that general statement?
That no matter what the story is, a single source You'd bet against it.
I would bet against a single source all day long.
So who knows?
Anything's possible when it comes to these UFOs.
But I would say the quality of evidence would be at the lowest rung of credibility.
Ben Stein is getting the peacock treatment today.
So he did a little video in which he said, I'll summarize, paraphrase a little bit.
He said that 60 years ago when he was young, black Americans looked like they weren't doing well.
And just observationally, it looked like they weren't doing well.
But in modern times, they have at least the opportunity to have a good life and go to a good school if they qualify, and get a good job and have a good time.
And that was his entire observation, is that things have improved for black Americans.
And do you think he was called a racist for that?
Of course he was.
He was immediately labeled a racist for saying that things used to be worse for black Americans, but they've improved, and under the right conditions, you can have a real good life.
Now, do you think that people took him a little too literally?
Does that ever happen?
Do you think that when he talked about black people that people may have assumed that he meant every single one was going to live a good life?
Because I don't believe that would be a reasonable way to interpret his observation.
It's more about opportunity.
Individuals are still going to have racism, they're still going to have problems, but he's saying there's this golden highway to success and anybody can get on it.
I couldn't find anything racist with that.
But did it matter to Democrats?
No.
Because this is not about racism.
And you know that, right?
It's not about racism.
It's about taking Republicans off the field.
So anybody who says anything about race, anything, they'll just get labeled racist so they can take their voice off the field.
Now these are all political things.
There's nothing about racism.
Whatsoever.
But he's getting the peacock treatment now.
And it looks familiar, doesn't it?
Let me ask you this.
What percentage of stories about public figures are accurate in the first telling?
In the first wave of news, you hear a story about a celebrity or a public figure.
How often is that accurate and within the right context?
It's close to zero.
If it's in the political realm, it's really zero.
It's actually zero.
In the political realm.
Because what makes the initial story a story is that something incredible happened.
That's why it's a story.
They don't do stories about somebody acted normal today.
They do stories about, oh, somebody did something unexpected today.
Now, Scott Alexander, which is a pseudonym for a blogger, Had the best take on this a number of years ago.
He said, if something in the news looks incredible, you're like, whoa, I can't believe that happened.
It didn't.
That's the rule.
If you hear the news and you're like, whoa, I can't believe that person said that, they didn't.
They didn't say it.
That's why it's incredible, because it didn't happen.
Now, they might have said the exact words quite often.
But when the context is removed, the exact words can be actually even reversed in meaning just by the change of context.
So, a good general rule for following the news is that all political stories are false in the first telling.
All of them.
So, you say to yourself, well, that can't be true because, you know, the people who support the people are going to tell the truth, right?
No.
No, they're not.
No.
The people who support whatever politician are going to tell the untruth that supports them, meaning that they'll leave out the context that's inconvenient.
So any news about politics in 2023 is fake in the first telling.
All right, here's the second question.
If you buy that as a general rule, of course there are exceptions, right?
Everything's hyperbole.
But generally speaking, how long does it take For the fake news about a political situation to be clarified so that even the people who disagreed with it eventually say, okay, that does look different than what I thought some time ago.
What's the general time it takes for a fake story to be clarified accurately?
Some say never.
But I think that never applies to some people who just can't be convinced.
But of the few people who can actually change their mind, I'd say one to five years.
One to five years.
That's the approximate time it takes for a fake news story about politics to evolve into something true.
How long did it take before we found out that the 50 signatures on the Hunter laptop document were liars, basically?
How long did that take?
Two years, you say?
How long did it take to find out that Russia collusion was a hoax?
Three years?
Something like that?
Yeah.
How long did it take for the public to get a more complete video about January 6?
A year or two?
Two years?
Two years, right?
So one to ten years is how long you have to wait to find out if a political story is real.
And I would include as a political story anything about bigotry.
Those are political stories, if the public figure is known to be associated with one side.
The Ben Stein story is not about racism.
It's just a political story, because he's a political figure.
The story about me, I don't know if all of you have realized it yet, but that was completely political.
The political right looked at it, looked at the context, said, well that was alarming, but I see what you did, carry on.
The political left didn't look at the context and didn't care, because they only care that I'm a political figure, and they wanted to take me off the chessboard.
So, if you think that the initial version of any story about a political figure is true, you haven't been paying attention.
Almost never.
It would be the rarest thing if the initial story held for five years.
You just don't see that.
Somebody mentioned O'Keefe.
Take the Project Veritas story.
Do you think that whatever you heard in the last few weeks about Project Veritas, do you think that will be the same thing you'll understand in five years?
Not a chance.
I don't know what's true and what's not true, but I can say confidently in five years you'll have a different opinion if you're a person who can change their opinion.
So keep that in mind.
Several years ago I got mocked for saying Republicans would be hunted.
Headlines today, more than, I think this is on Fox News, more than 1,000 people will face new charges because of January 6th.
New charges, 1,000.
1,000 people, all Republicans, will face charges that all of us know they would not face if they were Democrats in a similar, had they done exactly the same thing or a similar thing.
We know that Democrats would not have been charged.
We know that.
Now, how do you like my prediction that Republicans would be hunted?
If you said to yourself, Scott, 100% of Republicans aren't being hunted, well, then you're bad at understanding life.
It never means 100%.
It never means 100%.
Yeah, Republicans would be hunted by the thousands now.
You could actually say out loud, without Without any political spin on it.
The Republicans are literally being hunted by the Justice Department.
They're looking for them, they're hunting.
They're finding them, and then they're punishing them.
And there's no doubt about it, it wouldn't happen if they had been Democrats.
Nobody questions that.
I don't think there's a Democrat that would doubt that.
They would not be... For the types of crimes they did, they wouldn't be charged.
You know, the trespassing and interfering with a public event.
They wouldn't be charged for that.
Nobody would be.
Except Republicans who are being hunted.
Apparently the Biden administration is proposing or thinking about making it a violation of Title IX to use the wrong pronouns.
So I guess in the school, well, I don't know too much about this story, but apparently it would be some kind of a hate crime if you used the wrong pronouns.
That might be the worst idea I've ever heard in my life.
Might be.
However, the good news is I have a workaround for you.
I did a little research today and I found that there are some black academics, which is important that they're black academics, have wanted to classify racism as a mental disability or a mental disorder.
I googled it, it's a real thing.
And it's not just black academics, there are other people who think so too.
What do you think?
Do you think that actual racism, the real kind, not the fake kind, do you think that actual racism should be considered a mental disorder, which would allow it to be a disability?
Well, whether or not that makes sense or not, I'm going to extend that thought, logically, to bigotry in general.
Bigotry in general.
So don't you think that Somebody who's a racist, it's not that different from somebody who's just a bigot in general, right?
So you could be a bigot against, let's say, a race or a religion, but also a bigot against trans people or, you know, non-binaries, and be a bigot in every way.
If you were a bigot about everything from race to religion to, you know, you name it, would that be considered a mental disorder?
There are experts who say yes.
So your opinion may not be important.
There are experts who say yes.
So if I can get an expert to say in writing, and apparently a psychologist would be sufficient, could a psychiatrist or a psychologist, both of them actually, could they give you a medical note that says you have a disability, In the field of bigotry.
And they can even give examples, unwilling to use the correct pronouns.
An unwillingness or inability or inability.
The patient, I can certify that this patient is either unwilling or unable to use correct pronouns.
My diagnosis is that they have a disability because that would be the kind of disability that would prevent you from getting jobs and, you know, You know, operating in a normal way in society, which is what a disability does.
It allows you to have less access to society in some way.
So, I think that just to protect yourself, you should get a psychologist to give you a medical diagnosis of bigotry as a disability.
Now you say to yourself, well, maybe I can't get somebody to do that.
But I remind you, years ago, When activists wanted marijuana to be legal in states, they started with medical marijuana.
And the critics said, no, you're going to try to get that medical stuff legalized, and then you're going to sneak in with the regular recreational stuff after everybody gets comfortable with the medical stuff.
It's just a trick.
It's just a trick.
But there were always doctors who were willing to say that you needed it for medical reasons.
Weren't there?
Did anybody have a... Well, if you were in the right state.
If you were in the right state, did you have any problem getting a doctor to say you needed it for medical reasons?
Not your regular doctor.
No, not your regular doctor.
But you could find a doctor.
You could just Google it.
And find a doctor who would be, let's say, just a little bit more flexible than the average doctor about whether or not you have a medical problem that weed is just right for.
But most people can get one.
You don't think that there would be a psychologist or a psychiatrist somewhere who would advertise, I will give you a bigotry diagnosis so that you could take advantage of whatever benefits you get for being disabled.
Now, one of the benefits is you can't be fired simply for your disability.
You can be fired if you can't do the work.
I think that's still legal, right?
If you can't do the work with reasonable accommodations, you can still be fired, because you still have to do the job.
But I would think that I could get some psychiatrist to say, no, Scott, you have a bigotry disability, and therefore, you cannot be fired simply for your opinions, or what you said.
It'd be sort of like Tourette's.
You know, you can't really help that you shouted out something profane.
Do people get fired for having Tourette's?
I would think no, right?
Because that would be a... You think yes?
Well, I would say yes if it's maybe a customer-facing job.
But if you're somewhere where everybody understands that you have a disorder, then I would think that the workplace would allow it.
A little more yelling than usual, but basically you make some accommodations.
Give them an office or something, whatever it takes.
All right, well, I think there might be a workaround.
If we could get those bigotry diagnoses, you would be protected from the law, which is kind of ridiculous at this point.
All right, I'd like to tell you the worst opinions I've seen on Silicon Valley Bank.
All right, the worst one is the so-called moral hazard argument.
That if you allow all the depositors to be made whole, that would create what's called a moral hazard, meaning it would incentivize people to take more risks than the system can handle.
So you really need to be tough on people who take the wrong risks and things go wrong, because if you're not tough on them, then everybody will take more risks.
So the thinking here is that the managers of the banks would not have done what they did except for knowing that their depositors were protected.
Except their depositors were not protected.
And the Silicon Bank people did their bad stuff in the context of knowing that their depositors were not protected.
Didn't make any difference.
So some people want to make sure that future bankers, if they're going to do something that's, let's say, a little risky, That they would know that the only thing that could go wrong for them is that they would lose their jobs, which are really good jobs if you're the top of a bank.
You lose your job and your reputation, you'll be shamed and scorned in the community, but the thinking here with this moral hazard stuff is that those things are not enough to stop you from bad behavior.
So you wouldn't be stopped by losing your job for sure, being shamed and scorned by all your neighbors who lost their money, maybe having to move out of the community.
But what would really make you want to do bad behavior is knowing that the strangers We're called depositors, people you've never met.
Knowing that those strangers would be made whole, that would allow you to take the risk of losing your job, losing your reputation, being scorned in society and having to move.
So that's the thinking there.
The thinking is that people will stop doing bad behavior because of people they've never met might have a, there might be some cost to that.
But by the way, you can always blame those other people if they lose their money because they knew there was only a $250,000 limit on insurance.
I mean, they knew it.
So it's their own damn fault.
And then here's the follow-up bad opinion.
Is that...
The depositors need to learn to do due diligence.
So it's not just about the leaders of the bank.
You have to train depositors in the country to do a better job of researching their bank.
Right?
So you need a few big banks to fail and all those depositors to lose their money.
And that will make the other depositors say, whoa, I better stay under that limit and I better watch my risk.
That is a terrible opinion.
Because if you teach people to manage their risk with banks, there will only be four banks left.
It does not make sense to keep your money in the 19th biggest bank.
As I said before, when people ask me, did you have money in Silicon Valley Bank?
I said, I have a degree in economics, I have a An MBA, and I was a banker for years.
You think I'm going to put my money in the 19th largest bank?
Seriously?
I mean, what?
To me, as soon as I heard that anybody had money in the 19th biggest bank, I just laughed.
I said, you don't know anything about risk management.
Being in the 19th biggest bank is the worst idea in the world.
Being in one of the top two, Might be better.
Should be.
But being in the 19th largest bank is stupid from the bottom to the top.
There's nothing smart about that.
Now I get the Silicon Valley Bank had a sort of a clever situation where they wanted you to put some of your personal money and your venture capital money and you get a little extra benefits somehow with that bank.
But that's not enough reason.
That is not enough reason at all.
The only reason the small banks survive is because depositors don't do due diligence.
The minute they did due diligence, they'd all go out of business.
It'd be crazy to keep your money in a small bank.
Unless you trusted the government to have your back.
And if the government wouldn't have you back in a situation where, you know, like Silicon Valley Bank, then you should pull your money completely out and put it in the top two banks or under your mattress or some damn thing.
I don't know what you're going to do with it.
Like, I'm not going to give you any advice.
But it's a terrible take that depositors should do their own research.
And let me give you one specific suggestion I got.
From somebody on Twitter who was making this case that the depositors should do their work.
So here's what he said, and I swear this actually happened.
This actually, somebody said this.
In public.
In public.
On Twitter, this individual said, anyone going and reading a short bit of history could develop a reasonable risk model, talking about depositors of banks.
So he wants people to do a short bit of history, to find out about history before you open your checking account.
So how much history should you look into before opening your checking account?
Well, this person suggests you don't have to, but you could start with reading about the Second Bank of the United States and Nicholas Biddle versus Andrew Jackson.
So the suggestion here is that before you open a checking account with your bank, You should do some history and a deep dive of the banking system through the history of the United States, and especially look at this case of Nicholas Biddle versus Andrew Jackson.
Because what we learn about Andrew Jackson's time is totally relevant to today.
This is the worst advice I've ever seen.
There's somebody who thinks that an ordinary depositor can research the history of the United States and come up with a risk management model for their checking account.
For their checking account.
Ridiculous.
Well, the Congress heard from, let's see, who is it?
Mr. Ortiz, who is the Border Patrol Chief, talking about the border and the situation on the border.
And he said about the border border, I like to say border too much, that it's not controlled.
This is the guy in charge of it.
He says it's not controlled, meaning it's open.
I mean, not completely, but basically, We don't have a border security.
He also said that Trump's wall should have been built.
And I think he backed the people who were accused of whipping migrants on horseback.
They were on horseback, not the migrants.
That turned out to be fake news.
So that whipping migrants on horseback, how long did it take before we figured out that was fake news?
That was less than a year, wasn't it?
Was it less than a year?
I think most of the people who knew about horses and stuff knew right away.
But I think in terms of the public, when do you think Democrats found out that was fake?
Never, right?
Never.
I'll bet it's never been covered on CNN.
I'll bet it's never been covered on MSNBC.
I don't know, but I bet it's never been covered.
So do you think maybe in a few years, there might be a story about it on the left, and then they would find out about it for the first time?
UltraDerek says, I'm confusing depositors with investing.
Now if I'm talking about depositors you know what I mean.
A checking account.
Don't pretend That I'm in cognitive dissonance because I just demolished your mental model and now you're hallucinating.
Because that's what's happening.
I don't think anybody was confused that opening a checking account is an investor in a bank.
I don't think anybody was confused by that.
All right.
So the border's a mess.
Rasmussen did a poll asking people what they thought about the Arizona voting integrity.
And the result was 55% of likely Arizona voters believe it is likely that problems with the 2020 election in Maricopa County affected the outcome.
Including 35% who think it's very likely.
Now the 35% probably is pretty close to the, you know, the serious Republican number.
But at 55%, doesn't that suggest that a number of Democrats are now convinced?
Are Democrats in some number now convinced that Maricopa didn't look copacetic?
Yeah, we're private.
Yeah, so I don't have an opinion of what did or did not happen there, but I haven't seen any convincing evidence that there was anything wrong.
But a lot of people believe it.
So there's your There's your quality of propaganda.
It's good.
Now I call it propaganda because it's unproven allegations, but I'm not saying there's nothing there.
I'm saying I haven't seen evidence of it.
The anti-Trumpers are losing their frame.
Let me explain that.
If you're an anti-Trumper, You had this idea in your head, your frame, that everything Trump did was a bad idea and everything that's the opposite of that was a good idea.
But it's really hard to hold that frame when you see that Biden did the opposite of Trump and it's just everything went to hell.
And everything that Trump did is starting to look smarter and smarter with time, as I predicted it would.
But here's a Good example of that.
So on CNN, they often have these political analysts and opinion people, and one of them is Julian Zelizer, who you might know is, he's like the worse than a Watergate guy.
When CNN needs to remind the public that Orange Man bad, They have a few people they bring out.
All right, we need to remind them.
Orange man bad.
It's been two days, so we'll need an opinion piece.
Julian Zelzer, you always say orange man bad.
So write us an article about something, but make sure you say orange man bad.
Now, I don't think they had that conversation, but it feels like it.
So here's something that this deep anti-Trumper said.
About Biden.
For the 2024 presidential election, we'll establish a similar dynamic because he was talking about Reagan versus Carter.
He says, for Biden, it will be important to avoid looking like Carter.
It will be important to avoid looking like Carter, meaning that even this anti-Trumper thinks that Biden is starting to look like Carter.
Specifically, Carter didn't campaign too much against Reagan when the hostages were being held in Iran, so it was interpreted that Carter wasn't sort of trying hard enough to win.
The reality was he was, I guess, working to get the The prisoners released.
But it was a bad look.
And even an anti-Trumper is saying, it's going to be a bad look if Trump comes in looking like Reagan and Biden is looking like Carter.
Because a lot of our minds have that model in our head.
And it's just going to be devastating for Biden if that's the model that people have in their head.
Oh, it's a Reagan versus Carter election version 2.
In fact, the more times you hear it's Reagan versus Carter version two, the more likely the Reagan in this example, which would be Trump, is going to win.
Because if you can put into people's minds that this is just Reagan versus Carter, and it's just a replay, and I have to admit, it looks a lot like it, doesn't it?
In my mind, that analogy fits like a glove.
So I don't know how many other people would be primed to automatically accept that analogy, but it would be persuasive.
It would be persuasive.
I always tell you the best story always wins.
What's the best story if Biden runs against Trump again?
If Biden wins a second time, would you say, oh, that's surprising?
Or would you say, all right, that's just more of the usual.
So a second Biden win would just be more of the usual.
The most interesting story would be the comeback story, where Trump comes back and saves the country from everything that Biden did.
That's the better story.
Now even if you're a Democrat, you would still recognize the better story.
You wouldn't love it.
Well, you know what the better story was.
You certainly know what it looked like.
So this whole Reagan versus Carter dynamic could be really important.
The more people talk about it, the more it will become the opinion of the public.
And then the public will just start viewing things through the Reagan versus Carter frame.
And you won't even care that Trump is running.
You won't even look at the people who are running.
You'll just look at history and say, well, Reagan versus Carter.
And I don't think that analogy is off.
All right.
First, Republic Bank got rescued by some banks that got together and decided to do that.
So that's good news.
I think our banking problems are not over, but they're not going to be a debacle.
I think it's just a challenge that needs to be managed, like a lot of other things.
So that's my take.
I don't make any recommendations about what you do with your money, because I'm not right every time, but my opinion is that we're going to work our way through it, and the economy will stay intact.
I saw Greg Godfeld say this yesterday, I guess on The Five, or the day before, talking about any story about Hunter Biden, you get Hunter Biden exhaustion.
We've heard so much about Hunter Biden that if tomorrow a news story breaks that says, well, new update, Hunter Biden murdered a family and then cannibalized them himself.
He ate every one of them himself.
If you heard that story today, you'd be like, yeah, Hunter, he's a bad man.
What else is in the news?
Let's see what else.
Like, we're so conditioned to see that there's nothing that Hunter Biden does that could be so bad that it causes anybody to act.
Like, we don't have, yeah, we're numb to it.
So it's just like outrage fatigue about this one thing.
And here's a perfect example.
So now apparently we have some banking records that would know that That the Bidens, three of them, Haley Biden, you know, the ex of Beau Biden who died and then Haley dated Hunter later.
Which, by the way, I don't have a bad opinion about.
I know you probably think that just because I mentioned it that I'm judging it.
I actually don't judge that at all.
I don't judge it at all.
And the reason I don't is that I'm not them.
I'm not them.
And whatever they needed to make themselves happy, that was entirely up to them.
They were both legal adults.
And it's not like really surprising that somebody would like somebody who was like the person they married.
It's not like really surprising.
The fact that any of us are grossed out about it is about us.
That's about us.
If two people figure out a way to legally be happy in an adult way, I have no problem with it.
No problem.
Now I get that it's uncomfortable for the family, I get that it's a bad look, I get that it's bad politically, but you know, life is short.
Life is really short, and it's really brutal.
And when I see two people find some little sliver of happiness, I'm sure they liked it while they were doing it.
If they find a little sliver of happiness, and it doesn't bother me, and it's completely legal, and they're adults, I'm out.
I'm out.
You've told me everything I need to know about this situation.
That's just an aside.
So we can judge him on, you know, maybe corruption if that gets proven.
But his personal life is still his.
I wouldn't want to be judged by any of that.
All right.
So this big Chinese company gave what I guess Biden's lawyer is calling good faith seed money To the Biden family, which got distributed to Haley and Hunter in small amounts, presumably because bigger amounts would have caused higher notice.
Now, what do you think it means when a company gives you good faith seed money?
Good faith seed money.
That is the most lawyerly term for a bribe that I've ever heard.
Because this does say it's not for a purpose.
That they were given money for no purpose.
Obviously there was some, you know, presumed purpose, but even the lawyer can't figure out like a legal obvious reason that it happened.
You had to go with good faith seed money, which is kind of brilliant, because what else are you going to say, right?
If you had to say something, That was pretty good, but it's still kind of ridiculous.
I mean, it still says they weren't working for the money.
Nobody gives you good faith seed money.
Has anybody ever given you any good faith seed money?
Hey, I'm not going to ask anything of you, but it's just sort of a good faith seed money situation.
So if any of you would like to give me some good faith seed money, And require nothing whatsoever from me in return.
Well, that is your right.
That is your right.
I don't encourage it, but you have a right to give your good faith seed money, which happens all the time.
I mean, such a common thing.
I don't even know why we're questioning it.
Everywhere I go, people are trying to give me some good faith seed money and ask for nothing in return, because that's a normal thing that happens in the real world.
In my opinion, This is probably enough to conclude that they were taking bribes from other countries for access.
I don't know what would make it illegal, what's legal or not.
But if you had heard this story first, can you imagine?
Can you imagine how you'd feel about it?
If it's the first thing you'd ever heard about the Biden operations.
And you'd never heard anything about Hunter.
You didn't know about his personal life.
You didn't know about Haley.
You didn't know anything.
And the first thing you heard was, they took all this money.
You'd be saying, send him to jail.
Send him to jail.
It's obviously corrupt.
I mean, after a trial, of course.
But obviously corrupt.
Lock him up now.
But we've been so exhausted, as Greg said, Gottfeld, I can't even get outraged by it.
Like I tried to.
I looked at it like, I guess I'm outraged, Scott.
It's bad for the Republic.
You can't do that if you're related to a current or past vice president or president.
Nope, nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I literally am not outraged.
I know I should be.
Like, I'm positive I should be, but I don't have any emotional reaction to it.
Am I alone?
Are you feeling the same thing?
Like, intellectually, you're like, oh yeah, that's a major crime, but your body doesn't feel it at all?
Like, we've been drained of feelings about Hunter Biden.
There's no emotional content.
It's hard to believe.
And again, if this is the first thing you saw, you couldn't stop screaming about it.
It's quite an effect.
All right.
Here's a claim by Robert Kennedy Jr.
and a number of you.
I think many of you have made the same claim.
That ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not allowed because doing so, at least by the authorities, because doing so would have made the emergency authorization Which allowed the vaccinations to be developed, would allow that not to have happened, at least under that cloak.
Because if you have a treatment, you can't do something risky to make a treatment, if you have a treatment already.
How many of you agree that that's the reason that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were depressed?
Okay.
Now, how would you tell the difference between that, which is a perfectly reasonable assumption?
I agree with follow the money.
So I agree that anybody involved in making money on vaccinations almost certainly was also involved in talking down ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Totally agree.
So does that prove that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work?
Does that show you that they work?
No.
No.
But I think there's some assumption that although science is completely useless for everything...
The exception is it works for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Oh yeah, the science is always lying and it's always about follow the money, but the exception would be these studies we've looked at for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Oh yeah, we don't believe in vaccinations because we think science is all liars and money chasers, but we do believe in science when it's this other money chasing and other people.
I get that, you know, maybe the people who did the studies weren't directly benefiting from ivermectin, but somebody was.
I mean, somebody would have made a lot of money on ivermectin.
I mean, it might have been a, you know, a generic maker or something, but somebody was.
So in both cases, money would be presumably behind the science, but for some reason we accept That the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are somehow subject to good science, and that was the one time that people weren't lying to us to make money.
But in this other case, we can be sure they were lying to us to make money.
Now, here's my take.
I completely agree with the fact that the big pharma companies were, let's say, maybe stretching things and cutting some corners and didn't do what we wish they had done and all that.
But none of that says the product doesn't work.
Also, none of the science says it does.
The science does say it does, some of it.
But since we don't believe any of the science, what does it matter what science says?
It doesn't make any difference.
So the only thing I'm pointing out, this is not a conversation about whether vaccinations work.
It is not a conversation about whether hydroxy or ivermectin work.
I'm not in that conversation.
My conversation is, if you don't trust the science, you can't pick winners.
It's either all bad or it isn't.
And I think it's all bad.
So I don't believe anything about the vaccination science, as of today.
And I don't believe anything about the ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
Now I heard somebody say, but Scott, all you have to do is You know, use your own experience.
So somebody said, I took ivermectin and I got better.
So the observed experience is more useful than the science.
What do you think of that?
Is your observed anecdotal experience more useful than the science?
Go ahead.
A lot of people are going to say true to this.
Some people are saying yes.
Yep.
I think there are actually some situations where it is true.
If you had the kind of thing which, let's say you'd had a rash for, suppose you'd had a rash for ten years that you couldn't get rid of it.
And then you got a recommendation and you rub some cream on it and it went away in an hour.
If it went away in an hour, after five years, but the science says it doesn't work, would it be reasonable to conclude that the science is wrong?
I think so.
In that really specific case, I think the anecdote is stronger than the science.
Now that doesn't talk to side effects, but if you rub it on and it goes away after ten years of nothing else working, and it happens the same day, that would be a pretty big coincidence, unless it worked.
And given that, you know, scientific studies, half of them can't be replicated, I would say that your anecdotal experience is much stronger than the science in that weird little case.
But generally speaking, here was my response to somebody who said, they took ivermectin and they got better, so ivermectin works.
So I explained that I got COVID, I watched television, and I got better fairly quickly.
Fairly quickly.
So I'm pretty sure it was the television watching.
Because I don't think it was a coincidence I was watching television, which I didn't do as much of when I didn't have COVID.
So I watched a little extra television, rapidly recovered.
Anecdotally, I believe television cures COVID.
That was my experience.
So that was pretty strong, strong evidence there.
All right.
But we've reached a point where we used to say, trust the science.
And that actually sounds like a punchline, doesn't it?
It actually sounds like a punchline.
Trust the science.
Because it's been used as a punchline a lot of times.
I think I've used it as a punchline.
It used to be the highest level of smart thinking.
I know you savages are using your anecdotal and lived experience, but we smart people, we follow the science.
You know, if you don't follow the science, well, I don't want to be judgmental, but that would put me up here with the smart people, and that would put you down with the savages and the wild animals.
But, you know, you don't have to follow the science, but all the smart people do.
I feel like it was only five years ago, That follow the science was the most respectable thing you could say.
And that today you sound like a freaking clown.
Anybody who follows the science because the science said so, you just have to be a clown.
Yeah.
So we've actually replaced follow the science with follow the money.
And there is a large proportion of the public who believes that gets you a better answer.
And so they say, we followed the money on the vaccinations.
We didn't like what we saw and we ignored the science because if you follow the money you don't need the science.
The science isn't, you know, dependable.
So they said we got the right answer because we found that the people making it were doing sketchy things that were all directly related to making money.
Yeah.
Except, here's my problem.
They would have done all of those sketchy things even if it works.
Even if the vaccine is a good idea, they would have done all the same sketchy things.
They still would have wanted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to go away.
They still would have wanted all the competition to go away.
They still would have wanted the government to guarantee it.
They still would have wanted the government to say they can't be sued.
They still would have wanted the government to write the massive checks.
They still would want you to think that the shots were more, let's say, more safe than they were.
So the fact that the big pharma did every sketchy thing you could do, clearly just to make money, doesn't say anything about the quality of the product.
Because they would do that whether the product worked or not.
And I don't believe that everything they've ever made doesn't work.
I just think some of it doesn't.
All right.
So follow the money and follow the anecdotes is what we have left because the science has done such a bad job.
Here's an example of the high ground maneuver.
I tweeted this and it ends the conversation, or should, on TikTok and being banned.
All right, so Congress is noodling about, how do we ban this thing?
Or do we ban it?
Can we take out the data part and make the data safe?
What if China still owns it?
But is there any way we could get some guarantees that there wouldn't be any bad behavior?
But it's also about persuasion, that they could persuade us it's not just about data.
And should we ban it or ban it later or ban just some things or something?
So that's what I call being in the weeds.
That's being in the weeds.
Once the Pentagon and the Department of Justice have weighed in and said this is a national security risk and it's not a small one, which they have, the Pentagon and the Department of Justice have agreed it's a major homeland security risk.
Let me explain how decisions are made by people who are not absolutely incompetent.
When the Pentagon tells you it's a national security risk, you immediately cancel it in America, and then you take your time figuring out if that was the right answer.
We're doing it backwards.
We're talking about all the ways you could do it and if you do it.
No, that is the wrong way to make a decision.
The right way to make the decision is first you remove the risk, And then you make sure that it was the right decision.
And if it was the wrong decision, well, you can reverse it.
You can reverse it.
So what?
People don't have TikTok for two weeks?
Who's going to die from that?
This is the easiest decision in the world.
Just the simplest, dead simple decision.
Ban it first, figure out the specifics later, and then I'll add to that, don't let 16-year-olds back on it, no matter what.
Right?
Maybe 18.
Don't let minors on it, just no matter what.
If you're going to make any change at all, do that one.
That's the obvious one.
Now, you tell me, is this a hard decision?
Why is anybody even having a conversation?
Just ban it, and then figure out if you made the right decision.
That's the correct order.
And nobody will argue with this, by the way.
You won't see anybody say, you know, we really should let this national security risk, you know, continue until we get the right answer that we'll never agree on anyway.
Crazy.
Crazy stuff.
All right.
I think in some ways this is why I think somebody would want to cancel me.
Because this is the sort of persuasion, you know I tweeted this, this is the sort of persuasion that actually moves the needle.
Not everything I say has any impact on the world, but every now and then I can develop a high ground position that really will change opinions.
And I would argue that the first time you heard, decide now and then figure out if it was right later.
If you had not heard that, I'll bet some of you were still saying, you know, we better make sure we do this right.
Doesn't have to be today.
You know, let's make sure we've talked it out.
I'll bet a lot of you were thinking that, that that was reasonable.
But the moment you hear, if it's a national security risk, stop it immediately and then figure out what you did.
The moment you hear it, you adopt that opinion.
That's called the high ground maneuver persuasion.
So people who have this level of persuasive technique, I'll just call it technique.
It's something anybody could learn.
Are dangerous.
They're dangerous.
Because I can move maybe 100,000 votes in a day.
Or opinions, not votes.
It's hard to move votes.
But I could probably move 100,000 opinions in a day.
And I'll bet I have.
I don't know any way to measure it.
But I'll bet I have.
I'll bet I have.
I've got a million followers on Twitter who could have seen this tweet.
Do you think 100,000 wouldn't say, oh yeah?
Not all millions say it, but if a million saw it, you don't think that 100,000 would immediately say, yeah, that's right, just ban it immediately, figure it out.
At least, I think all 900,000 would say it immediately, but at least 100,000.
100,000 would say it immediately, but at least 100,000.
So I would claim that I can move 100,000 people's opinion in a day, that's my claim.
Minimum.
I think I could move a million on a good day, but I could move 100,000 in one day.
And it's not because I'm special.
It's because I have a specific talent set.
Anybody who had the same talent set, I think, could do the same thing.
I mean, Cernovich could do it.
If you want to name some names, Cernovich could do it.
You can move 100,000 people in one day.
Pandemic conspiracy theory.
People are still angry or disappointed in me that I do not accept the conspiracy theory that says the pandemic was planned from the start.
And the technical problem.
So people are mad that I haven't accepted that the pandemic was a plannedemic.
It was planned from the start.
The virus was created for this purpose.
And that the people conspiring did it to gain power and money.
Now, here's why I don't believe the conspiracy theory.
The people who believe that conspiracy theory, would you agree, have a low opinion of the people involved?
Would you agree?
The people who accept the pandemic, plandemic, as being all planned, would you agree that they have a low opinion of the people involved with all that.
Very clearly, right?
Now, here's your mistake about me.
You believe that my opinion is based on having a higher opinion of those people, don't you?
Because I think they didn't do that.
So does that look like a higher opinion?
Oh, no, they wouldn't do that.
No, I have a lower opinion than you do.
Much, much lower.
I don't believe that there's anybody in large numbers who could coordinate this and be undetected so far.
Now, you think you've detected them, but not in any legal way, obviously.
I don't believe people are that smart, or not even close to that smart.
So here's my rule on conspiracies.
A conspiracy in which one person and one person only knows about the conspiracy?
Could be.
That's something I might believe.
Conspiracy with three people involved?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Three people who had common interests?
Maybe they could keep a secret?
Yeah, I'll take three.
How about ten people?
Well, when you get to ten people, the odds that one of them doesn't You know, break out of the thing and tell.
It gets smaller, but you can still imagine 10 people, you know, coordinating.
Certainly, like, if it's a mafia thing or something.
Yeah, yeah, you can imagine 25 people.
But I can't imagine hundreds.
Yeah, there's no conspiracy theory where hundreds of people have to keep a secret.
That's just not a thing.
And I think the plannedemic, I don't know if it'd be hundreds, but it's not five people.
It would take more than 10 people, you know, who would have some connection to the conspiracy.
I think it would take A hundred?
Or hundreds?
So, no.
I don't buy any conspiracy theory in which hundreds of people would have to keep a secret.
It's not impossible.
It's not impossible.
Somebody said D-Day?
D-Day was before Internet.
Before the Internet, and if everybody's on the same side, you could probably keep a secret.
But in the real world, people are too fractured.
All it would take is one member of the conspiracy theory to disagree politically with somebody else in the group, and then they'd narc on them.
So I don't want to really have a conversation about whether it was or was not a plannedemic.
Here's the only thing I want to sell to you.
Never assume that my opinion of people is higher than yours.
You'll always be missing the right context.
Always assume that I think people are even less capable than you do, generally speaking.
On average, on average.
You know, some people are highly capable, of course.
All right.
Did I tell all of you about the prank on me, or was it just on locals?
YouTubers, did I tell you about the prank somebody played on me this morning?
Oh, it was only locals?
Oh, it was a really good prank.
Did anybody see it?
Normally I wouldn't like it if somebody does a prank on me if it was just like clumsily done, but here's the prank.
So every day I tweet I tweet that I'm going to be on here doing the live stream.
And I tweet the URLs.
When I tweet the address for the scottadams.locals.com, it used to put my profile picture up there that I have on Locals.
So it just automatically grabbed that image and put it with the tweet.
But somebody hacked me somehow.
I don't know who or what they hacked.
And they replaced my profile picture with a picture of Dilbert wearing a KKK Necktie.
And when I tweeted it, I don't get to see it until after it's posted.
So this is why the prank is so good.
When I tweet it, I'm just tweeting a link.
So I don't see the image.
The image is added after the fact.
So the fact that I'd have to tweet it before I would know that it would put a KKK image there is pretty good.
And I don't know how they got into it.
I don't know what they hacked or if it was an insider.
Could have been an insider.
I don't know.
And they're looking into it now in locals to find out.
But even though the prank is on me, Would you agree that's a pretty good prank?
I gotta say that's A+.
A+.
Nicely done.
I liked it so much I just kept it up there.
I don't know if it'll change automatically if they fix it.
I don't think it does.
But I'll just keep it up there.
See what happens.
Alright.
I put it in a comment that I knew it was a prank.
So, I think I mentioned I was going to talk to Larry Elder for his show, but he had some construction.
The neighbour was doing construction so it was too loud.
So we postponed that until Monday, I think.
Ruben should comment on it?
No, nobody needs to comment on it.
Let's just let it be what it is.
I wouldn't make it a national story or anything.
By the way, it's not like, you know, it's not like Dave Rubin was behind it or anything.
I don't think so.
Wouldn't have noticed the tie if I hadn't pointed it out.
Well, that's probably part of the prank.
Part of the prank is probably that maybe I wouldn't notice.
I've already discussed this.
What did I already discuss?
Oh, I told you about-- well, you told me I didn't.
Maybe I said it early.
Oh, I told you about the prank?
Okay.
So, I know I told it to the locals people before I got on.
It's hard to remember what you've just said versus what you plan to say.
It's actually hard.
When you give a lot of public speeches, the most terrifying thing is that you say a sentence and you say to yourself, as you're on stage, did I just say the same sentence twice?
Because you can't tell after a while.
You just don't know.
Did I say that yesterday?
Or was that today?
Did I just say that?
Yeah.
Alright.
That's all for now.
I'm going to go talk to the Locals people privately.
Because they're special.
The only place you can find the Dilbert cartoon, Dilbert Reborn, is now on the scottadams.locals.com platform.
But if you're on YouTube, you should be hitting that subscribe and Like button, all that other stuff.
It's good for all of us.
It's good for everybody.
There's a lot more content there.
I've been doing a lot of robots, reading news, comics as well.
Lots of stuff.
As well as my over... How many micro lessons do I have now?
So on the Locos platform, I put these little 2-4 minute lessons that give you a life skill.
Like a total life skill.
A thing you can use that's useful in 2-4 minutes.
And there are, I think there are over 200 of them now.
It's 200 or so.
So believe it or not, I came up with 200 things That I could teach you that would be useful right away.
