Episode 2062 Scott Adams: OTC Narcan Approved, DeSantis & 1A, Media Causes All Our Problems
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Content:
Narcan and ED spray confusion
First Amendment and DeSantis
Media causes all of our problems
Reason for the collapse of civilizations
Congress screws America on TikTok
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Highlight of Civilization.
You might notice that I've got a little bit of laryngitis today, so I'm going to take it easy with my voice.
Don't think I'm sick.
I don't know what it is.
I think I just maybe enjoyed myself too much or something.
But today, your experience is going to go up a level.
I mean, you won't even believe it.
It'd be hard to believe, anyway.
And all you need is a cupper mug or a glass, a tankard, Elsa Stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better, it's called the simultaneous sip.
Go.
Allow me to share with you my personal phobia.
Which I didn't know I had until just now.
Some of you know my story.
That some number of years ago I lost my ability to speak.
Through something called a spasmodic dysphonia.
Made my vocal cords go nuts when I talked.
What you might not know is that we are private.
What you might not know is that Typically, when people get that condition, it starts with a normal... What do you call this?
When you can't talk?
What's it called when you can't talk?
Why am I blanking on that?
Laryngitis, yeah.
It starts with a normal laryngitis, just from some normal kind of bug or something.
But if you try to talk past the laryngitis, you can trigger yourself into permanent voice loss.
Which is what happened to me.
Now I got mine reversed by surgery, but I don't want to reverse, I don't want to trigger it again.
So I'm not going to push my voice, but I'll just sort of get through today and then rest it for the rest of the day.
So, That's what I have to worry about today, is not overextending my voice.
So I might sound a little bit like NPR today.
Would you mind if I do the entire live stream like NPR?
Let's see what that would look like.
Nashville police released the body cam footage.
The body cam footage shows the police doing an excellent job.
Would you like that?
That'll put you right to sleep.
Alright, well, this is the story.
The only reason I mention this is because we spend so much time criticizing law enforcement, and when you see law enforcement do something that to me looked exactly right, the Nashville police taking out the school shooter, and I have to admit, when you see the body cam, It restores your faith in the police.
Because you see a bunch of anecdotal stories about somebody who didn't do something right.
And you sort of imagine that's everybody.
Because you see a few anecdotes and you're like, oh, that's what the police are.
But then you see this bunch of police who were both fearless, running toward the shots, and very effective.
The moment they made contact, they ended the threat.
I don't know what to say about this, except it was perfect.
So congratulations to the Nashville Police for making law enforcement in general look good, I think.
Well, here's an interesting story.
New York Post.
There are a bunch of researchers in Australia who designed a nasal spray that's like Viagra.
So I think it's different chemistry, but it's a nasal spray instead of a pill.
The thing that makes it work well... Microphone's fine.
The thing that makes it work well is that because it's a nasal spray, it doesn't have to go through your bloodstream, it gives you full results in five minutes.
It's like spray, boom, you're ready to go.
Now, if that were the only story in the news, I'd say, well, that's an improvement.
They've done something good here.
But there's another story.
That seems totally unrelated, but maybe not.
The FDA approved Narcan for over-the-counter sales.
Now Narcan is what you get if you have a fentanyl overdose.
If somebody has Narcan, they stick it in your nose and it's like a nasal spray.
Spray it up your nose.
And apparently it works so well it can just take you back from almost the dead.
So, One of the problems, of course, as you see these two stories intersect, is that what if you get those two confused?
Yeah.
You don't want to grab your erectile dysfunction spray when you wanted the Narcan.
And if the bottles are not labeled appropriately, there is a way to tell.
So if you give somebody the Narcan spray, and the only change five minutes later is a raging erection, go look for the other bottle.
All right?
So what you don't want is somebody to die with a raging heart on, because my understanding is that that's embarrassing if it's an open casket.
You know what I mean?
If it's an open casket, you're like, hmm, what are we going to do about that?
Because I think the rigor mortis sets in about the same time as the rectal dysfunction.
So you could die with a wall saluting.
And they probably just have to make some adjustments, depending on your size.
I guess they'd make some adjustments to the casket top, make one a little extra deep, sort of thing.
I don't know, I'm just thinking through all the possibilities.
I don't think it's a big risk.
But you know, it's good to, it's just good to make sure you've covered all your bases.
The question I ask is, why did it take so long for the FDA to approve this?
Why did it take so long for the FDA to approve this?
I think we've known for a long time this was a good play.
I knew it.
I'm not in the FDA.
But yeah, I mean, I suppose there was some testing and they were waiting for some data.
I don't know.
It feels like too much of an emergency situation to have not done something about it earlier.
So I can't be happy about the speed of that, but at least it happened.
And by the way, I would like to congratulate all of you, because I do think that public opinion has some influence on this.
Don't you?
And certainly, you know, my audience has been pushing for it as I have for two years.
How long have we been pushing for this?
Two years?
And, you know, I'm not going to say it wouldn't have happened anyway because it's just a good idea, but I do feel like if you're putting pressure on something that ends up happening, You can claim that you were part of the productive process.
I think we were.
I don't know that it made a difference.
But we were certainly pushing in the right direction.
And you should be proud of that.
Because I think that proves you were on the right path and you were advocating for the right stuff.
So, good for you.
Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak and a bunch of other tech leaders have signed a petition, I guess, or a letter, asking for AI development to pause for six months, pause immediately, for at least six months, the training of AI to not make anything more powerful than the current version.
And it's because of the risks to society.
What do you think of that?
Do you think it's a good idea to pause AI development until we have a robust monitoring, you know, some kind of a human system for maintaining it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to say yes unambiguously to that.
There are very few things which I can say, you know, I agree 100%.
This is one of them.
This is one of them.
And here's the argument.
The argument goes like this.
Pausing for six months probably won't hurt us.
Would you agree?
Pausing for six months probably won't hurt us.
But it could save civilization.
Now, if you say to yourself, Scott, it's going to get out anyway.
There's nothing you can do.
You could try to control it, but it's too late.
I agree.
I agree that there's a really good risk, or high risk, that it's too late.
Some people said, well, I can already download it onto my local device.
I could keep training it.
There's nothing you can do.
But I would point out, do you remember when it was that the internet was new?
And all the people who were in charge of copyrights and books and stuff, they all said, oh no, publishing will go away because everybody will just steal it and put it on the internet.
So there's no way to have a business model when the moment you make something, it's just stolen and on the internet.
Now, that's the current situation.
The current situation is all of my work gets stolen and put on the internet immediately, almost the moment it's created.
But it never hurt.
Because the law was still robust and it's still illegal to routinely put my work on the internet.
Lawyers would come get you.
So I would say you should not underestimate how comprehensive the law could be.
If the law tried to make AI illegal, I think it could do it.
I think it could.
That doesn't mean people wouldn't cheat.
But if you're cheating sort of locally, you know, if you're not Google, and you're not some giant AI, you know, company, you're not going to do too much in your bedroom, you know, with your local computer.
I think you only have to worry about the big entities.
And the big entities can be completely controlled.
Right?
Google is not going to violate the law.
They have too much at risk.
So I think you underestimate how effectively the law could shut down AI.
I think you're seeing the beginning of a movement that's going to be chipping at AI from every direction until it's almost completely neutered.
So my guess is that AI is far too dangerous for the right reasons and the wrong reasons.
The right reasons that AI is dangerous is it might teach us what's real.
If America ever found out what was real and what was bullshit, the whole system would collapse.
Because our system depends on people believing stuff that isn't true.
AI could change that.
So our whole system could be at risk just from the truth.
And that's just one risk.
If you imagine all the other worst case risks, they're pretty amazing.
Now, I am opposed to stopping AI permanently.
I think it's necessary.
I think you don't want China to have it before we do.
But I do think it makes sense to be really, really serious about safety.
I think the net effect of that is AI might have a military use and almost nothing else.
Because we'll neuter it in so many ways.
Now, what happens when AI starts taking jobs?
Don't you think there'll be legislation to make it illegal to replace a human with a machine?
Now, we've been replacing humans with machines for, you know, 100 years or more.
But once they can replace all the humans, I think we're going to have to rethink it.
So here's what I think is going to happen in the medium term.
I think there are too many humans who are incapable of taking care of themselves, more so than ever probably.
Because in the old days you could at least be a farmer, or work on a farm.
But today they're just a huge segment of the population that really isn't capable of doing anything in the modern world.
They don't have any capabilities whatsoever that are commercial.
So I think we're going to have to create two civilizations.
One, who lives on some kind of UBI and maybe the robots do the hard stuff for them.
And they just take them away from everybody else.
Because they'll be crime ridden and, you know, low, bad mindsets.
It'll be every problem in the world.
But they won't want to work.
So take the people who don't want to work or can't work, because they don't have capabilities, put them in one place.
And try to get the people who still have something to add physically separated from them.
Because at this point there is a poisonous mindset and there's still a productive mindset and they're living simultaneously.
I feel like when I grew up in America there was only one mindset.
Is anybody in my age range that would concur with that?
That whole image of the American dream, that was pretty much 100%.
I don't think anybody disagreed with that.
It wasn't even, even generationally people agreed.
I went through the hippie generation and it looked like the hippies were anti-work and You know, anti-establishment.
But really, as soon as they wanted money, they became pretty establishment.
So that was more of a youth difference.
But today we've got so many different opinions about everything that our operating system is dissolving.
I wasn't going to talk about this yet, but well, let me add this first.
There was another study, Stanford researchers tried to figure out if AI could change your mind on politics better than a person could.
So they did a trial where a person would write something to change your mind and then AI would write something to change your mind.
And they found out that the AI beat the people.
AI was more persuasive in its arguments than people.
Not a lot.
You know, maybe like in the 2% range, something like that.
But, as the article I read pointed out, on the big issues in the country, 2% is a pretty big deal.
I mean, that could be the difference between passing and not passing.
Or elected or not elected.
Now, here's what I would add to that.
As far as I know, no one has ever trained AI in the techniques of persuasion.
So far, everything I've seen, it looks like it writes the way a good writer would write, but not with any of the deep techniques of persuasion.
Just sort of ordinary communication good practices.
What happens if AI learns hypnosis?
So for example, I ordered a deck of cards that each has a hypnosis trick on it.
So it's like 50 or so cards.
Each one has a specific trick that AI could learn very easily, right?
They just use these words instead of these words.
Very easy stuff.
If AI, if I trained it just with that deck of cards, and I wish I could, I forgot the name of the company or person that makes the cards.
I want to give them a shout out because I bought the cards.
Mike Mandel, thank you.
Mike Mandel, he's a hypnotist.
I just saw his cards advertised on the internet, and I thought, oh, I'll get those, see what that's all about.
So I got the Mike Mandel... Is it Mandel or Mendel?
Mandel.
So I got the Mike Mandel hypnosis cards, and I was looking through them, and sure enough, they're actually useful, completely powerful tips on how to word things more persuasively.
All you'd have to do is sit down with the AI, because I believe it has memory now, you can train it, and say, hey AI, I'm going to teach you 50 tricks to be more persuasive.
Remember these tricks, and then I'd like you to write a persuasive argument using whichever of these tricks makes sense in this document.
And then how persuasive would it be?
You really have to worry about that.
See, I have a unique window into a risk that most people don't see, which is the techniques of persuasion.
I can see that AI doesn't have them.
It's obvious that it doesn't have the techniques.
But they're so easy to learn.
And they're so powerful.
All you have to do is expose it to them once.
You're done.
I don't think anybody in the government has a full appreciation of that.
Like even people like, you know, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.
Some of the smartest people who have ever, you know, drawn a breath.
But do you think they have a unique understanding of persuasion and persuasion tools?
I don't know.
I mean, they know a lot of stuff.
They might.
But I doubt it.
I doubt it.
So that's a big risk.
All right.
I love watching CNN reporting on Fox News because it's always so biased.
And they like to slip in their fake news in a sentence that just otherwise seems innocuous.
So you just assume that the fake news is real because the rest of the sentence seemed pretty reasonable.
Here's an example.
If you're following the Fox News and Dominion lawsuits, here's what CNN says about it.
Now this isn't just as part of a larger article, but this is just one sentence that I want to call out for amazing weasel-ness, alright?
CNN website says.
But that was several weeks ago, before Dominion unleashed a trove of embarrassing text messages and testimony from Fox executives and personalities that suggested they knowingly aired Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.
Huh.
Did that happen?
In the real world, did that happen?
No.
No, that didn't happen.
But they just put it in a sentence like, well, we all know this happened.
Just sort of obvious this happened.
Now, let me be more specific when I say it didn't happen.
There is no smoking gun in the Dominion lawsuit.
Because we've seen the texts that are the most embarrassing.
The most embarrassing ones do not have any admission that they were aware that Trump was wrong.
How could they?
How could anybody know Trump was wrong?
You could know some of his specific claims didn't hold up in court.
I mean, that's verifiable.
But you don't know he's wrong.
You can't prove a negative.
So according to CNN, yeah, they can not only read the minds of the people, but then they look at their writing that does not say what they want it to say.
It does not say We knew that he was lying and we acted like we didn't know.
Nobody said anything like that.
They said stuff like, this is the content that our people want to see.
They've said in some cases that they didn't believe the election was rigged.
But that has nothing to do with whether Trump believed it.
If Trump believed it, that's the news.
And they were just reporting the news.
So I don't think that there's any evidence that somebody knowingly put something on that they knew was false.
I don't think that's an evidence.
So it always amuses me to see that CNN will just drop that in there like it's a fact when it's not.
Did you know that Ron DeSantis is trying to make it easier to sue the media if you're a public figure?
What do you think of that?
Do you think that public figures Should be able to sue the media more easily.
Think that's a good idea?
Yeah?
Do you know how many lawsuits there would be?
It would probably end the media.
Do you think it's a good idea if you knew it would put the news business out of business?
Or that the news business would not say negative things about people because they might be afraid of getting sued?
Yeah.
The First Amendment would allow anybody to say anything as long as it's not knowingly malicious.
But I guess the proposed change would make it easier for the public figure to sue.
Now, let me ask you this.
The headline of almost every major publication in the last month ran a story about me that painted me as a racist.
Was that an accurate story?
It was a headline everywhere.
Was that accurate?
How many of them reported that I was complaining about racists who didn't like me?
That the context was about other racists and that those racists didn't like me so I'd want to stay away from those racists.
Did any of them report that?
Do you think that it cost me any money?
Millions.
Yeah, millions and millions of dollars.
Fake news.
Now, when I say it's fake, I only mean that they left the context out that would have reversed the meaning of the story.
It wasn't fake that I said things that other people say sound racist.
That was true.
But if you leave out the reason I said it, it reverses the meaning.
Would I have a lawsuit?
If Ron DeSantis makes it easier for me to sue, do I have a suit?
Well, a lot of you are saying no.
Under the current rules, I'd say no.
Under the current rules, I'd say no.
Because you'd have to prove malice.
And it would be too easy for them to say, malice?
I have no malice.
I just thought that was true.
Right?
It's an ultimate defense.
Well, we thought it was true.
We didn't look into it very closely, but we thought it was true on first, you know, on the surface.
I don't think I should be able to sue for that.
Because if I did, I'd put the entire media out of business.
I mean, the size of what they did just to me was enormous.
Just the size of it.
Just think of the scale of what they did to me.
Just the scale.
It's huge.
Now, you know, there's a part of me that always wants to set the world right and get revenge or something.
But I really don't think I should have that right.
I don't think that you would be served if I could do that more easily.
Because it would just remove your news.
They just wouldn't be able to have a business model.
That's what I think.
So I think DeSantis is on some dangerous ground here, yet I completely understand the motivation.
Having been in the target zone for malicious media treatment, I understand it.
I just don't think you can win that way.
All right.
So I feel like there's something happening in the mindset or something.
Here's a story that I don't know that I would have seen.
Two months ago.
You tell me.
Does this sound like something that would have been said two months ago?
So you know the story about Leah Thomas, the trans athlete who competes as a woman and is beating most of the women most of the time.
And of course, the women who are born as women say that's unfair.
They would say they're competing against a biological male is what they say.
But here's what's different.
This Riley, is it Riley Gaines?
Riley Gaines, who's a born female and a competitive swimmer.
And she's coming out directly and she's not shading any of her opinion.
She's just saying, this is a man.
We're competing against men.
This is bad for women.
And it's being reported, at least by Fox News, and probably others, just directly what she says.
Have we reached the point where people don't need to be so polite?
Because it seems like two months ago the way she would have had to say this is, Leah Thomas, she, they would have said she in all cases two months ago.
She is a problem for other women because it's, you know, unfair or something.
But, you know, we hope that she finds a place to compete and she is too strong for, you know, the competitors and she makes it unfair.
Doesn't it feel like two months ago you would have had to buy into the pronoun?
But now she's just on the news saying it's a man.
I'm competing against a man.
And that's not fair for women.
But forget about the topic for a moment.
Forget about the topic.
Doesn't it feel like she has more free speech than even a few months ago?
Or is that my imagination?
Because I might be biased about this.
It feels like people are now saying directly, you're just men with mental illness.
People are saying that directly.
No, this is not about wokeness.
This is people with mental illness who are trying to jump on a theme.
Now, just to be clear, I think people are so different, and there are so many different kinds of people with kinds of minds and everything else, I do think That there are people who have some general, you know, genuine situation where the only thing that can make them happy is gender reassignment.
As adults.
Kids is a different situation, of course.
But I don't think it should be illegal for somebody to change their gender if that's what they need, because they're adults.
And we're not in their bodies, we're not in their brains, we can't make decisions for them.
But is it not clear that it's gone too far?
And is it not clear that it has attracted people with just mental illness?
And that if we treat the mentally ill the same as somebody who's just, let's say, operating based on their freedom, just somebody who says, you know, I think this will make me happier, and then they do it, it makes them happier.
Good for them.
But I feel like society has kind of reached a limit.
Yeah, it's too far.
It's too far.
And I think that treating Leah Thomas as a woman would make sense in almost any other context.
If Leah Thomas wants to live that kind of life, it's a free world.
I think people should just do what makes them happy, if it doesn't hurt me.
But once that preference is taken into the specific context of sports, I don't have any problem with the women who were affected by it saying, we're competing against men.
To me, that doesn't even feel impolite.
Not even a little bit.
And I feel that that's a change.
I feel like I would have been cancelled just for this.
Am I wrong?
Even what I just said, I feel like I would have been cancelled two months ago.
But I don't feel like that's out of bounds at the moment.
I feel like we're achieving some kind of clarified understanding of the situation, which is it's not all about everybody trans is good all the time, and it's definitely not everybody trans is mentally ill.
As long as we can get out of the binary, I think we'll be okay.
It can be true that it's good for some people and isn't it good that they can do what they need to do.
And it could be also true that the mentally ill have taken over the category.
To me it looks like it.
To me it looks like a lot of mental illness masquerading as something else.
Now that wouldn't be different from any other topic, would it?
In almost every topic there's somebody who's mentally ill This being mistaken for a legitimate voice.
Take racism.
There's all kinds of, I'll call it normal racism.
But then there's crazy racism, isn't there?
Isn't there crazy racism?
Wait a minute, that's not racism.
That's just mental disorder.
That is just mental disorder.
As soon as you call that racism, it just gets confusing.
You're getting lost in the binary.
That people are racist or not racist.
You know, that little simplified world.
And I would say that almost every major topic has some important people who are involved who are actually just mentally ill.
And they get confused with the serious people who just have different opinions.
Yeah.
Well, Greta's a good example.
Greta's a good example.
Now, Greta appears to be, from the outside, Somebody who's suffering from a mental, I won't say, doesn't look like any organic mental problem, but it looks like a mental condition brought on by, you know, media forces.
And there are probably a lot of young people who have the same alarmist PTSD feeling about climate change, that they better act now or they'll be dead in six years we have left or whatever the crazy number is.
Greta, to me, looks like somebody suffering from some kind of mental issue.
Which doesn't mean she's wrong.
The question of whether she's right or wrong is completely separate.
It just doesn't look like that's the motivation.
From the outside.
I can't read her mind.
I can't diagnose her.
You know, you shouldn't listen to anything I say about anybody else's mental health.
But, from the outside, that's what it looks like.
Liberalism is a mental disorder, Michael Savage says, but again it's a matter of degree, isn't it?
Being a moderate Democrat is definitely not a mental disorder.
Does anybody think it is?
Does anybody think, you know, let's say old Bill Clinton, the old Bill Clinton Democrat, was that a mental disorder?
He looked like the most rational guy we've ever had as a president, to me.
But certainly there are things that you would call liberal or progressive today that, in my opinion, they get in a little too far into mental health and not so much about politics.
So I think it's important that we can call out mental health as a variable.
Isn't it?
And doesn't that move things forward?
If you can say, you know, Here's the other thing.
People like me who are just tired of having to lie.
I just got tired of lying.
So I just started saying what I was actually thinking.
And of course you get cancelled, it's very expensive.
But I don't have a moment of regret.
And I feel like it's useful for you to see people like me Who took a back full of arrows.
I don't have a single regret.
And maybe that's good.
Maybe the system needs people who are willing to, you know, run at the pillbox first.
It just happened to be me this time.
Next time it'll be somebody else.
All right.
I have a theory that the media is the root cause of all of America's current problems.
And I'm going to build this into a bigger theme.
And it goes like this.
The basis of the... I'm going to talk about that chart.
The basis of the hypothesis is this.
That when we got the internet, And we learned to be able to count the number of clicks on a story, which is the first time we could know with certainty every little nuance of, oh, this headline gets more clicks, this story gets more clicks, which was a little bit harder to deduce back when the news was just on TV and it was three people reading the news.
But once you could tell exactly what would get people excited, which was correlated with profits, Then you had to chase the outrage.
So once we monetized outrage, everything else came out of that.
Monetized outrage.
So at this point, the media is no longer about the news.
It's about monetizing outrage.
The news is just the ingredients, but the cake is outrage, right?
They could use those ingredients to inform us, to lift us up, to enlighten us, but they don't have a business model that would support any of that crap.
So instead, they serve as outrage, because that's where the money is.
Now, as long as you have that system, can you have a healthy country?
I would argue it's impossible without changing something.
I'm not even sure what needs to be changed.
But the current situation is a fast road to destruction.
Let me give you an example of some of the things, in my opinion, the media is the sole reason for all of the problems.
And if this doesn't shock you, I don't know what will.
And before I read them, I'll give you this backup.
There's some graphs that just went by in the locals platform because they can put images in with their comments.
And I saw that on Twitter.
It was, since 2010, the media massively increased headlines that use fear, anger, and disgust and sadness because those things get clicks.
And it's a dramatic change around 2010.
2010 is, you know, roughly when we knew exactly what worked and what didn't yet.
Roughly iPhone time.
So basically you can tell that this is a clickbait-related phenomenon.
Would you agree?
That the timing in 2010, you know, coincident with smartphones-ish, you know, around that, isn't it obvious That the headlines turn negative because of a technological improvement.
It's obvious, right?
Like, that part nobody doubts.
I don't have to defend that any more than the obvious, right?
So once you have that situation where the news is not trying to help, they're actually trying to hurt.
They're trying to hurt you because it's profitable.
And when I say hurt you, I mean give you bad news that doesn't make you feel good, and maybe there's nothing you can do about it anyway.
Alright, here are things I think the news literally destroyed.
Traditional American values.
I want to see your comments.
Agree or disagree?
The traditional American values have been destroyed by the media.
Not just the news.
Not just the news.
But movies, etc.
Now, I'm not going to make an argument that traditional American values are perfect and the only thing we should consider.
Because traditional American values had too much racism and sexism and other issues, lots of other issues.
But would you agree with me that as an operating system for the country, it worked to keep cohesion, even with all of its problems, it kept cohesion, and that cohesion was applied toward merit and hard work, and that's what built the country.
The country was built on trust.
You don't know how important trust is, which I believe is a religious traditional value.
You don't get trust unless you think God was watching.
Am I wrong?
If you thought there's no God, you'd just say, well, if I can get away with it, I can get away with it.
But if you think you're going to burn in hell forever if you lie to your business partner, You might be less inclined to do it.
Well, I don't want to burn forever, so I'll tell the truth.
So I think that the traditional American values created an operating system for the country that was super successful, and that the media has chipped away on it in recent years, usually for good reasons.
Usually for good reasons.
I love inclusiveness.
I like diversity.
I like getting rid of racism.
So the reasons are all good.
It's just that you don't indulge in those until you're already successful.
There's a certain type of way of thinking that I don't think emerges until you've taken care of all your big problems.
You know, and got the country solid.
And then people have the luxury of, you know, I'm not sure everybody should have a job.
Can you imagine, those of you who are in my age range, imagine in the 60s, well, I guess in the 60s they were saying that.
But imagine in like the 80s, somebody saying, how about UBI would just pay people to do nothing?
You couldn't even have that conversation.
It would have sounded ridiculous.
Because people have said, no, that's not the operating system.
As soon as you pay people for not working, you're gonna get more not working.
How's that not obvious?
So, I think you have to succeed, and I'll come back to this theme, before you can be silly.
Silliness is like a luxury of the successful.
And especially their children.
The children of successful people have the greatest luxury of all, because they don't know what it takes to make the money.
They just know they don't need any at the moment.
All right.
I think traditional values was destroyed by the media.
Not that it shouldn't have.
I'm just saying it happened.
I think the January 6th insurrection story is completely media-driven.
And if the media had told us, well, it was a bunch of people who were unhappy about the election, but, yeah, and there was some violence, and that's the end of the story.
You know the media could have covered that that way, right?
How did the media cover the protests when Trump got elected the first time?
First time Trump got elected, huge protests.
Media covered it while it was happening, and then it's not a story anymore.
But this January 6th one, the media, you know, being the winged monkeys of the Democrats, decided that this needed to be the main story you see.
So is this good for you?
Is it good for the country that the media decided insurrection, which was literally not what happened?
Is it good for the country that they made up a narrative and then sold it for two years?
No!
It's terrible for the country.
How about racial division?
Do you think racial division is being driven by media narratives?
Of course.
Of course.
Do you think racial division got worse on its own?
No.
No, if you leave people alone, they kind of say, oh, you're my neighbor?
Oh, you're cool.
I like you.
It's just when we get charged up by the media clickbait stuff.
I mean, how unhealthy is it that we see on Twitter every day there's a news story of black people hurting other people?
Right?
There's no way that's representative.
Of course.
But if you see that kind of video every day, it's going to make you think, wow, everywhere I go it's going to be this.
Of course that's not the case.
How about our mental health?
Of course.
Of course the media has destroyed our mental health.
Does anybody doubt that?
Does that seem obvious to you?
That they've destroyed our mental health?
Because they're giving us PTSD, they're making us racially afraid of each other.
Just every possible negative thing that's come to me.
How about climate change and the way we're addressing it?
But let's say energy policy.
Probably the biggest economic factor in the world is energy.
Don't you think we're doing everything wrong because of the news?
Do you know why we don't have a robust nuclear Nuclear industry in America?
It's the media.
It's the media.
Yeah.
If you took the media away, scientists would say, well, you know, we're good at this now and it's safe.
The current models are safe.
And if the media just reported that, well, it turns out the current models are safe.
That's it.
We would have a robust, France-like nuclear energy.
But we don't.
And the media did that.
That was the media.
How about TikTok and banning it?
Don't you think TikTok would already be banned?
It's only the media that even allows this to happen.
The whole story about trans athletes.
Do you think that Leah Thomas would be competing if the media did not support her?
Of course not.
Of course not.
If the media reported that a man was competing as a woman, it would end immediately.
It's just the way it's framed.
The moment that all of the media reported the story, there's a man competing as a woman, Which, by the way, is the only one way to frame it.
The other way to frame it is, she's a woman and, you know, she has advantages.
But if the media decided that they didn't want this to happen, they'd just say, oh, there's this man competing as a woman, and then everybody would have no problem banning it.
Because they'd know they'd be safe.
Well, the media says it's a man competing as a woman, so obviously we can ban him, they would be able to say in that case, from competing.
But right now the media says, That, you know, treat everybody according to their gender preference.
And so if you were to complain about it, the media is this, you know, has worked up a bunch of people to complain about you.
So that's a media problem.
How about population decline?
Do you think the population in mostly industrialized countries, do you believe the population is declining because of natural reasons?
You know, just economics?
Or do you think the media has a lot to do with it?
The media.
There are young people who literally don't want to have babies because of climate change.
Better is a lot of them.
I bet there's a lot of them.
And I don't see the media saying having babies is good and noble and American and necessary.
If there's a media story about babies, it's gonna be how they're too expensive.
Right?
Or, people are way happier without babies.
Surprise!
We found that women are happier without babies.
I've seen that story.
I've seen that story.
I don't know how true it is, but I've seen that story.
How about the Ukraine war?
Do you think we'd be at war if half the country did not support it?
And do you think half the country would support it if the media had not told them to?
No.
Everybody's opinion comes from the media.
All of it.
So the only way you have a war is if the media says it's okay.
If CNN and Fox News said, this is insane, stay away from Ukraine, whatever happens, happens.
By the way, that's not necessarily my opinion.
I'm just saying that the media decides if you're in a war.
It's not the government.
The government doesn't have the power to create a war and sustain it without media support.
Now, they only need half of the media.
They don't need the left and the right.
Either one would be enough, probably.
But they can't do it without the media.
So the media creates our wars.
We wouldn't be in Ukraine without it.
And that was just the things that came to my head immediately.
What about the bank run?
Do you think we'd have a bank run if the news covered it differently?
The bank run is completely a media phenomenon.
It's not a banking phenomenon.
It is a media phenomenon.
If the media tells you the banks are failing, they will fail.
If the media says, oh, there's one special case, don't worry about it, the banks will succeed.
Now, they do have actual structural issues of having enough reserves and all that.
But I think those are the problems we could figure out.
The thing you can't figure out is if everybody tries to withdraw their money at the same time.
That you can't figure out.
And the media is bringing us very close to the point where that's a risk.
I don't think we're there, but...
Try to think of any problem in the world, that's one of the big ones, and see if you can see any problem, any problem, that isn't either entirely caused by the media, or influenced in the wrong way by the media.
It's actually everything.
It's everything.
All of our problems are the media.
Do you know why we don't talk about this more?
Who would do the talking?
You're not going to get invited by the media to talk about the media being bad.
So if it doesn't happen on something like this, an independent live stream, you're not going to hear it.
So there's pretty much no issue that isn't being destroyed by the media.
Here's a new poll.
Charlie Kirk tweeted about this.
New poll from Newsweek shows that 69% of Americans believe January 6th was less violent than reported by the fake news media.
Just 26% believe it was more violent than reported.
That spunky little 25-26%.
25, 26%.
They can get every question wrong.
All right.
So here's my question.
Thank you.
Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of ancient civilizations that left advanced cities, at least advanced by their standards, that just got covered with dirt?
Do you ever wonder about that?
How is it that so many buried cities exist where there was once this thriving city and now every single person is gone and they've been gone so long that the whole thing covered with dirt so you didn't even know it was there?
Now, I assume there are a number of reasons.
One of those reasons could be, you know, economic.
Maybe there's a drought.
Maybe there's a natural disaster.
In Central and South America, maybe it was smallpox that came in from Europe.
So there's a bunch of reasons.
You have volcanoes, etc.
But collectively, in my opinion, they don't seem to explain all of it.
Now, of course, this is just a subjective kind of a view.
But to me, it looks like there's something else that wipes out civilizations.
And it does it reliably.
That's the problem.
It's the reliable part.
It seems like they all get wiped out.
It makes me wonder if there's a common theme.
And here's what I believe.
I believe if you have hundreds of millions of humans running around, some of them will have philosophies and mindsets that will drive them towards success.
Where they could build a civilization, and some will not.
Some will have more tribal, everything's fine the way it is, tomorrow is the same as yesterday, and then they would not drive toward building civilizations.
But, here's my hypothesis.
That when there's a coincidental correct mindset in some group of humans, and let's say early America was the perfect example, the early American mindset was really, really optimized for building economics and civilization.
And so it did.
So America sprang up from that.
But here we are, highly successful, arguably the strongest nation on Earth at some point.
And once you're the strongest nation and you can feed everybody and all of your major problems seem solved, then you have the luxury of the useless people having a bigger voice.
The useless people are anybody whose view would take you away from the mindset of success.
I call those the useless people.
Now you don't have that many useless people until you're really successful.
It's like the children of successful people become the useless generation because they don't know what it takes to succeed.
They just sort of were born into a good situation.
But now they're sure that they have good ideas and you should all listen to them.
Narcissists, mostly.
So, my theory is that every successful civilization requires a success mindset.
They can be different, right?
The success mindset for, let's say, the Christian biased, you know, traditional family would be different from, I don't know, let's say some early Muslim civilization that was also successful.
They would have different mindsets, but both of them optimized for some kind of success.
But once that successful civilization becomes strong enough, it breeds the second generation of people who don't get it.
And they think they need to change the mindset to improve it.
So now we're seeing the viruses.
The DEI, the CRT, the ESG, the climate alarm.
You know, the trans stuff, etc.
And 100% of it is either anti-population or anti-success, anti-merit, anti-economics, anti-everything that worked.
And here's my guess.
I bet that's what happened to other civilizations.
I'll bet that success breeds a useless class.
The useless class gains power because nobody thinks to stop them.
It's just talk.
Right?
If you have freedom of speech, you're like, oh, they're just talking.
They're just talking.
Everybody gets to talk.
But at some point, that talking becomes so toxic and corrosive that Oh, yeah, I'm going to pull myself back from something I was just going to say right there.
But maybe I'll tell you later.
Yeah, there's something I'm going to tell you later.
The locals people already heard it because they get the special stuff.
But YouTube, you're not ready for this information, so I'm going to hold back on that.
I'll tell you later, though.
I just have to wait.
So I think that we're heading toward, at least America, is heading toward a civilization collapse that is directly caused by the media, the media allowing the mindset of success that drove America to be corrupted because they get more clicks for that.
So the people complaining about the system and protesting They're causing clicks and then they get more people because the media tells you what's true.
And now the media is sort of the winged monkeys of all the people who have the anti-success mindset.
They're the ones telling us that the real problem is racism.
Is it?
The only reason we have a racism problem is because... Well, not the only reason, but the biggest reason is because the media told us to.
They told us what to think and here we are.
Yeah.
So, I think we're actually heading toward a extinction event in America and everybody can see it.
Would you agree?
Everyone can see it.
But here's what I think is the good news.
Earlier when I said, could you talk about Leah Thomas in direct terms even two months ago?
But today you can.
Have you noticed that since I got cancelled, the discussions about race have expanded?
That might be just my impression, I don't know.
But I feel like you can speak more freely about race and gender, and more freely about mindset.
Success mindset.
And I'm seeing a little bit more of it emerge.
It takes some people to You know, basically get cancelled before people will take anything seriously.
So, I think it can be saved, but we are on an extinction path.
America is.
Not that we'll have it.
Not that we will be extinct, but that if we don't change direction, we're running right toward the cliff as fast as we can.
And I think that before we get to the cliff, the smart people will emerge.
I bring you back to an earlier story about Elon Musk looking to help us pause AI.
Elon Musk is not the media.
Elon Musk is a dad.
And in many ways he's a dad first.
You think of him as richest guy and SpaceX and Tesla and all that.
But I think he's a dad first.
I think he's a dad first.
And when he says, you know, the dad of all dads, says, you should pause AI, and then a whole bunch of other smart people agree completely, that is useful.
That is the solution to the media.
Elon Musk, by buying Twitter and restoring, in my opinion, restoring free speech to Twitter, is the biggest thing that's happened in years.
It's the biggest thing.
Because only Twitter is like slightly free at the moment.
And it might be, you know, with the help of the internet dads and internet moms, it might be the thing that drives us back to sanity.
It might.
But right now the media and the Democrats in particular are on a toxic march toward destruction.
And the only counterbalance will not come from the media.
It's gonna have to come from Twitter and people like Elon Musk and the people who are willing to get shot down.
So, and I also think that some people, and I'll use my own example as the perfect example, I guess.
Some of us are just done.
Some of us are just done lying.
And here's the other thing.
You can beat up white people for a long time.
And white men in particular.
You can beat up white men for a long time.
Until you can't.
That's all.
You can shit on white men as long as you want.
Until you can't.
Until you can't.
All right.
Here's the media again.
So this was in the news today.
New research shows that physical exercise has little mental benefits.
New York Post.
That's right.
The media is telling you that exercise might not be good for your brain after all.
You fucking pieces of shit.
You know that's not true.
You fucking know that's not true.
You know that's not fucking true.
You know that's not fucking true.
You know that.
Fuck.
Yeah, and wine is good for you.
Wine is good for you.
Fuck you, media.
Fuck you.
You're trying to kill us now.
How many of you think that that's true?
Now, here's what they did.
They looked at all the studies, and they decided the studies were underpowered or, in some cases, inadequate.
They did not prove that exercise is not good for the brain.
They proved that studies suck.
Here's how this news should have read.
Study shows that studies suck.
That was the only news.
That's the only thing they proved.
They looked at the studies and they said, the way you did all these studies is bad.
That's good news.
I mean, that's useful news.
Hey, studies show that studies are all bad.
I would like that.
But no, do not tell me that exercise doesn't help me think.
Because I know that that's not true.
I fucking know that's not true.
It really pisses me off.
I don't know if you could tell, but I'm really pissed off about that.
Could there be a better example of the media trying to fucking kill us?
I mean, this is like just trying to fucking end the country.
This is so wrong.
So wrong.
Somebody says the author is fat.
Maybe.
I doubt it, but maybe.
Anyway.
Let's see.
I think I have some more notes I haven't ripped up yet.
Is anybody following the story of Netanyahu and Israel and some judicial reforms?
How many of you know the details of that story?
All right, so I'm not good on the details, but it looks important.
So let me tell you what I know.
So Netanyahu, as Prime Minister, is trying to put through some legislation that would give more power to the government and decrease the power of the judicial system in Israel.
Does that sound like a good idea to you?
If you didn't know anything else, if that's the only thing you knew, does it sound like a good idea?
Well, it would depend if the judicial system was out of control, right?
If the judicial system is truly out of control, then maybe you could argue you need more balance.
Alright, suppose I told you that the judicial system Had grabbed some power for itself not too long ago.
And what Netanyahu is trying to do is claw back the power that the judicial system initially claimed for itself that was greater than before.
Now, I don't think it's one for one, but in terms of just a power balance, it's a response to a grab by the judicial system.
And he's trying to grab back a little bit, which he would call balance, maybe.
And maybe somebody else would call a power grab.
Yeah, Joel Pollack is reporting on this in Breitbart, and that's where I'm getting my updates.
So, here's what's important from the outside.
What would you think if you saw the United States Congress passing a law that seemed to give them more power than the courts?
In other words, trying to take power away from the courts.
Wouldn't you reflexively oppose that?
Just automatically?
No?
You wouldn't?
Depends?
Yeah, I guess the right answer is it depends.
But unless there was some, like, national urgency... It just sounds like a bad idea on the... just on the surface.
But it doesn't make it a bad idea.
It doesn't make it a bad idea.
It just means that on the surface, it's the scariest frickin' idea I ever heard.
Oh, the government wants to take power away from the courts.
The courts are the only thing that control the power of the government.
And so the government would like to take away the power of the only thing that can control the power of the government.
I can see why the citizens are revolting.
And I don't even think they need to know the details.
But of course it's like everything else.
It became a left-right thing because the courts apparently...
are more supportive of left-leaning things and the government, if it's a conservative government, is more supportive of conservative things.
So it's really just, it has nothing to do with the Constitution in Israel.
It has everything to do with the left and the right wanting to win.
That's about it.
But it's fun to watch because you can imagine this situation or something like it happening in America.
So, I think Netanyahu wisely put it on the back burner because of public response.
But, you know, interesting to watch.
I also saw that, did you know that there's a Gallup poll showing that Democrats favor Palestinians over the Israelis for the first time since the poll has been run?
Did you know that Americans are so divided that the left is favoring the Palestinians and the right must be favoring Israel?
I mean, not completely, but by a majority.
Now, I'm not going to pick favorites because there's good and bad behavior by everyone everywhere, so I'm not going to get into the... I'm not going to call a favorite here.
Well, I am.
I mean, I'm pro-Israel.
I can't hide that.
I'm very pro-Israel.
But that doesn't mean that the Palestinians have no complaints.
Is that fair?
Would you accept that as a balanced view?
I'm completely pro-Israel.
But the Palestinians have some stuff to complain about.
It's not baseless.
It's not baseless.
So, but, you know, you need some kind of balance there.
I don't know, that's pretty alarming.
That we don't even agree on Israel anymore.
All right.
So it turns out that, do you remember that one happy moment a few days ago where I was saying, my God, You think everything is so partisan, but it turns out our Congress can get things done when it's important, they can become bipartisan when the country is at risk, and I saw that happening with TikTok.
I was like, oh my goodness, finally some bipartisan movement.
Finally, the Democrats, the Republicans, they're not going to fight over it like it's some kind of left-right thing.
They're just going to do what's right for the country.
And there was this bipartisan move to ban TikTok.
And I thought, wow, golden age, here we come.
Things are looking good now.
And then, thanks to Tucker Carlson's reporting, we learned that that was a trick.
And there's not a bill to ban TikTok.
There's only a bill to give the Congress more control over social media in general.
That's the opposite of what I want.
That's not even close.
Yeah, that was just a trick.
So, everybody involved with this.
Now, there may be more than one TikTok bill, so I want to make sure I'm not throwing the wrong people under the bus.
But anybody who's bipartisanly supporting this bill to give them control over social media, fuck you.
Fuck you.
I'm not even going to give you a political or legal or practical opinion on this.
Fuck you.
All right, this is pure evil, or incompetence, or completely not caring about the citizens of the United States.
This is so unacceptable.
Fuck you.
That's all I've got to say about that.
Just fuck you.
All right.
Guess I woke up with a little bit of an attitude today.
So you got that.
Yeah, so apparently this, the new anti-TikTok bill, which doesn't mention TikTok, it gives the government, this according to Greg Price in a tweet, says it gives the government the ability to go after anyone they deem as a national security risk, at which point they can access everything from their computer to video games to the ring light.
Now, I suppose they could have done that anyway, but anything that gives the government more power Over the people?
Without a specific threat?
Right.
Just sort of generally, we'd like to have more power over you in this way?
Not cool.
Not cool.
So let's hope that stops.
Well, but at least the FDA approved Narcan, and there's going to be a good boner spray, too.
So that's the good news.
Oh, I'm actually over the hour.
I was trying to make this a short show.
Guess I got... VDH and Vivek agree with you on our destruction.
Yeah, I think... Here's one of the things I love about Vivek Ramaswamy.
I love the clarity with which he presents his opinions.
That is so good for the country.
So good.
Whether he wins or loses, he's a pure patriot at this point.
He's a pure patriot.
What he's doing looks like it's expensive for him.
He's going to take a lot of hits.
And it appears purely good for the country in the sense that it expands our productive conversation about everything.
And I could not say enough good things about what he's adding to the process right now.
He's adding a lot.
And I think he's going to make Trump stronger.
I think he'll make the Democrats have to up their game, hopefully in a productive way.
So I don't know if he's going to win or lose.
And by the way, I don't agree with everything he says, but that's also not necessary, right?
If he says his view clearly backs it up with his reasoning, and I still disagree with him, I'm cool with that.
That's a good situation.
I just want to see good arguments without any lying.
And he provides that.
He provides, so far, all I've seen is complete honesty, and he's not pulling any punches, and he's such a good communicator that every topic he touches gets better.
That's my view.
Everything he touches gets better.
Through his clear language, basically.
I think he made his money in tech, I believe.
Don't let your thoughts get divided against Trump.
Here's what I'm going to do with talking about Trump.
I think everybody knows who he is, right?
So there's not really any explaining that needs to be done about Trump.
He's just such a well-known entity at this point that I don't really need to change anybody's opinions about anything.
I wouldn't feel any impulse to even try.
So I think at this point the best way for me to talk about Trump is the warts as well as the benefits.
Do you think that's fair?
If I cover what I don't like about his, let's say his campaign, But I also cover what I like.
Everybody okay with that?
Because, you know, he's not exactly a flawless candidate.
But people understand that.
It's transparent.
Trump's flaws are so transparent, like we all see them.
The funniest conversation I have with Democrats, let's see if any of you have the same experience, the funniest conversation I have is when they remind me of the bad things he's done and they think that's the reason that I shouldn't want him to be president again.
And I look at the list of bad things he's done, and I say, I know about all those.
I know about Trump University.
I've heard of Stormy Daniels.
I know all of that.
I still think he's the best choice, probably.
I mean, we'll see what the candidate situation shapes up as.
I could change my mind.
Now, my first choice would be Vivek, because he's younger.
I don't know if he has a path because Trump's position is so dominant it's hard to say.
But I think I can be consistently saying that I'd prefer Vivek.
At the same time I can say Trump brings a set of benefits that the country needs as well.
My biggest concern with Trump is that he brings so much controversy that we get lost in that.
If the only thing we could get is, you know, Trump's policies, like on energy for example, that would be cool.
But what he brings is so much consternation from the other side that you can't get anything done.
And that's got to be part of the analysis.
You know, it's not his fault entirely.
You could argue it is.
But it's more of a media phenomenon.
On the other hand, do the Republicans not get to have their first choice just because the media won't like it?
That's not a good enough reason to keep him out of office.
So we'll have to deal with that, I guess.
He isn't owned.
You know, that does seem to be the case, doesn't it?
Could you say at this point that no matter what you liked or didn't like about Trump, do you feel that he was owned by anybody?
Because I'm actually curious.
I feel like no.
I feel like no.
Yeah.
Owned by his ego, somebody says.
Well, we're all owned by our own egos.
Fauci?
You say he's not owned, but he's manipulated.
Well, I don't know.
Manipulated?
You know, one of the things you hear about Trump is that he can change his mind.
Who was it that was saying that?
That Trump will listen to an argument, and then listen to the next argument, and then change his mind to the new argument?
I want more of that, not less of that.
That's being presented as a flaw.
The ability to change your mind with a better argument is sort of an advantage.
Sort of an advantage.
Now if it's a bad argument and it changes his mind, that's a problem.
But he does seem pretty good at spotting BS.
So we'll see.
Oh yeah, Kimberly Guilfoyle said that.
All right.
You know, if Trump Somehow, I don't know, goes to jail or collapses in the primaries.
I've got a feeling that Vivek is your emergency spare.
So I would keep him totally inflated, if you know what I mean.
Like, if you're a Republican, you should have a backup plan to Trump.
Because anything could happen.
You know, part of it's age, right?
You know, anything could happen.
But there could be some legal thing you didn't see coming, anything.
So I would say even if Vivek is your first choice, realistically Trump's leading the pack, but he could self-destruct pretty easily.
Or somebody could destroy him easily.
Could happen.
I don't think it will.
I think the odds are that Trump will sail right through and be in the general election.
But you have to be ready for that.
Here's my current view on DeSantis running.
The smart people seem to have reached a general agreement, and it goes like this.
If he runs in 2024, DeSantis will be so destroyed by Trump that he might be done forever.
He might be done forever.
But if he just continues to do a solid job in Florida as, you know, the country's most beloved conservative governor, then Trump will not be able to run in 2028.
DeSantis is young.
It's the obvious play.
The obvious play is to wait.
It's really, really obvious.
And I would say that 100% of the smart people Are now understanding that.
Now, before we got close to the primary, we had the luxury of just looking them as two candidates.
Oh, if I were to individually look at DeSantis, huh, he seems to have a lot of Trump-like qualities without the drama.
And people like him, and huh, okay, that's all good, I love that.
You look at Trump separately, and you know about Trump.
But, as soon as you imagine them competing, and then this is the important part.
You haven't even seen Trump power up yet.
Trump is still running at like half power, compared to where he will be.
He's still running at half power, and he's already taken the legs out of DeSantis.
He just keeps repeating his claims about DeSantis, and just repetition alone is making him sink in, because you always talk about it.
If Trump says something bad about DeSantis, it's a national headline forever.
Right?
Everybody knows Ron DeSanctimonious.
Everybody knows.
So as soon as you imagine the primary being a competition, you imagine Trump destroying your favorite politician, if he is, and you think, well, I'd rather save my favorite politician and then get 12 years of Republicans somehow. I'd rather save my favorite politician and then get 12 What's the sticky one?
Yeah.
I missed it.
All right.
That's all for you today, YouTube.
I'm going to talk to the locals people a little bit more.
